Book picks similar to
The Circle - A Comedy in Three Acts by W. Somerset Maugham
plays
drama
classics
fiction
The String Quartet
Virginia Woolf - 1921
An e-publication of a single short story.The download link is below.
Love and Freindship
Jane Austen - 1793
So begins a series of unspeakable events that Laura must confront and overcome, by way of the occasional fainting fit and bout of delirium.Tragedy and comedy here go hand in hand as a very foolish young heroine is placed at the centre of Jane Austen's early satire on drawing-room society. Written as a series of letters, "Love and Friendship" is a delicious romp through the highs and lows of a young girl's lot in life and a precursor of Austen's later works of genius.
Blasted
Sarah Kane - 1995
and was the sensation of that year's theatre season, making front-page headlines and outraging some critics who thought her premise that there was a connection between a rape in a Leeds hotel room and the hellish devastation of civil war was simply an attempt to shock audiences. The questions raised in this play about violence are at the heart of Kane's writing.
Swan Song
Anton Chekhov - 1887
One-act-play with only two characters: Vasili Svietlovidoff, a 68 year old comic actor and Nikita Ivanich, an even older man, the theater's prompter.
Barefoot in the Park
Neil Simon - 1963
He's a straight-as-an-arrow lawyer and she's a free spirit always looking for the latest kick. Their new apartment is her most recent find-too expensive with bad plumbing and in need of a paint job. After a six day honeymoon, they get a surprise visit from Corie's loopy mother and decide to play matchmaker during a dinner with their neighbor-in-the-attic Velasco, where everything that can go wrong, does. Paul just doesn't understand Corie, as she sees it. He's too staid, too boring and she just wants him to be a little more spontaneous, running "barefoot in the park" would be a start...
Linda Tressel
Anthony Trollope - 1868
However, the voice of Trollope was unmistakable in this much more somber work, and the true authorship was ultimately unveiled.The heroine, Linda Tressel, is pressured by her religious zealot aunt to marry an unpleasant man she finds repulsive. The story unfolds in some caricature and melodrama, yet remains an interesting study of Victorian social mores and relationships.
Look Back in Anger
John Osborne - 1957
He browbeats his flatmate, terrorizes his wife, and is not above sleeping with her best friend-who loathes Jimmy almost as much as he loathes himself. Yet this working-class Hamlet, the original Angry Young Man, is one of the most mesmerizing characters ever to burst onto a stage, a malevolently vital, volcanically articulate internal exile in the dreary, dreaming Siberia of postwar England.First produced in 1956, Look Back in Anger launched a revolution in the English theater. Savagely, sadly, and always impolitely, it compels readers and audiences to acknowledge the hidden currents of rottenness and rage in what used to be called "the good life."
After the Fall
Arthur Miller - 1964
In the background are key figures in his life, and they move in and out of his narrative. The narration shades into scenes, little and big. They are revelations and illuminations. They remind Quentin of an awkward young girl whom he made proud of herself. They bring the tortured image of his mother's death and another of his mother's fury with his father, who lost all in trying to save a floundering business. They crisscross through his relations with a number of women the first wife who wanted to be a separate person, the second who drove him into a separateness and a possible third who knew, as a German raised in a furnace of concentration camps, that 'survival can be hard to bear.' These intertwining images bring back the memories of inquisition when men were asked to name names of those who had joined with them in a communism that they mistook for a better future AFTER THE FALL is a pain-wracked drama; it is also Mr. Miller's maturest For to sit in Mr. Miller's theater is to be in an adult world concerned with a search that cuts to the bone."
Miss Buncle's Book
D.E. Stevenson - 1934
Times are harsh, and Barbara's bank account has seen better days. Stumped for ideas, Barbara draws inspiration from fellow residents of her quaint English village, writing a revealing novel that features the townsfolk as characters. The smashing bestseller is published under the pseudonym John Smith, which is a good thing because villagers recognize the truth. But what really turns her world around is when events in real life start mimicking events in the book. Funny, charming, and insightful, this novel reveals what happens when people see themselves through someone else's eyes.
Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches
Saki - 1910
The name Saki is often thought to be a reference to the cupbearer in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a poem mentioned disparagingly by the eponymous character in Reginald on Christmas Presents. Saki is considered a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His tales feature delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. In addition to his short stories, he also wrote several plays; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington (1912); and two novella-length satires, the episodic The Westminster Alice and When William Came (1913).
The Matchmaker
Thornton Wilder - 1954
He employs a matchmaker a woman who subsequently becomes involved with two of his menial clerks, assorted young and lovely ladies, and the headwaiter at an expensive restaurant where this swift farce runs headlong into a hilarious complications. After everyone gets straightened out romantically and has his heart's desire, the merchant finds himself affianced to the astute matchmaker herself. He who was so shrewd in business is putty in the hands of Dolly Levi. He is fooled by apprentices in a series of hilarious hide and seek scenes, and finally has all his bluster explode in his face.
L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas
John Milton - 1900
The poetry is effervescent as it is spontaneous gush of thoughts, rhythmic and the lyrical measures delight the reader and bound him to read till it ends.