Middlemarch
The great Victorian novel of provincial life — town gossip as destiny, told with more patience and sympathy than almost anything else in the language.
★★★★★
The shelf
Every book reviewed so far, verdicts included.
Moby-Dick
Half whaling encyclopedia, half fever dream — a book that throws its whole century against one white whale and wins.
★★★★★
Pride and Prejudice
Comedy so precisely balanced it feels engineered. Austen makes the small world of a country parish contain the whole moral universe.
★★★★☆
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A morality tale disguised as a paradox machine — the most quotable novel in English, which is both its strength and its disguise.
★★★★☆
Frankenstein
Read as it was written — as a book about responsibility — and it outgrows every film ever made of it. The creature is still the best argument.
★★★★☆
Wuthering Heights
A storm you step into and cannot leave. Fierce and uneven; the cruelty is real, which is exactly the point.
★★★☆☆