Rebecca Reads

The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution by Linda Monk is simply brilliant. Monk takes the Constitution of the United States, including its amendments, and dissects it line by line, explaining the historical significance and the modern significance of the wording. She does so in layman’s terms, with amusing quotes in [...]

In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington attempts to define the post-Cold War world. His conclusion is that, instead of an “us” and “them” approach to world politics, we must view the world as that of many civilizations, including mainly the West (generally Christian), Sinic (Chinese), Islamic, Hindu [...]

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 [...]

There is something to be said for close, careful reading.
I must have read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with the rest of my tenth grade class, but I honestly didn’t remember any of it. I decided to read it this month as a part of the Martel-Harper Challenge, for which Yann Martel chooses “book[s] that ha[ve] been [...]

Bhutto’s autobiography, Daughter of Destiny (published in 1988 as Daughter of the East), tells a completely unique story. Bhutto was the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country (Pakistan), and she first went through years of struggle, including years of solitary confinement, before she could be an example of democracy.
Much of her autobiography was [...]

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I loved reading Vladimir Nabokov’s short stories a few months ago because his control of language is so powerful, although I did feel that some of his stories were rather odd. Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire is similar in that it is both odd and powerfully written. It is a masterwork of creation: who [...]

I was going to read Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin for the US Presidents Reading Project. But then I started to be intimidated by its 800+ pages; I’m currently reading a 700+ page book and I have been for three months. So, while I do plan on [...]

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the boars lead the other farm animals in a revolution against Mr. Jones’, in hope of a better life. Together, the animals take over Manor Farm, making it their own farm. Running a farm is a lot of work, but the farm animals are convinced the work is worth it [...]

There was no doubt that John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (reviewed here) was written to teach both children and adults lesson about Christianity and life; there was little attempt to veil the message behind the story.
While the message in modern children’s literature may not be so thinly veiled, to me it seems obvious that authors still [...]

Last week I reread Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public as a part of the Martel-Harper Challenge.
While I was well aware that Jonathan Swift’s short essay is classic satire, I [...]