Two hours ago, I was in a small jam-packed London theater, joining in on a much-deserved standing ovation to the cast of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Some of the finest Shakespearean actors, most notably Ralph Fiennes, indulged us tonight with an unforgettably moving performance. Pleasure, sadness, delight and joy, smiles and tears, deep reflection and thrilling [...]
literary
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 [...]
How beautiful to see that timeless poetry and literary classics preserve their relevance across generations. How awe-inspiring that they transcend all nationalities, religions, ethnicity and apply to our life today. How extraordinary that such wisdom usually comes to us from the sages who have suffered greatly in their life. How fortunate for us that such [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
When I saw Azar Nafisi‘s “Reading Lolita in Tehran” on the shelves in my beloved Maui, Hawaii, I distinctly heard it beckon me. The time has come to read this book. I was in paradise, as anyone who has ever set foot in Hawaii knows well. The warm perfect breeze combined with Mother Nature’s pristine beauty [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
In “What happened to Anna K.?“, Irina Reyn gives us the life of Anna Karenina in a new light. Reyn’s writing and story-telling was simply riveting. This brilliant young author had me captivated and glued to her book from page one. Reyn’s writing style is remarkable for such a new novelist. Her spellbinding way of [...]
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 [...]
