Best Books of the Decade: 1900's
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book data
1,852 ratings,
3.96
average rating, 307 reviews
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published
October 9th 2001
(first published 1907)
by Modern Library
binding
Paperback, 224 pages
characters
setting
The United Kingdom
isbn
0375757910
(isbn13: 9780375757914)
description
In an article published the day before his death, G.K. Chesterton called The Man Who Was Thursday "a very melodramatic sort of moonshine." S...more
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avg 3.96
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in August, 2008
I lost my backpack thanks to this book.
It was years and years ago, probably my first winter in Japan, and I'd picked up this book at Maruzen. I had heard about Chesterton, mainly from the dedication page of Pratchett and Gamian's Good Omens ("The authors would like to join the demon Crowley in dedicating this book to the memory of G.K. Chesterton. A man who knew what was going on.") and the title looked weird enough to be entertaining. So, I was reading the book on the t...more
It was years and years ago, probably my first winter in Japan, and I'd picked up this book at Maruzen. I had heard about Chesterton, mainly from the dedication page of Pratchett and Gamian's Good Omens ("The authors would like to join the demon Crowley in dedicating this book to the memory of G.K. Chesterton. A man who knew what was going on.") and the title looked weird enough to be entertaining. So, I was reading the book on the t...more
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This short novel is intriguing, humorous, clever, and spotted with stunning descriptions. Ostensibly, it is a tale of an undercover police man (Syme) seeking to infiltrate an organization of anarchists, controlled by the "Council of Seven Days" under the leadership of a man named Sunday. The novel is not as obviously allegorical as The Ball and The Cross, at least not until near the end, when it become entirely symbolic. I struggled with Chesteron's meaning when I concluded the novel...more
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Read in October, 2003
A very original, wonderfully quirky, thought-provoking little book about an English detective who infiltrates a group of anarchists. Part fantasy, part mystery, part philosophical, lots of Christian symbolism that is not apparent until later in the book, but you don't have to be a Christian to enjoy it. There is so much going on here that I will have to reread it at some point.
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Read in January, 2009
recommended to Terence by:
Maevisvintage, Michael Dirda
To be honest, I'm still trying to get my head around the book's ending, where the wheels-within-wheels machinations of the anarchists and the special police squad dedicated to eradicating them come to an earth-shattering finale.
Or does it...
The subtitle of the novel "A Nightmare," may not be entirely figurative.
And then there's an underlying idea that we're dealing with fundamental forces of the universe which becomes explicit in the final chapter (P...more
Or does it...
The subtitle of the novel "A Nightmare," may not be entirely figurative.
And then there's an underlying idea that we're dealing with fundamental forces of the universe which becomes explicit in the final chapter (P...more
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Read in June, 2008
The question "What is your favorite book?" has always been impossible for me to answer, but this is the only book I have ever felt comfortable defaulting to. I've read it at least a half a dozen times since I discovered a copy of it in a used bookstore when I was in middle school; I will probably reread it a dozen more in the next ten years. I get something different out of it every time I reread it.
The story itself makes no sense, until you come back to the subtitle: A N...more
The story itself makes no sense, until you come back to the subtitle: A N...more
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Read in February, 2008
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
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Read in April, 2008
Kingsley Amis tells us it is "not quite a political bad dream, nor a metaphysical thriller, nor a cosmic joke in the form of a spy novel, but it has something of all three". However you describe it, it's hilarious. It gives "The Third Policeman" a run for its money, both for how funny it is, as well as the unabashed goofiness of its central conceit.
Read it in one sitting. Then read it again.
Scuttling off to look for more Chesterton .....
Read it in one sitting. Then read it again.
Scuttling off to look for more Chesterton .....
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Read in January, 2001
recommends it for:
i want to say "everyone", but it would be dishonest
nobody reads chesterton but me, it seems, but they should! not so much the father brown stuff, though. this piece of work is just that, and, yet, so much more. i just can't explain it. yes, christianity's mixed up in it, but you'd hardly know if they didn't write it all over the cover. gah! read it!
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Read in March, 2008
this book is enjoyable on many levels: as a compelling mystery, as a humorous and well-crafted yarn, as classic british literature (1908), and as penetrating allegory. chesterton's novel excels at each count, and was composed without a trace of sanctimony.
more aptly, writing about the man who was thursday in 1929, chesterton asserts, "the bolshevists have done a good many silly things; but the most strangely silly thing that i ever heard of was that they tried to turn this ...more
more aptly, writing about the man who was thursday in 1929, chesterton asserts, "the bolshevists have done a good many silly things; but the most strangely silly thing that i ever heard of was that they tried to turn this ...more
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Read in October, 2007
The Man Who Was Thursday is not an allegory. It is called an allegory for want of a better word, but there is absolutely no symbolism or metaphor. It is completely literal in every way, and the reader who feels the need to say 'allegory' is simply thinking too hard. The ending, especially, is reminiscent of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I think that Lewis and Chesterton are making similar points, and that they are both talented enough to be able to whack their readers over the h...more
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Read in July, 2007
Whoa.. most of this book was like any other British literature of its time, but then when you get to the end, the author goes way out on a limb and makes you STREEETCH your imagination, and comprehension. The whole thing kept me waiting and wondering what would happen at the end, and then when I got to the end, I was like.. "What the??" Keep in mind, the title includes the words "A Nightmare". The end was definitely more dream-like than realistic, and my brain spent many days...more
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Read in June, 2008
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. This novel is a satire on religious anarchy with bubbling undertones of politics, espionage, human loyalty and Edwardian gentlemanly behaviour. Not for the feint hearted, readers should consider a reread when they finish the final chapter; I immediately went back to page 1, read the book again and I felt the better for it. This is a weighty piece of work and although Chesterton writes in a style which keeps the story moving at a fast pace, it requires a ...more
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Read in February, 2009
This book seems at first to be a detective novel. The story begins in a London suburb at the turn of the twentieth century, where an undercover policeman and an anarchist poet debate the merits of order and anarchy. Before the night is through, the policeman, Gabriel Syme, has almost by accident infiltrated the anarchist power structure.
The events which follow are surreal and genuinely creepy, while at the same time their wild improbability - together with the author's use of wittic...more
The events which follow are surreal and genuinely creepy, while at the same time their wild improbability - together with the author's use of wittic...more
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I heard good things about this book, so I read it. It was ok, but it was not the great masterpiece I was expecting. If this book was a person, it would be a young modern artist who has been told that he is a genius. The writing is too self-aware.
Here's an example - 'Syme, who had sat down once more with his usual insolent languor, got to his feet with an unusual hesitation.'
If you can get past this weird literary style, the plot is a nice twisty brain puzzler that makes fun of secret...more
Here's an example - 'Syme, who had sat down once more with his usual insolent languor, got to his feet with an unusual hesitation.'
If you can get past this weird literary style, the plot is a nice twisty brain puzzler that makes fun of secret...more
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Whether you like this book or not will probably have a lot to do with whether you can swallow Chesterton's eventual swing into Christian allegory, and I think that's a shame, because there's so much good going on in the Man Who Was Thursday - and so much tolerance for doubt, confusion, and paradox - that even if you don't have much of a stomach for theology it should have a lot to offer.
What really amazes me about this book is the beautiful sense of structure Chesterton displays. ...more
What really amazes me about this book is the beautiful sense of structure Chesterton displays. ...more
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Read in June, 2009
Very strange book. The "Nightmare" part of the title should have clued me in, but it didn't. It just got weirder and weirder, which made sense by the end, but didn't in the present. The part just before the end was still a very kaleidescopic--if I didn't know better I would have wondered if he had been on lsd. :)
Not a really great read for a very tired mommy, I found I had to use my brains too much, still felt stupid at not getting some of it. Was really excited about Che...more
Not a really great read for a very tired mommy, I found I had to use my brains too much, still felt stupid at not getting some of it. Was really excited about Che...more
Read in January, 2007
The Man Who was Thursday is a genuinely strange and original book. Now, much of literature is strange and original. Moby Dick, for example. Gogol's Dead Souls. Burrough's Naked Lunch. Waiting for Godot by Beckett.
But these books all make more sense the more you read them, and they all create worlds that feel unified and complete (imagine here a smiling professor with an ideally bald head and a sunlamp tan forming an invisible sphere in the air with his hands).
The M...more
But these books all make more sense the more you read them, and they all create worlds that feel unified and complete (imagine here a smiling professor with an ideally bald head and a sunlamp tan forming an invisible sphere in the air with his hands).
The M...more
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Read in January, 1982
recommended to erik by:
Ardiss Collinsrecommends it for: Chesterton fans
This novel was assigned for the first night of Collins' Hegel seminar during the second semester of 1981/82 at Loyola University Chicago. Consequently, it was read too quickly, in one sitting, and wasn't the fun it should have been.
The plot of this complicated story is simple. The hero is assigned by Scotland Yard to infiltrate an anarchist group. He does and discovers that six of the seven members are, like himself, infiltrators. The seventh, Sunday, masterminds and manipulates....more
The plot of this complicated story is simple. The hero is assigned by Scotland Yard to infiltrate an anarchist group. He does and discovers that six of the seven members are, like himself, infiltrators. The seventh, Sunday, masterminds and manipulates....more
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Read in December, 2008
“I tell you I am sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate. But this new movement of ours is a very different affair. We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless ...more
Read in December, 2006
this was written in 1907 and published in 1908. i read a 1910 printing, so i didn’t have the foreword or afterword taht comes with the new printings. perhaps they would have helped my understanding.
this was a book that had a point and a message and a social commentary. but i didn’t get any of it, because i am no longer a close reader. that is definitely to my detriment. not that i would have gained a lot from this book in particular, but overall, a lot is lost to me because i am no lon...more
this was a book that had a point and a message and a social commentary. but i didn’t get any of it, because i am no longer a close reader. that is definitely to my detriment. not that i would have gained a lot from this book in particular, but overall, a lot is lost to me because i am no lon...more
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quotes from this book
"You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! You are the police--the great, fat smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken?"
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