I consider myself to be fairly well read. At the very least, I read a lot, and I try to read some works that are considered important, or classic, or even popular, not necessarily because they capture my interest but because experience (and educational English classes) have shown me that […]
From The Huffington Post: Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” has come under fire yet again. This time, the board of education president in Morrison’s home state is criticizing the inclusion of the book on the Common Core Standard’s recommended reading list for 11th-graders, labeling the controversial work “pornographic.” And, if Ohio schools leader […]
It’s a difficult task, narrowing down the novels that have impacted your life into a small, somewhat abstract list. For many of us, reading a novel, a well written novel, is more than a task set to those merely interested in reading a good book. The novels in this […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.