by Paulo Coelho The Alchemist was a novel that I had been greatly anticipating for some time, given the glowing reviews it received from friends of mine, so it comes with heavy disappointment to say that I didn’t love this book. I will say that parts of the story really spoke to me, but those…
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by Jean-Dominique Bauby I will admit to the unique method of construction of The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly––being dictated by an almost-fully-paralyzed author after his stroke using only a series of winks––being one of my initial attractions to the book. As extraordinary as this is of its own merit, the story itself is well-written and…
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by Helen Humphreys A nocturne is a musical composition, inspired by or evocative of the night. In its most familiar form, it is a single-movement character piece written for solo piano. With that description, it’s not difficult to see how fitting the title for Helen Humphreys’ memoir truly is, both channelling the spirit of the…
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by Lawrence M. Krauss A Universe From Nothing is highly interesting in many ways. Coming from someone who only has basic understandings of physics, learning of many general concepts to help you reach similar conclusions to those of the author already made this read worthwhile, but presenting the number of widely accepted theories in physics…
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by Kurt Vonnegut Few authors can claim to have changed my life, but even fewer can make that claim on separate instances with different works. Kurt Vonnegut is one of the few, first with Breakfast of Champions––which flipped the whole notion on how you can tell a story on its head––then, again, with Slaughterhouse-Five. I absolutely loved…
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by Fiona Gold Kroll Some stories speak more of their author than their subject matter. I truly believe that A Stone for Benjamin is an instance of this. Kroll shows much of her positive outlook when she romanticizes the unknown man in the image she has seen her entire life; what comes across is a strong woman…
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by Ray Bradbury Bradbury truly had some thoughtful insights with regards to censorship, arguing with his novel that even censorship performed with “good intentions”––using the term in the loosest sense I can possibly command––can easily sink to horrible depths. But, Fahrenheit 451 is not just a warning of the dangers of unchecked censorship; it’s also a celebration…
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by Vladimir Nabokov I have always enjoyed a good pun, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to come across intelligent ones these days, in lieu of the mediocre and insular. I only mention this because Lolita is riddled with them, right down to the titular nymphet’s dolorous haze. One could say that Nabokov was a pundit in the…
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by F. Scott Fitzgerald Until The Great Gatsby, nothing compared to the works of Nikolai Gogol––at least, in my mind––with regards to successfully capturing its time and place and transporting the reader there, this time 1920s New York rather than the old Ukrainian countryside. I really have to commend Fitzgerald on this point; he extensively knew…
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