Books

I realized 2021 slipped by without me reviewing any of the books I read this year. So I'm going to do quick, mini, book reviews of everything I read this year. It will be in the order of when I finished the book. I will start with a few sentences ...

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was our fifth book for Quill Quotes Book Club! Classics won the genre vote and Frankenstein was the clear winner for the book vote. We split the book in half and had two discussions. Everyone enjoyed the book more than they thought they would with the ...

I'm glad I read Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley! I almost didn't after Brave New World wasn't quite up to my expectations, see my review for it here. However, since Revisited is a nonfiction evaluation of the earlier novel rather than a sequel, I found it much more ...

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley has been on my reading list for a while among other dystopian sci-fi classics like , Animal Farm, and Fahrenheit 451. Unfortunately, I enjoyed those others much more than Brave New World. As one of the first such stories published, I have to assume ...

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway is a classic I've been meaning to read for a while. I enjoyed the simple, short story but didn't find it as profound as many have. For me, it's somewhere between a 3.5 and 4 star read. The older you are, ...

I found Dune by Frank Herbert to be superbly entertaining but am not quite sure I understand what makes it the best-selling sci-fi book ever. To me, the underlying themes of environmentalism, politics, and human psychology are too subtle to make it more than an adventure saga for sci-fi/fantasy fans ...

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott is simultaneously a brilliant explanation of dimensions and a satirical look at social hierarchy. I first heard of Flatland on an episode of The Big Bang Theory and it stuck with me as a very interesting concept to have a ...

I had to wait a few weeks to get Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke from the library. It was a good read but I'm glad I didn't buy it. I typically love Clarke's work but only found this one so-so. I think it was his departure from hard science ...

I really enjoyed reading Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke! It's not as grandiose as many of his other works, taking place solely in our solar system in the not too distant future, but has a unique charm. I can't quite place what's different about this one but think it ...

I probably never would have found The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz if not for Brooke's article on Women in Translation. The description drew me in immediately and was especially fitting since I was already reading George Orwell's Animal Farm. While the premise is really interesting and well-executed, the ending ...