Book Reviews

“I Can’t Breathe” is the name of the first story I ever read by Ring Lardner. It concerns a well-to-do 18-year-old girl who is infatuated, off and on, with several boys.

Nikolai Gogol published his great novel, “Dead Souls”, in 1842. The plot concerns a man named Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, who buys dead serfs from various landowners; not the cadavers of these serfs, rest assured; only their names.

From 1942 to 1945, James Fahey served on board the USS Montpelier, and recorded his experiences in a diary.

While at an estate sale here in Fullerton, I happened upon an old book written by Helen Hunt Jackson first published in 1884, the name: Ramona.

Though James Farl Powers (1917—1999) focused his fiction on a variety of subjects, he is best known for his depictions of Catholic priests.

I would not call Seabury Quinn’s “The Phantom Farmhouse” a great work of literature; but it is good, and well worth reading—especially for fans of the horror genre that do not require high doses of violence and sex in their fictional products.

Stories about the supernatural fascinate and attract, I suppose, because they deal with those realms of human experience that are mysterious.

“Light in August” (1932) is set in the American South during the era of racial segregation and is focused chiefly on a protagonist named Joe Christmas.

The plot concerns a man named John Russell. He is a non-Native American who was raised as an Apache; and if you want an example of stoicism or “grace under pressure”, here it is.

“The Brothers Karamazov”, Dostoyevsky’s last novel (1880), is generally considered to be his masterpiece. Its central theme is arresting and provocative: if there is no God and no life beyond this life, then morality is non-existent; ANYTHING goes.