16/08/2024
Quentin Durward
Quentin Durward is a historical novel set in the mid-1400’s. The main character is a Scottish archer serving French King Louis XI, another main character. – Summary by Deon Gines [chương_files]
16/08/2024
Crime and Punishment (Version 3)
Crime and Punishment is the second of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s full-length novels following his return from 5 years of exile in Siberia, and is considered the first great novel of his “mature” period of writing. The novel focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her cash. Raskolnikov, in an attempt to defend his actions, argues that with the pawnbroker’s money he can perform good deeds to counterbalance the crime while ridding the world of a vermin, and to test a theory of his that some people are naturally superior and have the right to commit crimes if it is in pursuit of a higher purpose. ( Mark Nelson) [chương_files]
16/08/2024
Andersen’s Fairy Tales (Version 2)
A small collection of some of H.C. Andersen’s fairy tales — including The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Red Shoes, The Naughty Boy and fifteen others. [chương_files]
16/08/2024
mer
Un ouvrage très intéressant (en notre siècle de réflexion pour l’avenir de notre planète et de ses océans), où déjà, y est traitée la protection animale, et proposé le Droit de la mer, grande et belle idée de 1860, de Michelet. Cet ouvrage est une magnifique présentation de nos océans, de la vie maritime, dans un style limpide et clair, sciences, société, et réflexion très profonde et enrichissante. – Summary by Christiane Jehanne [chương_files]
16/08/2024
Life and Adventures of Frank and Jesse James
Biographies of Frank and Jesse James, detailed accounts of all their significant escapades, and the final outcomes. [chương_files]
16/08/2024
Spieler
Alexej Iwanowitsch begleitet als Hauslehrer einen pensionierten russischen General und dessen Kinder zusammen mit weiteren Angestellten in einen Badeort. Da sich der General in einem finanziellem Engpass befindet, versuchen die Protagonisten immer wieder auf verschiedenen Wegen zu Geld zu kommen – meistens über das Glücksspiel. In der Nebenhandlung gibt es immer wieder Affären und Skandale, deren Folgen das Leben der Akteure beeinflussen. – Summary by Welfenelfe [chương_files]
16/08/2024
Story of a New Zealand River
“This is the land of the lost, one of those happy spots where no questions are asked. Of course, the fact of a person’s being here is usually all the explanation necessary.” The Story of a New Zealand River is a romance set in the Northland region of New Zealand, in the time when the forests of New Zealand’s grandest tree, the kauri, were being logged for their exquisite timber. The novel begins as Alice Roland and her free-spirited daughter Asia are being rowed in a black punt by handsome and cultured David Bruce up the Kaipara harbour to their new home at a raw kauri logging settlement in a bend of the Kaiwaka river. Tom Roland, a rough colonial and the boss of the settlement, is Alice’s husband of a few years. Alice is a beautiful but tight-laced, proud, puritanical Englishwoman whose mismatch with Tom Roland is not a happy one. They arrive with Alice’s piano among their belongings to find a half-built cottage, a strange collection of inhabitants, from gentry to scoundrels, and a place that is beautiful and challenging. Jane Mander was a New Zealand novelist and journalist. As well as New Zealand, she also lived in Sydney, New York and London. There is a superficial resemblance between The Story of a New Zealand River and the Jane Campion film The Piano, which is principally the setting and the piano. (summary by Gail Timmerman-Vaughan) [chương_files]
16/08/2024
A to Zed Collection Vol. 002
This is a collection of 26 selections, both fiction and nonfiction, in which each topic begins with a different letter of the alphabet. [chương_files]
16/08/2024
Rainbow (Version 2)
Briefly appearing in 1915, then banned and taken out of circulation for its adult treatment of sexuality, Lawrence’s visionary novel The Rainbow attempts to situate the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family within the continuous social change marking the Victorian transformation of Britain. Farmer Tom and his Polish wife Lydia, whose peaceful rural existence re-enacts the potent myths of Genesis; artisan Will and the matriarch Anna, who go to live among the industrial and mining communities so rapidly sprung up around Nottingham; finally the restless Ursula who, moving to the city, seeks sexual and emotional fulfilment with the Polish-descended Skrebensky – the three couples are not merely illustrative of the changing times, but allow the author to study in depth the conflict between the outer ‘social’ selves of those individuals and what he curiously calls the ‘inhuman’ essential being, the ‘is-ness’ at the core of their psychical life. Lawrence evokes this dark, unconscious ‘vital core’ through a language of breathtaking poetic beauty; a rhythmic incantatory prose which listeners to this recording will find perfectly rendered by Tony Foster, in all its nuances. Like Paul Morel, the hero of the earlier Sons and Lovers, Ursula survives her losses to face a future of uncertain but radiant hope: “She saw in the rainbow the earth’s new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.” [chương_files]
16/08/2024
阿Q正傳 (The True Story of Ah Q)
The True Story of Ah Q (simplified Chinese: 阿Q正传; traditional Chinese: 阿Q正傳) is an episodic novella written by Lu Xun, first published as a serial between December 4, 1921 and February 12, 1922. It was later placed in his first short story collection Call to Arms (吶喊, Nahan) in 1923 and is the longest of the stories in the collection. The piece is generally held to be a masterpiece of modern Chinese literature, since it is considered the first piece of work fully to use Vernacular Chinese after the 1919 May 4th Movement in China. It was first published in the Beijing Morning News supplement as a serial. Originally Lu Xun wrote the story under the name “Ba Ren” (“crude fellow”), and so originally few people knew who wrote Ah Q. The first installment was published on December 4, 1921, and additional installments appeared weekly and/or fortnightly. The final installment was published on February 12, 1922. The story had nine chapters. (Summary from Wikipedia.) [chương_files]