The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway is often considered one of the century's best writers and while reading his work his immense talent is apparent. My experience with Hemingway started with his short stories. I liked the way that he could use such simple language to describe such grand ideas. Often, his stories have much more meaning than appears on the surface.
Such is the case with The Old Man and the Sea, the book for which he won the Nobel Prize. The book tells the story of a poor fisherman, Santiago, and his long battle with a giant marlin. His struggle to bring the fish in represents the struggle of all mankind against the things that bear against it. Likewise, the way in which Santiago faces this immense challenge exhibits Hemingway's idea of the way men should deal with adversity--they should never give up or complain. Instead, like Santiago, mankind should respect adversity and face it with diligence and courage.
If you've ever wanted to read Hemingway but haven't yet, this is a good place to start. If you already have, then, well, good.

Ethan Frome

In the last few months I've been finding some really good deals on used books at the D.I. Not all the books there are in great condition, but I've been able to find some older classics for cheap that are in great shape. Because of this, I've been reading some books lately that I found there. A lot of them are books I'd always heard of but never actually read. Such was the case with Ethan Frome. Ethan Frome was published in 1911 by Edith Wharton. Wharton is most well-known for her books about upper class society like The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, neither of which I have read. I read somewhere that Ethan Frome is Wharton's least characteristic book, which is too bad because I think it is one of the best books I've ever read. I was really surprised by how much I liked it.
I wouldn't say its a happy story. In fact, its probably one of the sadder books you could read. I suppose there is some humor, as sad books often contain at least a little. In this case, I would say there is some humor in the ending, although its quite bleak also.
I don't want to reveal too much of the story because it would ruin the surprising, ironic ending. But the basic outline is that a narrator, who remains unnamed, comes to a small New England town. He is struck with a local man named Ethan Frome, who everyone in town seems to know but doesn't really want to talk about. Everyone just makes cryptic remarks about how its 'too bad' what happened to him. The narrator gets curious about this man and eventually is able to go his house. Once he enters Frome's house his whole life story begins to make sense and the narrator begins to understand why he has become such a shell of a man, devoid of any joy or hope.
The first and last chapter are told in first person by the narrator. The middle chapters are all third person and tell the story of a younger Ethan Frome and the events that led him to where he is when the narrator meets him.
Throughout the book, Wharton's use of language is masterful. Her descriptions of winter, isolation, love and disappointment are spot-on. Its hard for me to think of a writer who has done these topics better.
Frome is also a short book and can be read in one or two sittings, if you have a little extra time. I started reading it and couldn't put it down, especially toward the end when the tension builds and builds.
I highly recommend this book and I think its made it onto my top ten list of favorite books.

Noli Me Tangere

The jacket of this classic book by Filipino author Jose Rizal says that it 'sparked the Philippine Revolution.' My wife, who is from The Philippines, suggested that I read it. I think the book can help anyone who wants to understand the culture and history of the country more. But I don't think it is exclusive to one country, it can be applicable any country or people that has experienced oppression under the hands of seemingly unstoppable forces.
Written over a hundred years ago, the formidable book introduces and tells the stories of several characters who are all influenced in some way or other by the Spanish presence in their country. A little history lesson: Spanish officials lived in and attempted to colonize The Philippines for over three hundred years. They brought many things with them, not the least of which was the Catholic Church, which is still the predominant religion in The Philippines.
Although the story tells the injustices and cruelties of the Spanish against Filipinos, it deals primarily with two young lovers named Ibarra and Maria Clara. Ibarra is a man from a wealthy upbringing who has just returned from college in Europe. Upon returning, he wants to help his homeland, and if he's lucky, win the heart of his childhood sweetheart, Maria.
For awhile things seem to go okay, but Rizal favors reality instead of fantasy and things go from bad to worse for the doomed lovers. However, their story is but one among many Filipinos who's lives were irrevocably altered, and in most cases ruined, by the omnipresent powers of the Spanish government and leaders.
Rizal picks his targets out in his legendary book and takes merciless aim, exploiting them for all their hypocrisies and sins. He spends much of the book satirizing and demonizing the fathers, priests and friars of the Catholic Church in The Philippines, people who he believed, and as history has shown rightly so, to be the cause of nearly all the suffering.
One example is a story about a woman named Sisa and her two boys, Crispin and Basilio. The boys work at the parish house in town, where they are constantly accused and beaten for crimes which they did not commit. When the priests want to inflict punishment, they don't even need to prove a crime, they need only make something up and in order to continue their inhuman torture. All the while, people continue to laud the priests as holy servants of God.
Rizal seems to have picked out one-by-one the personalities he disliked or found serious fault with and exposed them through his writing. One example is the character Doña Victorina. Victorina is a native Filipina who is married to a European doctor. Because she has married a foreigner, this social climber feels that she is better than her fellow countrymen and has a condescending attitude toward them. Like the Catholic leadership, she refers to them in a derogatory as 'indios.'
Despite her incessant bragging and belittling, the truth is that her husband is a near cripple who has no real money, power or social stature, the main things that she consistently brags to others about possessing. In one humorous scene in the book, she meets another woman similar to her and the two almost get in a fistfight over who is more important in in her respective social circle, both of whom claim to include nothing but 'important' people.
Noli Me Tangere is a powerful lesson in history, political and religious cruelty and injustice and the negative effects of European colonialism.
In the conclusion of the book, the protagonist Ibarra is exiled and forced to leave his true love behind. Things didn't work out much better for the book's author and in the end Rizal's bravery and boldness did not come without a price--he was exiled, only later to be sentenced to death and killed by a firing squad because of the truth he wrote about. Like so many others who speak up against tyrannical governments and institutions, Rizal had to back up his beliefs with his life. In doing so, he became a national hero whose works continue to be studied by university students in The Philippines and scholars around the world.

One more thing, the book was originally written in Spanish. I read an English translation.

As I Lay Dying

Before I read this book I had heard a lot about the infamous William Faulkner. Considered to be a quintessential Modernist, Faulkner can sometimes be a bit hard to digest. This book, like several of his others, is written in stream-of-consciousness.
At first, I found the story a bit hard to follow. It is told through the words of several different narrators, seventeen or so as I recall, with every chapter switching from to another. Instead of revealing the plot or characters in a typical, straightforward way, Faulkner gives you bits and pieces through each of their distinct voices.
The story centers around the Bundren family and their journey to bury their dead mother in the place that she had requested. Hence the 'As I Lay Dying' refers to her.
The longstanding problems of the Bundren family are revealed as the family journeys across the Mississippi countryside. The reader comes to like some of the family members and really despise some of the less honorable ones, particularly the father, who step-by-step unveils how selfish he really is.
The voices range from the main family's nosy, self-righteous neighbor to the mother's youngest son who cannot understand that she is really physically gone. In fact, it is his words that comprise the book's most famous chapter: "My mother is a fish."
I would be lying if I said I understood everything in this book, but from what I got, I did like it quite a bit. One thing that helped me was looking at some plot summaries online. This really helps when trying to make sense of the fragmented plot.
I also studied this book with a very good professor at my school. He made the interesting observation that As I Lay Dying is realistic in the sense that it is told in bits and pieces, with time jumping around and the reader never really sure who is telling the truth. Readers have come to expect authors to tell them how things are and how they, as the reader, should feel about the events happening in the book. Faulkner doesn't do this. Instead he presents pieces of the family's life and inner thoughts and lets the reader decide what he or she thinks. This is similar to real life--we hear bits and pieces of conversations all around us, and most of these have their own personal spins and biases. We then take these things in and put our own spin on them and decide what we think.
That Faulkner was able to do this and still produce a meaningful, humorous book is what amazes me. It seems to have impressed a lot of other people as well, as this book is often considered one his finest and often makes lists of the best American novels.
Faulkner can be a little difficult and I think you have to be in the right mood to read it and enjoy it. But when you are, he has a unique way of storytelling that is worth looking into.

Getting Even

This is a book of short pieces by Woody Allen. Yes, it's that Woody Allen. I like a lot of his movies so when I found out that he had a few books I was curious. His books are somewhat similar to his movies, I suppose, but I think they are also different in several ways. They tend to be sillier and less focused on relationships, although his interest in history and religion are still apparent.
Like his older movies, his short stories are funny stuff. Most of the pieces here were written in what may be considered Allen's best 'funny' period, the late 60's and 70's. Like his older movies, one can expect slapstick humor and lots of non-sequitir jokes. As may also be expected, Allen proves in his short pieces that he is the king of the one-liner. There are a lot of them I like in this book, one example being: "Helmholtz spends most his time writing, and is currently revising his autobiography to include himself."
The stories typically have ridiculous concepts such as the memoirs of Hitler's barber or a chess game played out by two people through letters, each of whom seem to playing a different game. Another story explores the way the inventor of the sandwich, The Earl of Sandwich, slowly researched and developed his idea into what we now call the sandwich. His failed attempts include mistakes like putting the meat outside of the bread or stacking three slices of bread on top of each other.
Allen does this a lot. He takes a funny idea and stretches it out to get as many laughs as he can. When I read these older stories sometimes it surprises me that Allen was this funny in his younger years. Although he was a stand-up comedian so I guess this makes sense.
The stories in the book are short and you can read a few in one sitting. Sometimes I like to read a few before I go to bed because they make me laugh and take my mind off things.
So whether or not you're a fan of Allen's movies, you may still like these funny short pieces. He has two other similar books titled Without Feathers and Side Effects.

Holes

This Louis Sachar novel is one of my favorite books of all time. If you've only seen the movie, don't compare or judge the book by it--the book is way better. (You probably knew I was going to say that.)
The creative plot of this easy read centers around an overweight boy named Stanley Yelnats. Stanley, after having been convicted of a crime that he did not commit, believes himself to be a part of curse that was long ago put on his family. He is sent to Camp Green Lake in Texas to dig a hole every day, which he is told builds character. As the plot unwinds the camp warden's ulterior motives for digging are revealed.
I love the way this book is written. Sachar tells several stories at once, which at first seem to jump around from one to another. But by the end of the book they all come together and we see that they are all part of the same grand story. I really like this aspect of the writing and the way that Sachar is not only able to jump from character to character, but from time period to time period. I wish more books were written this way.
This book won the Newberry Medal in 1999. I think this was a well-deserved award. Holes combines several issues smoothly; things like justice, racism and teenage interaction are just a few.
Like with all of Sachar's books, Holes is written in simple, easy-to-understand language. There are a lot of jokes and most of them are quite dry. I think simplicity this well done is the sign of a great writer.
I try to read this book every so often and I highly recommend it to anyone else. Like I said, it is easily one of my favorite books ever. I think its writing style is creative and unique, its jokes hilarious and its themes important. I hope Sachar continues to put out quality literature like this because this is what the world needs.

The Pearl

This is one of John Steinbeck's shorter novels, perhaps you could consider it a novella. It is about a poor fisherman named Kino who finds The Pearl of the World, a jewel that he believes will bring his young family great wealth and prestige. Nothing goes right for Kino, however, and the pearl that he thought was a great blessing ends up destroying his family.
One thing that I've noticed in a lot of Steinbeck's work, which is also present here, is the tendency for things to go badly. While reading Steinbeck, you can always assume that when things are good, they're about to go badly, and when they're bad, they will continue to get worse. I think this is funny.
The themes in this book are timeless--greed, wealth (and lack of), humility, corruption and good vs. evil. These can be good themes, but I don't think this particular story and its use of them was too great. Perhaps the tale seemed a little too familiar to me, I'm not sure.
I didn't think the characters in here were too interesting or compelling either, maybe they were a little too one-dimensional. I suppose in some ways that The Pearl is an allegory, thus its characters are representations of things and are not actual people. If this were the case, I guess it would make sense that the characters are this way.
Anyway, The Pearl is okay, and its not so long that you'll regret reading it. I just feel like Steinbeck has done better work and would recommend some of his other books before this one.

The Call of the Wild

Ever since I read his awesome short story "To Build a Fire" I wanted to read Jack London's classic The Call of the Wild. Sometimes written off as an adolescent book, it is actually a searching, philosophical masterpiece. It helped to establish London's reputation as one of the great writers of Naturalism, a literary movement that dealt heavily with man's relationship to nature.
The book tells the story a pampered wolf dog, Buck, who is sold into captivity in the Yukon to work in the gold rush. Taken from his rich lifestyle, Buck quickly adapts to his new life and the natural feelings he inherited from his primal ancestors are awakened within him for the first time. London tells the story through Buck's eyes and attempts to show the thoughts and reasoning behind a dog's actions.
Buck eventually escapes from captivity and is faced with the choice to go back home or stay in the wild. Buck opts to go back to his natural roots and take his place in a pack of wild wolves. Once here, Buck feels truly at home.
I found this book very moving and convincing in its effort to encourage man, like Buck, to leave behind all the worldly distractions we have created for ourselves and return to who we really are. As technology advances and things become more and more convenient, London's book is just as important as it ever was.

Is He a Girl?

I love reading kids' books and Louis Sachar is one of my favorite all-time authors. His books are funny, insightful and have great stories. There are a lot of times where I would choose his books over an 'adult book.'
This book is number three of eight in the Marvin Redpost series. The series follows a young redhead boy on his various adventures.
Is He a Girl? tells the story of the time when Marvin, after talking to a girl in his class about how to turn into a girl, thinks that he accidentally did it and has turned into a girl. For the rest of the story he is confused with his identity and ends up not really sure who or what he is. Sachar has several books where people's thoughts or beliefs about themselves are what cause those things to be true. Its a pretty interesting idea and he does it well here in a humorous and light-hearted way. This one gets a big thumbs-up.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

I discovered Raymond Carver in a literature class I had last year. We read one of his short stories titled "Cathedral." I loved the story and immediately went to the library to check out more of his work. Within a few weeks I had read all of his short story collections. Unfortunately, this is not too large a number because Carver died in 1988 at the age of 50.
Carver has been called a modern Ernest Hemingway and I think this is a fair comparison. Like Hemingway, Carver uses simple, realistic language to paint pictures and show his character's deepest feelings and thoughts. This, in my opinion, is one of the hardest things to do in writing. Thus, I admire Carver's talent for being so provocative in so few words.
His stories focus mainly on common people, especially suburbanites. He tends to like to uncover the private lives of those that appear normal, revealing unexpected passions and desires. Through all of it, Carver maintains a love for those he writes about.
Sometimes when I finish his stories I need to stop and think if I understood it all. They have a tendency to end abruptly and sometimes, somewhat mysteriously. He leaves it up to the reader to fill in the details that are lacking in the words he puts on the page.
This particular collection, like all his others, is pretty solid. One standout is the story "Why, Honey?," which is one of the creepiest stories I've ever read. It's not your traditional scary story by any means, nor do I know if it was even intended to be scary. You may just have to read it to see what I mean.
There are a lot of other good stories in here both funny and serious.

The Importance of Being Earnest

I had heard a lot of people say that Oscar Wilde was a really funny writer. I tend to lean toward funny books so I was interested in seeing what this Irishman had to offer. Needless to say, I was not disappointed--this play really was funny.
The plot follows two scheming friends who can barely keep up with their own mischief. They end up getting caught up in their lies and deceptions, but since its a romantic comedy, things all work out in the end.
This book is good if you're looking for a nice, short read that can be finished in only one or two sittings. It's also a light read with a lot of satire and puns.
By the way, the publisher of this book is Dover. I have been liking them a lot lately. They have several of their books at my school bookstore and they are very cheap. I bought this one new for only $1.50. They do a lot of other classics for good prices as well in this series called Dover Thrift Editions. Check them out.

The Grapes of Wrath

I took a John Steinbeck class last semester and really grew to love this renowned American author. I will start with Grapes of Wrath because it stands out as my favorite book of his. It is also probably his most well known, and for good reason.
Grapes of Wrath details the struggles of the Joad family as they are forced off their land in Oklahoma due to problems caused by the great dust bowls of the 1930's. The story of the Joad family, although fictional, is representative of reality for hundreds of thousands of poor migrant worker families of the time. Steinbeck had done his homework on them--before writing the book, he had spent time with the displaced farmers, traveling with them down Route 66 toward California, eating what they ate and participating in group storytelling and singing.
Although critics of the book claim that Steinbeck had a communist agenda, I could not find proof of this. Granted, Steinbeck is critical of mass consumerism and the negative effects of capitalism. He also encourages a society which watches out for its fellowman; however, more than any type of communism, his argument promotes brotherly love, charity and other simple traditional Christian values that many of his critics would likely profess to believe in.
I also enjoyed Steinbeck's animosity toward authority in the book. In it, government workers like police officers are the cause, not the solution, to many of the problems.
But Grapes of Wrath is more than just a social protest novel. It deals primarily with the interworkings of the Joad family. Almost all the members of the family are strong characters that leave lasting impressions on the reader. Through the family, Steinbeck shows how normal people deal with serious problems and show strength and courage in the face of them.
The book is packed with powerful scenes and statements. My copy of it is filled with pen marks from notes and underlining.
I highly recommend this book. Not only is it a great and moving story, but one can also learn more about history and the social climate of the time from reading it. The book is also an eye-opener to the situations and conditions in which some people are forced to live and provokes empathy in the reader for other human beings.

"The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment."

Hello

My name is Clayton and I love reading and writing. Here you will find different things pertaining to the world of literature. My two biggest plans for this site are to review books I've read and also to post things I've written myself; this could include chapters from books, poems and maybe more...
I hope that my reviews will help you find books that sound interesting that maybe you wouldn't have read or known about before. I read a lot of different stuff so I will try and get a variety of reviews up. I am also always reading so keep checking back for updates.
I hope you enjoy.