Unreviewed Books

Back in October, I shared a list of recent books that I had read but not reviewed. That post did fairly well so I thought I would do this again. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one that doesn’t review all of their reads. Sometimes it’s really hard to get a review out. I promised myself at the end of the summer to read more classics, and those are the ones I find the trickiest to review (and also not really necessary to review anymore, I think.) I’ve also been reading a ton of classics lately so those dominate the list. So let’s get to it.

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Classic/Mental Health
Amazon, Bookshop, B&N

About the Book:
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s neurosis becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage, Alix E. Harrow
Short Story/Sci Fi
Amazon, B&N

About the Book:
Oona’s blood is a river delta blending east and west, her hair red as Tennessee clay, her heart tangled as the wild lands she maps. By tracing rivers in ink on paper, Oona pins the land down to one reality and betrays her people. Can she escape the bonds of gold and blood and bone that tie her to the Imperial American River Company?

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Classic, Dystopian
Amazon, Bookshop, B&N

About the Book:
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
Classics, Literature, Short Story
Amazon, Bookshop, B&N

About the Book:
The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published, “The Old Man and the Sea” has proved itself to be one of the enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple. powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificnet twentieth-century classic.

The Complete Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm
Classics, Fairy Tales
Amazon, Bookshop, B&N

About the Book:
This is the complete and authoritative edition of the folk and fairy tales of the brothers Grimm, with 212 tales, and including the tale of The Starving Children (which was removed after the 1819 edition). THE FOLK & FAIRY TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM (German: Kinder- und Hausmarchen – Vollstamdige Ausgabe) is a collection of German fairy tales first published in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm. The collection is commonly known in English as Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The work of the Brothers Grimm influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe, in a spirit of romantic nationalism, that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence.

Have you read any books lately that you haven’t reviewed? Are you prepping for the new year and making new reading goals? I hope to continue reading more classics and more non-fiction.