Ciro Giobbe Giobbe itibaren Sirukarumbur, Tamil Nadu 632531, India
A classic for obvious reasons. Hemingway's style is notoriously difficult. I've had this book for literally probably 20 years and just now finally read it. It was alarmingly prescient in terms of the current political/economic situation we find ourselves in today. I brought the book with me on my trip to Europe, my first from Chicago, Hemingway's home, to Hemingway's adopted home, Paris. It seemed fitting that I begin the book while leaving Paris, and continue it back in Chicago. I began school again and the book became train reading. The scenes between Robert Jordan and Maria were often painful to read even and they offered the book it's one tender bright spot. Perhaps because they were the book's one tender bright spot. I felt strangely numb at the close of the book, as a worldwide movement protesting global economic inequality is developing, I wonder what a book like For Whom the Bells Tolls bodes. It speaks of universal human solidarity, but also the fragility of ideals, the futility of war, and the tenuousness of love. For Whom the Bells Tolls is a powerful yet strangely dispassionate treatise on the ways in which our ideals can turn on us, can become lost in conflict, and may or may not serve us in the final reckoning. Still, the Republicans are the obvious protagonists in the tale, and Jordan the tale's moral center. I wish I had been required to read this in high school. Thankfully, I was spared reading the Old Man and the Sea. Here's to you, Hemingway!
This book is actually one I like to read again and again. John Berendt is a former magazine writer and his first book "Midnight In The Garden of Good And Evil" was a fascinating peek at Savannah society as well as a peek inside the judicial system - following trials of Jim Williams for murder - tried multiple times for the same murder and acquitted each time. "The City of Falling Angels" turns it attention to the ancient Italian city of Venice, and the tragic fire that destroyed the famous opera house there. This is a true story and it covers not only the fire, but several scandals that rocked Venetian society. It is populated with characters that are too colorful to be real, but indeed, they are. Read this book.