It being the 100th anniversary of George Orwell I decided to read one of his books that I hadn't gotten around to yet that was recommend to me a while ago, Keep The Aspidistra Flying. It was a novel about a poet who is trying to live outside the capitalistic system with abysmal results. He vividly describes the tedium and sordidness of "middle class" poverty, which differs from the equally demoralizing squalid poverty of the common classes. I could relate to some of the experiences of the main character when trying to get by as a student and just after.
I've been reading a lot of Junichiro Tanizaki lately, and the most recent book I read was Quicksand. It was another love triangle penned from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, which is similar to The Key and Diary of a Mad Old Man. It is yet another story of obsession, desire, and death. It is a love triangle between a married woman, her husband, and a corrupt, manipulative femme fatale. It was one of his more compelling stories.
I'd have to say that Graham Greene is one of my favorite authors; The Lawless Roads is the second non-fiction travel book of his that I've read, and Journey Without Maps was also a great book about travel in Africa. Greene is a brilliant travel writer; he makes detailed observations about the countryside, people, and customs of Mexico. The way he traveled in the 30s makes you appreciate modern infrastructure and the advances of civilization that make godforsaken places livable. He was on assignment for a paper to report on the anti-clerical government that was persecuting the Catholics. It was from this experience that Greene wrote The Power and The Glory, which germinated from an anecdote he heard in Mexico about a whiskey priest.
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