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Cimarron
Edna Ferber 1930 (The Oklahoma land rush of 1889 gives Yancey Cravat an opportunity to rescue his wife from civilized mediocrity, and head west for the untamed life of the pioneer.) Yancey Cravat is the Cimarron—the wild one, like an aimless river or a jousting bighorn sheep. He may tote legal volumes as easily as […]
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Emmuska Orczy 1905 (A master of disguise rescues French aristocrats from the guillotine and drops them safely into London society—until a sly French inspector tracks him down.) Don’t let the title’s reference to a dainty flower and the femininity of the author fool you. This is no Austen or Brontë novel. It is a hearty […]
Sappho’s poetic fragments
Sappho 7th-6th centuries BC (The tenth muse expresses beauty, love, and the contents of her heart.) Αιαι. Aiai! If only our dinner hosts still upheld the custom of ordering beautiful recitations over the wine! So it was in the days when some, at least, still believed in the Muses. On one of these evenings, Solon the […]
Whose Body?
Dorothy L. Sayers 1923 (A financier goes missing and a lookalike is found dead in a bathtub. The easygoing Lord Peter Wimsey searches for the connection.) As troubling as murder is in our society, more of them happen on bookstore shelves than anywhere else, and millions of apparently peaceful people pay plenty of money to […]
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
December 28, 2014 / Leave a comment
Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 (Two slaves struggle mightily: one for her liberty, the other for his integrity.) This novel, the best selling book in the nineteenth century besides the Bible, is a remarkably forceful argument against the world’s most blatant form of widespread institutionalized violation of human rights. It is a collage of slave lives and […]
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