Category: Book Critic

Book Challenges, Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Gen Lit, Literary Criticism, Reading, Reading Challenges

Review: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

by The Lit Bitch5 Comments on Review: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Well it’s taken me a few months but I have finally finished Great Expectations! Yes I know I started it like months ago and have been slowly trying to finish it up between the move and other books I’ve been reading.

I started reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens for the Gothic Literature Reading Challenge, I had it down to read for the Victorian Literature Reading Challenge also but I decided to use it for the Gothic one since it had a lot of classic Gothic themes which I love.

I have struggled with reading Dickens over the years only because I think he is wordy and often his stories seem a little slow to start.

However, last year I read the book Drood which is a fiction work based on two English literary greats…Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. After reading that book I was curious about Dickens’s life and works. After signing up for both the Victorian and Gothic literature challenges having some Dickens novels on my ‘to read’ lists was a no brainer.  Continue reading “Review: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens” →

Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Gen Lit, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks

by The Lit Bitch10 Comments on Review: The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks

I think I must be the only girl on earth who hasn’t seen The Notebook. I am just not into Nicholas Sparks, and I had no interest in watching The Notebook let alone reading a Nicholas Sparks novel. However, at the behest of one of my friends, I decided to cave and read ONE Sparks novel.

I picked The Wedding.

Now, in general I too fancy myself a jaded cynic so Nicholas Sparks has never really had any appeal to me what-so-ever….he seems a little too over the top sappy.

Romance as a genre in general has never been one that I am particularly into though I do like Para-Romance books (I’ll swoon for Eric Northman any day!)….I just don’t understand the draw for romance novels like those by Sparks, and I REALLY don’t understand the draw for books like Danielle Steele, or some of the harlequin romance novels….though I am willing to give Sparks a shot.

Half way through the book, I felt a little lost, like I was missing a huge piece which made me kind of drag my feet reading it. There were references to various characters and past stories that I just felt like I wasn’t getting.  I confessed I had no idea what was going on! Continue reading “Review: The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks” →

Book Challenges, Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Gen Lit, Literary Criticism, Reading, Reading Challenges

Review: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

by The Lit Bitch5 Comments on Review: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

I decided to read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as part of the Victorian Literature Challenge.

I have read Heart of Darkness before for a Comparative/Literary Criticism class in college. I’ll be honest, I didn’t care for it much then and I didn’t care for it reading it again two years later. Though I hoped that not having to write a paper on the book and not having to deconstruct the entire concepts would help me be able to get into it more but I was sadly disappointed.

Conrad’s novel is an interesting specimen in literature, it is more of a transitional book that has a foot in the Victorian era but also has a foot in modern literature. The book is about one man’s journey into madness while he travels the Congo.

The main character (Charles Marlow) is on the Themes on a boat waiting for the tide to change, he beings to tell his travel companions about his adventures in the Congo. He talks about the ‘evils’ he expeirences while there and how he worked to transport ivory down river….he was more or less a mercenary. Continue reading “Review: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad” →

Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Gen Lit, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasumussen

by The Lit Bitch2 Comments on Review: The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasumussen

I won a copy of The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen thanks to a Goodreads giveaway.

I had heard lots of good things about this book on Twitter and read lots of awesome reviews on Goodreads about this book and I must say in this case the book lives up to its hype….it was GREAT :).

The story follows the lives of two sisters who couldn’t be more opposite–Twiss and Milly. The sisters are spinsters who live in the same house that they grew up in and are now in their 70’s. We get a little background on them in the beginning of the story and then the story shifts and goes back to one summer that changed their lives forever when they were young girls.

The sisters parents are clearly having marital problems, Twiss struggles with some gender/identify issues and Milly with the uncertainty of a first love, and then as if that isn’t enough their older cousin Bett comes to stay with them for the summer which more or less causes all hell to break loose in their ‘perfect’ worlds. I don’t want to give too much about the story away but having Bett there causes both girls to lose their last bit of innocents and faith. The book is more or less about coming of age and innocents lost but it is also about forgiveness.  Continue reading “Review: The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasumussen” →

Book Challenges, Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Gen Lit, Literary Criticism, Reading, Reading Challenges

Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

by The Lit Bitch3 Comments on Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I have settled on re-reading one of my fav books of all time….The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

I decided to read Dorian Gray for the Gothic Reading Challenge, I had it on my list to read for both the Gothic Reading Challenge and the Victorian Literature Challenge but decided to use it for the Gothic Challenge since I am in a ‘dark’ mood with all the madness happening…..why not have madness in my literature too LOL.

Oscar Wilde is one of my most fav authors, he literally just didn’t care who he made mad and wrote about what he loved….he is eccentric, carismatic, and philosophical in his writing style, I just cannot get enough Wilde :).

In Dorian Grey, we as readers are introduced to many “monstrous” sides of vanity and pride. We first met protagonist, Dorian Gray, as a naive young man who is gentle and kind. He is oblivious to the idea of age, maturity and growing “old”. The story focuses on the moral disintegration of Dorian which of course is a metaphor for the Victorian/Gothic era….the who era is about ‘darkness’, moral corruption, and the ‘daemons’ in us all.  Continue reading “Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde” →