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Hardy - Tess of the d'Urbervilles

‘A PURE WOMAN’ (Well, that tell us what we’re in for here).       ·        Phase the First – The Maiden ·        Phase the Second – Maiden No More ·        Phase the Third – The Rally ·        Phase the Fourth – the Consequence ·        Phase the Fifth – The Woman Pays ·        Phase the Sixth – The Convert ·        Phase the Seventh - Fulfillment “The ideal and real clash slightly” Ah, ‘purity’.    What a fraught political and social concept.   Actually it is not.   It’s quite simple.   Men figured out they had something to do with reproduction and at that point, women had to be kept solely for the procreative use of one man.   (Although that is antithetical to widespread and healthy gene mixing – right, down s...
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Dickens - Great Expectations - An educational journey begins.

Well, thanks to Dr. Bodow and his untiring obsession with turning me on to Benjamin McEvoy -- I'm going to try to get my Oxford University English Literature Degree ... for free. https://benjaminmcevoy.com/get-oxford-university-english-literature-education-free/ Do click or cut and paste or whatever you do. Then, in skimming and wandering through this potential project, the first thing I discovered was that I did not know how to read ... so we must digest How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren; (this book must be a read in progress).   https://tinyurl.com/na35v47y And also the You Tube interviews they did (I've done enough work, put it in your search box on You Tube). I am trying to remember if I ever did read Great Expectations, or if I am a victim of enjoying TV and movie adaptations to the point where I THINK I read it. One gets to the age where the dodges once was wont to indulge in to deceive pr...
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The Keeper of Lost Causes - Jussi Adler-Olson

I find it deeply disturbing to find a book in my Kindle library (which Amazon politely tells me I purchased on August 29, 2014) that I have no idea why or how I bought it (or even when, but Amazon tells me what I actually do not, did not … know). I suppose this was when Tony was going through his “Nordic detective tales” phase.   He did buy me several of these murder-under-the-midnight-sun series, including Wallander; maybe starting with Wallander, I don’t remember.     I discovered Stieg Larsson all on my own.    (NB the only film version of this to watch is with Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil Taube, and Peter Andersson, produced by Yellow Bird in Sweden … as close to perfect, as could possibly be).   Anyhoo …. Published in 2011, long after Silence of the Lambs, with a fairly Lamby-endgame, that stretches suspense to tedium as one drags oneself to the close.    The central characters hold your attention.    The downf...
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