"I Have Come to Be Very Much A Cynic in These Matters; I Mean That it is Impossible to Believe in the Permanence of Man's Or Woman's Love"

And so The Good Soldier is completed. I always read everything that comes included with the books. And because many of these are the classics and come in some kind of series of re-published classic novels, they usually have introductions, author histories, endnotes, and all kinds of other stuff to enhance the overall understanding of the book. So I had read the introduction that accompanied The Good Soldier and had at least a good idea about what to expect or what made this book different from others published by his contemporaries. But now after having read the book, I must say that I've never read anything even remotely close to The Good Soldier.

As a quick background to what the book was about, the story is told from a narrator, John, about his times spent with his wife Florence, and another couple that they spent many years with abroad, Leonora and Edward Ashburnham. And while initially the narrator states that he was truly happy during the 9 years that these 2 couples spend together, he acknowledges that it was all false. That so many things happened during their time that he didn't know about that completely taints his understanding of each person, particularly Edward and his wife Florence, such that it has, in the end ruined his life.

The main thing about the book that threw it off from anything I've read before was simply, the narrator. So even while I say in the previous paragraph that his knowledge of everything that happened amongst his wife and friends "ruined his life", that is not really certain. In another breath the narrator will describe how he doesn't feel anything. How things came to pass and how he never really felt anything. And then he will rant about the horribleness of the entire situation and the tragedy of it all.

And the crux of the novel is understanding that the narrator is tremendously unreliable in his accounts of everything that occurred. I don't much care for reading between the lines or being uncertain about what is actually happening in a narrative...I generally feel that's a cop out in being honest about the truth of the story. Any movie or book that ends with "maybe it was all a dream" or "maybe it didn't really happen that way" I personally think it was the author/screenwriter being lazy. So knowing, when I started the book, that this is how the narrator was, I was a little concerned that the entire narrative was faulty and not to be believed, and that it would frustrate and irritate the crap out of me.

But it really wasn't how the book felt. For example, in the very first chapter, the author swears by the comfort and stability of his and his wife's time spent with the Ashburnhams (he uses the phrase "I swear" multiple times in this chapter when describing what he knew of them and of their time together). That they passed many wonderful years sharing the same interests and knowing each other so intimately and the narrator is so certain that it was all true. And then in the next breath, he rants about how it was all false and that it was all a "prison of screaming hysterics." And then in the next breath, he's back to swearing that it was all brilliant. And then in the next breath, he says that he knows nothing about anything (the phrase "I don't know" also appears a few times in this chapter too).

So while initially I thought that the author would tell the story in a way where you wouldn't know what was reality and what was false, in the end, the story was told pretty faithfully, but it seemed more like the narrator was unwilling to believe his own account of what happened, mostly because he may just not have wanted to accept it. Or because he was conflicted about what he thought he knew and what the truth turned out to be.

Another interesting facet of the book is that nothing is told in chronological order. The narrator recounts the tale in bits and pieces, in no linear fashion. And near the end of the novel, the narrator even acknowledges that he has done this, but as he explained very early on in the novel, he wanted to tell the story as though he was telling it to a sympathetic soul at the fireplace of a country cottage however the story came to him. So I must admit that even now, if you were to ask me the timeline of the overall events, I don't think I could explain them to you without having to draw out a timeline. And while it complicates things in my head, it doesn't necessarily seem to be that critical to understanding the whole of the story

Final verdict? I did really like the book, if only because it presented me with a completely different way of writing a novel. And I am beyond impressed with Ford Madox Ford's ability to do this. The novel is certainly a triumph and even he regarded it as the finest thing he had ever writer. Like I said, it's like nothing else I've ever read before, and while I attempted to explain what that means, I don't know if I adequately did that. So you should probably just read it yourself to figure it out.

And total random last minute trivia note about Ford Madox Ford: he was a writer in residence at Olivet College here in Michigan shortly before he died.

So on to the next one. I'm taking a quick break from the reading lists to pick up a more recent selection, The Tiger's Wife, by Tea Obréht. Because I have Shakespeare up next, I need to mentally prepare myself for that (reading more of the older works takes much time and is much more tedious for me).

244 books left to go. Given the god-awful winter we've been having here, I'm hoping to get my grizzly bear on and hibernate until spring and maybe plow through some more reading. We'll see how that goes.

"Happiness is Not a Possession to be Prized, it is a Quality of Thought, a State of Mind."

We were finally able to rent Rebecca. It was actually on tv a few times during the holidays, and I had to resist the temptation to watch it without the mister as we had agreed to watch it together...he had already raved about the Hitchcock version.

And I just adored it. It very fairly depicted the book...a few minor things that were different, but no deal breakers (well, except maybe the ending...but I won't give it away for you). Probably changes that just made more sense in a film sense than for the book. Most of all, the film very successfully makes Rebecca ever-present in a dark, ominous way. Everyone loved her, admired her, wanted to be her. And although she's gone, she's everywhere, from her raincoat, to her handkerchiefs, to her handwriting, to what sauces she would choose for lunches with guests. Without doing a thing, she keeps the second Mrs. de Winter constantly feeling inadequate and measuring herself against Rebecca. The book certainly did a better job of providing insight into Mrs. de Winter and why she was so terrified with shyness and almost paralyzed in her new position as Mrs. de Winter, but the suspense was expertly done. But I liked that that the movie wasn't SO Hitchcock. So many of his movies have such a distinct style to them, and even though this one fit that milieu, it was definitely more subtle. And Manderley...ahhh, Manderley. Lovely to see it translated from my imagination to the screen. 

Overall, 2 thumbs way up. On the book and the movie. See it. Read it. Do it.

"Last Night I Dreamt I Went To Manderley Again"

Usually when I read a book, I dog-ear the pages when I come across a particularly interesting, salient quote that grabs my attention and then when writing this blog (side note: for some reason when I type out the word "blog", my fingers inevitably type it out as the word "blob". I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something...), I go back to all of the pages I dog-eared to see if there are any I liked enough to use as the title for the post.

For Rebecca, I had quite a few that I had liked very much ("Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind." And "They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word."), but I really had to choose the first sentence of the novel. Because in such a simple first chapter, the tone is set for the rest of the book. You know something terrible happened to this couple to drive them to their current location and dynamic, and clearly this location, Manderley, played a significant role.

Suffice it to say, I am obsessed with this book. I loved it. Cover to cover. Every word. Every page. I just loved it. I read 200+ pages in 3 days. Once I got going, I just could not put it down. The way the suspense was conveyed was so well done. It wasn't a murder mystery, it wasn't a horror novel. It was so subtle that you didn't even really know what was wrong with the situation, but just that something was off. Was it the house? Was the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, really evil? Was the narrator just a bit crazy herself? But all is revealed in time, and there was one bit fat surprise twist about two-thirds of the way through the book that I did NOT see coming at all. I can absolutely see how this book would so marvelously lend itself to Hitchcock's deft hand (more on that in a moment). Psychological suspense at it's finest.

And I've always been a sucker for mystery novels. I pretty voraciously read as much Agatha Christie as I possibly could when I was in middle school/high school. And just the intrigue to the stories got me, particularly when they're set in mansions. I don't know why the idea of old, ornate mansions fascinates me so much (I recently discovered that I have this same fondness for movies, particularly offbeat wacky comedies like Clue and Murder By Death. I could watch these damn movies over and over again, certainly not because they're very good movies, but because they hit some strange chord with me). So when I started reading this book, it so easily fell into that milieu that I have loved so much and haven't really read much of lately, which may have contributed to me enjoying it as much as I did.

I can not WAIT to watch the movie of Rebecca. However, once again, it's not available On Demand so I'll have to wait until the mister can get it through Netflix. He assures me sometime in December, and I'm sure I'll be pestering him as often as I think I can get away with before driving him crazy. Usually after I finish reading a book, I'll do a quick internet search to read about themes etc that others have noted in the book, or read about movie adaptations. And when I read about the film adaptation for Rebecca, it seems that at the time Hitchcock made Rebecca, Hollywood production code required that if a character had murdered someone, the murderer would have to be punished for his/her crime (quite different from movies today, right? Keeping morality and social codes in movies? That's crazy talk!). So I imagine that the ending of the movie is quite different than the book, and I'm not sure that I want to there to be a different ending than what was presented in the book, but I'll have to wait and see how I feel about it...

So on to the next one, which is The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. I had no idea what the novel was about when I chose it, and I seem to be inadvertently choosing novels about late 1800s/early 1900s society with some kind of adultery or impropriety driving the story along (between this one, the Age of Innocence, and Rebecca). I'm sure I'll be ready to mix it up once I'm done with The Good Soldier (and I have Shakespeare on deck next, so I'm sure that will sufficiently squash my turn of the century mindset).

245 books to go.

"A Book Must Be the Ax For the Frozen Sea Within Us"

Quick demonstration of what an immense book dork I really am:

I was in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago to run a 1/2 marathon (in addition to some other debauchery...) and on the last day I was there I had some time in the morning to kill while waiting for friends who were staying at a different hotel to wake up and recover from the night prior before meeting up with them. So I spent my time walking to The Venetian and in and around The Grand Canal Shoppes, when I came across the Bauman Rare Book store.

How is it that I find the dorkiest possible thing to do in Vegas? Looking at old books? But I did. For a sizable amount of time. I had never really given much thought to original print versions of books...it didn't really seem all that interesting to me, but to actually see them blew me away.

The only theatrical work Cervantes ever published in his lifetime which was ~400 years old? Jack London's very first printing, first edition of Call of the Wild, inscribed for his mom? An actual signed copy of The Catcher in the Rye (from what I understand, Salinger did not do this very often)? I couldn't even believe what I was seeing. And it's not like you're just looking at pictures of these on the internet. The books are right there in front of you (although certainly behind glass), each with their own story to tell of how they passed through hands over many, many years. I was completely transfixed and fascinated with each and every one, to look at the little creases at the edges of the book jackets and how the tinge of the covers had changed over time. So many of the books I had read (even an original version of The Age of Innocence) that I got so giddy excited to see. 

So if you ever find yourself in Vegas with time to kill and you're as much of a dork as I am, I would highly recommend strolling over to check this store out. You won't regret it. And if you're not interested, hey, I hear they might have some other stuff you can do in Vegas too.    

"You See Monsieur, It's Worth Everything, Isn't It, To Keep One's Intellectual Liberty, Not to Enslave One's Powers Of Appreciation, One's Critical Independence?"

We finally watched the film version of The Age of Innocence last night. It took me a while to get my hands on it, largely because I am an On Demand whore, and if the movie is not immediately available at my fingertips, I get ornery and a bit of anxiety. And I don't have Netflix, so the mister had to get it for us to watch.

And let me just say, this was an absolutely gorgeous and very faithful retelling of the book. Go figure that it was Scorcese. One of the biggest things that Edith Wharton did magnificently well in the book was the translation of the things that were valued by those in the wealthy echelon that the story centers around - particularly home interiors, furniture, food, and clothing. And all of these things were so opulently displayed in the movie - while watching it I was hoping that the costume and set designers received Academy Awards for their work, (only 1 of these turned out to be true). It's one thing to imagine in your mind that kind of extravagance and that kind of detail while you're reading a book, and another thing entirely to see it translated in even more detail that your imagination could have summoned. So that visual part of the film was done to perfection.

And the acting and translation of the story was very faithful too. The love affair between Newland and Madame Olenska is much more overt in the movie (it felt a little more reserved in the book), and the book certainly captured Newland's frustration with having to be tied to societal norms (while also revering them) more than the movie, but I think the gist of it was there. There were times while watching the movie that I think, if you hadn't read the book, you would have been thoroughly confused (characters and events that were squished into the movie without the sufficient explanation), but overall, it was a very fair representation.

So overall, I really really liked it. It's the kind of movie that I wish I was able to watch on a regular basis. Like if it was on tv and I happened across it, chances are I would stay there and watch the entire thing until it was done.

I'm plugging away on Rebecca (100+ pages down) and am already looking forward to watching the movie. Hitchcock here I come.

Happy Sunday!

"I Consider In My Own Mind Whether Thou Art A Spirit, Sometimes, Or Sometimes An Evil Imp"

So finally Kim is done. And general verdict? Meehhhh, it was ok. It wasn't that riveting for me, which is why it took me so long to get through it.

Background on the book: the character of Kim is a white young boy who is the son to a British soldier but whose parents have died, leaving him orphaned in India. At the beginning of the story, he meets a holy lama searching for a river that will give him enlightenment. Kim agrees to travel with the lama and be his chela (a sort of a disciple who travels with him and begs for him). But Kim isn't necessarily a good, virtuous disciple of a holy man. He uses the knowledge he acquires from others and manipulates situations to his gain. He is discovered to be a white boy and is sent to a high class school, and eventually divides his time between spying for the government and continuing to serve as the lama's disciple.  

Honestly, the main reason I didn't love the book was because the character of Kim was kind of a little punk. I had a hard time really liking him or rooting for him. It was such a strange dichotomy to have this kid be so devout to the very holy, venerable lama, but then to do other less-than-respectable things at the same time. Don't get me wrong, Kipling did a wonderful job at pairing these 2 things in 1 character, and by the end of the book you definitely saw growth and transition of Kim, but I just didn't really connect with him. The one thing that I did love about the book though was the descriptions of India. There was so much detail that felt really authentic and true. I did however, have to look up the locations of the named cities in the book constantly - having a map nearby was helpful!

So from one single female titled book to another, on I move to Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Hopefully this one will be a little more engaging! 246 books more to go!

"Men Are Only as Good as Their Technological Development Allows Them to Be"

So I've been horribly delinquent on reading Kim. And on writing blogs. There are multiple reasons for this:

1. My computer is currently in the hands of the Geek Squad. And I will refrain from calling them names or insinuating that their prices are an absolute racket until my computer and all of its contents (including all of my documentation of the book lists!) are safely returned to me in 100% functioning order (I heart you Geek Squad!! Smoochies!).
2. I have just recently climbed out of my post-vacation depression which consisted of :
• Despising doing anything that wasn't being on vacation,
• Coming home from work and mindlessly watching whatever reality show marathon would make me not think of the fact that that I was no longer on vacation, and
• Pondering ways to make more money to allow me to always be on vacation (this was usually done concurrently with the 2 above bullets).

So the post-vacation depression rendered my completely uninterested in Kim. Plus, in reading the first 5 pages, it's going to be a very language heavy book; the kind that you can find yourself having read an entire page, but have no idea what you just read because the language is so rich and intricate. So if it's that kind of book, I'm going to have to read it with attention and dedication. So generally not while the television is on in the background while I half watch what the chefs on Chopped are trying to cook up with navy beans, gummy worms, sardines, and Triscuits.

But I'm feeling more motivated. So I'm on it. I swear. By the end of the month. Fo' reals. Progress: still 247 books to go.