betweenpages

Bram Stoker

The ship arriving in Whitby with everyone dead is cinematic decades before cinema. Stoker was a visual thinker.

Mary Shelley

A novel about loneliness at its core. The creature and Victor are mirrors of each other - both isolated, both suffering.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien was a linguist who invented worlds to house his languages. The result is the richest fiction ever created.

Charlotte Brontë

A book that burns with quiet rage against injustice. Charlotte Bronte channeled her anger into art.

J. P. Steed

The phoniness Holden rails against is real. He's not wrong about the world, he just doesn't know how to live in it.

Herman Melville

I admire it immensely but "enjoy" isn't the right word. It demands everything from you as a reader.

Matt Haig

Haig has a gift for making philosophy feel like a warm hug. Not every book needs to be complex to be profound.

Emily Brontë

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." Chills, every single time.

Bram Stoker

The way multiple narrators piece together the mystery is ahead of its time. A proto-thriller.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Gatsby's obsession with the past resonates deeply. Fitzgerald understood longing like few others.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I appreciate its historical importance but struggled with the episodic structure. The digressions tested my patience.