Black Beauty

Melanie and I are reading this now. It is quite good. Anna Sewell was raised Quaker and sound, good Christian sensibility permeates the book. Here's a sample from a chapter called the 'Devil's Trade Mark':

..he talked to all the boys very seriously about cruelty, and said how hard-hearted and cowardly it was to hurt the weak and the helpless; but what stuck in my mind was this, he said that cruelty was the devil's own trade-mark, and if we saw any one who took pleasure in cruelty we might know who he belonged to, for the devil was a murderer from the beginning, and a tormentor to the end. On the other hand, where we saw people who loved their neighbors, and were kind to man and beast, we might know that was God's mark."

Other Links: Netflicks, Project Gutenberg

Dorian Gray

Librivox:
http://librivox.org/the-picture-of-dorian-gray-by-oscar-wilde/

Sparknotes:
Dorian Gray

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde

My thoughts:

Interesting ~ as plot Dorian Gray appears to be antithesis of 'Tithonus' (Victorian poem by Alfred Lord Tenneyson). While Dorian remained forever young and his painting aged -- Tithonus lived forever -- but, continually aged: Tithonus

Dorian Gray appears relatively early in his list of Wilde's work--between his stint as a journalist and before his plays. The work seems to be his showpiece for his ideas of "art-for-art's sake." ~ "Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

Books for January - February

The Annotated Hobbit
ical

The Lord of the Rings
ical

Moby Dick
ical

The Tale of the Genji
ical

Ugetsu ~ 'Tales of Moonlight and Rain'

Very good film.

I found these quotes from subtitle download file at allsubs.org:

"The fruit of experience is beauty."
(経験のフルーツは美である)

"The value of both people and
things, change by the location."

"You are a dead man if you continue to run
around like this. Hurry up and get home!"

"You will wake up from the dream when
you realize how horrible the ghost is."

Google ~ Ugetsu ~ Books
Google ~ Ugetsu ~ Video

Got 'Tales of Moonlight and Rain' from the library. It was the basis for the movie 'Ugetsu' ... very good. The author reminds me of Isak Dinesen short stories : Winter's Tales