Masterpiece
Excellent
Very good
Good
Just okay
Not for me
Definitely not for me'z' authors
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
I read this a few weeks months?! ago, and I’m not sure why I haven’t written the review yet. I want to talk about it intelligently because I really loved it. Unfortunately, intelligent writing has eluded me lately. Had to write the review today, though, as it was one of my Dystopian Challenge books.
This book preceded and heavily influenced both 1984 and Brave New World. People have no names, just letters and numbers. They plan on going on to other planets to compel others to adopt their mathematically-minded happiness. Emotions aren’t allowed. They live in glass apartments. Everything ‘human’ is discouraged. But. . . a rebel faction is present in and outside ‘the wall.’ Will those inside the wall learn to be truly human?
Side note: A few weeks ago I saw the movie Equilibrium starring Christian Bale, and it surely had to be influenced by this novel. If you’re interested in the dystopian genre, it’s a must-see. See my review here.
1924, 232 pp.
Rating: 4.5
Popularity: 20% [?]
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007The Top Ten by J. Peder Zane
The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books
by J. Peder Zane
2007, 323 pp.
Rating: 3.5
This book has top ten book lists for 125 writers. Zane then scored these selections with a #1 pick getting 10 points and a #10 pick getting 1 point to come up with an overall list. The top ten works are the following:
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857)
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869)
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
- Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1600)
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
- In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913-1927)
- The stories of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
- Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-1872)
I find it interesting that the breakdown according to nationality was 40% Russian, 20% British, 20% American, and 20% French. I LOVE Russian lit-especially Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. I have read the titles in bold and would like to read the other books on the list in the following order: Middlemarch, War and Peace, The Stories of Anton Chekov, Lolita, and then In Search of Lost Time. I want to read Middlemarch in 2008 and perhaps War and Peace as well.
There were various other top ten lists in the back with the following as the #1 pick for each:
#1 work of the 20th century: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#1 work of the 19th century: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
#1 work of the 18th centure: Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
#1 work of the 16th and 17th centuries: Hamlet by William Shakespeare
#1 work of the 15th century and earlier: The Odyssey by Homer
#1 author by number of works selected: William Shakespeare
#1 author by points earned: Leo Tolstoy
#1 work by an American author: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#1 work by a British author: Hamlet by William Shakespeare
#1 work by a Russian author: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
#1 work by a French author: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#1 work by a living author: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez
#1 comic work: Don Quixote by Cervantes
#1 work of fantasy/science fiction: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Carroll
#1 mystery/thriller: The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
He also lists all 544 books mentioned by the writers in point order with a summary for each. I did glean some titles for my TBR pile that I’ll list here:
The Golden Argosy edited by Van H. Carmell
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Mrs. Bridge/Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos
Wheat That Springeth Green by J. F. Powers
The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Silence by Shusaku Endo
The River of Earth by James Still
The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett
I like lists of books so you may be wondering why only a 3.5 rating. I just really liked The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop and The King’s English so much better. Also, out of the 125 authors that participated, I had only heard of 55 of them. As I read through the selections, I found that other than the obvious classics I haven’t read and the above titles, I just wasn’t interested in many of them. Doom and gloom and s*x and violence. I don’t have to have a happy ending to enjoy a book, but I do want to feel something other than utter hopelessness.
Popularity: 13% [?]
Saturday, March 10th, 2007The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
I normally do not like reading “war” novels–especially those about World War II. My heart breaks when I think of the evil that mankind can do. I did, however, love The Diary of Anne Frank, and I also loved The Book Thief.The Book Thief tells the story of a German orphan girl named Liesel. Her brother has just died, and her mother gave her up because she couldn’t care for her after “something happened” to her father, a suspected Communist. She goes to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann, who also have two grown children. Their son is a solid Hitler supporter. Hans is a gentle man who tenderly takes care of Liesel. Rosa is a gruff German woman, yet we also see gentleness and compassion from her throughout the story.
At her new home on Himmel Street she meets Rudy Steiner, a boy with hair the color of lemons. He is a good student and an excellent athlete. In one incident he paints himself black because he is obsessed with Jesse Owens. Liesel and Rudy become best friends. They play soccer together and steal together–whether it be apples or the books that Liesel takes from a prominent town figure.
Another person close to Liesel is the German Jew they are hiding in the basement–Max Vandenburg. The relationship they have is one that transcends simple friendship or a romantic attachment. Their hearts are truly knitted together due to the horrible circumstances of the war. Their bond is unbreakable.
Each character in the book is so perfectly portrayed and so lovingly depicted. I fell in love with each one and cared deeply about what happened to them. I won’t spoil any more of the storyline, because this book is a treasure to read and to ponder over long after the final page is turned. It is a story that will stay with me for many, many years to come.
2006, 550 pp.
Rating: 5
Popularity: 13% [?]