Thirty-eighth book reviewed as part of the 130 Challenge. People often don’t take the ‘adult’ part of ‘young adult’ seriously (myself included) and that is why we have so much sappy literature in this genre. We can definitely do much better. But despite that expectation, when I saw that ‘Oranges for Christmas’ was about the hard life in Communist East Germany, I thought it was being far too ambitious and I feared that it might turn out to be a drab post-war story. The story […]
1984 IRL
While reading this book, I had to keep reminding myself that it is not, in fact, 1984. The stories Demick tells are true. North Korea is a place that actually exists. These stories happened, are happening. This is the story of North Korea as told through the lives of 6 ordinary but very different people, from the Korean War through 2010. The story is told masterfully, gliding between the details of the regime and the details of these people’s lives: there’s Mrs. Song, my personal […]
The Golden Notebook: A Novel by Doris Lessing
There is a part of me that feels brazen and shameless for daring to write reviews of literary classics. Who am I to judge Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for example (which I did for Cannonball Read 5)? The Golden Notebook is another such a book, but it is also one of those novels that I have wanted to read because it appears on so many “must read” lists, particularly among feminists. So I will boldly proceed with this review in the hope that I do […]