renehasekamp is not currently reading any books.
I’m 69 years old, male, from Netherlands. I’ve been a DailyLit member since December 29, 2008. My reading interests include Detective, Mystery, and Classics.
Books
- A Christmas Carol finished
- Fetching Raymond finished
- A Moment of Wrong Thinking finished
- A Princess of Mars (Barsoom Series Volume 1) finished
- Promissory Payback finished
- The Scarlet Letter finished
- The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 finished
- The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 finished
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Ivanhoe finished
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Middlemarch finished
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button finished
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The Woman in White finished
Posts
Ivanhoe - Slow
This is a very famous book. But reading it is a kind of a task. The story goes very slow, Ivanhoe appears for the first time at about 1/3 of the book, there is a dreadful "deus ex machina" in it and the old English language is difficult to read (for non-native English readers).
Still, the story is good. (By the way, what happens between Ivanhoe and Rebecca?)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Nice, but not exceptional
maybe because it's so short, but it remains too much "at the surface". Still nice to read.
The Woman in White - Great read!
I enjoyed this book tremendously. Wilky Collins is definitely an eye-opener to me. His books are not written as if they were written 150 years ago but as if they were written recently. Some elements of the story are "old fashioned" of course, but the book is a page-turner.
Jane Austen - Pride and prejudice
Everybody with some interest in English literature should read this novel. And also "Sense and Sensibility", if it comes to compulsory literature.
Book Requests - Where are the old mystery books?
Hi,
I am enjoying the DailyLit system tremendously. I even changed reading an e-book I was reading to the DailyLit installments of it.
But I am missing most of the old mystery / detective books, the basis of the modern detective stories.
There was Fergus Hume ("The Mystery of a Hansome Cab" and many others).
And how about Anna Katherine Green ("The Leavenworth Case", "The Mystery of the hasty Arrow" and many others? She was an inspiration source for Agatha Christie, it seems.
You have two books by Wilkie Collins already. It would not harm DailyLit to get more of this great writer and friend of Dickens.
All the books mentioned are available at Gutenberg and free from copyright.
How about more books in this direction?
Book Requests - The Red House Mystery by A A Milne
I have read "The Red House Mystery" by A.A.Milne as an e-book and I can say that it is one of the best and most amusing (of the old) detective stories I ever read. It is - sadly - the only detective story by Milne.
I am missing more authors at DailyLit, but I will post that in different threads.
Charles Dickens - Which is the best?
There is no doubt about that: David Copperfield is his absolute masterpiece. Not only the story is good, but the way of writing is superb.
The book is written from the point of view of David Copperfield. It starts when he is a child (Chapter 1: "I am born"), and ends when he is a man. At the start his thinking and way of acting is that of a child. During the book the writing becomes more mature and at the same time the writing becomes more mature.
That aspect (the way the book is written) for me makes this book an absolute masterpiece. I have never seen something like that elsewhere, in such a brilliant way. One of the finest pieces of literature ever written. If you don't love "David Copperfield" you won't like anything by Dickens.
Other great books by Dickens are Great Expectations, Bleak House, Oliver Twist, Our Mutual Friend. Well, everything by Dickens is very good.