Initially, Lolita was considered unpublishable. Even I was reluctant to read it. But this story is just as much about Dolores and the world that allows her to be defiled and corrupted by men like Humbert. And it is brilliant.
The Mayans believed that writing was sacred (as I do). They had one of the most advanced writing systems in the ancient world. Deciphering them was difficult since few books survived the Spanish Inquisition.
Published in 1931, The Waves pioneered a stream-of-consciousness style that really just mimicked the voices in her head. She battled mental illness all her life, and in the end, she lost, filling her pockets with rocks and drowning herself in the River Ouse.
The Moors pulled Europe out of the Dark Ages by bringing agriculture, architecture, medicine, science, and libraries. But after the Reconquista of Moorish Spain in 1492, over 1 million non-Catholic books were burned, most of them Arabic, but also Jewish books and those on the sciences.
Upon the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the state library in Moscow had collected over 27,000 books that were banned.
Khaled Hosseini describes an Afghanistan before the Taliban and the wars that ravaged it, where childhood dreams soared as high as the kites they flew, girls were educated to become doctors, and the Buddhas of Bamiyan once stood safely. Now, two decades after publication is another generation who might know nothing of it but war.
Like Kahlo and Rivera and Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, they were intellectual equals who had polyamorous affairs. But de Beauvoir was unique - she would take on young female lovers, as if in training, and then pass them on.
Born in 1924 in a segregated Harlem as the son of a preacher man, Baldwin would go on to become one of the most resonant voices of the Civil Rights Movement. There was always something fearless and revolutionary in his writings. And I love him most for that.
"𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘰 𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘦𝘵, 𝘐 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨." Early one summer morning, Ernest Hemingway took his favorite double-barrel shotgun, bent himself over it, and pulled the trigger.
Orwell's seminal dystopian novel was written in light of Nazi Germany and the consequences of hate-filled ideologies. Set in the future, this story about governments driving perpetual wars, cameras tracking our private lives, and the use of psychological and physical torture has become frighteningly true. It was only meant to be a warning.
