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
Book Review: The War of the Worlds (Wells)
Have I read this before: Yes! I think I read this in junior high.
Review: I don’t remember this being as absolutely creepy as it was, haha. I don’t know if “creepy” is even the right word. Ominous? Menacing? Wells does a great job in making the reader feel as if they’re being stalked (or at least watched) by the Martians alongside the narrator, which is wonderfully unnerving.
Favorite Part: When the narrator gets trapped under the house with that other guy, the curate. The narrator’s description of the Martians is – again – unnerving, and the increasing tension between the narrator and the curate is pretty suspenseful.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: To the Lighthouse (Woolf)
Have I read this before: Nope. Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Me.
Review: This took a little getting used to because of the shifting perspective/focal points, but it was more enjoyable once I got the swing of it. I don’t know what I was expecting from Woolf, but it wasn’t this. It’s not my favorite style, but it works.
Favorite Part: I really liked the second part (Part II), which was told from a bit more of an omniscient viewpoint and was a bit more removed.
Rating: 4/10
Book Review: Rabbit, Run (Updike)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: So this isn’t really a review of the book, but I was just looking up more info on it on Wiki and it says that Updike wrote the book as a response to Kerouac’s On the Road. I didn’t catch that explicitly when I read it, but now that I know that, I can really tell some of the same sorts of themes and even the same sort of style. Before I was going to write this blog I was thinking of comparing the book’s overall vibe to On the Road. So that’s cool.
Favorite Part: I really liked the opening of this book. I didn’t know what to expect from the book ‘cause I knew nothing about it, and was excited after reading the first several pages. That enthusiasm kind of wore off for me, haha, but that beginning was a great hook.
Rating: 4/10
Book Review: Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: This wasn’t too bad. I don’t know why it took me so long to get to it on my book list, and I’m also surprised we never had to read this in high school. This seems like a high school required book. I am, though, starting to hit that fatigue wall with all these 19th century English novels. Next time I expand my book list, I’ll make a point to make it more diverse in its authors and settings.
Favorite Part: The Lydia/George scandal was pretty great.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: The Optimist’s Daughter (Welty)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: Well, I mean. It’s a book.
This is Goodreads’ description:
The Optimist’s Daughter is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back still farther, to the small Mississippi town where she grew up. Alone in the old house, Laurel finally comes to an understanding of the past, herself, and her parents.
I’ve fixed it:
The Optimist’s Daughter is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying. After his death, the book is no longer worth reading, as you’re now stuck with the pushiest, whiniest, most self-centered and ANNOYINGLY STEREOTYPICAL character in literary history and you won’t even get the satisfaction of anyone confronting her because Laurel is too timid and also too ANNOYINGLY STEREOTYPICAL to say anything. By the end of this book you’ll want to heave your Kindle into the stratosphere out of anger and frustration.
I’m not even kidding, yo, I could BARELY get through this book because I wanted to punch every single freaking character in the teeth. The only tolerable one was the dad and he got lucky and FUCKING DIED instead of having to deal with Laurel and the stepmom.
Favorite Part: The end. Because then the book was over and I could read something better.
Rating: 2/10
Edit: this thing won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973? Were there no other books written during that time period?
Book Review: A Night to Remember (Lord)
Have I read this before: I read like half of it in Vancouver, but then I accidentally left the book on the bus (I am a horrible library patron, I know) and never recovered it.
Review: Want to read the book that a large portion of “Titanic” (the movie, obvs) is based on? Lord interviewed 63 survivors of the sinking and has a lot of direct quotes and experiences. Much of the non-love-story dialogue in the movie is from this book. And it’s really well-written, too, so it’s not just this slog of “and this dude was doing this when the iceberg was hit” and “then this person thought “[insert thought here]” when they saw that most of the lifeboats were gone.
Favorite Part: I just liked linking all the stories with the dialogue that’s in the movie. Because, y’know, I can quote the whole damn movie.
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: Mutiny on the Bounty (Nordhoff, Hall)
Have I read this before: Yes! I remember reading this in either junior high or high school. I distinctly remember reading it in between bouts of ice skating in Moscow while they were Zamboni-ing the rink.
Review: Not NEARLY as good as the other book on my list with “mutiny” in the title (I really don’t know if any book will ever top The Caine Mutiny for me. I just love that book so much nnnnnnnnnf), but pretty good. I didn’t remember much from it from the first time I read it, so it was a pleasant re-read in the sense that I didn’t know (in terms of the specifics, haha) what was going to happen.
Favorite Part: I don’t think this counts as a “favorite part,” but every line of Bligh’s was read in Bugs Bunny’s voice thanks to this:
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Little Women (Alcott)
Have I read this before: I think I started to read this way back in high school or something, but I never got past the first few chapters for some reason.
Review: This was a really good book. I love that the four sisters all have such strong, distinct personalities and how Laurie complements all of them. Jo was definitely my favorite, and though I was pretty disappointed that she did end up having children at the end even when she expressed no desire to for the majority of the book, I suspect that ending was more of a product of the time the book was written as opposed to Alcott’s desired outcome for Jo.
Favorite Part: Jo’s mother talking to her about anger:
“I’ve been trying to cure it [the anger/temper] for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I have learned not to show it, and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so.”
I think a woman expressing that she feels anger is a big deal in this type of book.
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: How Green Was My Valley (Llewellyn)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: I don’t know if it’s just because I’m super emotional right now (Jazzy’s not doing great), but this book really got to me. You get to spend a lot of time with Huw and his family and the town they live in is almost like a person itself and you see the effects that mining has not only on the family but on the town itself. It’s a very heartbreaking story.
Favorite Part: This beautiful quote:
“There is patience in the Earth to allow us to go into her, and dig, and hurt with tunnels and shafts, and if we put back the flesh we have torn from her and so make good what we have weakened, she is content to let us bleed her. But when we take, and leave her weak where we have taken, she has a soreness, and an anger that we should be so cruel to her and so thoughtless of her comfort. So she waits for us, and finding us, bears down, and bearing down, makes us a part of her, flesh of her flesh, with our clay in place of the clay we thoughtlessly have shoveled away.”
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: The Good Earth (Buck)
Have I read this before: Yes! But I don’t remember when. I think it was when I was in Vancouver. Or maybe I associate depressing books with the most depressing period in my life, WHO KNOWS?
Review: I mentioned “depressing” above. That’s because it is. I haven’t read The Grapes of Wrath yet, but this is about the same level of depressing that I would imagine that book to be. It’s a very raw glimpse into the effects of poverty, famine, and drought on a farming family, as well as some additional hardships (especially for O-Lan) when the family finally acquires some money. It’s actually the first book in a trilogy, so if you’re into that sort of thing and want to read about what happens to the future generations, check out the other two books.
Favorite Part: the description of the food riot and the looting was very well-written. You get caught up in the moment, just like the characters, and it feels like it happens so quickly and without thought. I really enjoyed that part.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Fathers and Sons (Turgenev)
Have I read this before: I…I don’t recall, actually. Which either means a) I’ve never read it, or b) I read it when I was like 13 and it went way over my head.
Review: The general interactions of Arkady, Bazarov, and Nikolay really remind me of another book I’ve read at some point, but I can’t place it. Hell, maybe it’s this one, haha, and I just can’t remember reading this book in the past. But I feel like I’ve read another story recently where a son comes home with a friend and the friend has influenced the son’s views enough so that his parents are quite upset about it.
I could be wrong, though.
Favorite Part: this quote from Bazarov: “while I think that here I am lying under a haystack…the tiny area I occupy is so minute by comparison with the rest of space, where I don’t exist, which doesn’t bother with me. And the span of time I’ll be able to live out is so insignificant before he eternity where I haven’t been and where I will not be…yet in this atom, in this mathematical dot blood is circulating, a brain is functioning and wanting something too…what a monstrous state of affairs! What nonsense!”
Rating: 5/10
Book review: East of Eden (Steinbeck)
Have I read this before: Nope. It’s Steinbeck, who I had avoided up until just recently.
Review: This is a fantastic book. There are a decent number of characters and they’re all very interwoven in their lives and stories. There’s obviously a lot of Biblical analogies and references, but it’s not obnoxious about it. There’s also a lot of depth to the story as a whole and it has a lot of moving parts.
Favorite Part: I liked this interesting conversation amongst Adam, Samuel, and Lee when Adam was trying to name his two sons:
Samuel: “Have you thought of your own name?”
“Mine?”
“Of course. Your first-born – Cain and Abel.”
Adam said, “Oh, no. No, we can’t do that.”
“I know we can’t. That would be tempting whatever fate there is. But isn’t it odd that Cain is maybe the best-known name in the whole world and as far as I know only one man has ever borne it?”
Lee said, “Maybe that’s why the name has never changed its emphasis.”
Just an interesting take.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Death Comes for the Archbishop (Cather)
Have I read this before: Yup. Back in 2014 I think.
Review: It’s alright. It’s one of the many books that I’ve read on my list that doesn’t really stand out in either the “god this is bad” direction or the “GOD THIS IS FANTASTIC” direction. It’s…there. I do like Cather’s writing style, though.
Favorite Part: This beautiful description of the ride back to Santa Fe:
“The sky was full of brilliant sunlight. The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still – and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one’s feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere anthills underneath it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.”
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Catch-22 (Heller)
Have I read this before: No. I tried to read it once a long time ago, but I think I was overwhelmed by the rapid introduction of characters near the start of the book, so I stopped, haha.
Review: I love the repetition in this and how different events are described from different perspectives almost effortlessly. To me, it has the feeling of a scattered set of puzzle pieces that get haphazardly pushed and pieced together throughout the novel and then finally start to form a picture.
Favorite Part: When the woman Nately was with REPEATEDLY just like pops out of nowhere and tries to murder Yossarian. She just keeps appearing. It was freaking great.
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: Brideshead Revisited (Waugh)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: This was an enjoyable book. Similar to Atonement, it didn’t go where I thought it would go. But unlike Atonement, I didn’t really mind that. I also really like books that revolve around a strong friendship between two people, and this book had that…even if it fell out of focus after a bit.
Favorite Part: When Sebastian contacts Charles to come see him immediately and Charles is sure that Sebastian is seriously ill or injured or even already dead.
The cornfields and heavy woodland sped past, deep in the golden evening, and the throb of the wheels repeated monotonously in my ears, “You’ve come too late. You’ve come too late. He’s dead. He’s dead.”
…
[Charles] “What’s happened to him?”
[Lady Julia] “Didn’t he say? I expect he thought you wouldn’t come if you knew. He’s cracked a bone in his ankle so small that it hasn’t a name.”
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Atonement (McEwan)
Have I read this before: Nope. It’s one of the ones I just added to my list, actually.
Review: PUNCH ME IN THE FACE this book had so much potential and then dumped it down the toilet after Part One. Part One gets you all set up for this fantastic story of a wrongly-accused Robbie standing trial and trying to prove his innocence and you’re like YEAH LET’S GO but then suddenly you’re in WWII with Robbie and you’re like WHERE THE FUCK DID THE GOOD PART GO and then Briony is remorseful and everyone is angry and you’re like WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUT??
Seriously. Part One was so promising as the start of a very interesting and heartbreaking story. Then it just tanked.
(For me at least.)
Favorite Part: I loved how detailed Briony’s love of writing was detailed at the beginning. “It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thought sand feelings from her mind to her reader’s. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”
I also liked the way the supposed “incident” was described through Briony’s eyes:
“The word: she tried to prevent it sounding in her thoughts, and yet it danced through them obscenely…naturally, she had never heard the word spoken, or seen it in print, or come across it in asterisks. No one in her presence had ever referred to the word’s existence, and what was more, no one, not even her mother, had ever referred to the existence of that part of her to which – Briony was certain – the word referred. She had no doubt that that was what it was.”
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Winesburg, Ohio (Anderson)
Have I read this before: I did, but it was like back in junior high and I had no idea what the hell was going on.
Review: It was, y’know, okay. I like the unconventional style of it, I suppose. I’m always down with books that have a different style. I wasn’t too into the writing style, though; I understand it’s meant to be kind of gloomy and melancholy, but it didn’t quite do it for me. I can see how it’s been compared to Dreiser, though.
Favorite Part: I like how each story focuses in on one or two characters and we see the other characters (sometimes) in the “background” of these stories.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: V. (Pynchon)
Have I read this before: Nopers.
Review: Holy crapspazzle balls, Thomas Pynchon. What a…unique style. To be honest, I really dug it at the start of the book, but about a third of the way into it there was, I dunno, a slight shift in it and it got a little bland for my taste. Not that Pynchon’s writing is bland in comparison to anyone else (‘cause it’s not), but bland compared to itself in the first third of the book.
I dunno.
I loved the character names. I loved the search for V. and what V. represented. It’s an interesting book. It makes me want to read Gravity’s Rainbow, which is a book I picked up in in an attempt to read several years ago, took a look at the first paragraph, and promptly put the book back on the shelf because I had NO IDEA how those words combined to make coherent sentences.
V. is supposedly Pynchon’s most approachable book, though, so…
Favorite Part: Benny hunting alligators in the sewers was pretty great.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Things Fall Apart (Achebe)
Have I read this before: Yes. I think I read this in high school.
Review: It’s interesting how things build up and change in this book. There’s the not-so-subtle influence of the Europeans coming in and pushing their beliefs and values, but underlying that are the more subtle changes in Okonkwo that exist despite his persistent desire to show no weakness. I think it makes what happens to him at the end even more impactful.
Favorite Part: I don’t know if it’s my favorite part, but the part that stuck with me from my high school reading of this book was the process of Okonkwo’s exile. His questioning of its reasons were very poignant and I still remembered that from way back when I read it the first time.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: The Return of the Native (Hardy)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: This was quite an enjoyable book. Gotta love those weird-ass convoluted relationships that are only weird-ass and convoluted because PEOPLE DON’T DISCUSS THINGS WITH EACH OTHER. I also like it because it seemed to bring to light the idea of a flawed female main character, which wasn’t really seen in the best light during the time the book was written (1878). Also, Hardy does not shy away from sexual themes; another thing that was not all that common amongst big selling books of the time.
Favorite Part: I love the chaos of the ending when Clym and Wildeve are trying to rescue Eustacia. It’s hard to make those scenes just right, I think, but Hardy does a good job of it.
Also, this quote about Clym Yeobright: “He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all had been chaos.” Yeah, that pretty much describes him, haha.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: The Pearl (Steinbeck)
Have I read this before: Nope. Steinbeck.
Review: So I have avoided reading anything by Steinbeck for the longest time because back when I was in junior high I’d picked up The Grapes of Wrath, read about 20 pages, and hated every last single word. But I have a decent amount of Steinbeck on my list and I can’t hide from him forever, so I chose the shortest work of his that was on the list and went for it.
And it wasn’t too bad. I don’t remember exactly what it was I hated about The Grapes of Wrath way back when, but there was nothing in this story to suggest that there was anything inherent in Steinbeck’s writing style or choice of themes to make me hate his writing in general.
The Pearl is quick and sad. It struck me as somewhat similar to The Old Man and the Sea in a few ways, but of course they’re very different stories.
Guess I’ll have to read more Steinbeck.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway)
Have I read this before: I think I read this in high school? I remember reading it, but I don’t remember when.
Review: I dig Hemingway. I like his style. It’s simple but the ideas expressed in it are complex. I don’t know if it’s because this is a novella and not a novel, but this definitely seems like a slightly different style than “typical” Hemingway. But I like it. I’ve read that one of the criticisms of the story is now “ungrounded” it is compared to how Hemingway typically writes, but I think it works here.
Favorite part: I really like this reflection by Santiago:
“Then he was sorry for the great fish that had nothing to eat and his determination to kill him never relaxed in his sorrow for him. How many people will he feed, he thought. But are they worthy to eat him? No, of course not. There is no one worthy of eating him from the manner of his behavior and his great dignity.
I do not understand these things, he thought. But it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.”
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Nausea (Sartre)
Have I read this before: Yes…I think? Maybe in high school.
Review: I dig Sartre. I dig existentialism. I like the way that he represented the idea of the existential angst of existence via the “nausea.” You don’t need to know about existentialism to dig this book, but it helps to give it depth!
Favorite part: A few quotes:
“And I – soft, weak, obscene, digesting, juggling with dismal thoughts – I, too, was In the way. … I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives. But even my death would have been In the way. … I was In the way for eternity.”
“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.”
Rating: 6/10
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