Tag: classic

  • Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

    Picked this up shortly after reading The Poisonwood Bible, and you can see the influence this book had on it. Parts of Kingsolver’s book feel like the same story told from the opposing perspective. No doubt that was Kingsolver’s intent, and she did it well. Anyway, this is great – classics are often classic for a…

  • Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

    There are so many quotable lines in this book. It’s no wonder that Chandler’s writing helped set the template for an entire genre: I was sitting on the side of my bed in my pyjamas, thinking about getting up, but not yet committed. I didn’t feel very well, but I didn’t feel as sick as…

  • Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

    The second of Verne’s I’ve read recently (I read The Mysterious Island last year because a work connection recommended it), and I liked this a lot. It made me wish my kid was younger so I could read it to them (adjusting some of the language along the way I guess). I’m looking forward to…

  • We by Yevgeny Zemyatin

    It’s surprising how long a shadow this book casts. I haven’t read 1984 or Anthem in a long time but both of them came back to me clearly while reading this. And it feels a lot less like homework than Brave New World. It’s also much more interesting coming from the perspective of a Russian…

  • Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

    This seems like the book that Stephen King has been trying to write for 50 years. It’s a short book, but it packs heat. And the ending is super satisfying. The writing is so beautiful I read most of the book out loud to myself. Will’s dad’s speech in the library is one of those…

  • The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

    This ranks with A Canticle for Liebowitz for me – bold and philosophical in a way that is kind of immune to time. In the same way that lots of people think that Fahrenheit 451 would have made a better short story, many of these stories were strong enough to build a whole world around. Just brilliant.…

  • Middlemarch by George Eliot

    This took a long time, and at times I wanted to toss it in the grass, but I am going to miss this book. It was comforting and calming, but also challenging. It is another book I spent a lot of time reading about when I wasn’t reading it. The story of George Eliot, the…

  • A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller Jr.

    That was absolutely stunning. It wasn’t an easy read, but it was a rewarding one. It’s a classic for a reason. Big themes and big ideas here, and until the third part of the book it didn’t read like it was written more than 60 years ago. It’s definitely going to be a book I…

  • Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

    I read this in school more than 20 years ago, and it blew me away then. This book is so engaging and rich with ideas about class, sex, gender, violence and the nature of humanity. Absolutely timeless and just perfect.

  • Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann

    Like East if Eden, this was a book I reluctantly picked up, then couldn’t put down. It took a while to get into – a cast of thousands and a million details, but it eventually gets laser-focused on certain characters and dissects events in incredible depth. The writing is so immersive I would be reading for…