Quality poetry and literature from the
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IN ASSOCIATION
WITH
The Thirty-Nine Steps
John Buchan, introduction by Christopher Harvie
“John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine
Steps while he was seriously ill at the beginning of the First World War. In it he
introduces his most famous hero, Richard Hannay, who, despite claiming to be an
‘ordinary fellow,’ is caught up in the dramatic race against a plot to devastate
the British war effort. Hannay is hunted across the Scottish moors by police and spy-ring
alike, and must outwit his intelligent and pitiless enemy in the corridors of Whitehall
and, finally, at the site of the mysterious thirty-nine steps. The best-known of
Buchan’s thrillers, The Thirty-Nine Steps has been continuously in print since
first publication and has been filmed three times. In this, the only critical edition,
Christopher Harvie’s introduction interweaves the writing of the tale with the
equally fascinating story of how John Buchan, publisher and lawyer, came in from the cold
and, via The Thirty-Nine Steps, ended the war as spymaster and propaganda chief.” The
other Richard Hannay adventures that continue the story through the course of World War I,
include Greenmantle,
Mr.
Standfast, and The Three
Hostages. Buchan is also the author of critical biographies, the most famous being
Julius Caesar (unfortunately out of print), and a critical history of World War I.
Two Years Before the Mast
Richard Henry Dana
In 1834, Richard Henry Dana broke the
monotony of his convalesence with a bout of the measles by taking part in a sea voyage as
a working sailor. The ship put out from Boston and sailed round the Cape of South America,
putting into dock in San Francisco Bay at a time when going to California was about as
easy for the common American as going to the moon is for us. His journey on the whole took
two years, and Dana has a sharp eye for detail and an engaging narrative style that makes
you feel as if you are there. “While this autobiographical tale is not in the least
self-serving, [Dana] unconsciously paints a picture of himself as an adventurous but
sensitive young man, who, despite his education and class, which in most cases would have
put him far over the master of the ship, never thinks himself above his mates or his
duty.”
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
At first glance this book is historical
fiction taking place in Paris and London during the French Revolution in the late
1700’s. And it is true, Dickens’ impressive use of detail and language put us
right in the middle of the events and help us not only see what is happening, but why. But
the book is more than just a historical novel--Dickens creates amazingly complex and
life-like characters, and the way they interact, becoming increasingly drawn into each
other’s lives as the book progresses, keeps you on the edge of your seat until the
final page. A powerful story about all that is best and worst in the human condition, and
the consequences of our choices.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes is the ultimate
detective, world-renown for his feats of logic and deduction (which is actually induction
to be technical). Doyle makes Victorian England come alive for us until we can hear the
clop of horses’ hooves and smell the gas lamps illuminating the thickly-shrouded
sidewalks. The first Holmes story which introduces the characters of Holmes and Watson is
Study in Scarlet. The most famous is Hound of the Baskervilles, although that tale is a
little steeped in the macabre. But with this one volume edition of the complete Sherlock
Holmes tales, you can read just the most famous already mentioned, or all of the novels
and short stories, as so many want to do when they get hooked on the quintessential
detective’s flamboyant and humorous style.
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
Herman Melville published what has come to be known as
the Great American Novel in 1851. We begin the story with the narrator, Ishmael, who has
signed on to work on the whaling ship Pequod under her captain, Ahab, out of New Bedford,
Massachusetts. Little does he, or anyone, realize that this will be the Pequod’s last
voyage, and that he alone will be left alive to tell the story at the voyage’s end.
For Ahab is set to hunt down and kill the great white whale which killed his son. But when
does the righteous quest for justice end and the murderous thirst for unreasoning
vengeance begin? The crew finds itself drawn deeper and deeper in the depths of the
nightmare as the whale is not about to roll over but challenges Ahab’s right to the
sea, and Melville crafts a haunting and powerful tale which is much more than a simple
narrative, it is fully an exploration of the depths of the human soul laid bare by
pressures from within -- madness, eventually, in Ahab’s case? and without --
masterfully embodied in the great white whale and the sea. This book would be best saved
for the final book of the year, as it is multi-faceted and layered, and a fitting
preparation for the greatest books of western civilization that will be read in the
rhetoric stage.
Animal Farm
George Orwell
“When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust
their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in
collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one
brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals’ Seven Commandment credo is
painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink
alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that
go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the
enemy.” Eventually the animals’ intelligent and power-loving leaders, the pigs,
subvert the revolution and form a dictatorship even more oppressive and heartless than
that of their former human masters, proving the maxim that while power corrupts, absolute
power corrupts absolutely. Possibly Orwell’s finest work, this political fable is
based on the events of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution and the betrayal of the cause by
Joseph Stalin. This book is also very brief, and it would be good to round out Orwell with
his equally prophetic classic, 1984. It is
a study of totalitarianism set (for Orwell) in the future: “‘Who controls the
past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present
controls the past.’ In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is
always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, protagonist
Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still
functions. He knows the Party’s official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He
knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations
through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from
his fellows and deprives them of every liberating human pursuit. Drawn into a forbidden
love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called
The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved
Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.”
In His Steps
Charles Sheldon
The setting of this classic novel is a small town
church just like a thousand other small town churches in America. But one Sunday a
mysterious stranger visits the service and challenges the pastor and the congregation: how
have they changed the lives of the poor and downtrodden of their town? Didn’t Jesus
say that those who clothed the naked, visited the sick and imprisoned, and filled the
hungry did it unto Him? Can they say that the way they live their everyday lives sets them
apart as Jesus’ own? What would happen in their town if for one year, in the course
of living their everyday lives, they asked themselves this question: What would Jesus do?
and then did that? Deeply shaken, the minister and five influential parishoners begin a
year-long experience in Christianity. Each has resolved to conduct his life according to
the precepts of Christ, applying His behavior to their own lives. But then when that
committment causes them to change the way they live in their homes, the way they conduct
business in their jobs out in the secular world, the world stands up and takes notice. And
when the persecution starts, can they carry out their committment to the end?
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn’s first
book, this economical, relentless novel is the simply-told story of one common man’s
life in the Stalinist gulag in Siberia. From the icy blast of reveille through the sweet
release of sleep, Ivan Denisovich endures. A common carpenter, he is one of millions
viciously imprisoned for countless years on baseless charges, sentenced to the waking
nightmares of the Soviet work camps in Siberia. Even in the face of degrading hatred,
where life is reduced to a bowl of gruel and a rare cigarette, hope and dignity prevail.
This powerful novel of fact is a scathing indictment of Communist tyranny, and an eloquent
affirmation of the human spirit. Set in the forced-labor camp in which the author was
interned from 1950 to 1953, Ivan Denisovich was published during Nikita Khrushchev’s
de-Stalinization program, released without interference from Soviet government censors.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe
This was a ground-breaking book when it
was released in 1852, and in it, Harriet Beecher Stowe used the form of a novel to try to
get North and South see black men and women as human beings rather than just property. She
portrayed her fictional characters (based on compilations of the stories of real people;
she later published a book documenting her sources) as mothers and fathers, wives and
husbands, people with Christian souls. Uncle Tom’s Cabin paints pictures of three
plantations, each worse than the other, where even the best plantation leaves a slave at
the mercy of fate or the master’s debt. In one of the three stories, beautiful Eliza
Harris, a slave whose child is to be sold, escapes her beloved home on the Shelby
plantation in Kentucky and heads North, eludes the hired slave catchers and is aided by
the underground railroad. In another story, Uncle Tom is sent “down the river”
for sale and ultimately endures a martyr’s death under the whips of Simon
Legree’s overseers. Abraham Lincoln spoke truly of the influence of this book on
American society when he said upon meeting Mrs. Stowe, “So this is the little lady
responsible for all this big war.”
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