weekly posts on literature, languages, and learning
"We translate more easily than we know our gratitude to God into our admiration of ourselves." Hugh Walpole’s 1922 novel The Cathedral is one of the best works of this, now sadly and unjustly neglected, author. Regular readers of the Grammaticus blog hopefully haven’t missed the December 2022 release of his short ghost story The …
Continue reading "Book review: ‘The Cathedral’ by Hugh Walpole"
In this post I will present the latest addition to my Latin library, which is a single-volume edition of the 1962 Diurnale Romanum breviary. The post can be read as an addendum to ‘Learn Latin using contemporary resources’ or as a sample review related to ‘Let’s talk about books and literature’ article found elsewhere on …
Randomly picked off a library book shelf the other day, Truman Capote's last work, Answered Prayers (posthumously published in 1986), was a first for me. Although I've been intrigued for a long time, I kept avoiding Capote, confident that I'd dislike his writing as much as I dislike what I'd known were his usual themes: …
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If you’re a fan of TV shows like Midsomer Murders, you’ll love this book series by Faith Martin. It’s mostly because of the cold, grey and uninviting January weather that I’ve only wanted to stay in lately—a book in one hand, a nice cup of tea in the other. And this winter I’ve been very …
Continue reading "Book review: “The Complete Monica Noble Murder Mysteries”"
Arin Murphy-Hiscock is a Canadian author who has written a number of books on contemporary witchcraft. What initially drew me to this title in particular, I am not ashamed to admit, was its beautiful cover – I am a sucker for nice book designs, and this one immediately got my attention. But, of course, there …
Man’s belief in survival of life after death is one of the oldest expressions of religiosity, firmly embedded in the very foundations of organised religion. Right from the prehistoric times humans have been keenly interested in what happens to the soul after the demise of the physical body, as evidenced by the earliest funerary rites. …
Continue reading "Book review: “Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances”"
As the summer slowly draws to a close, I return to the book I love to re-read this time of year. Sarah Orne Jewett’s 1896 novella The Country of the Pointed Firs is a gentle and relaxing, almost meditative account of an idyllic summer spent in a small fishing village on the coast of Maine. …
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Donna Tartt’s debut novel “The Secret History” was first published thirty years ago, but it’s one of those books that age really well. In terms of genre, it's been described as a campus novel, but don't mistake it for a piece of YA fiction set in a college; nor is it, in spite of the …
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John Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, was set in the small town of Clanton in Ford County, Mississippi: population of 10,000 but “enough conflict to support fifty-one lawyers.” That 1989 book has since been followed by dozens of titles that have earned him the reputation of a master of legal thriller. In Ford …
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Think of literary vampires, and everyone’s first association is bound to be Bram Stoker’s Dracula hailing from that dark, mystifying land of Transylvania. Enormously influential as it has been, Dracula had a notable antecedent in the form of an even more ground-breaking, yet lesser known, vampiric antagonist - Carmilla - created by the Irish novelist …
Continue reading "Queer in more ways than one: “Carmilla”, a Gothic literary classic"
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