A little Satan goes a long way

Books on the list tend to fall into three categories:

1. Books of which nobody has heard. Likely, the majority of the books on the list actually fall into this category. Which means that often when people who know about the list project ask me what I'm reading and I tell them, they respond by saying that they've never heard of it (English majors skew this a bit).

2. Books everyone knows about but nobody has actually read. These are particularly fun, and are the most impressive to be able to say that you've read (Moby Dick, anyone?).

3. Books that most people have read and that it's a bit strange that I have not. My reading habits are capricious, and my high school reading did not exactly follow a traditional curriculum. This means that I have not read 1984 or Catcher in the Rye. Ah well. People are always shocked that I haven't read the particular book for ones in this category.

Which brings me to The Scarlet Letter, the lovely little tome that I read today. I was completely familiar with the story beforehand, of course, and I have read The House of the Seven Gables before. However, I've always wanted to avoid reading this one. Fortunately, it was short and now it is in the past. Yay!

I also recently finished Tipping the Velvet, which likely falls into the first category of books. That said, it's really worth a read. It's the funnest, most engaging one that I've read in awhile. I've been in a bit of a dry spell with enjoying my reads, so this was a welcome respite. It's sort of decadent and lush, really, in terms of the details and characters.

Seeing an Oscar Wilde and reading this one all on the same day definitely made for a rather intense Victorian England day. Fortunately, I rather enjoy Victorian England. Here's something a bit ironic, though: as I read it, I kept thinking how much it reminded me of Fingersmith, but it wasn't until after I had finished it that I clued into the fact that it was by the same author. Bright of me, I know.

Masochism Tango

Take your cigarette from it's holder/ And burn your initials in my shoulder/ Fracture my spine/ And swear that you're mine/ As we dance to the masochism tango.

So, I just read two Coetzee's in a row. I don't mean to make him my punching bag or anything, but goodness, I just do not like these. At all. With some authors, after reading a few I start to understand and love their work. For example, I struggled with The Satanic Verses, and even Midnight's Children wasn't a favorite. Then, I read The Ground Beneath Her Feet and fell in love. With other authors, I may not like everything I had to read from them, but I have some favorites (Persuasion, Great Expectations, etc.). Maybe after a few more of Coetzee I'll start to enjoy them, but right now I am mostly excited to report that I have read half of the ones that I will have to read.

Let's start with Foe. It's fine, really. It's deliciously, blessedly short. Just 157 pages. Thank goodness. The story is sort of a re-imagining of Robinson Crusoe. I probably should have read Robinson Crusoe before reading this one. I have three main associations with DeFoe's novel:

1) Baby Island (again!), since the lovely ladies of that story reference Crusoe on occasion.
2) The Peabody and Sherman, where they split the island and make a horrible Friday the 13th pun.
3) A supremely trippy little animated show we watched in Germany where it was Robbins and Crusoe or something; it was really trippy (that may have been the language barrier, but man, we watched some fairly awesome TV there).

Now I can add this story. Apparently, the main point has something to do with the nature of reality and truth, and how literacy, language, and imagination shape that. Or something. I don't know. It's classic Coetzee, which is to say stark and bleak.

Of course, Foe has nothing on Disgrace for stark and bleak. Or grim and intense, for that matter. What a book. The plot essentially is, middle-aged divorcee may or may not rape young college student, loses job, goes to live with daughter out in rural South Africa, daughter is brutally raped, and then things sort of get worse. And meanwhile everyone is borderline depressed. Including me, the poor little reader.

The other thing about Coetzee is that I always feel like I am missing something, like the point or the resolution. Or else the books really do stop abruptly without any resolution.

I picked these flowers; they're prettier than you

You'd be forgiven if you've never heard of Castle Rackrent, or for that matter, its author Maria Edgeworth. You also wouldn't be missing all that much. There's nothing really painful about it, but I was mostly bored most of the time. It was short, though; I definitely appreciated that about it.

My main thought in reading this related to how incredibly American I am. It boggles my mind that you can have aristocracy that essentially have no money and never do and who borrow it from their servants, but they are the aristocracy and the servants have more money and. . . I just don't get it. I know that "class" is made up of more than just money in the US as well, but our class system is very much based on money and capitalism, not a sense of aristocracy/genetic nobility. I feel like I'm not explaining this well, but essentially, on a basic level I do find it these rigid notions of class and status that really actually have little to do with wealth so counter-intuitive, and while I can sort of understand them intellectually, I have a hard time understanding how someone would accept them as at all sensical.

Anyway, if you haven't heard of my next read or its author, there really is no forgiving you. The exciting piece of reading David Copperfield is that I am now a bit closer to finishing the canon of Dickens. I believe I just have two novels left, and then I will have read every single, shockingly long, shockingly numerous book written by this prolific man. It's hard to go into a Dickens without preconceived notions. First of all, they are all remarkably similar. Second, they are such a part of our cultural knowledge.

I also couldn't help thinking of the illusionist, of course. Man. I don't usually wish I was born in a previous era (I love technology, temperature regulation, improved women's rights, and diet soda a bit too much), but sometimes I think it would be fun to have lived in a time when magic and illusions were really magical. Now we have too much with computer generated options, and nothing is shocking or unbelievable or really magical. Of course, small-scale, close up magic/slight of hand/illusions can still be fun. I'd like to learn some magic tricks; I also would like to learn to juggle.

Before going any further down that rabbit hole that is my brain, let's return to the novel in question.

I actually really enjoyed this one. Yes, it's long, but it's fun, engaging, and a quick read. David and Agnes are adorable as a couple. Just absolutely adorable. I loved their relationships and how Dickens handled their friendship. Even some of the more annoying characters were less annoying that their equivalents in other Dickens'.

Dickens said this was his favorite, or hinted at that at any rate, and I have to agree with him. Apparently it's his most autobiographical as well. I would say read this one and Great Expectations. Don't read Oliver Twist. Seriously.

A Tale of a Whale; A Whale of a Tale

Yes, dear readers, I have done it! I have finished Moby Dick. I feel awfully (perhaps even unreasonably) proud of myself. I actually hadn't intended to read it, but on the other hand, stuck in an airport likely was my best chance to finish it, and I had no time to get to the library before my trip to MN last weekend. Thanks, work for being even more busy than usual! Seriously.

Anyway, wow. What a book!

I thought that this one would be so much more miserable than it was; I know that sounds like damning with faint praise, but actually, it's not. I am certainly not the target audience for this one, and it felt rather dated. But it was pretty similar to Treasure Island or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in terms of readability and enjoyability.

I actually read the whaling parts, too. I particularly appreciated all of the references to Jonah, since they made me think of Baby Island. Man, I loved that book so much. I didn't actually love Moby Dick, but it could have been so much worse. Some of his odes to the awesomeness of whales does wear thin, but the parts about the actual chase where kind of fun in their way. They had momentum, even if the thought of whaling anymore is pretty disturbing. It had a pretty fantastic ending, of course.

I agree with the person who wrote the commentary for the edition that I read, who said we should really just read this and enjoy it as an adventure travel book, and not get all philosophical. Or more importantly, not get psychoanalytic, I think. I do not want to go there.

Some People Write a Lot

I'm still trying to work through Coetzee. I'm also trying to develop a love for pushups and kale, so there you go.

I don't really know what to say about the Master of Petersburg (side note: I really, really want to go to St. Petersburg). I was definitely helped through this one by my love of Russian novels. This one is relentlessly bleak, but if you can embrace the stark beauty of that bleakness you'll be semi okay-ish, more or less.

Right, so he gets the style right. It works. It feels very Dostoevsky-esque. But ultimately, it is a super frustrating novel. You think the novel is reaching some sort of a climax of some sort, we get this startling revelation, and then the novel turns and just sort of drops off. It's so odd.

I'm not a fan of D. H. Lawrence. He just gets old pretty quickly for me. However, if you do decide to read The Rainbow and Women In Love, please, do yourself a favor: read them in that order. Seriously. I can only blame myself, of course, but I really can't emphasize this point strongly enough. Don't do what I did. I think I would have gotten so much more out of Women in Love if I had done this in the right order. Though I still wouldn't have understood why they named one of their daughters Gudrun. I mean, really? And to me, that's the biggest mystery.

Essentially, the novel explores identity formation across three generations. How do we become ourselves? What does it mean to be an actualized individual? What does it mean to grow up, and how do we grow up? How do we define ourselves and both separate and connected to our families?

I did enjoy this one much more than Women in Love. I was mostly struck by how the structure of this novel is so unusual, but overall it worked. I still don't love D. H. Lawrence, but this was my favorite of his overall. He captures so much the anxieties and earnings of his characters.

But man, I wish I could say that I was done with his canon, but no: three to go.

Hey, Jude

Don't make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better. Yes, pretty much the whole time I read Jude the Obscure, I had that song in my head. Oh, well. I have very conflicted feelings about Thomas Hardy (though I did like Tess of the D’Urbervilles, though it was triggering).

I was actually grooving with this one for awhile. It was moving along, and it was pretty interesting. Sue started out as a really interesting character, but by the end I pretty much hated her. Still, at first I was really enjoying the complexity of her relationship with Jude, and enjoying that they both had passions and intellectual lives that were their own. While some of the issues it explores are timeless/still relevant, it is very much of a specific historical moment, in terms of gender roles and divorce. It addresses a time of immense, albeit subtle/suppressed upheaval; well, I guess verge of upheaval.

The novel explores a number of issues, but the main guiding issue is the idea that "the word kills," referring to societal norms, law, values, and roles, as well as religion and religious believes. Sue particularly chafes under these words, but Jude is the one who ultimately is crushed. That said, near the end I really just wanted to knock Sue over the head.

Arabella is a bit of an interesting character as well. She would be interesting for a re-write from her perspective. I didn't exactly like her, but she is fascinating, and I think we're likely more sympathetic to her than Hardy's contemporaries were.

Fortunately, I did not have Meg Manning's challenge when I read The Sun Also Rises. Mind you, I'm not a Hemingway fan (you can tell I grabbed both of these while wondering in the library and picking books that were close together alphabetically speaking), and this didn't change my mind. But I found it overall painless, despite my lack of interest in bull fights. I was struck by how much time the characters spent drunk, and how understanding and relating to being drunk likely would make the book make more sense. Oh, well.

Pacing

Clearly, many factors impact how much someone enjoys a book. Everything from genre, literary style, plot, characters, etc. plays a role. However, I think that one factor typically gets overlooked: pacing of reading. Some of this, I'm sure, varies person to person, so the following thoughts likely really only apply to me. That said, the pace with which I read a book certainly shapes my perception of the book, at least to a certain extent.

Some books may be best if you can luxuriate in them, taking your time, savoring each page. I remember that there were parts of The Ground Beneath Her Feet where I just had to stop reading and relish the previous passage. On the flip side, I read The Joke in a few short, intense bursts over the course of one afternoon. Being so intensely in the moment with the book increased my enjoyment in that case.

I tend to read books in two ways, depending on whether I start it on a Sunday or Monday, or if I start it on a Tuesday. If I start it on S or M, I usually read it very quickly, generally in one day. If I start it during my work week, I might take the whole of the work week to finish it. In some cases it likely matters less, but regardless, it does impact my experience of the book. I'm reading The Sun Also Rises more slowly than To Have and Have Not, and it's much more enjoyable (it's also a better book, but still, for me I need some breathing room with Hemingway). In other cases, dragging out a book just makes it painful (say, The Corrections).

Regardless of how long it takes me to read a book, I'm always glad with the serial novels that I am not stuck waiting for the next installment. If I had to wait months for the next chapters of each and every Dickens' novel, I'd go crazy.

Two priests and a rabbi walk into a bar. . .

I read The Joke in about three hours. It was that engaging for me. It was my third Kundera, and the one that grabbed me the most. Some of my enjoyment, of course, was due to the novel itself, but I am also a sucker for all things related to the Czech Republic. This dates back to my childhood and then ten or so years I spent studying violin from an amazing woman from Prague.

I am absolutely passionate about Prague. Sarah and I got to spend a few days there before my junior year of college (and actually faced some challenges getting out of Prague) and it was simply wonderful. It is such a beautiful, amazing city. I also am crazy passionate about Mucha and I've played a ton of Dvorak, and I just love the Czech Republic. This is important context, though it's also worth noting that my knowledge of its history is not as extensive as it should be.

The Joke is tragically exquisite. Kundera handles the multiple perspectives beautifully, and he uses those perspectives to complicate our understanding of the meaning of the events. While the story has many themes and possible topics for focus, I was particularly struck by the role of forgiveness in the novel, and the questions it raises both about our capacity to forgive and also about the way that our inability to forgive erodes us. I was also fascinated by Lucie. Someone should do a re-telling/re-imagining of the story from her perspective. She is the turn of the novel, the center, but her voice is completely absent.

The 39 Steps is a bit of an odd one to follow The Joke, I'll admit. They really have nothing in common. The 39 Steps is enjoyable in its own way. It feels rather Hitchcockian or like the thriller Agatha Christie's. There's nothing particularly special about it, but it would make for a good read on an airplane or long bus ride (say on a trip to or from Prague).