Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
After my brief affair with Anna Karenina in the summer I had a sudden urge to delve into the lives of other suicidal, over-sexed and under-appreciated women. Enter, Madame Bovary. The feminist in me had a whale of a time reading this novel. As with AK I loved and hated Emma in equal measure although her selfishness far outweighs any element of selfishness in AK's characters. I whizzed through the book just to find out what happens but I am already planning a re-read just to appreciate the language. Flaubert's vocabulary is amazing (I wonder how it is in French?!). On every other page I came across a new word (thank goodness for the dictionary app on my phone) which made it an enjoyable experience on many levels.
Madame Bovary has been yet another win for the Classics Club as it has been yet another from my list that I have adored. It is melancholy and generally without any hope (particularly at the end) but there is something about the quiet beauty of the language that really captivated me.
'Oh yes, I can imagine.'
'I doubt if you can. You're not a woman.'
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
I decided to read this because of banned books week. I have a couple of banned books on my CC list and it was a toss up between this and Lolita but I went for this because, even though it is one of the recent additions to my list, I have wanted to read it for (like) EVER. It was a quick and entertaining read and I often shook my head at the sheer stupidity of anyone who would want to censor it. Seriously, I've never read a book that has a more brilliant and hopeful concept of death (that though we may die, somewhere in time we are still living).
It is a very darkly funny book but also a sad one. Although the war is slightly disguised by the science fiction it is a revealing and distressing representation of the destruction of Dresden. I really would highly recommend this book both for it's sci-fi humour and the picture of war. I can also see now why so many people have 'so it goes' tattooed on their bodies.
