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Books/Plays I Still Love After All These Years
 
 



 Books/Plays I Stil...  


  
Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club)
Leo Tolstoy

Penguin Classics, 2004

A deeply human book that repays many re-readings

+ A classic worth reading
+ Indifference? NOT HERE!
+ Masterful
  
  











  



  
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel
Haruki Murakami

Vintage, 1998

Weird but engaging

+ Chronicle of the Lost
+ More fun than sitting alone in a pitch-black well!

Toru Okada, the protagonist, loses his job, his cat, and his wife and goes looking for all three. His search introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters. Strange occurances abound. In the end, this book has too many loose ends (perhaps because the English translation is abridged) and ...
  
  











  



  
The Makioka Sisters
Junichiro Tanizaki

Vintage, 1995

Every Family Has Their Ups and Downs

+ Outstanding
+ Family drama in every detail

This beautiful novel set in pre-World War II Osaka completely transported me to it's time and place. Mr. Tanizaki has drawn the characters of the Makioka family with great care and precision. I sat bolt upright when he first puts Yukiko together with her domineering little niece Etsuko, a scene ...
  
  











  



  
Long Day's Journey into Night
Eugene O'Neill

Yale University Press, 2002

As Good As It Gets

+ Great play, not for light reading
+ Living death in the middle class
+ NO EXIT
+ The Great American Drama of the 20th Century
  
  











  



  
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Harper Perennial, 2004

puleeze

+ Read it
+ A profound book, and one of the best I've read

It's so disappointing, not to mention depressing, to read the negative reviews of this book on line here. We are speaking of one of the dozen finest books of the twentieth century. The failure is not the book's. I encourage all of you to try again--let the book lift you.
  
  











  



  
Kokoro
Natsume Soseki

Gateway Editions, 1957

An Insightful Read

+ DEEP & SOU RIVETING...not to mention an interest grabber.
+ subtle, disturbing examination of the heart

By using his experiences living in the late Meiji period of Japan, Natsume Soseki wrote an insightful novel entitled "Kokoro," which was translated in English language by Edwin McClellan. The book is broken into three sections, "Sensei and I," "My Parents and I," and "Sensei and His Testament." The ...
  
  











  



  
Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics)
Jane Austen

Penguin Classics, 2003

Loving Tension and a Fine Balance

+ "Sense and Sensibility" - a must-read
+ Elinor and Marianne....What great sisters!
+ An enduring classic
+ Sense and Sensibility Review- Arghavan
  
  











  



  
The House of Mirth (Signet Classics)
Edith Wharton

Signet Classics, 2000

Old New York's pomp viewed with a sharp discerning eye

+ Good book for the genre
+ Men, Women & Money in the 1900's
+ Struggle. Failure. Struggle...
+ A novel for a buck!
  
  











  



  
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath

Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006

Why, oh, why was I reading Holden Caulfield when I should have been reading Esther Greenwood?

+ I was moved

One might think that a novel about a young college woman's experience with madness in the mid-20th century would come across as dated or even quaint. On the contrary, as I read I found myself nodding emphatically, and even calling up friends to tell them about passages I'd read that were ...
  
  











  



  
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002

Perhaps the best novel ever written in the history of mankind

+ Bothers Karamazov
+ Dark and Beautiful
+ What a messed up family!
+ Understanding the Russian
  
  











  



  
Wuthering Heights (Bantam Classics)
Emily Brontė

Bantam Classics, 1983

very intense

+ Gothic romance
+ Love doesn't always make us happy.

The outdated writing style takes a little getting used to, but once you do, it's good. It's incredible to me how the author, with her unusually limited experience of the outside world, who probably never had a boyfriend or lover in her life and lived a secluded life in a remote part of Yorkshire ...
  
  











  



  
Couples
John Updike

Ballantine Books, 1996

Take their wives, please

+ The Dissatisfactions of Marriage (4.3*s)
+ an excellent insight into what we can become...
+ No Regrets About Missing This Scene
  
  











  



  
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)
Oscar Wilde

Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003

Beautiful and witty

+ Further reading
+ The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame
+ A
+ Dated
  
  











  



  
A Doll's House (Dover Thrift Editions)
Henrik Ibsen

Dover Publications, 1992

somaia n. A Doll's House

+ Excellent shape
+ A pleasant surprise!
+ Functional edition of _A Doll's House_
+ Read it Aloud.
  
  











  



  
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Oxford World's Classics)
Anne Brontė

Oxford University Press, USA, 1998

You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827 to meet Helen Huntington and learn her secret sorrows

+ Surprising
+ Loved this.
+ A Victorian tale for the modern reader
+ A good attemp
  
  











  



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Why, oh, why was I reading Holden Caulfield when I should have been reading Esther Greenwood?

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