I finished reading "all quiet on the western front" and it is still haunting me.The author ,who was in WWI,pulls you into the chaos of this wide awake nightmare and depicts what must have been his experience at the age of 18 to be near the front lines.I remember the visceral punch "saving private Ryan" had for alot of people and this packs the same punch.I highly recommend it.
I am trying to re-read all the classics.I've got thru lord of the flies,watership down,clockwork orange,and now all quiet..,theres a reason these books are considered classics.I am dreading moby dick and war and peace though lol.
But next up i got a murakami book i haven't read.(after dark).I think I've read everything that's been translated so far but i found this new one.Murakami is one of my favorite authors and if you ever wanted to know what it would be like to read a dream,pick up his stuff.
all quiet is simply one of the best war books ever written, it captures the chaos of ww1(which is a particular favorite subject of mine) and the horror felt by the individuals. today, our weapons allow for fairly distant fighting...but nothing prepares a person for having to decapitate another human being with a small hand shovel.
ReplyDelete-octo
good point octo.the shelling while they are in the graveyard shook me to the core.
ReplyDeleteI love Murakami's work, particularly Windup Bird and Kafka - After Dark was interesting. I imagine you've read some of it by now (I am late to the post :-). The weird creepiness of it is really great.
ReplyDeleteYou _may_ also like "In the Miso Soup" by Ryu Murakami (no relation). It is not as well written, but interesting. A Japanese tour guide for the seedier parts of Tokyo gets involved with an American serial killer.
Also "Grotesque" by Natsuro Kirino was interesting, and a tad bizarre. Hard to even describe it. A tad on the perverse side, but not grossly so.
I also really liked "The Ring" and "Spiral" by Koji Suzuki, but forget how I felt about "Loop" (the final in the trilogy, worth reading for closure if you like the other two).