-
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games (audio) by Suzanne Collins Published: 2008 Narrated by: Carolyn McCormick With all the hype surrounding the film adaptation of The Hunger Games, I broke down and decided to read it. I was a little worried I was getting myself into the next Twilight, but I’m glad I picked it up. Set in a post-apocalyptic alternative (or is it??….it is) future of our world, a new country of Panem is under rule by a totalitarian government. This government occupies the central capital, whose technology is so advanced as to seem alien to us, and the twelve surrounding districts live in squalor. Seventy-five years ago the districts rose up…
-
Dear Mr. McCarthy
In October of 1973, a high school English teacher in North Dakota decided to use Slaughterhouse Five in his classroom. When Charles McCarthy, the head of the school board, later heard of this he had all 32 copies burned in the school’s furnace, using the book’s apparent “obscene language” as his reason. Kurt Vonnegut sent this letter to him the following week. November 16, 1973 Dear Mr. McCarthy: I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school. Certain members of your community have suggested that…
-
All Art is Quite Useless
When The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published, it was attacked for apparently lacking a moral message. Oscar Wilde added this preface to the second edition of the book. The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these…
-
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness (audio) by Joseph Conrad Published: 1899 Narrated by: Kenneth Branagh The story is framed by a group of men sitting in a boat on the River Thames, listening to Charles Marlow tell a story from his past. Our narrator is actually one of the unnamed men on the boat, but almost the entire novella is Marlowe telling his story. It’s a story of his time captaining a steamboat on the Congo River. I’m not sure they mention that he’s in The Congo Free State, as it was then called, but I knew this going in. When he first arrives, he stops briefly at a trading station and…