August 9, 2009
SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE COMPLETE NOVELS AND STORIES, VOLUME I
Written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over his forehead and the bridge of his nose ‘It is a question of cubic capacity,’ said he; a man with so large a brain must have something in it.’”
—Page 379, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, Volume I
Fun Facts
- Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories that feature Sherlock Holmes.
- Dr. John Watson narrates all but four stories, two are narrated by Sherlock Holmes himself, and two others are written in the third person.
- Conan Doyle killed off Holmes in The Final Problem. However, after resisting public pressure for eight years, he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, setting it before Holmes’ death. But the public still wanted more, so he resuscitated Holmes two years later in The Return.
August 20, 2009
THE AENEID OF VIRGIL
Written by Virgil
Translated by Allen Mandelbaum
“Trojans, do not trust in the horse. Whatever it may be, I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.”
—Book II, lines 69-70, page 30
Fun Facts
- The Aeneid was written in a time of major political and social change, when many Romans’ faith in the greatness of Rome was severely crumbling.
- The main character, Aeneas, first appears in the Iliad. Virgil took the stories and expanded them.
- Legend says that Virgil would write just three lines of the poem a day. Regardless of whether this is true, it is commonly accepted that Virgil had unlikely been able to finish the poem himself especially on that schedule.
August 28, 2009
MANSFIELD PARK
Written by Jane Austen
“Depend upon it, you see but half. You see the evil, but you do not see the consolation. There will be little rubs and disappointments every where, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better; we find comfort somewhere.”
—page 46
Fun Facts
- Mansfield Park is perhaps, for Jane Austen fans, the most controversial and yet the least popular of her major novels.
- The name of Harry Potter character, Mrs. Norris, is J.K. Rowling’s nod to Jane Austen’s Mrs. Norris the officious, skinflint sister of Lady Beltram and reveals Austen’s influence on Rowling’s writing.
- Mansfield Park was the first of her novels that was not a revision of an earlier work.
