by Jack Kerouac Hearing, in passing, of a relationship between Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, I made the foolish assumption that On the Road would remind me of Naked Lunch. So it should come as no surprise that I was startled to see that Kerouac’s novel is nothing of the sort, with a wide-eyed,…
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by Kurt Vonnegut I think this has to be some kind of record for me. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five kept me so enthralled that it took me merely two days to get through, while Cat’s Cradle was easily finished in one. Yes, yes, both are short and funny, which makes the reading easy, but, beneath that, they…
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by Vladimir Nabokov Nabokov really is a cruel man. Twice now, with both Despair and Lolita, has the author successfully crafted an entirely likeable protagonist and proceeded to make him truly despicable. Of course, while this doesn’t necessarily leave me satisfied in the end, it really is a testimony to the author’s skilful pen. The…
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by J. R. R. Tolkien Elves in the forest, dwarves mining in the mountains, and Halflings living in their quiet homes under the hills; the hero stepping out of his comfort zone and travelling far and wide to overcome significant challenges. (And magic, of course.) To me, it seems odd that the tropes and races…
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by Elie Wiesel “We were the masters of nature, the masters of the world. We had transcended everything––death, fatigue, our natural needs. We were stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers, we were the only men on earth.” I tend to stray…
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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 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 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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