Monday, October 03, 2011

Off topic: a literary binge

Nothing to do with personal finance, but I've spent the last several weeks on something of a literary reading binge. This was, in part, inspired by glancing at a (obviously subjective) list of the greatest novels of all time and, in part, by a desire to read something a bit different from my usual fare (mostly non-fiction with a lesser amount of popular fiction).

Books read:

1. Tender is the Night - F Scott Fitzgerald

2. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (previously read at school)

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. The Trial - Franz Kafka

5. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

6. The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde

I'm currently on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

I actually enjoyed reading all of these (with the exception of Jane Eyre which I found rather dull and marred by a plot line that required a most unlikely coincidence to "work"). The Trial was rather disturbing and it's easy to find parallels with daily life. However, Tender is the Night was the most thought provoking - I was left thinking to myself "I don't want to be Dick Diver".

I haven't quite found the courage to take on one of the door stopper long novels like Ulysses or War and Peace.

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