Tragic – DaneCobain.com

Title: The Bell Jar

Author: Sylvia Plath

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 216

Rating: 5/5

This is one of those books that I’ve been meaning to read for years but which I never got round to. I’ve read Ariel, Plath’s poetry collection, but I eventually had to order a copy of this online after giving up hope of ever seeing it.

Plath’s writing is beautiful here, and she does a fantastic job of capturing the complex emotions that are going through her protagonist’s mind. It’s also interesting because it’s semi-autobiographical, and indeed it foreshadowed Plath’s own tragic end. If you have any interest at all in mental health and its portrayal in literature, this one is a must-read.

All in all, my voice is just yet another one that rings out in praise of The Bell Jar, but what can I say? When people say this is an excellent novel, they’re right. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up on my top books of the year list. I also liked that in the biographical note, it mentioned that the novel was described as like a feminist Catcher in the Rye. I can see that, and I think that if you like one then you’ll like the other.

Click here to buy The Bell Jar.

Hunter S. Thompson – The Rum Diary | Review

Title: The Rum Diary

Author: Hunter S. Thompson

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 214

Rating: 8/10

Hunter S. Thompson – The Rum Diary

The Rum Diary tells the heartwarming and tragic tale of the adventures of journalist Paul Kemp in Puerto Rico, where he works at the Daily News by day and drinks rum at Al’s by night. Of course, there’s a woman involved, and the novel is also home to its fair share of institutionalised corruption – a very Thompson topic.

The author is better known as the writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and while his style is similar here in some ways, it’s also a little different – little touches, and the idiosyncrasies of some of the characters, make this a much more traditional novel, even though it’s still far from it.

It’s a strong recommendation from me, particularly if you’ve already read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and if you’re a fan of Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway and other writers of that era – Thompson’s style here reminds me a little of that, and it’s interesting to note that even though he sounds wiser here, it was written before Fear and Loathing, although it wasn’t actually released until 1998. I like a book with a story behind it, and you should too.