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Venturing into the world of Junji Ito, Japanese horror manga artist

Venturing into the world of Junji Ito, Japanese horror manga artist

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I was never a fan of Japanese horror. For a scaredy-cat like me, it takes a lot of courage to take on movies like Ringu or The Grudge. Although I am aware that there usually is a close connection between movies and comics as they are both under the umbrella of culture, my perception of Japanese manga is completely isolated from that of movies and bound to more lighthearted series like Doraemon, Naruto and Avatar. I never thought of trying…

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Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a glimpse into the life of refugees

Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a glimpse into the life of refugees

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There are countless reasons one can think of on why many people choose to move far away from their mother land, be it to pursue one’s distinguished career in a promising foreign market, to settle down with a local, or simply look for better economic status. However, the term refugee would still be such an unfamiliar concept to most Americans until waves of Vietnamese refugees arrived in the US after the war just to be greeted with reservation, doubt, and…

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Do you know what you’re reading this summer?

Do you know what you’re reading this summer?

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Who wants to read?! Not you, probably, as you slog through to the last stretch before finals. And I get it, you’ve read hundreds of pages of theory, history, literature, science, etc., and if you’re a humanities major you’ve probably read more Freud than you think should be legal under the Geneva Convention. But whether you believe in it or not, there is life after finals and a whole summer stretched before you. Maybe you have an internship, a summer…

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The Appeal of Animal Narratives and Narrators

The Appeal of Animal Narratives and Narrators

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I recently began reading Virginia Woolf’s “Flush,” a novel that portrays the life and inner world of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel. “Flush” was written in third person, but for most of the novel, the third person is close enough to Flush that he, a dog, is narrating his own story. “Flush” has inspired me to consider what role animal narrators and narrations have in literature, what world and personal themes an animal narrator allows an author or reader to…

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Opening Lines of Novels that Work For Me

Opening Lines of Novels that Work For Me

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“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” It is also a truth universally acknowledged that we’ve all heard the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice approximately a million times. And there’s a reason for that. The opening lines of classic novels have a tendency to become iconic, gaining lives of their own beyond the fame of the novel itself.  There are certain opening lines…

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In Defense of “Young Adult,” Sort of

In Defense of “Young Adult,” Sort of

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I’ll admit it: when it comes to books, I have a tendency to be a bit pretentious. So, when I started reading John Green’s novels and loved them after having turned my nose up at the “young adult” shelf for years, I went through a period of mild identity crisis. I tried to reconcile my conflicting feelings and I was just short of tossing and turning in my sleep over it. Thankfully, I have been courageous enough to work through…

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Vassar Alumnae Must-Reads

Vassar Alumnae Must-Reads

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If you are anything like me, you probably had plans to read a few novels over winter break but became too engrossed in sleeping, eating, and watching Scandal on Netflix to even so much as glance at a book. Don’t worry – there is still time to read something solely for pleasure before professors really start piling on the assignments and reading anything else becomes unthinkable. During the first few weeks of the semester, I always start a title from…

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Book Banning: The Importance of Controversial Texts

Book Banning: The Importance of Controversial Texts

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Although Banned Books Week–an annual week-long celebration of the freedom to read–already occurred in September, it is always relevant to think about issues of censorship and book banning, both in the United States and countries around the world. While banning books might seem like a practice of the past–challenged by modern, progressive ideas of intellectual expression–hundred of complaints and challenges to different titles (over 464 in 2012) are reported by the American Library Association each year. Over 11,000 books have…

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The Importance of Bookstores

The Importance of Bookstores

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Growing up, I was always enchanted by bookstores. At my local bookstore, I would wander through the seemingly endless shelves, searching through the battered copies of used books and the shiny new bestsellers. I would pull out a novel and curl up on the floor between the shelves to read the first few pages, hoping each time that I had discovered the perfect purchase. Now, bookstores continue to remind me of the endless possibilities of the literary world, displaying all of…

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