There are around 700 relevant reviews.I copied and pasted two longer ones below.I also found and pasted a review in Chinese below.
1.Hemingway delivered his last masterpiece with this book, a cultural phenomenon when first published in the early '50s: in an unprecedented move, Life Magazine published the novella in its entirety,recognizing that Hemingway, the most influential writer of 20th century American literature and then a world-wide celebrity, had delivered a long-awaited masterful story. The Life magazine edition sold more than 5 million copies in a week so this book reached tens of millions of people within days - not many authors can achieve that! And that's before becoming a much beloved story translated into scores of languages. It is fair to say that this book, which won the Pullitzer Prize, reignited the interest and respect for Hemingway as a serious writer and might have been the decisive factor for his Nobel Prize award.
It is so disappointing when people say that story is boring and has too much simbolism... if you have experience fishing or sailing or simply appreciating the sea and nature, then the book offers a marvellous account of man AND nature (not man vs. nature). As for the simbolism, don't dwell too much on it. Hemingway himself said that the book is about "an old man, a boy, a fish and the sea", but if the story is told well enough (as it is on this book) it can mean so much more.
And the story is indeed so much more, in no small part because of the inherent goodness of the old man. That's how I enjoy and interpret the book: it is a straightforward tale of an old man embracing the struggles and rewards of life with courage, dignity and still full of the human spirit. Santiago is one of the most dignified characters in Literature, and I have to say he is my favorite and a bit of a personal hero... the old fisherman strives to be the best he can be and do the best he can do... he does not complain of his living in poverty, do not blame others for anything. His spirit is big, generous, undefeated. While other Hemingway heroes might have disappointed some people by way of too much machismo, Santiago keeps all the best traits of courage, resilience and non-nonsense survivalism, while displaying more maturity and humility - perhaps reflecting the middle-age wisdom of the author (then is his fifties).
Hemingway story-telling skills are at his best here. I am a big fan of his style, particularly in the short-story format, but here he is astounding all the way. yeah, the prose is deceptively simple at first, but if you pay attention we can see the craft of a master. The opening sentence alone is formidable and could only be delivered by a master of the short-story format. Ihe last sentence is also wonderful and pure Hemingway- simple but infinitely deep, and in this story hopeful and bitter-sweet.
In between, Hemingway writes with uncanny power,in such a way that you can fully experience what the character is going through: first you see what the old man does, from mundane tasks and spadework to the excitement of the deep-sea hunt and the exhausting struggle, and in the process you start to think the way Santiago thinks and finally you are feeling the way he feels. It is magical if you only give it a try. Granted, it is easier to immerse into this story if you are familiar with the ways of fishing and the ocean, but in any case, when Santiago is alone in the boat looking at the sea creatures or at the night-sky... I guess the recognition of the infinite solitude of human condition, mitigated by the bonding with the life and the world around us, that is truly universal.
2. Ernest Hemingway, the author of The Old Man and the Sea, is a novelist, short-story writer who liked to depict people whose courage and honesty are set against the atrocious ways of society and in the midst of the confrontation, would lose all optimism and faith. A classical novella, The Old Man and the Sea, displays emotional sentiment virtually throughout the story. This is a heroic story that is perfectly written and that is filled with perseverance, pride and friendship. This novella mostly takes action at the sea.
Santiago, the old Cuban man, goes for eighty-four days without catching a fish. His buddy, Manolin, strongly believes in the old man that he can catch a fish. Manolin has been deprived of going with the old man who has worst luck. The two of them like to talk about baseball in their conversation. Santiago's favorite baseball player is the great DiMaggio.
On the eighty-fifth day, Santiago goes sailing far beyond the island's shallow coastal waters and ventures into the Gulf Stream. Like always, whenever he throws the line that has the bait fixed to it, a fish would eat whatever is attached to that line and rapidly move away. The following is a battle which tests the old man's skill to suffer to the limit. It was as if perseverance was in the man's blood. At noon, this particular marlin catches on the line and actually moves the skiff along. The strange man points out that the fish was two feet longer than the skiff. During some time, when the line was steady hard, Santiago's left hand got cramped. He disgustingly looks at his hand and asks it how it is doing after eating fish that he caught earlier.
While weariness hit him, he remembers the time when he and an African American went one day and one night arm wrestling. By remembering this event, he gave himself confidence. At daylight, the old man defeated the African American and became known as "The Champion." This memory effectively shows that the old man has sustained before and can still endure the encounter with the enormous fish.
During the whole story, the old man wishes that the boy was with him to see this magnificent fish. He has only three things that are his brothers, his two hands and the fish. He greatly admires this marlin but at the end, he pities the great fish that he had hooked. On the third day of the struggle, the fish circles around the boat which means exhaustion. This was the time for the old man to strike into the fish.
Hemingway effectively shows his objective by describing an old man against society (the fish and the sea). Frankly, this simple book is mostly about fishing, friendship, and endurance. I strongly encourage anyone who enjoys to fish to read this novella. Its suspenseful climax really lures the reader to finish the book. I liked this book because of the structure on how it is written and its simplistic wording.

《1984》读后感

书买了很久了，但是一直没有看。每次看到封面上写的字，包括乔治奥威尔的名字，就觉得这是一篇枯燥的社会研究性质的小说。结果这次翻开，只用了不到一周的业余时间，读完了1984这篇小说，中间几次甚至让我这样一个孕妇熬夜。

看书的时候对几个事情是存疑的：
第一个疑问是推荐语，“多一个人读奥威尔的这本小说，自由就多一分保障”——这个话觉得夸大了，现在生活的环境谈不上对自由的渴望，也不知道这个推荐理由里，自由的程度是什么
第三个疑问是，“思想罪不会带来死亡，思想罪本身就是死亡”觉得有点故弄玄虚之嫌，书里到底写了什么？
第三个疑问是：这个小说应该是现实生活中某个时期的缩影，但是具体对应哪段时间？哪些事件？比较惭愧的是对不上号，只是依稀记得大学的时候看过一部《**风暴》的电影，和这个比较像
虽然没有经历小说里那么专制的被白色恐怖笼罩的年代，但是小说描述的氛围，特别是主人公的内心活动的描写，会让你有很强的代入感。不管是什么环境，我们得到的“自由”都是相对的，那么怎么判断和考量我们是不是有足够的自由呢？？行为和思想，是自己的选择，还是被动的接受？
在吃饭睡觉工作全天被监视的情况下，谈不上人权，还哪有什么自由。唯一“自由”的只剩下思想了。虽然还有思想警察，但是思想是唯一一个活动了可能不被发现的地方了。如果思想都不能活动，受到限制，如同行尸走肉才是真的死了。。

我特别能理解主人公偶尔那些出格的举动和想法，他喜欢和情人寥寥几次的约会，冒险租下一个自己的房间，冒险去一些很刺激的事。

1
I just read Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. Besides a great book and a fun read, I found there to be a number of principles in there that are useful for managing and executing any project or undertaking. Without giving away too much of the book if you haven't yet read it, here it goes:
1) Singleness of purpose: Phileas Fogg had one goal in mind. It was not to tour the world and learn about new cultures. It was to win the bet with the Reform Club that he could circumnavigate the globe in 80 days or less. Granted he may have missed out on some chances to learn a new language or receive insight into the way others live, but that was not his goal and he knew it.
2) Availability of resources: It's true that money can't buy you love but it can buy a heckuva lot of other things! Having the cash that he did bailed him and Passapourt out of many a jam throughout their adventure. You should always count the cost before taking on any venture in terms of financial and human resources.
3) Keep a cool head: If Phileas Fogg was nothing else it was unflappable, composed, self-possessed, and cool-as-a-cucumber. No matter what the obstacle, he never lost his composure. Bringing a project in on time and within budget means dealing with all of the issues that come up with coolness, logic, and good decision-making.
4) Openess to risk: Phileas Fogg was willing ot risk his entire venture to save the woman Auoda from death. He was not reckless, however! He was able to work himself into a position to take this risk by getting ahead of schedule where he could afford to try and save the woman. Success in this venture leads to one of the greatest benefits of the entire voyage although he does not know it at the time.
5) Expect the unexpected: Early in the tale when confronted with all the uncertainties involved in his proposed endeavor, Phileas states simply that "The unforeseen does not exist." What he means is that every roadblock can be anticipated with enough foresight. Likewise, we can use careful planning to mitigate many of the possible pitfalls for any given project we undertake.
A great exercise would be to have your young reader (11 or older) read the book and see if they can pull any of these principles out and use it as a discussion starter. Enjoy Jules' fun classic of adventure!!
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傲慢与偏见
The novel opens with the famous line, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.". and ends with two marriages: Jane and Bingley's, as well as Darcy and Elizabeth's. Both couples are assumed to live happily ever after.
Elizabeth (Lizzy) Bennet is the core of the family. Elizabeth is the second of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's five daughters, and is an intelligent, bold, attractive twenty-year-old when the story begins. In addition to being her father's favourite, Elizabeth is characterized as a sensible, yet stubborn, woman. Misled by his cold outward behaviour, Elizabeth originally holds Mr. Darcy in contempt. However, she finds that Mr. Darcy improves on acquaintance, more so than she would expect.
Fitzwilliam Darcy (commonly known as Mr. Darcy) is the central male character and Elizabeth's second love interest in the novel. He is an intelligent, wealthy, extremely handsome and reserved 28-year-old man, who often appears haughty or proud to strangers but possesses an honest and kind nature underneath. Initially, he considers Elizabeth his social inferior, unworthy of his attention, but he finds that, despite his inclinations, he cannot deny his feelings for Elizabeth. His initial proposal of marriage is rejected because of his pride and Elizabeth's prejudice against him; however, at the end of the novel, after their relationship has blossomed, he is happily engaged to a loving Elizabeth.
Role of women in the 18th century
In late-18th-century England, women were relegated to secondary roles in society with respect to property and social responsibilities. For example, women were not permitted to visit new arrivals to the neighbourhood (such as Mr. Bingley in Pride and Prejudice) until the male head of their household had first done so. Women were under enormous pressure to marry for the purpose of securing their financial futures and making valuable social connections for their families. Therefore, marriage, though romanticised, was in many ways a financial transaction and social alliance rather than a matter of love. Although Jane Austen did not condone loveless marriages (she stayed single all her life), she did approve of matches having equality in various respects, including wealth, social status, love and character. In Pride and Prejudice, wealth, social status, chastity (and the perception of chastity) and physical attractiveness are depicted as factors affecting a woman's chances for a good marriage.
了不起的盖茨比
Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby became an immediate classic and propelled its young author to a fame he never again equalled. The novel captured the spirit of the "Jazz Age," a post-World War I era in upper-class America that Fitzgerald himself gave this name to, and the flamboyance of the author and his wife Zelda as they moved about Europe with other American expatriate writers (such as Ernest Hemingway). However, Gatsby expresses more than the exuberance of the times. It depicts the restlessness of what Gertrude Stein (another expatriate modernist writer) called a "lost generation." Recalling T. S. Eliot's landmark poem "The Wasteland" (1922), then, Gatsby also has its own "valley of ashes" or wasteland where men move about obscurely in the dust, and this imagery of decay, death, and corruption pervades the novel and "infects" the story and its hero too. Because the novel is not just about one man, James Gatz or Jay Gatsby, but about aspects of the human condition of an era, and themes that transcend time altogether, it is the stuff of myth. Gatsby's attempts to attain an ideal of himself and then to put this ideal to the service of another ideal, romantic love, are attempts to rise above corruption in all its forms. It is this quality in him that Nick Carraway, the novel's narrator, attempts to portray, and in so doing the novel, like its hero, attains a form of enduring greatness.
The novel is narrated in retrospect; Nick is writing the account two years after the events of the summer he describes, and this introduces a critical distance and perspective which is conveyed through occasional comments about the story he is telling and how it must appear to a reader. The time scheme of the novel is further complicated as "the history of that summer" of 1922 contains within it the story of another summer, five years before this one, when Gatsby and Daisy first courted. This is the story that Jordan tells Nick. As that earlier summer ended with Gatsby's departure for the war in the fall, so the summer of Nick's experience of the East ends with the crisis on the last hot day (the day of mint juleps in the hotel and Myrtle Wilson's death) and is followed by Gatsby's murder by George Wilson on the first day of fall. This seasonal calendar is more than just a parallel, however. It is a metaphor for the blooming and blasting of love and of hope, like the flowers so often mentioned. Similarly, the novel's elaborate use of light and dark imagery (light, darkness, sunshine, and shadow, and the in-between changes of twilight) symbolizes emotional states as well.
红字
The Scarlet Letter attained an immediate and lasting success because it addressed spiritual and moral issues from a uniquely American standpoint. In 1850, adultery was an extremely risqué subject, but because Hawthorne had the support of the New England literary establishment, it passed easily into the realm of appropriate reading. It has been said that this work represents the height of Hawthorne's literary genius; dense with terse descriptions. It remains relevant for its philosophical and psychological depth, and continues to be read as a classic tale on a universal theme.[6] Another consideration to note having to do with the book's popularity is that it was one of the first mass-produced books in America. Into the mid-nineteenth century, bookbinders of home-grown literature typically hand-made their books and sold them in small quantities. The first mechanized printing of "The Scarlet Letter," 2,500 volumes, sold out immediately, was widely read and discussed to an extent not much experienced in the young country up until that time. Copies of the first edition are often sought by collectors as rare books, and may fetch up to around $6,000 USD.
远离尘嚣
Much of the plot of Far from the Madding Crowd depends on unrequited love — love by one person for another that is not mutual in that the other person does not feel love in return. The novel is driven, from the first few chapters, by Gabriel Oak's love for Bathsheba. Once he has lost his farm, he is free to wander anywhere in search of work, but he heads to Weatherbury because it is in the direction that Bathsheba has gone. This move leads to Oak's employment at Bathsheba's farm, where he patiently consoles her in her troubles and supports her in tending the farm, with no sign he will ever have his love returned.
This novel focuses on the way that catastrophe can occur at any time, threatening to change lives. The most obvious example occurs when Oak's flock of sheep is destroyed by an unlikely confluence of circumstances, including an inexperienced sheep dog, a rotted rail, and a chalk pit that happens to have been dug adjacent to his land. In one night, Oak's future as an independent farmer is destroyed, and he ends up begging just to secure the diminished position of a shepherd.
This novel offers modern readers a clear picture of how important social position was in England in the nineteenth century and of the opportunities that existed to change class, in either direction. In the beginning, Oak and Bathsheba are social equals: he is an independent farmer who rents his land, and she lives on her aunt's farm next door to his, which is presumably similar in value. The only thing that keeps her from accepting his proposal of marriage is the fact that she just does not want to be married yet. After Oak loses his farm and Bathsheba inherits her uncle's farm, there is little question of whether they can marry — their social positions are too different. She is more socially compatible with Boldwood, who owns the farm next to hers and is in a similar social position.