I never expected to read Gone With the Wind. It was a classic and extremely long– but that was about all I knew. My grandmother one day recommended that I read it, and so I impulsively decided to. This book is extremely detailed, but not too much so. It treads the line very close, but I feel the detail is what makes the book good.
The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, is a creative imagining of the Civil
War. Whitehead takes the concept of the Underground Railroad, which is ironically visualized as
a real railroad that runs under America. The novel follows a young slave, Cora, after her
mother’s escape from their plantation. After years of torment and abuse, Cora and a new slave,
Caesar, escape the plantation and make their way North by underground trains. Throughout her
I have never been a big fan of war movies, so I expected to spend an unpleasant two-and-a-half hour watching a boring movie centered around politics. Surprisingly, this was not the case with Lincoln. The movie takes place mainly in the year 1865, during President Abraham Lincoln's second term. Along with managing all the stresses in his life and in society during this time period, he was also figuring out how to successfully pass the 13th amendment.
Little Women is a classic realistic fiction novel. It is divided into two parts, both telling the story of four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. The first part is set at the end of the Civil War, and relates the story of these four loving sisters and their mother waiting for their father to come home from the war. They each have different temptations and struggles, but ultimately they bond together to create a loving household filled with laughter and joy.
Don't be fooled by the opening battle scene and continuous conflict that drives the story into thinking this is a simple action book. It's tense and fast-paced, yes, but it is also full of moral, psychological, interpersonal, and political conflict. It is a book whose external action deeply considers complicated internal issues.
