Adam Bede by George Eliot

...who by the way, is a woman writer.

I liked this book. There's a lot to it and I like how Eliot treats all the various subjects. I think nuanced is the word that comes to mind with a lot of the way she handles the various issues.

To keep it short, I didn't like how it took her 300 pages to set up the story, but it reminded me of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo in that sense.

It's a long read and, honestly, not something I would recommend to people. I simply liked it because I generally like Victorian literature but it's a long book and not one that is accessible to many people.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

I don't like war stories.

This one is a metafiction-war-story-type book or at least it feels like it in the first read, but it really isn't.

[MAJOR SPOILER ALERT - I'm going to talk about the ending]

Though in all honesty, the book is a collection of short stories related (more or less) to the Vietnam War so each story can be read relatively episodically...

I felt like the stories created a nice, coherent whole in the sense that they still felt connected. Some other short story collections I read had a disjointed feel so I liked how the stories in this one worked together.

I suppose having to read it for a class helped, too.

Anyway, back the the spoiler.

I think this book is about coping with death - that's why there's the reference to Laura at the end of the novel and that entire last story has nothing to do with Vietnam. Thinking about it now, it kind of reminds me of David Sedaris' book, Holidays on Ice in its similarity with the theme of death, though the theme manifested pretty differently in each book (well, I suppose an argument could be made on its similarity...... but perhaps another time).

This is probably why I liked this book even though it talked about war. War novels (especially contemporary ones) are usually horribly graphic, grotesque, and revealing about the darkness of human nature. It shows what humans are capable of and it isn't pleasant and as I've said before, I don't like depressing novels because the depression in the novel seems to seep out of its pages and contaminates my very being...

But I digress.

This novel did have graphic descriptions of injuries and death but it also showed the various coping mechanisms of the individuals and the seeking of truth behind war and the various mechanisms O'Brien uses were pretty interesting. This is one of those novels you read again and again and find something new and interesting.

Anyway, I'd have to say this novel is a keeper though how much I would pick up this novel for fun is something I haven't yet decided. It's an easy read but it has a lot of depth and I feel like it portrays war pretty well. I'd definitely recommend to others to read (though with less enthusiasm simply because it does talk about war and such things are never pleasant).