AJ Dunn Reads

  Franny and Zooey By J.D. Salinger  4 stars.

  Cannery Row By John Steinbeck  4 stars.

  Villette By Charlotte Brontë   3 stars.

 Agnes Grey By Anne Brontë   4 stars.

  Mansfield Park By Jane Austen   3 stars.

  Emma By Jane Austen   4.5 stars.

  The Hound of the Baskervilles By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle   4 stars.

  Madame Bovary By Gustave Flaubert 5 stars!

  The Canterbury Tales By Geoffrey Chaucer   4 stars.

  Far from the Madding Crowd By Thomas Hardy   4 stars

  Dracula By Bram Stoker   My first time finally reading Dracula! Jonathan Harker is on his way to Transylvania to assist Count Dracula with his home purchase in England. While there he encounters Dracula's strange habits and is visited by three women who seem intent on having their way with him. He explores the castle and discovers his worst nightmares. He is a prisoner, it seems, to a very dark force. Back in England Lucy, Mina Murray's friend, starts exhibiting strange behavior due to unaccounted for blood loss. Mina, Jonathan's fiance, worries about him. She hasn't heard from him for a long time. Doctor Seward takes care of Lucy, but has to call in a friend, Doctor Van Helsing, when Lucy's health continues to go down hill. Van Helsing suspects he knows what is happening. Local children start to go missing and show up claiming they were playing with a woman. Several of Lucy's admirers converge to solve this riddle. Seward, along with two others (Arthur and Qu...

  Maurice By E.M. Forster   Maurice Hall is conventional by all standards in his Edwardian society, except that he is gay. As he grows up he tries to deny the fact, but then falls in love with a boy from school and they form a romantic relationshi9p that ends when Clive marries, denying his feelings for Maurice. Maurice focuses his energies on work, unwilling to believe that Clive doesn't love him. But he eventually falls for someone of a lower class and finds that he can truly be happy if he denies the conventionality he has relied on his whole life. This was a beautifully written story, my first experience with E.M. Forster. It was moving and I could fully identify with Maurice's struggle, particularly when Clive denies him and Maurice is afloat with his feelings. I liked the class discussion, and was particularly happy when Maurice decided love mattered more than his standing in society. It was an excellent book, elegant and emotional. 4 stars.

  Persuasion By Jane Austen Anne Elliott is a woman past the prime marrying age. She lives with her vain father and her older sister who doesn't think much of her. When her father, who lives beyond his means, has to let his property and move them to a smaller place in Bath, Anne takes it in stride, willing to go where providence leads her. Her younger sister, who is married and lives near the family home place, persuades Anne to stay with her and her husband and children. Anne accepts and is is swept up in their lives of the usual Austen fare of upper class visits, parties, and getaways. Anne has a friend in an older woman named Lady Russell who, along with Anne's family, is responsible for Anne denying a marriage proposal in her past to a naval captain named Frederick Wentworth. But Captain Wentworth resurfaces in a much more acceptable position of wealth for the landed gentry and enetrs Anne's circle of acquaintances. However, there are many young ladies who find him appe...

  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens This novel takes place during the lead up and onset of the French Revolution. Dr. Manette is found, by his daughter Lucie who he's never met, making shoes in a room above a wine seller unable to remember who he is until he meets her after having spent eighteen years imprisoned. Later Charles Darnay is being tried for treason against the English Crown but is defended and acquitted. He is a French aristocrat who left France for England. The Manettes were witness to the trial, with Lucie showing deep sympathy for Darnay. They meet later on and he falls in love with her, asking Dr. Manette for her hand in marriage.  In France a Marquis runs down a child in his carriage, setting off the constant sentiment that the aristocracy abuses and cares little for the common folk. Darnay returns to France and confronts the Marquis, his uncle, about these things and renounces his family name and legacy. The Marquis is murdered. Manette relapses into hi...

 The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde   Artist Basil Hallward has painted a portrait of the beautiful young Dorian Gray, a young man everyone admires for his youth and vitality. While in the studio, Basil's friend Henry Wotton is introduced to Dorian who fascinates the young man with his wild and hedonistic ideas about life. Once the painting is finished, the three marvel at it and Dorian wishes that he would always look so young and beautiful, and that the picture would get old and ugly instead of him.  Over several years Wotton seems to corrupt Dorian, who begins to lead his own hedonistic lifestyle and causing the ruin of many men and women along the way. His friendship with Basil wanes as he spends more and more time with Wotton. As he is living this life, Dorian discovers that the painting is starting to have changes of expression and appears to be getting ugly and to have blood on its hands. This change begins to drive Dorian a little mad. He vows to lock the p...

  Middlemarch by George Eliot Middlemarch is a book about the intertwining story lines and relationships of a few families, whose various marriages and employments either lead them to happiness or to ruin. Through the book we get a glimpse of several classes of characters in the late 1820s and early 1830s, but the story is chiefly concerned with Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, both idealists in their own way who enter into marriages that are less than ideal. There is quite a bit of scandal in Middlemarch , chiefly in the exploration of love outside of unhappy marriages and in shady financial swindlings that result in both death and displacement. The book explores the condition of women during this time and how marriages were actually conducted. Something that sets Middelmarch apart is that it doesn't have the requisite happy ending of most books of this time, especially those written by women. There is also a sense of moral ambiguity. This is considered a work of realism, de...

  The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett Sam Spade is a private detective in San Francisco. He is stoic, shows little emotion, and likes to be a thorn in the side of the police, who seem to have it out for him or are trying to find him at fault in some way. A woman named Brigid comes to him looking for help under an assumed name. She refuses to tell him how he can help her, but insists she needs him. Sam and his partner (Archer) take her case and Archer ends up murdered, along with another man who turns out to be Brigid's former associate in search of the Maltese Falcon, a gold statue that is worth a fortune. But they were not the only ones looking for it. Another set of characters was also on the hunt, among them the leader Gutman, the surprising gay character Cairo, and Wilmer Cook, a youth who is good with guns. A series of events leads the whole group to come together with Sam Spade trying to figure out how everyone is involved. He learns about their various connections to the ...

  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald This story follows Nick Carraway, a young man from the Midwest living on Long Island surrounded by the idle rich. Nick lives next to a millionaire named Jay Gatsby who hosts lavish parties at his mansion. Gatsby invites Nick to one of them and the two become friends, even though Nick despises Gatsby's life and pretty much everything he stands for. Across the water lives Nick's second cousin Daisy with her husband Tom Buchanan, the two of them also quite wealthy. Nick discovers that Gatsby and Daisy have known one another and are in love. The majority of the story is concerned with the carefree lives of these wealthy people and Nick's understanding that they are ultimately selfish people who do not take responsibility for their own actions, allowing others ot clean up after them or deal with the fallout from their mistakes. This is evident when a tragic accident occurs and the blame is left on Gatsby who was not responsible for it, y...

  Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens This is the tale of an orphan named Oliver Twist who ends up finding his way to his original family, rising from the depths of the seedy underbelly of London to a life of love and means. Oliver is born in a workhouse and his mother dies. Mistreated, in typical Dickens style, Oliver runs away and falls in with a band of thieves who plan to use his innocence for their own evil ends. But one of them, Fagin, knows who Oliver is and has been told to keep him in a position of poverty and loneliness. Oliver Twist is full of delightfully awful characters, fully drawn in their wickedness. I often wonder when reading Dickens if people back then were really this terrible to one another. There is no compassion for poor little Oliver by anyone until he meets those who recognize a resemblance in his face to someone they loved who has passed. Oliver is repeatedly saved by them only to again be duped by Fagin and his crew, and dragged back into their realm. When ...

  North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell Margaret Hale and her family must move to an industrial town in the north of England called Milton. Her father has resigned as a clergyman due to a conflict of his faith. He moves the family to this place to become a tutor to working men, far away from their home in Helstone (in the south) so he does not have to be reminded of his failures there. Margaret is resigned to go, believing she never cared for Helstone anyway, having returned to her parents after being raised by her aunt Shaw. She goes believing she will be lonely, though, as the Hales are used to gentlemen and ladies of a higher stature, and does not think anyone in her class will be living there. The Hales are rather poor, so this is a curious attitude, but I guess since her Aunt Shaw had some wealth the entire family socially benefited from it. In Milton Margaret becomes a regular visitor to a poor family after taking an interest in the sickly daughter of a working man named Higgi...