Tag: Classic

Authors I have read

Authors I have read

Posted March 1, 2015 by @amanhimself in Book List, Books / 0 Comments

Earlier today, just hovering on ‘My Books’ section on Goodreads I found an astonishing stats page that tells you about the authors you have most read, ranking according to the amount of books read of each author. It helps to recall a lot of involuntary memories of when I read those authors, and how I felt about their work. This stats does not show those authors for whom I have read only one book. Thus, I conclude a list of some those writers and the number of books written by each I have managed to read, and a recommendation from my part, in that order. Ian Rankin- 16 books I have read       Set In Darkness introduced me to the world […]

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Book Review: Middlemarch by George Eliot

Book Review: Middlemarch by George Eliot

Posted February 19, 2015 by @amanhimself in Books, classics, Reviews / 0 Comments

The magnificent book that, with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people Virginia Woolf It took me almost 9 days to finish reading Middlemarch. It’s huge, but George Eliot certainly knows how to play with a reader’s imagination by practicing the art of puppetry through her characters. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, a novel of more than 750 pages (of course, depending on the edition) is a work of realism. This massive novel is composed out of eight books that reflect a form serialisation. Starting with a short prelude that introduces the character of Dorothea to the finale in which the post-novel providences of the main characters are examined. Middlemarch is an unfolding story of the lives and loves […]

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The Unknown Van Gogh

The Unknown Van Gogh

Posted February 13, 2015 by @amanhimself in Books, Essay, Reviews / 0 Comments

Admire as much as you can. Most people do not admire enough. ― Vincent van Gogh I can’t stop admiring his art work. Sometimes I just want to drown myself in them. Anyone familiar with the drawings and paintings Van Gogh produced will certainly observe that he just not created any beauty with his art work, but the beauty that would give people something to think about. During his short, intense life, one will discover that The Letters of Vincent van Gogh highlight many facets of his personality that are suggested by his work as a visual artist. These complete letters linked with brief passages of connecting narrative and showing all the pen-and-ink sketches provide both a unique self-portrait and a vivid picture of the contemporary cultural […]

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What to learn from Dante’s Inferno?

What to learn from Dante’s Inferno?

Posted January 4, 2015 by @amanhimself in Books, Essay / 0 Comments

Dante’s Inferno offers a great amount of lessons that are considered to be moral and necessary. Born in Florence to a noble family, and ended up spending almost half of his life in exile Dante presents The Divine Comedy which is believed an epic, with various moral lessons and taking a reader’s conscience in to his grateful imagination that is altogether a different world from what we are living and it’s basis are the same moral values we believe in. In the review, I talked about how iconic it is that a piece of literature like Dante’s can survive almost 700 years and reaching a state of being well-known. That’s the beauty of his work. “How hard it is to tell what it was like, […]

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BOOK REVIEW: Inferno by Dante Alighieri

BOOK REVIEW: Inferno by Dante Alighieri

Posted December 24, 2014 by @amanhimself in Books, classics, Non-Fiction, Reviews / 0 Comments

Inferno by Dante Alighieri My rating: 5 of 5 stars Imagine that feeling, when you are reading a book and by the end it makes you feel complete. We all have observed that by one or the other book(s). Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno is one of them. Written almost 700 years ago, it still has the mesmerizing capacity to capture a human’s attention. It’s iconic for a literary work to survive a 700 years and Dante’s work has reached that status: most people at least know of the Inferno, even if they haven’t read it. Dante’s Inferno, the first third of what has come to be known as the Divine Comedy. Dante himself only referred to it as a Comedy […]

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BOOK REVIEW: Matilda by Roald Dahl

BOOK REVIEW: Matilda by Roald Dahl

Posted November 24, 2014 by @amanhimself in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

Matilda by Roald Dahl My rating: 5 of 5 stars To celebrate Roald Dahl’s birthday in my on way, I choose this book. I often regret on not coming across his books in my childhood as each of them are fascinating and Matilda is no exception. The book’s a pure work of fiction, a classic I’d say. The story revolves around a five year old girl, Matilda who starts knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and reading Dickens. Even more remarkably, her classmates love her even though she’s a super-nerd and the teacher’s pet. But everything is not perfect in Matilda’s world. For starters she has two of the most idiotic, self-centered parents who ever lived. Then there’s the large, busty […]

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BOOK REVIEW: The Last Man by Mary Shelley

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Man by Mary Shelley

Posted October 24, 2014 by @amanhimself in Books, classics, Reviews / 0 Comments

The Last Man by Mary Shelley My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars Critics consider The Last Man is Mary Shelley‘s most important novel after Frankenstein. Since I read Frankenstein, a few months back, my obsession with the author’s writing style grew and I wanted to gradually examine Shelley’s writing by reading her other works.Thus, I picked this 500 pages long novel that explores similar thematic concerns as in Frankenstein, though from a vastly different perspective. The nightmarish story envisions the end of humanity from a ruthless and inescapable plague. Full of heart-wrenching loss, The Last Man tests the resilience of humanity, as well as its capacity for sorrow and grief. The storytelling starts at the constant node following the timeline […]

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PULP FICTION, Anyone?

PULP FICTION, Anyone?

Posted July 30, 2014 by @amanhimself in Books, Essay / 0 Comments

No, I am not talking about Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction here. But what is Pulp Fiction anyway? The real pulp fiction goes back to the magazines that used cheaper pulp paper in order to sell in great volume to a voracious reading public. These magazines had their heyday in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. It was fiction for the people, for the guy on the crowded subway going to work, or the busy mother with five kids who got a little reading time at night. It was for the people who wanted to be caught up in a fictive dream. It was not written in a style aimed at some elite literati.

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TUESDAY TOP TEN: 10 Stories to read at The New Yorker

TUESDAY TOP TEN: 10 Stories to read at The New Yorker

Posted July 22, 2014 by @amanhimself in Uncategorized / 0 Comments

The New Yorker relaunched its website yesterday with complete makeover signifying the first step in the magazine’s new focus on the web. Part of that initiative is the magazine’s decision to open up its archives to the general public for the next three months. Until the website puts up its metered pay wall sometime in the fall, the New Yorker editors will be releasing curated collections of stories periodically. I am pulling out with a list of Ten Stories that I have read since the archives are free to access (and yes, I tried not to sleep as I had the intention to read all the stories in the archives but being a human I finally dozed off) and I think you should take a […]

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BOOK REVIEW: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

BOOK REVIEW: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Posted July 20, 2014 by @amanhimself in Books, classics, Essay, Goth, Reviews / 0 Comments

For several years, I avoided reading FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelly because the name had been caught up in endless clichés and had been inextricably linked with the horror genre, which I consider a bad form of fiction. However, being obsessed on reading more Gothic Fiction and the author herself I decided to give it a read and I confess that I am sorry I have waited for this long. The story behind the writing this great piece of Gothic Fiction is as animate as the book itself. In 1816, at Lord Byron’s villa on shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron himself and his guests Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and John Polidori. Byron, inspired by some fireside readings of supernatural tales, suggested that each member of the party should write […]

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