Posts in category Book Review
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
I recently listened to the audiobook of Kim by Rudyard Kipling as part of my Nobel literature project. Kipling won the prize in 1907, so he is currently the earliest Nobel laureate I have read. I think I read The Jungle Book and Just So Stories as a kid (or had them read to me), but this was my first time reading Kipling as an adult. I had se [...]
The Wild Iris, Louise Glück
I’ve been trying to read more poetry, and I happened to read Louise Glück’s collection The Wild Iris shortly before she won the Nobel Prize in literature this year. I don’t feel qualified to write anything about poetry. I don’t know a lot about poetry, so I often feel like I’m missing references and things about [...]
Inka History in Knots (Book Review)
This post originally appeared at scientificamerican.com.
Imagine that in a few hundred years, archaeologists stumble on some of your old files. Maybe they find spreadsheets of tax information, medical bills, or bank statements, or maybe text files with old emails or drafts of your novel. These archaeologists cannot read Latin script, and no o [...]
Secondhand Time, Svetlana Alexievich
I recently read Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich as part of by Nobel laureate reading project, which is still slowly chugging along. She won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2015.
This book took me about a month to get through, and while I’m glad I did, I probably won’t be reading more of her work anytime soon. The book contains mostly [...]
Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
I took Babbitt with me on a trip earlier this summer because my copy is quite small and lightweight and Sinclair Lewis won the 1930 Nobel Prize for literature, and though it is going slowly, I’m still interested in reading Nobel laureates. Around the 80-page mark, I wasn’t so sure. The main character, George Babbitt, was entertain [...]
Prose and Prose-Poems of Gabriela Mis...
In 1945, Gabriela Mistral became the first Latin American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. I recently picked up Selected Prose and Prose-Poems, a collection of her work published in 2002. Works in the book appear both in the original Spanish and translated into English by Stephen Tapscott. I wished the book had dated the work. I w [...]
Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro was the most recent Nobel laureate in literature. I read Remains of the Day in graduate school, and I’m left with memories of restraint and quiet regret but not a lot of more distinct feelings or pictures. I was planning on rereading that one, but it was checked out from my library while the ebook of Nocturnes was availab [...]
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
I read Lord of the Flies as part of my Nobel literature project. I checked out the e-book from my local library and read it at the end of my travel in Europe this summer. I finished it in CDG waiting for my flight back home. Golding won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1983, the year I was born, but Lord of the Flies was written in 1954, the [...]
Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
I read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse as part of my Nobel literature project. Hesse received the Nobel in 1946. Siddhartha was published in 1922. I was glad to read a German author in Germany. I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg (translated by Gunther Olesch, Anke Dreher, Amy Coulter, Stefan Langer, and Seymon Chaichenets) and read it on my e [...]
Blindness, José Saramago
Blindness by José Saramago is the subject of the first reflection in my Nobel literature project. Saramago, a Portuguese author, was the Nobel laureate in literature in 1998. Blindness was published in Portuguese (as Ensaio sobre a cegueira, or Essay on Blindness) in 1995 and English in 1997.
I read Blindness in 2011. My memory is a bit hazy, [...]
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