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It was Wordsworth who wrote, "The world is too much with us"; and if I
could give the secret of my ambition as a novelist in a few words it
would be contained in that quotation. My inspiration to write has
always come from nature. Character and action are subordinated to
setting. In all that I have done I have tried to make people see how
the world is too much with them. Getting and spending they lay waste
their powers, with never a breath of the free and wonderful life of the
open!

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What happens when a family suddenly gets enough money to play with and probably won't have to pay it back? That word "probably" really throws the brakes on, doesn't it?

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The Way Of All Flesh needs explaining, or at least an introduction, because of the author being male.  If you will go into this as if it were a gothic romance you will not be far disappointed.  It is still distinctively male for inclination and presentation.  It reminds me of once upon a time I asked my wife why women were going into a certain store in such a long stream.  She responded that it was a woman's kind of store.  "Men and women are different.  Women like one kind of store and men like another."

I could see it immediately and blurted out my favorite kind of store.. "Yeah, like Office Max!"  Well ---- I'm a man and I love browsing through Office Max more than any other kind of store.. so that makes Office Max a man's store.  Case closed.

That's how it is with this book.  It is a gothic, set during the 19th century, but it comes at you from the man's side of the family.  Back then a man had to assert his rights or the woman would be wearing pants, not him.  This leaves our hero in a quandary because he is a minister and doesn't want to raise his voice or strike his beloved on the sharp point of her pretty little chin.  He also has to earn more than a thousand pounds a year to keep the family in decent trousers.  Samuel Butler, is an author that sneaks up on you too.  I didn't even realize I liked him until I was half way through the book.

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The Venus From Moscow  by Pushkin.  A very nice, almost mystical short romance from Paris where everybody still cuddles. Elizabeth is a penniless but sweet young thing living with a mean-spirited but wealthy old Russian Countess.  One day Elizabeth glances out her window and there on the street below is this handsome young officer in the Engineers corp. Naturally, Elizabeth shrinks back from the window and clutches at her heart.  Here it is, just like it happens in the Russian romance novels - and she is stricken with love, on the spot. "He is in love with me and hoping to get my attention by posting himself there on my Parisian street corner. The swirling snow is turning his lips almost blue on this bitterly cold afternoon, that he ignores because the heat of his passion is keeping his feet and his heart warm. Elizabeth nearly swoons again. Well, I won't ruin the story for you. Download this novel and read it for yourself, but I will tell you that with Pushkin at the author's throttle you can look in a dozen mirrors and never know who is the fairest one of them all until the last snowflake melts.

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The Mummy's Left Foot: It is hard to chase your foot down through the dusty corridors of time when it has such devilish help in getting away, but then her luck began to turn: Suddenly a spark of wheeling light twirled in a stream of dusty sun beams and I caught a gleam of sparkle on the ankle of a woman's charming foot. How can I describe that foot, or the impact it made upon me? Every angle, every curve in it was perfect, perfect when I first looked upon that sweet left foot that I took for a fragment torn off of some antique Venus that had been shattered in some ancient earthquake, perhaps. Ah, but I was dreaming, as one does, you know, when the romance spirit rises up into the head and claims the soul.

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Meadows and Myst: Where do thoughts go at the end of day? Do they dance through the meadows and climb to the stars on the evening myst? And what if someone steals them before they leave, someone snuggling close to you, someone fascinated, ravenously fascinated with every word you say? Can you break the bond set that night? Can you make yourself stay away? When a poet turns his fancy to writing a novel it turns into the story of a playwright composing a play and a sculptor composing songs. One can naturally expect daylight shadows to give forth radiant butterflies, but then ladies of darkness leap across the stage of time and the poet sees his play being read from the lips of the greatest novelist of the century --word for word, his own, right up to the thrilling end. Can he find his way back to the island and wind his way through the bright meadows and the evening's thickening myst? For Life has kissed me full upon the lips as it paused in fleeting by, but I left no impression there, nor am I myst.

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Rummy-Go  Rummy-Go is an archaic expression used to signify a state of bewilderment. In this short romance mystery an English duke is confronted with the kidnaping of his beloved wife and struggles valiantly to keep her alive without paying a vast sum for her release.

A Knight of the Wilderness  Abe and Ann are matched again in this romance of the western frontier.  Set in the Blackhawk war time frame you'll find Abe already setting out on the trail that leads to greatness in the eyes of all that know him.  Ann is a prize any man might wish to win.

Sliced from a bygone age when love was LOVE, golf is the background and indeed it is the driving force of this beautiful novel.  I'm sure that if I understood the game I would love this book all the more, but even in my complete ignorance I was fascinated with the entire book.