And We're Back

Why, yes: it has been an incredibly (amazingly, stupendously, shockingly, ridiculously, unforgivably, strangely, remarkably) long time since I have written anything for this blog. Why, no: there is no good reason for that being the case. I could make something up, but it would likely lack both verisimilitude and veracity, since I repeat: there is no good reason.

I just sort of stopped. That is not unusual. That is why blogs will eventually die out and give way to Twitter and Facebook, since it is very easy to spew random thoughts in 140 characters and/or “status updates.” But until that day, I shall continue to fight the (very natural) urge to suddenly and inexplicably stop blogging.

Perhaps my moving, which means I no longer have to spend hours cursing the DC metro system or trolling Craigslist for housing leads, shall allow for more time to fill the void with thoughts about books I will hopefully still make time to read now that I am no longer a prisoner of public transportation where all you can do is read. Who knows? We shall find out together.

Since I last left you, I have read 29 books. Which is sort of sad and pathetic. Maybe my speed will increase this year, too (and maybe I’ll finally get that pony. . .). I’m not going to write full-up reviews on these. I’ll cover 15 here and 14 in the next one.

Here is what I started to write about the first two:

I find that two books are just about the right amount of material for a blog post. Sometimes, this works out rather well when I can find a common theme or question explored by both works in different ways, or when there’s at least an interesting commonality in their style. However, with Saturday and Martin Chuzzlewit, I don’t know what to say to link the two together. I can’t even think of an interesting point for compare and contrast. Ah, well.

Well, I suppose that time would be the point of contrast. Saturday takes place on a single day, though it is embedded in memories, relationships, and events that keep it from feeling static or rootless. Martin Chuzzlewit, on the other hand, like most Dickens’ works, is more epic, spanning time and place.

I’m fascinated by novels that cover a single day. Of the other two obvious ones, I’ve only read Mrs. Dalloway (yet to tackle Ulysses. . .).

Anyway, I loved Saturday. I’ve said this before, but people who think Ian McEwan is pretentious just do not get it. The prose is so beautiful. I loved the portrait of a family, a marriage, a world. This was one of my favorites, and one that I highly recommend.

Martin Chuzzlewit, on the other hand, was pretty much just okay. Scintillating, I know. Seriously, though, two months after the fact, and all I remember is that it felt very Dickens-y, albeit darker than we like to think of Dickens (who is darker than many adaptations of his works are, I would argue). Worth reading if you want to feel more well-read than Oprah, but if that isn’t a goal, stick with Great Expectations.

Wow, The Name of the Rose. Another excellent read. I’m sad it just gets this short sound bit of a review (almost like a Tweet of a review!). This appeared on one of those lists of books no one has read but everyone claims to have/thinks they should. And really, they should. It is also extremely dark and defies conventional narrative structure in many ways, but it is absolutely mesmerizing. At once a murder mystery, a glimpse into a claustrophobic and frightening reality, and an exploration of dialectics and the structure and inter-relationships of texts, its focus often shifts before finally clicking into place in an extremely satisfying way. Read it.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a bit of a relaxing respite (redundant). For some reason, my brain always has trouble separating this from Doctor Who; they are linked from childhood in my mind. The book is, of course, extremely funny, and I was continually amazed by how familiar everything was (and then here are the Babel fish).

Flannery O’Connor’s book The Violent Bear it Away is certainly not one I had heard of before. I can understand why. It is as painful as the title may lead you to believe. Not as painful, perhaps, as The Piano Teacher, it still made me want to gauge my eyeballs out.

Silas Marner. What to say about you, my friend? This one brought up my mixed feelings about Wishbone; no child should watch Wishbone and decide to read this book (as I did); the poor child shall be bored to tears and realize that she has been grossly deceived by that Jack Russell Terrier (though not as much as she was by Pride and Prejudice; what was up with that, Wishbone?). That said, it’s actually a pretty good read and brings up many themes and questions that a PBS children’s show may not be able to cover.

Catch-22 was awesome. You probably have to be in the right mood, since it will either be awesome or aggravating. It was certainly a bit too long for my interest, but that being said it’s a good read. I can see why the title phrase has entered into our cultural lexicon. I could say more, but we need to keep moving here.

The Time Machine was another throw back to Wishbone. On the one hand, I was actually surprised by how well this one held up for me in some ways (I mean, we just need to look at Uhura’s outfits to know what happens when you look back at historical attempts at portraying the future; and yes, this is off topic, but what is with the Star Trek reboot movie and keeping that outfit? Really? Really?). On the other hand it says a lot more about what was on (white, upper-class men’s) minds at the time than about the future. But even still, it’s pretty interesting.

Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader has become another favorite of mine. I recently read a fascinating article about the moral complexities of artistic portrayals/fictional narratives of the Holocaust, and I’d love to discuss this novel through the lens of some of the issues that article raised. Actually, I’d just love to discuss this novel with someone (read it!). It is one of the richest that I have read in terms of the range of issues it explores, but also in terms of the connections the author makes between the issues (the guilt of German generations that were not alive during the Holocaust, questions of responsibility and culpability of those who “followed orders”/what does it mean if we fully condemn or fail to fully condemn someone like Hanna, the narrator’s responsibility to Hanna given what he knows about her, the ways that we try to mask our own shortcomings and inadequacies and the terrible moral consequences that can have, etc.).

Well, this is mad crazy long. We shall need three posts to catch up!

The Author is Always Right?

Ah, books with an author as the protagonist. These seem to fall into two categories, ones where the protagonist happens to be an author (there’s a whole subgenre of mysteries, I’d argue, where the protagonist is an author of mystery novels, who then gets caught up in mystery after mystery), versus books where the author is narrating/writing the novel that you are reading, leading to a nice meta experience. Both The Black Prince and Vanishing Point were of the latter variety.

The Black Prince affirmed my love for Iris Murdoch; it was very similar to Under the Net in many ways, but still felt fresh and interesting. Murdoch’s wry humor is present throughout; I also thought that the random, literary and/or philosophical tangents were better integrated than in Under the Net. Some of the characters, notably the ex-wife, felt underdeveloped, though. In some ways, it seemed like Murdoch bit off more than she could chew and/or the story went in a different direction that she had originally planned.

The novel also features a classically unreliable narrator. This is hinted at near the beginning in the author’s forward (that is, “the author’s,” not Murdoch’s, of course), and becomes very evident near the end, and is solidified in the various post-scripts from other characters. It’s not clear, though, what happened. We know that the version is not exactly as presented by Pearson, but the veracity of the post scripts (all self-serving) is certainly in question.

Side note, but this is a book that likely reads better if you are familiar with Hamlet/get the title reference. Another reason to be annoyed that the list really only includes novels.

Vanishing Point is not for everyone. Actually, I’m not sure who it would be for; I can’t imagine ever recommending it. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but man: you have got to invest in this one. Don’t worry about making sense of it, just read it through to the end. It will all become clear and then it will seem amazing. If you give up part way through, though, it will just seem weird and irritating I would think.

Until near the end, it won’t even really feel like a novel. It’s essentially a collection of quotations, facts, and insights; the premise is that the “author” has pulled out a shoebox of note cards he has collected throughout the years and has put them in order to create a novel, interspersing the cards with occasional musings on his current situation. Nothing is random here, though, and it will make sense and it is a novel. But you do have to really invest in this one (it’s not long, though).

Again, this is likely more enjoyable/comprehensible the more you get the references. I certainly didn’t get all of them, so clearly it’s not completely necessary, but I’d suggest reading a lot before tackling this one.

Side Note: There are multiple novels with the name Vanishing Point; I'm talking about the David Markson one, not the Victor Canning one, which Wikipedia described as "lively and entertaining. The central character, Maurice Crillon, is a French art forger who suddenly discovers that he is the son of an English baronet. His father gives him a picture, which turns out to be a dangerous burden and involves him in a pursuit through Switzerland, Italy and France." Don't go into Markson's excepting lively entertainment. I read the Wikipedia entry for the Canning one, and thought I was missing something. And I was: my ability to read and remember author names.

Short But Not Exactly Sweet. . .

When I put The Death of Ivan Ilyich and The Castle of Otranto on hold, I honestly had no idea how that they are so short. I was, perhaps depressingly, thrilled by this fact, however. When one slogs through many books that are closer to 1000 pages than 200, the occasional 120 page novel is a welcome surprise (thanks, Daisy Miller, Turn of the Screw, A Christmas Carol, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Of Mice and Men, and The Garden Party!).

The Castle of Otranto was. . . weird. Yeah, that’s probably the best word for it. It rather made me think of this fairy tale book we got while we were living in Germany. Those stories were rather odd as well. The one from that book that stands out in my memory is about this woman who went to church on the opposite side of the Rhine from where she lived, and she did that just by walking on water. Which worked fine until one day she was all, this is weird, I wonder why I can do this. And then she couldn’t anymore, and I think she drowned. ‘m not sure what the moral of this story is, but I think it is something like, find a church near where you live and cut down on your commute time! Or maybe I just have commutes on my mind.

There really isn’t much to say about the story itself. I did appreciate that the romance went the way it did – well, up until she died, anyway. Usually the smart, interesting one ends up working with the guy to solve the problem, before being dismissed, while the vapid blond sweet young thing the guy was crushing on after seeing from afar ends up with the guy for no apparent reason (think Woman in White and Ivanhoe), and this story did not go that route (though she did die).

Speaking of death, Tolstoy’s little novel was all about death, as the title would lead you to likely guess. I actually really enjoyed this one; I hated War and Peace with a passion, but I definitely found The Death of Ivan Ilyich to be engaging, thought-provoking, and strangely moving. It’s shortness was definitely an asset, since for me, with Russian novels a little bit goes a long way.

What struck me most throughout the story was something I had read awhile back in an interview with an author for a book about chronic pain/what causes some people to experience more pain than others/some to have a higher pain tolerance. And in the interview, the author said something along the lines of, to care about someone’s pain, you have to care about that person. Which may sound obvious, but in many ways it isn’t. We are expected to show superficial sympathy and concern, but how often do we really care about someone’s headache, someone’s cold, someone’s knee that always aches when it rains? How often do we mostly think, this is very inconvenient for me, this sneezing is really irritating?

I kept thinking about that as I read the story and we see Ivan’s family, who to a large extent do not really care about his pain except in terms of how it affects their own lives. I found that to be the saddest piece of the novel.

Pamela: Or, Sexual Harassment and Relationship Violence ‘Justified’

Oh. My. God. I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated this novel (I can see why Ebert wrote a whole book devoted to films he hated, and yes, this opening was inspired by him)

I hated it so much, that at one point while reading it on the metro, I started hitting myself in the face with it out of sheer disgust. I feel sorry for the poor guy who was sitting across from me facing me, who I think was a bit worried that he was in a metro car with a crazy person. He wouldn’t be too far off. Pamela will make you crazy!

Where or where to begin? If you are fortunate enough to know nothing about Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded, yet foolish enough to be willing to change that fact, here is a brief synopsis: Pamela is a young maid whose mistress dies; her son takes over the household, harasses Pamela, makes unwanted sexual advances, has a serious problem with the word no, and when Pamela wants to return home he instead takes her off to stay with this other servant and hold her prisoner. Then, he does an about face after reading her letters (because, hello, boundary issues) to her parents where she talks about how upsetting this all was for her (because, hello, sexual harassment and borderline sexual assault ain’t fun), and he apologizes and asks her to marry him. And Pamela says yes, and the rest of the novel is an ode to how awesome he is and how great Pamela’s life is now that she’s married to the guy who spent the first half of the novel as a sexual predator.

Now, you might be thinking, wow, if that’s virtue rewarded I think I’ll just go in for vice. I’ve got to hope that was the takeaway lesson here.

I do not think that portrayal equals endorsement, and I don’t think we can say that any portrayal of sexual violence helps normalize it. And I certainly believe that this type of harassment and these type of “solutions” or “positive outcomes” were common. And, yes, we cannot read this ahistorically.

But, I still hate Pamela and find it (and any argument that we shouldn’t find it problematic because of the historical context) loathsome. He is an abuser, end of story. Her saying, please leave me alone (or get the fuck away from me) should be enough for him to do it. The fact that marrying him is her great outcomes is so, so, so problematic. This is where portrayal becomes endorsement. Basically, the novel is saying, if guys are willing to marry girls, then they can harass them. If guys learn from their mistakes and realize, hey sexual assault is bad, then the girl who they were abusing will want to be with them and it will be great.

I guess that is where my issue really comes in, because I think this appears again and again in “romances; essentially, it’s the hard to get set up, or this belief that women should guard their sexuality, tell men no, but they don’t really mean it, they really want the guy, and he just needs to push past no and want to then commit and it will all be great. And I hate that romance trope, that stalker justifying, “yes she said no with her voice, but not with the way she was dressed” justifying; gah! I can’t even intelligently talk about this. It’s such an awful cultural trope and it is awful for men and women and heterosexual relationships and gender norms and; gah!

Look, when I say no or leave me alone or just ignore comments or street harassment, I jolly well mean leave me alone and I am not “asking” you to try harder thank you very much.

While we can’t read Pamela ahistorically, I think we can still hate the “love story” it tells; I don’t feel the need to find it progressive just because Pamela has a voice in the novel or because it upsets class norms.

We’ll take a nice long break before reading Clarissa. Yes, yes we will.

If You're Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands

I have now finished the pantheon of Toni Morrison novels on the list. I’m actually rather sad. Bluest Eye, the first I read, is not a favorite, but from Beloved on (Song of Solomon, now Jazz, and to a lesser extent Sula), I have come to absolutely adore Toni Morrison.

Ultimately, I think most of her works are about love, not in a goopy, romance novel way AT ALL, but in all the rich complexity, all the ecstasy, all the pain, all the wonder, and all the hate of the many, many types of love (including self love and self hatred, and the justice that is what love looks like in public), and Jazz epitomizes that for me.

I have a weakness for novels that use other art forms to help structure their story (one of my two favorite books, God of Small Things, mirrors a Kathekali dance). I particularly like the solo improvisations in Jazz. Morrison is just masterful in the way that she uses jazz to enhance and maintain the force of the novel; it doesn’t feel even remotely artificial or gimmicky.

My favorite quote comes at the end (the last two paragraphs, essentially): I envy them their public love. I myself have only known it in secret, shared in secret and longed, aw longed to show it – to be able to say out loud what they have no need to say at all: That I have loved only you, surrendered my whole self reckless to you and nobody else. That I wanted you to love me back and show it to me. . . But I can’t say that aloud; I can’t tell anyone that I have been waiting for this all my life and that being chosen to wait is the reason I can. If I were able I'd say it. Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you.

The declarative, linearity of Hemingway’s novel, Farewell to Arms, ways a strange experience after so many non-linear ones. I feel like I should have something to say about this. Hmm. It probably hurts that I’ve read several (yes, I am running behind; my bad). Let’s see. What happened in this novel.

I recall being annoyed at the one head nurse, thinking Keira Knightley should play the female lead if they do another movie version anytime soon, liking the fact that it ends tragically, and wanting to go to Italy. That’s really it. This is pretty terrible. I should remember more. I mean, I remember the main theme (the tragic nonsensical nature of war, individual tragedy/human suffering in the context of this suffering of humanity), but I’m not sure death in childbirth (which sort of isn’t necessarily all that connected to war) is the best way to show that. But hey, that could just be me.

Metaphorical Body Parts

The entire time that I read The Heart of the Matter, I kept thinking that it really should be a Bogart film or some such. There was a film adaption sometime around 1950 I guess, but I didn’t recognize any of the actors. The story feels incredibly claustrophobic. I know Heart of Darkness is supposed to feel that way, but it has nothing on Greene’s novel.

Despite being a very masculine novel in many ways, it has two interesting female characters. Louise manages to be fairly likeable, which is somewhat surprising considering. I also didn’t expect to like Helen, but I did (another Helen that I identified with; yeesh). I love the scene where Scobie is reading a story to a young boy who is very ill, and he makes it into an adventure novel when it isn’t and Helen overhears. I can see why she’d be interested in him after that; so many authors do poor couple meetings.

The main theme is Catholicism/Scobie’s shifting morality (or apparently shifting; I think that is open for debate). Suicide absolutely fascinates me, particularly the way different societies and religions address it. It might be a morbid fascinating (okay, let’s be honest, it is morbid), but I think how we view suicide and its meanings tells us a lot about ourselves.

In contrast to that mostly straightforward novel, Eyeless in Gaza is rather disorienting at first. It’s essentially non linear (I saw essentially, since the chapters bounce around to different times, but the different times present linearly, so it’s like several different times are interspersed, but they’re individually in order).

While this narrative choice takes some getting used to, I ultimately really liked it, since it allows themes that wouldn’t necessarily be obvious to come out. It also makes for unusually climaxes, and does a better job of showing the complexity of a human life than a usual presentation of time would. Some of the stories were more interesting to me than others, though, and it is rather long.

That being said, I really have no idea what the significance of the title is; I really do not.

How the Heck Did You Get Ivanhoe?

I have so many associations with Ivanhoe that's it's almost impossible to go into reading it without baggage. Here are some of my favorites:

1) The Fairie Tale Theatre Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I have five or so favorites from Shelly Duval's awesome series, and this is one of my top ones. Whenever I play charades, I can't help but think of the scene where Goldilocks and the Three Bears are playing charades (I know; you kind of have to see it to understand. . .) and Mama Bear jumps up and exclaims Ivanhoe, when it clearly is not Ivanhoe, and everyone wonders why in the world she guessed it. It's become a family in-joke.

2) Betsy in Spite of Herself. After their freshman year of high school, the crowd/the high school freshman class is told to read Ivanhoe over the summer for an essay the first day of sophomore year (this is the English teacher Betsy has problems with, the one who really wants to be teaching science; he leads to the amazing apple blossom scene that any Betsy/Joe shipper knows by heart). Most do not, though Betsy already has, and she ends of coaching them through it.

3) Wishbone! Oh, Wishbone; you've probably messed up my sense of many great novels for the rest of my life. I can distinctly picture the inner story for this one, but I cannot for the life of me remember what the outer story was. Let's see if Wikipedia can come to the rescue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh, that's right. Samantha has an allergic reaction to coconut cookies, and David has to compete in the spelling bee to win against the resident school jerks.

All of this is to say, I had some preconceived notions going into this one. Specifically, I expected to hate it. Ivanhoe, how dare you not get with Rebecca! Why in the world do you love Rowena? Etc.

But, I didn't hate it. I actually really, really enjoyed it. Ivanhoe is long, but it is another super fast read. Sir Walter Scott is an interesting character, but I can see why this one made him as an author. First, he basically created this genre, which is amazing when you think about it (sort of like how Tolkien created the Medieval setting for fantasy novels that is now so ubiquitous).

Yes, I did prefer Rebecca to Rowena, but at the same time, I didn't actually want them to get together in the end. Given the social context Sir Walter Scott was writing about, it wouldn't have made sense, and I sort of like that tragic element. The social context is super important and super fascinating (though good lord, the Antisemitism; yeesh).

And now I have the Wishbone theme song in my head.

The End of Howard the Handmaid’s Tale

So, the other day I was thinking that I would be doing a lot better with this project if it weren’t for The Economist. Oh, David Cameron and your Big Society; if I didn’t spend so much time reading about it, maybe I’d have tackled Crime and Punishment by now. But we digress.

The Handmaid’s Tale was my second Margaret Atwood; I liked it about as well as I liked The Robber Bride. Which is to say, it was all right. Of course, I’m not a big fan of stories about dystopian near futures (well, any sort of speculative dystopian story; it takes a lot to overcome that for me). Like all good dystopian stories, it actually reveals a lot about what is happening and about our society as it is now, which is always interesting.

In contrast to Hardy’s novel, Atwood’s depicts institutionalized violence against women. Well, Hardy’s does as well, of course, but through the lens of individuals’ actions which are permitted/tolerate/almost encouraged in a society that has institutionalized violence against women, whereas Atwood’s explores state violence against women, primarily in the form of extremely coercive and overt reproductive control, and the ways that creates individual violence against women. The story actually is funnier than this would lead you to believe; it is also very bleak.

I started to have the most incredible moment of deju vu when I started Howards End. Confession time: I must be incredibly ignorant. When I read On Beauty, I had no idea that it was a re-telling/re-imagining of Howards End. Howards End, not surprisingly, focuses the issues through class and to a more limited extent gender. On Beauty adds race (of course, race is not absent from Howards End, but all the characters are white, and Forster isn’t consciously exploring race at all, which says something itself about white privilege).

I’m always fascinated about novels about eccentric families that have a similar make-up to my family (like I Capture the Castle), though in this case that makes me Helen, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Tibby was my favorite sibling in this case.

In terms of the On Beauty parallels, I’m still not sure why Zadie Smith chose this novel or what she wanted to say with that re-telling. It’s very strange. A closer reading of both in comparison is probably warranted. I do wonder what reading them in the wrong order (in a sense) did to my perspective on both.

Movies Part II: With Thin Man, Watchmen, and The Three Musketeers’ Spoilers

Thin Man
This one is particularly complicated for me. On the one hand, I absolutely love the film version to death. I can re-watch this one at any time. Nick and Nora are such a wonderful, hilarious, couple; they show that you can have a film/film series about a married couple that is truly in love without having it be at all dull/have their relationship be at all dull. Mona Loy and William Powell have amazing chemistry (and Mona Loy looks so beautiful). The second one is almost as much fun as the first (the Nick/Nora interactions are as fun, and the twist is excellent, but the overall story is not as good or well plotted); they go a bit off the rails after that, but still fun.

On the other hand, I have a passion for the book as well. It is darker, more noir. Dorothy in particular is less of an innocent victim, and has her own instabilities with which to grapple. The non Nick and Nora characters ring more true, and the psychology of the novel is more complex. I would love to see a remake of the film that emphasizes the darkness of the book (though it can leave out the cannibalism excerpt; still not sure what to make of that).

Watchmen
Sigh. I actually enjoyed the movie of this, which I saw before I read the graphic novel. I wasn’t at all familiar with the source material, and I particularly enjoyed the Laurie/Daniel romance, perhaps in part because of my love for Patrick Wilson. I remember I had an absolutely horrific headache after seeing it (which is not unusual for me; I spent more time recovering from the headache I got at Atlantis than I did watching that unfortunate piece of cinema), but all in all I had fun.

But, after reading the graphic novel, I can see why a) critics/fans were disappointed, and b) Moore thinks you can’t really adapt his works for film. The power and the pain of the graphic novel seemed to be missing in the movie somehow. It’s been awhile since I saw it, but the movie doesn’t capture the raw despair of the novel nor the desperate hope that keeps propelling the novel forward.

In the novel, every little cruelty seems to matter, you can see how Dr. Manhattan is shattered by those around him and how he is unintentionally cruel beyond words to those he claims to care about; the film doesn’t capture that. For example, I was most struck by his relationship with Laurie in the novel (not Daniel’s, though again, that may be a Patrick Wilson issue), and the incredible pressure he places on her to be all of humanity for him, even when he chooses to save the world. So, yeah, the film disappoints. The graphic novel doesn’t.

The Three Musketeers
Okay, I’m a terrible person, but I still really enjoy the Disney film version. Yes, it is not really The Three Musketeers at all, but I still love it, all right?

Maybe it’s because the King and Queen have such a sweet, adorable relationship. It certainly is not historically accurate at all, but I’m not really looking for that in this movie. They are just too cute, particularly at the end when they finally connect; yes, it is an overly rose-colored glasses version of arranged marriages, but hey, I’m cool with that because I ship them.

Similarly, while Athos is a better character, with more depth and complexity in the novel, I prefer Sabine in the film. This may because the women get modernized in the movie, but again, I can live with that. She is a more compelling ,interesting character when she is not pure evil from the beginning but really was betrayed by Athos, and it makes him have a certain depth as well (which is so ironic, considering that he is more complex/interesting in the novel; I can’t explain that).

On the other hand, the Cardinal is a much more interesting character in the novel; I appreciate that it is not as black and white, and it makes significantly more sense. The novel manages the difficult task of not having one main story arc but several little ones while maintaining momentum. The friendship among the four is better developed, and d’Artagnan is less shallow/less of just a pretty-boy hero.

I do think it is interesting that the male characters in the novel are more interesting/complex/three dimensional, while the women are much more interesting/complex/three dimensional in the film. Whether this reflects a better ability to portray women, or the fact that I can just more easily identify with these modernized women is an interesting question.

Still need to see Cider House Rules, Dr. Zhivago, and The French Lieutenant’s Woman. And I’m excited to see Never Let Me Go when it comes out this fall, so there will be another movie post soon.

I Know What I Like, and I Like What I Know

The same Salon article I mentioned in my post about recommending books briefly discusses one way to evaluate what makes you enjoy a book/what you look for in books, with the idea that knowing that can help you select other books with those characteristics and thereby improve your ability to choose books you’ll enjoy. The method involves thinking of your favorite books, and then selecting various phrases that apply to why you like that book. Some relate to the prose, others towards having a gripping plot, etc.

I never thought of myself as someone who likes a book because of the prose. Perhaps this is because I’m not a fan of some of the authors most renown for the “language” of their works (cough Austen cough). However, when I think of many of my favorite books from the list, many are ones where I found certain passages or quotes to be incredibly beautiful (The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The House in Paris, and God of Small Things in particular). I don’t mean flowery prose, so much as prose with a certain intensity to it, prose that I have to stop reading because it’s touched me on some level and I need to step back.

When I think of my favorites, I also tend to gravitate to ones that have unique or unusual characters, and even more so ones that have interesting relationships among characters. Wings of the Dove, the only Henry James I’ve liked thus far, stands out because of those interesting relationships; one main strength of The Forsyte Saga is the different relationships between men and women/the different relationships within marriages that it explores. The Idiot and The Robber Bride don’t rank among my favorites per se, but the main reason I liked them was because of the relationships in the stories (and in general I do not mean romantic relationships at all; in The Idiot I mean the relationship between the two leading ladies, and in The Robber Bride I mean the trio’s friendship).

I do think of myself as a plot person, but in general works on the list don’t stand out because of their plots (exceptions to that would be Count of Monte Cristo, noir novels, and anything by Le Carre). World building is also important to me, but like the right shoes or the appropriate bra, it has a bit of a thankless role. You notice if it is off or shoddily done, but when done right you don’t necessarily notice or give it credit.

The next post that I’ll write in this vein will focus on some of the different reasons/ways that a book’s presence on the list is justified in my mind (in a general way, rather than the justification of specific works, which I’ve already undertaken).

I'm either bored or traumatized, but it's all good

I don’t have anything to say about Love in the Time of Cholera. Really don’t. I feel bad, because I know that I should love Marquez and that many people thinks this book is amazing, and it has all this nuance I am sure. But I just was bored. I didn’t really enjoy 100 Years of Solitude, per se (I always think of it as 1000 years of solitude; it certainly felt long enough), but it is rich and complex. I found Love in the Time of Cholera surprisingly bland. And that’s really all I have to say. Really. I’m sorry.

Ah, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The question here really is, how do you like your portrayals of violence against women? We’ll take a second shot at this when we get to The Handmaid’s Tale.

But for now, let’s start with Hardy’s novel. It’s beautiful; Tess is an amazing character. I love her voice and the way we are in her head, and yet not in so many ways. But, I found this one extremely hard to read. It may not have been the best week for me to be reading a work where one of the main themes is violence against women. If you do read it, be prepared. There were times when I just had to stop reading for a few seconds.

What really stood out to me was the victim blaming that permeates the novel. Obviously as the rapist Alec is horrible, but Angel is not much better (her parents are equally victim blaming; gah). One way that we justify victim blaming is through dehumanizing victims. Throughout the novel, Hardy repeatedly brings up Tess’s humanness and the ways the different characters view Tess. Angel muses on the fact that Tess is fully human, a full person living her own true and real life, not just a thing defined in relation to him. At the same time, Angel clearly doesn’t fully comprehend this or what it means, which is why Angel ultimately is able to be so incredibly cruel to Tess.

Alec doesn’t even pretend to see Tess as a full person. He completely defines her in relation to him, to his needs and desires. That’s why he rapes her in the first place, and why later, after he thinks he has changed/ “converted,” he still only thinks of his need to absolve his guilt over his actions, not what Tess needs.

Next time, The Handmaid’s Tale and Howards End.

In Which We Progress in Our Expectations

Well, that’s over with. And thank goodness. Believe it or not, my need for allegorical novels espousing puritanical beliefs and values is actually pretty minimal (shocking, I know). The Pilgrim’s Progress was wearing thin by about page 25, but it is now in the past. And like Christian and later Christina, we have survived the journey to reach a better place. A place where we will never again have to read, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

I went into this one knowing that it would not be fun. The pre-1700s on the list are all rather difficult for me for some reason (one of my biggest cheats is probably The 1001 Nights; I have read all that I can stand, and I am counting that as a read, and there is no way you can possibly convince me otherwise). I tried to make it more fun by thinking of the role it plays in two of my favorite young adult novels (one is obvious, but bonus points if you know the second one!) and how reading this would give me insight. And perhaps to a certain extent it did.

But good gravy. Any work where characters are named Pliable, Knows Nothing, Enmity, and Hopeful is going to be a little heavy handed, and The Pilgrim’s Progress lives up to that expectation.

I’m not exactly sure why, but I decided to read Great Expectations after this one. I’m trying to knock off some of my dreads, and I guess that’s my justification. I certainly did not have great expectations going in, but surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. Dickens is much more fun than I expect him to be, and I probably need to stop underestimating him.

First, the story is well plotted, and the character journeys are compelling. No one is perfect, but no one is beyond evil, either. Joe and Biddy come the closest to perfection in some ways, but they still feel like actual people (and who couldn’t love Joe). The scene where Estella confronts Miss Havisham is so powerful, and would make for a great scene. Pip is actually interesting, which I had not expected at all, and Herbert and Clara’s romance is lovely.

I’m a fan of Dickens’ first ending, not the re-worked one to make it more appealing or what have you. I’m not a particularly romantic person, of course, but the re-worked ending just doesn’t. . . work. Estella is who she is, and that isn’t going to change. I’d love to read a re-write of the story from her perspective, though.

You Look Approachable or It's Watchmen All the Way Down

“Reading anything interesting?’ The elderly gentleman on the metro asks me.
Now, I am not only engrossed in the novel in my hands, I also have headphones in. Yet, apparently I seem approachable. I couldn’t begin to tell you why.
I respond by showing the cover of The Three Musketeers.
“Now, that is interesting,” he says. “Not many young ladies read that one anymore.”

This conversation felt odd while I was in it, since I tend to have these out-of-body conversation experiences where I see myself having the conversation. That being said, recapping it makes it seem even odder. I mean, did many young ladies used to read The Three Musketeers? Do young men read it now, or did he really mean young people? Gah, I’ve got nothing.
Anyway, I sort of smile dubiously. I’m not really sure what to say to that.

“Are you reading it for a seminar?”
Now, this would be the point to tell all about my exciting list project, right? WRONG. I merely say that I thought it would be fun and that I’m enjoying it. And I breathe a sigh of relief that my metro stop is here.

This experience was in no way as awkward (and uncomfortable!) as when I was walking home from the library (again with headphones) with a large stack of books, and some creep in a car pulled over to try to use my books as some sort of entry pick-up line. That was really awkward. I have a low trigger threshold, though, for being hit-on or for street harassment.

In other news, I actually really did enjoy The Three Musketeers. Young ladies may not be reading it anymore, but they don’t know what they are missing out on. It was a super fast read (about two days for 600 pages), since it just moved so quickly. I was a bit disappointed by Lady de Winter, but other than that I thought it was excellent. Athos was easily my favorite character (which is interesting, considering how I felt about the Milady situation). It feels modern in many ways, and stands the test of time quite well, though overall the female characters are a bit thin. In all, I prefer The Count of Monte Cristo, but for fun, it’s hard to beat The Three Musketeers.

I finally finished Watchmen as well. Graphic novels aren’t easy for me, so I was glad that I knew about the plot ahead of time. I had forgotten some of the pieces for how it fit together, but it came back to me as I read it. I found it hard to read, though. I do not think of graphic novels as childish, per se. I’m not one of those people who sees superheroes as juvenile.

At the same time, for me, they are tied in many ways to my childhood. I think of them in terms of watching the Batman animated series in our house in Germany or in Phoenix growing up. I think of the ridiculous X-Men talking game Sarah, Josh and I played. I don’t necessarily want them to be dark and dystopian; I want them to have that nostalgia (no joke intended there, really) of childhood memories. Of course, Watchmen ultimately has a (fairly) happy ending, but it still rips at the security of superheroes.

My favorite quote is from Dr. Manhattan (who wasn’t always blue!): Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.

The End is in Sight

It's a long way off, but in theory I will get there someday. Someday when I am middle aged if I keep pace and elderly if I don't, but someday nonetheless. When I began this project, finishing wasn't the goal at all. I thought maybe I'd get to around book 500, which will be an accomplishment in and of itself. This was definitely a project where the journey mattered much more than the destination. My aim really was to read books off of the list and see where I ended up. The list guided what I read, but I didn't expect to ever exhaust it.

Until one day when I calculated my reading speed and discovered that I should finish around age 32. When I tell people my projected end date, push this out to age 35, so I have a few years of flex time if I need it. I always give the caveat that this depends on keeping my current pace, which may not be at all sustainable (particularly if/when I go back to school, or if I lose my mind and decide to procreate).

Knowing that I might actually finish this project, and that it might happen in the relatively near future and not when I'm an 85-year-old woman in a nursing home who can't even remember the first 200 or so, has change the project in ways I did not expect.

Perhaps most obviously, I think it has helped me speed up my pace of reading. Some of that may be due to the fact that I am increasing my reading fitness. But being able to have a sense of the finish line, even one so far away, has played a role, too, I think. This is definitely a marathon, not a sprint, so keeping a sustainable pace matters a great deal in terms of my ability to actually finish. At the same time, knowing I won't be going forever has given me something to strive for, and has made speed take on a more tangible meaning, which has lead to increased speed.

I've also realized that I need to do a better job of reading authors who have a lot of works on the list. Starting to tackle Dickens and Coetzee has been a direct result of this knowledge, since they are the two with the most works on the list. I like to spread out works by the same author or in the same genre. Therefore, I know that I'll get to all Dickens eventually, which has meant that I need to start sprinkling him in if I don't want to end up having to read David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and Oliver Twist back to back.

Similarly, I've started to tackle some of the more unpleasant or intimidating works on the list. Before, I never thought I'd actually have to read Moby Dick; now, it's only a matter of time. It's moved up in my mental queue, though I've not been able to face it yet (The Idiot was read because of this phenomenon).

The main consequence has been more subtle, and I'm not sure how to put it into words. It's more of a perspective change than anything else. The journey still matters way more than the destination. If it didn't, this would be both a pretty shallow project and a pretty unrewarding one; I don't think you'd be able to keep it up. At the same time, knowing the destination is there means the destination does matter more. Checking off books and see the number I've read climb is rewarding, and I've started setting short-term goals for numbers, which I hadn't done before.

Can I Persaude You to Leave?

I was thinking the other day about how I’ll probably never be able to work as a bouncer. My voice is too quiet, I’m probably too small, women don’t tend to be bouncers, and I sort of look like a little girl sometimes (I still get carded for R rated movies).

Now, I don’t particularly want to work as a bouncer or anything. I have very little patience for drunk people, and I’m not into the bar or club scene. I’m not a night person, either, so I’d likely really hate the work. At the same time, it’s sort of sad in some ways. I have a strong misanthropic scene, and I enjoy telling people that they can’t do something or need to leave. When I was ushering last week, I was thrilled to be a Petal Pincher Prohibiter (I got to tell people not to steal rose petals that were part of the set). I love reporting people who take pictures. I think being a bouncer might let me take advantage this aspect of my personality.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with Persuasion? Essentially nothing.

Well, that’s not completely true. First, I should mention, that I actually really enjoyed Austen’s final tome. I’m not usually an Austen fan (at all; Pride and Prejudice does nothing for me, except bug), but I liked Anne as a heroine. There weren’t any characters, even some of her more irritating relations, that I wanted to maim with hot-metal objects. I wanted Anne and Wentworth to get together, and I enjoyed reading and then immediately re-reading the part where that finally happened.

At the same time, I can’t help but think about how boring it would be to be one of the female characters in an Austen novel. They never get to do anything. They having dilettantish accomplishments, go on walks, and silently pine. I'd lose my mind. I would not be able to handle it.

Which is where being a bouncer, sort of comes in (at least in my rather convoluted brain). Perhaps it's because of seeing the Jane Austen fight club video, but the combination of my thoughts on being a bouncer and my thoughts on how boring it would be to exist in an Austen novel, gave me this image of Jane Austen characters as bouncers, which I just cannot get out of my head. The picture of Mr. Darcy in this role is the one that cracks me up the most.

Sense and Sensibility, The Moor's Last Sigh, The House in Paris, and Fingersmith

Well, I am extremely behind. Since my last post, I’ve read several. My run down n each will be short and sweet. It also won’t be chronological, since I want to save Fingersmith for last, given that it’s the most spoilerable one. As always, spoiler alert for the works mentioned in the post's title.

So, with that, let’s start with that, let’s start with Sense and Sensibility, since it’s not at all possible to spoil it. If you have read any Jane Austen, seen a movie based on any Austen novel, or heard a good joke about an Austen novel, you already know what happens. If you are a young, overly charming, and too good to be true male, you are a cad who will break the heart of one of our heroines on her path to getting with the wiser, quieter, older male who at first may appear rude. Like The Woman in White, my ships got off with this one. I would have had Elinor get with Brandon (and I guess put Marianne with Ferrars or given her a few years to grow up a little, since Ferrars was sort of a non character anyway).

I don’t know why, but I still have a minor fear of Rushdie. This is completely irrational, since once I start reading, I remember that I love his writing. It is so incredibly rich; every page is just overflowing. I don’t think you could ever describe his works as derivative, per se, but The Moor’s Last Sigh definitely re-explored similar territory to some of his other novels (particularly Midnight’s Children, I thought). That being said, the character of Aurora is probably one of my favorites of Rushdie.

The House in Paris had the most beautiful quote in it. “Good-byes breed a sort of distaste for whomever you say good-bye to; this hurts, you feel, this must not happen again. Any other meeting will only lead back to this. If today good-bye is not final, some day it will be.” Karen is an absolutely amazing character with such conflicting desires and loyalties. She certainly isn’t completely likeable, but she feels completely real. The quote captures the essence of the story’s themes, or at least the themes that struck a chord with me.

And now for Fingersmith. This novel had a number of twists, where you think you know what’s happening, and then the perspective shifts and you have to reevaluate what you thought you knew and understood, and the picture changes. In many cases multiple twists don’t work too well (not a high-brow example by any stretch of the imagination, but Titan AE anyone?), but in this case, they do work, mostly because Susan and Maud are excellent.

I guess the theme of this post would be, amazing female characters. I’ll save Persuasion, Watchmen, and The Three Musketeers for the next one (technically, I’m still reading that last one, but it moves super quickly).

What do you recommend?

One danger of this project is that people seem to think that I should be a good source for book recommendations. This is very unfair, in my opinion. I don’t even like giving restaurant recommendations! I recently read an interesting article on Salon that argued that there are two different kinds of book recommendations, which I argee with wholeheartedly.

The first springs from the book review. Here, the reviewer offers her/his opinion of the work, perhaps recommending it in an abstract sense. The review is targeted at a general audience, however, not a specific individual, and more presents the reviewer’s thoughts and less tells the review reader that he/she should go out and read the book.

I can get behind that sort of recommendation (I give my thoughts on the various works in this blog, after all). It’s the second type of recommendation that makes me nervous. I liked The Sound and the Fury and The Idiot, after all.

This second type is the personalized recommendation. When someone asks e to tell her/him what to read based on what I’ve read, the person isn’t actually asking for my personal opinion, per se, but rather my thoughts on what he/she might think/like. This is a lot of pressure, particularly since I think people expect me to have a different taste in books than I do.

My love for God of Small Things, for example, has caused a number of people to read it. Most have told me they found it depressing and violent. Which it is, of course; I find it so beautiful, so painfully exquisite, that I have a hard time intelligibly discussing it. The repeated phrases! The way it mirrors a Kathakali dance! The unflinching pain! But it’s not for everyone, and you have to understand that I like that sort of thing.

Similarly, while no one has ever taken my Forsythe Saga or The Ground Beneath Her Feet recommendations seriously, I think there’s a not minuscule chance they’d be disappointed if they did. It took me a bit to start appreciating Rushdie, and if you just jump into The Ground Beneath Her Feet, you might feel like I felt about The Satanic Verses – I appreciated that one, but didn’t love it.

For people that I know well, I volunteer recommendations if after reading a book I think the person would like it (and I did succeed in getting people to read The Count of Monte Cristo and The Red Queen, among others, but they weren’t the same person, and I wouldn’t cross recommend). I’m still trying to find the right person to whom I should recommend Under the Net.

If pressed, I tend to just cite my favorites, but the art of recommending books is complicated, particularly if you don’t understand why I like what I like (my movie taste is similarly unexpected for most people, as I have been told by multiple individuals). I’ll try to write a post explaining my literary tastes in a bit.

That’s on the List?!?

I get that question not infrequently. I didn’t include it on the FAQ, since it tends to be more work specific rather than applicable to the list/project as a whole. My general response is that it is the list of 1001 books to read before you die, not the 1001 best books, greatest books, or even most important books. I stand by that answer, though without more of an explanation it is a bit of a cop out. Plus, 1001 is quite a lot.

Without further ado, I present works whose place on the list has been questioned and why I think it was put on the list (the book that goes with the list actually discusses this, too, but I’ve never ready that book - it isn’t on the list after all; thus, I don’t know what it has to say on this topic).

The Virgin Suicides. I think the most commonly cited reason for this book being on the list is its satirical portrayal of the hollowness of suburban life/ middle America, and the destructive forces it brings on those caught in that life, using our anxiety about sexuality, primarily female sexuality as its impetus. I personally think the main reason to read this book is for the collective first-person perspective of its narrator(s). Having read books with so many different types of narrators, perspectives, and narrative constructions, I can say that this one stands out as unique, at least thus far, making Virgin Suicides worth reading for that alone.

American Psycho. I feel like I pick on this one all the time. Really, it wasn’t that bad! If you like your murders graphic, sudden, and frequent. In all seriousness, I think this one’s main contribution is the way it epitomizes the hallow violence of the 1980s Wall Street culture it indicts.

Casino Royale. Okay, this one isn’t exactly War and Peace or even The Golden Notebook, but on the other hand, James Bond is iconographic. With this novel, Ian Fleming created a character that would span a book and movie industry, and create an archetype (or tap into one and revitalize it, if you prefer) that has impacted countless other works, including parodies.

The Cider House Rules. I think this one suffers from mainly being associated with the movie, and thus seen as light weight, which strikes me as unfair. The world Irving created is sharp, Dr. Larch is fascinating, what it does with storytelling adds this layer that still impresses me, and of course, it explores issues of abortion in an unflinching, honest way. I do think it loses steam in the middle and the character of Melody is a bit much to take, but still, worthy of the list.

The Black Dahlia. I got nothing. Truly, I don’t, aside from a minor gripe. This list is heavy on the noir. It may mostly be my perception, since I might have read more noir than I should have from a proportional perspective, but it still feels heavy on the noir. Chandler and Hammett I can get behind, but still.

No one has ever demanded that I explain why X work isn’t on the list. I think that’s less because people don’t have quibbles with the list in that direction, more that people don’t realize that they do, since it’s such a rather long list.

Go Down, Moses; The Vicar of Wakefield; Under the Net; The Piano Teacher

Yeesh. I’m running behind. In my defense, it’s been a bit crazy. I also don’t have a great deal to say about any of these books (except Under the Net, but mostly I want to say, go read it!), s this should work as one post. As always, spoiler warning for the texts in question.

Oh, Faulkner. I don’t really know what to do with you. I actually really enjoyed The Sound and the Fury. It wasn’t until I had finished it that I read somewhere that it is supposed to be difficult, which I think is unfair. It’s exquisite in this very raw and painful way. It’s a tragedy both in that it is sad/almost depressing, and that it seems inevitable. I’m still a bit afraid of Faulkner, though, and Go Down, Moses didn’t help that. I can’t see it as a novel, try as I might. I can see it as interconnected short stories, but I’d love to talk with someone about it not as vignettes but as a single arching narrative. Because I just didn’t experience it that way. I didn’t connect with most of the stories, except The Old People, The Bear, and Go Down, Moses, itself; my favorite was the first of those three. It’s the one that finally pulled me in.

The Vicar of Wakefield was quite the change of pace. It’s old, of course, and you can certainly see that. It works best as a satire, I guess. I’m glad that it was short, since it got old near the end (one can only take so much of, “and then another catastrophe happened”). I also did not care for the Vicar at all. I sometimes wonder if I would have a very different sensibility if I had been born during that era, or if I would have chafed at the gender roles and expectations. Clearly, our sensibilities and identities are shaped at least in part by our cultural context, but at the same time people born within cultural norms are the ones who change and expand them, so I do wonder where I would have fallen with that (which is to say, I would make a pretty terrible pre-Victorian woman if I suddenly got kicked back in time). All of that acknowledged, I did appreciate the character of the second daughter and her romance. Nothing modern about either, per se, but still I found it admirable and appealing. The book might make a decent play, if you played up the humor.

Under the Net made me fall in love with Iris Murdoch. I read this book incredibly quickly, because it was so much fun. Who couldn’t love a story where a man decides to steal a movie star dog when he is essentially homeless all for an extremely muddled notion about holding it ransom when it is clearly more of a liability than an asset? I also loved all three women as characters. Murdoch created three dimensional characters that still had elements of caricatures, but that were also fully realized. They had their own desires and ambitions, and weren’t just accessories (maybe because this was the first female author I’ve read in a bit). This doesn’t even touch on the philosophy, which adds weight to what might otherwise seem almost frothy (though frothy is not an applicable adjective at all). It would be interesting to re-read the novel from the perspective of the philosophical debates within it as sort of a meta close read. The other way I’d turn this into an academic paper would be through the main character’s journey arc, also cast through the prism of the philosophical debates. Still trying to figure out to whom I could recommend this one, since I really enjoyed it, but I’m not sure who else would have the same connection.

The Piano Teacher has earned a dubious place on the books that I almost wanted to stop reading/books that I am mostly glad I have read because it means that I never have to face them again. I do not necessarily object to the portrayal of violence, even sexual violence in graphic detail, but this book was really hard for me to get through. I see plenty of the dark side of humanity without it being so thoroughly and singly portrayed in my reading choices. I went back and forth between which character I hated the most. I can admire the craft and the prose, but this one was hard for me and I’m so glad it is behind me. It did raise some interesting questions about why certain books are considered important/good, which I’ll discuss in a later post, though.

Reading the Fingersmith right now. Saw this twist coming, but it was still sort of shocking when it was actually upon me.

Musings on Lists

I know I’ve already written about why I was motivated to start this project, but there is another reason why it appeals to me. I love lists. Like one of my absolute favorite literary heroines, Betsy Ray of Maude Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series, I am a compulsive list maker. While I have never made a list of ways to make myself more dramatic and mysterious, and sadly haven’t had cause to make a list of how to structure my life while living in Munich, I have certainly made my share of lists.

I make to-do lists, lists of museums I want to get to on my days off, grocery lists, lists of goals. I love watching movies, but the ability to play with my Netflix queue is at least part of the joy of Netflix. I find that if I make lists of what I am anxious about I can let (at least some of) the anxiety go.

Thus, it isn’t really surprising that working through this list appeals to me. In fact, I attempted a similar project when I was twelve or so and decided to read every book that was on the Newberry award list. I don’t honestly remember how far I got with that project, though I know I certainly didn’t finish it (I was probably either too old or too young).

I remember there were some that I really disliked, mostly because I thought they were boring and very adult choices of what children should read or want to read. Some, like From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Jacob Have I Loved, are among my favorite books. I expected to hate Jacob Have I Loved, but I re-read it numerous times (probably part of why I petered out on the list).

And Mixed Up Files has an incredibly special place in my list of favorite books. I read it out loud to my brother after I read it, and it’s become one of our “things.” My love for the Met would likely exist regardless, given my passion for art museums, but I loved it before I knew it because of this book and what this book means to me.

I also remember being underwhelmed by A Wrinkle In Time. I know that many people who first read the Wrinkle In Time set found the Austin family boring, but for me Vicky Austin’s adventures trump the tesseract. I still re-read A Ring of Endless Light, and cry uncontrollably, each summer. It’s become a ritual for me. I probably need to get a new copy.

I didn’t get very far in the project, as I recall, but I’m glad I at least started it for the books to which it brought me, and I can see how it helped lay the foundation for my current list-y goal.

A Nice, Easy Post

I keep track of my progress on two lists. The first is the complete list of 1,001 books, where I bold the ones I've read. Then I have a second list just of what I have read.

What I have read to date (not necessarily in order):

Atonement – Ian McEwan

White Teeth – Zadie Smith

The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx

The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi

The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie

Beloved – Toni Morrison

The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera

Sula – Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison

The Godfather – Mario Puzo

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez

Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote

Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett

The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway

Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett

Molloy – Samuel Beckett

Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

Animal Farm – George Orwell

The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien

Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie

Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield

The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton

Main Street – Sinclair Lewis

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce

Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence

Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton

A Room With a View – E.M. Forster

The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Kim – Rudyard Kipling

The Awakening – Kate Chopin

Dracula – Bram Stoker

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson

The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James

The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy

Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne

Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll

War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins

Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

Les Misérables – Victor Hugo

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell

Walden – Henry David Thoreau

Villette – Charlotte Brontë

The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne

Shirley – Charlotte Brontë

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë

Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë

Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe

The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe

The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens

Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

Oroonoko – Aphra Behn

The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous

The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje

Dead Souls – Googol

A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy

Castle- Franz Kafka

Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov

The Wings of the Dove – Henry James

Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

The Turn of the Screw – Henry James

The Red and the Black – Stendhal

Emma – Jane Austen

Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

The Once and Future King

Song of Solomon

The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

The Ambassadors – Henry James

Dr. Zhivago

Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis

A Passage to India – E.M. Forster

Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton

Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh

The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing

The Trial – Franz Kafka

Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett

Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier

Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence

The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen

The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst

The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz

Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams

American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

Death in Venice – Thomas Mann

The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy

On the Road – Jack Kerouac

Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood

Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood

The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers

· The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo

The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd

The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie

The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré

All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque

The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble

King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard

The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood

Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe

The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford

Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Casino Royale – Ian Fleming

Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger

The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles

Candide – Voltaire

The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler

On Beauty – Zadie Smith

Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler

Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

The Cider House Rules - John Irving

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolfe

Books vs. Movies

Serious Spoiler Alert for The Big Sleep, Casino Royale, and Rebecca.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the book is superior to the film adaptation. While I agree this is typically the case (cough The Black Cauldron cough), there are certainly exceptions (To Have and Have Not, undoubtedly, but personally I enjoy the HP films more than the books). I’m not interested in cases where there isn’t one version that is clearly better, but where the different versions have different strengths. Many of the list books have film adaptations. Unfortunately, the films I’ve seen and the books I’ve read do not match up too well, but here are some thoughts.

The Big Sleep.
If I had to choose one over the other, the film would win. Bogart and Bacall absolutely sizzle in this one. There a spark that To Have and Have Not has over Big Sleep, and a depth to their relationship in Key Largo, but their chemistry in Big Sleep is in a class by itself. My main complaint about the book is, of course, that they don’t have as much of a relationship. Vivian and Phil are not a couple at all, really. Mona Mars even gets one of the best scenes, thus eliminating the scene when Phil tells Vivian that he didn’t know they still made them that good (and oh, Bacall, they don’t now; it’s sad). Mona is even the woman Phil is thinking about at the end. It’s just wrong. But, the book did help clear up all of my confusion about why Geiger did what he did and why Mr. Sternwood hired Marlow in the first place; what can I say, I’m a bit slow when it comes to noir. Vivian, Carmen, and Phil also have a more interesting dynamic in the book, since Carmen doesn’t have to be redeemed at all. She’s a much darker character, and I like it that way. My favorite scene in the book is missing in the movie (and wouldn’t work in the movie while still keeping my favorite movie scene, so I guess I have to live with that), and it shows Carmen at her rawest. It’s positively terrifying. So, there are definite tradeoffs. I really do not understand, though, why they don’t have Vivian married to Sean in the movie like she is in the book (though his name is Rusty in that). Don’t get that change at all.

Casino Royale.
Again, movie wins hands down. Vesper is just an infinitely more awesome character in the movie. Vesper and Bond therefore have a much more interesting, and I would argue believable, relationship. Vesper in the book is almost your average Bond girl and she doesn’t do anything for me, really. That being said, SMERSH is works much better as the villain in the book; the Russian set up makes much more sense. I also like that Vesper commits suicide in the book. Finally, I think Baccarat is more fun than Poker. So, no contest, but the book is worth checking out and does have some things I like better than the film. It probably goes without saying, but I’m talking about the Daniel Craig film; I’ve never seen the first one.

Rebecca
I’ve always had a soft spot for Joan Fontaine. However, the book wins out for me with this one. The lead works better if you are in her head; she comes off as awfully simpering in the movie; in the book, she’s at least marginally interesting. The real reason the book is superior, in my opinion at least, though, is that the death of Rebecca makes so much more sense than in the film. It’s supremely ridiculous in the movie: “I was upset, and then she just kind of died.” Really, movie? Really? In the book, he’s a murderer! It’s awesome. Whether it’s the movie or the book, though, Rebecca kind of bugs. I am obviously not cut out to be a gothic heroine. “Thanks for telling me that’s not how Mrs. de Winter used to do things; I’ll just file that away in the completely irrelevant column. I am curious, though: what time of day did she write up help-wanted ads? I think I’m in the market for a new housekeeper.”

There are several that I should probably see the movie version, since the movie is almost more famous than the book (Dr. Zhivago, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, American Psycho, The Cider House Rules, The English Patient). We’ll see. I’m particularly interested in seeing the first two, since I don’t understand how they could work as films without messing with important aspects of the novels.

Cider House Rules; To the Lighthouse (and a little Little Dorrit)

I’m not sure I have any particularly interesting or insightful observations about The Cider House Rules. I certainly enjoyed the book. Dr. Larch was easily my favorite character, followed by Nurse Caroline. Candy bugged me more than anything. I enjoyed the first half more than the latter half, but I was pleased with the ending. The role of Dr. Larch’s historical records throughout the story is both amusing and poignant, and set the stage nicely for the ending.

From a craft perspective, I was struck by the way Irving moved from different perspectives/narrators within the same passage. On the one hand, that would seem to serve to make the authorial perspective seem particularly omniscient. On the other hand, I think it actually accentuates the importance of narrative and story-telling, which is one of the central themes of the novel (particularly the way the stories we tell and the stories we believe shape who we are and how we understanding others).

The book did make me wish that I had kept a graph of the connections between the books on the list with a node connecting ones that reference each other. It would make an interesting representation of the links between works of literature. It would also need to be huge, and I likely will not attempt to start one now. Still, would be an interesting project.

After wrapping that one up, I read To the Lighthouse. Confession time: I am not a fan of Virginia Woolfe. She just really does nothing for me. I found the ways she drifted from one perspective to another to be powerful and to pull out both the differences and commonalities among the various psyches and voices she explored. There were certain passages that caught me (I don’t think of myself as someone who reads for the language, per se, but I am increasingly finding that when I love a book, it is because of various passage within it that just resonate with me and make me see humanity or the world or myself in a new way, that complicate or eliminate, uplift or sadden). Not a favorite, but glad I read it.

My fear of Dickens had become paralyzing, so I decided I needed to leap into Little Dorrit today. I’m well past page 100 today, and I am amazed by how engaging I am finding it. I can see why he is so popular and seen as an enjoyable author, not just an important one. His love for humanity and his humor certainly come through (I think you have to embrace the satirical edge). It’s my fourth Dickens, and the one I have enjoyed the most so far. We’ll see if it keeps up, since it is over 850 pages, which is long even for something that is fun.

The FAQ Part II

Continuation of the FAQ:

Which ones have been your favorites so far? I consider may favorites to fall into two categories: 1) ones that are fun to read (Love in a Cold Climate, Lord of the Rings, Dracula) and 2) ones that I wouldn’t have read without a push from the list, and that I am so glad that I have read.

I think the latter list is more interesting: The Ground Beneath Her Feet (some of the passages were so painfully beautiful that I had to stop reading and just breathe), The Red Queen (the Queen’s voice is distinctive and so fully realized; I read the rice chest piece coming home from work late one night, and I was shaky), The Forsyte Saga (yes, it’s long, but it is worth it; I had no idea what I was getting into when I started it, and it’s portrayal of the changing meanings of marriage, of the different ways love takes shape; I can’t articulate my love for this book in only a few words); Pale Fire (so hilarious; if you want something fun, go read this one); and many others (Remains of the Day; Never Let Me Go; Count of Monte Cristo; The Wings of the Dove; All Quiet on the Western Front)

Are there any books that you've wanted to stop? Yes.

All right, smarty, which ones? The Hunchback of Notre Dame, American Psycho, The Trial, Dr. Zhivago, The Unnamable, Molloy, Malone Dies. Sorry, Beckett aficionados and anyone else whose favorite books made this list. I would love to talk with you about why you didn’t hate every character in Hunchback, why the nihilist violence in American Psycho is more than just gratuitous, how you manage (if you manage) to not want to shove every character in a Kafka novel into a vat of hot oil, why there is anything romantic to be found in the suffering of Dr. Zhivago, and what in the world is happening in the Becket trilogy of “Oh my God, when will this end? Die, Malone, and put me out of my misery.”

What If you want to read something that isn't on the list? Then I do. The list is not meant to be restrictive. I definitely read the latest Mary Russel novel the day it was published. I also throw in non fiction on a fairly regular basis (in addition to the nearly 60 list books in 2010 thus far, I've also read Yes Means Yes, Dream City, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Undercurrents, Half the Sky, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, and All The President's Men; I also read for a book club, and I read The Economist cover-to-cover weekly)

What if they update the list? I've decided it's like when you enter college. The degree requirements/list of books when you start applies throughout (technically I think in most colleges you can later choose the new reqs if you want, but I don't intend to update the list for myself).

My apologies to the authors whose names did not appear in the labels for this post (apparently only twenty can per post).

The FAQ Part I

This seems a little self-serving, but on the other hand, people really do tend to ask me the same questions when they first learn that I am attempting to read each and every book on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list (from here on out, just the list). The project also comes up pretty frequently, for three reasons 1) if you're reading Babbitt, King Solomon's Mines, or American Psycho, people will want to know why, 2) I tend to trot this out when I need to make small talk, since I find it a remarkably impersonal topic to discuss, and 3) it tends to snowball from there since people tell other people. I don't really know why.

Without further ado, The FAQ:

How do you decide what to read? What people really mean, usually, is: "Are you reading in order? Oldest to most recent?" to which the answer would be, no. Not even close. The process isn't exactly random, but it's not apparently systematic and it's hard to describe. It's a combination of what I feel like reading, and what I can easily get from the local library (I rarely buy a book on the list).

I have to break up authors and genres. D. H. Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh become repetitive if you try to read more than two in a row. I need to start on Dickens soon here (I've only read A Tale of Two Cities, Nicholas Nickleby, and Christmas Carol) or I will really be in trouble later. I also need to break up styles. White men are a bit overrepresented in the list (why should it be different than congress?), and I need to slip in some women, people of color, and people not from the US or Europe on occasion or I start to get cranky. A little Noir goes a long way, and coming of age stories get old quite quickly.

Overall, though, the project is capricious. If it looks long and painful, I try to bookened it with something shorter and more fun. In general I try to go long, short, long, short as much as possible.

How much do you read a day/week? How long does it take you to read a book? I average around 100 pages a day (50 pages each way on my commute! Thanks, Red Line, for single tracking!). I try to read at least two books a week.

Do you ever stop a book once you've started it? In theory, no (see the rules). In practice, once. This reasoning behind the rule that I have to finish the books is simple. I'm only putting it off, since if I seriously plan to finish the list, then eventually I will have to read it. I prefer to do unpleasant things right away, so coming back to books doesn't make sense for me. It's also way too easy to shop around different books and never actually finish anything. Making the rule hard and fast keeps me moving forward.

There has been one exception though, in the form of Franny and Zooey. I actually find this exception ironic, given that when I came back to it I really enjoyed it (I would love to see the scene with Zooey and his mother as a play short). When I first tried to read it, though, I was dealing with my own angst, and didn't need Franny's adding to it. While the fact that I enjoyed it more when I came back might be an argument for letting myself not finish books on the first go, I think it's easy for that to become a cop-out/excuse for not finishing. If I genuinely think I will get more out of a book if I wait, then I will. If I'm just being lazy or indulging my short attention span, then the rule keeps me accountable.

What will you read when this is done? Books that aren't on the list. One thousand and one is a lot, granted, but there are so many books (and plays, memoirs, essays, short stories, and poems which don't usually appear on the list) that didn't make the list, and more are always coming out, that I am not at all worried. I find this question one of the most strange. When people do ask, they always sound so genuinely concerned that I will somehow run out of reading material before I turn 40.

The Idiot and Of Mice and Men

Spoiler Alert: I've finished both of these, and I may spoiler the plots.

I finished The Idiot today. Six hundred and fifteen pages from Friday to Monday; not one of my fastest reads, but a solid pace. I'm going to put some distance between this one and my attempt on Crime and Punishment, but I actually enjoyed it much more than I expected. It qualifies for the success list, since it's one that I wouldn't have read without the list pushing me towards it, and I likely wouldn't have gotten as much out of it without having read Anna Karenina, Dead Souls, War and Peace, etc. to give it some context.

That being said, a little Russian goes a long way for me, I'm not going to lie. While I definitely prefer it to War and Peace (which I HATE), there were subplots that I could easily do without. The overall plot didn't do much for me, but there were some passages that made up for that. My thoughts are half-baked on this, but I think reading the text through the lens of the recurring discussions of the death penalty could make for an interesting paper if I had to write one. Fortunately, I don't. I also sort of shipped Adelaida and Prince Sch. Till the end, anyway.

I'm not sold on Dostoyevsky's portrayal of women's psychology, but the letters that Anastassya Filippovna sent Aglaya and the scene where Aglaya confronts Anastassya Filippovna were the most compelling passages for me (the ones that made up for anything having to do with Burdovsky).

After finishing The Idiot, I read Of Mice and Men; it's a nice, short read. I've never read The Grapes of Wrath, and I'm still a little apprehensive about it, but I found Of Mice and Men strangely compelling. This is a good counterexample, I think, to the belief that being spoiled about the ending ruins a work for someone. In this case, I think it was quite clear what the novel(ia) was building towards, and for me at least, part of its power came from knowing and seeing George's agony, while knowing that the conclusion was inevitable.

I'm now reading The Cider House Rules. I've never seen the movie, though from seeing clips/its trailer, I can't help but picture Michael Caine as Larch. That being said, I'm glad that Tobey McGuire isn't invading my perceptions; I'm not really a fan.

The Task: Read every book on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list before dying.

The Impetus: A combination of two factors, really. The first was actually reading the list and realizing I had read 76 titles on it. Depressing. I consider myself a fairly avid reader, and granted I’ve read way more books that are not on the list, but still. 76? Really?

The second factor was an English class I took in college. The class itself wasn’t super inspiring in some ways (most people treated it the way most people treat book clubs; yeah, we’re here to talk about books, but does that really require reading them first? All the way to the end? Really?), but the professor and the books were great. I read and fell in love with Beloved and God of Small Things, two books I hadn’t planned to read before taking the class.

After graduating college and realizing that my life and mind were my own again, I wanted to use my new liberty to read voraciously books of my choosing. But I also wanted to continue to read authors and styles that I wouldn’t normally choose if I was basing my selections solely on what I thought I would like before even trying the book (it’s like eating; my life would be sadly falafel free if I didn’t try food that looked completely unappetizing at first; sometimes books are the same way).

The juxtaposition of these two factors gave rise to the quest. I’m currently reading book 157 (The Idiot), and am on schedule to finish by the time I am 35 if I keep to my 2010 (to date) pace. I likely won’t.

The Blog: When I explain the project to people, they always tell me I should write a blog about this. People keep saying that novels and print are dying, and now they say that blogs are, too, so why not bring them together? Really, I have no good reason for this and I expect I won’t keep it up. But now I can have a better response when people tell me to keep a Blog on the books I’ve read.

The Rules:

Rule Number One: If you start, you must finish.

This is the most important rule, and the foundation on which this whole project is based. Without it, everything crumbles. Just like the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to never making it through the Russian masters is paved with letting yourself “come back to it later” (a phrase which I unapologetically put in quotation marks, because it really means, “never revisiting Larissa Feodorovna Guishar and trying to forget if we want the Reds or the Whites to win”).

Of course, rules are made to be broken, and in my next installment (the FAQ) I’ll write about the time (just once thus far) that I have broken this rule.

Rule Number Two: No substitutions, exchanges, or refunds.

So the whole canon of Edith Wharton is not on the list. So you’d rather read The Wind Done Gone than Margaret Mitchell’s (discouragingly) lengthy tome. So what? The Custom of the Country is not, and never will be, The Bunner Sisters. Get over it. This is not a quest to read books written by authors who appear on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, it’s a quest to read the list.

Rule Number Three: Books are not Movies

This one I think is pretty obvious, but clearly I actually have to read the book. The Wishbone adaptation and the Wikipedia article don’t cut it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t still be facing Don Quixote.

Those are really it. The first one is the most significant. The other two are basic to the very spirit of the project. Everything else about how I tackle the list will be covered in the FAQ. Which I may never write, because I am a fickle, fickle person, and this may be the one and only post on the quest.