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When I finished The Witches of Eastwick, I felt as if I had stepped out of a storm that kept changing shape. Updike’s novel follows three women in a small Rhode Island town who discover their own strange power after their marriages fall apart. As I moved through the story, I kept feeling a mix of amusement and unease. The magic in the book never felt light to me. It carried weight, and I sensed the loneliness sitting under each spell.

I followed Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie as they tested their strength, and I caught myself smiling at their confidence. At the same time, I noticed how their freedom unsettled the town around them. Updike captured the texture of boredom, desire, and small town gossip in a way that made me pause more than once. I felt the tension build when Darryl Van Horne arrived, a man who stirred all their ambitions and insecurities at once. Watching their world bend around him left me uneasy, as if I could see a crack forming long before they did.

The story carried a rhythm I found hard to shake. I felt sympathy for the women even when their choices turned sharp. Their magic became a mirror for the emotions they tried to outrun. When the novel closed, I was left with a faint sadness and a sense that freedom can feel heavy, especially when the world keeps trying to shrink it.

Reading The Wretched of the Earth wasn’t easy—it was urgent. Though written by Frantz Fanon, the preface by Jean-Paul Sartre hit me like a warning shot. From the first page, I knew this wasn’t a book meant for passive consumption. It demanded something from me.

Fanon writes about decolonization not as a metaphor or academic idea, but as a necessary, painful, and violent rupture. His voice is fierce, grounded in lived experience, and impossible to ignore. I felt both captivated and uncomfortable—especially as a reader coming from privilege. He speaks directly to the psychology of oppression, and how colonial violence doesn’t end when the flag is lowered.

What moved me most was the clarity with which he describes rage—not as chaos, but as a response to centuries of humiliation. His words made me see how dignity, when stripped for long enough, doesn’t ask politely to be returned.

This isn’t a text that consoles. It confronts. And in that confrontation, I felt something shift.

The Wretched of the Earth lit a fire I wasn’t expecting. It gave shape to injustices I thought I understood, and then showed me I didn’t. I finished it feeling shaken—but more awake. Some books challenge your thinking. This one dares you to change.

Reading The Night in Lisbon by Erich Maria Remarque was like stepping into a cigarette-lit memory—one laced with desperation, war, love, and a city waiting at the edge of exile. It begins with an unnamed narrator, a refugee from Nazi Germany, wandering the streets of Lisbon in 1942. Then, out of the shadows, a man offers him a lifeline: two boat tickets to freedom and forged passports. The price? One night of listening to his story.

What unfolds is not just a tale of escape, but a confession—one haunted by loss, urgency, and impossible choices. I was completely pulled in. The man, Josef, recounts his love for Helen, their flight across Europe, their brief moments of peace constantly shattered by borders and brutality.

Remarque’s writing carries the weight of someone who has seen too much. It’s precise, but full of feeling. Every line feels like it matters. As I read, I felt a quiet ache growing—a sorrow that wasn’t loud but relentless, like watching smoke curl up into a darkening sky.

This is a war story, yes, but not about battles. It’s about survival. About the quiet heroism of keeping your humanity when the world demands you surrender it.

I admired how Remarque makes room for love, even in ruin. Josef and Helen’s relationship is tender, but never naïve. It’s a love that knows it’s on borrowed time—and that’s what makes it real.

When the sun rises over Lisbon, the story ends—but the feeling doesn’t. The Night in Lisbon left me thinking about how little time we’re given, and what we do with it. It’s a novel of twilight hours, told with grace and gravity. And it stayed with me like a whisper I couldn’t quite forget.

Reading Franzen’s What If We Stopped Pretending? felt like someone turning on the lights in a room we’ve all agreed to keep dim. In this short but provocative essay, Jonathan Franzen argues that climate catastrophe is no longer a possibility—it’s a reality. Not a future threat, but a present collapse already in motion.

At first, I resisted. I wanted to disagree, to cling to hope. But as I read, I recognized the strange relief in what he was doing: saying the quiet part out loud. Franzen doesn’t call for despair, but for realism. He suggests that instead of imagining we’ll "fix" climate change, we should focus on preserving what we can—local communities, democracy, decency.

His tone is sharp but not cynical. He writes not to scare, but to reframe. That made me uncomfortable, then thoughtful, then oddly calm. I didn’t feel inspired exactly—but I felt grounded.

This essay doesn’t offer solutions. It offers clarity. And that, I think, is its power. Franzen isn’t asking us to give up; he’s asking us to grow up.

When I finished, I sat with it for a while. I’m still sitting with it. Because sometimes, the first step toward real action is finally telling the truth.

Reading The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende felt like stepping into a dream woven from memory, myth, and political trauma. From the very first page, I knew I wasn’t just reading a family saga—I was witnessing generations being shaped and shattered by forces larger than themselves.

The story traces the Trueba family across decades, beginning with Clara, a mysterious girl who speaks to spirits, and her volatile husband Esteban. Their lives, and those of their children and grandchildren, unfold against the backdrop of a country that closely mirrors Chile—its beauty, its corruption, its collapse.

What gripped me wasn’t just the magical realism—though Allende’s world glows with ghosts and premonitions—it was the emotional weight each character carried. Love, revenge, power, silence: these aren’t just themes, they’re weapons and wounds. I found myself especially moved by the women in the novel, who endure so much with strength that feels both mythical and heartbreakingly human.

Allende’s prose is lush, but never soft. There’s brutality here—political violence, betrayal, torture—and she doesn’t flinch. I was stunned by how she balanced the intimate with the historical, how the fall of a country could feel as devastating as the collapse of a marriage.

By the end, I felt as though I had lived a dozen lives. The House of the Spirits doesn’t offer clean resolution. Instead, it leaves you holding a thread of memory—fragile, sacred, unbreakable. I closed the book in silence, grateful for the spell it cast and the truths it refused to hide.

When I picked up Pincher Martin, I thought I was in for a survival story—stormy seas, a castaway on a rock, man versus nature. What I got instead was man versus himself, stripped to the bone. William Golding doesn't hand you a narrative. He locks you inside a decaying consciousness and dares you to stay.

The novel begins with Christopher Martin, a naval officer, being hurled into the sea after his ship is destroyed. He claws his way onto a barren rock in the North Atlantic. No food, no fresh water, no hope. Just rock, sea, sky—and his mind. That’s where the real story happens.

What unfolded wasn’t action but disintegration. Martin’s thoughts looped, fragmented, grasping at order, pride, and identity. And I followed him, page after page, through misery, denial, hallucination. It was exhausting. At times, I wanted to put the book down just to get out of his head. But I couldn’t. Golding’s language, sharp and cold, held me fast.

And then came the moment when everything fell apart—beautifully, horribly. The realization of what I was actually reading changed everything behind me. Martin hadn’t just been clinging to a rock. He’d been clinging to the illusion of survival, to ego, to the refusal to die.

Reading this book was like watching a soul unravel. It disturbed me more deeply than I expected. But it also forced me to think—about identity, guilt, denial, and what we protect when we’re at the end.

Pincher Martin didn’t move me emotionally in the way a tragic novel might. Instead, it left a colder mark. I didn’t cry—I just sat still for a while, thinking. Golding doesn’t ask for sympathy. He asks for confrontation. And I gave it, reluctantly but fully.

Reading Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann felt like climbing into a cold, cerebral labyrinth—with no guarantee of coming back whole. At its center is Adrian Leverkühn, a composer who trades his soul for artistic genius. But this is no flashy Faustian bargain. It’s slow. Clinical. And terrifyingly plausible. Mann fuses dense intellectualism with creeping dread, and I often felt like I was wading through quicksand made of philosophy, music theory, and theology.

The novel is narrated by Leverkühn’s friend Serenus Zeitblom, a cautious, moral man chronicling the life of a genius consumed from within. Zeitblom’s tone is restrained, but through it, I could feel the chill of Leverkühn’s isolation, his detachment, and ultimately his collapse. The pact with the devil is framed not just as a personal tragedy but a national one—mirroring Germany’s own moral decay leading up to the rise of Nazism. That parallel haunted me throughout.

This wasn’t a book I read quickly—or comfortably. Mann doesn’t allow that. I wrestled with it. I felt intellectually inadequate at times, overwhelmed by references and abstract discussions. But every so often, there’d be a moment of piercing clarity—a line or idea that hit like thunder. Those moments made the struggle worth it.

What lingered most wasn’t the pact, but the silence that followed—the music that never got written, the warmth that never returned. Doktor Faustus left me unsettled, and that feels right. It’s not meant to soothe. It’s meant to challenge, to provoke, to make you sit with discomfort.

I didn’t just read Doktor Faustus—I survived it. And I’m still thinking about what it took from me.

Reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison was not just a literary experience—it was a reckoning. Told through fragmented perspectives, the novel follows Pecola Breedlove, a young Black girl in 1940s Ohio, who yearns for blue eyes, believing they will make her beautiful and loved. What unfolds is not simply her story, but an indictment of a society infected by racism, internalized self-hate, and generational trauma.

As I read, I didn’t feel like a distant observer. I felt complicit, uncomfortable, and ultimately heartbroken. Morrison’s language is both poetic and punishing. Her prose doesn’t ask for permission—it demands attention. I found myself stopping mid-paragraph, re-reading lines, feeling gutted by how brutal and beautiful they were.

What struck me most was how Morrison refuses to offer easy comfort. Pecola’s descent into madness isn’t romanticized. It’s raw. Her world doesn’t change. It breaks her. And yet, Morrison doesn’t write tragedy for tragedy’s sake—she writes to expose the forces that destroy innocence, especially for Black girls.

This novel left me silent after the last page. It sharpened my awareness of how beauty standards and systemic violence intersect. I didn’t just read Pecola’s story—I carried it with me. Morrison makes sure you can’t look away, and honestly, I don’t think I ever will.

Reading The Bluest Eye was painful. Necessary. Unforgettable.