Mike’s Comments (group member since Oct 28, 2021)

Mike’s comments from the Never too Late to Read Classics group.

I read We last month and really enjoyed it, I hope you do too Fannie.

The Symposium by Plato


90 pages - Review

Group total: 639,368

Thanks Sandy! I've not come across Rolland before and I've even found the book on Project Gutenberg.

Wailing Ghosts by Pu Songling


56 pages - Review

Group total: 635,808

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli


106 pages - Review

Group total: 635,752

Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw


288 pages - Review

Total to date: 625,106

I remember that sketch. I've been looking forward to this and will be reading the 6 volume set in the Penguin Modern Classics published in 2002.

I shall shamelessly plug The Cambridge Companion to Homer as the editor is my father!

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie


275 pages - Review

Group total: 605,628

Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales: From Burns to Buchan


228 pages - Review

Group total: 595,942

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll


378 pages - Review

Total to date: 556,948

Piccadilly Jim by P.G. Wodehouse


320 pages

Pages so far: 510,426

Lord of the Flies by William Golding


313 pages - Review

Total to date: 495,666

I'm reading We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and really enjoying it so far, especially the playing with math. In a chapter titled "Limitation of Infinity. Angel. Reflections on Poetry" a circle is mentioned early on and I immediately marvelled that the line of a circle is infinite but the area it contains is limited.

I'm not one much for quotes, but occasionally a line does ring out and sticks. A few paragraphs after the mention of the circle we get:

Truth is one, and the true path is one. And that truth is two times two and that true path is four.

The reason this jumps out to me is that it touches on a line that I love from At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien:

Evil is even, truth is an odd number and death is a full stop.

At Swim-Two-Birds was first published in 1939 so it's possible that O'Brien was familiar with We, but who knows - perhaps there is a truth in one!

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux


368 pages - Review

Total to date: 472,939

Luís wrote: "The City of God by Augustine of Hippo"

That's been on my TBR for years, I look forward to your review Luis.

In the last few days I've finished both the short story collection (A Parisian Affair and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant) and novel (Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell) I was reading. Given it's October and I'm going to try and complete my challenges, for short stories I've picked Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales: From Burns to Buchan and the novel is The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell


596 pages - Review

Total to date: 459,318

A Parisian Affair and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant


322 pages - Review

Current Group Total: 455,617

I'm still gradually working my way through A Parisian Affair and Other Stories and read a story suitable for this time of year. Horla is a fun story about a possibly invisible person haunting the town.