The Literary Pages

Books!! What can one say? What can one argue about books? All sorts of things. There is nothing, at least for me, quite like the feel of a book in my hand, the paper caressing my fingers, as I sit by a nice quietly crackling fire in winter. I love books, I am fond of books, I get lost in books. To be honest, you've likely been to my SF & Fantasy page by now, and have seen the references and compilations of material that I've placed there. There's a lot of good books in the sf and fantasy fields, but I'm not limited to just those areas of literature.

I'm quite fond of mysteries, adore a good Shakespearean romp, and can quite happily bury myself in a good historical piece of literature as well. And there are the Greek myths, the epics of legendary heroism, and the like. For this particular page, I'm constantly on the look-out for good sources of material where it comes to books and Web sites that have information about books. But here are some of my guideline choices.

"A man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
                            -- Mark Twain
 
"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."
                            -- Jorge Luis Borges

Literary Classics

One of my favourites out there an also be found on-line. Check out the complete text of Don Quixote, one of the very best pieces out there. I should also include the works of Alexandre Dumas and Dante as well. I am also rather fond of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales as well.

And then we come to the works of William Shakespeare... There are a whole bunch of terrific sites, including this Shakespeare site. And if you'd like to send someone a Shakespearean Insult!, you can do so. <g>

Are you a fan of a good mystery? In that case, you might want to check out the Sherlock Holmes stories. You can check out the biting wit and gentle wisdom of Mark Twain. On the subject of Mark Twain, you can find an on-line collection of his priceless quotations and newspaper articles here.

Other material you can check out includes the works of Edgar Allan Poe. In a pinch, one can also check out the work of Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison. There are also a couple of very nice Lewis Carroll sites as well, including this site with texts and some nifty illustrations.

One should not forget to include the works of William Faulkner, among the greats, and there is also the works of Eudora Welty, Earnest Hemmingway, Flannery O'Connor or James Joyce.

I'm also quite fond of poetry in its many forms and styles. Some of my favourites include the works of William Butler Yeats, Walt Whitman, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Seamus Heaney, and William Blake.

There's also other types of more traditional *classical* fare. You can browse through nearly four hundred classical Greek and Roman texts. You can try the classic Aeneid by Vergil. There's also some pages of Irish writing on the Web and here's a source of Irish Drama, Literature, Folklore and Mythology for those with an interest in such.

One of first, and best, places for a book reader to check out is the United States Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is the biggest repository of information in the United States, possibly in the world; I have found that their web interface isn't all that great, but there is a good deal of information at this site.

One can also check out the On-line Literature Library for more good literature, and there is the Gutenberg Project, one of the largest libraries of classic texts on the entire Internet. he Project is an attempt to put hundreds of public domain books and texts into an electronic format. Some of the stuff they've assembled here is pretty good - there's A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, some of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum, novels by Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Arthur Conan Doyle, the John Carter of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and others. Well worth checking out.

If you're into that sort of thing, read a banned book!

Click here for some sources of info and links on Mythology and Folklore or the Arthurian legends.

Another good site to visit is The Open Scroll. The FireBlade Coffeehouse is a rather cozy place to curl up with some on-line fiction.

There is also a rather fascinating, very neat page on English Literature and Religion, that has the usual list of links. The centerpiece is a very large bibliographical database (more than 4,800 records) about religious aspects and backgrounds of English literature from the Middle Ages to the present. There are also shorter bibliographies devoted to particular writers.

You can send me e-mail at jkahane@comnet.ca.