Native Son

Richard Wright got this published in 1940.  It seems ahead of its time.  It's about a chauffeur Bigger Thomas who accidentally kills his employer's daughter.  He panics and chops her up into the furnace.  He tries to pin it on a communist but is eventually found out. The other half of the book deals with him on the run.  One of the reasons Bigger didn't like the employer's daughter was that she respected him and treated him like a human being.  It confused him too much.  He gets accused of rape also although that didn't happen. The book drags a bit by the end since it preaches too much.  But you get the point the media displayed in the book wants to paint this man as a monster.    It's an interesting view on how race was treated in the day and not only the paranoia of communism at that time as well.   I've got to read Richard Wright's autobiographical "Black Boy."

The Autumn People

This follows the formula that two other Ruth M. Arthur books I've read dealt with a previous ancestor that influences a person currently living.  Both girls are named Romilly although the earlier one went by the name of Millie.  Millie was in love with a good boy named Jocelyn, but an evil warlock Rodger, unfortunately, gets her interest more.  He could be casting a spell on her?  Rodger also bugs the current Romilly as he starts following her around as a fox. One reviewer on Goodreads pointed out that the nature of evil wasn't really discussed enough here.  Arthur did a more thorough job on that in A Candle in her room.

Uzumaki

When I was 18 I went a whole year with just reading comic books.  Then I missed regular books and never went back.  I'm trying to get back into them now.  Frankly, movies based on comic books are some of the best movies around.  They're family-friendly.  Most of them aren't rated R.  I read this comic when I was a teenager and remembered liking it.  It's about a town being infested with spirals.  People turn into spirals.  People become snails after all the shape is spiral.  Soon the people of the town are homeless and desperate for shelter.  Japanese comic books are books that you have to read backward so that just added to the dizzy effect.  Frankly, some of this book freaked me out.   I bought some more comic books from this author.  I hope they're good.  It was made into a movie which I haven't watched yet.  I'll probably get around to it in a couple of months.  This collects all the comics in the Uzumaki series.  

Tartuffe

Shakespeare's plays can be hard to read.  Tartuffe was written in the 1600s.  I was worried it was going to be a difficult read but it wasn't hard at all.  It's a comedy about religious hypocrisy.  Orgon thinks the world of Tartuffe, he paints him out to be a saint.  Everyone except Orgon's mother tells him that Tartuffe's putting up an act that he is really a horrible man.  It isn't until Orgon witnesses Tartuffe hitting on his wife that the truth comes out.  Only Tartuffe won't end with that.  I watched a silent movie of this play years ago.  It was a drama and had a modern plot added to it as well.  I was surprised to learn this was a comedy as the movie definitely didn't paint it that way.  It was a pretty good read.