Before reading The Yellow WallpaperI did not even know that a state of mind called Postpartum Depression exists. Wikipedia describes it better:
[…] is a type of clinical depression which can affect both sexes after childbirth. Symptoms may include sadness, low energy, changes in sleeping and eating patterns, reduced desire for sex, crying episodes, anxiety, and irritability. While many women experience self-limited, mild symptoms postpartum, postpartum depression should be suspected when symptoms are severe and have lasted over two weeks.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is written in 1892 as journal of a woman who failing to relish the joys of marriage and motherhood, is sentenced to a country and is forbid by her doctor and her husband to write. The novella can be regarded as the a autobiographical work of the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She was a prominent figure during the first-wave feminist movement in the United States. Much of her life’s work was influenced by the experiences of her early life. [You can read the full review of The Yellow Wallpaper here].
This is a call for self-honesty and harmony with nature in the writings of Henry David Thoreau.
Walden was published in 1854 written during the reign of transcendentalists of which Thoreau was a central figure. Transcendental was a philosophical movement that was influenced by romanticism, Platonism and Kantian philosophy in which one must examine and analyse the reasoning process which governs the nature of experience. German philosopher Immanuel Kant developed the base idea for this movement.
I know, most of you are familiar with the terms: The Bard, and the Bard of Avon. Recently, the world celebrated The Bard’s 400th death anniversary on April 23, 2016, and the Bard himself is unaware of.
It is almost summer everywhere and I was wondering the other summer day why is the Bard is called The Bard. In general terms, ‘bard’ means a poet. In medieval times, all bards were travelling poets who made living out of performing and telling stories. Thus so, edging out the Medieval times, our Bard was a performer in plays and loved to write plays himself.
Why Celebrate his Death Anniversary?
The reason being Shakespeare’s birthday remains unknown to us till date.
People have been reviewing Great Expectations for 150 years. It’s the essence of a classic to survive such a long time and still being read. It is also a writer’s name that adds to a classic’s character, but that is not always the case. However, with Charles Dickens it is the former case and readers have expectations. I do. Whenever I start reading a Dickens novel, I expect it to be long, and contain all the elements of a story telling. Certainly, Dickens is one of the masters of the art.
The story is of an orphan,Pip, who from the beginning of the novel is not an ideal protagonist who have to be heroes or emotionally and physically strong. The story in short is tale written in first person narrative is about a person and his “great expectations”. It is the tale of self-understanding and perception. As a young boy Pip, lives with his sister ad her husband, kind soul, of whom he is fond of in his childhood. One day his presence is at demand in front of a strange woman who lives in a grand house with her niece. This is the starting of Pip’s “Great Expectations”. (more…)
Most of the times when you see a book, you read its blurb at the back of the cover and then only few remains in your memory. Until you go to a deep sleep or you pick the book and start reading it. That’s what happened with me when I took William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury in my hands.
The title of the novel is taken from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, act 5 scene 5. It’s a tragedy. This is not a spoiler, I am just making you aware of what you have to deal with once you are deep down a hundred pages. The tragedy is about Compson family in America, featuring Caddy, Benjamin, Quentin, and Jason. Four siblings who are synonyms of rebel, immature, sensitive and obsessive, and brutal. It consists of four chapters, and the first two ones are the most difficult ones I have read.
The first chapter use a narrative technique known as the Stream of Consciousness. You might have seen it in James Joyce’s Ulysses but in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the mode is at its best. Nobody could have written it better. Or someone might, but that’s just a rational hypothetical converse. The second chapter is the silver lining between intelligence and torment. It stretches the narrative technique to its extreme. There are no punctuation at times to associate with the stream of text so one has to read it very carefully. The non-linearity of both the chapters will highly demand one’s attention. (more…)
Jack London’s Martin Eden is a rare book that would indulge any reader from page one. It is also rare since it does resemble the typical American writing as one can observe in the writing styles of American writers of early twentieth century. It’s a powerful book, one that will definitely have an impact on its readers and will leave a reader thoughtful in the end.
Set in San Fransisco, this semi-autobiographical work is the story of a sailor called Martin Eden who pursues ambitiously, dreams of education and literary fame. For a start with help of the girl, he falls in love with, he educates himself feverishly and becomes a writer, hoping to acquire the respectability sought by his society-girl. However, fame is a cruel mistress and takes her own time to develop but that doesn’t mean it will knock on one’s door. Martin pledges towards his writing everyday, once he feels confident of himself being an intellectual he starts writing articles, essays and stories and sends them to magazines and newspapers all across the country. (more…)
You can go on reading books after books for fifteen days or you can read Tolstoy’s undoubtedly masterpiece: War and Peace. How was it, you ask? Easier than I expected. Choosing the right translation plays a major role when you are reading books written in languages you are not familiar of. We will talk about that more, later.
Saying that I haven’t read Tolstoy before will be an understatement since I remember my failed attempts with Anna Karenina, twice I think. The Confession is a petite novella and is lying on my shelf just like that for months. Not a single attempt-to-read yet. War and Peace is humongous. Lots of characters introduced in first few chapters will seek you attention. Don’t start this book before going to bed. Especially before going to bed when you are starting to read it. The characters introduced in those first few chapters may help you doze off to sweeter dreams, thus you might end up loosing any interest that was the result of earlier motivation.
With lots of characters comes a lot more story lines. Tolstoy does a fantastic job in describing those story lines along with timeline of historical events, recounting them deeply and the blending of the fictional characters along with the historical ones. In short I can say, War and Peace is about five families during Napoleonic War in Russia. But that doesn’t satisfy me at all. It is about a lot more than that. It explores of human emotions during various circumstances including, war, patriotism, money, love, marriage, betrayal, forgiveness, gossip, et cetera.
The book is divided into five volumes. First one starts in 1805 when Russia is at war with Napoleon Bonaparte’s France. Tolstoy introduces his list of characters at an evening gathering held by a socialite. This party introduces us to many of the characters such as Pierre Bezukhov, and Prince Andrei are major ones. The major part of the story is either played in St. Petersburg or in Moscow. Rest are shown in various fields and outposts where the French and the Russian army are getting net to neck. Tolstoy makes the reader familiar by indulging some of the major characters in war at this time. The war is interesting if Tolstoy is describing it to us. At some point in the book Tolstoy arguably defies historians and the events described by them. He certainly disliked their way of forging with historical events. He also denies the fallacy that history is a production by some great men, instead suggesting it is the result of minute moments and decisions made by a large number of men and women. Many of the events described by him are graphic and you will end up visualising them in front of your eyes just as you see reality merely by reading Tolstoy’s words. (more…)
Notes From Underground is not doubt one of the most challenging books I have read in years. It needs a reader’s attention from the page one and till the last page. It must be read when you aware that you are conscious and you are reading the book. This book needs time absorb in a reader’s intellect. It has the power of to kick you in your guts straightaway from the first line of the book. The narrator introduces himself as a man who lives underground and refers to himself as a ‘spiteful’ person whose every act is dictated by his spitefulness. Many people would say that Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella marks the beginning of the modernist movement in literature. Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosisare some other contenders.
It is a two part novella and addresses the reader directly. First person narration is contributed by a forty something man, a retired mid-level government bureaucrat, who ruminates in his poor apartment. If somebody remember reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, they will some similarities between both of the work. Both works manage to share a solitary, restless, irritable protagonist and a feeling for the feverish.
This narrator is portrayed through Dostoyevsky’s words as a sensitive, intelligent, idealistic and morally paralysed. In the first part of the novel the protagonist, after introducing himself, complains about everything: industrial capitalism, scientific rationality, and any sort of predictive, mathematical model of human behaviour. He points out that some people love things which are not to their best advantage. His objection continues that the scientific trend is trying to define a way for a society that will function for man’s best advantage and the theory will prove a man to be a rational being and in this utopian society not a single man would need to suffer but the narrator argues that without suffering there will be nothing left that of a man’s desires. With the scientific way, the freedom to choose life in one’s own way also subsides. (more…)
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is a book full of quotes. It is the book, in which the lines must be quoted and not para-phrased. I remember first picking up this book when I was fifteen but never finished. Until last year, when I finished the book. Charles Dickens has been a very important personality in my life. I got to know him when i was thirteen when I remember reading Oliver Twist which had an impact over me at that time.
Dickens characters always has never failed to amaze me but A Tale of Two Cities is all about the storyline which is set during era of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. It is a story of love, betrayal, courage, and of sacrifice and redemption.A Tale of Two Citiesbegins with Miss Lucie Manette and Mr. Jarvis Lorry make a trip to Paris because they believe they’ve found her father. Dickens describes their venture as on their, “way to dig someone out of the grave.” After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter.
Years later after Doctor’s release, Lucie and Dr. Manette take part in the trial of Charles Darnay, who is found innocent, and Darnay seeks Lucie’s hand in marriage. When revolutionaries learn that Darnay is related to an evil aristocrat, they imprison him the next time he is in France. Sydney Carton determines he can bring value to his life by rescuing Darnay. The novel successfully cover the theme of self-sacrifice and self-worth. It also provides social commentaries on British and French culture and politics. (more…)
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens is considered to be the most closest work resembling Dickens life. It is autobiographical. is the story of a young man’s adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist.
There is a funny anecdote related to this book. At the time when I was reading David Copperfield, a friend of mine tells me that the first book Sigmund Freud gave his fiancee, Martha Bernays, on their engagement in 1882. At the moment, I wanted to question his anecdote but I thought it otherwise. I said to myself, ‘Why not read this 900 pages book and find the answer to that ‘why’ myself?’ And indeed I did.
The first half of the novel begins with the childhood of David Copperfield. The childhood starts of with his father’s death only when he is three years old. His mother, very young, pretty, and inexperienced, raises the boy with the help of her loyal maid, Clara Peggoty. Things go well, young David is growing up in a happy, loving home until his mother marries again. David’s stepfather, believes that firmness is the only way of dealing with boys. He ends up sending Davy away to a boarding school run by a cruel schoolmaster. (more…)