You want to write well and never run out of ideas? You want to be inspired, entertained, left in awe and wonder of beauty and learn something at the same time? You want to improve your vocabulary and enhance the use of your English (or other) language? You want to keep your mind sharp and [...]
classic
If it weren’t for my curiosity to find out about the real life whereabouts of Pi, Yann Martel‘s primary character in Life of Pi, I would gone on believing that this shocking tale of survival and courage, of unshakeable faith and conviction, of true desperation and uncanny desire to hold on to dear life, was [...]
The Happy Journey of the Classics Rudely Interrupted “I would like to read you on a complete disaster of a book and why it should be buried!!” My eccentric Scottish friend sent me these words well over a year ago – and how I have wondered if I would fulfill that request at some point. [...]
I did not expect to find so much lasting imagery from Louisa May Alcott’s beautiful “Little Women“: The sisters writing plays and acting them out loudly up in their attic. Mother coming home to 4 overjoyed girls who hang on her every word and move. The sisters packing up their Christmas breakfast – tea and [...]
Dear Monsieur Dumas, It is the year 2010 today, nearly 166 years since you published The Count of Monte Cristo. Your contemporaries recognized it as the accomplishment it is, which is the least we can say for the treasures which have come to us from your period. It makes me immensely happy when a society [...]
I have a ritual with my books – first, to come into possession of book (through some generous source as I rarely buy books), read/inhale/digest the book, write a deeply personal blog post on book, keep book on shelf (if I loved it)/donate book to library (if I didn’t love it)/give book away to anyone [...]
Have you moved to the world of electronic books yet? I had been trying in vain. I even bought a Kindle; I have yet to really use it. The thing is, traditional books are a pain to give up. I am addicted to turning the pages, feeling the text, holding the book, marking my place, [...]
“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” With these captivating words, the supreme Russian artist, Leo Tolstoy, opens his magnificent masterpiece, Anna Karenina, and grips at my heart from that first paragraph until the closing words, 963 pages later. It is impossible to express everything I felt [...]
Reading Anna Karenina has been so overwhelming and gratifying that I chose to walk away from it for a short while. I decided to take time to digest the scope, the breadth, the depth in this masterpiece of a novel. It is of course an overly ambitious task to ever digest it all. This is [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
Our experiences are not only made up of what we have lived through. Sometimes, experience stems from that which we did not do. I never had the chance to watch Luciano Pavarotti perform live. I regret that bitterly. The immaculate voice of this opera tenor was a gift to this world and who knows when, [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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. [...]
