Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

So this may be hard for some people to believe, but I just read my first Steinbeck novel ever. I know, I know, I know... I'm an English major. Unfortunately, I'm an English major who has yet to have a Steinbeck-fan as a professor. And in high school, the honors classes didn't read him. But considering how many absolute classics he's written, I had to read some of his stuff. And I must tell you, I loved it!

I love the way he writes. He incorporates so much description into the plot line. Instead of introducing the setting and the backgrounds of the characters before setting up the plot, he incorporates it all together. Which is beautiful if you ask me. As much as I love Jane Austen, I must admit that at times her novels are a bit verbose when it comes to descriptions. Not that it's a bad thing, but you can definitely tell a difference in the intended audience between the two time periods.

In Jane Austen's time period, the people reading books were the wealthy who could A) afford a book and B) had the leisure time to read a book. The authors were catering to a class of people who would really savor a book and had plenty of time to read. John Steinbeck on the other hand, was writing for a much more current time period. The average reader was anyone between the people who could afford to buy books during the Great Depression and the people who would borrow books from the library. These books needed more action, because the reader of the time period didn't have as much leisure time. They weren't looking necessarily for a book to take up the countless hours of their day, but rather for a book to relax them after a hard day of work. In other words, they wanted something that moved quicker.

Fast forward now to today. Authors know that for their book to be a bestseller it has to be able to be made into a movie. More detail is being added in, but the story lines are also more complex. Take two writers in particular: John Grisham and Tom Clancy. Their novels, especially their later novels, are designed for action movies. Their chapter breaks align perfectly with jumping back and forth between two story-lines in a movie. Reading the books you feel like you're reading the screen play of a movie.

So now, you have to ask yourself. Do you like the type of novels coming out or would you rather have a higher class of literature to read. Would you like to go back to being the "gentle reader" that earlier authors wrote to. If so there's only one thing you can do... buy books that live up to your standards. Sure the public library is a great place to find new books and read something before you buy it, but if you really love a book buy it. Authors won't continue to write their books just because they're very popular at the library. They need to be a best seller. So if you find a book you love, do an author a favor and go buy it... not second hand either, go to a bookstore and buy a brand new copy. In tha way you can support the authors you love.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

This is a book that you have to be prepared to read. It's definitely not an easy book to get through, but it's so worth it. When I say it's not an easy book to get through, I mean emotionally. I flew through the book because the writing was so enthralling, but emotionally, you have to be prepared.

This is the story of a pedophile... who marries a girl's mother just so he can have unlimited access to her. When the mother dies in a freak accident, he runs off with the girl and drives all over the country trying to make her (Lolita/Dolores) fall in love with him (she's twelve when the book begins). Fortunately the protagonist (Humbert Humbert) is in jail when he writes his story, so at least you can rest securely knowing he's not roaming the streets.

Despite it's disturbing storyline, this book is a must-read. Written by a Russian, it shows his complete mastery of the English language. More than just that impressive feat though, is the interesting angle that many scholars have put on it. This is more than just the story of a pedophile, it's the story of the "Old World"s fascination with America. Humbert is a Swiss citizen who was raised in France, but came over to America to get away from the stodgy traditions and feelings of Europe. He fell in love with the idea of America and her vibrancy.

One thing that really struck me with this symbolism is his travels. He first travels from coast to coast trying to make his new "lover" happy. She's a spoiled brat who only wants junk food and movies, while he tries to encourage her in the finer things of life--good literature for the most part. Once he's travelled everywhere, he returns to New England and puts Lolita in a private school in order to give her the best in modern education (the school by the way, is absolutely ridiculous). When she loses interest in that, it's back to travelling, but in a more structured way with Lolita controlling things more (she's 14 at this point).

While it's a very frustrating novel to get through, it ends up with Lolita escaping from Humbert to have a semi-normal life. At the end of the novel she's 17, married, and pregnant. She has to ask Humbert for money, but after that she goes on to lead a happy life with her husband.

While I whole-heartedly loved this book, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who shies away from "hard" books.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Last summer I read The Kite Runner by this author and loved it, so I knew I would love this one. I absolutely love this man's writing style! He manages to write novels that have so many different levels, but they don't bog you down. At first glance you may look at the book and think that it's going to take you at least a week to get through (depending on how quickly you read, etc.), but it goes so quickly.

This novel had one major difference in style from The Kite Runner that I loved though. The Kite Runner is written in one person's point of view (or maybe 3rd person omniscient... I don't remember... but it follows just one person), but A Thousand Splendid Suns is written from two different points of view. I loved his style for doing this because the story continues... he doesn't tell about the same event from the two different points-of-view. While the multiple angles of the same story may work for some people, telling a continuous story while switching between points of view helps to keep the story going.

Like The Kite Runner, this book makes you realize how good your life is. It's a heart-breaking look at how women were treated in Afganistan for many years. In some ways it reminds me of Reading Lolita in Tehran, but these women have even less options than the narrator of that book did. They are the traditional women who were married very young (14 or 15) and had very little education. They married a man many years older than them and had to deal with sharing a husband although they are 15 years apart in age and 20-40 years apart in age from their husband.

I loved this book and would whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone looking for a good read before school starts.