Books
This includes reviews, facts, and other bookish things.
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THE ART OF MEMOIR by Mary Karr | Review
Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning graduate teaching prizes… Continue reading
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FREDERICK DOUGLASS by William S. McFeely
I’ve been fascinated by the life and writing of Frederick Douglass ever since reading his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) in my Introduction to Literature class during my very first semester of college. Born into slavery, Douglass eventually escaped to the North, became a free man, and rose to be a prolific orator… Continue reading
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MEMORIAL by Alice Oswald | Review
In this daring new work, the poet Alice Oswald strips away the narrative of the Iliad—the anger of Achilles, the story of Helen—in favor of attending to its atmospheres: the extended similes that bring so much of the natural order into the poem and the corresponding litany of the war-dead, most of whom are little… Continue reading
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MRS. DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf | Review
Virginia Woolf’s classic 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway is one of this prolific writer’s best known works. It tells the story of a single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, who struggles with the fact that she is no longer the young woman she used to be once upon a time. Set in the urban tumult of… Continue reading
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THE QUARTET by Joseph J. Ellis | Review
The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 is a comprehensive, cohesive, carefully crafted analysis of the transition from distinctly powerful states in America under the Articles of Confederation to a nation of united states under the newly ratified Constitution. By focusing on the brilliant men who made this shift possible– George Washington, John Jay, Alexander… Continue reading
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UNCLE TOM’S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe | Review
“The narrative drive of Stowe’s classic novel is often overlooked in the heat of the controversies surrounding its anti-slavery sentiments. In fact, it is a compelling adventure story with richly drawn characters and has earned a place in both literary and American history. Stowe’s puritanical religious beliefs show up in the novel’s final, overarching theme—the… Continue reading
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WHITE TEETH by Zadie Smith | Review
“Zadie Smith’s dazzling first novel plays out its bounding, vibrant course in a Jamaican hair salon in North London, an Indian restaurant in Leicester Square, an Irish poolroom turned immigrant café, a liberal public school, a sleek science institute. A winning debut in every respect, White Teeth marks the arrival of a wondrously talented writer… Continue reading
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THE HAMLET by William Faulkner | Review
The Hamlet (1940), the first novel in William Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy, tells the story of Flem Snopes’ rise to relative power and influence in Frenchman’s Bend. Yoknapatawpha County is the iconic backdrop to this slow burn of a novel, one that sets the stage for future books and stories to be written about the Snopes clan. The… Continue reading
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OLIVER TWIST by Charles Dickens | Review
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens is one of those classic stories that everyone thinks they know– that is, until they actually sit down to read the novel in its entirety. Prior to starting this book in the middle of a flight from England back to the States, I thought this would be the simple story of… Continue reading
About ME //
i’m holly — former english major, current twenty-something book lover, allergic to nuts. drop me a line at nutfreenerd@gmail.com or on instagram.
nut free nerd 