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.  

The Fountain Overflows

I love New York Review Book classics (NYRB).  They really know to collect the best literature of the last century.  I read this just based on the label.  It's about a family of musicians.  The talented twins are learning piano from their mother.  Their father is a gambler.  The daughter Cordelia is a violinist but she isn't very good.  She has a teacher who doesn't know any better and has her do concerts.  This book also has a touch of the supernatural. The book is around 400 pages.  I think it could have been edited a bit.  Still, I was impressed.  There were sequels.  I'll get around to them this year and next.  Rebecca West also wrote a nonfiction book I'm curious about Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. 3.5/5  

The Crying of Lot 49

When I was in my early 20's I read a bit of postmodern literature.  I read some John Barth and I read this.  I read The Crying of Lot 49 because it was short.  Back in the days, I used to avoid books that were over 300 pages.  I found them too much of a challenge. My attention would wander. Now I don't have that problem at all.  I remember liking it so I read it fifteen years later.  I still enjoyed it.  It's kind of like a postmodern Alice in Wonderland.  A woman finds out about a secret postal service and it leads her down a rabbit hole.  I enjoyed the band obviously a parody of The Beatles.  I like The Beatles too.  One of these days now that long books don't overwhelm me anymore I got to read Gravity's Rainbow.  I bought it and put it on the bookshelf.  It's just waiting for the read.

The Blind Assassin

People seem to treat The Handmaid's Tale as the only thing that Margaret Atwood ever wrote.  But I liked this and Alias Grace just as much.  This book has a billion stories going on at once.  This is about two sisters Iris and Laura.  After their father's button factory business collapses Iris has to marry a villain Richard.  Before her suicide, Laura wrote a science fiction novel.  At the beginning of The Blind Assassin Iris is picking up an award given to her sister.  Excerpts of that novel are put into this book as well.  One of the reasons for Laura's suicide was her love for a radical named Alex.  Throughout the book many revelations are made about Iris and Laura.  Most of them are involved with Richard who turns out to be even a bigger jerk than the reader initially thought.  This won the Booker Prize.