Saturday, May 3, 2014
Favorite books from the year
I can't really decide on a particular favorite book from the last year, since they are all so different. However, I think the ones I enjoyed most were Things Fall Apart, Candide, A Hundred Years of Solitude and Notes from Underground. I liked Things Fall Apart for its directness; it doesn't try to be ambiguous or clever, and it presents a well-told story that conveys an account of Achebe's culture and a parable of imperialism. Candide is a hilarious and pointed satire that makes some universal points. A Hundred Years of Solitude is a magical, engrossing, and profound story. I guess I can't really say I enjoyed reading Notes from Underground but it was definitely disturbing and thought-provoking, with a protagonist who is completely vile for no good reason and yet weirdly understandable.
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I felt like we read a lot of really enjoyable works this year. The books we read in the second half of the year were definitely some of my favorite. I absolutely loved Beloved! I also really liked The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I loved how much variety there was in our reading list this year.
Out of all the stories we read this year, my favorites would have to be Candide and The Metamorphosis. I liked Candide because of Voltaire' masterful use of satire; all of his jokes, though usually dark, were extremely witty and humorous. I liked The Metamorphosis because of its originality; the story was like nothing I'd ever read before and was structured in an unusual way, yet Kafka didn't just focus on destroying all past traditions, making it a lot easier and more fun to read than some more modern works, at least in my opinion. Also, I don't know if this counts because we didn't read it as a class, but I really liked my independent study book, Crime and Punishment. It was really interesting how Dostoyevsky explored the inner thoughts of a murderer in great detail rather than making a commonplace murder-mystery novel. These are my favorites, but I really enjoyed reading and discussing every story we studied this year.
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