Cate Crafter

October seemed like such a fast month, it was as if I blinked on the 1st and suddenly when I opened my eyes again it was the 31st. I also hit a bit of a reading slump this month as I only managed to finish 2 books.

Exciting Times by Noaise Dolan

Touted as the next Sally Rooney, Noaise Dolan’s debut novel Exciting Times has been sitting on my TBR list for quite some time. I finally got round to reading it and found that while it was a little like Rooney’s work it was also very different in many ways. While I enjoyed the book and its presentation of modern relationships and sexuality, I did think that it could have perhaps been a little more concise.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

I really enjoyed this book, and I was actually quite surprised at how readable Brave New World is considering that it was written in 1931. The concept of control through pleasure and complete balance in society is utterly compelling and quite scary and I really enjoyed Huxley’s witty jabs at consumerism and modern life which eerily seems more and more accurate nowadays! My one criticism about the book would be the idea of the “Savage Reservation”, this hasn’t aged very well at all and could be seen as highly offensive to Native Americans. While I am aware that the Savage Reservation represents an antithesis to the highly controlled World State and is most likely used as a satirical device Huxley nevertheless descends into damaging stereotypes of Native American culture.

As You Like It - William Shakespeare

I have always been much more of a fan of Shakespeare’s tragedies (with the exception of Much ado about Nothing) and I have to say that I am just not a fan of this pastoral comedy, but watching the play performed made it a lot more bearable than reading it, which I guess is to be expected but I was expecting a little more. The jury is still out on whether I nailed the essay on it though…

Black and White Photographer - Han Yujoo

This short story by Han Yujoo is available to read via Issuu or Buk thanks to the LTI Korean Library (there are also so many more short stories from Korea available on there for free too!)

The Black and White Photographer follows a young boy who is kidnapped and held in a storage room for a week. In this 20 page short story, Yujoo explores how a young mind would try and grapple with such a traumatic and alien experience.

Tale of a Mad Painter - Kim Dong-in

Another Korean short story that I read on Buk, this one also is a little dark and reads kind of like a Grimms Fairytale. The story is a story within a story, a writer is hiking and he decides to make up a story as he admires the view. The story he makes up is about a painter who is unsightly, and as a result he becomes a recluse, one day he meets a blind girl. I won’t tell you the conclusion as it’s well worth a read.

Walden - Henry David Thoreau - Nearly finished/ might not get to the end because it is oh so dull!

Oh dear. I am most definitely not a fan of Walden, in fact I could indeed say that this may just be the most boring book I have ever had the displeasure of reading. Thoreau is a self-entitled twit, whose occasional moment of poetical flare or interesting philosophical musing is overshadowed by his irritating egocentric narration. Also not much even happens, a whole chapter is dedicated to the hoeing of a bean field! I had to read this for uni and it’s safe to say I will never read Thoreau ever again!

October Books