The 305 Greatest Books - #188: Beloved by Toni Morrison

 The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Beloved by Toni Morrison. The book can be found on the Norwegian and My Book Lists.

Beloved definitely gave me the vibes that I was not tall enough to ride this emotional roller coaster. It is hard to discuss this book without getting into major plot spoilers, but in general the story is about a former slave family set during the the times right before and after the Civil War. While the story is a decade or so after the Civil War, flashbacks and remembrances occur before and during the war. This book definitely doesn't pull it's punches in regards to slavery and how people were treated during those times. The impetus for the novel was an event shortly after the main character, Sethe, ran away, where an infant is found bloody and dead. However, the text is confusing at the beginning and I wasn't sure if it was at first written cryptically or I was just not understanding it. But as the story continued, I realized that the narrative was purposely obscure and that the reason for that was eventually laid out for the reader. The novel is rough, and rightfully so. The harsh truths are the reasons that Beloved won the Pulitzer Price for Fiction and was likely the reason Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature. It is a good book, with an interesting story thread. It is a fascinating read, both with how bluntly she depicts slave life, but also how that story is interwoven with this poltergeist-esque story as they are living in a haunted house. I cannot recommend this book enough. It is beautifully written and is definitely a story that pulls you in, while also educating you about the horrors that had engulfed our society at the time.

The 305 Greatest Books - #187: The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The book can be found on the Observer, BBC, and My Book Lists.

This is one of those books I would classify as your standard middle school novel, that I however was never tasked to read. Even though I had never read this before, this is one of those stories that has permeated society to the point that many (most?) people could give you a generalized overview of the story. The story follows a group of boys who are stranded on a deserted island and how their "society" degrades from there. What I was not expecting, but makes sense, is that this is a dystopian novel about essentially the aftereffects of a nuclear war. Comments had been made almost in passing throughout the novel, but it was interesting how the reader is bounced around between some hopeful characters interacting with those who "know" more about what has been going on in the world. On top of all that is just the general fall of society into barbarism with certain members of society fighting back against it with rules and those members losing over time to the more aggressive, violent members of society. I found the debates between the different members of society to be the most interesting, since these are life and death debates in their world and yet also brought down to a child's level. Absolutely wonderfully written. It is so easy to fly through the story (it being extraordinarily short helps), and it is gripping. I flew through the whole thing in less than a week and read half of it in about a day. It was also much darker and gruesome than I was anticipating for a story where children are the focus. There is some notable geological problems with the story, which also gets me giddy all over. However, overall, this book was a lot of fun and one that I would highly recommend.