Bubonic Insomnia

All right! Yes, we did take a hiatus. We were on holiday. It was amazing. We read many books, but we had internet limitations.

Currently, Bleak House is destroying my soul, so I thought I'd take a reading break and do a quick update.

Let us start with The Last September (since that is the first one that I read). I elected to read this one on a transatlantic flight, which proved to be an excellent decision. This is because the first flight was one where I was supposed to fall asleep, and if this book doesn't cure insomnia I don't know what will. Truly, nothing happened. At all. This was actually sort of the point of the book, I think. It's kind of a coming of age story in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence, which actually sounds like it has some promise. However, the book is amazingly dull. I was actually quite disappointed, because I loved The House in Paris (and even The Heat of the Day was pretty good). I have a ton of Bowen's left, so hopefully this was the fluke and not the other way round.

After that, I decided to read The Plague, mostly because I found a left copy in the reading material stand at the gym. How amazing is that? This is a book about an Algerian town that faces the plague sometime in the 1940s. Now, I know that this sounds truly terrible, sort of about the worst book one can imagine, but please believe me, it is not. It's actually very beautiful in a sort of morbid way, and captivating. It's a bit bleak, but also hopeful in a way that only a work that real sees into the absolute darkness of the world without flinching can be. I'm not explaining this very well.

Here's an example quote "He knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of final victory. It could be only the record of what had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts." The whole book is like this. It's captivating, and it explores so, so, so many issues. You could do a whole course just using this book as a spring board. I'm always fascinated by ways people cope with facing horrific aspects of life over and over again, and my favorite passage of this book is a scene where the doctor and his friend decide to take an afternoon for their friendship to remind themselves the purpose of their work, the world the're working towards.

One of these books was abandoned in Venice and one in Munich. I wonder if anyone is reading them now.

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).