Archive for the ‘Fiction’ Category

Candide by Voltaire The real key to a great satire is its ability to be specific enough to destroy and mock its current targets in such a way that it will not be lost on future generations. For instance, Candide, Voltaire’s masterpiece, is essentially an attack on Gottfried Leibniz and any and all philosophers whose [...]

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett [Please note that this review does include spoilers.] Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is probably the most popular children’s book written by someone not named Suess, Rowling, Silverstein, Baum, Carroll, or Grimm. Like any book that inevitably falls into the category of “classic children’s book,” Burnett uses [...]

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë [Please note that this review does include spoilers.] The eternal problem with writing a review–or thoughts of any kind–with regards to anything written by the Brontë sisters is that you inevitably want to write about the non-writing aspects of either Anne, Charlotte, or Emily. Once you begin to read something [...]