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REVIEW: The Black Ball by Ralph Ellison
I learned something new today. Ralph Ellison’s full name is Ralph Waldo Ellison and he was named after (so says Wikipedia) Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist, lecturer, philosopher. I shall try not to get confused. The Black Ball is the twelfth in the boxed set of Penguin Modern Classics and comprises four short stories, Boy on…
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REVIEW: The Legend of the Sleepers by Danilo Kis
Back to the Penguin Modern Classic collection and this is number 11 of 50 and the first one where I had never actually heard of the author at all. So I Googled it. Because that’s what I do (and what everyone does) and discovered Kis (1935 to 1989) was born in what is now Serbia,…
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REVIEW: The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh
Number 10 in my Penguin Modern Classics boxed set and finally I have found a collection of poetry that I can a) understand and b) enjoy. Of the ten books that I’ve read so far in this set, three have been poetry and this is the only one that I have properly enjoyed. Patrick Kavanagh…
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REVIEW: The Three Electroknights by Stanislaw Lem
We are onto Penguin Modern Classic numero 9 and I give you The Three Electroknights by science fiction/ fantasy writer Stanislaw Lem. Now I know I have mentioned this before but the font on the front of this collection of 50 classics is so hideous I can barely look at it. The merging of the…
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REVIEW: The Veiled Woman by Anais Nin
Ooh Anais Nin is a little bit saucy isn’t she. I’ve never really read erotic fiction. When Fifty Shades of Grey and whatever the other two books are called came out, both my daughters read them but said I wasn’t allowed to. I pointed out to both of them that I had actually had sex…
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REVIEW: Three Japanese Short Stories
Three Japanese Short Stories is number five in my box of Penguin Modern Classics so I am classing these five slim volumes as one whole book read for my ‘let’s read 200 books this year goal’ (I’ve fallen a little behind by the way, but it’s still doable). The short stories are Behind the Prison…
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REVIEW: The Breakthrough
Number three in my box of Penguin Modern Classics is Daphne Du Maurier’s The Breakthrough. Now this is a good one – despite the fact the font on the front cover still makes me want to throw them all in the bin (you might get a bit of this raving each time I review one…
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REVIEW: Television was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber
Umm sorry about the title of the blog. As you can see, it is in fact the title of the second of the Penguin Modern Classics set that I bought and the title of one of Ginsberg’s poems included in here. Before we get on to the review of the book, can we just say…
Raynor Reads Stuff 