This Thanksgiving I am thankful for holiday weekends with extra days off where I don't have to do work, and while I have other "stuff" I could be doing around the house, instead, I can opt to do nothing but read a book all day. It's a luxury that I relish and don't do nearly often enough.
So I devoured almost 200 pages of Sophie's Choice yesterday. Confession: while I have never seen the movie of Sophie's Choice, I kind of had an inkling what her actual "choice" was all about. There have been enough references to it in pop culture that I kind of picked up on these (I'm looking at you Friends). However, in reading William Styron's work, he does a brilliant job of concealing the titular decision. The entire time, the reader is waiting for what the choice could be, and you don't see it coming at all. The way he tells Sophie's history keeps the reader guessing.
As a background, the story is about Stingo, a young Southerner who moves to New York to become a writer. He ends up living in a boarding house in Brooklyn where he meets Sophie, a gorgeous Polish immigrant, and Nathan, Sophie's lover who she is fanatically attached to and who is a magnetic and brilliant but domineering man. The 3 of them strike up a close friendship, where Stingo falls madly in love with Sophie but adores their companionship and understands the implausibility of Sophie ever loving him (due to her obsession and adoration of Nathan).
The story contrasts the telling of the trio's time together in New York with that of Sophie's history, which she reveals to Stingo a little at a time, often in drunken moments. Sophie was a Christian Pole who survived (just barely) in Auschwitz for 18 months. We learn all about her circumstances for getting there, her father and how he impacted her growing up, her time spent at Auschwitz, and her children. What is fascinating about how Styron tells Sophie's story, is that as the book progresses and you learn more and more about her history, she is constantly admitting to Stingo that she has lied about previous details. Many of these details are big ticket lies too (for example, her father being murdered by the Nazis defending the lives of Jews vs her father writing a pamphlet outlining why and how Jews should be exterminated). So her story is constantly being revised as the novel goes on and after a while, I couldn't help questioning her reliability all together. Is the final version of her story the "real" version or is it the one that she can accept Stingo knowing?
At the same time Sophie's story is being unfolded, we learn of the ongoing relationship between Sophie and Nathan, who have a passionate but dysfunctional relationship, with Nathan being a drug-addicted, maniacal individual who occasionally flies off into rages where he physically and mentally abuses Sophie and accuses her of cheating on him.
There is so much complexity to the story and so much to consider, but there were 3 things that I couldn't stop thinking about while reading the book:
1) The horrible guilt experienced by the survivors of the Holocaust. After everything they saw and experienced, and in many cases, things they did themselves in order to survive (often at the expense of the lives of others), once everything was over and done with, how do they reconcile that guilt? How do they live with themselves knowing that they survived and others didn't? How to they come to terms with knowing that they did some potentially horrible things at the requirement of their captors? Do they ever really recover? Do they ever feel as though they deserve happiness after that? All of these questions are the hallmark of Sophie's struggle. She finds herself in America a couple years after leaving Auschwitz, and all of the things she experiences couldn't be more of a contrast to her time there (she loves music, food, drinking which can be done in abundance here). Her character epitomizes passion - for Nathan, for sex, for life. But as she tells her story more and more, she seems to become more and more unhinged (as evidenced by her non-stop drinking) and the guilt becomes unbearable for her.
2) The role of religion in what was occurred during the Holocaust. The most significant of the statements in the book pertaining to this coming at the very end: "The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response. The query: 'At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?' And the answer: 'Where was man?'". The questions of religion and morality exist for all 3 characters, particularly for Sophie. She clearly has abandoned God (or, more appropriately, she feels that God has abandoned her) in spite of her Catholic upbringing, but there are some significant moments where her belief in God affects outcomes for her (particularly at the moment of her "choice"). Anti-Semitism also plays a huge role in the book, obviously as part of the historical context of the Nazis and the Holocaust, but also as a struggle for Sophie (she despises her father's opinions on the extermination of Jews, expresses indifference for the Jewish ghetto in Cracow, but at a drunken moment admits how much she hates the Jews. I got the impression though that this statement wasn't honest, it was more her misplacing blame for what she experienced at Asuchwitz and lashing out at Nathan for his desertion of her). But talk about heavy duty stuff. But isn't it though? All of the events occurring in the name of religion specific to the Holocaust?
3) Which brings me to #3. The absolute horrors and evil that we humans are capable of, as evidenced by what was done during Nazi Germany. It's not that this is a revolutionary thought or anything, but when faced with the events in detail, I just regress to the basic question of "How?". How does this kind of evil become pervasive enough to allow the slaughter of 11 million people? How can that many people share the same horrible desires to enact the kinds of terrible things that were done? How can power allow for that kind of evil to murder others on such a scale? There are a lot of details in the novel about the specifics of Auschwitz and Nazi Germany (from the logistics of the camp regarding slave labor vs immediate death, to the specifics of the crematoriums, to the historical context of the Final Solution), which I can only assume are true (I didn't look up every detail, but I would imagine that Styron did his homework). And it's as though I can't even wrap my mind around it. That only 70 years ago, in a modern, industrial, "civilized" country, that something this horrific occurred. And I realize that there are horrible acts that occur on a regular basis in this world akin to what happened during this time. I'm not negating that evil persists today in just as terrible a form, but maybe it's the scale of it or the amount of detail that is known about the Holocaust today that just makes it seem so unfathomable. That kind of evil just doesn't compute in my brain somehow.
So overall, this book was fantastic. While my recap here is rather depressing and bleak, the story didn't feel quite that soul-crushing while reading, but maybe just felt that way in totality after reading. There were so many fantastic things that Styron did (they dynamic of the narration and how he often would "break" from telling the story while happening to telling the story long after it occurred, the foreshadowing, the qualities of each character) that just made everything about this book an excellent read. I CANNOT WAIT to watch the movie. I'm sure I'll have to make that happen before the weekend is over. I would highly recommend reading the book though. There's lots of good stuff packed on those pages.
So off next to The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. I still have ~ 2 days left of a long weekend...maybe I'll do some damage on this book before the weekend is over.
237 left. Happy Saturday!
PS. I have slightly fixed access to the full lists of books in the right margin. You are now able to access the lists without having to login to a website. There are still a few more clicks involved than I would like, and I'm not certain how long this site will host the document, but I'll test it out for a while and see if it meets my needs...
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
"Centered As If The Love That Boy Feels For Them Anchors Them Deep As A Tree's Roots, Holds Them Still As The Oaks, Which Don't Uproot In Hurricane Wind"
It's amazing how having a more modern and relatable book can make it that much easier to read. I had actually foregone most of my possible plans in order to stay home cuddled with the book this weekend. And while I did thoroughly enjoy Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones, and it was a quick read, I don't know if I would necessarily say it was up there at the top of list of favorites.
The story is about a poor family in rural Mississippi in the days leading up to (and including) Hurricane Katrina. It is told through the eyes of Esch, a 15-year old girl with 3 brothers, Randall, Skeetah, and Junior, and a largely absent, hard-drinking father; their mother died in childbirth with Junior. Their father knows that a hurricane is coming - he can feel it in his bones - and is making preparations and while the kids somewhat help prepare, they are also dealing with their own issues. Skeetah is taking care of his pit bull and her new litter of puppies and Esch finds out early on in the book that she is pregnant.
The pacing of the book was very expertly executed. There are mini-climaxes or intense scenes in almost every chapter making it that much easier to want to continue on to the next chapter (side note: I feel as though this is a key strategy used in a lot of modern fiction that I've read recently. I could rattle off multiple books that do this...maybe it's a good thing to keep the reader that engaged, but when I read the same technique so often, maybe it feels a little formulaic?). And while the writing was clever and well-done, sometimes the text and descriptions felt a little simile/metaphor heavy (title quote of this post as one of MANY examples).
There are a lot of things about this book that made me uncomfortable reading. Foremost, Skeetah fights his pit bull and there is a fairly graphic scene describing multiple dog fights in explicit detail. So while Skeetah cares for his dog to an almost fanatical degree, in a very maternal, loving way, I found it hard to reconcile him then being ok with her being torn to shreds by other dogs. But the author does a good job of putting this in the context of his love for the dog being primarily so she can fight, so she can win, and so it can be an ego/pride thing amongst his peers and others who fight dogs. Similarly, 15-year old Esch talks about in detail, the many different boys she has sex with and how she knows that it's the one thing that she's good at, which is a bit hard to read from a 15-year old character.
I totally get that both of these elements of the story show the realities of these characters and their lives (and similarly, the realities of many poor, rural families in the South). And I completely appreciate the author's willingness to go there and include these things that will make the reader uncomfortable, and her honesty about these characters' lives doesn't need to be all non-offensive and vanilla. However, I found it a lot harder to sympathize with the characters, particularly Skeetah and Esch. There's one moment towards the end of the book when Esch is confronting her baby's father and he mentions that her brothers know she's a slut. He uses the word to intentionally hurt her and it does feel harsh in that moment of the book. But instead of feeling that it was inappropriate, I kind of found myself thinking, "Well, yeah, she kind of is." Same with how the book ends in regards to the dogs; I won't give this part away, but again, I had a hard time feeling all that bad for Skeetah. And maybe this is the author's intent. And maybe this is a result of my own life and upbringing being so vastly different than the characters affecting how I view their choices.
What I did love most about the book, however, was the dynamic between all of the family members. That even though each of them had difficult challenges going on, they all showed so much love for each other. In spite of their circumstances, they took care of each other, looked out for each other, and defended each other. In a multitude of little ways, the relationship between these 5 characters was very real and very loving.
I couldn't help remembering those days before Katrina hit too. I was visiting my parents in Florida at the time, and I remember that overnight, the hurricane just exploded into this monster in the gulf and then watching all the horrors that happened afterwards, hardly believing that this was happening in my own country. The book ends the day after the hurricane rather than telling the story of what happens in the days and weeks afterward. And while it doesn't necessarily end happily ever after, we're-all-gonna-get-through-this-just-fine, knowing what came in the weeks after makes me wonder how these characters and this community really would have fared. Oddly enough, 10 years ago today would have been one of the chapters in the book.
On I move to Sophie's Choice by William Styron. I have not ever seen the movie. I always get Sophie's Choice and Norma Rae mixed up (something about them being female names?), so all along, I've been thinking that this book was something about unions and envisioning Sally Field as the main character, when in fact it's about a Polish immigrant played by Meryl Streep. And I honestly don't know much about the story at all, but I have a feeling I'm not going to like what Sophie's choice actually ends up being. But here goes nothin'...let's just wrench my heart out.
Happy Sunday!
The story is about a poor family in rural Mississippi in the days leading up to (and including) Hurricane Katrina. It is told through the eyes of Esch, a 15-year old girl with 3 brothers, Randall, Skeetah, and Junior, and a largely absent, hard-drinking father; their mother died in childbirth with Junior. Their father knows that a hurricane is coming - he can feel it in his bones - and is making preparations and while the kids somewhat help prepare, they are also dealing with their own issues. Skeetah is taking care of his pit bull and her new litter of puppies and Esch finds out early on in the book that she is pregnant.
The pacing of the book was very expertly executed. There are mini-climaxes or intense scenes in almost every chapter making it that much easier to want to continue on to the next chapter (side note: I feel as though this is a key strategy used in a lot of modern fiction that I've read recently. I could rattle off multiple books that do this...maybe it's a good thing to keep the reader that engaged, but when I read the same technique so often, maybe it feels a little formulaic?). And while the writing was clever and well-done, sometimes the text and descriptions felt a little simile/metaphor heavy (title quote of this post as one of MANY examples).
There are a lot of things about this book that made me uncomfortable reading. Foremost, Skeetah fights his pit bull and there is a fairly graphic scene describing multiple dog fights in explicit detail. So while Skeetah cares for his dog to an almost fanatical degree, in a very maternal, loving way, I found it hard to reconcile him then being ok with her being torn to shreds by other dogs. But the author does a good job of putting this in the context of his love for the dog being primarily so she can fight, so she can win, and so it can be an ego/pride thing amongst his peers and others who fight dogs. Similarly, 15-year old Esch talks about in detail, the many different boys she has sex with and how she knows that it's the one thing that she's good at, which is a bit hard to read from a 15-year old character.
I totally get that both of these elements of the story show the realities of these characters and their lives (and similarly, the realities of many poor, rural families in the South). And I completely appreciate the author's willingness to go there and include these things that will make the reader uncomfortable, and her honesty about these characters' lives doesn't need to be all non-offensive and vanilla. However, I found it a lot harder to sympathize with the characters, particularly Skeetah and Esch. There's one moment towards the end of the book when Esch is confronting her baby's father and he mentions that her brothers know she's a slut. He uses the word to intentionally hurt her and it does feel harsh in that moment of the book. But instead of feeling that it was inappropriate, I kind of found myself thinking, "Well, yeah, she kind of is." Same with how the book ends in regards to the dogs; I won't give this part away, but again, I had a hard time feeling all that bad for Skeetah. And maybe this is the author's intent. And maybe this is a result of my own life and upbringing being so vastly different than the characters affecting how I view their choices.
What I did love most about the book, however, was the dynamic between all of the family members. That even though each of them had difficult challenges going on, they all showed so much love for each other. In spite of their circumstances, they took care of each other, looked out for each other, and defended each other. In a multitude of little ways, the relationship between these 5 characters was very real and very loving.
I couldn't help remembering those days before Katrina hit too. I was visiting my parents in Florida at the time, and I remember that overnight, the hurricane just exploded into this monster in the gulf and then watching all the horrors that happened afterwards, hardly believing that this was happening in my own country. The book ends the day after the hurricane rather than telling the story of what happens in the days and weeks afterward. And while it doesn't necessarily end happily ever after, we're-all-gonna-get-through-this-just-fine, knowing what came in the weeks after makes me wonder how these characters and this community really would have fared. Oddly enough, 10 years ago today would have been one of the chapters in the book.
On I move to Sophie's Choice by William Styron. I have not ever seen the movie. I always get Sophie's Choice and Norma Rae mixed up (something about them being female names?), so all along, I've been thinking that this book was something about unions and envisioning Sally Field as the main character, when in fact it's about a Polish immigrant played by Meryl Streep. And I honestly don't know much about the story at all, but I have a feeling I'm not going to like what Sophie's choice actually ends up being. But here goes nothin'...let's just wrench my heart out.
Happy Sunday!
Thursday, August 6, 2015
"Nobody Can Say, 'Forgive The Heavy Heart That Loves More Than The Tongue Can Say Or The Hands Can Do. Look Back At Me Every Time I Look At You And Never Feel Pity, For What My Heart Holds This Minute Is Better Than What You Offer The Least Bit Less.'"
Lesson learned: 600 page books of short stories might be the death of me. 1) Because it's 600 pages, and 2) because by the time I get halfway through the book, I can hardly remember the 20+ short stories that I already read. So I found myself going back through the stories and quizzing myself regarding what they were about. So maybe in the future, I'll have to read a book of short stories in conjunction with an full novel so I can break up the short stories and actually have a chance of remembering them a little better.
With that being said, I actually liked The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty very much. She is without a doubt a master of the form of the short story. The richness with which she describes her settings is like nothing I've ever read before. It's not as though she just pulls in a bunch of fancy adjectives or a few clever similes to describe something . It's a completely different approach to describing landscape, and nature, and interiors using concepts and structure that I've never seen before. And while I guess Eudora Welty is considered a Southern Gothic writer (although apparently she disagreed with that sentiment), and there definitely was a bit of a sinister edge to most of the stories, the stories definitely didn't seem as full-blown dark as Flannery O'Conner, whose stories I also recently read.
She also uses a technique that I like to call "writing around the event," where she tells of a critical moment in the story, but she doesn't just blurt it out and lay it out in such obvious terms. She presents it in vague descriptions, and then almost skips to the next part of the narrative without really telling you what happened. This is particularly true for intense moments (murder/death, sex) that are the pivotal moments in the stories (examples: "Sir Rabbit", "The Whole World Knows", "No Place for You, My Love", and "The Burning"). So much so that I often found myself having to stop mid-story and Google it to find out if what I thought happened (or what I could discern from how it was written) did indeed happen. And I really liked the idea of this. I liked the idea of not handing your reader the narrative on a silver platter, but to make them really re-read the words and conclude for themselves what was really going on in the context of the rest of the story (ok fine, so I cheated and concluded for myself after googling. So sue me). I would like to say that I will in the future try to incorporate approaches like this into my own writing, but I wouldn't even be presumptuous to assume that I could even remotely pull it off. My approach would probably end up seeming as though I wrote the story straight up and then just deleted a couple of critically important pages and just assumed that the reader could figure it out. Not a sound approach.
So one more book in the books. I'm taking a quick sojourn from my lists to read Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. I've found lately that I really miss reading modern literature. My mom and sister are both in book clubs and when I was on vacation with them recently, I had a twinge of jealousy when they were talking about all the modern fiction they were reading and how much they enjoyed this book or that book. When I'm stuck in either 1940's Mississippi or 1600's England with Shakespeare. I'm looking forward to reading a book in less than 6 months because I'm slogging through the content.
Onward! 238 more books to go. Ugh, I feel like I've been at 238 forever.
With that being said, I actually liked The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty very much. She is without a doubt a master of the form of the short story. The richness with which she describes her settings is like nothing I've ever read before. It's not as though she just pulls in a bunch of fancy adjectives or a few clever similes to describe something . It's a completely different approach to describing landscape, and nature, and interiors using concepts and structure that I've never seen before. And while I guess Eudora Welty is considered a Southern Gothic writer (although apparently she disagreed with that sentiment), and there definitely was a bit of a sinister edge to most of the stories, the stories definitely didn't seem as full-blown dark as Flannery O'Conner, whose stories I also recently read.
She also uses a technique that I like to call "writing around the event," where she tells of a critical moment in the story, but she doesn't just blurt it out and lay it out in such obvious terms. She presents it in vague descriptions, and then almost skips to the next part of the narrative without really telling you what happened. This is particularly true for intense moments (murder/death, sex) that are the pivotal moments in the stories (examples: "Sir Rabbit", "The Whole World Knows", "No Place for You, My Love", and "The Burning"). So much so that I often found myself having to stop mid-story and Google it to find out if what I thought happened (or what I could discern from how it was written) did indeed happen. And I really liked the idea of this. I liked the idea of not handing your reader the narrative on a silver platter, but to make them really re-read the words and conclude for themselves what was really going on in the context of the rest of the story (ok fine, so I cheated and concluded for myself after googling. So sue me). I would like to say that I will in the future try to incorporate approaches like this into my own writing, but I wouldn't even be presumptuous to assume that I could even remotely pull it off. My approach would probably end up seeming as though I wrote the story straight up and then just deleted a couple of critically important pages and just assumed that the reader could figure it out. Not a sound approach.
So one more book in the books. I'm taking a quick sojourn from my lists to read Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. I've found lately that I really miss reading modern literature. My mom and sister are both in book clubs and when I was on vacation with them recently, I had a twinge of jealousy when they were talking about all the modern fiction they were reading and how much they enjoyed this book or that book. When I'm stuck in either 1940's Mississippi or 1600's England with Shakespeare. I'm looking forward to reading a book in less than 6 months because I'm slogging through the content.
Onward! 238 more books to go. Ugh, I feel like I've been at 238 forever.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
"My Words Fly Up, My Thoughts Remain Below. Words Without Thoughts Never To Heaven Go."
Yes, it has been over 4 months since I last posted. So hey, welcome to 2015! My absence can be directly explained by life, predominantly all kinds of horribleness at work resulting in 60 hour days for over 4 months (almost exactly linked to the duration of my absence).
And I think that Hamlet could quite possibly have been the worst possible book/play to be reading during this time. Because it required more brain cells than I could usually muster up on a given evening (assuming that I actually had more than 10 minutes in the evening to do anything remotely connected to my personal life). Under normal circumstances, Shakespeare is no walk in the park to read, but after working 15 hour days, usually all I wanted to do was drive silently in my car home and go to sleep, as a form of mental self-preservation. Or else I would end up like a blurbering idiot (yes, I will make up words as I see fit, thank you very much) unable to string but a few simple words together. Much like this blog - ha!
So I'm back on task and moving forward with reading stuff again, finally. And now that life has returned to a pleasant pace, and spring has finally broken the miserable winter, all I want to do is sit in the sunshine with a book. I hope to indulge in this desire as much as possible now.
So about that Hamlet. I've mentioned before that when I read a book, I have to read everything from cover to cover, including all of the other additional pieces added by the editors to enhance the reading experience. This can include portraits of the author, critical essays of the text, timelines of the context of the story, etc. And in the case of the Signet Classic version of Hamlet, there were 17 (!!!) different additional pieces added into the book aside from just the play. So the play itself probably took me only 2-3 weeks to actually read, while most of my delay was slogging through all of the other stuff. And while some of it was interesting (I am fascinated by the ways in which the play has evolved over the years - you'd be surprised to know that the version that everyone knows of Hamlet is probably not the original version as Shakespeare wrote it), some of it...well, not so much (I'm talking to you critical character analysis). This is probably going to be a big deterrent for me when considering to read other Shakespeare plays in the future...I'll probably go for, not the most handy version of the book at the bookstore, but the one that has the least other "stuff" in addition to the actual play.
There are so many iconic lines from Hamlet ("To be or not to be", "To thine own self be true", "What a piece of work is man", "The soul of brevity is wit", etc etc) and so many iconic visual images (the drowning of Ophelia, pretty much any image of Hamlet holding up a skull) that there doesn't seem to be much need for me to go into any significant detail about the play and/or what I thought about it. There are many who are far more learned than I who have studied this play for their entire lives who can certainly provide significant amounts of evaluation and interpretation. However, I must say that it was nice to actually read the play to finally understand all of the things that Hamlet has become so known for in popular culture.
Speaking of Hamlet in popular culture, I know I previously mentioned that I'm a huge Sons of Anarchy fan, and I probably spent half of my time while reading Hamlet completely preoccupied with analyzing the TV show in respects to its relationship to Hamlet. And while part of that was trying to match up the characters to their TV counterparts, I think in the end I decided that it's not that straightforward (Clay, Gemma, and Jax are the obvious parallels, and initially I had thought that Tara was the obvious Ophelia but now I'm leaning towards Opie being the more suitable choice for Ophelia). Overall, there is so much consideration to be given to the themes and characters across both, that it would require an entirely separate post and a re-viewing of all of the SOA episodes, which I'm certainly not ready to consider yet. But man, if you had the time and inclination, you could write a thesis on that.
So onward we move. In less than 3 weeks time, I will have almost a month off from work, during which, reading is on the top of the list of priorities (I love priorities that are based around me exploring things that I do for the sole purpose of personal delight and joy; but shouldn't that be everything?). I'll also be on a 2-week trip where I'll have lots of time to read on airplanes and in airports, so needless to say, I'm REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO IT. I'm now starting The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty and am also reading The Beak of the Finch (which should give you a clue about where my awesome 2-week trip will be...and which means I'll probably have to put The Origin of Species higher up on my "to read" list). Happiness returns to a girl who has time to curl up with a good book. Until next time! (Which will not be 4+ months from now).
And I think that Hamlet could quite possibly have been the worst possible book/play to be reading during this time. Because it required more brain cells than I could usually muster up on a given evening (assuming that I actually had more than 10 minutes in the evening to do anything remotely connected to my personal life). Under normal circumstances, Shakespeare is no walk in the park to read, but after working 15 hour days, usually all I wanted to do was drive silently in my car home and go to sleep, as a form of mental self-preservation. Or else I would end up like a blurbering idiot (yes, I will make up words as I see fit, thank you very much) unable to string but a few simple words together. Much like this blog - ha!
So I'm back on task and moving forward with reading stuff again, finally. And now that life has returned to a pleasant pace, and spring has finally broken the miserable winter, all I want to do is sit in the sunshine with a book. I hope to indulge in this desire as much as possible now.
So about that Hamlet. I've mentioned before that when I read a book, I have to read everything from cover to cover, including all of the other additional pieces added by the editors to enhance the reading experience. This can include portraits of the author, critical essays of the text, timelines of the context of the story, etc. And in the case of the Signet Classic version of Hamlet, there were 17 (!!!) different additional pieces added into the book aside from just the play. So the play itself probably took me only 2-3 weeks to actually read, while most of my delay was slogging through all of the other stuff. And while some of it was interesting (I am fascinated by the ways in which the play has evolved over the years - you'd be surprised to know that the version that everyone knows of Hamlet is probably not the original version as Shakespeare wrote it), some of it...well, not so much (I'm talking to you critical character analysis). This is probably going to be a big deterrent for me when considering to read other Shakespeare plays in the future...I'll probably go for, not the most handy version of the book at the bookstore, but the one that has the least other "stuff" in addition to the actual play.
There are so many iconic lines from Hamlet ("To be or not to be", "To thine own self be true", "What a piece of work is man", "The soul of brevity is wit", etc etc) and so many iconic visual images (the drowning of Ophelia, pretty much any image of Hamlet holding up a skull) that there doesn't seem to be much need for me to go into any significant detail about the play and/or what I thought about it. There are many who are far more learned than I who have studied this play for their entire lives who can certainly provide significant amounts of evaluation and interpretation. However, I must say that it was nice to actually read the play to finally understand all of the things that Hamlet has become so known for in popular culture.
Speaking of Hamlet in popular culture, I know I previously mentioned that I'm a huge Sons of Anarchy fan, and I probably spent half of my time while reading Hamlet completely preoccupied with analyzing the TV show in respects to its relationship to Hamlet. And while part of that was trying to match up the characters to their TV counterparts, I think in the end I decided that it's not that straightforward (Clay, Gemma, and Jax are the obvious parallels, and initially I had thought that Tara was the obvious Ophelia but now I'm leaning towards Opie being the more suitable choice for Ophelia). Overall, there is so much consideration to be given to the themes and characters across both, that it would require an entirely separate post and a re-viewing of all of the SOA episodes, which I'm certainly not ready to consider yet. But man, if you had the time and inclination, you could write a thesis on that.
So onward we move. In less than 3 weeks time, I will have almost a month off from work, during which, reading is on the top of the list of priorities (I love priorities that are based around me exploring things that I do for the sole purpose of personal delight and joy; but shouldn't that be everything?). I'll also be on a 2-week trip where I'll have lots of time to read on airplanes and in airports, so needless to say, I'm REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO IT. I'm now starting The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty and am also reading The Beak of the Finch (which should give you a clue about where my awesome 2-week trip will be...and which means I'll probably have to put The Origin of Species higher up on my "to read" list). Happiness returns to a girl who has time to curl up with a good book. Until next time! (Which will not be 4+ months from now).
Saturday, November 29, 2014
"Because Isn't That the Point of Every Relationship: To Be Known By Someone Else, To Be Understood? He Gets Me. She Gets Me. Isn't That the Simple Magic Phrase?"
Yes, I read Gone Girl in a week. More appropriately, I read two-thirds of it yesterday. From the time I woke up to around midnight, that was pretty much all I did. I left to meet a friend for lunch, but that was it. Man, I love holiday weekends.
So I did get totally sucked in. And I am beginning to be convinced that if I had it all to do again, I would want to be a detective. Not with the whole actually being a cop part, but the solving crimes part. Because I could just read mystery stories and be a happy camper. Or watch non-stop marathons of Law and Order: SVU or Dateline (not that I do that now or anything...I swear. I actually had to take a break from the Law and Order marathons because it was beginning to give me a horribly bleak outlook on the world. And I would go to bed convinced that someone was going to break into my apartment in the middle of the night. I don't need that kind of paranoia).
Without giving too much away, and you can probably already tell this from the commercials for the movie, but Gone Girl is simply that: a story about a husband whose wife disappears. So the book centers around the investigation of her disappearance, and is told in alternating chapters from the husbands perspective and then the wife's perspective via journal entries from the previous 7 years of their relationship. The writing is very clever, as the voices of the 2 characters are so well-defined (often in more ways than 1...). And not just the storyline is clever, but what the characters come to realize about themselves, each other, who they are/were in their relationship together, who they wanted to be, and who they were pretending to be. I honestly can't wait to see the movie because I think that in David Fincher's hands, the book could be masterfully translated. Maybe I can sneak that in before the end of the holiday weekend...
But perhaps what I loved most about this book was that feeling of getting so immersed in a book, that I literally couldn't put it down. Even while making dinner, I was kind of half reading in between doing things. It has been a really long time since I gotten that into a book I was reading, and I just brings me so much joy. I do think it was a testament to how well done the book is for a modern story. I really hope to keep that craving for reading at the forefront of my noggin, and get so very taken with the next books I read, where I just fly through them, completely entranced with the story and writing.
But I'm not necessarily holding my breath on that. Because I'm moving on to Hamlet. So the bf and I are HUGE fans of Sons of Anarchy. Like, binge watched all 6 previous seasons for a large portion of our summer (who needs sunshine and warm weather when you have a motorcycle club and seriously graphic violence?). And I know Kurt Sutter has said that the show was based off of Hamlet (and on it's surface, that seems clear, right? Father is killed by stepfather, who then marries mother, and how the son discovers this, and the events that occur as a result). But I always seem to get the impression that there's so much more than just that. As an obvious place to start, many of the episode titles are quotes from Hamlet. So I'm looking forward to really reading it carefully and understanding each and every passage, and then looping it back to SOA. So it might sound strange that I'm reading Hamlet to better understand and appreciate a television show, but hey, if it's going to get me to read it in the level of detail that I plan on, then so be it.
Off I go. Hopefully, I'll be able to hunker down and read more during the holidays, but I'll be moving in a couple weeks, so I don't anticipate that happening too much. But I'll give it a shot!
Happy Saturday!
So I did get totally sucked in. And I am beginning to be convinced that if I had it all to do again, I would want to be a detective. Not with the whole actually being a cop part, but the solving crimes part. Because I could just read mystery stories and be a happy camper. Or watch non-stop marathons of Law and Order: SVU or Dateline (not that I do that now or anything...I swear. I actually had to take a break from the Law and Order marathons because it was beginning to give me a horribly bleak outlook on the world. And I would go to bed convinced that someone was going to break into my apartment in the middle of the night. I don't need that kind of paranoia).
Without giving too much away, and you can probably already tell this from the commercials for the movie, but Gone Girl is simply that: a story about a husband whose wife disappears. So the book centers around the investigation of her disappearance, and is told in alternating chapters from the husbands perspective and then the wife's perspective via journal entries from the previous 7 years of their relationship. The writing is very clever, as the voices of the 2 characters are so well-defined (often in more ways than 1...). And not just the storyline is clever, but what the characters come to realize about themselves, each other, who they are/were in their relationship together, who they wanted to be, and who they were pretending to be. I honestly can't wait to see the movie because I think that in David Fincher's hands, the book could be masterfully translated. Maybe I can sneak that in before the end of the holiday weekend...
But perhaps what I loved most about this book was that feeling of getting so immersed in a book, that I literally couldn't put it down. Even while making dinner, I was kind of half reading in between doing things. It has been a really long time since I gotten that into a book I was reading, and I just brings me so much joy. I do think it was a testament to how well done the book is for a modern story. I really hope to keep that craving for reading at the forefront of my noggin, and get so very taken with the next books I read, where I just fly through them, completely entranced with the story and writing.
But I'm not necessarily holding my breath on that. Because I'm moving on to Hamlet. So the bf and I are HUGE fans of Sons of Anarchy. Like, binge watched all 6 previous seasons for a large portion of our summer (who needs sunshine and warm weather when you have a motorcycle club and seriously graphic violence?). And I know Kurt Sutter has said that the show was based off of Hamlet (and on it's surface, that seems clear, right? Father is killed by stepfather, who then marries mother, and how the son discovers this, and the events that occur as a result). But I always seem to get the impression that there's so much more than just that. As an obvious place to start, many of the episode titles are quotes from Hamlet. So I'm looking forward to really reading it carefully and understanding each and every passage, and then looping it back to SOA. So it might sound strange that I'm reading Hamlet to better understand and appreciate a television show, but hey, if it's going to get me to read it in the level of detail that I plan on, then so be it.
Off I go. Hopefully, I'll be able to hunker down and read more during the holidays, but I'll be moving in a couple weeks, so I don't anticipate that happening too much. But I'll give it a shot!
Happy Saturday!
Saturday, November 22, 2014
"The House Was Vile. She Shivered And Thought, The Words Coming Freely Into Her Mind, Hill House Is Vile, It Is Diseased; Get Away From Here At Once"
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.
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.
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.
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