The Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows movies had a lot to live up to when it came to fan expectations. For the book readers, who had been on the journey much longer than the movie fans, it was the final closing chapter of the Harry Potter series. At that point in 2011, no one knew that Rowling would have an equally hard time letting go of the characters and would end up writing a …
British Literature
British humor has its own identity; wry, genteel, steeped in sarcasm, slightly tongue-in-cheek. All writers have their own style, but there is something inherently similar in the language and narrative. I always find similarities between Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and PG Wodehouse with their mostly country house settings, caricaturized protagonists and situational humor. I also measure every other British humorist against them, which probably doesn’t help my reading at all, as it happened with Miss …
It takes a truly talented mind to take the day to day life of a country house wife and convert it into a journal of light satire and human observation. It is a little wonder why The Diary of a Provincial Lady was a bestseller when it was published in 1933 and why the reprints are still so popular. To be honest, when I got through the first fifty pages or so, I wasn’t entirely …
In high school, I only read the Charles & Mary Lamb version of Shakespeare’s works. While it served as a good introduction to the essential plots and themes, it failed to capture the true beauty of the language. I never formally studied Shakespeare, and my only attempt at reading his original works was as a fourteen-year-old, grasping at dusty shelves to retrieve a heavy copy of The Complete Original Works of Shakespeare at my grandparents’ …
Wilkie Collins is famous genre-defining novels like The Moonstone & The Women in White – these novels often make it to the top hundred lists. The Haunted Hotel is a lesser known work – a purely gothic story with interesting characters, haunted rooms and scandalous love affairs. Without spoiling the plot, there is a lot making it a page turner. A hush-hush marriage, a scorned lover, rivalry between brothers, missing servants and phantom visions – …
I picked up this book solely because it was a Virago Modern classics cause one can typically trust their curation. However, I am not sure if this was a win. I am not entirely sure whether The Play Room qualifies to be a modern classic. But I guess, 50 years down the line, it may be considered a reflection of teenage youth in England during the Swinging 60s. The Plot The Play Room is centered …
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