Requiem - Akhmatova's best piece?

I wouldn't know, because I've only read four of her poems.
Hopefully, certain people will realize I don't have this book, I want it, and this is what it looks like.

Emma

Incidentally, my cover doesn't look like this at all.
Mine has a hideous picture of Austen on the front.

When Dreams Came True

Whew- busy month.
I will be less thorough and more productive, to keep my readers (all two of them) happy.

Lu Xun: A Madman's Diary

Another short one! I'm dying to get on with a longer work though, and I have several waiting for me to get around to them, so hang in there. This, of course, is as interesting as the title suggests. The narrator is experiencing extreme paranoia, seeing things and imagining things and above all convinced that everyone wants to eat him, even his own brother. It isn't very long, so you'll forgive me for having very little to report! (Lu Xun/ aka. Zhou Shuren: 1881-1936)

Horst Schroeder: "Some Historical and Literary References in Oscar Wilde's 'The Birthday of the Infanta'"

A quick, interesting piece of research, "Some Historical..." proposes that the Infanta's father is actually meant to be Charles II of Spain. Schroeder builds his argument on some convincing circumstantial evidence- people of the times, similar names or traits, coinciding events. He does have several articles of evidence along these lines, which makes an overall believable argument. I don't know how useful this will be for my purposes, but I'm glad I read it.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper

I've read this before, and it's very short, so it hardly counts for the purposes of this blog, but if you haven't read "The Yellow Wallpaper," you definitely should. Gilman is one of the few American writers (Connecticut) that I'm interested in. She deals with the social conditions of middle class and upper class women at the turn of the 19th century (1899 to 1900s). In this story, a woman is slowly driven insane by her husband/ physician, who has prescribed a strict regimen of rest and solitude to "cure" the narrator of post-partum depression. Her objective correlative, in this case, is the horrible yellow wallpaper that lines the room to which she is "confined" day and night. A quick read, and one I really recommend.

Austen: Mansfield Park

Possibly one of my favorite novels, up until the last chapter, where Austen winds everything up with a direct speech from the narrator. It is all rather hurriedly wrapped up and I don't like it. But the rest of the book is excellent. The main character, Fanny Price, is a very sweet, quiet main character with a great deal of sense ( as always). The intended love is Edmund Bertram, who has been her constant companion since the Mertrams adopted her at age nine. She is, at eighteen, in love with him, but he is smitten with Mary Crawford. Fanny's two cousins Maria and Julia Bertram are not the typical sort of horrible step-sister characters, but the effect of their slight snobbery is intensified in the narrator's depictions of Fanny because she is so sensitive. These girls get some recompence when Mr. Henry Crawford, Mary's sister, is suddenly mad for Fanny after flirting with them for months. And she rejects him, of course, because his manners are unseemly, so he runs of with Mrs. Rushworth (Maria) and ruins both of them. Because of Mary's callous attitude towards his sister, Edmund decides he cannot love her (for a trait that Fanny has pointed out since day one!) and decides to marry Fanny. Yay! Other important characters are Sir Thomas, William, and Mrs. Norris, the evil aunt who always reminds Fanny how low her position is.