“To kill a Mocking Bird” by Harper Lee

🍂”Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit’me, but remember its a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
– Harper Lee, To kill a mocking bird
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🌼If you have been a reader for some time, you would have definitely come across a mention of this classic, and most of you would have already read it.
But if you have not yet come around to reading this coveted novel, here are all the reasons why you should!
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🌻 A classic set in 1930s Alabama is told by the point of view of a little girl, Jean, fondly known as Scout, who is witnessing her father, who is a lawyer, struggle to stand for a black man accused of raping a young white woman, in a town surrounded by people of racial prejudice.
As the events unfold leading up to the trial, will Atticus Flinch, the father, uphold his morale even when everyone is against him?
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🌺 Easily one of the easiest to understand classics, the story flows lyrically, the words almost poetic, the intricacy of the characters so memorable, the words don’t leave you long after you are finished reading them. Compassionate, striking and deeply impactful, the book talks of important themes of racism and inequality, by means basic subtleties of life, of human behavior, its innocence, its kindness, its cruelty, its love, its hatred all at the same time.
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🍁 A masterpiece that takes a story of two kids growing up in a world where all things are not fair, and the conflicts of a father trying to be an example for his kids and do the right thing, the characterization makes for a great story that constantly keeps you hooked and brings out the messages in a poignant manner.
Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐.5/5
Genre: classic, fiction, historical-fiction

“Atonement” by Ian McEwan

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”
– Ian McEwan, Atonement.
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It’s the summer of 1935, and a thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis misunderstands her older sister Celia’s relationship with their family gardener Robbie, and in a day a series of events will lead her to commit sin more grave than anything the price of which the two people have to pay for years, and she will be left atoning for it for the rest of her life.
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While the premise of the book is so enticing, the story goes real slow and the element of suspense and wonder what first made me go for this book was lost in the slow pace writing and overly detailed description. Very few books can make the narration from different POVs work, and this just didn’t work for me.
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The wartime chapters were extremely generic and unnecessarily crawling. Also, the idea of the ‘flawed’ judgment of a teenager, bringing in dire consequences felt like a fluke.
Other than that the writer has worked well with words and you can feel yourself looking forward to find out what happens next, in bits and pieces.
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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐/5
Reading difficult: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Genre: fiction, historical-fiction, romance, classics, historical

“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker

“I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way…I can’t apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to… We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful.” -Alice Walker, The Color Purple
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Do you ever come across a tale so poignant yet so inspiring, that you cannot help but marvel at its beauty in all its form, one that is so tender that it touches you deeply even though it is just some words written on a few pieces of paper?
Well, this was one such read for me.
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Celia is a young black girl born into a poor family and having grown in a household where she was continuously raped by her father, deprived of the right to live with her two children and separated by her darling sister Nettie, she finds herself in an ugly marriage.
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Her life is gloomy and melancholious until she meets Shug Avery, a steadfast and unwavering woman, who refuses to resort to her destiny of living the life of a black woman, one that is filled with a lot of sacrifices and prejudice.
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Told by means of letters written by Celia, the story takes beautiful turns, showing a mirror of the condition of woman in black societies. If the blacks were the deprived classes back then, then the black women were deprived of the deprived. So much so that at some points of the book, it almost breaks your heart.
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Even though the narration is in African American English dialect, which might not be everyone’s piece of cake, once you get the hang of it, it is one of those tales that are so absorbing, you almost don’t want it to finish.
Intense yet gratifying.
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Genre: classics, black-history, historical-fiction, feminist-literature, feminism
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5/5
Reading difficulty: ⭐⭐⭐.5/5

“Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
– Jane Austen, Pride, and Prejudice
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Do you also love reading as much as our protagonist Elizabeth here?
Elizabeth Bennet, one of the five daughters of the Bennet family is our vivacious heroine, is fiercely opinionated and witty at the same time, often attracting displeasure from her anxious mother who wants to see her daughters married and thinks such behaviour is not ‘lady-like’.
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“A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
– Virginia Woolf, A room of one’s own
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I am truly short of words to describe my experience or thoughts about my first read by Virginia Woolf. And that is saying something, considering I hardly ever feel that way.
Of course, it is a five-star read, of course, every woman must read it, of course, everyone must read it. With that out of the way, I would try my best to “review” this masterpiece.
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“No one writes to the colonel” by Gabriel García Márquez

“The only thing that comes for sure is death”
-Gabriel García Márquez, No one writes to the colonel

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Fifteen years have passed since the Thousand days war ended in Columbia, and the colonel is still waiting for his letter of pension to arrive which was promised after the war.
Struck in poverty, the old man lives with his wife, the couple had lost their only son, lives off by selling little objects around the house and now they are just left with an old clock and their son’s rooster.

“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself”
                                   -Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

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Jane Eyre is the perfect Victorian classic, with the title being the name of the main protagonist.

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Jane, an orphan kid living with her aunt and cousins at the Gateshead hall. As any other orphan of her time, she is pretty much treated very badly, to the extent of being locked up in a room to learn to ‘behave’.

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Jane, a young kid of ten years, sent away to a religious boarding school – Lowood Institute. Even though she has good company, the inhabitants of the institution are constantly starved and cold for the lack of warm clothes.

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Jane, a young lady now, works as a governess for two years in Lowood and goes on to be a private tutor to a little girl named Adele, at a country house called Thornfield. There she meets  Mr. Rochester, the owner of the house and a series of events conspire between the two of them.

“The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” by Agatha Christie

“The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.”         – Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

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As always, Agatha Christie never disappoints you. The murder of Roger Ackroyd is one of the most popular novels by Agatha Christie, also the only one to be featured in the 1001 books to read before you die list. And once you read it, you can’t deny that claim.

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The tale is about the murder of a rich man Roger Ackroyd who gets killed on the evening of a widow’s suicide, amidst rumours of a secret affair between the two deceased. The village of King’s Abbot is full of suspects, the nervous butler, Ackroyd’s stepson, his sister-in-law, the house help. It is now up to the famous detective – Hercule Poirot to solve the mystery with the help of the village doctor and narrator, James Sheppard and James’ sister, Caroline.

“The handmaid’s tale” by Margaret Atwood

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”  -Margaret Atwood, The handmaid’s tale

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The handmaid’s tale is a dystopian narrative set in the Republic of Gilead where a theonomic military dictatorship exists in what is present-day Massachusetts. The government is thrown off and a totalitarian Christian theonomy reigns. Human rights are diminished and women’s rights are heavily curtailed. The women of the society are now compartmentalised based on various functions and emphasis is now wholly in the act of reproduction making it the centre of the order.

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As the protagonist puts in these words:
” I am a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black.”

“The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger

“I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.”      -J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

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Ever came across a book that has no solid plot or storyline but still gets to you in so many different ways. Well, this is that book for me. “The catcher in the rye” by J.D. Salinger is a classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion. It is a story about Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old teenager, who has to leave his prep school in Pennsylvania, under some circumstances. So instead of going back to his home in New York, he decides to go underground, exploring New York for three days.

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What follows is a simple and yet complex account of a child’s understanding of the world. A world in which he tries to fit again and again but being sixteen-year-old, he is too naive and confused. Still, he has his own expectations and he eventually finds himself lost.