Little Thoughts About Books and Stuff

Mini Reviews of the last two books in the semester! Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez My rating: 3 of 5 stars I liked this book, but it was a bit disturbing.  The whole romance between senior citizens...yeah that didn't go over so well with me. I think I enjoyed it more because I had to analyze it for class. Having to break it down and look at meaning and everything gave me a different way to look at the story.  If not for this, I think some of the descriptions would have had me closing this book and not picking it back up.  The same can be said for Midnight's Children. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie My rating: 3 of 5 stars OMG I feel like I've been through a war reading this book. I don't know how some of my classmates said it was their favorite book of the semester. There was so much going on in this story.  I think an abridged version was needed for me.  There was just too much talk of excerment, and bodily fluid...

Wide Sargasso Sea: A Norton Critical Edition by Jean Rhys My rating: 4 of 5 stars After giving myself some time to dwell on it, I had to up my rating of this book.  I think this book was my favorite of this class. This book is written as a sort of prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.  It really changes your opinions of Bertha and Rochester (or just mine).  I always felt bad for Bertha, having your husband lock you away in the attic because you went crazy, now I really feel bad for her when you read Rhys' back story of how she ended up the crazy woman locked in the attic.  I had felt bad for Rochester for having the first wife that wasn't the love of his life and who went crazy; I no longer feel bad for Rochester!  Well, I guess I do, but just not as much as I did before reading this novel. Being a big fan of Jane Austen, it's almost required (in a sense) to not be a fan of the Brontes.  Charlotte didn't like Jane, just look at the results ...

The Grass Is Singing: A Novel by Doris Lessing My rating: 3 of 5 stars What a depressing novel.  I'm a little confused by the ending, did she have a relationship with him or didn't she?  Lessing never writes that she does, but I guess that's part of this story.  As I read the novel, I kept wishing the characters were different.  I wanted Dick and Mary to at least attempt to work out their differences and try at their marriage. As depressed as I was reading this book, I have to say it's been my favorite so far in this class.  I really liked Lessing's writing style and I thought the story was formatted great!  You know from the first few lines that Mary is dead, the story is how she winds up that way.  The story is about identity and the struggles that we all face in finding who we are and where we belong.  Sadly Mary never found where she belongs. View all my reviews

In order to catch up with the current weeks in the semester I'm combining weeks 2 & 3 into one post. The Stranger by Albert Camus My rating: 2 of 5 stars It was okay, I don't think I would have picked this up on my own. I've always thought that Camus was a bit heavy and I tend to avoid heavy reading unless it's assigned to me. That being said I thought it was a deep book, and it really made me step back and take a look at how I react to and interact with the world around me. View all my reviews Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe My rating: 3 of 5 stars I liked this book. I was starting to think that I wouldn't like anything we were reading this semester. I was surprised that this would be the book that I liked, since I don't have a favorable opinion of Chinua Achebe. (Long explanation involving earlier Literature classes.) There were things that frustrated me about this book, but it got bumped up to "like" because I can see myself rec...

This semester I'm taking Graduate Seminar in Global Literature.  We have a great line up of books and I wanted to share some mini-reviews here.  Here is the list of books I'll be reading: Week 1 - The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and Death in Venice by Thomas Mann Week 2 - The Stranger by Albert Camus Week 3 - Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Weeks 4 & 5 - The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing Week 6 - Wide Sargasso Sea Weeks 7 & 8 Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Weeks 9 & 10 Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie I chose Midnight's Children as the book I'm going to focus on for my final project/report.  I'll be finishing that up sooner rather than later. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka My rating: 2 of 5 stars It was okay, I don't understand what all the fuss is about with this book.  I thought it was disturbing. View all my reviews Death in Venice by Thomas Mann My rating: 2 of 5 stars It ...