The Disintegration Machine

Arthur Conan Doyle

The Disintegration Machine is a story featuring Doyles famous character Professor Challenger. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in January 1929. The story centers on the discovery of a machine capable of disintegrating objects and reforming them as they were. This short story is a part of the Challenger series, a collection of stories about the wealthy eccentric adventurer Professor Challenger. Unlike Conan Doyles laid-back, analytic character, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger is an aggressive, dominating figure. The professor is described as a lion of a man with a full beard and a rotund physique. One day, he is interrupted by the young journalist, Malone, to go investigate a machine designed by Latvian inventor, Theodore Nemor.

Candide. Or, The Optimist

Voltaire

Candide, who grew up in a rich mans family, who absorbed real mentor sermons on the fact that everything in the world happens for the better, serves its purposes and in general is accomplished in the best of all possible worlds, despite all the misfortunes that have happened to people this is also for the better. By the will of fate, Candide sets off on a round-the-world trip, where everyone literally screams that the world is unfair, misfortunes are often meaningless and lead only to great misfortunes, and people everywhere do not shy away from bribes, anger and self-interest. Besides the semi-mythical Eldorado, of course. But its not so easy to get into it. And its not so easy to get out of it.

The Double. A Petersburg Poem

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

In the book The Double Dostoevsky appears before the reader as a writer with an inimitable sense of humor. The author shows an extraordinary skill in describing comic episodes from life and makes the reader cheerfully laugh at the shortcomings of his characters and the comic nature of the situations. Before the reader St. Petersburg streets of the XIX century come to life, he will get acquainted with the mores of the inhabitants of St. Petersburg.

David Copperfield

Charles Dickens

David Copperfield is the story of a young mans adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; and the magnificently impecunious Micawber, one of literatures great comic creations.

Mare nostrum

Vicente Blasco Ibáez

Vicente Blasco Ibáez (18671928) był hiszpańskim publicystą, pisarzem oraz działaczem politycznym o poglądach lewicowych, autorem reportaży, powieści społeczno-obyczajowych oraz regionalnych. Tytułowe Mare Nostrum to starożytna rzymska nazwa Morza Śródziemnego, na którym toczy się akcja powieści. Pochodzący z Walencji Ulisses Ferragut jest kapitanem statku, który w czasie I wojny światowej dostarcza surowce statkom angielskim i francuskim. Kiedy na jego drodze staje tajemnicza doktorka i jej piękna towarzyszka Freya, postanawia zerwać dla nich ze swoimi dotychczasowymi przekonaniami.

Felix Holt, the Radical

George Eliot

Set during the time of the Reform Act of 1832, the story centers on an election contested by Harold Transome, a local landowner, in the Radical cause, contrary to his familys Tory traditions. Contrasting with the opportunism of Transome is the sincere, but opinionated, Radical Felix Holt. Against this background, the author George Eliot tells a love story and weaves a plot which has many elements of the sensation novel, such as illegitimacy, blackmail, and the discovery of an heiress, where the suspense is maintained until the end.

Poetics

Aristotle

The first part of this essay gives a general description of the term poetics. At first, Aristotle claims that any art is based on a mimesis, or imitation. Aristotle proves this by arguing that curiosity is peculiar to any person. In particular, the curiosity of observing all sorts of unpleasant things, for example, images of dead animals, and getting pleasure from it.

The Rover

Joseph Conrad

This is both mystery and romance; the latter creates one of the recurring difficulties in Conrad: it preserves the Victorian histrionic element, which sometimes may seem a little attractive. But overall, it is well read and much less burdensome than some of his novels. The Rover was Conrads last book and probably one of his most accessible stories.