Not Crime & Punishment?

This is rather fascinating. I'm not sure what I think. I'm not a Les Mis fan, so I confess when I first saw this I thought his reasoning was that reading it was a form of punishment; I was glad to see it was more nuanced than that. I'm still not sure what I think about it as a practice, and I'm quite sure it's not what I would personally pick (not sure what I would, though).

Sometimes. . .

I throw parties with book themes. Because I am that cool.

Harry Potter cake from work party.

And then I read this book

I really have nothing to say about Family Matters. It felt very oddly paced, and I never actually cared about anyone in the story. Story may be stretching a term, though, since it had very few story qualities. Fortunately it was a quick read. I think I may have missed the point of this one. Or the author did. One of the two.

So, to make this a post-length piece, here are two random things:

Remember The Double? When I read reading it, someone asked me if it was a movie. I said I didn't know, which at the time was the truth. Then, recently Amazon recommended The Double to me, and at first I thought, whoa, that's creepy, how could it sort of know that I was reading that book/may be planning to read that book? And then I realized it wasn't that book, but a movie called The Double that has nothing to do with the book. It sort of offends me that Amazon thinks I'd like it.

Also, recently the person at work who told everyone about my reading project learned of my dance habits, which means that pretty soon all the LE in the area will know me as the hip-hop girl. That's even more horrifying.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Yes, dear reader, I am beginning to dread those words. You see them printed on a book, and you know that you are in for it almost certainly.

For example, let's take The Double. I'd sort of rather leave it, actually, but it's too late for that now. Not that it was a painful read or anything. Well, it was sort of painful. Plot synopsis: this guy, who is generally not very happy with his life, randomly discovers that he has a double, a stranger who looks exactly like him. And then it's about his quest to meet this person and determine which of them is the original and which is the copy.

Again, my summary makes it sound more interesting than it is, sadly. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the lead character is really irritating. He's this middle-aged man who is, as I said, generally unhappy with his life, unfulfilled, and rather self-centered and whinny. Not the most fun guy with whom to spend a novel. It's too bad, because the idea is really fascinating: how would we react if we thought we might be a copy? Or are we, regardless, really the sum of our experiences making the notion of a copy absurd?

Sometimes I wonder about authors. So many of this guy's actions felt completely off to me; I mean, the way he reacted to this situation just didn't seem like the way someone would actuallyreact, even taking into consideration the huge variations in how people react to things. Just didn't feel at all real. Maybe this is my own inability to really connect with characters with whom I have nothing in common, but whatever.

And finally, and I know that this is bad and I'm just not a very good reader, but this novel would seriously have full chapters - many, many pages - without a paragraph break. Seriously! Yes, that's a style choice or whatever, and I should just get with the program, but it is annoying.

More on temptation

Though my blogging of late may not reflect this, I've actually been reading! Just not writing about what I've been reading.

The problem, though, is that I've been reading a lot that isn't on the list (though some that is on the list; I'm behind again). Sadly, guidebooks to Amsterdam and Paris aren't productive from a project perspective, but they are great for my self-care.

So, there's that. The main culprit, though, has got to be The New Yorker. I have such a love-hate relationship with my subscription to this periodical. On the one hand, I always read it cover to cover and it's so much fun. On the other hand, it's often more tempting a read than my current list novel (I may just be in a dry spell with the list; it happens). I just finished an absolutely fascinating read about popular book types in China, specifically this genre that is novelizations of work/career. I'm trying to read one about Tyler Clementi's suicide, but I've found it triggering.

Sometimes I'm tempted to re-subscribe to The Economist, but that would really mess me up.

In other news, one of my colleagues recently saw the LE agent who is keeping tabs on my reading habits, which he inquired about. Sigh.

If you've seen one, you've seen them all

The thing about certain types of novels is that, really, if you have read a couple of them there isn't much need to read any more. You get it, and everything else is just sort of repeating over and over again. Both of these novels felt that way to me. Now, I totally acknowledge that this might just be me and others may feel completely differently.

Let's start with Cancer Ward, which is a very, very Russian novel. I read some criticism on this one (not much, but a teeny-tiny bit), and one of the commentators mentioned that Solzhenitsyn feels of the wrong era, he really belongs with Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky, which I think is fair. It's an almost disorienting experience to read this one, because it does feel like it's too modern in setting given it's style. Essentially, it's an allegory for the body politic, specifically the USSR, and the idea that the moral blights of the USSR and Stalinism are like tumors in a human body, spreading, destroying, and corrupting the whole body.

It's actually an amazing allegory and very well crafted, but it's also as bleak as it sounds. Which is to say, bleak even for a Russian novel. It's also, apparently, pretty autobiographical, which actually just makes it more depressing. So yes, a good read, but not a fun read. Not even in the same neighborhood or even general part of the world as a fun read.

Now let's talk about A Tale of a Tub. To me, this one belongs to the series of "novels" that really mostly just show how far novels have come. And let's just say that I'm very grateful that we've come this far, or there is no way that I'd be doing this list project. I just get nothing out of these really old ones. They make me crazy, they are so boring, and they are so awkward. This one literally has a series of interruptions every other chapter where Swift sort of just babbles on about something or another, which makes it feel like a NaNoWriMo. I don't think satires often hold up to well. Anyway, glad to be done with it.