Giovanni’s Room

Giovanni’s Room

by James Baldwin

★★★★

David is a young man living in Paris and reflecting on a doomed love affair. This poetic story, a mere 160 pages, delves not only into his relationship with Giovanni, but also into his confusion, self-loathing, loneliness, shame and more. In a flawed attempt to figure out who he is and what he truly wants, David has a tendency to hurt those around him with little or no feeling. Baldwin’s beautiful and succinct writing style pulls readers into David’s world.  

In addition to telling a tragic love story, the book touches on the complicated role women held in society in the early 20th century. As they began to gain the freedom to make their own decisions they realized that in many ways they weren’t really free. The expectation was still that they find a husband as soon as possible.

 

“I don’t see what’s so hard about being a woman. At least, not as long as she’s got a man.” “‘That’s just it,’ said she. ‘Hasn’t it ever struck you that that’s a sort of humiliating necessity?’” … ‘I began to realize it in Spain that – that I wasn’t free, that I couldn’t be free until I was attached – no committed to someone.’”

BOTTOM LINE: A haunting look at love and its many forms, this story reminds the readers of the importance of understanding who you are. The pain and heartbreak is universal when we can’t even be honest with ourselves.

“But people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, any more than they can invent their parents.”

“Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.”

*My edition is part of the Penguin Great Loves Series. The whole series is just gorgeous!

 

Also, this was my Classics Club spin book and I’m so glad I finally read it.

Top Ten Books For Your Beach Bag

 

 

This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish asks for the Top Ten Books That Should Be In Your Beach Bag or Ten Books That Will Be In My Beach Bag This Summer. Here’s a list of great beach reads that I recommended last year. Since I did that last year, this year I’ll just list books I’m hoping to get to.

Please let me know of any great summer reads I should add to my list!

 

 

1) The final Barcetshire books, I’m getting so behind!

2) Fangirl or Landline - I REALLY want to read one of the two Rainbow Rowell novels I haven’t read yet… or maybe both of them.

3) On the Beach by Nevil Shute – To continue reading Australia and New Zealand books before my trip.

4) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (it’s my Classics Club Spin Book)

5) Germinal by Émile Zola – I just have to get to him this year!

6) The Bat by Jo Nesbo – Sandy has been recommending this author for awhile and I’ll dying to check him out. This is the first in the series and it’s set in Sydney!

7) The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum - I’ve slowly been working my way through this series and this one is the next on the list.

8) The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton – For my book club

9) Paris in Love by Eloisa James

10) Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Classics Club Spin #6

 

The Classics Club is hosting another Classics Spin! Pick 20 books off your Classics Club List. On Monday (the 12th) they will announce a random number and you have to read that number off the list you created sometime before July 7th. I’ve listed a mixture of books I’m dreading, ones I’m looking forward to, very old ones, relatively new ones, big ones, small ones, etc. Can’t wait to see what I’ll be reading.

We have a winner! It's #1 Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. I’ve been meaning to read this book for a long time and it’s not a huge one, so I’m pretty happy!

1) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

2) Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac

3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

4) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

5) American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

6) Light in August by William Faulkner

7) Maurice by E. M. Forster

8) The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles

9) Twenty Years by Alexandre Dumas

10) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

11) The Quiet American by Graham Greene

12) The Trial by Franz Kafka

13) Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

14) Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope 

15) King John by William Shakespeare

16) Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

17) All My Sons by Arthur Miller

18) In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

19) Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

20) Germinal by Émile Zola

 

You can check out the complete details here.

 

Image from here.



Galapagos

Galapagos

by Kurt Vonnegut

★★★★

Vonnegut tends to be one of those authors that you just get or you don’t. I love his sarcastic style, but I know it doesn’t work for everyone. I also think I have a particular soft spot for him because he is a fellow Hoosier.

In this novel we meet Mary, a widow who is taking a cruise to the Galapagos islands. Little does she know that their cruise ship will soon become a second Noah’s ark when the world ends and the only people left are those on the ship. The story is told a million years in the future by the son of Kilgore Trout. The few remaining humans must attempt to restart the human race on the Galapagos islands.

One of the themes in Vonnegut’s work is the absurdity of man; our willingness to destroy both ourselves and each other. This is a central point in Galapagos as well. He can’t help but add a few lines about his own big brain’s crazy idea to go fight in Vietnam, which echoes his own experience fighting in WWII.  

BOTTOM LINE: An overlooked classic and one of Vonnegut’s better books. If you’ve already checked out his big ones (Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle) then pick this one up. It’s an incredibly quick read and sure to make you laugh if you love Vonnegut’s sense of humor.

“I say the same thing about the death of James Wait: "Oh, well - he wasn't going to write Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway." This wry comment on how little most of us were likely to accomplish in life, no matter how long we lived, isn't my own invention.”

p.s. A few of Vonnegut’s best lines.

This was my Classics Club Spin book for September and a book on my 2013 TBR list.

Classics Club Spin #3

The Classics Club is hosting another Classics Spin! Pick 20 books off your Classics Club List. On Monday (the 19th) they will announce a random number and you have to read that number off the list you created sometime in August or September. I’ve listed a mixture of books I’m dreading, ones I’m looking forward to, very old ones, relatively new ones, big ones, small ones, etc. Can’t wait to see what I’ll be reading!

**UPDATE My spin book is #4 Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut!**

1) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

2) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

3) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

4) Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

5) The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

6) Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

7) The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

8) Germinal by Émile Zola

9) Sanditon  by Jane Austen

10) Light in August by William Faulkner

11) Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald

12) Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

13) Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

14) Maurice by E. M. Forster

15) The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

16) The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

17) Roughing It by Mark Twain

18) The Warden by Anthony Trollope

19) If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

20) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel G. Marquez

You can check out the complete details here.

Image from here. 

Classics Club Spin

The Classics Club is hosting another Classics Spin! Pick 20 books off your Classics Club List. On Monday (the 20th) they will announce a random number and you have to read that number off the list you created sometime before July 1st. I’ve listed a mixture of books I’m dreading, ones I’m looking forward to, very old ones, relatively new ones, big ones, small ones, etc. Can’t wait to see what I’ll be reading!

We have a winner! It's #6 The Rights of Man. I'm not looking forward to it, but I've been wanting to read it, so this is a good motivation.

1) Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

2) Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

3) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

4) All My Sons by Arthur Miller

5) Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

6) The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

7) The Warden by Anthony Trollope

8) Roughing It by Mark Twain

9) Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

10) Germinal by Émile Zola

11) The Island of Dr Moreau by H G Wells

12) The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

13) Native Son by Richard Wright

14) Maurice by E. M. Forster

15) Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

16) Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens

17) Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

18) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

19) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

20) In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

You can check out the complete details here.

Image from here.