Mini-reviews - Classics Club Special

I joined Classics Club in February 2013, and uploaded my list of a 100 classic books I hope to read. A year and one month has passed and I figured it's a good idea to see how I've been doing in that front.

 

I've read 21 books out of my 100! Which I'm perfectly happy with. So far I have written about 16 books. I was very firm about my classic books, meaning that I was willing to mini-review other books, but wanted to make a separate post for all my classics. However, I am going to type a mini-review edition of five classics that I have, and have had for quite a bit, on my shelf.  

 

 

C_Club #17 - The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera - 5/5

I read this book last year, and it's one of my all time favourite. The first time I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being was in high school, and now, after the re-read, I love it even more. That book also started my slight obsession with Prague, which finally culminated last summer, when I got to visit this marvellous city for the first time (there's a scene in the beginning of the book where one of the main characters, Tereza, walks around in Prague with a copy of Anna Karenina casually under her arm; I find both characters, Tereza and Anna, equally intriguing). I wrote a little bit about why I love this book in my TOP5 Best Books 2013 post.

 

C_Club #18 - North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell - 4/5

Fortunately or unfortunately, this was not my first Gaskell novel - I read and enjoyed Cranford back in December. So it's safe to say I expected to like North and South, and I did. Taking a peek into life in an industrialist town was interesting, and I liked that Margaret Hale was not portrayed as some stiff upper class person unable to think change. John Thornton is, I think, one of the better male protagonists, he did have some hilarious lines -- "I am a man. I claim the right of expressing my feelings."

 

C_Club #19 - Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol - 4/5

A man named Chichikov goes around in Russia and attempts to buy dead souls. This is a heavy criticism on Russian politics and Russian people, but its told in a surprisingly humorous manner (trust me, I was more than ready to face some more angst of tortured Russian souls). Especially Chichikov's meetings with people he sees in the countryside are very funny.

A fun fact: in Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief, we meet gogols. Since I read these two books close to another, it was not exactly difficult to draw instant connection. Gogols are entities that can be cloned and transferred between bodies, so they are kind of dead souls. I proper book-geeked out, because book nerds love such pointless tidbits.  

 

C_Club #20 - The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver 4/5

Another very solid book from Kingsolver, I am quite sure I will read her other books too (I read and rather enjoyed Flight Behavior last May). Nathan Price takes his wife and four daughters to a Baptist mission to Belgian Congo in 1959. The book is highly thought provoking (who has the right to assume that things, which we believe in and which suit us, work the same way for everyone else?) and I liked it because I learned so much about this time period in Africa, which I was not aware of before - perks of historical fiction. The book is told through five different POVs, which I always like; in this case all the voices were very different and distinguishable. The reason why I didn't give The Poisonwood Bible maximum points is that the characters at times felt too stretched out, exaggerated - for example Rachel was totally believable as your typical door-slamming can't-see-further-from-my-own-tip-of-nose teenager, but I found it hard to believe that even at the age of 40, pretty much nothing had changed in her attitudes. But maybe there are such people in this world...

One thing I cannot stop thinking about is the translation of this book. I know it has been translated into many foreign languages, and one of the characters Adah speaks a lot in palindromes - how do you translate a palindrome so that neither its meaning nor its shape changes? It's impossible! I am so curious. My guess is they probably made up different palindromes with as similar meaning as possible.

C_Club #21 - Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut - 2/5

I didn't like this book. *sad face* I just didn't like it. I can sense its huge literary merit and the importance of the ideas it carries but I just didn't connect with Vonnegut's writing at all. Which is a shame - I so wanted to like his stuff.

 

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Guys! I'm almost caught up with all my reviews - don't remember when that last happened. Now I only have John Green's The Fault in Our Stars to write about, and that's gonna be a toughie :p, and also Packing for Mars by Mary Roach for year 2014 TBR Challenge.

PS. The Women's Prize (Bailey's Prize this year) longlist was just announced last night - have you already seen it? Click me. Exicing stuff. I'll make a post on Women's Prize and write how the last year's project went for me.