The Haunting of Hill House is in the books (no pun intended).
Like most people, I first read The Lottery by Shirley Jackson a very long time ago. I don't even remember when, I just know that I've known this story and it has been a part of my memory as long as I can recall. And I remember being very drawn to the dark, subversive, and very unexplained feeling to the story. And in her masterful way, Jackson brings that same feeling to The Haunting of Hill House. There is a strong psychological element to the way the story is told - there is as much going on in the characters' minds as there is action going on in the storyline.
The book is about Dr. Montague, a researcher of paranormal activity, who invites a few guests to stay with him for a while at a supposedly haunted house. Those guests include a relative of the house's owner, Luke, a flighty, kind of free-spirit, Theodora, and a shy, sheltered woman, Eleanor (Theodora and Eleanor chosen to come based on their documented histories with unusual, paranormal events). The story is told from the perspective of Eleanor, who has always wanted to live a life different than the one she was dealt, having taken care of her ill mother for many years and not having a good relationship with her sister.
At the base of it, the book is a good, old fashioned ghost story. The group of visitors experience many encounters with the forces who inhabit the house, from banging on bedroom doors, to mysterious voices in the night, to writing in blood on the walls. Eleanor initially despises the house, but little by little, become psychologically entrenched and attached to it. She begins to understand and feel where the house is coming from, and the house certainly seems to be targeting her to stay as well.
There are also a lot of very complicated dynamics between the characters, especially Eleanor and Theodora. They immediately take to each other like sisters (similar to the sisters who lived in the house long ago, which Theodora mentions many times throughout the book), but as the house begins to affect them, they come to be very distrustful and even cruel to each other. But so much of the character dynamics were done is such a subtle way, it isn't handed to the reader. You really have to read a lot into what is going on between them against the backdrop of the insanity of how the house is affecting their psyche.
Would definitely recommend it for a quick, scary book read. Not many do It better than Shirley Jackson.
I'm taking a quick break from the book lists to read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Yeah, I know, I know. I'm not a fan of reading books that are the "book of the moment" and I like to discover the books that I read by kind of coming across them organically. But like I said, I'm a sucker for a good mystery, whodoneit book, and from what I've read, this book sounds like it's pretty darn good. So I'm guessing it should probably be a quick read; I'm sure I'll get sucked into it and won't be able to put it down. After that, it's on to Shakespeare, I swear this time.
240 books to go.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Sunday, October 26, 2014
"You Kept Fighting Everything, And Everything Broke You Down, Until In The End You Were Just A Little Goddam Bolt Holding On And Squealing When The Machine Went Too Fast"
I've finally finished The Naked and The Dead. I think once I finally focused on it (and started turning off the damn television and actually reading a book in the evening rather than zoning out, inevitably watching something that makes me dumber), it went a lot more quickly.
The book tells the story of an army platoon on the island of Anopopei in the South Pacific during World War II as they try to defeat the Japanese forces who hold the island. The story is told from the perspective of the numerous different individuals in the platoon, all the way from the general to the private. It goes through the phases of landing on the island and the terror of stepping into battle, to setting up the bivouacs and lines, to conducting a reconnaissance mission from the opposite side of the island to see if there is a possibility of advancing from the opposite side of the island to come behind the Japanese lines. Throughout the book, there are individual digressions usually telling the back story of one of the men in the platoon or "choruses" which is written as dialogue between the characters.
Admittedly, I know jack squat about military ranks, maneuvers, equipment, and pretty much anything related to war whatsoever. So initially, I had to look everything up to better understand what was going on (now I know what I pup tent looks like), but even then, it was very hard for me to visualize it all. But I did enjoy learning about this. I feel as though I have a much better understanding of what actually transpires during "war".
And what I learned about what transpires during war? A lot less battle and a lot more preparations. Building roads, moving equipment, setting up camps and foxholes, and just tons and tons of coordination of these efforts. I guess I never really thought about the fact that you're essentially setting up a functional city for thousands of troops with everything that is needed to make that happen. Before the first gun is even fired, it's an astounding amount of work.
The other main things I took away from this book was the basic tenet of the armed forces: that you follow commands and don't question your superior officers. There are so many parts where the troops are described in ways that make them just cogs in a huge machine. And even when one of them die, from his closest comrade to his commander, they all just kind of shove it down inside themselves somewhere and move on. And certainly that would seem to be part of coping with the horrors that they're experiencing around them and the only way they can move on without going crazy. But it often demonstrated how insignificant each individual was.
In addition to this, Mailer did an excellent job of showing the sheer physically excruciating lengths that soldiers go through to do their job. And again, it usually has nothing to do with battle but the physically exhausting work of something like moving cannons or traversing many miles of nearly impassable terrain, or carrying an injured soldier through the jungle . The bulk of the second half of the book spent significant amounts of time describing this in elaborate detail. And while Mailer did an excellent job describing the physical and mental changes of the soldiers due to physical exhaustion, I know I can't even adequately appreciate it because I've never even remotely pushed myself to that level of exhaustion (while a marathon and half Ironman were huge challenges, it definitely wasn't to the same crazy level as described in the book).
Overall, I did like the book. It's not something I would have normally picked up in a million years, and there were parts that dragged out way too much (721 pages was a lot), but it definitely gave me a completely different perspective on what some of the battles in the South Pacific may have been like. So in the end, learning a little more about this couldn't be anything but a good thing, right?
On I move to something in honor of Halloween, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I expect this to be a quick read since I'm usually a sucker for mystery books (I just can't put them down). I also have a long plane flight this week, so hopefully I can motor through this one. I think I've turned a page (no pun intended) where I'll be reading some of these books more quickly. Again, it mostly about making the choice to turn the damn TV off.
Also, I'm aware that for the website where I house my book lists, you used to be able to open the list directly from the link here, but now you have to have a login to open it. I'm not very happy about the change, and I'm looking for alternatives, but it might take me a while to figure it out and find a better option.
Happy Sunday! 241 to go.
The book tells the story of an army platoon on the island of Anopopei in the South Pacific during World War II as they try to defeat the Japanese forces who hold the island. The story is told from the perspective of the numerous different individuals in the platoon, all the way from the general to the private. It goes through the phases of landing on the island and the terror of stepping into battle, to setting up the bivouacs and lines, to conducting a reconnaissance mission from the opposite side of the island to see if there is a possibility of advancing from the opposite side of the island to come behind the Japanese lines. Throughout the book, there are individual digressions usually telling the back story of one of the men in the platoon or "choruses" which is written as dialogue between the characters.
Admittedly, I know jack squat about military ranks, maneuvers, equipment, and pretty much anything related to war whatsoever. So initially, I had to look everything up to better understand what was going on (now I know what I pup tent looks like), but even then, it was very hard for me to visualize it all. But I did enjoy learning about this. I feel as though I have a much better understanding of what actually transpires during "war".
And what I learned about what transpires during war? A lot less battle and a lot more preparations. Building roads, moving equipment, setting up camps and foxholes, and just tons and tons of coordination of these efforts. I guess I never really thought about the fact that you're essentially setting up a functional city for thousands of troops with everything that is needed to make that happen. Before the first gun is even fired, it's an astounding amount of work.
The other main things I took away from this book was the basic tenet of the armed forces: that you follow commands and don't question your superior officers. There are so many parts where the troops are described in ways that make them just cogs in a huge machine. And even when one of them die, from his closest comrade to his commander, they all just kind of shove it down inside themselves somewhere and move on. And certainly that would seem to be part of coping with the horrors that they're experiencing around them and the only way they can move on without going crazy. But it often demonstrated how insignificant each individual was.
In addition to this, Mailer did an excellent job of showing the sheer physically excruciating lengths that soldiers go through to do their job. And again, it usually has nothing to do with battle but the physically exhausting work of something like moving cannons or traversing many miles of nearly impassable terrain, or carrying an injured soldier through the jungle . The bulk of the second half of the book spent significant amounts of time describing this in elaborate detail. And while Mailer did an excellent job describing the physical and mental changes of the soldiers due to physical exhaustion, I know I can't even adequately appreciate it because I've never even remotely pushed myself to that level of exhaustion (while a marathon and half Ironman were huge challenges, it definitely wasn't to the same crazy level as described in the book).
Overall, I did like the book. It's not something I would have normally picked up in a million years, and there were parts that dragged out way too much (721 pages was a lot), but it definitely gave me a completely different perspective on what some of the battles in the South Pacific may have been like. So in the end, learning a little more about this couldn't be anything but a good thing, right?
On I move to something in honor of Halloween, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I expect this to be a quick read since I'm usually a sucker for mystery books (I just can't put them down). I also have a long plane flight this week, so hopefully I can motor through this one. I think I've turned a page (no pun intended) where I'll be reading some of these books more quickly. Again, it mostly about making the choice to turn the damn TV off.
Also, I'm aware that for the website where I house my book lists, you used to be able to open the list directly from the link here, but now you have to have a login to open it. I'm not very happy about the change, and I'm looking for alternatives, but it might take me a while to figure it out and find a better option.
Happy Sunday! 241 to go.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
"What Really Knocks Me Out is a Book That, When You're All Done Reading It, You Wish the Author That Wrote it Was a Terrific Friend of Yours and You Could Call Him Up on the Phone Whenever You Felt Like It."
I have always wanted to be a writer. Even when I was about 10 or 11 years old, I would write short stories on our typewriter. We had a damn computer at the time. I don't really know why I used the typewriter. Something about the noise it made that I think felt so satisfying. Like each clang of the key and dig of the return demonstrated progress in a way that a boring computer keyboard couldn't. Nowadays, I even have strange preferences for the sounds of the keyboards I use.
What I recall about writing those short stories though was that I never finished them. I had so many ideas and I would just write without much planning or thought. The story would just flow and not make a lot of sense, and I would generally end up abandoning my efforts. Hey, I was 10. Give a girl a break.
I never really spent since then to develop the skills to be a writer. I do actually work as a writer, but it's scientific, technical writing, not creative in any way. I can spout stuff off in a blog post here and there but I've come to learn that there is an entirely different skill set to write creatively. Every time I try, it's such a painful laborious process. It can take me hours just to get a page of text down. Maybe it's not all that different than other writers, but sometimes it's frustrating that it doesn't come more easily. Or maybe it's frustrating to me that I haven't devoted enough work to being better at it. Is it regrets of not pursuing what I have always wanted to? Probably, more than anything.
I have an itch to shake things up. A full time stable job is great and security is a lovely thing and all, and I really do like what I do, but an overall ennui makes me feel like I'm missing out on something that would make me happier. Maybe it's not just limited to a job though. Maybe I need to shake some other stuff up too. Move? Buy a house? Exotic travel? We'll see.
As far as progress on The Naked And The Dead, I'm about 400/700 pages in. I've been sticking with it pretty regularly, but it's just slow going. Hopefully I'll finish it by the end of the month.
Another birthday passed. Another year closer to trying to meet this goal.
What I recall about writing those short stories though was that I never finished them. I had so many ideas and I would just write without much planning or thought. The story would just flow and not make a lot of sense, and I would generally end up abandoning my efforts. Hey, I was 10. Give a girl a break.
I never really spent since then to develop the skills to be a writer. I do actually work as a writer, but it's scientific, technical writing, not creative in any way. I can spout stuff off in a blog post here and there but I've come to learn that there is an entirely different skill set to write creatively. Every time I try, it's such a painful laborious process. It can take me hours just to get a page of text down. Maybe it's not all that different than other writers, but sometimes it's frustrating that it doesn't come more easily. Or maybe it's frustrating to me that I haven't devoted enough work to being better at it. Is it regrets of not pursuing what I have always wanted to? Probably, more than anything.
I have an itch to shake things up. A full time stable job is great and security is a lovely thing and all, and I really do like what I do, but an overall ennui makes me feel like I'm missing out on something that would make me happier. Maybe it's not just limited to a job though. Maybe I need to shake some other stuff up too. Move? Buy a house? Exotic travel? We'll see.
As far as progress on The Naked And The Dead, I'm about 400/700 pages in. I've been sticking with it pretty regularly, but it's just slow going. Hopefully I'll finish it by the end of the month.
Another birthday passed. Another year closer to trying to meet this goal.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
"There Seemed To Be No End To The Things That Could Be Hiding, Waiting It Out, Right Where You Thought You Could See It All"
So I had a quick change in strategy for which book I was reading. My BF and I had planned a weekend get-away to his sister's place up north at Higgins Lake, and I just couldn't somehow see myself sitting back on the deck, with the warm July breeze rustling through the trees overhead, enjoying the mid-summer sunshine and a cocktail, reading Macbeth. And having to look up every other word in an Olde English Dictionary and seek clarifications for my confusion (which is certain to be significant) in reference material. It just didn't seem like the kind of book I would dive into while my feet were planted in the sand and much more of a hassle than I wanted on a leisurely weekend away.
So I switched it up to one of the books from my list of female writers: The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. And I literally read it in a day (that's the magic that happens when you go somewhere where you have no cell phone service).
I had read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver probably back in high school (back when Oprah had claimed it as one of her own), and I honestly can't remember all that much about it. I know it was about the lives of a family of missionaries in Africa. And I think one of the girls owned a high-end hotel when she got older. And I think there was something about fire ants? Or maybe I'm confusing that with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (which, if you haven't seen it, don't bother. The fire ants part was the only slightly entertaining part of the movie). And I don't really know why I can't remember this book. I recall liking it a great deal, but for some reason, there are a handful of books I can look at on my bookshelves and have very little recollection what they're about.
Anyway, similar to how much I enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible, I very much enjoyed The Bean Trees. It was really a perfect, quick summer read. The story is about a girl, Taylor, who is determined to leave her hometown in rural Kentucky to make a life for herself somewhere else. While she sets out driving west, along the way in Oklahoma, under very strange circumstances, she has a young Indian girl forced upon her. She discovers that the ~3 year old girl was abused and clearly unwanted, so she drives on to Arizona, taking the girl with her. And the story unfolds from there of the people she meets and befriends in Tucson, and how they all manage to make their lives work, in spite of the difficult circumstances that confront them.
First off, I very much liked the character of Taylor. She was sassy, but in an endearing, very charming way. Sometimes I feel like sass and sarcasm in a character can come across as very snarky and dislikeable. Which, isn't that true in real life too? It's hard to pull it off without coming across as a mean person that just wants to shit all over everything. But this character dished it out when she needed to and in a self-protective, limited way.
Secondly, it was worth reading the book just for the clever descriptions that Kingsolver uses in her observations. She really has a mastery of analogies and observations that we've probably all seen, but she manages to make them so humorous - I found myself smiling to myself dozens of times. Just a few examples:
So while we were up north, I had also brought another book along with me, under the assumption that I would have finished The Bean Trees and still delaying my start of Macbeth. So I've moved on to The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer. I haven't read a book about war in a while, but it seemed that for a time, every single book I read was in someway related to WWII (Catch-22, Everything is Illuminated, etc). I definitely won't be reading this beast in a day, although I'm about a third of the way through so far. So progressing slowly. I swear after this I'll read Macbeth. Maybe I'll start it in the fall when it feels like I should be going back to school too and it'll feel more like a school assignment.
242 to go. Happy Sunday!
So I switched it up to one of the books from my list of female writers: The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. And I literally read it in a day (that's the magic that happens when you go somewhere where you have no cell phone service).
I had read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver probably back in high school (back when Oprah had claimed it as one of her own), and I honestly can't remember all that much about it. I know it was about the lives of a family of missionaries in Africa. And I think one of the girls owned a high-end hotel when she got older. And I think there was something about fire ants? Or maybe I'm confusing that with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (which, if you haven't seen it, don't bother. The fire ants part was the only slightly entertaining part of the movie). And I don't really know why I can't remember this book. I recall liking it a great deal, but for some reason, there are a handful of books I can look at on my bookshelves and have very little recollection what they're about.
Anyway, similar to how much I enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible, I very much enjoyed The Bean Trees. It was really a perfect, quick summer read. The story is about a girl, Taylor, who is determined to leave her hometown in rural Kentucky to make a life for herself somewhere else. While she sets out driving west, along the way in Oklahoma, under very strange circumstances, she has a young Indian girl forced upon her. She discovers that the ~3 year old girl was abused and clearly unwanted, so she drives on to Arizona, taking the girl with her. And the story unfolds from there of the people she meets and befriends in Tucson, and how they all manage to make their lives work, in spite of the difficult circumstances that confront them.
First off, I very much liked the character of Taylor. She was sassy, but in an endearing, very charming way. Sometimes I feel like sass and sarcasm in a character can come across as very snarky and dislikeable. Which, isn't that true in real life too? It's hard to pull it off without coming across as a mean person that just wants to shit all over everything. But this character dished it out when she needed to and in a self-protective, limited way.
Secondly, it was worth reading the book just for the clever descriptions that Kingsolver uses in her observations. She really has a mastery of analogies and observations that we've probably all seen, but she manages to make them so humorous - I found myself smiling to myself dozens of times. Just a few examples:
- "The clouds were pink and fat and hilarious-looking, like the hippo ballerinas in a Disney movie."
- "...I left the interstate at an off ramp and pulled over next to what looked like the Flying Nun's hat made out of bumpy concrete..."
- There was a prostitute with a miniskirt that looked like Reynolds Wrap.
- There was a man who sold vegetables with skin that looked like a baked potato.
- There was a cat who walks in circles in the living room, kicking its feet behind it again and again throwing invisible sand over invisible cat poop.
So while we were up north, I had also brought another book along with me, under the assumption that I would have finished The Bean Trees and still delaying my start of Macbeth. So I've moved on to The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer. I haven't read a book about war in a while, but it seemed that for a time, every single book I read was in someway related to WWII (Catch-22, Everything is Illuminated, etc). I definitely won't be reading this beast in a day, although I'm about a third of the way through so far. So progressing slowly. I swear after this I'll read Macbeth. Maybe I'll start it in the fall when it feels like I should be going back to school too and it'll feel more like a school assignment.
242 to go. Happy Sunday!
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
"There Ain't Any Explanations. Not Of Anything. All You Can Do Is Point At The Nature Of Things. If You're Smart Enough To See 'Em"
We finally managed to watch the 2006 version of All the King's Men. And on paper, this book should make a fantastic movie. Hollywood loves 'em some political movies with over-the-top characters, adultery, and murder, right? And in casting, this movie should have been boffo (Sean Penn? Kate Winslet? Jude Law? Anthony Hopkins? Patricia Clarkson? James Gandolfini? Mark Ruffalo?). Seriously? It has hand-picked Oscar bait all over it, right?
And for some reason, it just didn't connect the right way for me. The movie was very true to the book (with only a couple changes for simplification). But there were just a handful of things that bugged me, and prevented me from really giving it 2 thumbs up:
And for some reason, it just didn't connect the right way for me. The movie was very true to the book (with only a couple changes for simplification). But there were just a handful of things that bugged me, and prevented me from really giving it 2 thumbs up:
- I could not STAND all of Sean Penn's arm gesticulating as Willie Stark. I mean, after a while, that's all I was watching. I was hardly listening, but just thinking, "He's just sitting having a normal conversation with 2 other people. Why does he need to flail his arms around like he's speaking to a crowd of a thousand or something?" There was certainly mention of Willie's public speaking style in the book, and how he lured people in with his charisma, but no discussion of all the flailing. And there was a lot of it. Arms. Flailing. Gesticulating. He was almost event kind of floppy at certain points. Like he was going to break out into a Harlem shake at any moment. So yes, completely distracted. It's sad when one simple thing can single-handedly alter an entire movie.
- The music in the movie was so oddly timed and distracting. And inappropriately melodramatic. Normally, I never ever notice music in a movie, except when it's classic and really elevates those key moments of a movie to epic status (think ET flying off in the basket of a bike, or an Indiana Jones chase scene). But there was all this big, sweeping music in strange moments, like a car pulling up to a farm house. I just didn't get it. And again, distracting.
- While the movie was very true to the book, it almost could have been longer. Clocking in at 128 minutes, that's shorter than just about every superhero movie that has come out in the last few years. The extra time I think would have helped to develop some pieces a little more to emotionally invest the viewer in what was going on a little more (like the relationships between Jack, Adam, and Anne, and the complexities of Jack's relationship with Judge Irwin). While these things were conveyed sufficiently enough to get the storyline across in the movie, it just could have been amped up a bit.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
I Had Not Understood Then What I Think I Have Now Come to Understand: That We Can Keep the Past Only By Having the Future, For They Are Forever Tied Together
I have this affliction where if I don't read a book regularly, when I come back to pick it up again, I have no idea what's going on or where I left off, and I usually have to backtrack a chapter or two to get my bearings. And then I just get to where I left off the time before. And by then, I'm tired because, well, you know, I just read 2 chapters. So my progress can be static, or painfully slow, and generally frustrating. Which doesn't bode well for how much I'll enjoy a given book
And that's kind of how things started with All the King's Men. I just kept reading the same few chapters over again trying to remind myself where I was 3 weeks prior. But once I finally got going....I read the whole thing in about 2 weeks. And I absolutely loved this book.
The story is about the infamous Willie Stark, or "The Boss," who starts off as a lawyer and then politician from a small town in Louisiana who initially has honest ideals and genuinely wants to make things better and represent the people, but as he becomes the governor, he is lured into the things he has to do as a politician to further himself and his agenda. The story is told through one of his associates, Jack Burden, who often seems apathetic to the goals of The Boss, but does them anyway.
The overall story tells of how both characters came to be where they are, and the inter-relatedness of the 2 characters (one of Jack's family friends, Judge Irwin, is someone who Stark attempts to bribe, Jack's childhood love, Anne, is having an affair with Stark, and one of Jack's childhood friends, Adam, is a doctor who Stark wants to run his new hospital). At one point in the book he even states that "the story of Willie Stark and the story of Jack Burden are, in one sense, one story."
The one thing that I took away from this book that was done so exceptionally well, was showing that, under certain circumstances, everyone will turn to doing something dishonest. Certainly, this is completely the character of Stark, who really just wanted to help people, but became the epitome of a corrupt politician, bribing, blackmailing, and doing whatever he had to do to get what he wanted. But every other character also commits some kind of egregious, morally reprehensible act, even those who were initially portrayed as genuinely good and above reproach (phew, a lot of big words there). But ultimately, their bad choices affect others and they all eventually pay for it, and the impact of one person's choice affects the (often bad) choices of another. As an isolated person, you don't always see the ripple effect of one action; how one thing you do impacts the choices that other people make (or if it does impact others). So it was just brilliant the way it was all laid out to see how each action has a reaction. One of my favorite quotes in the book explains this perfectly:
"He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but springs out to fling the goassamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide. It does not matter whether or not you meant to brush the web of things. Your happy foot or you gay wing may have brushed it ever so lightly, but what happens always happens and there is the spider, bearded black and with his great faceted eyes glittering like mirrors in the sun, or like God's eye, and the fangs dripping." (Man, I could only ever hope to write that wonderfully!!).
So I can most certainly see how the book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 and why it is included as the "best of" on 2 of my lists (Holla! Knocking out 2 books with 1 stone!). I would recommend it -- it wasn't too political, which I was worried about at first, 'cos that's not my bag baby.
Side note: As I mentioned before, I again made the mistake of looking up the film adaptations as soon as I started reading the book and then envisioning the actors who played the roles in the 2006 version as the characters as I read (Willie Stark = Sean Penn, Jack Burden = Jude Law, Anne Stanton = Kate Winslet, Adam Stanton = Mark Ruffalo, Judge Irwin = Anthony Hopkins, Tiny Duffy = James Gandolfini, Sadie Burke = Patricia Clarkson. I know, talk about stacked cast right??). And most of them I was fine with except Sean Penn (Gandolfini would have been a better representation based on the descriptions in the book) and Kate Winslet (she was just not the right physical description of the character). So we have moved this movie up in the Netflix queue to watch soon. I know I should probably watch the Academy Award winning version from 1949, but I'll get there eventually.
So on I move...begrudgingly to Macbeth. I've been avoiding having to read Shakespeare for a while now, but the book has been mocking me from the bookshelf for months now, so I should just get it over with. For this one, I'm going to check different resources as I finish reading each chapter, so I can have some kind of barometer of understanding of what's going on. It could be very easy for me to just breeze through the whole thing, reading the words on the page without knowing the full meaning. I don't speak Elizabethan English, after all. I think I forgot how useful lit classes can be when you have a teacher and other students to discuss and bounce thoughts off of, to enhance your understanding of a book. So in absence of a lit class, I turn to the interwebs (a valiant substitute, I know).
Only 243 left. Time to pick up my game!
PS. Blogger made some janky changes in the how things are published on the blog page, particularly with the "pages," or in my case, the links to the book lists. So instead of linking directly out to the lists, there are 2 clicks now to get there. Not that big of a deal, but after spending an hour trying to figure out WTF was up, the 2 click approach is going to have to do. Hopefully by the time I check in again, they'll have changed it back.
And that's kind of how things started with All the King's Men. I just kept reading the same few chapters over again trying to remind myself where I was 3 weeks prior. But once I finally got going....I read the whole thing in about 2 weeks. And I absolutely loved this book.
The story is about the infamous Willie Stark, or "The Boss," who starts off as a lawyer and then politician from a small town in Louisiana who initially has honest ideals and genuinely wants to make things better and represent the people, but as he becomes the governor, he is lured into the things he has to do as a politician to further himself and his agenda. The story is told through one of his associates, Jack Burden, who often seems apathetic to the goals of The Boss, but does them anyway.
The overall story tells of how both characters came to be where they are, and the inter-relatedness of the 2 characters (one of Jack's family friends, Judge Irwin, is someone who Stark attempts to bribe, Jack's childhood love, Anne, is having an affair with Stark, and one of Jack's childhood friends, Adam, is a doctor who Stark wants to run his new hospital). At one point in the book he even states that "the story of Willie Stark and the story of Jack Burden are, in one sense, one story."
The one thing that I took away from this book that was done so exceptionally well, was showing that, under certain circumstances, everyone will turn to doing something dishonest. Certainly, this is completely the character of Stark, who really just wanted to help people, but became the epitome of a corrupt politician, bribing, blackmailing, and doing whatever he had to do to get what he wanted. But every other character also commits some kind of egregious, morally reprehensible act, even those who were initially portrayed as genuinely good and above reproach (phew, a lot of big words there). But ultimately, their bad choices affect others and they all eventually pay for it, and the impact of one person's choice affects the (often bad) choices of another. As an isolated person, you don't always see the ripple effect of one action; how one thing you do impacts the choices that other people make (or if it does impact others). So it was just brilliant the way it was all laid out to see how each action has a reaction. One of my favorite quotes in the book explains this perfectly:
"He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but springs out to fling the goassamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide. It does not matter whether or not you meant to brush the web of things. Your happy foot or you gay wing may have brushed it ever so lightly, but what happens always happens and there is the spider, bearded black and with his great faceted eyes glittering like mirrors in the sun, or like God's eye, and the fangs dripping." (Man, I could only ever hope to write that wonderfully!!).
So I can most certainly see how the book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 and why it is included as the "best of" on 2 of my lists (Holla! Knocking out 2 books with 1 stone!). I would recommend it -- it wasn't too political, which I was worried about at first, 'cos that's not my bag baby.
Side note: As I mentioned before, I again made the mistake of looking up the film adaptations as soon as I started reading the book and then envisioning the actors who played the roles in the 2006 version as the characters as I read (Willie Stark = Sean Penn, Jack Burden = Jude Law, Anne Stanton = Kate Winslet, Adam Stanton = Mark Ruffalo, Judge Irwin = Anthony Hopkins, Tiny Duffy = James Gandolfini, Sadie Burke = Patricia Clarkson. I know, talk about stacked cast right??). And most of them I was fine with except Sean Penn (Gandolfini would have been a better representation based on the descriptions in the book) and Kate Winslet (she was just not the right physical description of the character). So we have moved this movie up in the Netflix queue to watch soon. I know I should probably watch the Academy Award winning version from 1949, but I'll get there eventually.
So on I move...begrudgingly to Macbeth. I've been avoiding having to read Shakespeare for a while now, but the book has been mocking me from the bookshelf for months now, so I should just get it over with. For this one, I'm going to check different resources as I finish reading each chapter, so I can have some kind of barometer of understanding of what's going on. It could be very easy for me to just breeze through the whole thing, reading the words on the page without knowing the full meaning. I don't speak Elizabethan English, after all. I think I forgot how useful lit classes can be when you have a teacher and other students to discuss and bounce thoughts off of, to enhance your understanding of a book. So in absence of a lit class, I turn to the interwebs (a valiant substitute, I know).
Only 243 left. Time to pick up my game!
PS. Blogger made some janky changes in the how things are published on the blog page, particularly with the "pages," or in my case, the links to the book lists. So instead of linking directly out to the lists, there are 2 clicks now to get there. Not that big of a deal, but after spending an hour trying to figure out WTF was up, the 2 click approach is going to have to do. Hopefully by the time I check in again, they'll have changed it back.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
"But the Truth is, Whether They Think About Him or Not, the Tiger is Always There, in Their Movements, in Their Speech, in the Preventive Gestures that Have Become a Part of Their Everyday Lives"
Alright, yes, I admit it, I've been horribly delinquent on writing posts (2+ months to be exact). But there has been progress, I swear. I just haven't gotten around to writing about it.
I recently took a 2 week vacation from work with the sole intention of doing as little as humanly possible. Or at least doing as little as possible that resembled work. I spent part of it at a gorgeous resort in Mexico and part of it visiting my sister and her family in Seattle. The first part of the vaca involved doing absolutely nothing other than eating, drinking, sitting by the pool/beach reading, eating, drinking, sitting by the pool/beach reading, repeat. Between airplane time and reading at the pool/beach, this allowed me to finish The Tiger's Wife in only a few days. Once I really got going, it just sucked me in.
The story is about a young woman, Natalia, in an unnamed Balkan country (I spent probably more time than the author intended trying to figure out what actual country it was intended to be based on the names of locations and the historical events described) and her relationship with her grandfather, who had recently passed away. She recounts stories that her grandfather had told her of his life, stories that are fantastic, and impossible, and almost like fables or fairytales. But stories, that when told in the way the grandfather had recounted them, seem almost plausible.
I had a bit of a hard time seeing where the book was going. There was a lot of jumping back and forth between the present story of Natalia, flashbacks of her past including times with her grandfather, stories that the grandfather told (that actually happened to him), and stories of other related characters in the grandfather's stories. When I was about 2/3 of the way through the book, I found myself really hoping that there was going to be some amazing revelation that brought all of these segments together in Natalia's ongoing narrative. And there was some amount of that in the end, but maybe just not what I was expecting.
What I must say about the book though, is that it is astounding to me that it was written by someone in her early to mid 20s. Not just astounding, but truly mind-blowing. The richness of the descriptions and the nuances of every detail was definitely what I loved the most about the book. From the sounds to the smells (I particularly loved the descriptions of the smell of the tiger), it gave so much to the story. Again, her gift for translating observation into words to enhance the narrative was just amazing.
Overall, I did really like the book. It took me a while to get in to the story (even though I was still thoroughly enjoying reading the book for the beautiful writing itself), but once I did, I had to keep reading. I would get pulled into one of the side stories (particularly, the one of the tiger's wife and the grandfather), and want to know what happened, even if that meant 80 pages straight reading without stopping (well, maybe stopping to refill my cocktail or re-apply sunblock...).
So on I go. Rather than picking up some Shakespeare to read while on vacation (I haven't seen that on any "Good Beach Books" lists, have you?), I moved on to another book from the lists, All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. Still not necessarily a light and airy beach read, but considering that I read it on airplanes, it didn't really matter. So far so good. I didn't know that there was a somewhat recent movie remake of the book with Sean Penn as the main character. And I can already tell you that I definitely do NOT picture him as Willie Stark. So he's going to have a lot to prove to me. I'll definitely have to watch it as soon as I'm done with the book. And possibly the original version of the movie too.
Happy Sunday!
I recently took a 2 week vacation from work with the sole intention of doing as little as humanly possible. Or at least doing as little as possible that resembled work. I spent part of it at a gorgeous resort in Mexico and part of it visiting my sister and her family in Seattle. The first part of the vaca involved doing absolutely nothing other than eating, drinking, sitting by the pool/beach reading, eating, drinking, sitting by the pool/beach reading, repeat. Between airplane time and reading at the pool/beach, this allowed me to finish The Tiger's Wife in only a few days. Once I really got going, it just sucked me in.
The story is about a young woman, Natalia, in an unnamed Balkan country (I spent probably more time than the author intended trying to figure out what actual country it was intended to be based on the names of locations and the historical events described) and her relationship with her grandfather, who had recently passed away. She recounts stories that her grandfather had told her of his life, stories that are fantastic, and impossible, and almost like fables or fairytales. But stories, that when told in the way the grandfather had recounted them, seem almost plausible.
I had a bit of a hard time seeing where the book was going. There was a lot of jumping back and forth between the present story of Natalia, flashbacks of her past including times with her grandfather, stories that the grandfather told (that actually happened to him), and stories of other related characters in the grandfather's stories. When I was about 2/3 of the way through the book, I found myself really hoping that there was going to be some amazing revelation that brought all of these segments together in Natalia's ongoing narrative. And there was some amount of that in the end, but maybe just not what I was expecting.
What I must say about the book though, is that it is astounding to me that it was written by someone in her early to mid 20s. Not just astounding, but truly mind-blowing. The richness of the descriptions and the nuances of every detail was definitely what I loved the most about the book. From the sounds to the smells (I particularly loved the descriptions of the smell of the tiger), it gave so much to the story. Again, her gift for translating observation into words to enhance the narrative was just amazing.
Overall, I did really like the book. It took me a while to get in to the story (even though I was still thoroughly enjoying reading the book for the beautiful writing itself), but once I did, I had to keep reading. I would get pulled into one of the side stories (particularly, the one of the tiger's wife and the grandfather), and want to know what happened, even if that meant 80 pages straight reading without stopping (well, maybe stopping to refill my cocktail or re-apply sunblock...).
So on I go. Rather than picking up some Shakespeare to read while on vacation (I haven't seen that on any "Good Beach Books" lists, have you?), I moved on to another book from the lists, All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. Still not necessarily a light and airy beach read, but considering that I read it on airplanes, it didn't really matter. So far so good. I didn't know that there was a somewhat recent movie remake of the book with Sean Penn as the main character. And I can already tell you that I definitely do NOT picture him as Willie Stark. So he's going to have a lot to prove to me. I'll definitely have to watch it as soon as I'm done with the book. And possibly the original version of the movie too.
Happy Sunday!
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