The Seaside Library

Author: Boris Pasternak Acquired in: October 2020 Sadly, the last book I read in 2020 had to be a mediocre book like this! After reading War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov, I was looking forward to reading Doctor Zhivago. It had several good reviews online, plus, Pasternak won a Nobel Prize after publishing this. I feel a bit let down by the plot, which started in such a promising manner. After all, isn’t the Revolution, whether French or Russian, a good place to set your tale? The protagonist Yury Zhivago is your everyday man but rather inclined towards melancholy. As an orphan, he grew up with his relations in Moscow, eventually marrying Tonya, a graceful and wise woman. The story then details his life in the tumultuous period of Russian reformation. Yury falls for another woman, Lara Antipova, whose life can make an interesting story by itself. What's interesting is that Yury loves both women, but cannot choose between wife or mistress. How can he even think he could strik...

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro Acquired in: August 2020 This pandemic has brought about a change in me- I’ve started experimenting. When the days feel like an eternity, it’s difficult to resist the temptation of buying books that differ from your tastes, in an attempt to stop the decline from lucid human to limp vegetable. Now, my library is quite diverse. Dystopia, crime, concentration camps, family stories or Hawaii? You name it- maybe I have it. Though, much to my exasperation, most of the books I come across these days have sad endings, despite all my efforts to snag something cheery. ‘Tis not the season to be happy, it seems.  After reading Never Let Me Go, I felt the same as when I finished Madame Bovary: depressed, yet filled with the characteristic satisfaction one feels after reading a book with a solid storyline. The striking plot draws your attention; it takes place in the 1950s to 1990s in England, only that human cloning occurs on a massive scale. In this historical dystopia, ...