Classics Considered

Our journey leads us to a castle in Hungary and Sándor Márai's short but stirring novel, Embers.  History takes center stage in the life of the old General, who wakes up one day to take revenge on the man that haunted him for forty-one years.

Great books can make great movies (and, in some cases, better ones). This week's topic features some of my favorite costume dramas inspired by classics.

Looking for your next great read?  This episode features six little-known classics and why I feel they should be famous.

An ancient family heirloom - and a mother's call for vengeance - sends young Leo Vincey and his adoptive father on a quest to find a mysterious sorceress, Ayesha, or She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.  In this episode, I review H. Rider Haggard's She, a novel which influenced the fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

In this episode, we meet William Faulkner through one of his most famous novels, The Sound and the Fury.

Our voyage takes a detour through that hardest of decisions: how to rate a novel.  I share my four personal guidelines for rating classics and show some examples of how this works in practice.

We wrap up the Space Trilogy with That Hideous Strength, Lewis's dystopian thriller which takes place on our very own planet Earth.

Here we uncover another dystopian classic: Robert Hugh Benson's little-known novel from 1907, Lord of the World.

Today I unpack three of Arthur Miller's most famous plays: All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible.

This episode takes us through the solar system as I review Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, the first two books in C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.

On this voyage through classic literature, we join Humphrey van Weyden and follow his struggle to survive on the ominous ship The Ghost.

Today's episode delves into WWI history with the life and writings of T. E. Lawrence.

For this week's topic, I talk about my favorites from classic literature and why I may give up having "favorites" in the future.

In this pilot episode, I discuss my latest read, We - a dystopian classic novel by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin.