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Aside from a handful of reading assignments in high school and a few beloved thick classics which slipped through, I turned my back to literature and the classics for the sake of science, engineering, and a career in technology.
“How on earth would English Literature or any other classic help me toward excelling in grad school [...]
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I finally know the timeless story of Madame Bovary.
What a remarkable journey to delve into the timeless classics whose names I first heard uttered in adult conversations in my childhood in Iran. The Godfather is such an example. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables another. Madame Bovary yet another.
I read Gustave Flaubert’s masterpiece in English, translated not [...]
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If I had to do it all over again, I would….?
When you ask yourself that question casually, what is the answer? In some situations, we cannot change the past and the opportunity has passed. In others however, we may be able to set a new course. A few years ago I realized one of my [...]
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Be it naiveté or lack of insight, I have never understood all the fuss about New York and its self-proclaimed greatness. Try as I might, I cannot recollect a single memory of a warm encounter, a nice experience or a kind human interaction during my visits. Sadly, I do have a few sour such memories, [...]
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In my mind, I was driving to Manderley last night.
I was driving my little Honda down a remote highway when I went into this state of complete mental absorption. Less than a day after finishing Daphne Du Maurier’s classic of a novel, Rebecca, I was finding it nearly impossible to stop thinking about Manderley, the magnificent [...]
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I read “Daisy Miller” and “Washington Square” because Azar Nafisi mentioned them in “Reading Lolita in Tehran“. I had set out to complete the reading list of all the books mentioned in Nafisi’s tales of Iran, and next on my list were these two short novels of Henry James. They came in the same book. [...]
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Reading Jane Eyre marks one of my most bittersweet journeys into a novel and into a character’s life and psyche.
I read Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece of accomplishment for an unusual reason. I wanted to find a way to get closer to her sister, Emily Brontë. I devoured Emily’s singular publication of ”Wuthering Heights“, a story that is at the [...]
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Ageless movies are boldly ignorant of the passage of time. The past and the future merge in the permanence of a timeless story. Years and decades pass us by, we grow up and grow old, and yet these movies only become more enduring with time. The Godfather story is insurmountable, it is beyond a classic, [...]
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Why did I read “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum?
I cannot say that I enjoyed the book or the writing, but that is not the intent for reading all books. Not growing up in America until my teenage years precluded me from being exposed to the cornerstone of American culture promptly. I am [...]
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Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811 when Jane Austen was just 36 years old, and only 2 years before the publication of Pride and Prejudice. In the span of such a short time, and almost 200 years ago from today, Jane Austen produced two timeless classics. I find it bitterly ironic that in almost every case, [...]
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It is best to be reading Wuthering Heights in the cold of winter. Perhaps when and where we read our classics and our favorite novels makes them particularly memorable to us years from now. I read Emily Brontë’s brilliant singular novel this winter, a few days short of Christmas. I already knew the story, all [...]
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Jane Austen’s masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice, is an epic novel, and no review or praise of this book, including mine, will yield it justice or measure the genius of the author behind it. There have been countless reviews of Jane Austen’s writing style and epic novels. What else can I say that has not been [...]
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