Rebecca Reads

While I still enjoyed In Chancery and To Let, the second two novels of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy felt less developed, less powerful, and less important. In essence, to me they felt like merely sequels to a powerful novel. My thoughts on the first novel of the trilogy were complimentary; these thoughts are [...]

To my relief, I was not the only one at the book club meeting that didn’t love this month’s choice!
I don’t usually read modern fiction; it’s just not my thing, and I can’t really say way. Maybe I’m just always reading the “wrong” modern fiction and so it has a bad rap in my mind. [...]

In Chapter 6 of my history of children’s literature textbook, Children’s Literature, Seth Lerer indicates:
Almost from its original publication in 1719, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe had an immense impact on literature for children and adults. It has been widely seen as one of the first major novels in English; as the stimulus for a range [...]

My LibraryThing group (called Group Reads – Literature) read The Forsyte Saga in March and April; I’m rather behind. I’m now midway through the second of the three novels.
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy tells the story of the end of the 1800s and the early 1900s: the cusp of modernity. The younger generation is [...]

The problem with reviewing a book I listened to on audio is that I cannot properly go back and quote for you the passages that made me shudder. Nor can I describe in detail the scenes that horrified me.
1984 by George Orwell is such a book. In some respects, listening to it reminded me of [...]

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley on the 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers list, and I know I’ve seen it on many other “must-read” lists. I never read it in high school when many people apparently did, so I thought I should give it a go now. But I just cannot.
I’ve listened to [...]

When I was in eighth grade, I had a reading class in school each day. My teacher often assigned the entire class the same book to read, and we read during each class period. Then we’d discuss it.
One particular time, I think we were reading a children’s novel, like My Brother Sam is Dead (which [...]

It was diverting to read, but Utopia by Thomas More was not a delightful, engaging read. It has essentially no plot: a world-traveler tells a man named Thomas More about a land called Utopia as they discuss various social problems.
And yet, Utopia was interesting to me as a commentary on “utopias” and “dystopias” in general. [...]

I loved reading Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, despite the fact that it was written with 1700s archaic language, with long sentences stringing thoughts together, with essentially no dialog and no characters (beyond Robinson Crusoe himself), and with basically no plot. And yet, I loved it. Putting in to words why I loved it is [...]

Often, I consider superior writing to be more important than a superior story: if it is written well, I don’t care so much about the story because the powerful writing can carry my interest in the book.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding, however, failed that test. I loved the writing: Golding’s prose is magical [...]