Me and Tender is the Night

Have you ever started a book hating the characters and then by the end of it, you ended up rooting and loving them? This is how I feel about Fitzgerald’s ‘Tender is the Night’. As I pledge to read more classics, Fitzgerald is one of the authors that works I always want to read.

The book consists of three books and with each book, the story gets deeper and more revealing. It opens with a scene at a beach in South of France with a 17 year-old actress, Rosemary Hoyt. She travels with her mother and at that beach she falls in love with Dick Diver, a charismatic man in his thirties. Rosemary was charmed by not only Dick, but also his beautiful wife, Nicole. At first, I disliked Rosemary for being so naive and hopelessly in love, but then as the story got more complex, her naive love was necessary for providing a contrast between hers and Dick and Nicole’s love.

Me and Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is like a myth to me. Maybe like Moby Dick or Hamlet. Books or works that I hear too often and scare me because they are important piece of literature. Last year I resolved to read more notable classic literatures and since Penguin published the book and its cover is illustrated by Ruben Toledo, I decided to buy it. I thought: if I don’t like it, at least it’ll look good on my shelf.

But not only does it look good, Jane Eyre is exceptional. It begins like a Cinderella story. Jane is 10 when her mother died, she was left orphaned and she lived with her uncle, Mr.Reed and his family. In the household, only his uncle is kind to her. After he passed away, Mrs. Reed wants to get rid of Jane but she can’t because of her husband’s dying wish. So Jane has to endure abuse – mentally and physically from her aunt and her three cousins. The only one whoo is kind to her is Bessie the maid. Later, after an incident, Jane is sent to a charity school far from home. Jane is glad to be able to leave Reed’s house and – this is why I like Jane – she confronts Mrs.Reed and tells her that she will never call her ‘aunt’ again, that she hates her and her children.

Me and The Virgin Suicides

It was just a couple years back I realised that Virgin Suicides was based on a book written by Jeffrey Eugenides. I planned to read it and finally bought the book last week. The book is republished by Picador Modern Classic and has a beautiful cover that I think suits the atmosphere of the story (by then I hadn’t read it – only remembered the nuance of the movie I had seen 13 years ago – melancholic and dreamy).

The Virgin Suicides was narrated by one of the teen boys who were obsessed with the Lisbon girls: Mary, Therese, Lux, Bonnie and Cecilia. The boys spent their days and nights watching the girls’ house and saw them as something unreal. It could be seen since the beginning that the girls weren’t brought up normally. Their mother was very strict and religious; their father – a math teacher in their school – always listened to his wife and didn’t have much say about how things ran at their household.

Seven Books for Bibliofeed

Last month, @bibliofeed an account in Instagram which shows books and their reviews by bibliophiles all around the world, asked me to give some book reviews for a week in their site. I was so excited and honored that I mulled over which books to post over than two weeks! Here are the seven books and their short reviews. Hope you like it!

Against Popular Belief

Haruki Murakami, one of the wisest authors I have known (but all authors are wise to some extent I think), said that if you only read books that everyone else was reading, you could only think what everyone was thinking. In another words, you lost your originality.

Haruki Murakami, one of the wisest authors I have known (but all authors are wise to some extent I think), said that if you only read books that everyone else was reading, you could only think what everyone was thinking. In another words, you lost your originality.