As you might guess from its title, this novel is set in Oxford and it's about a series of murders. The narrator, a young Argentinian mathematician (whose name we don’t learn, only know that it contains a double ’l’ which makes it hard to pronounce for several people – so we…
It was during winter, with a snowstorm raging outside when I first read this novel at the age of fifteen, and probably the circumstances of the reading had a lot to do with the huge impact the story had on me then. A large part of the story takes place in winter, with deep snow covering the world,…
Thomas Hardy’s perhaps most bitter novel tells the story of a young man looking for enlightenment and education. Jude lives in a remote village somewhere in the Wessex countryside and from his early childhood he loves books and learning. At the beginning of the story, the village schoolmaster…
Just as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is my favorite spring read, The Beach is my favorite summer read. I wouldn’t ever read this novel in any other season, but on every second or third summer I get an irrepressible craving for it and then I must re-read it without much delay.…
I first read this novel in the summer of 2004. I was holding down a summer job then, and I read the majority of the book on the bus while commuting to my workplace. I didn’t mind reading the novel in small installments, because I loved the story so much that I wanted it to last forever, and I…
I came across this novel on one of my favourite Hungarian book blogs, and I’m glad I read it, because this is a brutally stunning novel, and I really enjoy being stunned by books. Priority is an epistolary novel. The story is really simple: Delphine, a young Danish woman sees a painting…
Scarlett Thomas was brought to my attention by a blogger acquaintance of mine, and I’m glad that she recommended her to me because after reading this novel it’s pretty obvious that Thomas is really an author I’m bound to love. The End of Mr. Y belongs to the sub-genre of…
This has been one of my favourite novels since the time I was around sixteen, I have read it several times since then and I’ve been absolutely fascinated and overwhelmed by this book everytime I read it. Previously I always used to read it in translation, but during my latest re-reading I…
Usually I’m not too interested in anthologies containing the works of young and/or inexperienced authors, because (perhaps a trifle irrationally) I’m afraid that the writings of such authors might not be that good, and I’m too impatient to spend my time reading juvenile, perhaps…
Dimitri Verhulst was brought to my attention by two kind acquaintances of mine. One of them praised Problemski Hotel on his blog earlier, and the other recommended to me another novel by Verhulst, The Misfortunates. I started with Problemski Hotel, which was such an exquisite novel that soon after…