Others: Mixed Up among the Vosges mountains in Lorraine, but just outside the old half-de province of Alsace, about thirty miles distant from the new and thoroughly fr baths of Plombières, there lies the village of Granpere. Whatever may be said or thought here in England of the late imperial rule in France, it must at any rate be admitted that good roads were made under the Empire. Alsace, which twenty years ago seems to have been somewhat behindhand in this respect, received her full share of Napoleon's attention, and Granpere is now placed on an excellent road which runs from the town of Remiremont on one line of railway, to Colmar on another.
Genres: historical fiction, classics
Lists: …
Charles Dickens
1800 · 758 pages · 2 reviews
Others: MixedDickens’ first novel was originally written and published as a serial. It is a comedy relating the misadventures of the members of The Pickwick Club, whose main purpose is to discover and relate quaint and curious phenomena of social life and customs throughout England. This quest takes the members to all parts of the country, travelling by coach and sampling the comforts or otherwise of various coaching inns.
What made the match, strongest first
John Steinbeck
1939 · 544 pages · 4 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveSteinbeck’s classic novel of the Great Depression is as vivid now as ever. The story focuses on a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers, farmers who work another man’s land for a share of the crops. Driven from their home by drought and poverty they take to the road in a battered old truck and make their way to California to look for work. When they arrive they find hundreds of others like them being forced to work for breadline wages. they begin working as fruit pickers, strike-breakers replacing the people who have been trying to establish a union but their consciences force them to leave.
What made the match, strongest first
Ernest Hemingway
1940 · 471 pages · 3 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveHigh in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war. And there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels.
What made the match, strongest first
Richard Llewellyn
1939 · 495 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveThis is a story set in a south Wales coal mining valley and tells of a family striving to improve their lives through hard work, education and their non-conformist faith. The main character is the youngest son, Huw Morgan and his life's journey through the difficulties associated with the mining industry and the awful risks involved in deep coal mining in the mid nineteenth century. The narrative traces the dignity and fortitude of hard working Welsh miners and their ambitions and hopes for their futures. The location of the story is usually considered to be in a village called Gilfach Goch in the Rhondda Valley. The collieries are long gone but their scars are still evident, returning to the green of the book's title.
What made the match, strongest first
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1864 · 144 pages · 0 reviews
Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover, the novel introduces themes — moral, religious, political and social — that dominated Dostoyevsky's later works.
What made the match, strongest first
Anne Brontë
1847 · 186 pages · 2 reviews
Others: MixedIn her Introduction to an edition of "Agnes Grey," Barbara A. Suess writes "Bronte provides a portrait of the governess that is as sympathetic as her fictional indictment of the shallow, selfish moneyed class is biting." Anne Bronte relies on her own personal involvement in her duties as a home teacher to bring Agnes Grey to life. Agnes, a rector's daughter, must take employment as a governess to help her family make financial ends meet. But her situations with the spoiled, self-obsessed Bloomfield children and later with the ruthless Murray family forces her into a lonely, humiliating experience that is a wearying one extraordinarily blossoming into a romantic relationship with the local vicar, Edward Weston. Agnes' concern for her family brings her to these unfortunate trials where she suffers stupid and egotistic proprietors and their over-indulged progeny. She was not able to foresee the hardships she would have to undergo along with the class snobbery to which she was also subjected. And yet a career as a governess was the only "respectable" job available to an unmarried woman in Victorian England. Bronte's simple and uncomplicated rendition of these sordid affairs made circumstances surrounding such brutish conditions authentic enough to necessitate investigation and improvement.
What made the match, strongest first
MixedI did really enjoy this, but I think as Anthony Trollope books go, it's not the most special. The Golden Lion of Granpere is definitely the least dark of the three, , and therefore, in a way, it is the less interesting of the three, though I do think it's really good.
