The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

 

I made it to the grand old age of 54 without reading Hemingway...well I should have kept my streak LOL. This year the 10th-grade class was reading The Old Man And The Sea so I read it in order to know what the students were talking about. I have heard raves for Hemingway all my life, well I was disappointed. I thought the plot was simplistic and the story was boring. I did not like the Old Man either. So my advice is if you don't have to read it, don't bother. There are so many books out there that you needn't waste time on the boring ones!
So if you have to read it for class grab a mug of hot chocolate and some cookies so you have something enjoyable while you read this book.

I was given a copy of this book by the English teacher. All thoughts are my own.

From Amazon:  

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal -- a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.

Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph, won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.


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Biography

Ernest Hemingway ranks as the most famous of twentieth-century American writers; like Mark Twain, Hemingway is one of those rare authors most people know about, whether they have read him or not. The difference is that Twain, with his white suit, ubiquitous cigar, and easy wit, survives in the public imagination as a basically, lovable figure, while the deeply imprinted image of Hemingway as rugged and macho has been much less universally admired, for all his fame. Hemingway has been regarded less as a writer dedicated to his craft than as a man of action who happened to be afflicted with genius. When he won the Nobel Prize in 1954, Time magazine reported the news under Heroes rather than Books and went on to describe the author as "a globe-trotting expert on bullfights, booze, women, wars, big game hunting, deep-sea fishing, and courage." Hemingway did in fact address all those subjects in his books, and he acquired his expertise through well-reported acts of participation as well as of observation; by going to all the wars of his time, hunting and fishing for great beasts, marrying four times, occasionally getting into fistfights, drinking too much, and becoming, in the end, a worldwide celebrity recognizable for his signature beard and challenging physical pursuits.