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.