Rachel's Reviews of Nobel Prize Winners

Hi Everyone! I'm making an effort to focus more on reading prize-winning authors. I thought I'd start a thread here to keep track of all the Nobel Prize winners I've read and to put reviews as I proceed through the list. :) Here is a list of Nobel Prize Winners I've read:

2007: Doris Lessing: Mara and Dann

2005: Harold Pinter: Death etc.

2003: John M. Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians, Foe
2002: Imre Kertész: Fatelessness
2001: Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul: A Bend in the River
2000: Gao Xingjian: The Other Shore
1999: Günter Grass: The Tin Drum
1998: José Saramago: Blindness
1997: Dario Fo: Accidental Death of an Anarchist

1993: Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon

1982: Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude

1962: John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony

1957: Albert Camus: The Plague

1949: William Faulkner: Intruder in the Dust

1946: Herman Hesse: Gertrude

1938: Pearl Buck: The Good Earth

1907: Rudyard Kipling: Kim, Just So Stories, The Jungle Books, Captains Courageous

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2/5/2012)

My Review: 4/5 stars
One Hundred Years of Solitude chronicles 100 years of a family (of Buendia) and a village (city) that the “first of the family line” founded. The prose is lyrical and flows as smoothly as a river. That is, sometimes there are rapids and other times calm. The genre is magical realism, and it is fascinating watching the magic evolve with the family and village. After finishing this book, I’m not 100% certain what Marquez meant by it, though. It has anti-war and anti-oppressive-regime themes, but there’s something more that I haven’t quite put my finger on yet. I may need to re-read it after letting it settle for a while.

Kim, by Rudyard Kipling (3/20/2012)

My Review 4/5 stars
Kim is an orphaned boy living on the streets of Lahore. When he meets a Buddhist monk who is on a quest to find a healing river, Kim joins the lama as his student and friend. Together they travel, learn lessons, and have adventures. I enjoyed watching Kim grow up in this story, and enjoyed the colorful descriptions of the people Kim and the lama met. However, I’m still trying to figure out what the deeper meaning of this story is. Perhaps time will help.