23
Sep
2009
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Imagine this: you are a well-educated, upper-middle class. rising professional, who has never broken the law, and you have been put on trial for…something. You don’t know what it is, because nobody will tell you. Your education is no help because while the courts in which you are tried are legal, they operate outside of the realm of normal jurisprudence.
24
Aug
2009
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
I thought about attempting to write this review in the style of the book: winding, stream-of-consciousness type sentences that seem to spin around in the reader’s head. But then I thought that nobody would finish reading my post, and so here I am, writing in my plain old style.
9
Jul
2009
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
It’s been a while since I read this book. I checked it out of the library with the expressed purpose of refreshing my memory and writing this post. I also went and looked it up on Wikipedia, to help remember some of the funnier bits. Reading the Wikipedia article is like being in on a bunch of really good inside jokes. It’s good that nobody is home right now, because just remembering characters and story lines that I see on Wikipedia is a making me LOL for real.
27
May
2009
1984 by George Orwell
You know how “Pick Your Five” is popular on Facebook right now, and one of them is called something like “5 Things I hate that everyone else seems to like”? Mine include things like running/jogging, dogs, yellow cars, etc. The book 1984 might not be in my top five of such a category, but it’s definitely up there.
14
May
2009
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The title, “brave new world” comes from a quote in Shakespeare, from Miranda in The Tempest, “Oh…What brave new world that has such people in’t”. But keep in mind that “brave” in Shakespeare’s usage, and indeed, in the title, meant something more like “handsome” rather than courageous. And indeed, the citizens of Huxley’s futuristic dystopia are anything but courageous. They aren’t conditioned to be.
27
Apr
2009
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
For some reason, everyone loves Jane Austen, to the detriment of the Brontë sisters. To some extent this makes sense. Austen’s novels numerate more than all of the sisters’ works combined, and each sister really only has one classic. But, say we take Jane Eyre and compare it to any of Austen’s novels. The plot is far more intricate than Austen’s. Brontë might not focus on the banality of privileged life, but her satire and class criticism (and hypocrisy therein) can be just as biting.
13
Apr
2009
World War Z by Max Brooks
There are several things I like about this book. First of all, Zombies. As a Millenial, I am immediately drawn, like a zombie to pulsating brains, to all things zombie, ninja, and pirate. Other generations may like these things, too, I know, but there seems to be some great obsession among my generation. God knows why. It’s just thing that we do. I mean, debating the best escape routes from whatever building you are in can take hours if you are surrounded by modern teenagers and twenty-somethings, and may actually only be settled by consulting Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide. Gen-X may have had Vampires and Baby-Boomers may have had aliens and the bomb, but zombie obsession has taken a hold of young people today. Again, I am unsure as to the reason, except for the obvious (which if you are not a Gen Y member, may not be obvious to you, so please ignore that self-absorbed remark).
13
Apr
2009
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
Set in a dystopian society, which may or may not be our future, present, or even our past, Rant Casey is picked apart, praised, feared, loved, by those he has left behind after his death, which may have actually been a disappearance due to time travel.
