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Garnett's Edwardian translations probably did a great job in her time. But I also find them confusing. I read Crime and Punishment in a new translation, and the language just flew like it had originally been written in English.

In my childhood I preferred the American superhero comics to the European sci-fi/fantasy/adventure/western stuff: I grew up on Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor, The Avengers, Daredevil, Punisher, New Warriors, pretty much anything Marvel put out. I've lately grown disillusioned...

Well, it's a pretty long book, 600 pages or so, in small font, so it carries a lot of content. Being a layman I don't know what was left out, but I think Gribbin did a great job in making the history of science at least captivating, amusing and even heroic at times.

But these are not your daddy's superheroes: they're not Spider-Man, Superman or Batman. They're adult superheroes: they have mental problems, prejudices, insecurities, moral dilemmas, phobias: They're Watchmen!

I second The Mystery of the Yellow Room: it's actually one of the early examples of the locked room subgenre. I'd also recommed reading G. K. Chesterton's 'Father Brown' stories, which often involve locked room murders too. Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr also wrote lots of novels on this...

I wouldn't say it's a good introduction as much as it helps explain aspects of Kafka's work: the grinding oppressive worlds his impotent protagonists live in, etc. To me the real introduction is The Metamorphosis: it's short, it's powerful, it's complete, it's brilliant.

:lol:

Philip Roth has an M.A. in English Literature, and to me he's the best American writer alive today. I think the only thing people expect from a writer is that he write with quality.

It was a pretty good month for me: Surrealist Art, Sarane Alexandrian: a beautiful non-fiction book about the development of surrealist art from Breton's Surrealist Manifest in 1924 to his death in the '60s. A book full of fascinating people who produced incredible art. The Seven...

Hauntings is a collection of supernatural short-stories that remains on the threshold between the fantastic and the psychological. Perhaps ghosts and strange forces do exist here, but they’re always invited by the obsessions, hatreds and passions of the living. In the first story, Amour...

I've just come from watching The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which got me thinking about this thread and the problem of high fantasy in general. I like C.S. Lewis' universe because he wasn't an obsessive compulsive writer who worked on world building his entire life, creating a...

When I think Franz Kafka has no more secrets for me, I read Letter to his Father and lose myself in awe. This short letter, no longer than a novella, may well be Kafka’s most perfect work: short, clear, full of feeling, encompassing his pessimistic worldview, explaining his oeuvre. In Kafka’s...

An early dystopian short novel from a writer I had never read before, The Scarlet Plague is hardly a mind-blowing masterpiece of the genre. However, unlike in most dystopian novels I’ve read the world is not only ruined, it’s irreversibly doomed to remain ruined for a long time. And that's good...

She must have terrified readers when it first came out. I can only imagine how the prim, sexually-pressed Victorian society received a novel about an immortal woman who commands a lost tribe, possesses mystical powers, can submit any man to her will by unveiling her face, and has the knowledge...

I should rectify my last post: actually I care about literary criticism, but much of the navel-gazing intellectual porn that passes for criticism bores me. I think writers write the best literary criticism: what Borges, Kundera, Nabokov, Eco, Forster, Proust, have to say about books are...

Oh, Bartleby, Bartleby: arguably the best American short-story ever written. I was almost in tears at the end when Bartleby says, "I know where I am". Read it, do read it as soon as possible!

Literary criticism doesn't interest me at all. What I really want to know is, where do you find all those great cartoons?

Interesting that a lot of authors get written as detectives: Poe, Austen, Wendell Holmes, Longfellow. Why do you think that happens?

I was kind of hoping Mrs. Rowling didn't have any more books in her.

Stay away from illustrated versions of novels! That's the lowest form of comics there is. Read original comics, that's where the glory of the medium is.