"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Victory: An Island Tale (Joseph Conrad, 1915)

European businessman living in Indonesia travels to a town on some island to do whatever business; saves a girl (playing in the hotel band) from an attacker and takes her back to the island where he lives; they fall in love.  The attacker seeks revenge, including via sending three guys to the protagonist's island to kill him. 

Saturday, September 06, 2003