classicshelf

[classicshelf]

review of: tuesdays with morrie

spoilers ahead

my rating: 3.75/5⭐️

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> wow! what a lovely novel. it’s been a while since i’ve picked up a book of nonfiction, but i’m certainly glad i gave this one a go.

> going into it, you already know the outcome, but that doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking. it’s amazing to see such rich and beautiful conversations about life from the perspective of someone who is near death. this is a book i think would have helped me tremendously in high school when i had no real positive outlook on life and was quite the pessimist. morrie’s words will definitely stick with me, especially my favourite quote of his: “love each other or die.”

> this was an extremely quick read, it took only two days to get though as the margins are massive and the font is quite big, and majority of the book is dialogue. i do wish there was possibly a bit more depth, as at times for me it was difficult to connect with mitch. i know the book was not as much about mitch as it was about morrie, but as it was from mitch’s perspective, i felt really distanced from him. i think if i found this book during my high school years, it would have impacted me greatly, i think i may have just missed the mark in my life for this to be extremely profound. maybe it’s the very simplistic writing style, im not sure. either way, it is not bad storytelling at all, i think im just more of a poetic person, so i found it sometimes too surface level for me to truly connect with. that is a problem of my own, not a problem of the book.

> rest in peace to morrie, what a wonderful man, thank you so much for sharing such a vulnerable portion of your life with millions of people. you are special to me and i do not even know you.

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new insanely great thrifted book haul! everything in this photo cost me $2.50 total!

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Review of Maurice by E. M. Forster

(spoiler free)

My Rating: 3.5/5⭐️

—> I wish Forster could have known how much of an impact this novel would have on queer and gay communities of the modern day. Scandalous for its time, and therefore published posthumously nearly 50 years after it was written, Maurice is a fictitious story based on the real lives of two gay men in late 1800s/early 1900s England.

—> This novel makes you feel everything, from sadness to helplessness to joy, you are feeling not only the emotions of the protagonist Maurice, but those around him as well. The characters are realistic and have flaws of their own, no one is the hero in this story, but more importantly, no one is the villain. You end up empathizing and also disagreeing with their decisions, but ultimately it is made clear that even the hard choices were made with honesty and led to important growth of the characters.

—> The women of this novel really positively roused me! Kitty, Ada, Pippa, Mrs. Hall, even Mrs. Durham and Anne, were all wonderful characters in this novel. I hear much talk of this novel being misogynistic, and to a degree that is definitely true. The way the women are cast aside and portrayed sometimes in a villainous light can be quite jarring, but i do believe it is important to remember that we are reading the novel from the prospective of Maurice, a man who struggles deeply as he discovers he is a gay man during an incredibly homophobic period of time, and I like to think this “hatred” for women is a projection of his “inability” to love a woman like a typical heterosexual man of the time. Though I don’t excuse misogyny, I think it’s also critical to see through the eyes of the character who is narrating the story.

(slight spoilers below)

—> I wish there was more of Alec in the novel, their story felt quick and nearly on the brink of non-believable. I could not seem to feel the chemistry between them at all, and I think that is why I knocked my rating down from 4 to 3.5 stars. I needed more depth to his character, I craved for him to be fleshed out but he just wasn’t, and it was hard for me to mentally move on from Clive after over half the book was about him. That is a personal opinion of course, but so are all my other points.

—> I also wish there was more of Maurice’s sisters! Kitty and Ada seemed so fun and interesting, and I really wanted to hear more of Kitty’s quick quips and Ada’s playfulness.

—> Overall, this was my second novel of the year and I am so glad I finally got around to it!

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really great second hand book haul! $5 for all! i always get so excited when i see good poetry collections at the thrift store

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little birthday haul 😁

which one is your favourite?

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another great thrift haul! can’t believe ocean vuong was at my small town second hand store?

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what are your thoughts on The Stranger by Albert Camus?

my rating: 4/5⭐️

(my image)

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> intro post <

hellooooo…

— you can call me rocket, i am 22 years old and currently studying creative writing and publishing. i have a deep love for literature, especially poetry and classic novels, and i have been collecting second hand books for just over a year now.

— my top 5 novels (at this point in my life) include:

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier

Lord of the Rings (trilogy), J. R. R. Tolkien

Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, Anne Carson

The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

— i’m dedicating this side blog to all things books, but i have a main blog specifically for lotr, which is @r0cket-lotr , i also collect tolkien books

— i am undecided if i will post any of my own writing on this blog, but who knows, perhaps i will

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lovely thrift haul from yesterday :)

(my image)