Mini-Reviews: The 5 Best Novels I’ve Read This Year (So Far!)

Do you ever have so many books that you want to talk about that you can’t figure out which one to write a post on? Enter the mini-review, my favorite cop-out that I actually find more enjoyable to read and write than full-length reviews!

I was planning to list my favorite books I’d read since January 2019, but I couldn’t narrow it down. So after excluding non-fiction and kid lit because I felt as if I were comparing apples to oranges, I came up with a list of the 5 best novels I’ve stumbled across this year.

Surprised by Loss: Three Atypical Modern Epics

Hey, everyone! Long time no see. Sorry for the long break. My last year of high school has been crazy! But now that I’ve been accepted to college, my thesis has been written and defended, and I GRADUATED HIGH SCHOOL (!)—I can get back to blogging.

Today, I’d like to talk about the genre of the epic. No, I’m not going to talk about the Aeneid or The Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost (though you can bring those up in the comments if you want). I’m going to tell you about three of my favorite books (of which there are many), all of which were written in or after the 20th century.

Mini-Reviews: All the Books I Read for Literature Class This Year (Part 2) + 1-Year Blogiversary!

Good morning! Last week, we went over the books I read for the first semester of my literature class—The Great Divorce, The Iliad, The Aeneid, and a whole lot of Plato. This week, let’s take a look at my second semester line-up! Once again, I’ll examine the content of the books and then the edition/translation I used.

This semester was fun because the books we read were from the late Roman empire, medieval, and Renaissance periods, and we read them in chronological order. So my class was able to examine the progression of view on matters such as free will and humanism over the years. Let’s start at the beginning, with…

Mini-Reviews: All the Books I Read for Literature Class This Year (Part I)

Remember back in August when I posted a list anticipating the 7 books I was reading for literature class this year? A few of you wanted to know what I thought of them once I was done. Well, I took my literature final yesterday, so I’m officially done with this year’s literature class, and I can tell you about all the books I read this year! I’ll talk about both the content of the books and the edition/ translation I read.

Theology Thursday: Severus Snape and the Ordo Amoris (Part II)

“I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.”

-Lily Evans to Severus Snape, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

*WARNING:* Lots of Harry Potter spoilers, for all seven books.

Book Review: The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

Have you ever read a book, put it down, and said “What the heck did I just read?”

That’s a pretty decent summary of Evelyn Waugh’s novel The Loved One. But here’s a longer one, just in case that’s not quite sufficient.

7 Books I’m Reading for This Year’s Literature Class + An Announcement

I love reading, but I am terrible about getting off my bum and reading important, weighty books. You know, hard books. Books that are over a thousand years old. Or books that wrestle with tough questions. Or books that delve into the darkness of the human soul.

If left to my own devices, I’d just read Shakespeare comedies and C.S. Lewis (whose writings, although complex, are quite readable) all the time. That’s why I appreciate literature classes: they push me into books that I’d never read otherwise.