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Vertigo 24 reviews
Winfried Georg Sebald, W. G. Sebald
New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2001
In sleepless hours the urgent desire to belong to no nation
+ The first, but not the best, of Sebald's highly distinctive novels
+ Sebald, the Last Great Writer of the Twentieth Century
+ Accessible - even though I had never heard of Sebald
+ A journey into memory
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The Emigrants 45 reviews
W. G. Sebald
New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1997
Survivors who didn't ...
+ Life Saver
+ "This is the edge of the darkness"
+ a peculiar silent beauty
+ "And so they are ever returning to us, the dead."
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After Nature (Modern Library Paperbacks)6 reviews
W.G. Sebald
Modern Library, 2003
DNA for Sebald's Prose Works
+ Poetry by the last great novelist of the 20th century
+ Thought provoking
+ Profound
+ noontime lucubration
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The Robbers and Wallenstein (Penguin Classics)2 reviews
Friedrich Schiller
Penguin Classics, 1980
Wallenstein is a Masterpiece
+ The rough broom of war
The Wallenstein trilogy is a fascinating work, constructed in an unusual and innovative manner, and marked by unusually powerful language. Wallenstein is a profoundly ambiguous figure. Was he a proto-German nationalist? A seeker of peace and religous moderation? A determined schemer aiming to ...
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The Life of Henry Brulard (New York Review Books Classics)2 reviews
Stendhal, John Sturrock
NYRB Classics, 2002
goosebumps
+ Stendhal being Stendhal
Who would think that an unfinished autobiography could be so good? But despite its rough edges and the odd passage of interest only to the author, the Life of Henry Brulard is very good indeed, and as moving as The Red and the Black. Early in the Life, Stendhal describes the pleasure of ...
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The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Selection: A Selection (Penguin Classics)12 reviews
Samuel Pepys
Penguin Classics, 2003
A fascinating reminder of why I keep a journal
+ Love It!
Ever since I found a circa 1950's diary in an old attic rummage sale on a vacation in Maine when I was about 8, I've been fascinated by old diaries. It also helps that I'm fascinated by history in general. So bring together great historical periods (ie the Great Fire of London) with diaries (and ...
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The Divine Comedy: Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso (Everyman's Library)61 reviews
Dante Alighieri
Everyman's Library, 1995
The Divine Comedy
+ TheDivineComedybook Review
+ Wonderful
I needn't review the merits of Dante's epic work for it is without question a landmark achievement in Western literature. And Robert Moore's review is an excellent argument as to why this translation merits serious consideration. What remains is to add how much I enjoyed revisiting this haunting ...
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Selected Poems and Fragments (Penguin Classics) 2 reviews
Friedrich Holderlin
Penguin Classics, 1998
excellent translations
As a german reader I must say that the author had made excellent translations. You have the feeling that he translated with heart - very rich in his speech and sometimes surprising. Some verses of Hoelderlin, which are strange and not easy to understand are in his translations clearer and simpler ...
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Love (Penguin Classics)9 reviews
Stendhal, B. C. J. G Knight
Penguin Classics, 1975
A philosophical and elaborate study of love
+ Stendhal the Sublime
+ No one does it better...
+ concerning the tedium of unrequited love
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The Drowned and the Saved21 reviews
Primo Levi
Vintage, 1989
As important as a book gets
+ Final Ruminations By A Humane, Thoughtful Intellectual Survivor
+ Witnesses for the Lost
+ Trying to Understand the "Un-Understandable"
+ A Note
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Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories48 reviews
Franz Kafka
Schocken Books Inc., 1995
Doesn't Get More Influential than this
+ Not for everybody
+ good stories,
This is the best of the best. Kafka is a lonely reclusive German man who sold insurance and wrote in his spare time. One of the most imaginative writers ever, and certainly one of the most influential. If you like anything written by Charlie Kaufman, he draws a lot of inspiration from Kafka. So do ...
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The Poems of Georg Trakl
Margitt Lehbert, Georg Trakl
Anvil Press Poetry, 2003
This collection of Trakl's essential poetry contains the two books published in his lifetime, Gedichte (`Poems', 1913) and Sebastian im Traum (`Sebastian in a Dream', 1914), together with the later poems published in the magazine Der Brenner which might have formed the nucleus of a third collection. His starkly beautiful, musical poems are rightly regarded as being among the early twentieth ...
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In Search of Lost Time: Proust 6-pack (Proust Complete)24 reviews
Marcel Proust
Modern Library, 2003
For Amateur Literati
+ Amazing
+ The Best English Translation of Proust
+ The best novel (book) ever written
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Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life (Radical Thinkers)14 reviews
Theodor Adorno
Verso, 2006
Pure thought
+ A classic.
+ We're all damaged
+ Firme Vatos
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Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon5 reviews
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Penguin Classics, 2001
Poetry Worth Reading
+ Lush, sensuous beauty
+ Great collection of the early Swinburne
+ poems & Ballads and more!
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Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited50 reviews
Vladimir Nabokov
Vintage, 1989
"...our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
+ Nabokov's genius
+ One to savour and enjoy slowly....
+ Mnemosyne speaks very well
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The Eclogues: Dual Language Edition (Penguin Classics) (Latin and English Edition) 4 reviews
Virgil
Penguin Classics, 1984
Apology for the English Alexandrine
+ For Lovers of Latin Poetry
No reading of the Eclogues is complete without a reading of the Idylls of Theocritus.
Having said that, and having (re-)read that, I find myself commenting on the other review, which was excellent (though it was written for a different edition). I disagree that Virgil "slavishly imitated" ...
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The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, First, Second and Fifth Editions
Cosimo Classics, 2005
Oh, come with old Khayyám, and leave the Wise To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies; One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies; The Flower than once has blown for ever dies. -XXVI Though it's difficult to imagine, these 12th-century stanzas-oft quoted and frequently looked to for inspiration by those seeking to live life to the fullest-did not come to the public's attention until ...
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Illuminations: Essays and Reflections 13 reviews
Walter Benjamin
Schocken, 1969
Just a quick note
+ Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproductions
+ Of Benjamin, Dwarfs and Angels
+ Clarity and Brilliance
+ Brilliance
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Verdi1 review
Franz Werfel
Ayer Co Pub, 1942
Verdi v. Wagner in Venice ý Melodic Power v. Heroic Drama
The book starts with the arrival of Verdi in Venice in 1882. The Maestro suffers from a creative paralysis, AIDA seemed to mark the end of his era and his career as opera composer. In town he is confronted with the success of his antidote, Richard Wagner, who is in town and who's melodramas are ...
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