So, winter term ended a month ago and it has taken me a few weeks to get back into a reading groove. I read fiction to unwind and relax after an academic term, and summer is about stacks of fiction discovered in the library, bringing home as many books as I can stuff into my bag, and hopefully meeting a new favorite book.
Here is what I have been recently devouring:
All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. This novel is considered the greatest American political fiction work every written - quite possibly THE "Great American Novel". Warren won the Pulitzer in 1946 for this book. It is the story of the rise and fall of a hick named Willie Stark, and how his rise and fall takes many others with him, such as the narrator Jack Burden. Stark becomes the governor, and the novel is about how a good man is corrupted by bad company and power. Stark may have been a great man (whatever great really means) but he was not a good man. In the end, no one every says I am sorry for what has happened, they merely say it could have been different. In the end, all the king's men couldn't put him back together again. Few write like this anymore, with paragraph long descriptions stuffed with (good) metaphors galore - "his eyes were like peeled hard boiled eggs, staring wildly..."
A beautifully written book. Excellent story, and I heartily recommend it.
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