The Turn of the Screw in Pick-a-Shelf

Oct 13, 2016 Cora rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, horror, classic, ghosts, audible, england, 1001-books, 19th-century, gothic, unreliable-narrator

The suspense created in The Turn of the Screw made it a perfect read for an October afternoon. I liked how the reader is never quite sure what is real and what is not. I liked that the ending was not typical of these types of stories. There were times that the narrator annoyed me a little bit with her focus on the appearances of other characters (they were too beautiful to be bad) and other times where I found myself tuning out her internal ramblings, but overall I liked that there were more tha ...more

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Oct 22, 2014 Joanna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014-read, audiobooks, rws-2014-fall

I enjoyed listening to this LibriVox recording. The narrator does a fine, professional job of telling this creepy story. I have always enjoyed this story. The writing is fantastic, as one would expect from Henry James, and I don't mind the ambiguity of the story. Weird kids, crazy narrator, possible ghosts--there's lots to like here. If I were to register a complaint, it would be with the endless chapter breaks. For such a short book, did it really need to be separated into 24 chapters? This rea ...more

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Jan 05, 2014 Rebekah rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: e-book, genre-classics, genre-literature, genre-novels, genre-literature-19th-century, genre-mystery, genre-horror, genre-gothic, genre-paranormal-ghosts, 1001-import

I keep going back and forth on this one.

For a short book, it was still way too long and repetitive.

For a ghost story, it was not scary.

Is it satire? Maybe, but if so, I am not sure that I get the joke.

This one just left me scratching my head. I would rather read Wuthering Heights or Poe again.

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Nov 03, 2011 Joanna rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, 1001, 2011-read, rws-2011-fall

I enjoyed this book and the audiobook edition that I listened to was a lovely way to experience the creepy story. I can't believe I've never read this book and maybe never read anything by Henry James before. This is one of those books that I feel like I must have read, but the book and story weren't actually familiar once I started listening.

The short book, really more of a novella than a full-fledged novel, tells the story of a governess who is either working to protect the children in her car ...more

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Dec 28, 2009 Luann rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2010, adult, classics, lost-lit, audio

I had been warned not to read this, but I didn't listen. It's on the Lost literature list, and I was looking for a couple of shorter classics to include as part of my "10 Classics in 2010" challenge. Well, I should have listened. Yes, it's short. But it FELT long. I think listening to it in audio format also didn't help. Listening to it just seemed to drag it out even longer for me.

The only way I could get through it was to imagine that the main lady was in an insane asylum. The two children we ...more

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Nov 30, 2010 Joanie rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001-book-list, classics, winter-challenge-2010-2011

This is a dense little book. It's a creepy, Gothic, ghost story about a governess charged to look after two kids in a big old house that seems to be haunted. The book doesn't answer any questions but leaves the reader wondering if the governess was crazy or if they were really being tormented by ghosts. ...more

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