About the Site

Since childhood, I’ve been entranced by the old stories…Dickens, Brontë, Doyle, and Verne.  All those greats who stoked my curiosity with their glorious words and beautiful (sometimes scary) black-and-white illustrations.

Exactly when this fascination began, it’s hard to say.  There was Wishbone – a PBS kids show about a Jack Russell terrier who finds parallels between his owner’s real-life conundrums and stories from classic literature.  I loved that series.  Scenes like Joan of Arc bravely taking an arrow wound were, in retrospect, formative learning moments, which were subconscious because I was swept up in the story.

Somewhere around that same time frame, my mom found a haul of Wordsworth Classics on discount – Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea were among them.  Between the two of us, we pretty much read them all.  I met Sherlock Holmes shortly thereafter, the first (and best) of many character friends to come.

Fast-forward a few years…well, maybe ten or fifteen.  Despite several attempts, I now cannot stick to new books for any length time.  (Ishiguro is an exception, but he reminds me of the classics.)  Besides, I still have a long list of classics to tackle – Plato, Thackeray, and Joyce, to drop a few names.  It both excites and terrifies me.

I’ve been blogging about classic literature since 2009.  In 2017, I started the podcast side of things and found that while I don’t like hearing my voice, I do like talking about books, their authors, and their histories.

My hope is you’ll find something useful, interesting, or just plain fun on this site.  Feel free to leave a comment on any post, new or old.  The reading community has brought me many friends over the years, and I hope to keep having great discussions over literature.

About Me

I’m Marian, a Christian twenty-something living in the Pacific Northwest, a damp and sometimes foggy place reminiscent of England.  During the day I work as a software developer; in the evenings I like to read and catch up on others’ book reviews.  I don’t have favorite novels anymore; instead I keep a list of Axes, which means books that changed my life or made me think pretty hard.  However, I don’t mind saying Sherlock Holmes is still my favorite character of all time.