The Young Reader's Review

Summer is upon us; the sun beats down onto our sunglasses-covered faces as we sip onto an iced soda while reading beside the pool or as we bury our toes in the sand. School reading lists remain a distant memory… but a question arises: what to read? We often disqualify certain books as not being apt for summer reading; the veil of literariness is apparently unappealing for most readers, too reminiscent of the scholastic sphere (Dostoevsky seems incongruous lying on a beach towel). So here is a list of ten books, in no particular order, a mix of contemporary oeuvres and classics, where I am assured that at least one of them will be your perfect summer read.   - Blue Eyes, Black Hair   (Les Yeux Bleus, Cheveux Noirs) by Marguerite Duras A desultory-seeming narrative that beautifully represents the impossibility of accurately and loyally depicting the intensity and rawness of human emotion. A story of nonreciprocal love, of obsession. One of the lesser-kn...

Hello and welcome back to The Young Reader’s Review! It has indeed been a while but today I am back, fresh and rested, for a new review! You might have heard that, a few days ago, Joy Harjo was nominated as the first Native American U.S. poet laureate. To celebrate this, I thought that I could discuss on here one of my favorite poems of hers: “Perhaps the World Ends Here”.   “Perhaps the World Ends Here ” is itself an enthralling title, playing with our curiosity with its almost apocalyptic undertones and the visions it is saturated with: we imagine the “ here ” to refer to the abysses of a never-ending canyon that stands inches before our feet, where the phrase “perhaps the world ends here” may in fact edge its way into our frightened mind. But this title also arises questions in the semantic domain: what does the “world” refer to? Is it the world as we see it, or is it our individual world that orbits around us? And, most importantly, what does “here” refer to? Per...