This Amy Tan quote is taken from her bestselling novel, The Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Published in 1989, The Joy Luck Club focuses on the life experiences of four Chinese American families living in San Francisco in the mid 1900s. More specifically, the novel focuses on the complex relationships between three Chinese immigrant mothers and four American-born daughters. The novel reads like a collection of short stories; it plays off of the structure of a mahjong game and includes phrases about the game before each vignette. The Joy Luck Club was Amy Tan’s first […]
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Perfect for this time of year, this Anne of Green Gables quote captures our love of all things autumn. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery Published in 1908, Anne of Green Gables follows the life of young orphan girl Anne Shirley, who moves to a farm on Prince Edward Island. Although Anne was sent there mistakenly, the kind Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert take her in and agree to raise her. The title of the book comes from the name of the Cuthberts’ Avonlea farm, Green Gables. Since its publication, Anne of Green Gables has become one of the […]
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Thanks in large part to Disney’s many animated and live-action adaptations, few children in the entire world have grown up without some notion of the fantastical world of Mowgli, Baloo, and Shere Khan. But how much do children—and you—know about the original Jungle Book characters and stories by Rudyard Kipling? The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling first published his collection of stories that would later come to be known collectively as The Jungle Book in magazines back in 1893 and 1894. First edition copy of The Jungle BookPhoto from Wikicommons At the time these stories were written, Kipling lived […]
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Today’s Words Wednesday features a Jonathan Franzen quote from his essay collection entitled, fittingly, How To Be Alone. How To Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen Published in 2002, How To Be Alone is a collection of fourteen essays ranging in topic from the role of the novel in contemporary culture to the painful loneliness of Alzheimer’s. Many of the essays had been originally published in magazines such as Harper’s Magazine and The New Yorker. One of the essays, “My Father’s Brain,” was nominated for a 2002 National Magazine Award and was the basis for the character of Earl Lambert in his […]
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This Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie quote comes from her most recent novel, Americanah. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Published in 2013, Americanah follows the lives of Ifemelu and Obinze, a young Nigerian couple who leave military-ruled Nigeria in search of better opportunity. Ifemelu ends up as a renowned blogger who writes about race in America; Obinze struggles as an undocumented immigrant in England. (Ifemelu’s blog, Small Redemptions of Lagos, is actually published on Adichie’s own website, though there are no posts.) Through the story of Ifemelu and Obinze, their life together and their lives apart, Americanah explores ideas of national, cultural, racial, and personal […]
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To talk about fiction in the context of the horrific events of September 11, 2001, is to talk about the nature of fiction itself. Just what is fiction for? What is the 9/11 novel, and what role does literature play in our post-9/11 world? The purpose of fiction Over the years, writers, readers, and cultural commentators have inevitably chimed in with their own answers, one of the most famous of which came from the late David Foster Wallace: “I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. […]
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1984 by George Orwell This George Orwell quote comes from his acclaimed novel 1984 (sometimes written as Nineteen Eighty-Four). Published in 1949, 1984 is a dystopian novel that explores life under a totalitarian government that controls everything and watches everyone. “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” -George Orwell quote from 1984 Orwell’s Legacy It’s almost impossible to overestimate the lasting influence that 1984 has had on popular culture. Many common words were first introduced by Orwell in 1984, including doublespeak, thoughtcrime, telescreen, memory hole, and of course Big Brother. The author himself has even entered into the lexicon […]
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North and South Book (1854) This quote comes from Elizabeth Gaskell’s acclaimed novel North and South. Gaskell’s third novel, North and South was originally published in serial form in Charles Dickens’ literary magazine Household Words from September 1854 to January 1855. Like many Victorian novels, North and South is a social novel that sought to expose the plight of the working poor in England. The novel follows the main character Margaret Hale as she moves from the tranquility of the rural South to a cramped, dirty, and rapidly industrializing mill town in the North. Margaret is forced to face her own prejudices […]
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At Books on the Wall, it’s no secret that we love reading—and if you’re here, we assume you do too! But if you’re anything like us, you probably spend waaaaaaay too much of your monthly budget on books. We can walk into a bookstore with the best of intentions—”only one book…okay, maybe two books…but that’s all, no more!”—but of course we always walk out with at least twice what we planned for. Not that this is such a bad thing. There are worse problems to be had, certainly. But some months, it’s just not a good idea to tempt ourselves […]
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This F. Scott Fitzgerald quote comes from This Side of Paradise, which came out in 1920 and was the author’s first published novel. This Side of Paradise follows young Amory Blaine, who leaves his home in the Midwest to begin college at Princeton University. The novel received fairly positive reviews when it was first released, but it has never gained the public acclaim of Fitzgerald’s other works (like The Great Gatsby). It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being. -F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise Can’t get enough of F. Scott Fitzgerald? Check out our post […]
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