#wuthering heights is one of the most complex well written books

[laufire]

april reading meme!

BOOKS

We Will Devour The Night by Camilla Andrew. The version I read is available in the author's ko-fi (aninkwellofnectar), and the final version will come during fall of this year. I've talked about this saga before (The Essence of the Equinox), and I still recommend it to those of us who like complex characters (especially female characters), gothic horror, and lush prose. This is a sequel, and I like it even more than the first instalment. It gets deeper into the darkness of the world and it's an amazing read. The third and final part has started been posted on ko-fi as well, for anyone interested.

Why Does He Do That? Inside The Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft. I wish I could make everyone read this book. It wouldn't fix everything, because it runs against a lot of people's deep-seated belief systems, but maybe it would make SOME of them start second-guessing those beliefs... Anyway. A MUST read in terms of abuse and intimate partner violence.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I read the book for the first time about 15 years ago, and only reread it now. I loved it even more than the first time. The atmosphere, the revenge tale, the love story between Catherine and Heathcliff, all the ways these families' lives affect the others, how you have to parse through Nelly's account of events... I still wish I could hit Lockwood in the head with a stick lol. Just once. Not even too hard! But hit him in the head, I would xD

COMICS

Batman: Huntress/Spoiler - Blunt Trauma. One of those "it could've been so good if it was good" comics. It would've had to NOT been written by Dixon, of course. His ideas about these two characters are palpable here. He's met real women and girls, I know this, but he's completely failed to take anything from these meetings into account to understand them as people. And boy, does it show in his writing.

Green Lantern: Willworld. I've had this comic in my list for aeons and I moved it up when I found out its author would be writing Jason's upcoming ADITF "what if" story starting July. I really liked this one, and how it showcased Hal's character. It's not a guarantee I'll like his Robin Lives run, because comic writers have biases and blind spots and huge gaps in their knowlege regarding certain characters, but "he seems to be a good writer" is already a huuuuge leg up compared to most modern Jason content lol.

JLA: World Without Grown-ups. This was interesting because I've watched the Young Justice (cartoon) version of this premise, which is VERY different, from the villains to their goals to the handling of the crisis (since the cartoon had an established teen team), down to the emotional beats (the Zataras). They're too different to be compared, tbh. This one was quite fun though, and it made me feel very fond of Bart. Also Tim's parasocial relationship with Jason's memorial made an appearance LOL.

Colin Wilke's appearances. I am MOURNING this kid. He has like 9 appearances (and a couple of them are barely a few pages) but each one is gold. Bring him back. Make HIM Damian's best friend. Integrate him in the storyline!! His character and his dynamic with Damian had so so much potential. I am definitely going to include him in my fics.

Batman: Li'l Gotham. (plus the two stories introducing it in Batman Annual #27 and 'Tec Annual #11). A couple of things conspired (including me finding out there's a version of Colin in this lol) and I ended up reading it while I was sick. It's mostly fun fluff (as opposed to just corny fluff) and a quick read without much meat in it, but a few things nudged the inspiration muscle and Dustin Nguyen's art is adorable.

Batman Tales: Once Upon a Crime. I liked this one more than the above! It follows in that universe (a Gotham where everything is smaller and cuter lol), mixing it with some fairy tale vibes. Pinocchio!Damian is A Concept. Although my favourite story was "The Snow Queen", with Mister Freeze. The art goes into a whole other level in all of these, but especially that one.

Batman: The Chalice. Bruce Wayne receives the Holy Grail. I read this one in my list of Talia appearances and hers is the part that interested me: Ra's wants the Grail to make her immortal, like him, and Talia tells him that she has no desire to live forever. Her words are "Having lived my life in your company, the prospect of eernal life is not the attraction for me it might be for another." There are A LOT of things you can read into that sentence, and one of them, to me, is the idea that death to Talia would be an escape from Ra's, which is... interesting. Sidenote: this one was written by Dixon, who once in a while gets his wired crossed and is not wholly terrible with female characters xD

Ghost/Batgirl. I hadn't heard of Ghost before but I'm kinda curious after reading this mini run. I found a lot of the concepts it worked on (resurrection, mind control, etc.) quite interesting, although I ended up feeling the execution didn't delve too deeply into them. It's an story I might want to reread and pick apart at some point, though.

JLA: Tower of Babel. Yeah, THAT arc lol (also part of my Talia-reading). I also read JLA Secret Files and Origins #3 (in May, though), which shows Talia's whole thoughts on it as she steals the plans + some of the consequences the whole thing has for the other bats whose teammates no longer trust them (Dick, Tim, Barbara) + the wording of Bruce's contingency plans (which btw includes acceptance of lethal methods against Clark lol)... he certainly got off easy after this añsdlkfjasdf. Honestly, imo, the most selfish, cowardly thing he did was walking out before the JLA could tell him they'd voted him out. I know he and the comics probably won't frame it like that afterwards, but that's how it felt to me. The very least he could've done is face his teammates.

[vacantgodling]

Happy sts

Is there an author or work that you think was particularly influencial on your style, works or viewpoints on writing?

hello hello! thank you for the question <3

honestly i'd say there's 3 main authors that influenced me as well as one specific genre that's influenced my actual prose style in general.

the three i would say would be (1) rick riordan (2) cornelia funke and (3) f scott fitzgerald

rick riordan and cornelia funke inspired me in terms of story structure, topics, and general depths of character and creating dialogue. i used to be much stronger with dialogue versus prose (though i've always been a bit descriptive), but the way that i looked at prose changed entirely when i first read the great gatsby in 11th grade. i Love that book. the way it's written is absolutely sublime and i really latched onto how things were described and sought to emulate it in my own writing.

the introduction i had to wuthering heights (despite all of its yikes) and the gothic genre/shakespeare in general really helped me refine the prose style that i have. which most on writeblr will always hear me describe as "flowery" because its just. extremely descriptive and i really love it. my general crusade in reading old books in the past year, and leaning more into this prose and into my love of history generally, has helped me develop complex and interesting stories that are chock full of the kind of prose that i adore and i've managed to create something of my own i think. a modern-flowery, because i can't think of another way to describe it.

[masonhawth0rne]

What I read in October

Hoo boy, I sure did forget to post this earlier, didn't I!

Honestly I've been so busy so far this month that I just didn't even think of it. Also, this month is sort of evaporating. Before you ask, no I have written nothing at all for the not-NaNo that I was planning to attempt. But I did come up with another great idea for something that I'll probably start and not finish, so you can't say I've done nothing!

Anyway, on to the list:

Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, Hailey Piper ⭐���⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ghost Bird, Lisa Fuller ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Forest of Stolen Girls, June Hur ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Liar's Dice, Jeannie Lin ⭐️

Straya, Anthony O'Connor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Toxic, Dan Kaszeta (nf) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Illuminae, Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Penhallow, Georgette Heyer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Myth of the Self Made Man, Ruben Reyes Jr (ss) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Call, Christian White & Summer De Roche ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Death of the Necromancer, Martha Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cretins, Thomas Ha (ss) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Kill Your Brother, Jack Heath ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley (nf) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Valley of Terror, Zhou Haohui, tr. Bonnie Huie ⭐️⭐️

The Curse of the Burdens, John Wyndham ⭐️⭐️

Amazons, Adrienne Mayor (nf) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Kraken Wakes, John Wyndham ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Dead Mountain, Donnie Eichar (nf) ⭐️⭐️

Family Business, Jonathan Sims ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the House of Aryaman A Lonely Signal Burns, Elizabeth Bear ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Blessing of Unicorns, Elizabeth Bear ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

METAtropolis Anthology ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Plan for Chaos, John Wyndham ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Fatal Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon (nf) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Outward Urge, John Wyndham ⭐️⭐️

King Solomon's Mines, H. Rider Haggard DNF

The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle tr. David Ross (nf) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a bit of a mixed bunch!

At the end of September I went to a writer's conference, where Lisa Fuller and Amie Kaufman were guests of honour. I was a bit annoyed at myself because I had bought Ghost Bird the week before, not realising that she was on the program, so I had the book the whole time but hadn't yet read it! Oh well, better late than never.

Ghost Bird was a solid spooky read, dealing with family history and tensions, small town disturbances, and the violent inheritances of colonialism and racism in Australia. I originally bought it because it was on a list of books to read if you enjoyed Catching Teller Crow by Ambelin Kwaymullina and Ezekiel Kwaymullina, which I did.

Illuminae was one that I had heard @slushrottweiler mention several times, but I'd never gotten around to it (YA, not my most favourite! Epistolary, not my most favourite!). But after the conference I figured I'd check it out, and I'm glad I did. While I wouldn't say that it's my favourite thing ever, it was a solid scifi story, with an interesting form and style, and I'll probably check out the sequels eventually.

Straya by Anthony O'Connor was the other book on this list that I picked up after the conference. Kind of a goofy action romp through post-apocalyptic Sydney, I was expecting to be a kind of brain-off funtime read (and it is! Don't get me wrong!) but it also had a lot of very clever little twists and turns that kept it really engaging. Also a refreshing take on the 'love interest' character, being that she's asexual, and when the protagonist confesses his feelings for her she says well... that's sweet and all, but I don't do that. Can we still be friends? And then they are still friends! A lot of the goofyness of this book is held up by a backbone of sincerity which is really nice, too. In all, a fun read.

Also revisited some faves this month, re-read Penhallow for my book club, and I have to say, it is one of those books which just gets more complex with each rereading. It's up there with Rebecca as some of my most books of all time.

There's one big fat DNF on the list this month, King Solomon's Mine, which through a combination of Victorian era racism, and very poor audio quality was pretty much unlistenable, and I don't think I'll be bothered trying to find a better recording.

And that's that!

nf= non fiction

ss= short story

stars awarded at my whim

[julictcapulet]

Can you please recommend some of your favourite romance novels that are well-written and have more complex plots? Thank you! ❤️

Of course! I'm giving you recommendations as if you've never heard of any of these in your life so forgive the basic Jane Austen mentions, I simply believe it's always necessary to recommend Jane Austen. Also, some of these are straight up romance and some of them just have well-written romance subplots that take a backseat to the overall story. Some of these are adult, some of these are YA, some of these are classics, some of these are contemporary, some of these are fantasy—hell, some of these are less a romance in the sense that there's a wonderful relationship and there's a happily ever after and more a deconstruction of human relationships and the complex romantic feelings that come from that. Pick which ones stick out most to you and research what most fits the vibe you want to read!

my personal recommendations.

persuasion by jane austen. (all of jane austen's books as well, but this is my favorite novel of all time)

atonement by ian mcewan.

wuthering heights by emily brontë.

book lovers by emily henry. (my favorite modern romance novel ever!)

deathless by catherynne m. valente.

the invisible life of addie larue by v.e. schwab.

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid.

the princess bride by william goldman.

the heart principle by helen hoang.

act your age, eve brown by talia hibbert.

jane eyre by charlotte brontë.

between shades of gray by ruta sepetys.

love, rosie by cecelia ahern.

seven days in june by tia williams.

conversations with friends by sally rooney.

the price of salt, or carol by patricia highsmith.

fingersmith by sarah waters.

tipping the velvet by sarah waters.

the time traveler's wife by audrey niffenegger.

carmilla by j. sheridan le fanu.

recommendations from friends that i haven't read yet.

the hundred lives of juliet by evelyn skye.

one true loves by taylor jenkins reid.

brooklyn by colm tóibín.

if you could see the sun by ann liang.

happy place by emily henry.

our wives under the sea by julia armfield.

funny you should ask by elissa sussman.

even though i knew the end by c.l. polk.

[kmze]

Thanks for the book recommendation.I love Greek Mythology.And great meta by the way.Jane Eyre is one of my favourites.I think I had read the meta back in the day.You know when s7 first started and val's character was introduced, I thought they were paralleling her with Bertha Mason since she was locked up in the prison world and Bertha in the attic.But then..well never mind.And there are some Hamlet-Ophelia/Stefan-Caroline parallels in s7 as well although not sure how intentional they were.Another thing was Defan's choice of women (Dopplegangers) having similarities with their mother.Oedipus Complex?

Anyway, I noticed this show did some cool book references over the seasons.In s1, it was Wuthering Heights,in s3 it was Moby Dick.I think Stefan had mentioned Fitzergerald's Great Gatsby being one his favourites in s1.

You're welcome Anon! If you like Greek mythology I highly recommend her books I also read The Song of Achilles which was one of the most beautifully written books I ever read, it made me cry so much. Yeah that meta was great, the account deactivated but I remember the user and she had some really great insight and posts during S6-8. God this just reminds me again of the wastedness of S7 because Dries was driven by spite rather than creativity because the way Stefan/Lily/Damon was set up in S6 looked so interesting and then it was completely neglected in S7. In 7x07 Damon even says "what is this Hamlet community theater" when Julian linked himself to Lily and then fights a duel with Enzo.

I think Dries did all that on purpose because if Lily was utilized to her ability she would have been similar to Katherine and how she was manipulating both brothers. Since Katherine was Dries' fave and she couldn't play with her anymore she held a grudge against Lily and I felt tried to make Val the new Katherine which didn't work at all. Lily was manipulative like Katherine and she knew how to play each brother differently but like Katherine she loved Stefan more. I wonder if Julie wanted to make Lily=Katherine and Sarah Salvatore=Elena in tone for that season but maybe when they changed everything for Candice's pregnancy and Sarah got dropped. Because like you said Lily and Sarah both looked like the doppelgangers with their long dark hair and doe eyes, especially Sarah when I rewatched S6 I was like wow she looks exactly like S1!Elena. Then Dries' made Val the center of the bros vs. heretics and she wasn't as strong of a character to do that with (plus she didn't care about Damon). Then the miscarriage revenge plot overtook everything that could have been done with Lily until they killed her an episode early, no I'm not bitter or anything.

Yeah they used to do that a lot with books, I think the Wuthering Heights mention was completely intentional since it's gothic romanticism and that's the tone of the show especially in S1. Plus the Catherine/Cathy vs. Katherine/Elena vibes, I'd say Damon is more Heathcliff than Stefan though. I think Moby Dick was brought up because of Stefan and everything he did to get revenge on Klaus and despite his obsession he never kills Klaus. Then there's the fact that he lets Elena drown which is kinda similar to Ahab getting dragged to the bottom of the ocean by Moby Dick. The Gatsby one is really interesting too because I don't think that was intentional foreshadowing (it was just establishing Stefan was a bookworm) but the 1920s flashbacks with Klefan and Stebekah had total Great Gatsby vibes. I would even say that Stefan was Gatsby because Klaus was intrigued (in love) with Stefan and how he taught him his favorite tricks. Rebekah would be Daisy and Klaus as Nick, I mean look at how obsessed those two were in trying to bring Ripper Stefan back in the day, it was like the obsession Daisy and Nick had over Gatsby.

[petrichor-hiraeth]

Why I love Wuthering Heights.

it's 2am and i read a review of WH by a person who so clearly missed the entire point, so here this is.

The thing that i absolutely love about this book is how flawed the characters are. You won't find a romantic hero who's perfect or a heroine you stan. Here are characters who are human beings and face the tragedy of being humans.

This is a book that is not afraid to show you the tragedy of human flaws, of generational trauma, of love.

The true beauty of Wuthering Heights lies in the demise.

I think the Oscar Wilde quote completely fits here "The books that the world call immoral are the books that show the world it's own shame."

So many people are bothered by the cycle of abuse depicted in this classic, saying it makes them uncomfortable. If you want vanilla, perfect boy falls for perfect girl and the only trouble they face is their parents, you will miss the entire plot of this book, and of human beings. Thankyou.

[princesssarisa]

Nihal for the character ask?

Favorite thing about them: As a person, what I like best about her is the kindness and concern she shows to the sick Beşir, even if she doesn't really care as deeply as she should. On a meta level, I like the sheer complexity and emotional depth of her character, so unexpected for a 12-to-15-year-old girl in a turn-of-the-20th-century novel written by a man. In a more conventional book, she would just be a sweet, innocent foil to her adulterous stepmother Bihter, but she's most definitely not. On the one hand, she's spoiled, bitter, often irrational, manipulative, and much too possessive. But on the other hand, we can sympathize with her pain at being "abandoned" by her loved ones, especially because her father's remarriage comes at the same time as (and is partly motivated by) her transition from a child to a young woman in society, with the expectation of soon leaving her home to marry some stranger. Add to these her assorted other qualities, like her cleverness and her moments of genuine kindness, and she arguably has the richest characterization in the entire book.

Least favorite thing about them: Well, if she were a real person, I'd dislike her spiteful, vindictive tendencies, but that's part of what makes her interesting. As a character... I'm tempted to agree with @ariel-seagull-wings about disliking the idea that her rivalry with Bihter was inevitable, that stepmothers and stepdaughters are always rivals. But since (unless I'm forgetting something) it's only Mademoiselle de Courton who says this, I'll argue that we the readers don't need to take that view, per se.

Three things I have in common with them:

*I'm uncomfortable with change.

*I'm sometimes afraid of abandonment.

*I like Classical music.

Three things I don't have in common with them:

*I don't have a stepmother.

*I've always been strong and healthy.

*I don't play the piano.

Favorite line: "Father, when a child becomes a young girl she finally becomes a bride, doesn’t she? Do you know? I have made a decision, a decision that can’t be changed: Little Nihal won’t become a bride. You know you used to ask me when I was little: You used to say, Nihal, who will you marry. I, doubtless with a a serious conviction, used to say: You. Don’t panic, now I am not of that opinion, but I will stay by your side, do you understand, father? Always together with you…”

brOTP: Bülent (when she's not acting like he betrayed her just by innocently calling Bihter "mother") and Mademoiselle de Courton.

In crossover-land, I might also like her to meet either of the two Catherines from Wuthering Heights – she shares traits with both, combining an upbringing more like Catherine Linton's with the selfishness, pathology, need for adoration, and (eventual) emotion-aggravated sickliness of Catherine Earnshaw, and dealing with the hard transition from girlhood to womanhood too. I don't know if they could ever be friends or if they'd hate each other, though.

OTP: None; she's not psychologically ready for romance and might never be.

nOTP: Behlül, or her father.

Random headcanon: Her illness is some form of epilepsy (her fainting spells are actually seizures), and she's on the autism spectrum too. After all, about 10% to 12% of people with ASD are also epileptic, and it would explain a lot about her personality: black and white thinking, dislike of change, not wanting to leave the safety of childhood, etc.

Unpopular opinion: If it's unpopular to think of her as a unique, complex, morally gray character, and not just an ingénue foil to Bihter, then that's my unpopular opinion. Although I think anyone who thinks she's a stock ingénue must either only know a bad adaptation, not the book, or else lack basic reading comprehension!

Song I associate with them: None at the moment.

Favorite picture of them: These pictures from @faintingheroine of Itır Esen in the 1975 TV version.

[justforbooks]

The 100 best novels written in English: the full list

After two years of careful consideration, Robert McCrum has reached a verdict on his selection of the 100 greatest novels written in English. Take a look at his list.

1. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678)

A story of a man in search of truth told with the simple clarity and beauty of Bunyan’s prose make this the ultimate English classic.

2. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

By the end of the 19th century, no book in English literary history had enjoyed more editions, spin-offs and translations. Crusoe’s world-famous novel is a complex literary confection, and it’s irresistible.

3. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)

A satirical masterpiece that’s never been out of print, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels comes third in our list of the best novels written in English

4. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1748)

Clarissa is a tragic heroine, pressured by her unscrupulous nouveau-riche family to marry a wealthy man she detests, in the book that Samuel Johnson described as “the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart.”

5. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)

Tom Jones is a classic English novel that captures the spirit of its age and whose famous characters have come to represent Augustan society in all its loquacious, turbulent, comic variety.

6. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1759)

Laurence Sterne’s vivid novel caused delight and consternation when it first appeared and has lost little of its original bite.

7. Emma by Jane Austen (1816)

Jane Austen’s Emma is her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early books with a deep sensibility.

8. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)

Mary Shelley’s first novel has been hailed as a masterpiece of horror and the macabre.

9. Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)

The great pleasure of Nightmare Abbey, which was inspired by Thomas Love Peacock’s friendship with Shelley, lies in the delight the author takes in poking fun at the romantic movement.

10. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838)

Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel – a classic adventure story with supernatural elements – has fascinated and influenced generations of writers.

11. Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (1845)

The future prime minister displayed flashes of brilliance that equalled the greatest Victorian novelists.

12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)

Charlotte Brontë’s erotic, gothic masterpiece became the sensation of Victorian England. Its great breakthrough was its intimate dialogue with the reader.

13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

Emily Brontë’s windswept masterpiece is notable not just for its wild beauty but for its daring reinvention of the novel form itself.

14. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray (1848)

William Thackeray’s masterpiece, set in Regency England, is a bravura performance by a writer at the top of his game.

15. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

David Copperfield marked the point at which Dickens became the great entertainer and also laid the foundations for his later, darker masterpieces.

16. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s astounding book is full of intense symbolism and as haunting as anything by Edgar Allan Poe.

17. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

Wise, funny and gripping, Melville’s epic work continues to cast a long shadow over American literature.

18. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)

Lewis Carroll’s brilliant nonsense tale is one of the most influential and best loved in the English canon.

19. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)

Wilkie Collins’s masterpiece, hailed by many as the greatest English detective novel, is a brilliant marriage of the sensational and the realistic.

20. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868-9)

Louisa May Alcott’s highly original tale aimed at a young female market has iconic status in America and never been out of print.

21. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-2)

This cathedral of words stands today as perhaps the greatest of the great Victorian fictions.

22. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875)

Inspired by the author’s fury at the corrupt state of England, and dismissed by critics at the time, The Way We Live Now is recognised as Trollope’s masterpiece.

23. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884/5)

Mark Twain’s tale of a rebel boy and a runaway slave seeking liberation upon the waters of the Mississippi remains a defining classic of American literature.

24. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

A thrilling adventure story, gripping history and fascinating study of the Scottish character, Kidnapped has lost none of its power.

25. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (1889)

Jerome K Jerome’s accidental classic about messing about on the Thames remains a comic gem.

26. The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)

Sherlock Holmes’s second outing sees Conan Doyle’s brilliant sleuth – and his bluff sidekick Watson – come into their own.

27. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)

Wilde’s brilliantly allusive moral tale of youth, beauty and corruption was greeted with howls of protest on publication.

28. New Grub Street by George Gissing (1891)

George Gissing’s portrayal of the hard facts of a literary life remains as relevant today as it was in the late 19th century.

29. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)

Hardy exposed his deepest feelings in this bleak, angry novel and, stung by the hostile response, he never wrote another.

30. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)

Stephen Crane’s account of a young man’s passage to manhood through soldiery is a blueprint for the great American war novel.

31. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

Bram Stoker’s classic vampire story was very much of its time but still resonates more than a century later.

32. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899)

Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece about a life-changing journey in search of Mr Kurtz has the simplicity of great myth.

33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900)

Theodore Dreiser was no stylist, but there’s a terrific momentum to his unflinching novel about a country girl’s American dream.

34. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)

In Kipling’s classic boy’s own spy story, an orphan in British India must make a choice between east and west.

35. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)

Jack London’s vivid adventures of a pet dog that goes back to nature reveal an extraordinary style and consummate storytelling.

36. The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1904)

American literature contains nothing else quite like Henry James’s amazing, labyrinthine and claustrophobic novel.

37. Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe (1904)

This entertaining if contrived story of a hack writer and priest who becomes pope sheds vivid light on its eccentric author – described by DH Lawrence as a “man-demon”.

38. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908)

The evergreen tale from the riverbank and a powerful contribution to the mythology of Edwardian England.

39. The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells (1910)

The choice is great, but Wells’s ironic portrait of a man very like himself is the novel that stands out.

40. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (1911)

The passage of time has conferred a dark power upon Beerbohm’s ostensibly light and witty Edwardian satire.

41. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)

Ford’s masterpiece is a searing study of moral dissolution behind the facade of an English gentleman – and its stylistic influence lingers to this day.

42. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)

John Buchan’s espionage thriller, with its sparse, contemporary prose, is hard to put down.

43. The Rainbow by DH Lawrence (1915)

The Rainbow is perhaps DH Lawrence’s finest work, showing him for the radical, protean, thoroughly modern writer he was.

44. Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham (1915)

Somerset Maugham’s semi-autobiographical novel shows the author’s savage honesty and gift for storytelling at their best.

45. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)

The story of a blighted New York marriage stands as a fierce indictment of a society estranged from culture.

46. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

This portrait of a day in the lives of three Dubliners remains a towering work, in its word play surpassing even Shakespeare.

47. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)

What it lacks in structure and guile, this enthralling take on 20s America makes up for in vivid satire and characterisation.

48. A Passage to India by EM Forster (1924)

EM Forster’s most successful work is eerily prescient on the subject of empire.

49. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (1925)

A guilty pleasure it may be, but it is impossible to overlook the enduring influence of a tale that helped to define the jazz age.

50. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

Woolf’s great novel makes a day of party preparations the canvas for themes of lost love, life choices and mental illness.

51. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Fitzgerald’s jazz age masterpiece has become a tantalising metaphor for the eternal mystery of art.

52. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926)

A young woman escapes convention by becoming a witch in this original satire about England after the first world war.

53. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)

Hemingway’s first and best novel makes an escape to 1920s Spain to explore courage, cowardice and manly authenticity.

54. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1929)

Dashiell Hammett’s crime thriller and its hard-boiled hero Sam Spade influenced everyone from Chandler to Le Carré.

55. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)

The influence of William Faulkner’s immersive tale of raw Mississippi rural life can be felt to this day.

56. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

Aldous Huxley’s vision of a future human race controlled by global capitalism is every bit as prescient as Orwell’s more famous dystopia.

57. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)

The book for which Gibbons is best remembered was a satire of late-Victorian pastoral fiction but went on to influence many subsequent generations.

58. Nineteen Nineteen by John Dos Passos (1932)

The middle volume of John Dos Passos’s USA trilogy is revolutionary in its intent, techniques and lasting impact.

59. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934)

The US novelist’s debut revelled in a Paris underworld of seedy sex and changed the course of the novel – though not without a fight with the censors.

60. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938)

Evelyn Waugh’s Fleet Street satire remains sharp, pertinent and memorable.

61. Murphy by Samuel Beckett (1938)

Samuel Beckett’s first published novel is an absurdist masterpiece, a showcase for his uniquely comic voice.

62. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)

Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled debut brings to life the seedy LA underworld – and Philip Marlowe, the archetypal fictional detective.

63. Party Going by Henry Green (1939)

Set on the eve of war, this neglected modernist masterpiece centres on a group of bright young revellers delayed by fog.

64. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (1939)

Labyrinthine and multilayered, Flann O’Brien’s humorous debut is both a reflection on, and an exemplar of, the Irish novel.

65. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)

One of the greatest of great American novels, this study of a family torn apart by poverty and desperation in the Great Depression shocked US society.

66. Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse (1946)

PG Wodehouse’s elegiac Jeeves novel, written during his disastrous years in wartime Germany, remains his masterpiece.

67. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

A compelling story of personal and political corruption, set in the 1930s in the American south.

68. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (1947)

Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece about the last hours of an alcoholic ex-diplomat in Mexico is set to the drumbeat of coming conflict.

69. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1948)

Elizabeth Bowen’s 1948 novel perfectly captures the atmosphere of London during the blitz while providing brilliant insights into the human heart.

70. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)

George Orwell’s dystopian classic cost its author dear but is arguably the best-known novel in English of the 20th century.

71. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)

Graham Greene’s moving tale of adultery and its aftermath ties together several vital strands in his work.

72. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)

JD Salinger’s study of teenage rebellion remains one of the most controversial and best-loved American novels of the 20th century.

73. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)

In the long-running hunt to identify the great American novel, Saul Bellow’s picaresque third book frequently hits the mark.

74. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954)

Dismissed at first as “rubbish & dull”, Golding’s brilliantly observed dystopian desert island tale has since become a classic.

75. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Nabokov’s tragicomic tour de force crosses the boundaries of good taste with glee.

76. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)

The creative history of Kerouac’s beat-generation classic, fuelled by pea soup and benzedrine, has become as famous as the novel itself.

77. Voss by Patrick White (1957)

A love story set against the disappearance of an explorer in the outback, Voss paved the way for a generation of Australian writers to shrug off the colonial past.

78. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

Her second novel finally arrived this summer, but Harper Lee’s first did enough alone to secure her lasting fame, and remains a truly popular classic.

79. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1960)

Short and bittersweet, Muriel Spark’s tale of the downfall of a Scottish schoolmistress is a masterpiece of narrative fiction.

80. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

This acerbic anti-war novel was slow to fire the public imagination, but is rightly regarded as a groundbreaking critique of military madness.

81. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)

Hailed as one of the key texts of the women’s movement of the 1960s, this study of a divorced single mother’s search for personal and political identity remains a defiant, ambitious tour de force.

82. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

Anthony Burgess’s dystopian classic still continues to startle and provoke, refusing to be outshone by Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant film adaptation.

83. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (1964)

Christopher Isherwood’s story of a gay Englishman struggling with bereavement in LA is a work of compressed brilliance.

84. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)

Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel, a true story of bloody murder in rural Kansas, opens a window on the dark underbelly of postwar America.

85. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1966)

Sylvia Plath’s painfully graphic roman à clef, in which a woman struggles with her identity in the face of social pressure, is a key text of Anglo-American feminism.

86. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)

This wickedly funny novel about a young Jewish American’s obsession with masturbation caused outrage on publication, but remains his most dazzling work.

87. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (1971)

Elizabeth Taylor’s exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s.

88. Rabbit Redux by John Updike (1971)

Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, Updike’s lovably mediocre alter ego, is one of America’s great literary protoganists, up there with Huck Finn and Jay Gatsby.

89. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)

The novel with which the Nobel prize-winning author established her name is a kaleidoscopic evocation of the African-American experience in the 20th century.

90. A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul (1979)

VS Naipaul’s hellish vision of an African nation’s path to independence saw him accused of racism, but remains his masterpiece.

91. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)

The personal and the historical merge in Salman Rushdie’s dazzling, game-changing Indian English novel of a young man born at the very moment of Indian independence.

92. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1981)

Marilynne Robinson’s tale of orphaned sisters and their oddball aunt in a remote Idaho town is admired by everyone from Barack Obama to Bret Easton Ellis.

93. Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis (1984)

Martin Amis’s era-defining ode to excess unleashed one of literature’s greatest modern monsters in self-destructive antihero John Self.

94. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (1986)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about a retired artist in postwar Japan, reflecting on his career during the country’s dark years, is a tour de force of unreliable narration.

95. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald (1988)

Fitzgerald’s story, set in Russia just before the Bolshevik revolution, is her masterpiece: a brilliant miniature whose peculiar magic almost defies analysis.

96. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1988)

Anne Tyler’s portrayal of a middle-aged, mid-American marriage displays her narrative clarity, comic timing and ear for American speech to perfection.

97. Amongst Women by John McGahern (1990)

This modern Irish masterpiece is both a study of the faultlines of Irish patriarchy and an elegy for a lost world.

98. Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)

A writer of “frightening perception”, Don DeLillo guides the reader in an epic journey through America’s history and popular culture.

99. Disgrace by JM Coetzee (1999)

In his Booker-winning masterpiece, Coetzee’s intensely human vision infuses a fictional world that both invites and confounds political interpretation.

100. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2000)

Peter Carey rounds off our list of literary milestones with a Booker prize-winning tour-de-force examining the life and times of Australia’s infamous antihero, Ned Kelly.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

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The Doll Factory

Author: Elizabeth Macneal

First published: 2019

Pages: 336

Rating: ★★★★★

How long did it take: 3 days

I felt that this book, while perhaps not exceptional, was very well put together. It was paced just right and the sense of growing dread escalates in a way which kept me glued to the page. Truly well written historical fiction.

Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife

Author: Bart D. Ehrman

First published: 2020

Pages: 352

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 2 days

I am rather conflicted about this book. Firstly, as a Christian bordering on agnosticism (I have never been a part of any church and my family is completely atheistic), I felt both somehow comforted by Ehrman´s deductions and somewhat resentful at the same time. Not because he very convincingly talks about the changing of religious perspectives (I am a historian myself so that information was only natural), but because he is clearly working with the notion of non-existence of God, not really treating it as a possibility. That, however, is my own personal issue. Objectively speaking, this is a very good book. Though academic in tone, it reads quite easily and is obviously well researched. The title, however, is misleading. Like many others, I had expected this to be a study of VARIOUS theories of afterlives, but 80% of the book is focused on early Christianity only. Not that isn´t fascinating, but for people hoping to learn something about other religions and cultures and their post-mortem ideas, it can only represent a big disappointment. So - know what you are getting, have an open mind and you might find this book a worthy addition to your personal library.

Wuthering Heights The Graphic Novel

Author: Emily Brontë, John M. Burns

First published: 2011

Pages: 160

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 1 day

I don´t think there is much to review. I love the original book. I enjoyed its re-imagining here.

The Vanishing

Author: Sophia Tobin

First published: 2017

Pages: 390

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

How long did it take: 3 days

This was sort of OK I guess??? The beginning was promising, but I lost interest in the latter half, which also became somewhat convoluted. Not very memorable, though Sophia Tobin´s writing style is fine. I would not mind trying another book by her in the future.

The Mercies

Author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave

First published: 2020

Pages: 352

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 7 days

Stunningly-written and deeply moving, this book has really only one weakness. It somewhat drags in the middle. But the atmosphere is alive and palpable and the emotions pure and real. There are many other books dealing with the topic of witch-trials, but few manage to be as powerful as well as respectfully restrained. Hargrave as an author knows how to keep the balance and her book beautiful.

The Wizard of Oz and Other Wonderful Books of Oz: The Emerald City of Oz and Glinda of Oz

Author: Frank L. Baum

First published: 1900, 1910, 1920

Pages: 432

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 5 days

This book is not commonly known in my country and so I have only read it for the first time now when I am over thirty. It definitely has its charm, especially the first volume, which holds some beautiful truths one wishes to teach the children (or adults). The Emerald City of Oz and Glinda of Oz are both mostly just a flight of fancy with no actual conflict. In fact, the danger to any of the characters is so nonexistent it begs the question of "why should I care". Not bad, but perhaps I would have loved it more if I was 5, not 33. Mea culpa.

Vasilisa the Wise and Other Tales of Brave Young Women

Author: Kate Forsyth

First published: 2017

Pages: 103

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 1 day

Very sweet retelling of several classic fairytales in which the girl saves herself (even if she needs some help by others, and the others are never the prince).

S.

Author: J.J. Abrams, Doug Dorst

First published: 2013

Pages: 456

Rating: ★★★★★

How long did it take: 19 days

This book felt like an acid trip with Umberto Eco or something in a similar vein to me. I was rather terrified that the whole thing would be completely dependant on the unusual format, but to my delight, the format merely enhances and enriches the actual novel, which in itself is dark, confusing, moving, terrifying, philosophical and weirdly fascinating. I am sure a lot has escaped my attention or flew over my head, but I welcome it because it gives me more reason to return to the book in the future. It was not all flawless though. My biggest gripe, as an actual Czech person, is that even though so much effort and thought went into the creation of this book, the author decided that Google translate will do just fine - and no surprise - it did not. There are not many instances of the Czech language being used, but when it is... it is all wrong. The Czech language is quite difficult and complex and Google translate does not know how to deal with it most of the time. Just one example: In the book, Eric writes OPICE TANCE on the wall and says it is Czech for "MONKEY DANCES". Yeah. Yeah, it is. IF THE WORD "DANCES" IS TAKEN AS A NOUN IN PLURAL. The correct translation would be "OPICE TANČÍ" and trust me it IS a big big difference. (Do not get me started on the vintage newspaper article....) You definitely need a lot of brainpower and focus when reading, this is not an easy book to follow. You also need to accept that not all questions are answered. I am glad I read it though. I found it an interesting experience.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

First published: 1954

Pages: 407

Rating: ★★★★★

How long did it take: 3 days

What can I say? Yet again I had goosebumps and tears in my eyes. Few, very few books have the power of this one.

Mexican Gothic

Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia

First published: 2020

Pages: 301

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 12 days

I don´t have much to say but I was a bit bored at the beginning, but it turned out to be a pretty wild ride.

Aristokratka u královského dvora

Author: Evžen Boček

First published: 2020

Pages: 184

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 1 day

Miluji celou tuto sérii, bohužel tento díl mi, ač stále zábavný, přišel prozatím nejslabší... Měla jsem pocit, že první polovina knihy opustila můj oblíbený, laskavý humor teenagerky, která se musí potýkat s výstřední rodinou a situací, a sklouzává spíše trochu k upřímné krutosti... Doufám, že další pokračování se vrátí ke své laskavosti.

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz

Author: Erik Larson

First published: 2020

Pages: 608

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 2 days

An excellent and above all readable account of a chapter in the WW2 history. Larson explains well why Churchill was the best man for that dark hour and why he is still viewed as a hero in Europe (his questionable and even abhorrent views and actions in the context of the British Empire and people of other races notwithstanding), as the person who stood up to Hitler and pretty much kept the fires of defiance burning. There is definitely not enough "family" in this "family saga", but given the sheer amount of material and information presented to the reader, I suppose the author struck an acceptable balance between the politics and the private matters.

Conjure Women

Author: Afia Atakora

First published: 2020

Pages: 416

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 8 days

The beginning of this book seemed tiring, and at risk of sounding insensitive, not interesting, since it seemed to tackle the same things that have already been tackled. But then there appeared strands of stories and of secrets, and suddenly I just needed to know everything. The whole story then appears as an artful mosaic. The last chapter felt unnecessary though and I did not understand its meaning if it was supposed to have any.

[oadara]

...

I sometimes hear people complain that classic literature is the realm of dead white men. And it’s certainly true that men have tended to dominate the canon of literature taught in schools. But women have been writing great books for centuries. In fact, you could probably spend a lifetime just reading great classics by women and never run out of reading material.

This list is just a sampling of great books written by women of the past. For the purposes of this list, I’ve defined classics as books that are more than 50 years old. The list of classics by women focuses on novels, but there are some plays, poems, and works of nonfiction as well. And I’ve tried to include some well-known favorites, as well as more obscure books. Whatever your reading preferences, you’re bound to find something to enjoy here. So step back in time and listen to the voices of women who came before us.

The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon (990s-1000s). “Moving elegantly across a wide range of themes including nature, society, and her own flirtations, Sei Shōnagon provides a witty and intimate window on a woman’s life at court in classical Japan.”

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Before 1021). “Genji, the Shining Prince, is the son of an emperor. He is a passionate character whose tempestuous nature, family circumstances, love affairs, alliances, and shifting political fortunes form the core of this magnificent epic.”

Oroonoko by Aphra Behn (1688). “When Prince Oroonoko’s passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam.”

Phillis Wheatley, Complete Writings by Phillis Wheatley (1760s-1770s). “This volume collects both Wheatley’s letters and her poetry: hymns, elegies, translations, philosophical poems, tales, and epyllions.”

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1790). “Arguably the earliest written work of feminist philosophy, Wollstonecraft produced a female manifesto in the time of the American and French Revolutions.”

The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe (1791). “A beautiful, orphaned heiress, a dashing hero, a dissolute, aristocratic villain, and a ruined abbey deep in a great forest are combined by the author in a tale of suspense where danger lurks behind every secret trap-door.”

Camilla by Fanny Burney (1796). “Camilla deals with the matrimonial concerns of a group of young people … The path of true love, however, is strewn with intrigue, contretemps and misunderstanding.”

Belinda by Maria Edgeworth (1801). “Contending with the perils and the varied cast of characters of the marriage market, Belinda strides resolutely toward independence. … Edgeworth tackles issues of gender and race in a manner at once comic and thought-provoking. ”

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818). “Driven by ambition and an insatiable thirst for scientific knowledge, Victor Frankenstein … fashions what he believes to be the ideal man from a grotesque collection of spare parts, breathing life into it through a series of ghastly experiments.”

Persuasion by Jane Austen (1818). “Eight years ago, Anne Elliot fell in love with poor but ambitious naval officer Captain Frederick Wentworth … now, on the verge of spinsterhood, Anne re-encounters Frederick Wentworth as he courts her spirited young neighbour, Louisa Musgrove.”

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847). “Having grown up an orphan in the home of her cruel aunt and at a harsh charity school, Jane Eyre becomes an independent and spirited survivor …. But when she finds love with her sardonic employer, Rochester, the discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a choice. “

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847). “One of the great novels of the nineteenth century, Emily Brontë’s haunting tale of passion and greed remains unsurpassed in its depiction of destructive love.”

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848). “A powerful and sometimes violent novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal. It portrays the disintegration of the marriage of Helen Huntingdon … and her dissolute, alcoholic husband.”

The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts (mid-19th century). “Tells the story of Hannah Crafts, a young slave working on a wealthy North Carolina plantation, who runs away in a bid for freedom up North.”

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850). “Recognized for their Victorian tradition and discipline, these are some of the most passionate and memorable love poems in the English language.”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852). “Selling more than 300,000 copies the first year it was published, Stowe’s powerful abolitionist novel fueled the fire of the human rights debate.”

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (1854). “As relevant now as when it was first published, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South skillfully weaves a compelling love story into a clash between the pursuit of profit and humanitarian ideals.”

Our Nig by Harriet E. Wilson (1859). “In the story of Frado, a spirited black girl who is abused and overworked as the indentured servant to a New England family, Harriet E. Wilson tells a heartbreaking story about the resilience of the human spirit.”

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (1860). “Strong-willed, compassionate, and intensely loyal, Maggie seeks personal happiness and inner peace but risks rejection and ostracism in her close-knit community.”

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1861). “The remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to liberty and reunion with her children in the North.”

The Curse of Caste, or The Slave Bride by Julia C. Collins (1865). “Focuses on the lives of a beautiful mixed-race mother and daughter whose opportunities for fulfillment through love and marriage are threatened by slavery and caste prejudice.”

Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley (1868). “Traces Elizabeth Keckley’s life from her enslavement in Virginia and North Carolina to her time as seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln in the White House during Abraham Lincoln’s administration.”

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868). “The four March sisters couldn’t be more different. But with their father away at war, and their mother working to support the family, they have to rely on one another.”

A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Lucy Bird (1879). “In 1873, wearing Hawaiian riding dress, [Bird] rode her horse through the American Wild West, a terrain only newly opened to pioneer settlement.”

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson (1890). “Though generally overlooked during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson’s poetry has achieved acclaim due to her experiments in prosody, her tragic vision and the range of her emotional and intellectual explorations.”

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892). “The story depicts the effect of under-stimulation on the narrator’s mental health and her descent into psychosis. With nothing to stimulate her, she becomes obsessed by the pattern and color of the wallpaper.”

Iola Leroy by Frances E.W. Harper (1892). “The daughter of a wealthy Mississippi planter, Iola Leroy led a life of comfort and privilege, never guessing at her mixed-race ancestry — until her father died and a treacherous relative sold her into slavery.”

The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth (1897). “Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals are a unique record of her life with her brother William, at the time when he was at the height of his poetic powers.”

The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899). “Chopin’s daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the straitened confines of her domestic situation.”

The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader by Ida B. Wells (late 19th century). “This volume covers the entire scope of Wells’s remarkable career, collecting her early writings, articles exposing the horrors of lynching, essays from her travels abroad, and her later journalism.”

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1902). “Transformed from princess to pauper, [Sarah Crewe] must swap dancing lessons and luxury for hard work and a room in the attic.”

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (1905). “The French Revolution, driven to excess by its own triumph, has turned into a reign of terror. … Thus the stage is set for one of the most enthralling novels of historical adventure ever written.”

A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter (1909). “The story is one of Elnora’s struggles to overcome her poverty; to win the love of her mother, who blames Elnora for her husband’s death; and to find a romantic love of her own.”

Mrs Spring Fragrance: A Collection of Chinese-American Short Stories by Sui Sin Far (1910s). “In these deceptively simple fables of family life, Sui Sin Far offers revealing views of life in Seattle and San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century.”

American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings by Zitkala-Sa (1910). “Tapping her troubled personal history, Zitkala-Sa created stories that illuminate the tragedy and complexity of the American Indian experience.”

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (1913). Undine Spragg’s “rise to the top of New York’s high society from the nouveau riche provides a provocative commentary on the upwardly mobile and the aspirations that eventually cause their ruin.”

Oh Pioneers by Willa Cather (1913). “Evoking the harsh grandeur of the prairie, this landmark of American fiction unfurls a saga of love, greed, murder, failed dreams, and hard-won triumph.”

Suffragette: My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst (1914). “With insight and great wit, Emmeline’s autobiography chronicles the beginnings of her interest in feminism through to her militant and controversial fight for women’s right to vote.”

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (1922). Four women who “are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives … find each other—and the castle of their dreams—through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon.”

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1924). “Evangeline Knapp is the perfect, compulsive housekeeper, while her husband, Lester, is a poet and a dreamer. Suddenly, through a nearly fata accident, their roles are reversed.”

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925). “Direct and vivid in her account of Clarissa Dalloway’s preparations for a party, Virginia Woolf explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman’s life.”

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (1928). “First published in 1928, this timeless portrayal of lesbian love is now a classic. The thinly disguised story of Hall’s own life, it was banned outright upon publication and almost ruined her literary career.”

Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset (1928). “Written in 1929 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance by one of the movement’s most important and prolific authors, Plum Bun is the story of Angela Murray, a young black girl who discovers she can pass for white.”

Passing by Nella Larsen (1929). “Clare Kendry leads a dangerous life. Fair, elegant, and ambitious, she is married to a white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has severed all ties to her past.”

Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum (1929). “A grand hotel in the center of 1920s Berlin serves as a microcosm of the modern world in Vicki Baum’s celebrated novel, a Weimar-era best seller that retains all its verve and luster today.”

Thus Were Their Faces: Selected Stories by Silvina Ocampo (1930s-1970s). “Tales of doubles and impostors, angels and demons, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman, a suicidal romance, and much else that is incredible, mad, sublime, and delicious.”

Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers (1930). “Sayers introduces Harriet Vane, a mystery writer who is accused of poisoning her fiancé and must now join forces with Lord Peter Wimsey to escape a murder conviction and the hangman’s noose.”

All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West (1931). “When Lady Slane was young, she nurtured a secret, burning ambition: to become an artist. She became, instead, the dutiful wife of a great statesman, and mother to six children. In her widowhood she finally defies her family.”

Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann (1932). Olivia Curtis “anticipates her first dance, the greatest yet most terrifying event of her restricted social life, with tremulous uncertainty and excitement.”

Frost in May by Antonia White (1933). “Nanda Gray, the daughter of a Catholic convert, is nine when she is sent to the Convent of Five Wounds. Quick-witted, resilient, and eager to please, she adapts to this cloistered world, learning rigid conformity and subjection to authority.”

Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson (1934). “Times are harsh, and Barbara’s bank account has seen better days. Maybe she could sell a novel … if she knew any stories. Stumped for ideas, Barbara draws inspiration from her fellow residents of Silverstream.”

The Wine of Solitude by Irene Nemirovsky (1935). “Beginning in a fictionalized Kiev, The Wine of Solitude follows the Karol family through the Great War and the Russian Revolution, as the young Hélène grows from a dreamy, unhappy child into a strongwilled young woman.”

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936). “Gone With the Wind explores the depth of human passions with an intensity as bold as its setting in the red hills of Georgia. A superb piece of storytelling, it vividly depicts the drama of the Civil War and Reconstruction.”

After Midnight by Irmgard Keun (1937). “German author Irmgard Keun had only recently fled Nazi Germany with her lover Joseph Roth when she wrote this slim, exquisite, and devastating book. It captures the unbearable tension, contradictions, and hysteria of pre-war Germany like no other novel.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937). “One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston.”

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson (1938). “Miss Pettigrew is a governess sent by an employment agency to the wrong address, where she encounters a glamorous night-club singer, Miss LaFosse.”

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother’s home in London. There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939). “Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious U. N. Owen … By the end of the night one of the guests is dead.”

Mariana by Monica Dickens (1940). “We see Mary at school in Kensington and on holiday in Somerset; her attempt at drama school; her year in Paris learning dressmaking and getting engaged to the wrong man; her time as a secretary and companion; and her romance with Sam.”

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940). “Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated.”

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead (1940). “Sam and Henny Pollit have too many children, too little money, and too much loathing for each other. As Sam uses the children’s adoration to feed his own voracious ego, Henny watches in bleak despair.”

The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge (1940). “The Bird in the Tree takes place in England in 1938, and follows a close-knit family whose tranquil existence is suddenly threatened by a forbidden love.”

Anne Frank: A Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1942-1944). “Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.”

The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty (1942). “Legendary figures of Mississippi’s past—flatboatman Mike Fink and the dreaded Harp brothers—mingle with characters from Eudora Welty’s own imagination in an exuberant fantasy set along the Natchez Trace.”

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943). “The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years.”

Nada by Carmen LeFloret (1944). “One of the most important literary works of post-Civil War Spain, Nada is the semi-autobiographical story of an orphaned young woman  who leaves her small town to attend university in war-ravaged Barcelona.

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford (1945). “The Pursuit of Love follows the travails of Linda, the most beautiful and wayward Radlett daughter, who falls first for a stuffy Tory politician, then an ardent Communist, and finally a French duke named Fabrice.”

One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes (1947). “This subtle, finely wrought novel presents a memorable portrait of the aftermath of war, its effect upon a marriage, and the gradual but significant change in the nature of English middle-class life.”

Family Roundabout by Richmal Crompton (1948). “We see that families can both entrap and sustain; that parents and children must respect each other; and that happiness necessitates jumping or being pushed off the family roundabout.”

The Living Is Easy by Dorothy West (1948). “Cleo Judson—daughter of southern sharecroppers and wife of ‘Black Banana King’ Bart Judson … seeks to recreate her original family by urging her sisters and their children to live with her, while rearing her daughter to be a member of Boston’s black elite.”

Half a Lifelong Romance by Eileen Chang (1948). “Shen Shijun, a young engineer, has fallen in love with his colleague, the beautiful Gu Manzhen. … But dark circumstances—a lustful brother-in-law, a treacherous sister, a family secret—force the two young lovers apart. “

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948). “Tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills.”

Pinjar: The Skeleton and Other Stories by Amrita Pritam (1950). “Two of the most moving novels by one of India’s greatest women writers. The Skeleton …is memorable for its lyrical style and depth in her writing. … The Man is a compelling account of a young man born under strange circumstances and abandoned at the altar of God.”

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier (1951). “While in Italy, Ambrose fell in love with Rachel, a beautiful English and Italian woman. But the final, brief letters Ambrose wrote hint that his love had turned to paranoia and fear. Now Rachel has arrived at Philip’s newly inherited estate.”

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (1951). “Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history.”

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (1952). “As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors … the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.”

Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks (1953). “In a novel that captures the essence of Black life, Brooks recognizes the beauty and strength that lies within each of us.”

Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple (1953). “Ellen was that unfashionable creature, a happy housewife struck by disaster when the husband, in a moment of weak, mid-life vanity, runs off with a French girl.”

Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone (1953). “With charm, humor, and deep understanding, Monica Sone tells what it was like to grow up Japanese American on Seattle’s waterfront in the 1930s and to be subjected to ‘relocation’ during World War II.”

Cotillion by Georgette Heyer (1953). “Country-bred, spirited Kitty Charings is on the brink of inheriting a fortune from her eccentric guardian – provided that she marries one of his grand nephews.”

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya (1954). “This beautiful and eloquent story tells of a simple peasant woman in a primitive village in India whose whole life is a gallant and persistent battle to care for those she loves.”

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (1955). “Since his debut in 1955, Tom Ripley has evolved into the ultimate bad boy sociopath. Here, in this first Ripley novel, we are introduced to suave Tom Ripley, a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan.”

A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O’Connor (1955). “These stories show O’Connor’s unique, grotesque view of life— infused with religious symbolism, haunted by apocalyptic possibility, sustained by the tragic comedy of human behavior, confronted by the necessity of salvation.”

Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1956). “Millay remains among the most celebrated poets of the early twentieth century for her uniquely lyrical explorations of love, individuality, and artistic expression.”

The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West (1957). “An unvarnished but affectionate picture of an extraordinary family, in which a remarkable stylist and powerful intelligence surveys the elusive boundaries of childhood and adulthood, freedom and dependency, the ordinary and the occult.”

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (1957). “In Angel’s imagination, she is the mistress of the house, a realm of lavish opulence, of evening gowns and peacocks. Then she begins to write popular novels, and this fantasy becomes her life.”

The King Must Die by Mary Renault (1958). “In this ambitious, ingenious narrative, celebrated historical novelist Mary Renault takes legendary hero Theseus and spins his myth into a fast-paced and exciting story.”

A Raisin the the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (1959). “Set on Chicago’s South Side, the plot [of this play] revolves around the divergent dreams and conflicts within three generations of the Younger family.”

The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns (1959). “Harrowing and haunting, like an unexpected cross between Flannery O’Connor and Stephen King, The Vet’s Daughter is a story of outraged innocence that culminates in a scene of appalling triumph.”

The Colossus and Other Poems by Sylvia Plath (1960). “Graceful in their craftsmanship, wonderfully original in their imagery, and presenting layer after layer of meaning, the forty poems in The Colossus are early artifacts of genius that still possess the power to move, delight, and shock.”

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960). “The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published.”

The Householder by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1960). “This witty and perceptive novel is about Prem, a young teacher in New Delhi who has just become a householder and is finding his responsibilities perplexing.”

The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart (1961). “This remarkably atmospheric novel is one of bestselling-author Mary Stewart’s richest, most tantalizing, and most surprising efforts, proving her a rare master of the genre.”

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961). Miss Jean Brodie “is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music master, Gordon Lowther, and—most important—in her dedication to ‘her girls,’ the students she selects to be her crème de la crème.”

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962). “Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods—until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night.”

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962). “Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe (athlete, student, and one of the most popular boys in high school)… are in search of Meg’s father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem.”

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962). “Doris Lessing’s best-known and most influential novel, The Golden Notebook retains its extraordinary power and relevance decades after its initial publication.”

The Group by Mary McCarthy (1963). “Written with a trenchant, sardonic edge, The Group is a dazzlingly outspoken novel and a captivating look at the social history of America between two world wars.”

Efuru by Flora Nwapa (1966). “The work, a rich exploration of Nigerian village life and values, offers a realistic picture of gender issues in a patriarchal society as well as the struggles of a nation exploited by colonialism.”

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966). “Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman … is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.”

[auron570]

2018 Readlist

FAQ

Why do you read so many old books?

Because most of them belong to the public domain, and are thus freely available online. Also it is fun to see how much the past influences and creates the foundation for the present. And how much or how little has changed, and what this says about humanity.

 Orwell - Animal Farm (1945)

A satire on the Russian Revolution and the failure of communism. Among other things, Animal Farm underlines the importance of learning to read properly and think for oneself, in a way that tickles with dark humor.

 Orwell - 1984 (1949)

Similar to Animal Farm, 1984 is an even more systematic and total examination of a society where all history and information is tightly controlled and constantly being rewritten. Being published after WW2, 1984 trades some of Animal Farm’s humor for more serious and tragic imagery of concentration camps. In a sense, 1984 is an exploration of the possibility of mind control or brainwashing through societal-level propaganda.

 Huxley - Brave New World (1932)

Absolutely fantastic. If 1984 was about what would happen if everything we read was false, then Brave New World is what would happen if no one had the desire to read at all. Brave New World shows a futuristic society that runs like clockwork with the help of genetic engineering and a miracle drug called Soma. COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. BNW examines the costs of a society that is mass-produced off assembly lines.

 Fitzgerald - Great Gatsby (1925)

A criticism of conspicuous consumption and the Roaring 20s. You can’t bring your mansion with you when you die. Mortality sucks that way. Throughout the novel we are invited to ask ‘what makes Gatsby (the character) so great?’ From rags to riches to death, Gatsby’s lonely existence is pitiable, tragic and relatable as ever.

 Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Steinbeck’s illustration of the 1930s Dust Bowl and the resulting migration of impoverished families west across the United States, is a poetic masterpiece. ‘You want to work for 15cents an hour?! Well I got a thousan’ fellas willing to work 10cents an hour.’ Also featuring two of the strongest female characters in modern literature, Grapes of Wrath is a powerful lesson on human dignity.

 Shakespeare - Hamlet (1599)

The more I read Hamlet, the more I come to the conclusion that Hamlet is about delay of action. In a way, Hamlet forces himself to be penitent for something he doesn’t do. The more time he spends contemplating whether or not to kill Claudius, the more time he has to beat himself up and call himself a coward, and for accidents to pile up. ‘But put your courage to the sticking place!’ Hamlet is what happens when you ask a philosopher to commit murder.

 Shakespeare - King Lear (1605)

A lesson in parenting. If you want people (especially your children) to respect you, do not spoil them. Lear learns this lesson far too late, and gives up his inheritance far too early. Another possible lesson is to not trust liars, and instead divine a person’s character by their actions. The trouble is, with so much action going on behind the scenes, the opportunities for dramatic irony and treachery are twofold!

 Wilde - Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

An example of 19th century Gothic Romanticism. And also, similar to Great Gatsby, another cautionary tale against conspicuous consumption. Dorian Gray, forever beautiful, forever young, is by all appearances the outward ideal of a dandy. As the novel develops, his cruelty and vanity plunge to increasing depths.

 Wilde - Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

The comedic side of being a dandy. If the suit makes the man, surely if I wear a different suit I become a different man? In a play of double-identities, love polygons and other trivialities, Earnest is a raucous upset of 19th century decorum.

 Ibsen - Hedda Gabler (1891)

A complex and cruel character, Hedda’s penchant for destroying the lives of others, seems to stem from bitterness and boredom toward her own life.

 Williams - Glass Menagerie (1944)

Theater is a box through which we view the lives of our fellow homo sapiens. Like passing by an exhibit at the museum, or peeking in on pandas at the zoo, Glass Menagerie presents a slice of life.

 McCourt - Angela’s Ashes (1996)

A coming-of-age memoir about an Irish boy growing up in an impoverished family. From the day he’s born to the day he becomes a man, memorable moments include: father always coming home drunk, scavenging for coal to get the fire going, stealing loaves of bread, shoes made of tire rubber, having an affair with a terminally ill girl, having pig’s head for Christmas, and wearing Grandma’s old dress to stay warm at night.

 Salinger - Catcher in the Rye (1951)

A tightly written story of teenage angst, about the few days after an unmotivated student drops out of a New York prep school. Unable to face his family, he wanders around the bustling city, growing increasingly depressed. Holden’s conversations with different characters throughout the novel, underline a simple moral that sometimes we just want someone to listen. (Preferably someone who isn’t a phony!)

 Shakespeare - Macbeth (1606)

A bloody and ambitious soldier descends into madness after the murders the King! It can be difficult interpreting and staging the supernatural elements of the play (e.g. do you show the ghosts on stage? what about the Witches? When, why). But remember Shakespeare is writing in a time hundreds of years before modern psychology, where memory and cognition was still immaterial and mysterious. Similar to Dorian Gray (1890), Macbeth is a moral on how one’s actions affect one’s mind.

 Albom - Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)

Succumbing to ALS near the end of his life, sociology professor Morrie Schwartz welcomes death with open arms. Hosting many visitors and having many conversations with family, friends, past students, the media, Morrie’s affable outlook on life and mortality shines.

 Golding - Lord of the Flies (1954)

An allegory on the state of nature. One wonders if/how the story may have been different (and possibly more horrifying and prone to censorship debates) if female characters were involved. I suppose that would be a separate inquiry. Unable to see beyond the horizon, and unwilling to look at themselves, Jack and his follows almost doom them all.

 Lowry - The Giver (1993)

Another science fiction dystopia in a similar vein as Brave New World or 1984, but less difficult and more relatable for teenagers. Those who enjoy The Giver, should check out the film Pleasantville (1998) featuring Tobey Macguire getting stuck in a black-and-white world. Naturally the lesson being that life is never so simple.

 Naipaul - Miguel Street (1959)

A collection of short stories centered around unique characters in a slum in Port of Spain. Featuring arson, domestic violence and plenty of eccentric amateurs, Miguel Street illustrates a colorful community.

 Thiong’O - Weep Not Child (1964)

Set during the Mau Mau Uprising against British colonial rule, Weep Not Child follows one boy’s goal of education. Meanwhile his family falls apart around him, and is cut off from his best friend.

 Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables (1908)

Having recently been adapted by CBC/Netflix into a series (which is very good), the original novel is full of comedy, quaint coming-of-age lessons centered around school, tea parties, accidents and adventures. But despite this levity, Anne ends with a tragic turn which places it well within the realm of reality.

 Shelley - Frankenstein (1818)

Another example of 19th century Gothic Romanticism (like Dorian Gray). Doctor Victor Frankenstein becomes obsessed with the idea of creating life from inanimate material, only to spurn his own creation just after giving life to it. The monster, filled with rage and envy, murders Frankenstein’s dearest friends. A sort of cautionary tale in the same vein as Doctor Faustus by Marlowe, Frankenstein is a counter-weight to the enthusiasm around science at the time. That science can not only produce miracles, but also horrors in its own way if one is not careful.

 Anderson - Winesburg Ohio (1919)

A collection of short stories revolving around a small community (similar to Miguel Street). Themes of religion, old age, loneliness, love, feeling stuck in a small town, Winesburg is full of some of the most heart-rending stories in all literature. Also Winesburg manages to accomplish a unity of themes in very short space. The whole of Winesburg is much more than the sum of its parts, such that it can stand just as well against other great novels.

 Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre (1847)

One could argue that Jane Eyre is the predecessor to Anne of Green Gables. The latter frequently references the former, both are about orphan girls who grow up successfully in the face of many adverse challenges. While Anne ends with the protagonist becoming a young adult, Jane Eyre ends with a more traditional romantic happy ending, but like Anne is not without its tragedy.

 Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights (1847)

Fun fact, Wuthering Heights was a novel I considered doing an independent study essay on, but didn’t since I didn’t know anything about literature back then. Although technically of the gothic genre, Bronte primarily uses cruelty and domestic violence to evoke scenes of horror, as opposed to ghosts and monsters, while at the same time using these as tools to explore very down-to-earth themes of social class and gender inequality.

 Joyce - Dubliners (1914)

Very similar to Winesburg Ohio, but without the same unity. For example, one story is difficult to read without first reading about the history of Ireland. There are some tear-jerkers and lovely metaphors. For example the final metaphor of “snow falling faintly through the universe”, is a variation of the oft-used metaphor of flowers. How they bloom for a short period then die. What is new with this metaphor is that each snowflake is unique, thanks to the chaotic tumbling of water droplets through the atmosphere, just like how every live is unique. But all snowflakes much reach the ground some time and then melt away into nothingness.

[daphneblakess]

Hello! I want to write a dissertation on complex female characters and obviously the first one I thought about was Amy Dunne. I was wondering if you could recommend any similar complex female characters from books/movies if possible? I'd love to do a comparative study on the above-mentioned characters. Thank you 🌸

Oh, absolutely! Feel free to send it to me when you’re finished writing it as well!

- My immediate thought was Blanche Dubois from A Streetcar Named Desire. She’s one of my all-time favorite literary characters and I would do just about anything to play her. My favorite interpretation of her was by Gillian Anderson in the 2016 production, which there is a proshot of but I seem to have lost my link to. :( You can probably find it if you poke around in the tag, but if not, Vivien Leigh’s portrayal in the 1951 movie is generally considered to be the most iconic incarnation of her (although the movie had to cut some important plot points because of period-era censorship, so I would definitely recommend reading the original play). tw for very heavily implied sexual assault though

- Dana Scully from The X-Files (another Gillian Anderson character lmao. Maybe we stan but I swear this list isn’t too biased). A lot of people in the fandom have listed what they consider to be the most iconic Scully episodes but I would definitely recommend All Things since that was the one Gillian herself wrote and directed. She had been playing Scully for seven seasons by that point and used the episode as a chance to explore more sides of the character she felt like she hadn’t been able to express. There’s also the phenomenon of the “Scully Effect”, where a lot more women started going into science, medical, and law careers after the show began airing and Scully was some of the first representation of a successful woman in those fields (this was in 1992, so).

- I actually wrote an essay of my own for a film studies class on Guillermo Del Toro’s female characters! Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak, and The Shape of Water all have fantastic female leads, and I honestly recommend any of them. I’m specifically biased towards Crimson Peak, which is both a love letter to and 21st-Century interpretation of the gothic romance genre (think Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, etc.). Edith is a great examination of the gothic heroine archetype and Jessica Chastain steals just about every scene as Lucille.

- Both of the female leads in The Handmaiden (this is another one I’ve written an essay on). I think two years since this movie’s release, Tumblr is finally out of the worst discourse surrounding it, thank God. Along with layered characterization and fantastic usage of unreliable narrator, this movie also has a great lesbian romance and criticism of pornographic male gaze both as a whole and against wlw specifically. It’s also stylistically gorgeous, I’m still salty over the international awards snubs.

- Elaine Parks in The Love Witch. This movie is starting to make its rounds on Tumblr as an aesthetic blog favorite, but there is a lot to unpack both within the movie and when you read some of the stories about its production (Anna Biller fought to have almost complete creative control; she not only wrote and directed it, she was also the producer, editor, and composer of the score. Many crew members acted hostile towards not only her, but the cast, and allegedly even attempted to sabotage filming).

- Killing Eve is also getting a lot of well-deserved recognition for its female leads! Sandra Oh has already won several awards for her acting in it, and while Jodie Comer got snubbed this year, I have a feeling the second season is going to change that once it airs in April. This one has gotten a lot of buzz on Tumblr and in general so you probably already know it, but I feel like it belongs here. Hope I was able to help!

EDIT 1: One of my mutuals recommended The Americans, which I haven't seen for myself but I'm taking their word for.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Hi! Do you like Gone with the Wind and what do you think about Scarlett O'Hara?

So.  Gone with the Wind and I have a complicated relationship.

I.  I’m a young child.  Maybe seven or eight.  My mom’s playing Gone with the Wind, which she would because my mom loves it.  It’s pretty boring, though I distinctly remember bits like Scarlett getting drunk after her second husband’s death and Scarlett and Rhett dancing while she’s in her widow’s weeds.  But there’s a scene I find particularly disgusting--when some guy’s leg gets amputated.  It’s gross and gory (to little me) so I’m like fuck this shit.

II.  I’m thirteen, in the eighth grade.  Gone with the Wind is a classic, and I was on a classic kick at the time because I’d just read Wuthering Heights and decided that it was one of my favorite books ever (it still is).  I check GWTW out from the library, and UGH, a fire is lit.  I devour that long-ass book.  I read it again.  I go on various websites dissecting it, read articles and analyses of what it all meant.  I watch the movie, buy the DVD, buy an ancient copy of the book because it’s beautiful and a paperback because I need more than one copy.  I read my mom’s book about the making of the movie, watch other movies Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh did.  I make the book the centerpiece of my final project/paper for 11th grade high school English, basically about how Rhett symbolized reconstruction south and Ashley symbolized the antebellum.  (I get an A.)  

III.  Some time passes.  I read more about how Butterfly McQueen felt about her role as Prissy--and I’m increasingly made more uncomfortable with her scenes.  I read about the paradox roles like Prissy and Mammy present, because while they’re not good representation for black women, it’s not like we can dismiss the importance of Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar win or the quality of those performances.  I think about what it means, exactly, that the movie cut the KKK plot from the book (and how did Margaret Mitchell feel about that plot--does the fact that Rhett, a character who symbolizes inevitable and necessary progressive change, think it’s bullshit mean something?).  And what about that marital rape scene?

Basically, I think that a lot of what you’ll see old white male film critics (who never consider the book, which admittedly aside from a few changes like aforementioned KKK plot and Scarlett’s first two children) critique about GWTW is bullshit.  The story itself, from a story perspective, is epic and complex.  It’s both entertaining and deep--there is intentional symbolism, there are incredibly deep characters.  I think it’s so important that the book was written by a woman and is about a woman--and a woman who isn’t good at all, but is selfish and sexually voracious and not a good mother or friend.  But who does love people truly and deeply, and doesn’t do what she does solely for personal gain (though that’s often her motivation).  Scarlett’s a real human being.  So is Rhett.  Many of the other characters are plot device-y, but those two felt and still feel wholly real to me.  (And though Melanie isn’t super real I love her anyway.)  

The issues with Gone with the Wind have nothing to do with things like character and story and everything to do with the fact it’s dated and inherently problematic.  Though I should note that Margaret Mitchell apparently disliked that the movie turned the story into a romantic ode to the bygone era of the south, when Mitchell herself evidently saw it as a story about how the south of Scarlett’s childhood had to die.  It was weak and unsustainable, like Ashley.  Does this mean she was progressive?  No.  There’s something wrong with Mammy’s undying loyalty to Scarlett, despite her critiques of the woman.  The slaves are treated as simpletons, more in the movie than in the book.  In the book you see Scarlett think stupid shit like “well the slaves wouldn’t get on without us” but you’re also like mmmm Scarlett is a dumbass a lot of the time and couldn’t do a lot of what she does without Mammy, SOOOO what’s really going on here.  I don’t know if that was intentional on Mitchell’s part, so I can’t critique it.

It’s impossible for the material to not be dated and problematic and I think that it’s important to consume it with a critical eye.  But yes, I absolutely love Gone with the Wind.  It’s one of my favorite books and favorite movies and Scarlett O’Hara is one of my favorite characters.

(I didn’t address the marital rape scene because... it’s another thing I have very mixed feelings about.  And I basically have to measure the scene by the way that Scarlett feels about it--which is also mixed.  Do I think it’s problematic that her reaction to that scene is basically “best sex of my life”?  Yes.  Do I think it’s out of character that Scarlett, a malicious person who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on others, who has enjoyed fighting with Rhett most of their relationship even before they married, and loves getting a rise out of him to find that experience thrilling?  Not really.  Does that absolve Rhett?  Nope.  But there’s also an element of “they deserve each other” to Scarlett and Rhett’s relationship tbh because while he’s hideous to her at points, she’s also incredibly emotional manipulative and abusive to him at times.  I’ll also say that the scene is waaaay more interesting in the book, for obvious reasons because the movie at the time couldn’t show what happened AFTER they went into the bedroom.  And even in the book it’s vague, but it’s debated for a reason.)

I love Scarlett so much and I measure a good character by Scarlett sometimes.  She’s just such a hateful person, and yet so many of us love her?  She’s an antihero, a borderline villain to be honest.  When you really look at GWTW, it’s this 12-year saga of a woman-child who wraps people around her little finger romantically and platonically, is incredibly jealous and vindictive and basically sets out to ruin another woman’s life because of events entirely out of her control.  She’s a horrible wife, basically not giving a fuck about her first husband, only marrying the second because she needs cash (and ruining her own sister’s prospects in the process) and ignoring the fact that she loves Rhett and absolutely destroying him emotionally in part because... he genuinely loves her?  She genuinely loves him?  It’s complicated.  Also she’s like the worst mom and it’s kind of HILARIOUS in a dark way.  Scarlett being like “BE A LITTLE MAN WADE” to her sobbing toddler in wartorn Georgia as they struggle to escape Atlanta is... terrible but iconic.  It’s implied that her second child suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and Scarlett just dislikes her because she’s ugly.  Rhett is literally a better parent to his two stepchildren than their own mother, which isn’t saying shit because Rhett is a human disaster whose indulgence of his child indirectly leads to her death.

But the thing is that I admire so much Scarlett’s ability to survive.  Her sheer determination and resilience.  I think the book is kind of about the fact that in order to survive certain things, you have to let your inner rabid animal out.  You can’t necessarily be a good person and live through certain traumas, and that’s... okay.  Maybe you can recover your goodness, but if letting go of it means that you’ll keep your life and your sanity intact--that shit happens.  And it’s also about growing up and shedding the dreams of what you thought life would be, accepting the reality that the world has given you.  That’s what Scarlett as a character is about, really.  

And just as landmarks of fiction, the book and the movie are hugely impactful.  The book contributed heavily to the idea of the flawed female protagonist, sometimes the antagonist of her own story.  It’s an erotic read, and the movie for the day was an erotic movie--and that eroticism is targeted towards WOMEN, the female audience.  Scarlett is allowed to be a sexual being--in fact, it’s a big part of the Ashley vs. Rhett conflict.  Sure, Ashley is her romantic dream, but what if a woman doesn’t just want romance?  What about the sexual side of her that isn’t necessarily about love--it’s about getting fucked and well?  (Say what you will about That Scene, but the image of Vivien Leigh SINGING in bed after implied sex was a pretty big deal for the 1930s, esp. when it came to mainstream blockbusters.)  God, what about the fact that though Rhett leaves her at the end, Scarlett isn’t necessarily “punished” in one big sweeping way.  Her life is a nightmare, sure--she loses her parents, her favorite child, her unborn baby, the husband she loves ditches her after she finally realizes that she loves him.  But she’s alive.  She’s got her ancestral home.  She lives to fight another day and ends the story with hope.  After all she’s done, the story STILL lets her have another shot at life.  Hell, she’s still only in her late twenties.  Few male protagonists got away with that kind of shit, let alone females.  I love it.

Also, she definitely gets Rhett back after the book is done, I’m not saying it’s right or fair, I’m saying that Rhett Butler is her emotional bitch and there’s no way he didn’t take her back eventually, the end.  

[how2to18]

THE SLIPPERY NATURE of Araminta Hall’s American debut, Our Kind of Cruelty, is established from the very first page with an epigraph chipped from Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea: “One can be too ingenious in trying to search out the truth. Sometimes one must simply respect its veiled face. Of course this is a love story.”

The implication that what follows will also be a love story is both true and misleading, which sets the novel’s tone and identifies its central paradox: “[H]ow do you show someone that what they believe to be true is really not the truth?” This is, essentially, a love story; a story about love. It’s no starry-eyed romance, but a love story in the tradition of Wuthering Heights or Caroline Kepnes’s You, in which love manifests as darker, more obsessive, with lovers prepared to burn down the world that would keep them apart, even if they self-destruct in the process. Or, as the narrator of this book declares: “[S]ometimes two people need each other so much it is worth sacrificing others to make sure they end up together.”

These two people are Mike and V(erity), a young West London couple who spent eight years in a psychologically complex, all-consuming relationship before Mike’s work took him abroad to New York, where the strain of distance and one drunken mistake caused V to end their relationship, soon afterward becoming engaged to another man. This decisively removes any chance Mike has of winning her back. Or does it?

This is dark and thought-provoking psychological suspense, eschewing the typical “he said, she said” structure to instead present an intense single-perspective dive deep into the core of a relationship whose truths have always been veiled. Here, there is only the “he said”: the book opens with Mike sitting in prison after he’s killed a man, reluctantly writing a detailed history of his relationship with V at the request of his barrister. What emerges from this account is a portrait of a relationship with an intricate power dynamic characterized by role playing, sexual exhibitionism, and a deeply rooted choreography of cues, codes, and signals developed between two lovers for communicating undetected by outsiders.

These signals were carefully orchestrated behavioral props for use in the Crave — a bit of performance engineered by V as a lark, mingling danger and violence in a sexually charged ritual in which the couple frequently indulged over the course of their relationship. The Crave always took place in a crowded public space, a nightclub or bar where V would allow a man to buy her a drink and encouraged flirtation while Mike watched from a distance, waiting for V’s signal. As soon as she tugged her silver eagle necklace, he would push through the crowd and angrily confront the man hitting on her, using his extraordinarily muscular body to threaten him until he left, emasculated, and Mike and V would celebrate their triumphant rush by having sex in the nightclub bathroom, V turned on by Mike’s violent potential: “I love seeing how scared they are of you.”

These are the moving parts of their relationship; V setting the stage, calling the shots, Mike watching intently, waiting for his cue to act, intimacy triggered by theatrical heroism and the threat of violence. And as for the men from whom Mike had to “rescue” V, well, both love and war have their share of collateral damage. “We had played enough times to know that the end moments often seem cruel; that for us to get what we want others have to get hurt. If we could have done it another way then no doubt we would have, but there was no other way; cruelty was a necessary part of our game.”

Four months after their split, during which time V rebuffed all of Mike’s attempts to communicate, he emails to tell her he is moving back to London, and she responds warmly, apologizing for her behavior during their breakup, hoping they can renew their friendship when he comes home, and telling him of her engagement to a man called Angus. Although initially stunned, Mike quickly understands that her blithe announcement is both a punishment and a challenge — an opportunity for him to make amends:

Her breezy tone was so far removed from the V whom I knew, that I wondered for a moment if she had been kidnapped and someone else was writing her e-mails, although the much more plausible explanations were that V was not herself, or that she was using her tone to send me a covert message. There were two options at play: Either she had lost her mind with the distress I had caused her at Christmas and jumped into the arms of the nearest fool, or she needed me to pay for what I’d done. This seemed by far the most likely; this was V after all and she would need me to witness my own remorse. It was as if the lines of her e-mail dissolved and behind them were her true words. This was a game, our favorite game. It was obvious that we were beginning a new, more intricate Crave.

V broke up with Mike in response to “the American incident,” an offense Mike committed while overseas, and as he parses out the subtext of what would appear to others to be a casual email, he sees she is offering him reconciliation. Only he knows her well enough to see the coded offer she is making — the chance to redeem himself in their most elaborate Crave yet; an apology in the form of a grand romantic gesture, to rescue V from Angus — just another unworthy man, the latest dupe in a series of dupes.

Is this too difficult a request to make of Mike, a man she has cold-shouldered for months after breaking his heart? (“‘If it’s easy it’s probably not worth having,’ V said to me once, and that made me smile.”) And is she, in fact, asking, or is Mike just seeing what he wants to see, believing that this whole separation has been a test of his resolve, that “V and I were never meant to be apart.” Is he responding to the rules of a game V’s stopped playing? (“‘Everything is a game,’ V used to tell me; ‘only stupid people forget that.’”)

The ambiguity is thick. On the one hand, this is a couple with a long history of using mind games as foreplay. On the other hand, the reader is limited to Mike’s point of view, which is demonstrably unreliable, through his own admissions. But just because we don’t see the messages he sees in V’s words and behaviors doesn’t mean they aren’t there, not in a couple as opaque to outsiders as they were, and as comfortable with manipulation. Hall bats the question back and forth in front of the reader the whole way through: Do we have one unreliable narrator or two? Is this the work of two sociopaths in love or the misinterpretations of one delusional man? Is this Crave or Cray?

Mike is certain of his truth: “I knew what she was doing, it was all fine.”

It’s an intensifying thriller, building momentum as it progresses, bringing Mike’s narrative closer to his crime, keeping the reader guessing as to V’s intentions and the level of her culpability. She may not have a direct voice here, but her power over Mike is clear in his account of their romantic history and his devotion to her, even now.

V is a woman with the kind of entitled confidence found in the young and beautiful who are well aware of their beauty and the power it grants, accustomed to having people bend to their whims. In her personal life, she is impulsive, sexually adventurous, and fond of provocation, using Mike to shock her conservative parents. Professionally, she’s a successful and well-respected figure in the field of artificial intelligence, conditioning machines to be more human, and the persuasive influence she wields at work bleeds into her her relationship with Mike. “It is true to say that the Crave always belonged to V,” and in fact, she controlled every aspect of their relationship. Their compatibility wasn’t a case of two people perfectly matched; it was the result of V shaping Mike into what she desired at the time, even referring to him as “Frankenstein’s monster.” And Mike, who grew up in a foster family after his alcoholic mother was deemed unfit, basked in her attention and gladly adapted to please her (“I like the sense of dedication that has gone into creating me”). Grateful to V for everything, he changed his routines (“V likes me to lift weights and start all my days with a run”), his body (“V sculpted me into what she jokingly called the perfect man and she wasn’t happy until every part of me was as defined as a road map”), as well as his habits, tastes, and manners. One could construct quite a profligate drinking game from the number of times the phrase “V taught me how to…” appears.

For his part, Mike is unusually malleable, a care home kid with anger issues and a history of poor impulse control and acting out in rage, whose own written account exposes periods of blackouts, struggles with social cues and interactions, and disproportionately aggressive responses to small frustrations. V choosing to love him was an unexpected honor; she gave him purpose, a home, and a sense of belonging he’d never had before. He stresses frequently that he and V stand apart from the rabble: “V and I are not like others.” Their love elevates them beyond ordinary expectations, and Mike relishes his role as V’s protector; the “them-against-us” aspect to their games. “‘We make a funny pair,’ she said to me once, ‘you with no parents, me with no siblings. There’s so little of us to go around. We have to keep a tight hold of each other to stop the other from floating away.’” And Mike is determined to hold on tight.

Even after their split, he remains in her thrall. Like a dog trained to fight, he responds to one master and he’s in the ring for her whether she’s still commanding him or not. Conditioned by the Crave to observe her down to her most unconscious gestures, even the phrasings he uses are suggestive of a canine presence: “I would wait, my eyes never leaving her, my body ready to pounce at all times.” He’s eager to please, dead loyal, and trained to obey V’s subtext and cues even when they don’t line up with the facade she’s presenting to the rest of the world, which sustains the uncertainty throughout, Mike “knowing” what V would want, even when he suspects she may have gotten lost in her own game.

Getting Gillian Flynn to blurb this is a perfect choice. In many ways, Hall’s is a similar take on Gone Girl’s toxic relationship theme; a lack of honest communication and an uneven power dynamic are contributing factors to the relationship’s struggles, with a special emphasis upon a man’s frustration with the inscrutability of a woman. There’s even a deliberate echo to Gone Girl in a scene where Mike reveals he loves to watch V sleep and fantasizes about uncoiling her brain, both to understand her and to direct her thoughts toward him. The attractive vulnerability of a sleeping woman, the impulse toward violence as a tool for understanding; it’s the refuge of an emasculated man in thrall to a woman who outmatches him.

Despite the nod, this is no Gone Girl rip-off, and it actually becomes a thoughtful response to Gone Girl and all of the subsequent authors of psychological suspense homesteading on Gillian Flynn’s land. There has been a glut of post-G.G. novels in which manipulative women mastermind intricate webs of deception, so much so that it has almost become a cliché of the genre. Hall upends the reader’s expectations by removing direct access to the female character, and whenever V appears to be innocent, doubt is automatically triggered in the reader by these ingrained genre presumptions about gender and power.

This all gets thrown for a loop in the third-act courtroom scene, where Gone Girl gives way to a modern-day The Scarlet Letter, and the truth, previously twisted through Mike’s flawed perspective, is now professionally twisted through a legal wringer and the scope of the story becomes larger than a domestic dispute, much more insidious and timely.

Of course this is a love story, but it is a love story built upon emotional extremes:

They say that hate is the closest emotion to love. And passion certainly exists in two forms. The passion of sex and the passion of arguments. For V and I one would merge into the other all the time. One second shouting, the next fucking. We needed each other in a way that sometimes made me feel like it wouldn’t be enough until we’d consumed each other. I read a story once about a Russian man who ate his lovers and I sort of understand why he did it. Imagine your lover actually traveling through your blood, feeding your muscles, informing your brain. Some would see that as the basest level of cruelty, others as an act of love. Ultimately, that is what it means to Crave.

Love, cruelty, passion, and lies, manipulated to serve the theatrics of court and Crave alike, where the truth looks different depending on what you have to protect, what you have to lose, and whether you’re getting paid. To reenlist Murdoch’s epigraph, “Sometimes one must simply respect its veiled face.”

¤

Karen Brissette is a voracious reader and the most popular reviewer on Goodreads.

The post Love, Cruelty, Passion, and Lies appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[readingsweetblueflowers]

Reviews of Sweet Blue Flowers omnibus volume 1

UPDATE 2018/03/18: Corrected the attribution on the Geekly Grind review. (The site was apparently moved and/or renamed.)

UPDATE 2017/12/09: Added two more reviews, from TheOASG and Otaku USA.

UPDATE 2017/11/03: Added two more reviews, from More Bedside Books and Experiments in Manga.

Now that I’ve finished my own comments on omnibus volume 1 of Sweet Blue Flowers, let’s take a look at what other people thought of it. Here’s a not-quite-comprehensive list of reviews of volume 1 that I found online. (I ignored reviews on YouTube since I’m allergic to watching video reviews.) I’ve listed the reviews in rough order based on the prominence of the reviewer and the insightfulness of their comments.

Erica Friedman at Okazu. Friedman is one of the most well-known promoters and reviewers of yuri manga and anime, and hers is the single most authoritative site in English for yuri-related news. She also did previous reviews of volume 1 and volume 2 of the Japanese edition of Sweet Blue Flowers (Aoi Hana), which together cover the material in omnibus volume 1. In this review she rated omnibus volume 1 as 8 out of 10 overall, with art and characters at 8 and story and “yuri” at 7.

Summary: “... although the opening and the ending are—in my opinion —very weak, the rest of the story is excellent. It’s got surprising depth and breadth. Characters that surround Fumi and Akira are as well-developed as they and as interesting. ... This is the version we all wanted. There’s no excuse not to buy it and support the author and folks at the publishing companies that brought it to us!”

My take: Friedman has been a big fan of Sweet Blue Flowers both in manga and anime form, and I think her judgements are generally sound. In particular I agree with her characterization of Sweet Blue Flowers as a modernized “Story A” and “[class] S for a new generation.” I also share her opinion regarding the weakness of the opening, although our reasons may differ slightly. (Based on other reviews I’ve read of hers, the “ending” she’s referring to is the ending of the entire series; I’ll comment on that when the time comes.)

Rose Bridges at Anime News Network. ANN is the most prominent anime news and review site; they also do a fair number of manga reviews. Bridges gave Sweet Blue Flowers an overall B+ grade, with a B for story and an A for art.

Summary: “Overall, this release is an excellent way to dive into a yuri manga that's a cut above the rest. Sweet Blue Flowers still has plenty of its genre’s trappings, but also enough bite for those seeking something more realistic.”

My take: As with Friedman, I basically agree with Bridges’s review, and think she has some useful things to highlight about the work thus far.

Amelia Cook at Otaku USA. Otaku USA is a print and online magazine covering anime and manga; Cook is also the founder of the Anime Feminist web site. Her review is favorable. She particularly calls out the depiction of the four main characters (Akira, Fumi, Yasuko, and Kyoko) as being realistic and nuanced. She rated Sweet Blue Flowers as “recommended”.

Summary: “Sweet Blue Flowers [paints] a picture of everyday life with complicated young women going through important formative experiences. You’ll end the 400-page volume rooting for them all to have a happy ending.”

My take: I found it interesting that Cook’s is the only review I’ve linked to thus far that calls out and (in my opinion, rightly) criticizes the inclusion of the subplot involving Akira’s brother. My only minor (and somewhat self-serving) quibble with Cook’s review is her claim that “The overwhelming impression is that this is yuri predominantly for queer women.” I agree that Shimura did not (and does not) write for the male gaze and goes beyond standard yuri tropes, and thus Sweet Blue Flowers would likely resonate more with queer women than many other yuri works. However I think the publishing history of the manga points toward it being intended for a mixed audience of both women and men, both queer and straight.

Helen at TheOASG. TheOASG is a group anime/manga blog. This is a generally favorable review, albeit with some concerns expressed about the use of yuri tropes, possible queer-baiting, and the reaction by Yasuko’s family to her and Fumi’s relationship being unrealistic. She rated Sweet Blue Flowers at 3 out of 5.

Summary: “Sweet Blue Flowers ... treats its characters as people, not characters created for the reader’s gaze but real teenaged girls dealing with the always overly-complicated world of high school. But it still remains to be seen just how many times these girls have their hearts broken and mended by the time they graduate.”

My take: I can understand Helen’s confusion about exactly what type of story Sweet Blue Flowers is supposed to be: cute schoolgirl yuri or a realistic depiction of a teenaged lesbian? As I’ve written previously, I think that ambiguity is actually deliberate on Shimura’s part. I’ll also note a minor error in the review: she mentions both schools as having active drama clubs, but this is true only of Fujigaya; the club at Matsuoka is in danger of being disbanded.

@livresdechevet at More Bedside Books. A generally favorable review that focuses in particular on translation issues and changes from previous digital releases of volume 1.

Summary: “All in all Sweet Blue Flowers is an enduring series about maturing and girls in love with other girls finally receiving print treatment in English. ... Whether someone is familiar with the genre and history or not it’s a story with characters that can reach out to teenagers as well as older readers.”

My take: Her point regarding the translation of Fumi’s interior thoughts regarding Chizu is a good reminder of the potential pitfalls of interpreting a work solely through a translation of it.

Ash Brown at Experiments in Manga. A generally favorable review that highlights Shimura’s artwork and its relation to theatrical performance, as well as the realism of character actions and interactions.

Summary: “Sweet Blue Flowers is a wonderful series. The manga is emotionally resonate, with a realistic portrayal of the experiences of young women who love other young women. The characterizations and character development in Sweet Blue Flowers in particular are marvelous. ... Sweet Blue Flowers is a relatively quiet story, but the emotional drama is powerful and the manga conveys a compelling sense of authenticity and honesty.”

My take: Brown makes a good point, that Shimura’s relatively simple artwork “is reminiscent of intentionally minimal set design used in some theatrical performances”. I also agree with Brown’s contention that “the characters’ involvement with the play [Wuthering Heights] is an important part of the series both aesthetically and thematically.” I hope to write more about this general point more in the future.

Eric Cline at AIPT. A generally favorable review. Cline liked the characters and how they were handled, and thought the artwork stood out. One criticism he voiced was regarding a lack of clarity in some scenes in terms of who was talking, and where the scenes fit in the overall timeline. He also questions the exact relevance of one character (apparently Kyoko) to the story.

Summary: “Overall, Sweet Blue Flowers Vol. 1 is a solid start for the series. The characters are likable and well introduced, and the artwork throughout is beautiful. With that said, none of the volume’s more emotional moments are very memorably so. This is a volume that shows promise and generates enough interest to warrant giving the next installment a look, but it doesn’t quite reach greatness as is. I would recommend it, but not enthusiastically so.”

My take: Cline is spot-on about Shimura’s narrative sometimes being difficult to follow; she often makes scene transitions without warning between two panels on the same page. I also agree with Cline about the limited emotional impact of some moments; I think this is a combination of our having spent limited time with the characters thus far, the somewhat artificial and schematic nature of Sweet Blue Flowers as an homage to and critique of the class S and yuri genres, and Shimura’s occasional tendency to emotional distancing in her story-telling. As for Kyoko, I think she is and likely will be a key character in the story.

Ruthsic at YA on My Mind (also at Krutula at GoodReads). An overall favorable review that highlights the art, characters, and good handling of lesbian themes. She rates it 4 stars out of 5.

Summary: “Overall, a manga I am really looking forward to read more of. (There’s also an anime of it, and I am so going to watch it!)”

My take: She makes a good point about the setting of Sweet Blue Flowers being “contemporary, but without the homophobia”, presumably in service to this being a “feel good” story as opposed to a truly realistic one.

Sean Gaffney at A Case Suitable for Treatment. A favorable review from a manga-focused site. He acknowledges that the long delay in bringing out a complete official translation of Sweet Blue Flowers makes it seem less distinctive compared to more recent works like Bloom Into You or Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl.

Summary: “Sweet Blue Flowers is absolutely worth reading and checking out, both if you like yuri and if you like Takako Shimura. It’s also only four omnibuses, so shouldn’t devastate your bookshelf too much.”

Alexandra Nutting (writing as EyeSpyeAlex) at The Geekly Grind. A favorable review on a site focused on anime, manga, and video games.

Summary: “At the end of the day, I really enjoy Sweet Blue Flowers. The characters feel real and have a depth and complexity to their lives. While the visuals could be a little more striking, it fits the down to earth tone of the manga.”

My take: The reviewer praises Sweet Blue Flowers for its “authenticity”, and notes that it is melodramatic but not overly so. I think this is about right.

Leroy Douresseaux at ComicBookBin. A favorable review (score 8 out of 10) on a general comics site.

Summary: “Fans of yuri and shojo romance will want to smell the Sweet Blue Flowers.”

My take: A fairly brief and vanilla review, though it does make an interesting point about the confusion due to the number of characters and their different feelings evoking the state of confusion the characters find themselves in.

And one final “not really a review” item:

Rachel Thorn at Twitter. Thorn asked for opinions on Sweet Blue Flowers, apparently for an article she’s writing on Takako Shimura’s work. (Thorn announced separately that she’s completed the article, but hasn’t announced when or where it will be published, or whether it’s in English or Japanese. However from something Erica Friedman wrote elsewhere I believe it may be intended for the Japanese magazine Eureka.) Warning: Some of the replies have mild spoilers for the end of the manga.

[princesssarisa]

@lachica50 just asked me "How did you discover Wuthering Heights, and if you could recommend it to someone, what would you tell them?"

I first learned of its existence by reading about the 1939 film. I was actually reading an online review of the 1936 Greta Garbo classic Camille, which argued that of all death scenes from the Golden Age of Hollywood, only Cathy's death in the '39 Wuthering Heights comes close to being as moving as the death of Garbo's Marguerite. So from that review I learned that it's about two lovers, Heathcliff and Cathy, and that Cathy dies.

But my real introduction to the book came a few years later when I was assigned to read it in high school. Needless to say, it was far different from the type of love story I expected!

If I were to recommend the book to someone, I would have so much to say! This would probably be the gist of it:

"It's known as one of the great love stories, but it's so much more than that, and it's not a clichéd sentimental love story in the least. It's romantic in the 'capital R' sense: it's dark, stormy, and emotionally blistering. The central character, Heathcliff, is for the most part a 'villain protagonist' who can be very brutal and cruel, yet the book creates sympathy for him without ever excusing his actions. Likewise, his beloved, Catherine Earnshaw, is a very selfish, unlikable girl, but you can still understand her and feel for her, and she's one of the most fascinating, boundary-breaking female characters in literature. As for their love... well, it's an obsessive, stormy dance of death, and the narrative knows it isn't healthy and doesn't idealize it. But at the same time, there's a beauty to their passion... a sublime beauty, in the old-fashioned, 'frightening' sense of the word 'sublime'... and you still understand why so many people call this book the ultimate tragic love story."

"But the story isn't only about Heathcliff and Cathy, even though pop culture tends to give them all its attention. There are other excellent characters too. They're all complex, and they're all deeply flawed, yet very human, and they engage you. Very few of them are 'likable' in the traditional sense, yet you still care about what happens to them."

"Another reason why I'd recommend the book is how thought-provoking it is. I'd say it's one of the most thought-provoking novels ever written. Its structure is unusual: it has two main narrators, a man whose journal provides the framing device and a down-to-earth servant woman who tells the bulk of the story to him. Neither of these narrators are main characters and both are slightly unreliable, or at least biased in some ways and incomplete in their knowledge. As a result, the book raises more questions than it answers. The plot is full of mysteries that are never solved, and it's impossible for us to gain a definitive, perfect understanding of all the characters or the meaning of all that happens, because there are so many possible interpretations. I would argue that this is a good thing, because It means that the book can be discussed forever. You never stop finding new depths within it or new perspectives to view it from."

"Beyond that, well... there's something for everyone in this book. It's best known for its dark, tempestuous Gothic tone, but there's also a surprising amount of understated humor, and a surprisingly happy ending that I won't spoil. There's a sense of always-relevant social commentary too, dealing with issues of race, gender, social class, male-female relationships, parenting, and cycles of abuse. Yet the book also has the quality of a fairy tale or a myth, with hints of the supernatural teased here and there. It's a book that can appeal to a wide range of readers for different reasons. Of course it won't suit all tastes; some readers can't stand the dark, brutal story or the shortage of 'likable' characters. But even if you think it won't suit your tastes, give it a read anyway. You might be surprised. And don't let anyone convince you that it's just a cheap Gothic bodice-ripper for teenagers, even though pop culture sometimes paints it that way! It's a classic for a reason."

@faintingheroine, @dahlia-coccinea, @ariel-seagull-wings, @savagehardyandfreee, @longagoitwastuesday, @theheightsthatwuthered, @wuthering-valleys