A deeply authentic and heartfelt literary classic conveyed with James Baldwin's immediately recognizable, incisive, provocative, empathetic writing. OA deeply authentic and heartfelt literary classic conveyed with James Baldwin's immediately recognizable, incisive, provocative, empathetic writing. Over just two hundred pages, he crafts an array of colorful characters who come to life off the page, grow close to your heart only to have it ripped out of your chest by the social injustices you have to lay witness to.
A true masterpiece that leaves me at a loss for words. A Great Novel....more
He pictures the evening he might have spent, snugly at home, fixing the food he has bought, then lying down on the couch beside the bookcase a
He pictures the evening he might have spent, snugly at home, fixing the food he has bought, then lying down on the couch beside the bookcase and reading himself slowly sleepy. At first glance, this is an absolutely convincing and charming scene of domestic contentment. Only after a few instances does George notice the omission which makes it meaningless. What is left out of the picture is Jim, lying opposite him at the other end of the couch, also reading; the two of them absorbed in their books yet so completely aware of each other's presence.
Christopher Isherwood's "A Single Man" is a relatable and convincing study of the loss of a beloved person in your life and the aftereffects of dealing with the empty void left behind. We are introduced to our protagonist George, a middle-aged man who has been attached to a man, Jim, who has recently died in an accident. The status of his relationship with Jim is never clearly stated, though it is heavily implied they shared a sexual relationship and were a couple until Jim's untimely death. Exploring the theme of homosexuality, Isherwood never ponders about the usual subjects authors can write about when developing gay or lesbian characters: George's relationship with Jim and the other men in his life is depicted as something entirely normal, which is exactly the way it should be done.
George is a college lecturer who tells his students things like "a minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary... minorities are people; people, not angels." His homosexuality is never clearly defined; Isherwood refuses to even once use terms such as gay or homosexual, though the overall subject of the novel is clearly implied in the context and the underlying tone of the narrative.
I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about.
This is a book about clinging to the past, about the importance of forgetting in order to start living again, about how to be truly happy. Philosophical in his novel's depth, yet never exaggeratedly philosophical in his style, Isherwood confronts his readers with a number of important questions about life itself, the importance of past, present and future and how to deal with what lies behind and what lies ahead of you.
The writing style requires some time to get used to. When I first started reading the book a short time after watching the movie starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore, I was thrown back by the writing. Between the most notable parts of the text, Isherwood likes to ramble on and on about the daily life of our protagonist, and as important as it may be for setting the mood, I personally found it difficult to keep my attention on the prose. However, especially in the second half of the novel, the dominance of those parts is more and more reduced, until we come to the ending, an ending which I am likely not going to forget because it simply was so surprisingly well-written.
"A Single Man" is clearly not a novel for everyone, considering that hardly anything is ever happening in this novel and we mostly only get insight on the characters' thoughts and the process of his character development - the latter, by the way, being an aspect which Isherwood understood to embody very believably. It took some time for me to get accustomed to the novel's style and to get the images from the movie out of my head in order to appreciate the book for what it is and to judge it separately from the on-screen adaptation. It's a great book which touches many interesting and important subjects without referring to stereotypical methods to convey them, though in my opinion it's also a book which is hard to recommend to anybody. In "99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939", Anthony Burgess calls this novel "a fine piece of plain writing which haunts the memory", and I couldn't agree more....more
“People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind “People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.”
So good. I absorbed every word of this masterpiece.
James Baldwin was a genius and always had something interesting to say, something of value. I'm too impressed by his writing to even begin to formulate a more coherent expression of my scrambled thoughts right now....more
Night is perhaps one of the most remarkable, harrowing and haunting accounts of the events in the Nazi Germany concentration camps Auschwitz an[image]
Night is perhaps one of the most remarkable, harrowing and haunting accounts of the events in the Nazi Germany concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald. I read this powerful work only a few days before news of the author's, Elie Wiesel's, death were announced, and both shocked me. The first, because unless you have experienced it for yourself, you will never be able to realize the full extent of what happened in the Second World War with all its different facets and emotions, and the latter, because with Elie Wiesel, a remarkable man has left this planet who fought for memorizing the Holocaust, who fought against violence, suppression and racism.
Perhaps you will not find the most eloquent, the most artful language in this work of literature, but that's nothing you should expect to find in a book dealing with something as frightening, as horrifying, as real as the Holocaust. In his nonfictional book, Elie Wiesel writes about his own survival in the concentration camps, about reflections of the father-son relationship with his father, about humanity and inhumanity. It's a book everyone should read, because ultimately, the Second World War is something everyone should remember. Forgetting would be the worst way to deal with it.
A lot of people, more people than would be good, claim that it has all been "so long ago", is so completely irrelevant nowadays, just belongs to this boring stuff people are tortured with in school because it belongs to this dry nonsense called "history". I usually don't tell people they're wrong ... usually. Because in this case, they can't be more wrong. The Holocaust needs to be remembered, because if humans forget the mistakes they did, they will tend to repeat them. And I think everyone can agree that the Holocaust should never, never be repeated.
This is a book which is incredibly difficult to review, just like it is difficult to read - not for its language or its style; I read it in one sitting in the course of three or four hours - but rather for the horrifying events Elie Wiesel talks about. I can only recommend to read this book to everyone, independent from how much you already know about the topic.
And on a final note: Rest in Peace, Elie Wiesel....more
I need to begin seeking out longer novels again, but more recently, my attention span more often than not has led me to put longer books on hiatus forI need to begin seeking out longer novels again, but more recently, my attention span more often than not has led me to put longer books on hiatus for prolonged periods of time until I'm in the right mood again, and choosing books with shorter page counts has prevented me from abandoning them altogether. Which has helped me discover some books I might not have read otherwise—Claire Keegan's Foster, Ira Levin's Stepford Wives or James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk (to be reviewed soon) as examples—but I do want to immerse myself back into a long story again. (But maybe needing two months to listen to Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth while not even liking that book has played its part in reducing my motivation to a shrivel by itself, too.)
What I wanted to get at: John Steinbeck's The Pearl is another short novel that takes only a few hours to swiftly read through, in part because it's so short, in part because Steinbeck's prose is very readable and easy to get on the same wavelength with. Previously, my only exposure to Steinbeck was Of Mice and Men, another very short novel, while his big juggernauts (East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath) are still staring at me from my bookshelves, begging me to read them finally, but always getting shortchanged for something else.
But The Pearl is a brisk and resonating little morality tale that gets at some very interesting themes, especially the social structure of marginalized communities and the racial heritage of Kino and Juana driving their despair and struggle to break out of their poor, marginalized existence. "The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side." Steinbeck writes about desperation and helplessness awakening the evil in one's soul; the lengths one is prepared to go to in order to reach what seems out of reach.
"For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have."
The argument made by many detractors with respect to The Pearl's issues often refers to it being heavy-handed in its compassion, maybe even a 'preachy morality tale'—no reader likes to be told what to think, but The Pearl's strength, to me, lies in its simplicity: how its premise can be seen as a metaphor for so much else, and how easily it captures the most primal instincts of human nature. Maybe this will finally give me the push to approach Steinbeck's longer books....more
It is almost impossible to describe Camus' The Stranger to people who haven't read this book yet. L'Étranger is so unlike many other novels with philoIt is almost impossible to describe Camus' The Stranger to people who haven't read this book yet. L'Étranger is so unlike many other novels with philosophical themes that you can easily see why it has received its position among books people say everyone should read once in their life.
If you get around to reading this surprisingly short novel, don't do so with the wrong expectations. In a more common book, the plot would leave much to be desired; and Camus doesn't invent characters you care such a great deal about that you want to desperately learn more about them. This book is not about what's happening on the outside; it focuses on what happens on the inside of a human's mind in a surprisingly subtle way. A reviewer called this book "intellectually stimulating", which does perhaps come the closest to describing the essence of The Stranger.
While in the beginning the story may seem boring and uninspired, the words suddenly begin to grap your attention and pour their way into your thoughts, raising tons of questions on the way. What exactly allows our lives to be meaningful; do they even have a meaning? Shouldn't it rather be argued that since we are all equally going to face death sooner or later, all our lives are equally meaningless?
This story about a man alienated from his surroundings may bore some of its readers, but above all, it bears food for your thoughts, and as long as you don't expect enjoyment from Camus' most famous novel, then The Stranger is surely going to make you think....more
There is a very strong reason for why a lot of students are required to read this book in school nowadays. I can see both its appeal in the literary cThere is a very strong reason for why a lot of students are required to read this book in school nowadays. I can see both its appeal in the literary context and its potential to be hated by students, but apart from all that, Golding created a powerful story with significant themes and a memorable moral....more
Tuck Everlasting is one of those books everyone should read at a young age. After all, who hasn't ever thought at least once about how it would be to Tuck Everlasting is one of those books everyone should read at a young age. After all, who hasn't ever thought at least once about how it would be to live eternally, to be free to do everything you want to, to embrace life in all its different facets? The way this short novel deals with eternal life - and raising the question about whether or not that can be considered a blessing or doom - makes it an important addition to the literary world.
Fast-paced and easy to read, this is a book to devour in the course of three or four short hours, and while not the most involving book which can be found out there, at least it is able to make you think about what it would be like to (have to) live like the Tuck family does: Wandering around eternally and restlessly, comdemned to live on this earth until its very end. The book itself introduces the character of Winnie Foster, an eleven-year-old girl who meets the Tuck family and soon learns of their unbelievable secret: that the four members of that family are immortal after they drank from a magic spring.
Natalie Babbitt's prose is strong and powerful, drawing a convincing picture of how life can possibly work without death. Yet the book in itself is not without flaws; she never allowed the characters to become realistic. For me, especially the Tuck family felt like a gathering of stereotypes, and the lack of dynamics between the family members itself didn't help matters. Yet the potential was exploited almost completely, additionally helped by some strong messages (the connection between life and death, the ideas of human greed and constant change, the contrast between morality and craving, and the values of love and humanity).
The only thing which constantly bothered me was the way the Tuck family behaved - at least except for Jesse, the youngest son. If you are condemned to live your life on this earth forever, why constantly complain about your situation rather than actually doing something purposeful with your immortality? But then, maybe that was yet another message Babbitt implied in her novel: that the good-hearted are almost never those who actually want to change something in this world, while those with immoral and evil-minded purposes long to rule the world....more
Fabian {Councillor}
>
Books:
classics
(57)
Loading...
