Book Review: A Death in the Family (Agee)
Have I read this before: Yes! I don’t remember exactly when, but I have memories of reading it at the Lewiston Airport.
Review: This book stayed with me after the first time I read it (even though I can’t remember when that was, haha), but I’m not sure exactly why. I think it might be due to how well Agee portrays grief. It affects all the characters differently – as affects different people differently in real life – but regardless of how they react, the reactions are incredibly genuine and deep.
Edit: okay, apparently this was quite autobiographical. I believe it.
Favorite Part: I liked the increasing tension between the rest of the family and Andrew, whose anti-religious attitude kept getting brought up in various contexts.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole)
Have I read this before: Nope. This is actually one of the books I recently added to my list to help expand it from 200 books to 250.
Review: This was easily one of the most entertaining books I’ve read on my list. Ignatius is simultaneously annoying as shit and entertaining as all hell. As Wiki describes him, “Ignatius Jacques Reilly is an overweight and unemployed thirty-year-old with a degree in Medieval History who still lives with his mother, Irene Reilly.”
But I think the best indicator of how ridiculous and amusing this book is are the various covers. Check ‘em:
Great fun.
Favorite Part: Ignatius. Just…Ignatius.
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: The Bell Jar (Plath)
Have I read this before: Yes. I don’t remember when, but I do remember reading it at some point.
Review: Like a lot of the books on this list that I read when I was quite young, I have a very different interpretation of it than I did the first time around. Esther is still an incredibly annoying, spoiled, self-aggrandizing character, but it’s easier now to separate those aspects of her from her mental illness, whereas when I read it the first time, they were all intertwined. But she was still hard to empathize with, and perhaps because I’d read this before and knew how everything played out, I did not have much interest hearing about her mental health issues and the developments that followed her treatment(s).
Favorite Part: Her time in New York City is described nicely, as is her reaction to it all.
Rating: 4/10
Book Review: Arrowsmith (Lewis)
Have I read this before: I feel like I started reading this back in junior high (I distinctly remember seeing a copy on the library bookshelves at school) but I must have thought “oh god this is hard” and stopped.
(It wasn’t hard to read; I was just an idiot.)
Review: This book was absolutely not what I was expecting, but was still quite enjoyable. It was a bit dry, but not unbearably so. It was actually quite interesting reading this book given the current COVID climate today, as a decent portion of the book deals with an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the Caribbean and how ethics play into testing and distributing a treatment to those infected. COVID obviously isn’t as serious as the plague, but the discussion of the development of a treatment for the plague, distribution of it, and the ethics of it all seem very…relatable.
Favorite Part: Some of Lewis’ short, blunt descriptions are great.
“Professor Max Gottlieb was about to assassinate a guinea pig with anthrax germs, and the bacteriology class were nervous.”
“Like all ardent agnostics, Martin was a religious man.”
“Clif Clawson, at forty, was gross.”
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: You Can’t Go Home Again (Wolfe)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: ‘Twas good! I liked the portrayal of how people in George’s hometown reacted badly to his novel that was based on the town and their lives. I also liked the interweaving of the 1929 stock market crash and the emphasis on how George feels like – as the title states – he can’t go home again due to various factors.
Favorite Part: I love this description of the stock market crash. I think it’s easy to view that event as something that was sudden and catastrophic to everyone, when in fact it took time for its effects to actually hit everyone:
“The collapse of the Stock Market, which had begun in late October, was in some ways like the fall of a gigantic boulder into the still waters of a lake. The suddenness of it sent waves of desperate fear moving in ever-widening circles throughout America. Millions of people in the far-off hamlets, towns, and cities did not know what to make of it. Would its effects touch them? They hoped not.”
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Wuthering Heights (Bronte)
Have I read this before: Nopers.
Review: I liked this one. I like how it’s framed by Mr. Lockwood meeting his landlord, Heathcliff, getting sick, and then is told the actual story by the housekeeper. I love the complexity of Heathcliff and how he’s not just a one-note villain (or hero or anything). All the characters are decently complex, which is not something that can be said about every “here’s another story set in England!” book on my list.
Favorite Part: The changes Heathcliff undergoes, whether they’re for the better or for the worse. Even though he’s an extreme character, he retains a degree of relatability throughout (at least in my opinion).
Rating: 6/10
Best Books: 2021 Edition
I read 58 books last year! Let’s pick the top five, shall we? From fifth best to best.
#5: East of Eden (Steinbeck)
Y’all probably never thought I’d put a Steinbeck on a Top Five list, eh? Though The Grapes of Wrath is probably his most famous work, I think this is the one that Steinbeck himself said was his magnum opus. I can see why. This is an epic story with so many intricacies and relationships and underlying meanings. It’s very well crafted.
#4: How Green Was My Valley (Llewellyn)
This is a fairly long book that spends a lot of time building up the characters of a tightly-knit, hardworking family. This ultimately makes the ending of the book an even bigger emotional punch than it already would have been by its nature.
#3: Dracula (Stoker)
I think this is on here mainly because it was absolutely not what I was expecting when I started reading. It’s one of those books where you’re like “oh, [subject represented often in common media]. I know all about that!” and then you read the source material and you’re like “ooooooooooh, now I get it!” and it’s so much better. This was a much more engaging story than I thought it would be and played out very differently than I was expecting.
#2: Moby Dick (Melville)
I love stories involving the sea, I’m sorry. And I know Melville gets a bad rap because he loves his fish-related tangents (it’s almost like he was writing a story about fishing and accidentally turned it into a novel), but I love his writing style and I love how one chapter can be all technical and the next can be this beautiful philosophical reflection on life.
#1: The Pickwick Papers (Dickens)
I was never expecting a Dickens tale to be funny, but this was absolutely hysterical in places. The characters are wonderful (except Mr. Winkle, oh my GOD he’s annoying) and you want to keep reading.
Book Review: The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway)
Have I read this before: Yes indeed. Sometime in high school.
Review: If you want to get into Hemingway, DON’T START WITH THIS ONE. Hemingway is a great storyteller, but there must be a story to be told – and that’s what this book lacks.
Like, I get it…it’s supposed to portray that “Lost Generation” vibe, but UGH. It’s like the characters in The Great Gatsby went to France, took too many tranquilizers, and got boring.
Favorite Part: Knowing that practically any other Hemingway work I pick up will be better.
Rating: 4/10
Book Review: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: You know those books where you think you’ll know exactly how the story will go because you’ve seen so many adaptations or have heard the story/plot summarized or referenced so many times? Frankenstein is a good example of this. So is this book. I thought I knew the way this story would go because everyone knows “Jekyll and Hide,” but as usual with these sorts of things, the actual story itself is so much richer and more involved. I really enjoyed this one. I like how you get the perspective of what’s going on with Jekyll mainly from others or through what he’s written about his experience. You really get a feeling for his loss of control and his panic as the story progresses.
Favorite Part: More of a favorite line, haha. Mr. Utterson is looking for Hyde (or is at least trying to get a glimpse of him) and is stalking around trying to find him.
“From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty, and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post. ‘If he be Mr. Hyde,’ he had thought, ‘I shall be Mr. Seek.’”
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: A Raisin in the Sun (Hansberry)
Have I read this before: Yes! We read this in 10th grade English class.
Review: This is another play with very vivid characters. Hansberry also does a really good job of setting up the tension surrounding the Younger family’s possible move into a white neighborhood as well as the hidden (and then revealed) loss of a significant amount of money by Walter.
Favorite Part: The contrast between Beneatha’s two love interests, George and Joseph, and how they both interact with her and influence her. It adds another level of complexity and struggle to the overall story.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: The Pickwick Papers (Dickens)
Have I read this before: Nope. I reread Great Expectations earlier this month and that’s the only Dickens I’ve ever read, so I figured I’d go with the next Dickens book when I hit it alphabetically.
Review: This was a great book! I was not expecting this level of humor from a Dickens book, but that’s just because my only experience with Dickens is Great Expectations AND if you’re a guy who’s written a book called Bleak House you’re not going to automatically be seen as someone who injects humor into your writing.
But this was great.
Mr. Pickwick had waaaaaay more patience with Winkle than I ever would.
Favorite Part: There were a lot, but this quote is great:
“There are very few moments in a man’s existence, when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.”
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
Have I read this before: Nope. As mentioned before, I was an idiot and made The Grapes of Wrath my first introduction to Steinbeck way back in junior high and was so turned off by it that I’ve only been able to give him a second chance in the past several months.
Review: I’d only ever seen Family Guy’s interpretation of this story, so I did have a bit of background going into it and knew what to expect (to an extent). Steinbeck, I’m starting to learn, is really good at expressing despair and desperation in all the ways they can be experienced. I know there’s a lot of positive aspirations and hope in this story, but it’s all overshadowed by all the little things that build up to the main event which, in turn, heightens that feeling of despair that, in my opinion, underlies everything in the novella.
Favorite Part: The buildup to that climactic scene. It’s subtle, even if you know it’s coming.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Notes from Underground (Dostoyevsky)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: This is my least favorite Dostoyevsky work that I’ve read. In both The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, I always felt compelled to continue reading due to enjoying the characters, the story, or both. I didn’t really get that in this one. I understand that this one is much more of an overt philosophical reflection on things, but it doesn’t get carried by the story itself as well as Brothers and Crime and Punishment do.
Favorite Part: There were a few good quotes, though.
“To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows.”
“I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.”
Rating: 4/10
Book Review: Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare)
Have I read this before: Yes! We read this in 10th grade, I believe. I remember having trouble typing my essay on it because I kept typing “Claudia” instead of “Claudio” and had to backspace (I actually did it just then, too, haha).
Review: This is probably one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. As always, the witty back-and-forth is there (and the fake death…can’t go wrong with a fake death) and I really enjoyed the characters in this one. It’s also a much easier to read play than, say King Lear, so that helps (in my dumb opinion).
Favorite Part: I love how, after Don John is captured, everyone’s like “we’ll deal with that nonsense tomorrow!” so that Claudio/Hero and Benedick/Beatrice can just all chill together in happiness.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Long Day’s Journey into Night (O’Neill)
Have I read this before: Yyyyyes? I think I have. The names of the characters sounded very familiar, as did Edmund having consumption. I actually think we read this in one of my intro theater classes at U of I.
Review: Hey, kids, addiction is FUN! Watch how it ruins a family! Watch how anger and frustration surrounding addiction leads to outbursts of criticism of family members! Watch how shame and fear surrounding addition leads to poor communication and further frustration! I get “Death of a Salesman” vibes from some of this, but on a much more heightened level.
Favorite Part: The buildup of frustration and mistrust is, from my experience, very realistic.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Jane Eyre (Bronte)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: This book did not go where I thought it would go. What I mean by that is that every time I thought it would steer in one direction, it went somewhere else that I was not expecting. And this is a longer book, so it did this quite a few times. One thing I really enjoyed about this book is that while it was clear that circumstances were often in control of some of Jane’s larger life events, she was portrayed (overtly or not) as having control over her own narrative. Her independence and intelligence shined throughout, regardless of what was happening to her and around her.
Favorite Part: The way she addressed the reader sometimes. Especially the famous “Reader, I married him.”
Rating: 6/10
Get Ready for a Bunch of Book Reviews
It’s going to get butt-blistering cold here for like three weeks, so I’ll be stuck inside using the treadmill. Treadmill = four hours of reading every day, so there will be many books completed.
You’ve been warned.
Book Review: The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: Haha, this was great. It’s not often that a book (or play) makes me laugh out loud, but this one did on several occasions. All I really knew about this play going into it was that it had been criticized as one of Wilde’s only works that did not “contribute” something or have a deeper meaning/message (at least compared to his other works). After reading it, though, and reading more about it (I try to not look at info about a book/play I’m going to read before reading it if at all possible), at the time it was written, others argued that the humor itself was its contribution.
Favorite Part: I’ve obviously never seen this performed, but I think the way the lines are written allows for a lot of flexibility and actor interpretation in the deliveries. I can imagine there are a lot of variations in the performance due to that, which would be great to see.
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (McCullers)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: This book had super interesting characters. I like books that shift perspective and this book does that very well, heightening the relationships amongst the characters by allowing us to see things from their differing perspectives. Everyone has a (as the title suggests) a loneliness or isolation about them, especially the individuals who seem very highly connected with others. It’s an interesting exploration of all the different ways loneliness can appear.
Favorite Part: I like how Singer was sort of an anchor for so many different people in so many different ways. What eventually happens to him near the end is shown from all of their perspectives, adding to its weight and importance.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Great Expectations (Dickens)
Have I read this before: Yes! We read this in 8th grade.
Review: Okay, so I’m actually convinced now that we read an abridged version of some sort in 8th grade, because 1) I don’t remember this book being so long, and 2) I don’t remember half of the things that happened in it. I haven’t read any other Dickens to compare this book to, but I hope to read some more soon, as it did have a good deal of tension and build up in it (again, more than I remember from the 8th grade reading).
Favorite Part: Pip, Startop, and Herbert trying to row Magwitch to freedom. Tension!
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Frankenstein (Shelley)
Have I read this before: Yes! We read this in “Literature of Western Civilization II” back in undergrad.
Review: I’d completely forgotten that the book starts off with Captain Robert Walton narrating, haha, before Frankenstein tells him his story. It’s also pretty sad how all the botched interpretations of this story have made the Creature a far less sympathetic, intelligent, and caring individual than he was in the original story (or at least in most of it).
Favorite Part: The interaction of the Creature and the blind father in the cabin just made me think of this:
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Death of a Salesman (Miller)
Have I read this before: We read this in 11th grade English, too, I think, just like The Crucible. Gotta get that sweet, sweet Arthur Miller in those juniors. I can’t remember the character I read for, though.
Review: I like Miller, fight me. He’s really good at building up a persistent, nagging heartbreak that you know will eventually destroy a character. I remember going to see my drama teacher at U of I in this play way back in 2006 and I still remember how much it hurt.
Favorite Part: Just that buildup. It’s really extreme in this play (obviously) and even if you know what’s coming, it’s still very upsetting.
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: The Crucible (Miller)
Have I read this before: We read this in 11th grade English, I believe. Was it 11th grade? It was whatever grade I was in when I had an English teacher who had all sorts of Yoda quotes plastered around the room. I really liked her because whenever we read a play, we actually read it out loud. She would ask if anyone wanted to volunteer to read a character (and if not, she’d assign us) and we’d just read through the plays. It was super immersive and very enjoyable.
(I was Reverend Parris when we read this play.)
Anyway.
Review: I’ve always liked this play. I love how things accelerate and snowball and how you get this feeling that there was no way to turn back once the lies started to spiral. It’s very suspenseful and stressful.
Favorite Part: Just how much you hate Abigail Williams by the end. Or even at the beginning, haha.
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: Babbitt (Lewis)
Have I read this before: I think I tried to read it in junior high, but didn’t get very far.
Review: Have you conformed to the standards of middle-class living? Then you, my friend, are a Babbitt! Lewis does a great job of expressing a pestering suffocation that goes along with living the supposed “American Dream” that, for Babbitt, really just consists of sleepwalking through life, work, and societal pressures. It’s quite depressing, of course, but also unsurprisingly still relatable even today. I remember a lot of my friends had very high ambitions in high school/college, but the majority of them now (at least from what I can tell) are really just…existing in a very confined societal role. It’s sad.
Favorite Part: There’s nothing that stood out to me, but that was sort of the point. Babbitt exists in monotony and, though he considers it, cannot escape but praises those who do.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: The Awakening (Chopin)
Have I read this before: I thought I had when I started it, but the story ended up not being at all familiar, haha, so maybe not.
Review: I really liked the characters in this book. You really get an impression of Edna’s conflicting thoughts about conforming and not conforming to societal standards (though it’s clear what she really wants to do), and it’s very realistic how her thoughts change depending on who she’s around. I also like how Leonce (her husband) is basically non-existent in the novel. He’s there and he’s mentioned, but that’s about it. He’s like the least developed character, haha.
Favorite Part: The ending. I loved the peaceful release of it.
Rating: 5/10
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