Johnny Future believes that his life is calling for something bigger and greater than what it is. He sees it in random things like objects, but he hears exterminator icons and street signs. All of them talking to him and telling him he’s a loser. He hasn’t seen his grandmother since she’s gotten sick, so he steals a car with a prostitute. The adventure takes him from the vacant streets of Hollywood to a freeway chase with the LAPD.
Prentisstown is just your average town. It’s residents are only male and have their Noise making a mess of everything. Okay, maybe not so average. Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown. All the other boys have turned thirteen and are grown, but Todd. He’s just a normal kid going in the swamp with his talking dog, but when he finds a hole in the Noise everything changes.
Lady Sings the Blues is the extremely honest autobiography of Billie Holiday, jazz and swing legend. It takes the reader from Holiday’s rough childhood, to her first show in Harlem, to her sold out performances, and to her addictions that would be the end of her life.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in a run down recording studio in Chicago of 1927. Ma Rainey is the legendary blues singer and is out to pick her favorites amongst the new hopefuls. She runs the studio despite what the white owner of record company may believe. More happens in her sessions than just music. There’s racism, expression, and sometimes a shoe or two gets stepped on.
Jazz Age Stories is a collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It combines two of his more famous collections, Tales of the Jazz Age and Flappers and Philosophers. As Fitzgerald is known for, these short stories critique the time of the Jazz Age or Roaring Twenties. I’ve read all of the short stories in the Tales of the Jazz Age section and more recently I’ve read the Flappers and Philosophers section. I finally felt able to write a full review.
Maddie Kern is destined to be a world renowned violinist. Her audition to play at Juliard is coming up, but her thoughts aren’t all on the audition. She’s more concerned about her secret relationship with Lane Moritomo, her brother’s best friend. Lane also happens to be the son of Japanese immigrants. Maddie is prepared for their families disapproval of the relationship, but everything falls apart when they elope on the same day Pearl Harbor is bombed. Lane and his family are forced to move to an interment camp far away from the coast and far from Maddie. Maddie’s brother joins the ranks, and Maddie is left alone.
Treat It Gentle is the autobiography of jazz legend, Sidney Bechet. He was one of the first important soloists in jazz and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist. His career spanned from the early 1920’s to the early 1950’s. As Bechet tells the story of his life, he inadverntely tells the story of jazz.
“Sonny’s Blues” is a short story that revolves around two brothers. In the opening scene, the narrator, unnamed, learns that his brother Sonny has been arrested in a heroin bust and he has to go pick him up. Through out the short story, the narrator and Sonny learn why and how people cope with “the darkness” of life.
You can see my full review of it here.
I Am the Messenger, or The Messenger by it’s Australian/UK publisher, is the story about Ed Kennedy, who is an underage taxi driver “without much of a future”. The book blurb most accurately details, “He’s pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman.” Ed’s life had its normal rhythm until he accidentally stops a bank robbery. Soon after, he receives an Ace of Diamonds in the mail with three addresses on it and the journey begins.
The Shadow of the Wind is a book set in 1945 Barcelona. In the book, Daniel finds a book so called The Shadow of the Wind in a very cool place. It is the first book that he really learns to love literature and words. After reading the book, Daniel begins his quest to find out more about the author’s, Julian Carax, past and current whereabouts. This is where Daniel’s adventures begin.
How to Plant a Body by Terri Ann Armstrong
How to Plant a Body is not going to be a story about killing people. I felt like that had to be said first, because every time I mentioned what I was reading I got the questioning stares from people of perhaps I might be planing their demise. No, How to Plant a Body is about a body being found at the sisters Lily and Angel Aster’s flower shop. Lily, despite instructions otherwise stated by Officer Tony Falcetti, takes it upon herself to solve the case. The story twists and follows the mystery behind it through the eyes of Lily, our narrator.
I really loved the narration and mainly Lily as a whole. It was raw, sarcastic, and felt like an old friend explaining to me her issues in her daily life. Her voice was so clear in my head that it made her narrating scenes to be sublime. I think my favorite narration of Lily is in her interior monologue. It could easily see myself in her.
What I liked the most about this novel was that it was in no means just about solving the murder or just about the romance that unfolds in it. It weighed out these two major things so gracefully and just I had to just follow it. I would have never expected to be so wrapped up in this story as I was, but I most definitely was. I can’t wait to get my hands on the next book in the series How to Bury a Body!
Rating: ★★★★
Ulysses by James Joyce
*This is one of the many required reads for this semester. These types of reviews will consist more of what we discussed in class than my thoughts on the work.
Ulysses in its most basic of summaries is about Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. It is about their activities on the streets of Dublin and how their lives intertwine. I say in its basic of summaries, because there are so many layers to this novel. There is the layer of Catholicism and Judaism within our main characters. There is the Irish history and politics, that I knew nothing of before reading. There is also the layer of the epic. Joyce paired Ulysses with The Odyssey, so all of the chapters have one tie or another to the episode they reference. There is also the use of language, which was either syntax or the actual pronunciation.
This book has a reputation for being difficult. It definitely is not the easiest of reads, but I would say it is worth it. In talking about Joyce in my class, I learned that he liked to write in a sort of procession, so Ulysses was an epic of his own. In learning that, I came to understand why he made each chapter so different. The first few chapters are written with stream-of-consciousness and free indirect discourse, then the chapters become more in depth.
In paring Ulysses with The Odyssey, Joyce is making the real life epic. In terms of Ulysses, Bloom and Stephen’s most interesting night consists of a night that might have not happened. The Odyssey is a story of war and conquest, which does not happen in Ulysses. Needless to say, Stephen and Bloom’s lives don’t seem very epic. However, their actions are eerily similar to the characters they shadow in The Odyssey. I really liked this pairing, because it made understanding the “epicness” of the novel a bit easier.
I would say for those who want to read this novel: do it! I know it took me a while to get used to the stream-of-consciousness and the variety of writing styles, but that was part of the fun for me. I think the easiest way to read it is with annotations, and I know I’ve said it before. Our class read from The Gabler edition of Ulysses that goes along with Ulysses: Annotated by Don Gifford, both of which I’ll be doing a give away for in May. I would highly suggest using it to read the book. Over all, I really enjoyed this novel and now it’s amongst my favorites.
Rating: ★★★★★
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a series of letters written from a boy named Charlie. During his letters, he is a freshman in high school. Through Charlie’s letters we learn about his experiences within his first year with new friends, his family, drugs, sex, and even losing friends.
I have to say I really enjoyed this novel. I loved that it was written in letter format. I thought it made the story even more personal to the reader. I felt this writing format made Charlie more of an anonymous character. As if his experiences were not limited to just him, but are universal things kids go through in high school. In this way, it is very much a coming of age novel, which is about all I heard about it before reading. I have to agree though and say it is. It’s one of those novels that I found really easy to relate to and a good read.
Rating: ★★★★
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Fault in Our Stars takes the narrative of Hazel Lancaster, a sixteen year old cancer patient. She is forced into going to a cancer support group. There she meets Augustus Waters, a one-legged cancer survivor, and his best friend Isaac. I don’t want to give too much away with this book, so I’ll stop there.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually sat and read a romance YA novel. It’s never been to my liking, so I’ve avoided them in general. I did promise I would actually read John Green, so I did. I feel like I have to say that as a disclaimer when I say it wasn’t my favorite. I just don’t enjoy this genre.
I did like the use of literature in the novel. There are two fictions books and also poems from Robert Frost and William Carols Williams discussed in the novel. I really liked that Hazel’s book was the focus for the first portion of the book. I feel like we live our lives through the books or poems we love, so framing a story within that I found really enjoyable.
Rating: ★★★
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
*This is one of the many required reads for this semester. These types of reviews will consist more of what we discussed in class than my thoughts on the work.
At the very beginning of the novel, there is discussed of the viel. According to Du Bois, this veil is worn by all African-Americans because their view of the world and its potential economic, political, and social opportunities is so vastly different from that of white people. The veil is a visual manifestation of the color line, a problem Du Bois worked his whole life to remedy. Du Bois sublimates the function of the veil when he refers to it as a gift of second sight for African-Americans, thus simultaneously characterizing the veil as both a blessing and a curse. I really enjoyed Du Bois’s writing. Obviously, it was highly controversial for the time it was published, but the words are still as important as they were then.
Rating: ★★★★
