What's up fellas, here are the latest books I have read:
- Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey
I'm torn on this book. On one hand I appreciate its narrative style, and the plot has some interesting events, on the other hand I did not enjoy it as much. I don't know why, but it felt like a slog, and the book is rather short. I appreciated the description of all the good and bad effects of the opium, but at the end of the book all I could think of was "so what?". It's a book with its ups and downs, some passages are amazing, some are awful, and it's a shame, because the narrative style is excellent.
I don't particularly recommend this book. I'm interested in "Murder as one of the Fine Arts" by the same author and I hope it's going to be more enjoyable for me.
- The Handmaiden's Tale by Margaret Atwood
I wish the book explained how the world's society worked more in-depth, but nonetheless I enjoyed it. It has an interesting setting and it is narrated from a powerless figure in a society that has lost every value by professing them to an extreme. I'm seeing some parallels to the current world, and the way some facets of society are operating at the moment.
It's how I'd expect a society ruled a certain way to become. The book is gritty and you can feel how tense the atmosphere of the world is. As I said, my biggest gripe with it is that I hoped for a bit more description of the events of the world; think "1984", you know a lot about it: the Ministries, the war between the superpowers, and how easily the masses were manipulated.
Granted, the protagonist doesn't really know much about the world because she isn't a funcionary of the government unlike Winston, but she still has memories about the old world. perhaps the news that she followed during the meetings with Serena Joy while waiting for the Commander could be expanded upon to include more worldbuilding, and they could have been interpreted by the protagonist to offer a better look into her personality and her efelings.
Regardless, This is a book I'd recommend to anyone, it is a great readm and it is .
- Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
Oh boy where do I start with this. This was quite the read, the book is filled up with nonsense (or...expressionism, if you prefer), but there is a method to the madness of the narration. Franz Bieberkopf is way too human, you can TELL he is human, very few books are able to make you feel like the protagonists are human, but this is one of the few. Most other books narrate of idealized individuals, they have idealized thoughts and are somewhat predictable in the way they face reality. I'd argue that even psychologically complex characters like Ōba from "No Longer Human" by Osamu Dazai, or Heathcliff from "Wuthering Heights" are not as human as Bieberkopf is.
Everything that happens to Franz, and everything he does makes sense, and shows off the multiple facets of the human soul, Franz Bieberkopf's soul in this case. It isn't a simple "oh I'm like this so I will act like that", but his decisions are...human. They aren't entirely logical, and he manages to make them sound like they make sense, and it is how mots humans operate.
The other characters in the book are also incredible, you can feel like they are real people, you can find something to appreciate in them even when they are disgusting, like Reinhold, Eva, and Mieze (for different reasons).
This book is a masterpiece. Read it. It is a 10 out of 10 for me, I'm in love with it. It's perfect. It is chaotic, but it also all makes way too much sense.