Tolstoy

War and Peace

by Neil.B.Ennis 27 February 2026 Shortlink

Title: War and Peace
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Published: 1869
Pages: 1,440 Pages
Translator: Anthony Briggs (2005)
Structure: 4 “volumes”, each split into up to 5 “parts”, each split into up to 30 chapters.

“War and Peace” is a rich and vast work of literature set during the Napoleonic Wars that gives an intimate insight into the upheaval caused by military conflict.  For me it was a vivid multi-level experience that explored nations, families and individuals as they struggle for survival and search for meaning. Tolstoy refused to call it a novel, or a poem, or even a chronicle of history.

Bust of Tolstoy in Mariupol, Ukraine. Тетяна Миколаївна – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

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France

The Revolt of the Angels

by Neil.B.Ennis 20 February 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Revolt of the Angels
Author: Anatole France
Written: 1914
Translator: Emillie Jackson (1924)
Pages: 156
Structure: 35 chapters.

This fascinating novel is a modern retelling of the classic christian “War in Heaven” myth, set in 1914 Paris.  It follows a guardian angel, Arcade, who after discovering a love for reading books about Theology and History, comes to the realization that the god in heaven that he has been serving since before time is actually a malevolent impostor.

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Machiavelli

The Prince

by Neil.B.Ennis 13 February 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Prince (Il Principe)
Author: Niccolò Machiavelli
Written: 1513
Translator: Tim Parks, 2009
Pages: 124
Structure: 26 chapters.

Fifteenth Century Italy was a turbulent place.  After a life of exemplary diplomatic service, Niccolò Machiavelli found himself imprisoned, tortured, and on the verge of ruin following a change of political leadership in his country.

This book is an instruction manual that Machiavelli sent to the new leader, explaining how to gain political power, what was necessary to hang on to it, and how not to be a victim of circumstance.  In a way, Machiavelli was saying “I have experience, I can be useful.  Here is proof. Spare a kind thought for me.”

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Kafka

The Metamorphosis

by Neil.B.Ennis 6 February 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung)
Author: Franz Kafka
Written: 1915
Translator: Michael Hofmann, 2007
Pages: 77
Structure: 3 chapters.

“When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous cockroach in his bed.”

What an unusual way to start a book!  This strange, funny, sad, absurd, and alarming book is a powerful insight into what it’s like to live in a world where things can go wrong through no fault of our own, and we find ourselves rejected out of fear, and when we’re no longer useful.

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Camus

The Plague

by Neil.B.Ennis 30 January 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Plague
Author: Albert Camus
Written: 1947
Translator: Robin Buss, 2001
Pages: 238
Structure: 5 “parts”.

“The Plague” is a beautifully written book which describes an outbreak of Bubonic Plague in the Algerian town of Oran in the 1940’s.  But, as with most great books, it’s about much more than that.

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Homer

The Odyssey

by Neil.B.Ennis 23 January 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Odyssey
Author: Homer
Written: circa 700 BCE
Translator: Emily Wilson, 2018
Pages: 582
Structure: 24 “books”, each about 400 to 900 lines (10 to 20 pages) long.

The Odyssey is a timeless tale about trying to return home.  After fighting in a brutal war for a decade a brilliant but battered man, Odysseus, finds himself continually thwarted by misfortune for a second decade while he tries to come back to his family.  At the same time his wife, Penelope, is harassed daily by suitors who try to convince her that her husband is dead and that she should marry one of them.

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Dostoyevsky

The Brothers Karamazov

by Neil.B.Ennis 16 January 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Brothers Karamazov
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Written: 1880
Translator: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1988)
Pages: 796 Pages
Structure: 12 “Books” and an “Epilogue”, each consisting of up to fourteen chapters

After reading this book I feel like I have experienced a moral and spiritual tempest that has left destruction in its wake, and I am forced to ask how we are supposed to live when horrible things happen, innocent people suffer, and there are no clear resolutions to the conflicts that surround us.

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Tolkien

The Silmarillion

by Neil.B.Ennis 24 December 2025 Shortlink

Title: The Silmarillion
Author: J.R.R.Tolkien
Published: 1977
Pages: 358 Pages
Structure: 4 major sections, plus a series of tables, genealogies, index, and appendix

This is a difficult to read book which is also delightful.  It is well worth the effort for anyone who is a lover of Tokien’s world of  “Middle Earth”.   The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were such successful books because they’re built on a massive mythic foundation.  They’re like the top 10% of the proverbial iceberg.  The other 90% is represented by the depth of epic detail in the Silmarillion.

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Faust by Goethe
Goethe

Faust

by Neil.B.Ennis 19 December 2025 Shortlink
Faust by Goethe

Title: Faust. A Tragedy
Author: Johann von Goethe
Written: 1772 – 1831
Translator: Walter Kaufmann
Pages: 503 Pages
Structure: A play in two parts, 12,111 lines

“Faust” is an old German legend that has been retold many times by many different authors. It is based on the life of Dr Johann Faustus, a German magician and astrologer who lived in the fifteenth century.

We have been fascinated with his story for centuries. His legend has inspired music by Beethoven, Schubert, Verdi, Wagner, Mendelssohn, and many others. It has inspired literature by Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Mann, Oscar Wilde, Louisa M Alcott, Lord Byron, and Robert Louis Stevenson, to name a few. But the work that stands our among all these is the play “Faust” by Johann von Goethe, considered by many to be the greatest work of German literature.

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Cervantes

Don Quixote

by Neil.B.Ennis 12 December 2025 Shortlink

Title: The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha
Author: Miguel De Cervantes
Written: 1605, 1615
Translator: Edith Grossman
Pages: 940 Pages
Structure: Two “Parts”. Part 1 (1605): 87 Chapters.  Part 2 (1615): 74 Chapters

I was shell-shocked after reading this book.  How can something which, on the face of it, is a farcical comedy about the exploits of a mad man have such a huge impact?  I sat there for ages afterwards trying to soak in this amazing story and realizing that in the folly of the protagonist I saw myself many times over.

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Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings

by Neil.B.Ennis 28 November 2025 Shortlink

Title: The Lord of the Rings
Author: J.R.R.Tolkien
Published: 1955
Pages: 1567 Pages
Structure: 6 “Books” each containing between 9 to 12 chapters, plus 6 appendices and 3 indexes, published in 3 volumes

Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” (LOTR) is a masterpiece – one of the greatest works of literature of the twentieth century. I have never read a book with so much depth in its world, and such broad and majestic themes.

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Hemmingway

The Old Man and the Sea

by Neil.B.Ennis 21 November 2025 Shortlink

Title: The Old Man and the Sea
Author: Ernest Hemmingway
Written: 1952
Pages: 99 Pages
Structure: No Chapters

How can such a short and simple story about an old man going fishing have so large an impact? Hemmingway’s “Old Man and the Sea” is one of the great stories of the twentieth century, earning the author the Nobel Prize for Literature shortly after it was published.

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Anonymous

The Epic of Gilgamesh

by Neil.B.Ennis 20 September 2025 Shortlink

Title: The Epic of Gilgamesh
Author: Anonymous
Written: 2,100 CCE
Pages: 119 Pages
Structure: 12 “Tablets”.

I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story.

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