"That, We Disarmed Our Selves Of The Few Abilities She Had Bestowed; Had Been Very Successful In Multiplying Our Original Wants, And Seemed To Spend Our Whole Lives In Vain Endeavours To Supply Them By Our Own Inventions"

So I find it interesting that Gulliver's Travels is very often read and taught to kids at a young age. Everyone I've asked if they had read it (this was not a large sample size given the current state of lockdown and the fact that I don't interact with more than a few people), responded either that they had read it "a very very long time ago" or they had read it "back in grade school or middle school." And I get the imaginative nature of the book to open up kids' minds to creating worlds of their own making, limited only by their own creativity. And that I certainly did appreciate about the book...lands of teeny people only about 6 inches high, lands of giants, lands where horses talk and are the supreme intelligent beings, lands that float above the ground as though a cloud. And all of these lands and people/beings described in tedious detail, written by an astute observer. It brought so much concrete realness to the imagined places, that I could certainly see how a child would be drawn into the magic of each unique place. 

But really, the book is a big ol' satire. A satire about how comically awful we are as human beings. Sometimes this is reflected in the dynamic of the people Gulliver meets and how the things they do juxtaposed against the things he does as a native Englander all seem so bizarre. And this was very abundantly driven home in Gulliver's last voyage where the Houyhnhnms (the talking, wise horses) are so fully disgusted by the other inhabitants of the island, the Yahoos, who we learn are really just slightly more grotesque looking (and behaving humans). But as Gulliver recounts all that he can about the history of Europe and England to the Houyhnhnms and all of the miserable things that humans do there, from their social customs to their lying and corruption to their completely inadequate system of government (he really doesn't try to candy-coat it), even normal humans are pretty despicable and grotesque in their own right.

I tend to struggle with books that are a statement about the politics of a given country/place at the specific times they were written. Because (and maybe it's just the examples that I've read that fall into this category) I usually don't know squat about the political histories of these countries/times, maybe don't care all that much to learn tons about it, and also because it seems to be written about in laborious detail that makes it even more of a slog for me to get through. I don't want to sound blasé, because I know that the context to the time (and largely the politics) can be critical for many well-regarded texts (and many of the ones that are a bit older on my lists), but I'm just not that driven to want to know all of those minutiae. Particularly if it's written in a dry and unengaging, technical way, which I definitely felt it was in Gulliver's Travels. The politics of England in the early 1700s is just not that compelling to me. Meh, judge all you want, but not my cup of tea (pun intended).

So after knocking that one off the list and settling myself down to 216 more books to go, I'll be taking a slight break to read The Narcissism of Small Differences (and just learned that I had no idea how to actually spell "narcissism") by Michael Zadoorian. Michael is a local Detroit-area writer who happens to be friends with my bf (they've known each other for many years). After just adoring The Leisure Seeker, I cannot wait to dive into this one (and also have Beautiful Music on the bookshelf for future reading too). There is a fun connection that I've been told (by the author himself!) that is in the book but I'll save that snippet for the recap once I've actually read it. I suspect I'll motor right through this one, since I love Michael's writing so much, and because I have a 5-day holiday weekend up north staring me in the face - prime for relaxing and reading. Happy 4th!  

"The Way Most People Browse, It's As If They've Stepped Into A Temple Or Church"

So I probably should have written my entry for Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore as soon as I finished reading it. Because it has been a couple weeks and now most of my more interesting thoughts about it have vanished out of my brain like a wisp in the wind. So for future reference: either make notes while reading or write this shit up ASAP. 

This was a very fun little murder mystery, with some interesting cross-ties between characters (some of which I didn't see coming even though I should have) and some clever puzzles to follow and put together, leading the reader like bread crumbs. The story is about Lydia Smith, a bookstore clerk in Denver who one night is the discoverer of the body of one of the store's "Book Frogs" (the poor, young, regulars who spend excessive amounts of time there), Joey Molina, who has hung himself on the third floor. In Joey's pocket, is a photograph of Lydia as an 11-year old girl at her birthday party with 2 of her friends. What unfolds from there is a mystery that Joey has left behind for Lydia to unravel and along the way we learn about Lydia's very traumatic past and how it may be related to Joey, completely unbeknownst to Lydia. There were plenty of twists and turns and, as mentioned, connections between the characters that you don't necessarily see coming. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the plot of the story, and the very vivid, descriptive nature of many elements of the book (the store, Denver, the many unique characters, and a horrific crime scene). But I had a hard time connecting with the main character. I can't explain why, but something about her just didn't feel authentic (and one particular plotline regarding her and her boyfriend made me particularly annoyed...the character's decisions bothered me and felt overblown and inconsistent with everything else we had read about their relationship). I often wonder sometimes if this comes from an author of one gender trying to write from the point of view of the opposite gender; some authors can do this magnificently where you don't bat an eye or question whether the author is a man or a woman and some authors are less successful. 

All in all, a quick and enjoyable read. As I've mentioned before, I'm a sucker for a good whodoneit and this one checked every box that I would have wanted. 

Since finishing, I've moved on to Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. I honestly don't know much of anything about this book, having never seen any of the movie adaptations of it (other than the existence of the little people called Liliputians). I'm plugging away at it, keeping quarantine time occupied by trying to not hysterically break down into emotion-wracked sobs at the mess of a world we're living in. Maybe this is a good book to read now...voyaging off to lands not found on any map. Isn't that what we all wish we could do right now?