18 posts tagged “reading”
I haven't yet finished my 2008 list of books to read. In fact, this is the first year I've ever made a list of books to read. I was always sort of against the idea because I thought it made reading too stringent and boring. I believed the list would make reading less spontaneous and fun.
What I've come to realize is that I'm actually reading a lot more. The list is keeping me on track and making me super productive. (I'm easily distracted, so perhaps I needed to learn to a tad less spontaneous with my reading.) The lessons we learn aren't always the ones we set out to learn.
With only two and a half more books to get through on the list, I'm going to challenge myself some more:
11. Winesburg, Ohio (plan to read this during my July roadtrip to Ohio)
12. Madame Bovary (reading this one with a friend)
13. Lost in Place: Growing Up in Absurd Suburbia (biography of growing up in Connecticut)
14. Housekeeping (suggested by a friend)
15. Cinema Nirvana (because it combines two fascinating topics)
16. Enormous Room (biography of e.e.cummings's experience in a foreign prison)
17. Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (because I've yet to read anything by Murakami)
18. Looking Backward (utopian novel I've been planning on reading since high school)
19. Day Off (on the 1001 book list and haven't ever read anything by Jameson)
20. Wuthering Heights (reading with a friend)
But the fact that society is based on two things: people and trust--that's the same message in all three. Of course, that led to all kinds of thoughts about how I live in a place with three main rules: never admit you're wrong, take as much as you can from everyone in every situation, and patience is a vice. And I wondered just how close Connecticut is to full on cannibalism.
OK, my personal nightmares aside, I did find this book haunting. I have been thinking about things--birds and food and aspirin and the general point of life--for days now in a new light.
But the ending...I don't think this book could have an adequate end. There's no point if the characters die, right? And if everything works out in the end it's just a cheesy cliche. I think the author did the best he could in light of this horrible corner he painted himself into, but the ending just didn't quite work for me.
Why is it pretentious? There is little description of place or people. Time switches between around 1700 and 2000, (making it difficult to understand what is happening in the beginning). Dialogue happens without an explanation of who is saying what. And the characters in the 1700s are using rural English slang of the time, something few are probably familar with.
Why it is interesting in spite of those things? Thursbitch is a real place in England. It has a strange past and a cryptic stone was once erected there in memory of one of its residents. The author seems somewhat obsessed with the area's history and only talks about the place's "secret" to other academics.
This book is what House of Leaves wishes it was. Whereas House of Leaves is hollow at the end because the "secret" is just made up, this story really is shrouded in some kind of mystery.
And I also happen to be a sucker for anything that involves the concept of time. The time anomalies and symbolism in this book are really well done.
If nothing else, this book made me aware of a place that would one day be very interesting to visit.
I can definitely see why people were shocked back in 1928.
One thing struck me. I have never heard of a murderous egg fetish.
The rest of it was just unpleasant--rape, insanity, blasphemy, murder, golden showers, suicide--but not indescribable.
The egg thing. That's unique. Sick, but unique.
LibraryThing just notified me that I am receiving my first Early Reviewer book. I am so excited!
The website has this cool idea of sending people free books even before they hit the bookstores. The only thing you have to do is read it and write a review. What could be better than that?
Although I had requested to be a part of this project about a year ago, I had given up hope that I would ever be chosen.
But, nope, I have a title coming to me, Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks From Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West I'm gonna have to switch gears a bit because it's non-fiction. I used to read mostly non-fiction, but I've kind of gotten out of the habit.
No matter. The book is about travel--a combination of my two favorite things. I don't know if I'll be able to contain myself.
I can hardly wait to get the book in my hands! Wish me luck...
Part of me would have gotten more out of it at the age of eighteen. Now, it's hard to believe that there is a place where children play outdoors, listen to their parents, and everyone is wise.
Except on the topics of race and class, that is--
which is one reason this book is so poignant.
Telling the story through the eyes of a child is a powerful tool. It reminds the reader that everyone was young once. Everyone saw the world without the contemptuous of adulthood at one time.
Living in a very jaded place for the last eight years, I can really relate to the message. I fight to keep the cynicism and animosity at bay. But I know some of it has crept in over the years. In some ways it seems like the South has made more progress in the last hundred years than many places in the North. Where I am living the class struggle might as well be given a name that holds the same weight as racist does. Because it's no less ugly and no less harmful.
In high school I would not have known any of this. I was living in the rural Midwest, perhaps one of the most sheltered places in the U.S. I would have just thought this was a nice story about how kindness will win out in the end and if you get to know people you'll find they're basically good. Now I know it's a lot more complicated than that.
I finished Fireman Flower, the short story collection by William Sansom I was reading with a friend. The last three stories were somehow more odd that the previous nine.
The Inspector is about a guy who won't bend the rules even though its in everybody's best interest, including his own.
Saturation Point is by far the strangest story I've ever read. Sansom must have been having a bad trip while writing it because no one could have come up with that without some bad chemicals dancing around in the old skull.
Then Fireman Flower, the story the book is named for comes in very last. It's about a fireman with the last name Flower who goes to fight a fire he thinks will be very important and hallucinates for fifty pages. And then there is no end. None. It just ends.
Honestly I think the book would have been stronger without the last story, but somehow it not only made the collection--the collection was named after it.
I have heard that this is not the strongest collection of stories by Sansom. Several of the stories were very memorable. Difficulty with a Bouqet, In the Maze, The Witnesses, and The Long Sheet will stick with me I know. I have read a few of his other stories and found them more suspenseful or moving, whatever the case may be, than the majority of these.
Sansom does have a tendency toward the abstract, and often it takes a paragraph or a page to really understand what is going on. Other times he gives way more detail to the reader than necessary. More than anything, I would bet that is why his work has largely been forgotten in the last fifty years. Too bad becauses the stories that work really are quite unique and gripping.
Bizarre stuff about politics, and ultimately, God.
Some have been offended by the ending, but personally that was the only thing that kind of grabbed my attention in this book. I've always been a sucker for a retro Twilight Zone ending.
A great book for anyone interested in allegory or politics or post-modern writing. If you happen to be into post-modern, allegorical political stories, you'll absolutely love it. For anyone else, it probably won't make much of an impression on you.
First, I would say for its form this book definitely deserves to be in the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die book. Part of the rationale for the list is to map the evolution of the novel's form through time. Sometimes it is hard to discern why a novel fits that definition, but not for House of Leaves. And if you are at all interested in the history and/or structure of the novel, I could not recommend this book more highly.
In some way the format is more like a film than a book. If a character enters a small space the words decrease. If he falls, so do the letters. It's a bit daunting, and some have called it annoying, but it plays with the novel's form in a way that is reminiscent of a poetry.
Second, it is a story within a story within a story within a story. That format is very well thought out.
Third, the whole thing is based on a false document based on a false film based on a false event. It is sophisticated and yet profoundly simple--alternating between textbook format and journal-like entries.
There are at least a half a dozen themes running through the book. One I found particularly interesting was art (namely writing, photography, and film) and insanity. Everyone in the book who could be called an artist meets a bad end. Writing, in particular, seems to be linked to insanity and/or death.
The form of the book may be innovative (and for me it was worth it just for the retelling of the Minotaur myth) but others might want more out of a 700 page book. Here's the specific problems. For one thing it is wholly unbelievable. Forget that it is fanciful. No one could believe the characters would ever really make these choices if they had been real people. Also, the book is self-conscious. It is difficult to suspend disbelief while reading. The pacing is uneven, and the ending is unimaginative. Finally, it's not the "scariest book ever written." In fact, I have no idea how anyone could possibly find this book remotely upsetting. To me, that's the biggest mystery of all.
It's definitely a tragedy.
Maybe it's because I moved to New England eight years ago, but I could really relate to the desolate feeling winter backdrop of this story. The weather frames the sadness perfectly.
Everyone in this book loses out. Life, hope, happiness it all goes away. But in spite of that, the book is somehow not as depressing as I had expected.
It is also filled with suspense. And it perfectly describes what it's like to want someone you can't have.
I would say it is the most touching, "sad book" I've ever read.
