Emily May's bookshelf: read

Emily May's bookshelf: read en-US Sat, 26 Apr 2025 08:33:37 -0700 60 Emily May's bookshelf: read 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Tibetan Book Of The Dead. First Complete Translation]]> 1331712 The most graceful English translation of this masterpiece of world literature - prepared with the participation of the Dalai Lama and eminent contemporary masters of this tradition appointed by the Dalai Lama

One of the greatest works created by any culture and one of the most influential of all Tibetan Buddhist texts in the West, The Tibetan Book of the Dead has had a number of distinguished translations, but strangely all of these have been partial abridgements. Now the entire text has not only been made available in English but in a translation of quite remarkable clarity and beauty. A comprehensive guide to living and dying, The Tibetan Book of the Dead contains exquisitely written guidance and practices related to transforming our experience in daily life, on the processes of dying and the after-death state, and on how to help those who are dying. As originally intended this is as much a work for the living, as it is for those who wish to think beyond a mere conventional lifetime to a vastly greater and grander cycle.

'Extraordinary ... this work will be a source of inspiration and support to many' His Holiness the Dalai Lama

About the authors:

Commentary by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Thupten Jinpa is the senior translator to the Dalai Lama and President of the Institute of Tibetan Classics. Graham Coleman is founder of the Orient Foundation for Arts and Culture, a major Tibetan cultural conservancy organization, and writer-director of the acclaimed feature documentary Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy. Gyurme Dorje is a leading scholar of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, from which the Tibetan Book of the Dead literature derives.]]> 496 Padmasambhava 0713994142 Emily May 0 4.33 1350 Tibetan Book Of The Dead. First Complete Translation

Tibetan Book Of The Dead. First Complete Translation

author: Padmasambhava
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1350
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]]> The Saga of the Volsungs 593109 145 Anonymous 0140447385 Emily May 0 4.01 1000

author: Anonymous
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1000
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]]> The Women's Room 46456 The Women's Room follows the transformation of Mira Ward and her circle as the women's movement begins to have an impact on their lives. A biting social commentary on an emotional world gone silently haywire, The Women's Room is a modern classic that offers piercing insight into the social norms accepted so blindly and revered so completely. Marilyn French questions those accepted norms and poignantly portrays the hopeful believers looking for new truths.]]> 526 Marilyn French 1860492827 Emily May 0 classics, tbr-ftp 4.00 1977 The Women's Room

author: Marilyn French
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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]]> My Brilliant Career 219536297 272 Miles Franklin 0241699584 Emily May 0 4.00 1901

author: Miles Franklin
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1901
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]]> Selected Poems 67373
The founder of the order of the Whirling Dervishes, Rumi was also a poet of transcendental power. His verse speaks with the universal voice of the human soul and brims with exuberant energy and passion. Rich in natural imagery, from flowers to birds and rivers to stars, the poems have an elemental force that has remained undiminished through the centuries. Their themes - tolerance, goodness, the experience of God, charity and awareness through love - still resonate with millions of readers around the world.

Translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne]]> 310 Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi 0140449531 Emily May 0 4.23 1273 Selected Poems

author: Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1273
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]]> Egil's Saga 331089 243 Anonymous 0140447709 Emily May 0 4.02 1240

author: Anonymous
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1240
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]]> <![CDATA[The Prose Edda: Norse Mythology]]> 24658 'What was the beginning, or how did things start? What was there before?'

The Prose Edda is the most renowned of all works of Scandinavian literature and our most extensive source for Norse mythology. Written in Iceland a century after the close of the Viking Age, it tells ancient stories of the Norse creation epic and recounts the battles that follow as gods, giants, dwarves and elves struggle for survival. It also preserves the oral memory of heroes, warrior kings and queens. In clear prose interspersed with powerful verse, the Edda provides unparalleled insight into the gods' tragic realisation that the future holds one final cataclysmic battle, Ragnarok, when the world will be destroyed. These tales from the pagan era have proved to be among the most influential of all myths and legends, inspiring modern works as diverse as Wagner's Ring Cycle and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

This new translation by Jesse Byock captures the strength and subtlety of the original, while his introduction sets the tales fully in the context of Norse mythology. This edition also includes detailed notes and appendices.]]> 224 Snorri Sturluson 0140447555 Emily May 0 classics, tbr-hist-philos 4.17 1220 The Prose Edda: Norse Mythology

author: Snorri Sturluson
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1220
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]]> <![CDATA[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]> 3050 176 Unknown Emily May 0 3.58 1375

author: Unknown
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1375
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]]> <![CDATA[The History of the Kings of Britain]]> 129521 The History of the Kings of Britain traces the story of the realm from its supposed foundation by Brutus to the coming of the Saxons some two thousand years later. Vividly portraying legendary and semi-legendary figures such as Lear, Cymbeline, Merlin the magician and the most famous of all British heroes, King Arthur, it is as much myth as it is history and its veracity was questioned by other medieval writers. But Geoffrey of Monmouth's powerful evocation of illustrious men and deeds captured the imagination of subsequent generations, and his influence can be traced through the works of Malory, Shakespeare, Dryden and Tennyson.]]> 373 Geoffrey of Monmouth 0140441700 Emily May 0 tbr-hist-philos 3.72 1136 The History of the Kings of Britain

author: Geoffrey of Monmouth
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1136
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]]> Early Irish Myths and Sagas 954584 288 Anonymous 0140443975 Emily May 0 tbr-hist-philos 3.84 1981

author: Anonymous
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1981
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]]> The Aeneid 52692587 368 Virgil 0141994223 Emily May 0 3.62 -19

author: Virgil
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.62
book published: -19
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]]> <![CDATA[Grimm Tales: For Young and Old]]> 53246188 Grimm Tales of wicked wives, brave children and villainous kings will have you reading, reading aloud and rereading them for many years to come.]]> 448 Philip Pullman 0241472725 Emily May 4 classics, clothbound-own 3.92 2012 Grimm Tales: For Young and Old

author: Philip Pullman
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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]]> The Histories 1362
Here is the historian, investigating and judging what he has seen, heard, and read, and seeking out the true causes and consequences of the great deeds of the past. In his History , the war between the Greeks and Persians, the origins of their enmity, and all the more general features of the civilizations of the world of his day are seen as a unity and expressed as the vision of one man who as a child lived through the last of the great acts in this universal drama.

In Grene's remarkable translation and commentary, we see the historian as a storyteller, combining through his own narration the skeletal "historical" facts and the imaginative reality toward which his story reaches. Herodotus emerges in all his charm and complexity as a writer and the first historian in the Western tradition, perhaps unique in the way he has seen the interrelation of fact and fantasy.]]> 784 Herodotus 0140449086 Emily May 0 classics, tbr-hist-philos 3.98 -430 The Histories

author: Herodotus
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.98
book published: -430
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]]> <![CDATA[Discourse on Method and The Meditations]]> 309533 Discourse on Method he outlined the contrast between mathematics and experimental sciences, and the extent to which each one can achieve certainty. Drawing on his own work in geometry, optics, astronomy and physiology, Descartes developed the hypothetical method that characterizes modern science, and this soon came to replace the traditional techniques derived from Aristotle. Many of Descartes' most radical ideas - such as the disparity between our perceptions and the realities that cause them - have been highly influential in the development of modern philosophy.]]> 188 René Descartes 0140442065 Emily May 0 nonfiction, tbr-hist-philos 3.57 1637 Discourse on Method and The Meditations

author: René Descartes
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1637
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]]> <![CDATA[The Later Roman Empire (A.D. 354-378)]]> 669343 506 Ammianus Marcellinus 0140444068 Emily May 0 tbr-hist-philos 4.07 391

author: Ammianus Marcellinus
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.07
book published: 391
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]]> The Pillow Book 18187 The classic portrayal of court life in tenth-century Japan

Written by the court gentlewoman Sei Shonagon, ostensibly for her own amusement, The Pillow Book offers a fascinating exploration of life among the nobility at the height of the Heian period, describing the exquisite pleasures of a confined world in which poetry, love, fashion, and whim dominated, while harsh reality was kept firmly at a distance. Moving elegantly across a wide range of themes including nature, society, and her own flirtations, Sei Shonagon provides a witty and intimate window on a woman's life at court in classical Japan.]]> 364 Sei Shōnagon 0140448063 Emily May 0 classics, tbr-hist-philos 4.01 1002 The Pillow Book

author: Sei Shōnagon
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1002
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]]> Tales of Ise 25938375 One of the three seminal works of Japanese literature, a beautiful collection of poems and tales that offers an unparalleled insight into ancient Japan

Along with the Tale of Genji and One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each, the Tales of Ise may be considered one of the three most important works of Japanese literature. A poem-tale collection from the early Heian period, the narrative is loosely composed around a series of stories spanning the period from a man's youth to his death, and offers deep insight into the world of courtly love in ancient Japan.]]> 416 Anonymous 0141392576 Emily May 0 classics, tbr-hist-philos 4.26 Tales of Ise

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]]> The Analects 27297
The Analects are a collection of Confucius’s sayings brought together by his pupils shortly after his death in 497 BC. Together they express a philosophy, or a moral code, by which Confucius, one of the most humane thinkers of all time, believed everyone should live. Upholding the ideals of wisdom, self-knowledge, courage and love of one’s fellow man, he argued that the pursuit of virtue should be every individual’s supreme goal. And, while following the Way, or the truth, might not result in immediate or material gain, Confucius showed that it could nevertheless bring its own powerful and lasting spiritual rewards.

This edition contains a detailed introduction exploring the concepts of the original work, a bibliography and glossary and appendices on Confucius himself, The Analects and the disciples who compiled them.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 249 Confucius 0140443487 Emily May 0 classics, tbr-hist-philos 3.84 -475 The Analects

author: Confucius
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.84
book published: -475
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]]> Fear and Trembling 24486946 176 Søren Kierkegaard 0141395885 Emily May 0 3.80 1843

author: Søren Kierkegaard
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1843
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]]> <![CDATA[The Nature of Things (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)]]> 22571770
A new series of beautiful hardcover nonfiction classics, with covers designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith

World-changing ideas meet eye-catching design: the best titles of the extraordinarily successful Great Ideas series are now packaged in Coralie Bickford-Smith’s distinctive,award-winning covers. Whether on a well-curated shelf or in your back pocket, these timeless works of philosophical, political, and psychological thought are absolute musthaves for book collectors as well as design enthusiasts.]]> 433 Lucretius 0141396903 Emily May 0 4.03 -55 The Nature of Things (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)

The Nature of Things (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)

author: Lucretius
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.03
book published: -55
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]]> Essays and Aphorisms 23610620 Parerga and Paralipomena, which he published in 1851. He depicts humanity as locked in a struggle beyond good and evil, each individual absolutely free within a Godless world in which art, morality and self-awareness are our only salvation. This innovative and pessimistic view proved powerfully influential upon philosophy and art, affecting the work of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein among others.]]> 293 Arthur Schopenhauer 0141395915 Emily May 0 3.78 1851 Essays and Aphorisms

author: Arthur Schopenhauer
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1851
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Confessions (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)]]> 22571626 One of a major new Classics series - books that have changed the history of thought, in sumptuous, clothbound hardbacks.

The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between conflicting faiths and world views. His Confessions, written when he was in his forties, recount how, slowly and painfully, he came to turn away from his youthful ideas and licentious lifestyle, to become instead a staunch advocate of Christianity and one of its most influential thinkers. A remarkably honest and revealing spiritual autobiography, the Confessions also address fundamental issues of Christian doctrine, and many of the prayers and meditations it includes are still an integral part of the practice of Christianity today.]]> 576 Augustine of Hippo 014139689X Emily May 0 3.97 400 Confessions (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)

Confessions (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)

author: Augustine of Hippo
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.97
book published: 400
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]]> <![CDATA[Civilization and Its Discontents (Penguin Pocket Hardbacks)]]> 22934769 Civilization and its Discontents he considers the incompatibility of civilization and individual happiness. Focusing on what he perceives to be one of society's greatest dangers; 'civilized' sexual morality, he asks, does repression compromise our chances of happiness?

Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 and died in exile in London in 1939. As a writer and doctor he remains one of the informing voices of the twentieth century.]]> 188 Sigmund Freud 0141395893 Emily May 0 3.60 1930 Civilization and Its Discontents (Penguin Pocket Hardbacks)

Civilization and Its Discontents (Penguin Pocket Hardbacks)

author: Sigmund Freud
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1930
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Meditations (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)]]> 22571551 Meditations has become a key text in the understanding of Roman Stoic philosophy. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Martin Hammond and an introduction by Diskin Clay.

Written in Greek by an intellectual Roman emperor without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a wide range of fascinating spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the leader struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. Spanning from doubt and despair to conviction and exaltation, they cover such diverse topics as the question of virtue, human rationality, the nature of the gods and Aurelius's own emotions. But while the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation, in developing his beliefs Marcus also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a series of wise and practical aphorisms that have been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and ordinary readers for almost two thousand years.

Martin Hammond's new translation fully expresses the intimacy and eloquence of the original work, with detailed notes elucidating the text. This edition also includes an introduction by Diskin Clay, exploring the nature and development of the Meditations, a chronology, further reading and full indexes.

Marcus Aelius Aurelius Antoninus (121-80) was adopted by the emperor Antoninus Pius and succeeded him in 161, (as joint emperor with adoptive brother Lucius Verus). He ruled alone from 169, and spent much of his reign in putting down various rebellions, and was a persecutor of Christians. His fame rest, above all, on his Meditations, a series of reflections, strongly influenced by Epictetus, which represent a Stoic outlook on life. He was succeeded by his natural son, thus ending the period of the adoptive emperors.

If you enjoyed Meditations, you might like Seneca's Letters from a Stoic, also available in Penguin Classics.]]> 416 Marcus Aurelius 0141395869 Emily May 0 4.32 180 Meditations (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)

Meditations (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)

author: Marcus Aurelius
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.32
book published: 180
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]]> <![CDATA[Letters from a Stoic (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)]]> 22571572 Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, Seneca's Letters from a Stoic are a set of 'essays in disguise' from one of the most insightful philosophers of the Silver Age of Roman literature. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Latin with an introduction by Robin Campbell.

A philosophy that saw self-possession as the key to an existence lived 'in accordance with nature', Stoicism called for the restraint of animal instincts and the severing of emotional ties. These beliefs were formulated by the Athenian followers of Zeno in the fourth century BC, but it was in Seneca that the Stoics found their most eloquent advocate. Stoicism, as expressed in the Letters, helped ease pagan Rome's transition to Christianity, for it upholds upright ethical ideals and extols virtuous living, as well as expressing disgust for the harsh treatment of slaves and the inhumane slaughters witnessed in the Roman arenas. Seneca's major contribution to a seemingly unsympathetic creed was to transform it into a powerfully moving and inspiring declaration of the dignity of the individual mind.

Robin Campbell's lucid translation captures Seneca's humour and tautly aphoristic style. In his introduction, he discusses the tensions between Seneca's philosophy and his turbulent career as adviser to the tyrannical emperor Nero.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c.4BC - AD65) was born in Spain but was raised according to the traditional values of the republic of Rome. In AD48 he became tutor to the future emperor Nero and became his principal civil advisor when he took power. His death was eventually ordered by Nero in AD65, but Seneca anticipated the emperor's decree and committed suicide.

If you enjoyed Letters from a Stoic, you might like Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, also available in Penguin Classics.]]> 309 Seneca 0141395850 Emily May 0 4.34 64 Letters from a Stoic (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)

Letters from a Stoic (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)

author: Seneca
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.34
book published: 64
rating: 0
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]]> The Ramayana 8910536 The great Indian epic rendered in modern prose

India's most beloved and enduring legend, the Ramayana is widely acknowledged to be one of the world's great literary masterpieces. Still an integral part of India's cultural and religious expression, the Ramayana was originally composed by the Sanskrit poet Valmiki around 300 b.c. The epic of Prince Rama's betrayal, exile, and struggle to rescue his faithful wife, Sita, from the clutches of a demon and to reclaim his throne has profoundly affected the literature, art, and culture of South and Southeast Asia-an influence most likely unparalleled in the history of world literature, except, possibly, for the Bible. Throughout the centuries, countless versions of the epic have been produced in numerous formats and languages. But previous English versions have been either too short to capture the magnitude of the original; too secular in presenting what is, in effect, scripture; or dry, line-by-line translations. Now novelist Ramesh Menon has rendered the tale in lyrical prose that conveys all the beauty and excitement of the original, while making this spiritual and literary classic accessible to a new generation of readers.
]]> 696 ��ī�쾱 0670084182 Emily May 0 3.95 1957 The Ramayana

author: ��ī�쾱
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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]]> The Pilgrim's Progress 765570 The Pilgrim's Progress is a spiritual as well as a literary classic.

In his introduction, Roger Pooley discusses Bunyan's life and theology, as well as the text's biblical and historical backdrop, its success and critical history. This edition also includes accompanying seventeenth-century illustrations, a chronology, suggested further reading, notes and an index.]]> 344 John Bunyan 0141439718 Emily May 0 classics, tbr-hist-philos 3.69 1678 The Pilgrim's Progress

author: John Bunyan
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1678
rating: 0
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]]> The Bhagavad Gita 8560090 124 Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa 0670084166 Emily May 0 3.91 -400

author: Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.91
book published: -400
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]]> Mrs Dalloway 52692585 232 Virginia Woolf 0241468647 Emily May 0 3.73 1925

author: Virginia Woolf
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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]]> The Satanic Verses 12781
From the back cover.]]> 561 Salman Rushdie 0312270828 Emily May 0 magic-realism, tbr-other 3.73 1988

author: Salman Rushdie
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1988
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]]> The Magus 162853 The Magus is a feast for the mind and the senses.]]> 672 John Fowles Emily May 0 classics, tbr-other 3.94 1965

author: John Fowles
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1965
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]]> <![CDATA[A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #1-3)]]> 16113 Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art. In the second volume they move to London in a whirl of marriage and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures. These books "provide an unsurpassed picture, at once gay and melancholy, of social and artistic life in Britain between the wars" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.). The third volume follows Nick into army life and evokes London during the blitz. In the climactic final volume, England has won the war and must now count the losses.

Four very different young men on the threshold of manhood dominate this opening volume of A Dance to the Music of Time. The narrator, Jenkins—a budding writer—shares a room with Templer, already a passionate womanizer, and Stringham, aristocratic and reckless. Widermerpool, as hopelessly awkward as he is intensely ambitious, lurks on the periphery of their world. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, these four gain their initiations into sex, society, business, and art. Considered a masterpiece of modern fiction, Powell's epic creates a rich panorama of life in England between the wars.

Includes these novels:
A Question of Upbringing
A Buyer's Market
The Acceptance World]]> 718 Anthony Powell 0226677141 Emily May 0 historical, tbr-other 3.94 1955 A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #1-3)

A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #1-3)

author: Anthony Powell
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1955
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]]> His Natural Life 1697428 This edition is the first to print the complete original version of the novel in volume form.

Foreshadowing the nightmare visions of the twentieth century in which evil is perceived as central to the condition of man, His Natural Life is a novel of startling power and originality.

It is the greatest novel to come out of colonial Australia and pinpoints with shocking immediacy the reality of Botany Bay and the horrors of the transportation system - a fate so awful tht many convicts hanged themselves rather than suffer it. Written by a ‘kaleidoscopic, particoloured, harlequinesque, thaumatropic being��, as his friend Gerald Manley Hopkins described Marcus Clarke, it traces the fortunes of Richard Dawes at the hands of th ‘system��. Broken and disastrously changed by his treatment, Dawes nevertheless survives, a figure haunting as much for the vicissitudes he suffers as for the psychological brilliance of his characterization. Yet Marcus Clarke’s novel is more than an enthralling narrative and a catalogue of horrors. Its descriptive vigour and the telling portrayal of a struggling new society fraught with tension and paradoxes endow it with a moral and spiritual resonance that ‘will always assure it a place in the evolution of the literature of evil��.]]> 927 Marcus Clarke 0140430512 Emily May 0 classics, tbr-other 4.10 1874 His Natural Life

author: Marcus Clarke
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1874
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]]> The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 3242353
But things don't go according to plan, and their independence may ultimately prove harder to maintain than it was to seize...]]> 382 Robert A. Heinlein 0575082410 Emily May 0 4.02 1966 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

author: Robert A. Heinlein
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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shelves: sci-fi, to-read-longlist, dick-lit
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]]> The Story of an African Farm 42323167 301 Olive Schreiner Emily May 0 tbr-ftp, classics 3.25 1883

author: Olive Schreiner
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.25
book published: 1883
rating: 0
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]]> The Good Earth 1206058
Hard times come upon Wang Lung and his family when flood and drought force them to seek work in the city. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.]]> 357 Pearl S. Buck 0671035770 Emily May 4 classics, 2025, historical The Good Earth may have been published almost a hundred years ago, but it was still an unputdownable read in 2025.

It's just a good story, that's all there is to it. The characters are complex and memorable; the trials they go through are harrowing and heartrending. Even though Buck’s protagonist is a man, much of the story here is the tragic tale of women and girls: the position of wives, the disposability of daughters sold as slaves, the treatment of sex workers, and the pain and horror of foot binding.

O-lan, especially, got to me. She was a brilliant, hardworking, courageous woman, ignored and largely unloved because of her plain appearance. Poor O-lan, she deserved so much better in so many ways.

Buck did something quite brilliant with Wang Lung, her protagonist, because not many authors can introduce me to a man who is, in turn, deeply selfish, occasionally violent, and even, at times, predatory, and still manage to evoke sympathy for them. But she did. Somehow, he worked. His love for his family, especially his disabled daughter, and his deep emotional ties to his land, warmed me to him.

I just can't believe that was the last line of the book. I turned the page, looking for a next chapter that wasn't there. I hadn't even planned to read the sequel with it being less highly-rated, but maybe I have to?]]> 3.91 1931 The Good Earth

author: Pearl S. Buck
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1931
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: classics, 2025, historical
review:
The Good Earth may have been published almost a hundred years ago, but it was still an unputdownable read in 2025.

It's just a good story, that's all there is to it. The characters are complex and memorable; the trials they go through are harrowing and heartrending. Even though Buck’s protagonist is a man, much of the story here is the tragic tale of women and girls: the position of wives, the disposability of daughters sold as slaves, the treatment of sex workers, and the pain and horror of foot binding.

O-lan, especially, got to me. She was a brilliant, hardworking, courageous woman, ignored and largely unloved because of her plain appearance. Poor O-lan, she deserved so much better in so many ways.

Buck did something quite brilliant with Wang Lung, her protagonist, because not many authors can introduce me to a man who is, in turn, deeply selfish, occasionally violent, and even, at times, predatory, and still manage to evoke sympathy for them. But she did. Somehow, he worked. His love for his family, especially his disabled daughter, and his deep emotional ties to his land, warmed me to him.

I just can't believe that was the last line of the book. I turned the page, looking for a next chapter that wasn't there. I hadn't even planned to read the sequel with it being less highly-rated, but maybe I have to?
]]> Bring the House Down 223843176 A one woman show
A one night stand
A one star review

At the Edinburgh Fringe, vicious theatre critic Alex Lyons is dashing off his latest hatchet job.

When Alex meets the show’s performer, Hayley, in a bar afterwards, she has no idea who he is. It’s only after they’ve spent the night together that Alex’s well-meaning flatmate, Sophie, accidentally shows Hayley the one-star review.

Humiliated and furious, Hayley revamps her show into a one-star review of Alex’s entire life. Starring every bad thing he’s ever done to anyone. Sparing absolutely no details.

Hayley’s show is an instant hit, setting off a cultural earthquake. With Alex’s life in ruins, Sophie has a front-row seat to the carnage. Which is how she discovers that, sometimes, the audience is the most dangerous place to be.

Funny and thrilling, for readers of Cleopatra and Frankenstein or Fleishman is in Trouble, this is an extraordinary debut novel about bad art and good art and who gets to say what. About the one-star reviews we wish we could give out, and the personal criticism we would rather not face.]]> 320 Charlotte Runcie 000868801X Emily May 4 "Fair criticism doesn't exist," he'd said to me in the newsroom once. "Life isn't fair, so why should I be?"

This is one of those books that sounded sort of interesting, so I picked it up with the intention to sample, get a feel for it, and then put it aside for later. And I was doing that, honestly, but then, somehow, the pages kept turning and I finished the whole book. I guess I really couldn't put it down.

I don't want to sell this as a thriller, because it's not. Bring the House Down is a literary character and culture study, and a thought-provoking exploration of the responsibility critics have to both their subjects and their audience.

Did I have a greater responsibility to the actors on stage, the company and crew who made this obviously high-budget and well-rehearsed show, or to the audience around me? Or to the people reading the paper, who would never see that particular production, but who kept up an interest in theatre and just wanted some opinions to chew over with their breakfast?

But if that sounds dry, I'm doing it a disservice. Because it's seriously compelling and juicy.

We dive right into what the blurb promises from the very first chapter: cutthroat theatre critic Alex Lyons sees a show at the Edinburgh Fringe and completely decimates it in a review. Immediately afterwards, he goes to a bar and runs into the show's creator and sole performer, Hayley, and the pair sleep together.

Hayley has no idea Alex has just written a career-ending review of her show, but when she finds out, she decides on the perfect revenge: revamping her show into a vicious critique of Alex and his whole life. Soon, others are speaking up about their negative experiences with Alex, both through his reviews and in his private life.

Runcie has written a thoughtful meditation on several different aspects of our culture here, and it is compelling because it is relevant, the stakes are high, and there are no easy answers.

When does criticism cross a line? If you give a harsh criticism then add the disclaimer “I’m just being honest,�� does that make it okay? Is it always right to be honest or, at some point, are you-- as Madeline the Person puts it --? Or, conversely, is it better to be dishonest, as Sophie often is? To slap five stars against a production because you feel you should, out of a sense of duty to the creators? Does it matter less if your platform is smaller? Do you only have to temper your honesty if you know your voice is influential?

In Alex's case, he grew such a powerful reputation from being brutally honest. The readers loved his reviews because, if he thought it was shit, he said so. Nobody wanted the milquetoast three-star reviews. So is the problem even Alex, or the culture that built him? The culture that wants to know:

Excellent or worthless, nothing in between. Review your experience, share your thoughts, recommend us to your friends, swipe left, swipe right, leave a comment, have an opinion.

author: Charlotte Runcie
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: arc, 2025, contemporary, modern-lit
review:

"Fair criticism doesn't exist," he'd said to me in the newsroom once. "Life isn't fair, so why should I be?"

This is one of those books that sounded sort of interesting, so I picked it up with the intention to sample, get a feel for it, and then put it aside for later. And I was doing that, honestly, but then, somehow, the pages kept turning and I finished the whole book. I guess I really couldn't put it down.

I don't want to sell this as a thriller, because it's not. Bring the House Down is a literary character and culture study, and a thought-provoking exploration of the responsibility critics have to both their subjects and their audience.

Did I have a greater responsibility to the actors on stage, the company and crew who made this obviously high-budget and well-rehearsed show, or to the audience around me? Or to the people reading the paper, who would never see that particular production, but who kept up an interest in theatre and just wanted some opinions to chew over with their breakfast?

Excellent or worthless, nothing in between. Review your experience, share your thoughts, recommend us to your friends, swipe left, swipe right, leave a comment, have an opinion.

The book also looks at the aftermath of a "cancelling" with nuance. Alex is an asshole, no doubt, but as he becomes ever more hated, as more and more people gleefully gather round to judge him on social media, one has to wonder how much punishment he actually deserves. The book is stronger, in my opinion, because Runcie refuses to fully condemn or redeem him.

I am intrigued to see how other readers feel about the choice of narration. The story is told in first person-- not by Alex or Hayley, but by Alex's colleague, Sophie. In some ways, it's genius: Sophie is adjacent to the book's main events, close enough to witness them firsthand but far enough removed to offer a more balanced perspective. However, the book's biggest weakness, I feel, is that we also get a subplot delving into Sophie's life with her partner Josh and new baby, which I found to be the slowest and least interesting parts of the story.

But, overall, I really enjoyed it and found the moral ambiguity really compelling. Recommended for anyone who enjoys asking complex questions about the culture we live in.
]]> The Rector's Daughter 59412294
The Rector’s Daughter was published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press. The plot is timeless: a young woman called Mary Jocelyn lives at home in the rectory with her widowed father, a classical theologian; at first she finds fulfilment through looking after her disabled sister but eventually is left alone to be her father’s companion. She realises that she feels deeply about the local curate and for a while it looks as though she might be happy at last. Rather like The Fortnight in September, PB No. 67, it doesn’t sound much. But it is everything. And it is why we wanted Persephone readers to be able to read this superb novel and understand why it has been praised so highly by generations of critics.

In fact when it was first published there were so many laudatory reviews that Boots lending library had to ration loans due to its popularity. Then it disappeared. Completely. But in 1941 Rosamond Lehmann called Mary ‘my favourite character in contemporary fiction: favourite in that she is completely real to me, deeply moving, evoking as vivid and valid a sense of sympathy, pity, and admiration as do the Brontë sisters.The poignancy of the sisters lies in their moral grandeur. The same is true of Mary Jocelyn. Plain, not young, dowdy, shy, and from shyness awkward, proud, passionate, reserved, she is herself an individual, to an extraordinary degree. At the same time she becomes, to me at least, a kind of symbol or touchstone for feminine dignity, intelligence and truthfulness.�� Later Susan Hill, who had by chance discovered The Rector’s Daughter on the Penguin list realised that ‘here was indeed a masterpiece, a flawless English novel�� most beautifully written, with economy, plain elegance, perspicacity, grace��; yet, she added, FM Mayor ‘is still not a familiar name, the novel’s place in literary history is not yet immovably secure.�� In 1986 there came Virago’s reissue (with an informative preface by Janet Morgan). But still it stayed in the shadows, albeit with occasional flurries of attention, for example the critic DJ Taylor in The Times last year found it a mystery ‘why FM Mayor, with her impossibly subtle style, isn’t better known��, saying that ‘if, on the one hand, it is one of the saddest books ever written, then on the other, its 300 or so pages are alive with compassion, warmth and the sense of human possibility.��

The Persephone Preface is by Victoria Gray, Flora’s great niece, and contains much new information taken from family papers; she and her late husband, the playwright Simon Gray, admired The Rector’s Daughter so much that he dramatised it for radio. Victoria has the original recording and we shall make it available on our website with the proceeds going to the charity Give a Book. The Rector’s Daughter is also freely available online as ten 15 minute BBC R4 ‘Book at Bedtime�� episodes read by Juliet Stevenson. Victoria Gray lives in the house she inherited from her grandmother Beatrice (‘Bobo��) Mayor (1885-1971), Flora Mayor’s sister-in-law, of whom ‘family legend has it that the raffish interloper, Kathy, is a thickly disguised portrait.�� One of the Persephone team once lived next door to Mrs Mayor, as we knew her; she used to talk about Virginia Woolf, at a time when her work was still unappreciated. But The Rector’s Daughter was never mentioned at all.

The endpapers from a printed silk fabric manufactured in Manchester for the Calico Printers' Association in 1924.]]> 336 F.M. Mayor 1910263303 Emily May 0 3.97 1924 The Rector's Daughter

author: F.M. Mayor
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: classics, persephone, currently-reading, 2025
review:

]]> For Whom the Bell Tolls 6599421 For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.]]> 480 Ernest Hemingway Emily May 0 classics, dick-lit, dnf 4.20 1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: classics, dick-lit, dnf
review:

]]> Tangled Roots 211721232
Like dragonflies darting over the marsh, their lives glimmer briefly and then are gone: a young girl entranced by the forest folk, a faithless fiancé who meets his match beneath the age-old branches, a farmhand with a strange obsession��.

What endures is the wild, and the certainty that wherever we put down roots, the land will grow roots in us too.]]> 416 Maria Turtschaninoff 1805330136 Emily May 0 fantasy, to-read 3.88 2022 Tangled Roots

author: Maria Turtschaninoff
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: fantasy, to-read
review:

]]> The Day of the Triffids 29952881
The triffids are grotesque and dangerous plants, over seven feet tall, originally cultivated for their yield of high-grade oil. So long as conditions give the mastery to their human directors, they are a valuable asset to mankind. But when a sudden universal disaster turns those conditions upside down, then the triffids, seizing their opportunity, become an active and dreadful menace.

The story of what happens is told here by one of the few people lucky enough to escape the disaster.]]> 256 John Wyndham 0241284678 Emily May 3 It must be, I thought, one of the race’s most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that “it can’t happen here”—that one’s own little time and place is beyond cataclysms. And now it was happening here.
The Day of the Triffids was not at all what I expected. I had expected, with it being written in the 1950s, the attitudes to be dated (which, to be honest, it wasn’t that bad) and I had expected, given the title and its cultural legacy, it to be about flesh-eating plants called triffids. Which, bizarrely, it isn’t.

Surprisingly, the triffids are actually secondary to the central story. They are a bit of a background menace, occasionally complicating things, but you could take them out and pretty much the same story would be told. In fact, I was a little bit disappointed with how the potential horror of the triffids was never fully utilised.

Instead, what we have here is a fairly typical post-apocalyptic sci-fi. (Yes, I do understand it is fairly typical because many others copied it, and that Wyndham paved the way for other writers to do a better job (José Saramago, for one), but, hey, I can't help that I came to it late.)

Not that it's bad. But the most interesting part of this lil shop of horrors was wasted, in my opinion.

Basically, most of the world's population has been blinded, apparently by a mysterious meteor shower, and the characters have to figure out what to do with themselves in the aftermath. It is an undramatic, sometimes dry, exploration of how to create a functioning society after the collapse of civilisation. Wyndham does not seem particularly interested in the cause of the mass blindness, but is more interested in the human problems that result from it. Different groups posit different approaches for how best to go on-- authoritarian rule, communal living, polygamy, or strict adherence to pre-apocalyptic norms.

I’m not sure I agree with those who interpret the book as especially sexist or pro-oligarchy. Bill spends much of the novel as a bystander to the radical ideas of others, and I think Wyndham wanted to show how the collapse of society as we know it would necessitate a major rethinking of how the human race could move forward. I read the sexist and Machiavellian ideas espoused by certain characters as an exploration on Wyndham’s part, not a manifesto.

In fact, rather than being misogynistic, I think the author's depiction of the instrumentalization of women’s bodies for "the greater good," and his showing how quickly women’s agency can be threatened when law and order fall away, make for powerful cautionary tales.

More philosophy than sci-fi horror, and a bit dry and subdued, but it provides some food for thought.]]> 4.03 1951 The Day of the Triffids

author: John Wyndham
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: classics, sci-fi, clothbound-own, 2025, dystopia-utopia
review:

It must be, I thought, one of the race’s most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that “it can’t happen here”—that one’s own little time and place is beyond cataclysms. And now it was happening here.

The Day of the Triffids was not at all what I expected. I had expected, with it being written in the 1950s, the attitudes to be dated (which, to be honest, it wasn’t that bad) and I had expected, given the title and its cultural legacy, it to be about flesh-eating plants called triffids. Which, bizarrely, it isn’t.

Surprisingly, the triffids are actually secondary to the central story. They are a bit of a background menace, occasionally complicating things, but you could take them out and pretty much the same story would be told. In fact, I was a little bit disappointed with how the potential horror of the triffids was never fully utilised.

Instead, what we have here is a fairly typical post-apocalyptic sci-fi. (Yes, I do understand it is fairly typical because many others copied it, and that Wyndham paved the way for other writers to do a better job (José Saramago, for one), but, hey, I can't help that I came to it late.)

Not that it's bad. But the most interesting part of this lil shop of horrors was wasted, in my opinion.

Basically, most of the world's population has been blinded, apparently by a mysterious meteor shower, and the characters have to figure out what to do with themselves in the aftermath. It is an undramatic, sometimes dry, exploration of how to create a functioning society after the collapse of civilisation. Wyndham does not seem particularly interested in the cause of the mass blindness, but is more interested in the human problems that result from it. Different groups posit different approaches for how best to go on-- authoritarian rule, communal living, polygamy, or strict adherence to pre-apocalyptic norms.

I’m not sure I agree with those who interpret the book as especially sexist or pro-oligarchy. Bill spends much of the novel as a bystander to the radical ideas of others, and I think Wyndham wanted to show how the collapse of society as we know it would necessitate a major rethinking of how the human race could move forward. I read the sexist and Machiavellian ideas espoused by certain characters as an exploration on Wyndham’s part, not a manifesto.

In fact, rather than being misogynistic, I think the author's depiction of the instrumentalization of women’s bodies for "the greater good," and his showing how quickly women’s agency can be threatened when law and order fall away, make for powerful cautionary tales.

More philosophy than sci-fi horror, and a bit dry and subdued, but it provides some food for thought.
]]> Stranger in a Strange Land 350 NAME: Valentine Michael Smith
ANCESTRY: Human
ORIGIN: Mars

Valentine Michael Smith is a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, watersharing, and love.]]> 525 Robert A. Heinlein Emily May 0 3.93 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land

author: Robert A. Heinlein
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, sci-fi, to-read-longlist, dick-lit
review:

]]> Lucky Jim 395182 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers back in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.�� Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.

More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”]]> 296 Kingsley Amis 0140186301 Emily May 0 3.77 1954 Lucky Jim

author: Kingsley Amis
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, to-read-longlist, dick-lit
review:

]]> The Well of Loneliness 24874088 496 Radclyffe Hall 014119183X Emily May 2 classics, 2024, dick-lit
The Well of Loneliness-- and the legal battles over its publication --increased awareness and acceptance of lesbians in British and American culture. The first few chapters, approximately the first quarter of the book, were interesting. It was an emotive journey being inside Stephen's mind as she is born into a wealthy British family and grows up butch and nonconforming in a time when pretty dresses and nice manners were all that was expected of upper class women.

However, the book quickly grew stale and meandering as we ventured further into Stephen's adult life. It went on and on forever, with multiple tangents here and there, making me wonder if shaving off a couple hundred pages might have been the best decision.

It is also a struggle, as a modern reader, to accept some of the outdated ideology. Radclyffe Hall's understanding of homosexuality is drawn from the work of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, which makes sense as there were few sources one could turn to in the 1920s. But Ulrichs saw gay men as a "female psyche trapped in a male body" and vice versa for lesbians.

So Stephen is presented as something less than-- or perhaps it is correct to say more than --a "normal" woman. So, rather than being an empowering book about how there's no right way to be a woman, instead Stephen's disdain for the feminine, plus the way she infantilizes her more femme lover, comes across as simply misogynistic and gross.

Adult Stephen reads as a pompous, entitled, racist and misogynistic man. Some modern readers have decided that Stephen and Radclyffe Hall are actually trans men, which may or may not be the case. Impossible to say with the author long dead. But if Stephen is indeed a man, then he's a dick.]]> 3.80 1928 The Well of Loneliness

author: Radclyffe Hall
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1928
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/04
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2024, dick-lit
review:
I really wanted to like this more than I did.

The Well of Loneliness-- and the legal battles over its publication --increased awareness and acceptance of lesbians in British and American culture. The first few chapters, approximately the first quarter of the book, were interesting. It was an emotive journey being inside Stephen's mind as she is born into a wealthy British family and grows up butch and nonconforming in a time when pretty dresses and nice manners were all that was expected of upper class women.

However, the book quickly grew stale and meandering as we ventured further into Stephen's adult life. It went on and on forever, with multiple tangents here and there, making me wonder if shaving off a couple hundred pages might have been the best decision.

It is also a struggle, as a modern reader, to accept some of the outdated ideology. Radclyffe Hall's understanding of homosexuality is drawn from the work of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, which makes sense as there were few sources one could turn to in the 1920s. But Ulrichs saw gay men as a "female psyche trapped in a male body" and vice versa for lesbians.

So Stephen is presented as something less than-- or perhaps it is correct to say more than --a "normal" woman. So, rather than being an empowering book about how there's no right way to be a woman, instead Stephen's disdain for the feminine, plus the way she infantilizes her more femme lover, comes across as simply misogynistic and gross.

Adult Stephen reads as a pompous, entitled, racist and misogynistic man. Some modern readers have decided that Stephen and Radclyffe Hall are actually trans men, which may or may not be the case. Impossible to say with the author long dead. But if Stephen is indeed a man, then he's a dick.
]]> Foundation (Foundation, #1) 40793127 The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.]]> 255 Isaac Asimov Emily May 2 4.17 1951 Foundation (Foundation, #1)

author: Isaac Asimov
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1951
rating: 2
read at: 2020/11/07
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2020, sci-fi, classics, dick-lit
review:

]]> No Longer Human 11222940 Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.

Semi-autobiographical, No Longer Human is the final completed work of Osamu Dazai. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is a powerful exploration of an individual's alienation from society.]]> 177 Osamu Dazai Emily May 2 classics, 2022, dick-lit Stoner and I guess this is an example of how algorithms fail to understand the nuances of book preferences.

Sure, there are some similarities between Stoner and No Longer Human-- male protagonist narrates a mostly unremarkable life story, both are sad --but where Stoner was a sad book filled with many uplifting moments of passion, love and integrity, Dazai's book is extremely depressing. Every little event in the life of the protagonist, no matter how seemingly innocuous, is ugly, hateful, without a single speck of joy.

I don't want to be too harsh because I know this book was very personal to the author, who struggled with his own mental health and eventually committed suicide. But reading this book was a horrible experience for me and I am in a good place right now. Please do not read this if you are struggling with depression. I could feel the book dragging me down into a dark place as I was reading.

Some authors showcase the beauty in the mundane, but here the narrator finds every bit of ugliness in it. Nothing brings him joy and we are repeatedly told this matter-of-fact. The misogyny was nauseating, too.

I never could think of prostitutes as human beings or even as women. They seemed more like imbeciles or lunatics.

I often enjoy dark, gritty books, but there are some minds I just don't want to be inside.]]> 3.80 1948 No Longer Human

author: Osamu Dazai
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1948
rating: 2
read at: 2022/02/03
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2022, dick-lit
review:
An algorithm recommended this to me because I enjoyed Williams' Stoner and I guess this is an example of how algorithms fail to understand the nuances of book preferences.

Sure, there are some similarities between Stoner and No Longer Human-- male protagonist narrates a mostly unremarkable life story, both are sad --but where Stoner was a sad book filled with many uplifting moments of passion, love and integrity, Dazai's book is extremely depressing. Every little event in the life of the protagonist, no matter how seemingly innocuous, is ugly, hateful, without a single speck of joy.

I don't want to be too harsh because I know this book was very personal to the author, who struggled with his own mental health and eventually committed suicide. But reading this book was a horrible experience for me and I am in a good place right now. Please do not read this if you are struggling with depression. I could feel the book dragging me down into a dark place as I was reading.

Some authors showcase the beauty in the mundane, but here the narrator finds every bit of ugliness in it. Nothing brings him joy and we are repeatedly told this matter-of-fact. The misogyny was nauseating, too.

I never could think of prostitutes as human beings or even as women. They seemed more like imbeciles or lunatics.

I often enjoy dark, gritty books, but there are some minds I just don't want to be inside.
]]> <![CDATA[Jacques the Fatalist and His Master]]> 262265
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 261 Denis Diderot 0140444726 Emily May 2 classics, 2022, dick-lit
Even now, humour is completely subjective, but humour from several centuries ago is always hit and miss. I thought Voltaire's Candide-- written shortly before this one --was quite funny in parts. 150 years earlier, Don Quixote contained moments of comedic brilliance. The humour in Jacques the Fatalist, however, slipped right on past me without leaving a mark.

Jacques and his master gallivant around having supposedly comical adventures, all of which are to emphasise Jacques' philosophy that everything is prewritten and predestined. The adventures are whimsical and random and there is no character, conflict, or promised destination to really connect you to the narrative.

Harsh, but if you want to experience some men going on a trip and getting themselves in and out of comical scenarios, you could just watch The Hangover.]]> 3.88 1796 Jacques the Fatalist and His Master

author: Denis Diderot
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1796
rating: 2
read at: 2022/06/17
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2022, dick-lit
review:
Sort of interesting to analyse and study; not particularly enjoyable.

Even now, humour is completely subjective, but humour from several centuries ago is always hit and miss. I thought Voltaire's Candide-- written shortly before this one --was quite funny in parts. 150 years earlier, Don Quixote contained moments of comedic brilliance. The humour in Jacques the Fatalist, however, slipped right on past me without leaving a mark.

Jacques and his master gallivant around having supposedly comical adventures, all of which are to emphasise Jacques' philosophy that everything is prewritten and predestined. The adventures are whimsical and random and there is no character, conflict, or promised destination to really connect you to the narrative.

Harsh, but if you want to experience some men going on a trip and getting themselves in and out of comical scenarios, you could just watch The Hangover.
]]> Strait is the Gate 716381 Strait is the Gate describes a love affair between an acutely sensitive boy growing up in Paris and his cousin from the Normandy countryside that erupts into a soul-endangering passion. A devastating exploration of aestheticism taken to extremes, Strait is the Gate is a novel of haunting beauty that stimulates the mind and the emotions.

A serious purpose underlies the work of Gide, and it is from such purposes that great novelists arise. - The New York Times

A little masterpiece.... as fine as a spire on Notre Dame. - James Joyce]]> 128 André Gide 0141185244 Emily May 2 classics, 2021, dick-lit
It's not awful, just a little dull and mopey at times. I can't see the great romance some other readers have found in these pages. It is mostly about how religious fervour can be a kind of mental illness that destroys a person from within. Despite being in love with Jerome from childhood, Alissa rejects his marriage proposal and gradually withers away out of some misplaced piety. She sees romantic love as a threat to her relationship with god, and so shuns it.

Pretty dark and interesting concept. A little flowery and woe-is-me in execution. ]]> 3.48 1909 Strait is the Gate

author: André Gide
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1909
rating: 2
read at: 2021/11/21
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2021, dick-lit
review:
This took me longer to read than I thought it would when I decided to "quickly zoom through one of those 100-page classics I have on my TBR".

It's not awful, just a little dull and mopey at times. I can't see the great romance some other readers have found in these pages. It is mostly about how religious fervour can be a kind of mental illness that destroys a person from within. Despite being in love with Jerome from childhood, Alissa rejects his marriage proposal and gradually withers away out of some misplaced piety. She sees romantic love as a threat to her relationship with god, and so shuns it.

Pretty dark and interesting concept. A little flowery and woe-is-me in execution.
]]> The Immoralist 817308 The Immoralist, André Gide presents the confessional account of a man seeking the truth of his own nature. The story's protagonist, Michel, knows nothing about love when he marries the gentle Marceline out of duty to his father. On the couple's honeymoon to Tunisia, Michel becomes very ill, and during his recovery he meets a young Arab boy whose radiant health and beauty captivate him. An awakening for him both sexually and morally, Michel discovers a new freedom in seeking to live according to his own desires. But, as he also discovers, freedom can be a burden. A frank defense of homosexuality and a challenge to prevailing ethical concepts, The Immoralist is a literary landmark, marked by Gide's masterful, pure, simple style.

Translated from the French by David Watson, with an introduction by Alan Sheridan.]]> 144 André Gide Emily May 2 classics, 2022, dick-lit 3.46 1902 The Immoralist

author: André Gide
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1902
rating: 2
read at: 2022/06/23
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2022, dick-lit
review:

]]> The Power and the Glory 3690
In his introduction, John Updike calls The Power and the Glory, "Graham Greene's masterpiece��. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist."]]> 222 Graham Greene 0142437301 Emily May 2 classics, 2024, dick-lit
For a short book of just over 200 pages, it felt like an endless waiting game. I kept waiting for the moment when I would connect to this "whisky priest", feel for him, and become immersed in his story. I kept waiting for an inexplicable something else to happen that would elevate the story and make it more interesting to me. I kept waiting... and then suddenly it was the end.

The best aspect of The Power and the Glory is that it introduced me to an area of Mexican history I knew little about-- La Cristiada. This was a time when Catholicism was outlawed, and in some areas of Mexico the ban was enforced with violence. Catholics were tortured and executed; churches were fired upon. But that premise is where my interest ends.

The rest of the story follows a whisky priest on the run in rural Tabasco. He moves around, evades capture and ruminates over Catholic doctrine. Themes of duty, faith, sin and a heavy serving of Catholic guilt abound. Sound interesting? Then this is the book for you.]]> 3.99 1940 The Power and the Glory

author: Graham Greene
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1940
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/18
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2024, dick-lit
review:
I've tried with Greene, I really have, but I've yet to read a story of his that truly grabs me and holds my attention.

For a short book of just over 200 pages, it felt like an endless waiting game. I kept waiting for the moment when I would connect to this "whisky priest", feel for him, and become immersed in his story. I kept waiting for an inexplicable something else to happen that would elevate the story and make it more interesting to me. I kept waiting... and then suddenly it was the end.

The best aspect of The Power and the Glory is that it introduced me to an area of Mexican history I knew little about-- La Cristiada. This was a time when Catholicism was outlawed, and in some areas of Mexico the ban was enforced with violence. Catholics were tortured and executed; churches were fired upon. But that premise is where my interest ends.

The rest of the story follows a whisky priest on the run in rural Tabasco. He moves around, evades capture and ruminates over Catholic doctrine. Themes of duty, faith, sin and a heavy serving of Catholic guilt abound. Sound interesting? Then this is the book for you.
]]> The Graduate 6973956 192 Charles Webb 0141190248 Emily May 2 classics, dick-lit 3.25 1963

author: Charles Webb
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.25
book published: 1963
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, dick-lit
review:

]]> Naked Lunch 29847100 A stunning clothbound edition of William S. Burroughs's cult classic, designed by the acclaimed Coralie-Bickford Smith.

Nightmarish and fiercely funny, William Burroughs' virtuoso, taboo-breaking masterpiece Naked Lunch follows Bill Lee through Interzone: a surreal, orgiastic wasteland of drugs, depravity, political plots, paranoia, sadistic medical experiments and endless, gnawing addiction. One of the most shocking novels ever written, Naked Lunch is a cultural landmark, now in a restored edition incorporating Burroughs' notes on the text, alternate drafts and outtakes from the original.

'A masterpiece. A cry from hell, a brutal, terrifying, and savagely funny book that swings between uncontrolled hallucination and fierce, exact satire' Newsweek

'Naked Lunch is a banquet you will never forget' J. G. Ballard]]> 304 William S. Burroughs 0241284635 Emily May 2 3.14 1959

author: William S. Burroughs
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.14
book published: 1959
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, clothbound-own, dick-lit
review:

]]> Franny and Zooey 849079 131 J.D. Salinger 0140237526 Emily May 2 3.82 1957

author: J.D. Salinger
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1957
rating: 2
read at: 2015/09/14
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2015, short-stories, classics, dick-lit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Casino Royale (James Bond, #1)]]> 5821 181 Ian Fleming 0141187581 Emily May 2 3.54 1953

author: Ian Fleming
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1953
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: mystery-thriller, classics, dick-lit
review:

]]> Walden 5999217
In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his home town of Concord, Massachusetts to begin a new life alone, in a rough hut he built himself a mile and a half away on the north-west shore of Walden Pond. Walden is Thoreau's classic autobiographical account of this experiment in solitary living, his refusal to play by the rules of hard work and the accumulation of wealth and above all the freedom it gave him to adapt his living to the natural world around him.

This new edition of Walden traces the sources of Thoreau's reading and thinking and considers the author in the context of his birthplace and his sense of its history - social, economic and natural. In addition, an ecological appendix provides modern identifications of the myriad plants and animals to which Thoreau gave increasingly close attention as he became acclimatized to his life in the woods by Walden Pond.]]> 448 Henry David Thoreau 0199538069 Emily May 2 classics, 2016, dick-lit
That being said, I suppose Thoreau's pretentious, self-righteous douchebaggery was extremely revolutionary for the time it was written. He went to live in a shack in the woods and decided that gave him the right to impart truisms about life. Some of them are almost interesting, too, except that Thoreau's prose is so overwritten and dull that you have to work really hard to dig out the gems underneath.]]> 3.56 1854 Walden

author: Henry David Thoreau
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1854
rating: 2
read at: 2016/04/24
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2016, dick-lit
review:
If you find yourself having difficulty sleeping, this book is a fantastic cure for insomnia. Just writing a review about it makes me want to lie my head down and close my eyes.

That being said, I suppose Thoreau's pretentious, self-righteous douchebaggery was extremely revolutionary for the time it was written. He went to live in a shack in the woods and decided that gave him the right to impart truisms about life. Some of them are almost interesting, too, except that Thoreau's prose is so overwritten and dull that you have to work really hard to dig out the gems underneath.
]]> Paradise Lost 20525403 Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, who are motivated by all too human temptations but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.

Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition, Paradise Lost is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years, it has held generation upon generation of audiences in rapt attention, and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture.]]> 453 John Milton 0141394633 Emily May 3 3.97 1667 Paradise Lost

author: John Milton
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1667
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: poetry, classics, clothbound-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[King Solomon's Mines (Headline Review Classics)]]> 751789
Charged with finding a missing explorer, Quatermain embarks on the perilous journey to the mines. With courage in his heart and an ancient map inscribed with blood as his guide, he's determined to succeed. But the map doesn't mark the savage beasts, devilry, dark arts and bloody battles that await him ....]]> 288 H. Rider Haggard 0755338871 Emily May 1 classics, 2022, dick-lit
I always try to make allowances for the time in which a book was written, but this one has aged so badly that it’s just impossible to find the good in it. To be fair, it is both dated AND the kind of book I would never enjoy anyway, so there's that.

King Solomon's Mines is an adventure/survival story about three white guys trekking across Southern Africa murdering herds of African elephants for ivory, being disgusted when Zulu men dare to speak to them as equals, spending a few pages listing all of the guns they brought with them, and eyeing up some hot local women-- the description of whom was so grotesquely racist that I made note of it, but find now I can't bring myself to type it out.

This is all while they're on the hunt for Sir Henry's missing brother, yada yada, who cares anyway?

The whole point of a survival story is that you should want the characters to survive, but why would I? I was honestly delighted when one of the elephants�� a ‘brute�� according to Quartermain —fought back when they attacked him. But, of course, none of the main three were killed. [spoilers removed]

If you’re looking for the most ugly, nauseating and culturally disrespectful example of imperialism, then look no further than this book. A bunch of white guys go tromping through southern Africa with guns, acting like they own the place, sneering at the locals and killing the wildlife.

Allan Quartermain, go fuck yourself.]]> 3.66 1885 King Solomon's Mines (Headline Review Classics)

King Solomon's Mines (Headline Review Classics)

author: H. Rider Haggard
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1885
rating: 1
read at: 2022/11/21
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2022, dick-lit
review:
A lot of books have aged badly, but some are worse than others. This is one of the worst, in my opinion.

I always try to make allowances for the time in which a book was written, but this one has aged so badly that it’s just impossible to find the good in it. To be fair, it is both dated AND the kind of book I would never enjoy anyway, so there's that.

King Solomon's Mines is an adventure/survival story about three white guys trekking across Southern Africa murdering herds of African elephants for ivory, being disgusted when Zulu men dare to speak to them as equals, spending a few pages listing all of the guns they brought with them, and eyeing up some hot local women-- the description of whom was so grotesquely racist that I made note of it, but find now I can't bring myself to type it out.

This is all while they're on the hunt for Sir Henry's missing brother, yada yada, who cares anyway?

The whole point of a survival story is that you should want the characters to survive, but why would I? I was honestly delighted when one of the elephants�� a ‘brute�� according to Quartermain —fought back when they attacked him. But, of course, none of the main three were killed. [spoilers removed]

If you’re looking for the most ugly, nauseating and culturally disrespectful example of imperialism, then look no further than this book. A bunch of white guys go tromping through southern Africa with guns, acting like they own the place, sneering at the locals and killing the wildlife.

Allan Quartermain, go fuck yourself.
]]> The Book of Disquiet 45974 The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague." Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.]]> 544 Fernando Pessoa 0141183047 Emily May 1 classics, 2021, dick-lit philosophical emo journal entries.

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.��

"Each face, even if it belongs to someone we saw only yesterday, is different today simply because today is not yesterday."

"I've just re-read these pages, in which I write with a clarity that will last only as long as they last, and I ask myself: What is this, and what is it for? Who am I when I feel? What dies in me when I am?"

]]> 4.46 1982 The Book of Disquiet

author: Fernando Pessoa
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1982
rating: 1
read at: 2021/05/23
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2021, dick-lit
review:
God, this was so bad it was almost funny. This is literally just a book full of ~~philosophical~~ emo journal entries.

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.��

"Each face, even if it belongs to someone we saw only yesterday, is different today simply because today is not yesterday."

"I've just re-read these pages, in which I write with a clarity that will last only as long as they last, and I ask myself: What is this, and what is it for? Who am I when I feel? What dies in me when I am?"

]]> <![CDATA[The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings]]> 152114
Introduced by Simone de Beauvoir's landmark essay, 'Must We Burn Sade?' Unique in its enduring capacity to shock and provoke, 'The 120 Days of Sodom' must stand as one of the most controversial books ever written. Edition includes 'Oxtiern, or The Misfortunes of Libertinage' and 'Ernestine'. Compiled and translated by Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver. With introductions by Simone de Beauvoir and Pierre Klossowski.]]> 800 Marquis de Sade 0099629607 Emily May 1 classics, erotica 3.12 1785 The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings

The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings

author: Marquis de Sade
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.12
book published: 1785
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, erotica
review:
Well, what's to like? The part where a grown man [spoilers removed]
]]> <![CDATA[They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?]]> 9537951 The New Republic

The depression of the 1930s led people to desperate measures to survive. The marathon dance craze, which flourished at that time, seemed a simple way for people to earn extra money dancing the hours away for cash, for weeks at a time. But the underside of that craze was filled with a competition and violence unknown to most ballrooms.

Horace McCoy was born near Nashville, Tennessee in 1897. His novels include I Should Have Stayed Home (1938), and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948).]]> 128 Horace McCoy 184668739X Emily May 1 2012, dick-lit 3.89 1935 They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

author: Horace McCoy
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1935
rating: 1
read at: 2012/08/20
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2012, dick-lit
review:
This book is essentially about existentialism and nihilism. However, the plot of this small novel features little more than a dance marathon competition and the petty arguments that happen behind the scenes. I suppose this is meant to form a platform on which Gloria can whine about life but it's just insanely boring. I obviously made a mistake choosing to get some of the shorter novels on the 1001 list out of the way, so far they've all been really disappointing.
]]> <![CDATA[The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)]]> 2052
This is an alternate cover edition.]]> 231 Raymond Chandler 0394758285 Emily May 2 3.96 1939

author: Raymond Chandler
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1939
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: mystery-thriller, classics, dick-lit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Of Mice and Men (Little Clothbound Classics)]]> 62026017 153 John Steinbeck 0241620236 Emily May 4 4.09 1937

Of Mice and Men (Little Clothbound Classics)

author: John Steinbeck
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1937
rating: 4
read at: 2004/04/01
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, clothbound-own, dick-lit
review:

]]> Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1) 826383 Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, including longtime friend Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Dora, Mack and his boys, Lee Chong, and the other characters in this world where only the fittest survive, to create a novel that is at once one of his most humorous and poignant works. In her introduction, Susan Shillinglaw shows how the novel expresses, both in style and theme, much that is essentially Steinbeck: “scientific detachment, empathy toward the lonely and depressed…and, at the darkest level…the terror of isolation and nothingness.��

]]> 185 John Steinbeck 0140187375 Emily May 3 classics, 2025, dick-lit East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath.

In this book, we visit brothel owner Dora Flood, Chinese grocer Lee Chong, marine biologist Doc, a bunch of unemployed rogues led by Mack, and the disabled boy Frankie who struggles to fit in anywhere, amongst others. Cannery Row's short vignette-style chapters flit between so many different characters that I didn't feel particularly invested in any of them, save maybe Frankie. This was not the case in the other two books I mentioned above.

There is a beauty in how this ragtag bunch of characters come together and forge connections. It is thematically and atmospherically strong-- the gritty setting, the poetry in the mundane --but structurally plotless, and reads like a collection of loosely connected episodes.]]> 4.07 1943 Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1)

author: John Steinbeck
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1943
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2025, dick-lit
review:
Hmm. I enjoyed Steinbeck's writing, as always, and he creates a strong sense of place in this sardine-canning district of Monterey, California, but I find I prefer his longer family epic novels like East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath.

In this book, we visit brothel owner Dora Flood, Chinese grocer Lee Chong, marine biologist Doc, a bunch of unemployed rogues led by Mack, and the disabled boy Frankie who struggles to fit in anywhere, amongst others. Cannery Row's short vignette-style chapters flit between so many different characters that I didn't feel particularly invested in any of them, save maybe Frankie. This was not the case in the other two books I mentioned above.

There is a beauty in how this ragtag bunch of characters come together and forge connections. It is thematically and atmospherically strong-- the gritty setting, the poetry in the mundane --but structurally plotless, and reads like a collection of loosely connected episodes.
]]> <![CDATA[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas]]> 7747 230 Hunter S. Thompson 0007204493 Emily May 3 2012, dick-lit 3.95 1971

author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1971
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2012, dick-lit
review:

]]> Ulysses 58106893 The greatest novel of the twentieth century, now in a beautiful Clothbound Classics centenary edition

Following the events of one single day in Dublin, the 16th of June 1904, and what happens to the characters Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly, Ulysses is a monument to the human condition. It has survived censorship, controversy and legal action, and even been deemed blasphemous, but remains an undisputed modernist classic: ceaselessly inventive, garrulous, funny, sorrowful, vulgar, lyrical and ultimately redemptive. It confirms Joyce's belief that literature 'is the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man'.]]> 939 James Joyce 024155263X Emily May 0 3.88 1922 Ulysses

author: James Joyce
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1922
rating: 0
read at: 2013/05/30
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2013, clothbound-own, dick-lit
review:
I did it. I finished it. And it was everything everyone said it would be: difficult, infuriating, brilliant, insane, genius, painful, etc. You get the idea, I'm sure. I can't even rate it. How do you rate a book that left you wide-eyed with awe at the author's brilliance, yet simultaneously made you want to bring him back to life just so you could kill him?
]]> Dubliners 222993408 368 James Joyce 0241720206 Emily May 0 0.0 1914

author: James Joyce
name: Emily May
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1914
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, clothbound-own, tbr-other, dick-lit
review:

]]> Disgrace 749626 Man Booker Prize Winner (1999)

After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding.

For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.]]> 220 J.M. Coetzee Emily May 3 modern-lit, 2020, dick-lit 3.77 1999 Disgrace

author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2020/11/23
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: modern-lit, 2020, dick-lit
review:

]]> The Sorrows of Young Werther 16640 149 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0812969901 Emily May 2 classics, 2019, dick-lit “I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.��
A lot of classic novels contain certain things that make us cringe a little today but The Sorrows of Young Werther is one that, more than most, really hasn't aged well. I do not know if some people consider this tragically romantic, but it is not my idea of romance. Werther is a serious pest and borderline stalker. He needs to let it go.

In this story, Werther falls head over heels for the first pretty girl who wants to dance with him, obsesses over her, and continues to pursue her even after learning of her engagement to another man; even after she openly refuses him. He turns up at her house constantly. He attempts to force kisses upon her. We suffer through accounts of his sex dreams about her. They're not called that, but that's basically what they are.

The book is written as a series of letters to Werther's friend Wilhelm. It's a tiny book, but it feels so much longer because these letters mostly consist of Werther's repetitive internal struggles. Of course he believes he is the only person in the history of the world to feel like he does, and he repeatedly insists that Charlotte - the object of his obsession - secretly loves him, too, despite her protestations.

I can sympathise with the pain and angst of young love, even when it is wrapped up in a flowery, introspective package. I liked Call Me By Your Name after all. However, any sympathy I had for Werther quickly dissipated when he continued to harass both Lotte and her now husband, Albert. I guess this is just an old example of predatory behaviour being excused because of passion, and men's emotions being perceived as more important than the damage they do to the women they're directed at.

It also romanticizes [spoilers removed] And though the intellectuals smell blood when anyone dares to call a 300-year-old classic "boring", I'm going to have to be philistine and say it: It's also really boring.

| | | | ]]> 3.71 1774 The Sorrows of Young Werther

author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1774
rating: 2
read at: 2019/12/07
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2019, dick-lit
review:

“I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.��

A lot of classic novels contain certain things that make us cringe a little today but The Sorrows of Young Werther is one that, more than most, really hasn't aged well. I do not know if some people consider this tragically romantic, but it is not my idea of romance. Werther is a serious pest and borderline stalker. He needs to let it go.

In this story, Werther falls head over heels for the first pretty girl who wants to dance with him, obsesses over her, and continues to pursue her even after learning of her engagement to another man; even after she openly refuses him. He turns up at her house constantly. He attempts to force kisses upon her. We suffer through accounts of his sex dreams about her. They're not called that, but that's basically what they are.

The book is written as a series of letters to Werther's friend Wilhelm. It's a tiny book, but it feels so much longer because these letters mostly consist of Werther's repetitive internal struggles. Of course he believes he is the only person in the history of the world to feel like he does, and he repeatedly insists that Charlotte - the object of his obsession - secretly loves him, too, despite her protestations.

I can sympathise with the pain and angst of young love, even when it is wrapped up in a flowery, introspective package. I liked Call Me By Your Name after all. However, any sympathy I had for Werther quickly dissipated when he continued to harass both Lotte and her now husband, Albert. I guess this is just an old example of predatory behaviour being excused because of passion, and men's emotions being perceived as more important than the damage they do to the women they're directed at.

It also romanticizes [spoilers removed] And though the intellectuals smell blood when anyone dares to call a 300-year-old classic "boring", I'm going to have to be philistine and say it: It's also really boring.

| | | |
]]> White Noise 6719051 310 Don DeLillo 0143105981 Emily May 2 classics, 2024, dick-lit 3.92 1985

author: Don DeLillo
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1985
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/30
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2024, dick-lit
review:

]]> A Confederacy of Dunces 29847091 352 John Kennedy Toole 024128466X Emily May 1 3.86 1980

author: John Kennedy Toole
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1980
rating: 1
read at: 2016/04/28
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2016, modern-lit, dnf, clothbound-own, dick-lit
review:

]]> Catch-22 4610 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

With a new preface by the author

Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage.

Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him. Joseph Heller's bestselling novel is a hilarious and tragic satire on military madness, and the tale of one man's efforts to survive it.]]> 570 Joseph Heller 0099477319 Emily May 4 classics, dick-lit 3.97 1961 Catch-22

author: Joseph Heller
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, dick-lit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Something Wicked This Way Comes]]> 34466883
For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.

Few novels have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury’s unparalleled literary masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes . Scary and suspenseful, it is a timeless classic in the American canon.]]> 337 Ray Bradbury 1501167715 Emily May 3 2022, horror, dick-lit 3.85 1962

author: Ray Bradbury
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/02
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2022, horror, dick-lit
review:

]]> Fahrenheit 451 13451770
The classic novel of a post-literate future, ‘Fahrenheit 451�� stands alongside Orwell’s ��1984�� and Huxley’s ‘Brave New World�� as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.

Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.]]> 227 Ray Bradbury Emily May 2
On average, people today are smarter than they were fifty years ago. And I know this is where older generations throw up their hands in indignation and start yelling about how exams were much harder in "their day" and they really had to work for it. I am not disputing this, I have no idea if it's true or not. But what is true is that more people today than ever before are going on to further education after high school, the barriers that once stopped the working class from being as smart as society's more privileged members are slowly starting to break down bit by bit. Literacy rates have been on the rise the whole world over:

It's true. We have entered the age of computers and electronics, social networking and personal media players... and the world has not ended, the robots haven't taken over and people haven't become so stupid that they feel the need to rage a war against books. And this is the main reason why I think Bradbury's dystopian tale is out of date and ineffective. The author was writing at a time when technology was really starting to get funky, the digital age was still decades away but people were doing all kinds of crazy things like listening to music with little cones plugged into their ears. Bizarre.

Readers often choose to view Bradbury's story as one about censorship instead of technology because that allows a more modern reader to connect with the world portrayed. But taken as it was intended, I just don't share the author's sentiments. Not all technology is good, but I'm of the opinion that the good outweighs the bad: medical advancements, entertainment, access to information via the internet... I'm the very opposite of a technophobe because, in my opinion, forward is the way to go. And I'm sure it's because of the age I was born into, but I cannot relate to the apprehension that Bradbury feels when he tells of this true story (note: this is not in the book):

"In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction."

I know many still think today that we are becoming a completely unsociable species because of mobile/cell phones, social networking sites, etc. but I have made friends from all over the world thanks to technology. I have talked to people that fifty years ago I would never have known, I have learned about different cultures and ways of life because I have access to most areas of the world through the web. So, no, I'm not scared of this so-called technological threat that is somehow going to turn our brains to mush and create a society where we cannot concentrate long enough to read a book. And here is where I (finally) get on to details of this novel.

What I am supposed to believe in here is that - because of technology - humanity has become so stupid that they couldn't concentrate on books. So books were simplified at first for easier understanding, then banned, then burnt. Why? I am okay with the realistic aspect of "people have short attention spans because of technology so they don't want to read books", but why burn books? I don't see why this would need to happen and why it would become a criminal offense to have books in your home. This is where I understand why so many people prefer to apply this novel's message to censorship, because it works so much better that way. The argument for the technological side of it is weak - even for the time in question.

author: Ray Bradbury
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1953
rating: 2
read at: 2012/10/13
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, dystopia-utopia, 2012, dick-lit
review:
As I write this review, the year is 2012. We do not live in a perfect world; in fact, in many ways we don't even live in a good world. But one thing I believe with all my heart is that we live in a world which, on the whole, is better than it was fifty years ago. Now, I know I'm writing with limited perspective and that progression and development hasn't been the same all over the globe and even the definition of those words can change depending on what part of the world you live in. But here's what I do know: the average world life expectancy is higher, the infant mortality rate is lower, access to education is greater and the amount of countries that hold regular, fair elections has increased.

On average, people today are smarter than they were fifty years ago. And I know this is where older generations throw up their hands in indignation and start yelling about how exams were much harder in "their day" and they really had to work for it. I am not disputing this, I have no idea if it's true or not. But what is true is that more people today than ever before are going on to further education after high school, the barriers that once stopped the working class from being as smart as society's more privileged members are slowly starting to break down bit by bit. Literacy rates have been on the rise the whole world over:

The best thing about this whole book is the discussion about the phoenix and the comparisons made between the legendary bird and humanity: in the same way that the bird dies in flames only to be reborn again from the ashes, humanity constantly repeats mistakes made throughout history and never seems to learn from them. Secondly, to give credit where it's due, the writing is suitably creepy for a dystopian society and I understand why people who do actually share Bradbury's concerns would be caught up in the novel's atmosphere. But, overall, this wasn't a great dystopian work for me, I didn't agree with the point it was trying to sell me and I don't think it made a very successful case for it. Furthermore, I had some problems with the pacing. The book is split into three parts and the first two are much slower and uneventful than the last one - which seems to explode with a fast sequence of events in a short amount of time and pages. Disappointing.

]]> <![CDATA[A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories]]> 91885 1 �� In a Season of Calm Weather �� (1957) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
7 �� A Medicine for Melancholy �� (1959) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
16 �� The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit �� non-genre �� (1958) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
39 �� Fever Dream �� (1948) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
46 �� The Marriage Mender �� (1954) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
51 �� The Town Where No One Got Off �� (1958) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
59 �� A Scent of Sarsaparilla �� (1953) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
66 �� The Headpiece �� (1958) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
74 �� The First Night of Lent �� [The Irish Stories] �� (1956) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
81 �� The Time of Going Away �� (1956) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
88 �� All Summer in a Day �� (1954) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
94 �� The Gift �� (1952) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
97 �� The Great Collision of Monday Last �� [The Irish Stories] �� (1958) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
104 �� The Little Mice �� (1955) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
109 �� The Shore Line at Sunset �� (1959) �� short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of The Shoreline at Sunset)
118 �� The Day It Rained Forever �� (1957) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
129 �� Chrysalis �� (1946) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
150 �� Pillar of Fire �� (1948) �� novelette by Ray Bradbury
188 �� Zero Hour �� (1947) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
198 �� The Man �� (1949) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
210 �� Time in Thy Flight �� (1953) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
215 �� The Pedestrian �� (1951) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
220 �� Hail and Farewell �� (1953) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
228 �� Invisible Boy �� (1945) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
237 �� Come Into My Cellar �� (1962) �� short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!)
254 �� The Million-Year Picnic �� [The Martian Chronicles] �� (1946) �� short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of The Million Year Picnic)
264 �� The Screaming Woman �� [Green Town] �� (1951) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
278 �� The Smile �� (1952) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
284 �� Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed �� (1949) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
299 �� The Trolley �� [Dandelion Wine] �� (1955) �� short story by Ray Bradbury
303 �� Icarus Montgolfier Wright �� (1956) �� short story by Ray Bradbury]]> 307 Ray Bradbury Emily May 4 4.16 1998 A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

author: Ray Bradbury
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/30
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2012, short-stories, sci-fi, dick-lit
review:

]]> A Scanner Darkly 756984
The undercover narcotics agent who calls himself Bob Arctor is desperate to discover the ultimate source of supply. But to find any kind of lead he has to pose as a user and, inevitably, without realising what is happening, Arctor is soon as addicted as the junkies he works among...]]> 220 Philip K. Dick Emily May 0 4.05 1977 A Scanner Darkly

author: Philip K. Dick
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: sci-fi, to-read-longlist, dick-lit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]> 7083 169 Philip K. Dick 1857988132 Emily May 3 sci-fi, 2013, dick-lit 3.95 1968

author: Philip K. Dick
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1968
rating: 3
read at: 2013/09/07
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: sci-fi, 2013, dick-lit
review:

]]> The Man in the High Castle 22588 This a previously-published edition of ISBN13: 9780141186672.

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war—and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan.

This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.]]> 249 Philip K. Dick Emily May 3 3 1/2 stars
Scientifically and politically, this is absolute genius. The way Philip K. Dick masterfully rewrites history and portrays this alternate United States is quite incredible and I can easily see why the guy has such a huge following. That being said, while this novel is undeniably clever, I think what it lacks is a human touch. I found it hard to care about any of the mishmash of characters, which for me means that I ultimately found it hard to care about the direction of the story and its outcome.

What this novel does best of all is remind people how close the Nazis came to winning the Second World War. The author changes events during the war only slightly, but it makes a huge difference in the long run. Generally, people who aren't historians probably don't tend to think about the reality of this situation which - for most people alive today - seems of a completely different world and time. The Second World War seems somewhat unreal, a story told in textbooks and retold in movies about how the bad guys started killing people and naturally the good guys swooped in and put an end to it all. As if it was all that simple. In reality, Hitler came scarily close to victory and it's only through reading this book that I came to realise just German occupation was during the war.

The Man in the High Castle presents a very convincing alternate history where Hitler and the Nazis, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan had been the victors instead. The world-building is rich and Philip K. Dick doesn't neglect the little details in his fictional society. I especially like the way we get a glimpse of how this takeover has affected the rest of the world, not just the United States. We learn about the situation across multiple continents and how the Nazi beliefs have spread. He even goes so far as to tell a story within a story, as he imagines an author in this world speculating on what life would have been like if the Nazis hadn't won. The writer guesses some things correctly and others less so; this latter is especially interesting.

My rather middling rating reflects the fact that this is a slow and technical novel. It is not a particularly emotionally-engaging novel. Dick focuses on the politics and technicalities of the world, never developing much of a connection between the reader and any of the large cast of characters. My brain was impressed, and I'm glad I read it, but my heart wasn't really feeling it.

| | | | ]]> 3.60 1962 The Man in the High Castle

author: Philip K. Dick
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2012/08/24
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: sci-fi, 2012, dystopia-utopia, dick-lit
review:
3 1/2 stars
Scientifically and politically, this is absolute genius. The way Philip K. Dick masterfully rewrites history and portrays this alternate United States is quite incredible and I can easily see why the guy has such a huge following. That being said, while this novel is undeniably clever, I think what it lacks is a human touch. I found it hard to care about any of the mishmash of characters, which for me means that I ultimately found it hard to care about the direction of the story and its outcome.

What this novel does best of all is remind people how close the Nazis came to winning the Second World War. The author changes events during the war only slightly, but it makes a huge difference in the long run. Generally, people who aren't historians probably don't tend to think about the reality of this situation which - for most people alive today - seems of a completely different world and time. The Second World War seems somewhat unreal, a story told in textbooks and retold in movies about how the bad guys started killing people and naturally the good guys swooped in and put an end to it all. As if it was all that simple. In reality, Hitler came scarily close to victory and it's only through reading this book that I came to realise just German occupation was during the war.

The Man in the High Castle presents a very convincing alternate history where Hitler and the Nazis, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan had been the victors instead. The world-building is rich and Philip K. Dick doesn't neglect the little details in his fictional society. I especially like the way we get a glimpse of how this takeover has affected the rest of the world, not just the United States. We learn about the situation across multiple continents and how the Nazi beliefs have spread. He even goes so far as to tell a story within a story, as he imagines an author in this world speculating on what life would have been like if the Nazis hadn't won. The writer guesses some things correctly and others less so; this latter is especially interesting.

My rather middling rating reflects the fact that this is a slow and technical novel. It is not a particularly emotionally-engaging novel. Dick focuses on the politics and technicalities of the world, never developing much of a connection between the reader and any of the large cast of characters. My brain was impressed, and I'm glad I read it, but my heart wasn't really feeling it.

| | | |
]]> <![CDATA[All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)]]> 635719 Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood. Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.

From the trade paperback edition.]]> 302 Cormac McCarthy 0394574745 Emily May 2 modern-lit, 2016, dick-lit 4.15 1992 All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)

All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)

author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1992
rating: 2
read at: 2016/04/09
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: modern-lit, 2016, dick-lit
review:

]]> No Country for Old Men 12497 Alternate Cover Edition for ISBN 9780375706677

In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, the setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones.

One day, Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law–in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell–can contain.

As Moss tries to evade his pursuers–in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives–McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines.
No Country for Old Men is a triumph.]]> 309 Cormac McCarthy Emily May 0 4.15 2005

author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: mystery-thriller, tbr-other, dick-lit
review:

]]> The Road 1221381 The searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son’s fight to survive.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,�� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 287 Cormac McCarthy Emily May 3 3.92 2006 The Road

author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2012/09/12
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: dystopia-utopia, 2012, dick-lit
review:

]]> Blood Meridian 7117831 Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.]]> 355 Cormac McCarthy 0330544586 Emily May 2 historical, 2023, dick-lit Blood Meridian has been on my to read list for well over a decade because, quite honestly, I sensed it was not my cup of tea.

I’m not sure why exactly�� maybe it’s that I’ve suffered my way through Faulkner and Hemingway already and had this gut feeling that they and McCarthy would sit at the same super deep literary dudes lunch table, y’know?

But it is one of those books that has wormed its way onto lists of "must read before you die" and "greatest American literature" so I just had to know. And now I do.

Blood Meridian was pretty much ignored by critics when it was first released and it wasn't until later that a bunch of them-- Harold Bloom, David Foster Wallace, etc. etc. --decided it was a super deep and clever book about human nature and violence. I understand completely why it was ignored initially and not so much why it was rediscovered as a masterpiece.

What happens in this book is that a group of murderers called the Glanton gang go from town to town brutally killing and scalping indigenous Americans, as well as others. There is an unnamed protagonist, the "kid", and a dispassionate narration of this happened and then this happened and they all lay in pools of blood.

Lots of people die gruesome deaths, but they were just 2D, just words on a page, because Mccarthy made no effort to warm us to any of them. I was told the book was disturbing but I found it far too cold and unmoving to be disturbing. I would have been more disturbed if a single one of the characters felt real.

McCarthy describes the mountains and weather in exceptional run-on detail. It would go like�� the cymballic thunder crashed and reflected against the shimmering water lightning cleaved the sky asunder behind the precipitous mountain shadows�� and then he ripped the scalps off all the Indians and left a town full of corpses�� before plundering on into the blood-red sunset through rolling grasslands and flower-carpeted meadows shrouded in post-storm haze.

Looong descriptions of rocks and grass and then PHWACK! there goes someone’s scalp...

I could not understand what we were supposed to care about in this book. Certainly not this band of murderers, but equally unlikely all the nameless, faceless "savages" and n-words dropping left and right.

I've been genuinely trying to understand the appeal of Blood Meridian to its fans. I read some reviews, and also some of the furious comments left on negative reviews, and it seems like there are people for whom this type of writing is truly the epitome of beauty. That's fair. McCarthy does spend a long time on description. But it is just not for me.

I read passages like this and I get Nevernight vibes:

“The colt stood against the horse with its head down and the horse was watching, out there past men’s knowing, where the stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.��

author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1985
rating: 2
read at: 2023/06/28
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: historical, 2023, dick-lit
review:
Blood Meridian has been on my to read list for well over a decade because, quite honestly, I sensed it was not my cup of tea.

I’m not sure why exactly�� maybe it’s that I’ve suffered my way through Faulkner and Hemingway already and had this gut feeling that they and McCarthy would sit at the same super deep literary dudes lunch table, y’know?

But it is one of those books that has wormed its way onto lists of "must read before you die" and "greatest American literature" so I just had to know. And now I do.

Blood Meridian was pretty much ignored by critics when it was first released and it wasn't until later that a bunch of them-- Harold Bloom, David Foster Wallace, etc. etc. --decided it was a super deep and clever book about human nature and violence. I understand completely why it was ignored initially and not so much why it was rediscovered as a masterpiece.

What happens in this book is that a group of murderers called the Glanton gang go from town to town brutally killing and scalping indigenous Americans, as well as others. There is an unnamed protagonist, the "kid", and a dispassionate narration of this happened and then this happened and they all lay in pools of blood.

Lots of people die gruesome deaths, but they were just 2D, just words on a page, because Mccarthy made no effort to warm us to any of them. I was told the book was disturbing but I found it far too cold and unmoving to be disturbing. I would have been more disturbed if a single one of the characters felt real.

McCarthy describes the mountains and weather in exceptional run-on detail. It would go like�� the cymballic thunder crashed and reflected against the shimmering water lightning cleaved the sky asunder behind the precipitous mountain shadows�� and then he ripped the scalps off all the Indians and left a town full of corpses�� before plundering on into the blood-red sunset through rolling grasslands and flower-carpeted meadows shrouded in post-storm haze.

Looong descriptions of rocks and grass and then PHWACK! there goes someone’s scalp...

I could not understand what we were supposed to care about in this book. Certainly not this band of murderers, but equally unlikely all the nameless, faceless "savages" and n-words dropping left and right.

I've been genuinely trying to understand the appeal of Blood Meridian to its fans. I read some reviews, and also some of the furious comments left on negative reviews, and it seems like there are people for whom this type of writing is truly the epitome of beauty. That's fair. McCarthy does spend a long time on description. But it is just not for me.

I read passages like this and I get Nevernight vibes:

“The colt stood against the horse with its head down and the horse was watching, out there past men’s knowing, where the stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.��

It's an eye roll from me.

Also, I’m getting tired of authors who are just too intellectual and literary for punctuation. Great, you know how to not use speech marks and commas. I’m happy for you.
]]> Neuromancer (Penguin Galaxy) 29889257
Before the Internet was commonplace, William Gibson showed us the Matrix—a world within the world, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace. Henry Dorsett Case was the sharpest data-thief in the Matrix, until an ex-employer crippled his nervous system. Now a new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run against an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a mirror-eyed girl street-samurai riding shotgun, he’s ready for the silicon-quick, bleakly prophetic adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.

Penguin Galaxy

Six of our greatest masterworks of science fiction and fantasy, in dazzling collector-worthy hardcover editions, and featuring a series introduction by #1 "New York Times" bestselling author Neil Gaiman, Penguin Galaxy represents a constellation of achievement in visionary fiction, lighting the way toward our knowledge of the universe, and of ourselves. From historical legends to mythic futures, monuments of world-building to mind-bending dystopias, these touchstones of human invention and storytelling ingenuity have transported millions of readers to distant realms, and will continue for generations to chart the frontiers of the imagination.

"The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein
"Dune" by Frank Herbert
"2001: A Space Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke
"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin
"Neuromancer" by William Gibson

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 277 William Gibson 0143111604 Emily May 2 sci-fi, 2025, dick-lit
But, then again, maybe not.

One of the themes of Neuromancer is that of alienation and despondency in a time of mass technology. But it also continues a modernist/postmodernist trend among 20th century authors (especially American and especially male)�� the emotionally-detached male protagonist drifting through the novel, the narrative dislocation, the dreamlike blurring of reality.

And, in truth, I simply don't like it.

It really is that simple. I don't care to read about Case, our disaffected hero, endlessly trudging through an empty, nihilistic world. There's zero emotional depth to his character, making it hard to care about his fate.

This is one of those books that never once invites you to form an emotional connection with any of the characters. These people did not feel real to me; I did not suspend disbelief for them. Throughout every chapter of this book, I was conscious that I was reading fictional words on a page.

Also, the novel's pacing is sluggish, especially for a work that’s supposed to be setting the stage for a fast-paced, technological revolution. Gibson’s tendency to linger on the esoteric details of cyberspace and hardware at the expense of character development or plot momentum makes for a less-than-engaging read.

I appreciate it as the historical artifact it is-- a pioneer of the cyberpunk genre and weirdly prescient --but that's it.]]> 3.74 1984 Neuromancer (Penguin Galaxy)

author: William Gibson
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1984
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: sci-fi, 2025, dick-lit
review:
Maybe if I had read this book in 1984, if the concepts of the matrix and cyberspace, the web and AI, were genuinely new and mind boggling to me, maybe then I might have been more impressed.

But, then again, maybe not.

One of the themes of Neuromancer is that of alienation and despondency in a time of mass technology. But it also continues a modernist/postmodernist trend among 20th century authors (especially American and especially male)�� the emotionally-detached male protagonist drifting through the novel, the narrative dislocation, the dreamlike blurring of reality.

And, in truth, I simply don't like it.

It really is that simple. I don't care to read about Case, our disaffected hero, endlessly trudging through an empty, nihilistic world. There's zero emotional depth to his character, making it hard to care about his fate.

This is one of those books that never once invites you to form an emotional connection with any of the characters. These people did not feel real to me; I did not suspend disbelief for them. Throughout every chapter of this book, I was conscious that I was reading fictional words on a page.

Also, the novel's pacing is sluggish, especially for a work that’s supposed to be setting the stage for a fast-paced, technological revolution. Gibson’s tendency to linger on the esoteric details of cyberspace and hardware at the expense of character development or plot momentum makes for a less-than-engaging read.

I appreciate it as the historical artifact it is-- a pioneer of the cyberpunk genre and weirdly prescient --but that's it.
]]> Moby-Dick 18306730 720 Herman Melville 0141199601 Emily May 3 Moby-Dick at all. The middle is the slowest part with the descriptions of ship life and whaling hurting my head quite a bit, but I enjoyed the characters and (most of the time) being inside Ishmael's mind. It's a densely-written novel so be prepared.]]> 3.73 1851

author: Herman Melville
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1851
rating: 3
read at: 2013/12/27
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2013, clothbound-own, dick-lit
review:
My expectations were so low that I actually didn't mind Moby-Dick at all. The middle is the slowest part with the descriptions of ship life and whaling hurting my head quite a bit, but I enjoyed the characters and (most of the time) being inside Ishmael's mind. It's a densely-written novel so be prepared.
]]> As I Lay Dying 77013 As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members -- including Addie herself -- as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama, As I Lay Dying is a true 20th-century classic.

This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.]]> 288 William Faulkner Emily May 2 2017, classics, dick-lit
The first problem is my lack of enthusiasm for stream of consciousness narratives. If I'm being honest, I rarely like it. I don't mind working at a book if it's hard-going, but this style of narration makes it difficult for me, personally, to ever settle into the rhythm of the book. And Faulkner takes it to a whole new level. He drops us into scenes and scenarios without any explanation; I genuinely felt like Faulkner wanted to deliberately confuse his readers about characters and ideas he could have easily portrayed in a more accessible way. Confusion for confusion's sake.

Honestly, I can think of little more boring than suffering through every thought, feeling and instinct that passes through the human mind. I have my own mind that plagues me with this randomness; I don't need to read it in someone else's perspective. I want an author to organize language into a structure that is interesting, compelling, thought-provoking... and stream of consciousness, for me, is rarely any of those things.

But that's just my tastes for the style. Trying to take a step away from that a second and view what the novel did as a whole, I can't say I enjoyed the story. Nor do I tend to enjoy books with more than two or three perspectives - and this one had fifteen! In less than three-hundred pages!

The plot follows the Bundren family after the death of their matriarch, Addie. Fifteen perspectives tell the story of the family's journey to Jefferson, where Addie is to be buried. Hauling a wagon with Addie's decomposing body, the Bundren family sets out on a nine-day journey of frequent hunger and discomfort.

Faulkner includes important themes in his work, such as religion, poverty and identity in the Southern United States, but I still feel like other authors have done this in a more palatable way. I would much rather read Steinbeck any day.

One reviewer said this of Faulkner's style and I couldn't agree more:

It is easy to be confusing. It is easy to write something beautiful and understandable for yourself. It's hard to write universal words which we can all connect.

So, so true.

| | | | ]]> 3.71 1930 As I Lay Dying

author: William Faulkner
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1930
rating: 2
read at: 2017/08/10
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2017, classics, dick-lit
review:
I've been working up to a William Faulkner book for years. His books always appear on lists of "best books of all time" and "books you should read before you die". But when I've felt in the mood for a classic or something "literary", I've always passed him up for other authors, even those with 1000+ page monsters. I think, deep down, I always sensed Faulkner just wasn't for me.

The first problem is my lack of enthusiasm for stream of consciousness narratives. If I'm being honest, I rarely like it. I don't mind working at a book if it's hard-going, but this style of narration makes it difficult for me, personally, to ever settle into the rhythm of the book. And Faulkner takes it to a whole new level. He drops us into scenes and scenarios without any explanation; I genuinely felt like Faulkner wanted to deliberately confuse his readers about characters and ideas he could have easily portrayed in a more accessible way. Confusion for confusion's sake.

Honestly, I can think of little more boring than suffering through every thought, feeling and instinct that passes through the human mind. I have my own mind that plagues me with this randomness; I don't need to read it in someone else's perspective. I want an author to organize language into a structure that is interesting, compelling, thought-provoking... and stream of consciousness, for me, is rarely any of those things.

But that's just my tastes for the style. Trying to take a step away from that a second and view what the novel did as a whole, I can't say I enjoyed the story. Nor do I tend to enjoy books with more than two or three perspectives - and this one had fifteen! In less than three-hundred pages!

The plot follows the Bundren family after the death of their matriarch, Addie. Fifteen perspectives tell the story of the family's journey to Jefferson, where Addie is to be buried. Hauling a wagon with Addie's decomposing body, the Bundren family sets out on a nine-day journey of frequent hunger and discomfort.

Faulkner includes important themes in his work, such as religion, poverty and identity in the Southern United States, but I still feel like other authors have done this in a more palatable way. I would much rather read Steinbeck any day.

One reviewer said this of Faulkner's style and I couldn't agree more:

It is easy to be confusing. It is easy to write something beautiful and understandable for yourself. It's hard to write universal words which we can all connect.

So, so true.

| | | |
]]> Light in August 10979 Light in August, a novel that contrasts stark tragedy with hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, which features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, a lonely outcast haunted by visions of Confederate glory; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.]]> 507 William Faulkner 0679732268 Emily May 0 classics, tbr-other, dick-lit 3.93 1932 Light in August

author: William Faulkner
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1932
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, tbr-other, dick-lit
review:

]]> Brave New World 3273565
Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone in feeling discontent. Harbouring an unnatural desire for solitude, and a perverse distaste for the pleasure of compulsory promiscuity, Bernard has an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations, where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress.�� Huxley’s ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece.]]> 229 Aldous Huxley 030735654X Emily May 1 anger over this rating! My first post for this book was a quote and a gif of Dean from Supernatural rolling his eyes and passing out. And people were pissed. How dare I?

Lol. I'm honestly just so tired of all the dumb comments demanding that I (all caps) "ELABORATE". It's been going on for SIX YEARS now. So I will: This is still one of the most boring emotionless books I have ever read. It seemed like a natural choice after I loved Orwell and Atwood but, my god, Huxley is a dry, dull writer.

Another reviewer called this book a "sleeping pill" and that is a fantastic description. After all the hullabaloo with my original post, I borrowed Brave New World from my local library with the intention of reading it again to give a more detailed review for those freaking out in the comments. And I returned it after suffering through only a few pages. A few years later I got the ebook, thinking I would eventually make it through somehow. But I haven't. It's so mind-numbingly dull. I don't want to do it to myself. The Globalization of World Politics was more enjoyable than this book.]]> 3.66 1932 Brave New World

author: Aldous Huxley
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1932
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, sci-fi, 2012, dick-lit
review:
Wow, the anger over this rating! My first post for this book was a quote and a gif of Dean from Supernatural rolling his eyes and passing out. And people were pissed. How dare I?

Lol. I'm honestly just so tired of all the dumb comments demanding that I (all caps) "ELABORATE". It's been going on for SIX YEARS now. So I will: This is still one of the most boring emotionless books I have ever read. It seemed like a natural choice after I loved Orwell and Atwood but, my god, Huxley is a dry, dull writer.

Another reviewer called this book a "sleeping pill" and that is a fantastic description. After all the hullabaloo with my original post, I borrowed Brave New World from my local library with the intention of reading it again to give a more detailed review for those freaking out in the comments. And I returned it after suffering through only a few pages. A few years later I got the ebook, thinking I would eventually make it through somehow. But I haven't. It's so mind-numbingly dull. I don't want to do it to myself. The Globalization of World Politics was more enjoyable than this book.
]]> Post Office 51504 208 Charles Bukowski 0876850867 Emily May 1 modern-lit, 2016, dick-lit Post Office as I do about A Confederacy of Dunces. The protagonists are so repulsive that they are not even interesting in an unlikable way, and the "plots" are made up of drinking and screwing up one's life.

Oh, and they're both hilarious, apparently. Ha.]]> 4.01 1971

author: Charles Bukowski
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1971
rating: 1
read at: 2016/08/14
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: modern-lit, 2016, dick-lit
review:
I just don't see the appeal of these "modern classics" that mostly feature men getting drunk, getting laid, being assholes and never really doing anything. I feel the same way about Post Office as I do about A Confederacy of Dunces. The protagonists are so repulsive that they are not even interesting in an unlikable way, and the "plots" are made up of drinking and screwing up one's life.

Oh, and they're both hilarious, apparently. Ha.
]]> Cat's Cradle 876077 191 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0440111498 Emily May 4 sci-fi, 2014, dick-lit 4.11 1963

author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1963
rating: 4
read at: 2014/03/11
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: sci-fi, 2014, dick-lit
review:

]]> Breakfast of Champions 12502523 Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0385334206 (ISBN 13: 9780385334204)

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.]]> 303 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Emily May 2 classics, 2016, dick-lit
This is the kind of bollocks that runs through my mind on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, I just don't find him that funny most of the time. Perhaps jokes about open beavers are funnier to readers who don't have vaginas - who knows? - but it goes sailing right over my head. Maybe this is why my invitation to the bookish intellectual convention seems to have got lost in the mail.

He also repeats the phrase "which looked like this" and follows it with a sketch of everything from a flamingo to a swastika to the aforementioned beaver, in both senses of the word "beaver". Again, is this funny? Should I find it funny?

The funniest parts are his jokes about white people and the way in which they celebrate their "discovery" of America in 1492, despite the fact that others had actually been living on the continent for thousands of years. But even that is a little overdone these days, and haven't others done it better? It sure feels like it.

That being said, I enjoyed Cat's Cradle. Easily my favourite of his works.

| | | | | ]]> 3.81 1973 Breakfast of Champions

author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1973
rating: 2
read at: 2016/07/27
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2016, dick-lit
review:
I have a little inner book snob that desperately wants to like Vonnegut. In the very unlikely event that I should find myself at a convention of bookish intellectuals, I feel like I'd fit right in if I sipped my champagne and said "Oh yes, indeed, I simply adore what Vonnegut has to say about the absence of free will..."

This is the kind of bollocks that runs through my mind on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, I just don't find him that funny most of the time. Perhaps jokes about open beavers are funnier to readers who don't have vaginas - who knows? - but it goes sailing right over my head. Maybe this is why my invitation to the bookish intellectual convention seems to have got lost in the mail.

He also repeats the phrase "which looked like this" and follows it with a sketch of everything from a flamingo to a swastika to the aforementioned beaver, in both senses of the word "beaver". Again, is this funny? Should I find it funny?

The funniest parts are his jokes about white people and the way in which they celebrate their "discovery" of America in 1492, despite the fact that others had actually been living on the continent for thousands of years. But even that is a little overdone these days, and haven't others done it better? It sure feels like it.

That being said, I enjoyed Cat's Cradle. Easily my favourite of his works.

| | | | |
]]> Slaughterhouse-Five 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.��

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Emily May 4 sci-fi, classics, dick-lit 4.10 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five

author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2004/05/15
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: sci-fi, classics, dick-lit
review:

]]> A Farewell to Arms 10149064 A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway's frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto—of lines of tired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized—is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms, written when he was thirty years old, represents a new romanticism for Hemingway.]]> 336 Ernest Hemingway Emily May 3 classics, 2024, dick-lit 3.73 1929

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1929
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2024, dick-lit
review:

]]> A Moveable Feast 52093195 182 Ernest Hemingway Emily May 3 3.91 1964

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1964
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/17
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: memoirs-or-bios, nonfiction, 2024, classics, dick-lit
review:

]]> The Old Man and the Sea 2165 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.]]> 96 Ernest Hemingway 0684830493 Emily May 3 classics, dick-lit 3.81 1952 The Old Man and the Sea

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1952
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, dick-lit
review:

]]> The Sun Also Rises 3876 The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.]]> 189 Ernest Hemingway Emily May 2 classics, 2013, dick-lit 3.81 1926

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1926
rating: 2
read at: 2013/09/06
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, 2013, dick-lit
review:

]]> Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1) 249 Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s. Tropic of Cancer is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, "one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century."]]> 318 Henry Miller 0802131786 Emily May 0 3.69 1934 Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1)

author: Henry Miller
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, to-read-longlist, dick-lit
review:

]]> Gravity's Rainbow 17242066
Reading this book is like falling down a rabbit hole into an outlandish, sinister, mysterious, absurd, compulsive netherworld. As the Financial Times said, 'you must forget earlier notions about life and letters and even the Novel.' Forty years since publication, Gravity's Rainbow has lost none of its power to enthral.]]> 902 Thomas Pynchon 0099511754 Emily May 0 tbr-other, dick-lit 4.08 1973

author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: tbr-other, dick-lit
review:

]]> The Crying of Lot 49 6892721 This is an alternate cover for ISBN 006091397X.

Oedipa Maas is made the executor of the estate of her late boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity. As she diligently carries out her duties, Oedipa is enmeshed in what would appear to be a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not-inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge.]]> 183 Thomas Pynchon Emily May 2 classics, dick-lit 3.68 1966 The Crying of Lot 49

author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1966
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, dick-lit
review:

]]> Fight Club 5759 218 Chuck Palahniuk 0393327345 Emily May 4 contemporary, dick-lit 4.19 1996

author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Emily May
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: contemporary, dick-lit
review:

]]> American Psycho 28676 American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.]]> 399 Bret Easton Ellis 0679735771 Emily May 2 2014, horror, dick-lit This book shocked me. Though not for any of the reasons I might have expected.

Not shocking fact #1: This book is about a psychopath.
Yes, how very astute of me. I hadn't seen the movie before I picked American Psycho up, but most people who know a bit about books know a bit about Patrick Bateman. Despite this book not being very old, Bateman has a certain infamy amongst fictional serial killers and psychopaths. He is so wholly devoid of morality, completely disconnected from reality and human emotion, and obsessed with things, reeling off designer name after designer name, presenting what could be seen as Ellis' criticism of modern society and consumerism.

Not shocking fact #2: This book is extremely graphic and violent.
Well, it is a book about a serial killer; I didn't expect flowers and happiness. I should warn you if you're the kind of person who gets squeamish easily or are upset by graphically violent and disturbing scenes - this isn't the book for you. Bateman describes in a detached first person narrative each grisly atrocity he commits. He is 100% sociopathic, so unmoved by what he does and so immune to any plea for mercy.

"I imagine her naked, murdered, maggots burrowing, feasting on her stomach, tits blackened by cigarette burns, Libby eating this corpse out, then I clear my throat." (This is just the stuff I feel okay including without spoiler tags).

Not shocking fact #3: Patrick Bateman is a misogynistic piece of crap.
But I don't think that necessarily means the book or the author is. Or maybe yeah, Bret Easton Ellis could be a raging misogynist, but that's really not the point I took from the book. Bateman most definitely harbors no feelings or sympathy towards women, he deconstructs the women he meets, piece by piece, until they're reduced to just a sum of boobs, ass and vagina. His psychopathic nature is not limited to women, but his absolute and unending disdain for the female sex is apparent from the very beginning. Though, he's a psychopath so I'm not sure what some people were expecting.

The misogyny debate about this book greatly interests me. If there is one thing - probably above everything else - that I can't stand in books, it must be the positive depiction of sexism, slut-shaming and/or abusive relationships. But I've never thought that just showing the existence of something as part of a story equates to endorsing it. I suppose American Psycho might promote misogyny in the same way that any violent art might promote violence.

And I always remember a conversation I had with this guy way back in high school. We all had to read weekly news stories every Friday morning in our form rooms and one week there was this piece about "cheat dating" sites. As in, sites that encouraged married people to have affairs with others looking for affairs. I remember being pretty horrified and saying to this guy "I really don't think that should even be allowed, it just encourages people to cheat". And he shrugged and said "The way I see it, if you're the kind of person who's going to stumble across that site and think 'woah, what a great idea', there probably wasn't much hope for you anyway". And, you know, I think he was right.

The #1 most shocking fact about this book: It was soooo boring.
Yeah... I wasn't shocked by the violence, the psychopath, the graphic language, or the misogyny. But it never once occurred to me that a book which promised so much horror could have me wanting to skim read with boredom.

The fact is, I found being inside Bateman's emotionally-detached mind really repetitive and dull after a while. It was impossible to form any kind of emotional connection with him and, because of the first person narration, it was also impossible to form much of an emotional connection with anything or anyone else in the novel. Secondly, the really gritty stuff doesn't happen until the second half of the book; the first half is filled with Bateman's constant descriptions of designer clothes, his misogyny-filled rants with his almost equally repulsive friends, and his completely unerotic porn-fuelled masturbation sessions. By the time things got nasty, I was already losing interest.

Boredom - way more than the graphically violent and disturbing - is unforgivable to me.

| | | | | ]]> 3.82 1991 American Psycho

author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1991
rating: 2
read at: 2014/08/08
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2014, horror, dick-lit
review:
This book shocked me. Though not for any of the reasons I might have expected.

Not shocking fact #1: This book is about a psychopath.
Yes, how very astute of me. I hadn't seen the movie before I picked American Psycho up, but most people who know a bit about books know a bit about Patrick Bateman. Despite this book not being very old, Bateman has a certain infamy amongst fictional serial killers and psychopaths. He is so wholly devoid of morality, completely disconnected from reality and human emotion, and obsessed with things, reeling off designer name after designer name, presenting what could be seen as Ellis' criticism of modern society and consumerism.

author: Jack Kerouac
name: Emily May
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: classics, lost-interest, dick-lit
review:

]]>