Reading Through the Classics: North and South

TITLE: North and South
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Gaskell
PUBLISHED: 1854
CATEGORY: Classic, Adult
GENRE: Romance
PREMISE: A young woman moves to a new town after her father has a crisis of faith.
MY THOUGHTS: The first thing that popped into my mind as I read this was "this is kind of like Pride and Prejudice" and...it honestly is basically a bit of a redux on it. Gaskell definitely does her own take on people falling in love despite differences of opinion on things. Things don't go down quite the same way. I'm not saying it's a rip-off or anything like that. But...you can sort of tell, Gaskell got a lot of inspiration from Austen. As an Austen fan, I don't mind.
This one took the social commentary to higher levels then Austen did. But there was also still plenty of heart tugging romance. I definitely see why a lot of people fell for this story. There's lots going on, a lot of things to think about and the prose are great. Very wordy at times, like most of the classics are (daily reminder: a lot of authors back then were paid by the word. The books are wordy for a reason).
This was actually a rather enjoyable classic. I'll definitely be looking into Gaskell's other books in the future.
WHO SHOULD READ: Romance fans, Jane Austen fans, Bronte fans

Book Review: Human Acts

TITLE: Human Acts
AUTHOR: Han Kang
PUBLISHED: January 17th, 2017 (in the US)
CATEGORY: Adult
GENRE: Historical Fiction, Drama
PREMISE: Several different people recall their experiences during a violent student uprising in South Korea
MY REVIEW: So confession time: I tried to read The Vegetarian last year. Which was the book that Kang first wrote that finally got translated to English in 2016 and has basically put Han Kang's name on the map now. I...couldn't get into it. I got what the author was doing. Her writing was damn good in it. It...just wasn't for me, so I wound up ditching it. But I thought perhaps it was just because I'm not into horror all that much. So I decided to give Kang one more shot with this one. Luckily, this one was much more my speed.
I do admit...I was a bit confused at places. It's a very metaphorish sort of book and the author tends to assume you know about the event she's talking about. This is a fair assumption. This was published in Korean first and from what I've been able to gather, this event was huge in South Korea. Me...well, we don't get much news about other countries out here unless that news directly involves the US somehow. So...I was lost in places to say the least. But, I understood enough to get the gist of what happened.
This book is beautifully written. I may not have understood some of the historical bits going on, but there was enough commentary on human nature and whatnot for it to not really matter.
WHO SHOULD READ: fans of The Vegetarian, literature fans, Murukami/asian literature fans
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five gorgeous sentences

Book Review: Lost in a Book

TITLE: Beauty and the Beast-Lost in a Book
AUTHOR: Jennifer Donnelly
PUBLISHED: January 31rst, 2017
CATEGORY: Middle-Grade
GENRE: Fantasy/Media Tie-In
PREMISE: Taking place during Belle's time in the castle, this new story shows Belle getting sucked into an enchanted book in Beast's castle.
MY REVIEW: Sorry for my absence this week. It's been a busy few days. But I have been reading. I just haven't been blogging. Today, since the movie is coming out, I thought I'd do a review about one of Disney's many Beauty and the Beast tie-in books. I randomly picked this one up because a) I admit, I'm excited for the film. b) Jennifer Donnelly wrote it, and aside from the mermaid series, I have liked most of what she's written.
Sadly...this is more along the lines of her mermaid series which had great imagination...but really dumbed down writing.  This is more of that and look authors, I get it can be a change to write MG when you've previously written adult fiction or YA. But you don't have to dumb down the writing just because you're writing for a younger audience. I swear reading Donnelly's MG books in comparison to her adult or YA books...it just feels like two completely different authors. I have to say, I prefer the adult/YA writer.
Story wise...this was honestly just okay. I have to say, if this is how the movie Belle is going to be, then I'll probably enjoy the movie because I like this really smart and spunky Belle. I also enjoy the family dynamics between the servants. These peeks into what the movie may be like, are interesting. But on the whole...the book is just average.
WHO SHOULD READ: Major Beauty and the Beast fans, younger readers
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five enchanted books just laying around for...reasons I guess

Book Review: The Sense of an Ending

TITLE: The Sense of an Ending
AUTHOR: Julian Barnes
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: Adult
GENRE: Contemporary/Drama
PREMISE: A man thinks back over his life, particularly some incidents in his youth.
MY REVIEW: This book is a perfect example of why I scoff when literature snobs try to tell me a literature book is always better then anything else simply because it's literature. Yeah, no. There are poor literature books out there, just like every other genre.
In this book's defense, it's not that it's really bad. There are some beautiful prose here. I'm sure there's an audience somewhere for this book. I'm just...not that audience. Sorry, I like things to actually happen in a story. In this one...hardly anything happens. It is less then two hundred pages and it felt like a slog to get through, that's how bored I was while reading it. Once again: all the pretty writing in the world is not going to help you if your story is dull. I know I keep repeating this, but apparently, it needs repeating. I'm not even going to go into the annoying way this book treated its female characters. We'd be here all day.
So yeah...I was not a fan of this. I don't think it's the worst thing ever. Again, there are some really poignant lines in it. But that is not enough to make me actually enjoy reading it. I really don't understand how they're going to be able to make a movie out of this (it comes out in March, hence why I read this at all) as again: nothing much really happens. I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of changes.
WHO SHOULD READ: Literature fans, Virgin Suicide fans
MY RATING: Two and a half out of Five snores