Category: Literature
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Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Book Title: Go Set a Watchman Author: Harper Lee Year Published: 2015 (written in the 1950s) Publisher: HarperCollins Rating: 4/5 Go Set a Watchman is Harper Lee’s recently published first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. Tonja Carter, Lee’s lawyer, found the manuscript in a safe-deposit box in Lee’s hometown. Since Harper Lee is now…
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The City & The City by China Mieville
Book Title: The City & The City Author: China Mieville Year Published: 2010 Publisher: Random House Rating: ☆☆☆✮✮ I read this book for science fiction club. I’ve seen news about China Mieville on a lot of literary scifi blogs, so I was looking forward to reading this one because I thought the prose would be a…
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Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
“Madame Bovary”… recalls “bovine”, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought when I heard the head of the Literature department at UCSC, Vlad Godzich, giving a lecture on it. The connotation is not an accident – the theme of romance mixing with, and being overcome by reality is the main theme of the novel. This is the…
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The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
H.G. Wells is my favorite author, but when I tried to read this in high school I had to put it down after a few chapters. The first bit of it is extremely slow and if you’re not reading it closely it comes off as very racist. I must have been really tired the first…
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Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita is both sensual and challenging, shocking and learned. Its content is lewd but moving and its style is high but not above blunt jokes. It’s hard for me to put how I feel about it into words, but I’ll do my best. Lolita is the story of a literary, effeminate pedophile who captures a…
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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
You’ve probably heard Jonathan Safran Foer’s name before. His book Everything is Illuminated was a huge hit and the book I’m reviewing in this post, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, was made into a movie in 2011. The writing in this book is pretty good and the protagonist is lovable, but it doesn’t quite live…