Score!

Sometimes, the list project can get you down or seem like a waste of time. And then you read something you know you wouldn't have read otherwise, you fall in love, and suddenly everything is right again.

Life of Pi was one of those reads for me. It's one I had seen all the time at bookstores before, and one that I had never had any interest in reading. But I absolutely fell in love. It is so, so, so good. I love it on so many levels and for so many reasons. If you haven't read it, do. Go. I'll wait.

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Wasn't that beautiful? It presents so many fascinating ideas and questions. Obviously religion and humans' relationships with animals are the two main themes (which intersect and cascade in such breathtaking ways), and they give the novel structure and force, but there are many other themes and questions (What makes a life worth living? What drives us to survive? What is a story?). The structure of the story is so compelling; I felt a conflict with wanting to read it quickly because of the tension and wanting to savor it because of the beauty. It's surprisingly funny, and some of the passages are so beautiful. The characters are lovingly drawn. I am particularly in love with Pi's relationship with Richard Parker, and all the levels and questions that one relationship creates. I also just loved Pi's voice as the narrator. I can't even really explain why.

There is a quote on the cover of the edition I read from the Los Angeles Tmes Book Review: "A story to make you believe in the soul sustaining power of fiction," That really is a perfect description. It's such an affirming read.

Whenever I read something like this, I want to run out and recommend it to everyone. The problem with something like that, though, is that many do not fall in love with it. I do tend to love Indian novels and novels of the Indian Diaspora (God of Small Things, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Namesake), so if you don't love such novels this may not be one for you.

I also have a thing for Russian novels. Even though the Russian greats had some disagreements amongst themselves about Turgenev, I like him. So there, take that Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or whichever one of you it is who doesn't like Turgenev.

Spring Torrents is seriously, seriously Russian (spoilers: Russian guy in Frankfurt meets beautiful girl, misses train, is broke, meets girl's fiancee, fights a duel with a random person over her honor, she breaks up with fiancee, he attempts to get money, meets sort of horrible but rich woman whom he is sexually attracted to, leaves first love interest to pursue a shallow and ultimately soul-crushing life with horrible woman, and looks back on life with regret later). It also is strangely compelling. I think because it has this internal balance that makes it satisfying rather than frustrating, if you can just wallow in the Russian-ness of it all.This is what cold weather does to people, I think.

So There You Go

The description of the story certainly sounds timeless or even contemporary, and certainly not confined to one specific location. Father is excited about his son's return from college, only to find that he has changed and no longer is the young man the father saw off to college. That all said, Fathers and Sons is incredibly Russian. Incredibly.

Fortunately, I really like Russian novels. I have many favorite books from this project, but my favorite whole class of books that I wouldn't have really gotten into without this project has got to be Russian novels. Turgenev is not my favorite Russian author, but I have to say I disagree with Tolstoy about him (of course, in the Dostoevsky versus Tolstoy debate, my favorite is the former).

For my next read, I went back to Google Books for The Unfortunate Traveler. I'm still trying to finish off the pre 1700s, of which I have six to go (which would be much more impressive, except there are only 13 on the pre 1700s list).

I think that it's a bad sign when your main point of musing from a book is that it might be interesting to do a study on the ways portrayals of rape have changed over time. Really, this book lives up to its title. It's very unfortunate; I guess I thought it would be a bit of a satire, but it's not. Mostly it's a catalog of terrible things that happened to this guy and the people he runs into. But hey, at least now we've past the half-way point for the pre 1700s.

The Important Thing is that I Still Have My Eyesight

Both of these books were read on my computer via Google Books. I'm not exactly sure what I think about Google Books. On the one hand, it's so slick to be able to access books like that, and if they are pre-Disney you can get them for free! So, really, Google Books is pretty incredible and an easy-to-take for granted luxury. On the other hand, I find it a really hard way to read. There are some serious trade-offs here, and I definitely still am in love with libraries over the internet. Speaking of, the library and I need to have a date really soon here. I am going through withdrawal.

Apparently, The Golden Ass is the only Latin novel to survive in complete form; thanks, Wikipedia, for that tid-bit! I must say, if The Golden Ass is at all an exemplar of this particular literary tradition, I don't think we're missing much that this is the only entire Latin novel that we've got. I think I've mentioned before that I find the pre-1700s to be some of the hardest of the books to read, and this was definitely no exception.

Novels have just improved so much! I am not a classics person, I don't think. I mean, there is something to be said for them, and I did enjoy The Odyssey and The Iliad has some beautiful parts, but a little goes a long, long, long way. In this case, I was pretty over the story before he even became an ass. It was all so incredibly random and meandering, and there was absolutely no character development to speak of. Definitely a slog for me.

Maybe it was more the fact that I was coming off of The Golden Ass, but I found A Lear of the Steppes to be quite engaging and an easy read. The premise is that a group of friends are discussing examples of Shakespearean characters in their everyday lives, finding many Othellos and Falstaffs, but no Lears. Then the narrator recounts the Russian Lear that he knew. The story has the same essential plot and characters of King Lear, so if you're familiar with the play this will be easy from a plot perspective.

There is one HUGE exception, though, in that there isn't exactly a Cordelia. One of the daughters has some Cordelia and some Regan, I guess. In meshing those characters, Turgenev does something rather interesting. There is no one to route for now, exactly. I mean, you can feel some sympathy for the Lear character, but he really does bring it on himself in some ways (I know there are arguments that he has a mental illness, and I think he really must or else it's rather mind boggling), but you can't route for him, and his tragedy seems less avoidable than Cordelia's. Paradoxically, though, by not having that clear character to cling to, everyone else is more humanized somehow.

The other main change is that the focus is so much tighter, since Turgenev's tale is not a sweeping epic but rather a story of an isolated family drama. Again, this has the almost ironic result of showing the core immortality or timelessness of the themes Shakespeare raised.

Of course, the main interesting question here is, can you think of any Shakespeare characters in your own life? It's an interesting game to play.