Nearly two months in quarantine now have afforded a great deal of additional reading time. I’ve relished in the extra time in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings to settle down with a good book and a hot drink.
This month I read four books and two short stories.
Two of the books were by George Orwell. Most people have come across both 1984 and Animal Farm at some point in their reading lives, yet Orwell’s other works are just as brilliant.
I would highly recommend to everyone, no matter your interest or reading level, to read anything you can that has George Orwell’s name across the cover.
I do not exaggerate when I claim that Orwell exclusively wrote brilliant works.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
Orwell documents his time as an impoverished and down-on-his-luck city dweller in this novel, which is partly fictional but also autobiographical.
He discusses his time working 17-hour workdays as a kitchen hand in a hotel, or living in a 50-person-to-a-room dormitory where there were was no privacy, showers, or any semblance of sanitary living conditions.
Orwell talks about the divide between upper and lower classes, and the faulty misperception that each group has of the other. These misperceptions exist perpetually because, oftentimes, a member of one class has never lived as a member of the other class.
This was a brilliant novel as well as political musing; his thoughts on the economy, socialism, and even on the silver linings of being genuinely down and out are refreshing, intelligent, and written with his characteristic wit.
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell (1938)
In this book, Orwell recounts his time as a militiaman fighting for the socialists in the Spanish Civil War. He ventures between Barcelona and several other smaller Spanish cities. At one point he was shot in the neck while on patrol nowhere near the front lines.
He writes with a sense of irony, as he talks about wanting to be at the forefront of the battles and yet the militiamen were so disorganized, uncertain, and altogether incompetent when compared to traditional military operations that the whole thing was a bit of a sham.
I learned a great deal about the politics of the Spanish civil war from this book, about Franco’s regime and the push and pull between disparate socialist factions.
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2003)
This book is one of the best-selling books of all time. It took me less than 3 days to complete.
The book is fast-paced, exciting, and nearly every chapter ends on a cliff-hanger. It was such a fast and easy read, and yet I learned a great deal about Italian art as well as some bites of history and conspiracy.
Dan Brown is a brilliant storyteller. He weaved together a multitude of storylines into one cohesive narrative. His writing was not brilliant however. He wrote simply and sometimes it came across as a bit pedestrian for a best-selling author.
I enjoyed the book nonetheless, and it was a good and fast change of pace compared to Orwell’s work.
The Grownup by Gillian Flynn (2015)
Gillian Flynn is most well known for her book, Gone Girl. That is one of my favorite and most thrilling reads. The Grownup is a short story; I finished it within an hour or so. She took a simple story but told it brilliantly, and her writing is top-notch as always.
This is a story about a seemingly haunted house and a girl who tries to find out what’s really going on. Simple and cliched as it sounds, Flynn presents a flurry of twists and turns and uncertainties.
Flynn has a profound ability to create tension between characters and plot points, and I could not put the book down until I completed it. She squeezed so much into such brevity and with such lucidity.
Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson (2017)
Walter Isaacson has written biographies on Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin, and this is his most recent work.
In short, it is a masterpiece.
Isaacson dissects da Vinci’s life as a man, his art and pursuits, and his legacy as one of the most genius minds we have ever seen. Da Vinci was a painter, first and foremost, yet he was always extremely gifted and curious in engineering, physics, astronomy, anatomy, birds and flight, water dynamics, and architecture.
In clear and well-crafted prose, we learn about all the stages of Da Vinci’s life and each of his art pieces and sidetracks and passions.
This book is nearly 600 pages long but well worth the time and effort.
You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles (2019)
Amor Towles is the author of the best-selling book A Gentleman in Moscow.
This short story came out just last year as part of a science fiction anthology.
It was about a genetic-engineering lab that specialized in artificial determinism for babies. They would talk to parents, and proceed to plan out an entire personality and lifespan of a forthcoming child.
It was creepy and strange and well-thought-out, but ultimately the story ended without satisfaction (for me). It felt abrupt and cut short as if the author ran out of time before he could fully hash out his ideas. It was a short and interesting read, but not particularly memorable.
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