The 306 Greatest Books #13 - An American Tragedy

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

An American Tragedy is a fictionalized attempt to portray the real life of a hometown boy convicted of killing his girlfriend. The author was intrigued by this seemingly naive and innocent young man who went down a very dark path and why he did it. So he interviewed the boy in prison to get the first hand tale of the boy's life and turned it into this rather lengthy, but fantastically written account. It took me a long time to read the book. It was an assignment during my senior year of high school, but I never ended up actually finishing the book until the end of my first year of college. I kept at it though because it intrigued me, even then. I had to know what happened, and that was before I even started reading these books for my list. I would say that if you are up for a lengthy read, it is a good tale about how an All-American youth could be brought down to the deepest depths of despair. 

The 306 Greatest Books #12 - Crime and Punishment

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This book can be found on the Sybervision, Norwegian, BBC, and My Book Lists.

After reading Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky went straight to one of my favorite authors. The book follows a man who feels he can commit the "perfect murder". Unfortunately, his guilty conscious gets the better of him and after a long, agonizing reflection period he is eventually caught and punished for his crimes. The writing was excellent, and the story gave us every little nuance in the character's subconscious during the whole ordeal, from planning to regret. This book also illustrated to me that Russian actually translates very well to English, where I have rarely had difficulty in understanding a Russian-to-English translated work, and it has made Russian writers usually some of my favorites. In actuality, my only problem with the book is the epilogue, which is so out of place in the story that it is obvious it was added afterwards because the publishers were unhappy with how the original story concluded. To get the full impact of the story a reader may just want to not read that section, in my opinion. This is a definite recommend in my opinion.

The 306 Greatest Books #11 - The Cherry Orchard

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

Chekhov is definitely a subtle and complex writer. Often, when you finish reading one of his plays or short stories you are left with a feeling that you had missed a ton of hidden messages within the story. He is an expert at layering story elements, particularly with his plays, where there are whole depths of meanings just waiting to be explored. The Cherry Orchard is one of his few plays, but likely the best writing that he had done. The main part of the plot follows a mother who returns to her farm after her son had drowned and continues as she slowly loses that farm. A complex, emotionally-deep story about coping with loss. Although many of Chekhov's stories can be underwhelming, I find his plays are usually on the better end of his range and I definitely recommend this one.

The 306 Greatest Books #10 - Death of a Salesman

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

Death of a Salesman is often considered to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century. The play is about a a salesman named Willy Loman, who undergoes severe depression that quickly spirals out of control as he sees his life crumbling apart. The best part about the play is that it is made up of real life characters, whom the viewer (reader) can sympathize with. It is the strong emotion and the treating of the characters as if they are real people in real-life situations that has made this play resonate with so many. The story offers a view into the real-life world of depression and what could go wrong if nothing is done to help the depressed. Heartbreaking to say the least. 

The 306 Greatest Books #9 - Moby Dick

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Moby Dick by Herman Melville. This book can be found on the Sybervision, Observer, the Norwegian Book Lists.

Moby Dick is often cited as the analogy for relentlessly pursuing your dreams, often to the detriment of everyone around you. My introduction to this book was not all that great, having been forced to read it in my senior year of high school and never fully appreciating it at the time. Besides the plot of the book, one of the things it is most known for is perhaps being one of the most famous introductory lines in all of literature: "Call me Ishmael." In general, the story is about a man while trying to take control of his fears ends up being destroyed in the process. The book reads slowly and the chapter describing whales escaped my understanding as to why it was even in the book (at least for my high school self). This is a not recommend by me but maybe this could improve with a rereading (although I don't see that ever happening).