Book 32-Tristram Shandy (46th book)

I despised book 32-Tristram Shandy and this was my second attempt at reading it. I only finished the novel because I am stubborn and for the sake of the list I am reading every last word, of every last book on this list. I originally picked up Tristram Shandy as a teen thinking that I would like the odd quirkiness of the novel with its strange black pages, and weird squiggles interspersed throughout but I had to put it down when I was part way through book 2 and he hadn't even been born yet!!!

This time around I got angry right about the same point I did as a teen and wanted to give up. Thankfully  I persevered because it did get better, not much, but at least it got bearable.

The book makes frequent reference to Don Quixote and though  hated that novel more than this one I am becoming increasingly glad that I read it. I am not aware of what the frequent references to the book mean and have a point of reference for the varied references that are made to the characters and famous scenes from Don Quixote.

The quote that spoke the most to me from this book was one that made me angry. It made reference to the fact that this entire novel is a series of completely inane tangents, but that it was a good thing. I read that sentence and decided right than that I would write an angry rant of a book review involving the use of this quote:

"digressions, incontestably, are  the sunshine;-they are the life, the soul of reading"

NO!!!! Emphatically no! When I read I want food for thought and deep substance or at the very least complete fluff that allows me to escape the world. This book is just really not fun to read, although it did occasionally make me laugh. There are a few random gems interspersed throughout the book, but the majority of the book is one giant farce. I  have discovered after reading books like Gravity's Rainbow, etc that I am not as into weird, for the sake of weird as I thought that I was.

The narrator, Tristram makes reference to the reader at several points in the novel inviting him to go along with him on his crazy journey. He states at one point " the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that unless one of us in fault, will terminate in friendship." Annnnd the answer to that statement/question is again "NO!" I did not grow into any form of friendship with Tristram Shandy. I disliked him greatly and every last comically awful thing that happened in his life.

There were a few quotes that made me  happy but I a refuse to spend another second on this awful novel so I will only leave you with one which made me so happy. As a youth outreach worker funded to help prevent exploitation I loved this quote:

"Why then...is a black wench to be used worse than a white one? Only because she has no one to stand up for her"

Onwards and upwards to book 33 which will officially put me one third of the way through this project that I started 2 years ago. I am excited for Dead Souls as it is a Russian novel and I generally love Russian authors.

Book 31-The Red and the Black (book 45)

Huh...I don't really know what to say about book 31-The Red and The Black by Stendhal. I have found that the more French Novels I read the more I am left feeling a piece of me is always left on the outside looking rationally in at myself reading the novel. Not sure if that makes any sense, but I never really lose myself in these novels. As a fan of Russian literature for its real-to -life portrayals of both the beauty and the darkness in the world I have always found French novels slightly more pretentious. This novel was no different. I have given it a middle of the road rating because it was not the world's worst book I've ever read, but it was by no means the best. Consequently, I was pleasantly surprised that it was not a book about war like I first suspected it was....so at least there's that.

The novel follows Julien Sore, the son of a poor carpenter who sets out to live his life like Napoleon. He chooses to follow one of two roads to glory open to a young man of the times: the red (the military) or the black (the church). Despite his love of Napoleon he feels that the church is a much better fit for his personality. Julien is ambitious and everything he does including his two love affairs follows a cold, rational decision about furthering himself and following his ambitions. I think that is the part of the book that left me the most upset. I have always loved people that have dreams and that come alive  when they talk about following their dreams, but with Julien's dreams I felt like he was too cold and rational.to enjoy the process. He had some beautiful moments at the beginning of the book where you can tell that his heart is truly alive. He has a moment where he spent the night nestled in the woods in an alcove and this scene is mirrored at the end of the book almost like a redemption where he comes back to his true self that got lost along the way. Julien also has some beautiful moments nestled in the trees hiding away with a good book. Those parts of Julien I connected with...his ambitious society climbing, just made me mad.

The book had a lot of interesting things to say about the corruption in the priesthood/church. Despite being a Christian I agree that there are definitely those who pursue religion for selfish reasons. It also has a lot to say about true faith though and that despite all the corruption and mess in the church that there can still be a real beauty in true faith and also the idea of a loving, caring God.

"the priesthood that fine profession that opens all doors"

"I shall fear for your salvation if you go into the priesthood"

(this is actually more a reflection that being a priest was not a good fit for Julien's personality and less about the fact that priests don't believe in God)

"Why do priest and their hypocrisies matter? Can they  in any way detract from the truth and sublimeness of the idea of God?"

"...I mean a real priest. Then tender souls would have a meeting point in this world...we wouldn't be isolated"

"But how , when two or three are gathered together can you believe in the great name of God, after the terrible abuse made of it by our priests?"

Although Julien is a flawed character, he is a hero amidst the backdrop of the 19th century social hierarchy.

The book is an honest look at some of the flaws that Stendhal's society has:

"The normal course of events in the nineteenth century is that when a powerful member of the nobility encounters a man of generosity, he kills him, exiles him, imprisons him, or humiliates him so much that the other man is foolish enough to die of grief"

Julien takes advice from a Casanova-type man on the fringes of his social circle. Julien was always frowned upon by people everywhere he went because he wore his heart on his sleeve. This Casanova had this to say about the way things worked in the salons of the day.

"If you're miserable, there must be something you're wanting, something that hasn't turned out right...if you are bored, on the contrary, it's what's tried in vain to please you that is inferior"

Lastly, the book focuses on dreams and the role they play in our life and identity. Julien is an interesting character in that he never realizes the full potential of his dream to live a life worthy of Napoleon. Despite pursuing it consistently most of his life,  in the end he is left with nothing to show for it. Here are some of the things this book has to say about dreams:

"At twenty, the thought of the wide world and the impact you can have on it overrides everything else"

"I am the only one who knows what I might have done...for everyone else, I'm nothing more than a QUESTION MARK"

If you are a person who does not like loose ends this book would probably drive you nuts because Julien goes off on various tangents and strategies to pursue his goal. He uses whatever comes across to further his ambition to advance himself in the world. I was very confused by what this book was trying to say about having dreams since none of them really came to fruition in Julien's life and the main thing that caused his distractio was falling in love. I toyed with several theories as to what the point of the book was  (don't have dreams because they are vain, don't have dreams because you are just going to fall in love and be distracted anyways, don't have dreams because it will make it hard to live in society). I have decided that Stendhal would say that we should follow our dreams, but that they don't define our character. It is what we do with successes and failures in this realm that make us who we are. Julien shines the most when he is living from his heart and not his head. I guess that is what I didn't like the most about this book. I found Julien disingenuous 90% of the time and my guess is it is because he was a rational thinker and not a heart thinker. As someone who thinks almost exclusively from the hear,t I didn't relate as closely to his character as to some of the other  characters I have in the past.

Onwards and upwards to the next list book: Tristram Shandy. I am excited to dive into this one.as I tried reading it in high school and gave up because it was "too weird" for me!We will see what I think of it now.

Book 30-Women in Love (44th book)

I read book 30-Women in Love by DH Lawrence during an interesting time in my life. My life got quite busy this last month thanks to starting a new dating relationship after years of singlehood. Thanks to this new relationship, I was also both resistant and open to the messages that this book had to portray.

Ironically enough, for a book entitled Women in Love the book had a lot of homoerotic undertones to it! The relationship between Birkin and his good friend Gerald had some interesting moments in it. Ultimately though, there relationship remained a close friendship and the two men took to pursuing the two sisters portrayed in the book, Gudrun and Ursula. Their  individual relationships each work out two possibilities of ways of being in relationship. One: to remain complete in yourself and join in relationship to another or two: for one person to give up who they are and symbolically die at the hands of another. At times both of these ideologies seem pretentious, but by the end I realized that Birkin and Ursula's relationship (two individuals remaining complete but staying in union) remained the more attractive of the two options and the one that has been more closely in line with the person I have become in the last 10 years.

Here are some quotes from Birkin's point of view in remaining a complete individual in union with someone else:

"What I want is a strange conjunction with you" He said quietly, " not meeting and mingling-you are quite right: but an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings-as the stars balance each other"

"Love is a direction which excludes all other directions. It is a freedom together, if you like"

"Why should we consider ourselves, men and women, as broken fragments of one whole? It is not true."

"He says...that you can find an eternal equilibrium in marriage if you accept the unison, and still leave yourself separate, don't try to fuse"

Ursula who marries Birkin has trouble wrapping her head around this way of thinking but eventually is able to accept it when she sees what his philosophy does for him. She had experienced passion from other men but never true deep intimacy until she shares a moment with Birkin in the moonlight.

"She wished he were passionate because in passion she was at home. But this was so still and frail, as space is more frightening than force"


There was also a lot of philosophical stuff that made the existentialist in me giddy with glee. I loved the sections on what made life worth living and also on whether there was a God out there and the idea of mystic connection with God, the universe and people.



On the purpose for living:


"What do you live for?"

"One needs some one really pure single activity-I should call love a single pure activity"

"What is mankind but just one expression  of the incomprehensible"

"every man was fit for his own little bit of a task"

"work and love are the two"  said of the important things to relieve boredom with life.


On God and mystic connection:


"The eternal creative mystery could dispose of man, and replace him with a a finer created being"

"To have one's pulse beating direct from the mystery, this was perfection"

"I believe in something inhuman, of which love is only a little part. I believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown to us, and it is something infinitely more than love"

"the world is only held together by the mystic conjunction"

"Really, something, must be left to the Lord, there always is an always will be."

"We want to delude ourselves that love is the root. It isn't it is only the branches"



There is also a great deal to say about how we know things and whether knowledge is good or not. For brevity sake I will leave out the quotes that I found. I was planning on rating this book a 3 out of 5 stars until the last 30 pages of it and then I changed my mind. It has all my favorite themes in it: love, work that makes someone tick, mystic/magic connection, existential questions, what makes people great and a lot to say about good and evil. I have moved it firmly into the 4 star category but only because when I look at my other all time favorite books, it doesn't quite compete. The more I read, the pickier I get. I think this list is turning me into a snob!!! Next up? The Red and the Black by Stendhal.

Book 29- Portrait of a Lady (43 book)

Huh....So book 29 on the list was Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. This is the second of James' books I have read and I feel the same way about it as the first. I started reading both books at the beginning full of high hopes and excitement and ended them feeling like the excitement got lost somewhere along the way.

Portrait of a Lady for me will always remind me of the very specific time frame in which I read it. The book featuring Isabel Archer, an independent American, who is brought by her aunt  to Europe to see the world, mirrrored a little too closely my life at the time that I was reading it. Why, do you ask? Whilst reading it I made several choices of independence that mirrored Isabel's and her story was not a happy one. I am hopeful I will have a different fate.

I guess the first thing I want to say is that even though Isabel's fate is not a happy one I really like her life philsophy. She wants to see life and know it for herself, which is something that I too aspire to. Here are some quotes along that tangent.

"her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out the window. She was not accustomed indeed to keep it behind bolts."

"You want to see life"

"You want to drain the cup of experience"

and

"Her old habit had been to live  by enthusiasm, to fall in love with suddenly perceived possibilities with the idea of some new adventure."

Isabel loved life and wanted to go out and see the world. For her, at the start of the novel, the world was a wide open space with plenty of opportunities for a young girl with an enquiring mind. We first find Isabel in America as her aunt discovers her curled up in her family library reading a book. I think that very scene alone endeared her to my  heart.

*Spoiler alert*

Isabel ends up rejecting two marriage proposals. One from an English Lord and another from her American Sweetheart. It is a penniless collector who wins her heart but only wishes to keep her as one of the beautiful glittering objects in his museum-like home. Isabel realizes her fate two late and suffers in silence trying her best to live up to her husbands expectations that she hold only the views he wishes her to hold.

The book has some interesting things to say about marriage, most of them bitter.

"if one marries at all one touches the earth. One has human feelings and needs, one has a heart in one's bosom, and one must marry a particular individual"

"Who could say what men were looking for? They were looking for what they found"

"She had too many ideas for herself, but that was just what one married for, to share them with someone else"

I like the last sentiment and think that is true. In Isabel's case, however, her  husband wanted to have everyone in his life subject to his wishes. Isabel is asked to sacrifice everything that she is in order to remain in a outwardly civil relationship with her husband. Mr. Osmond, her husband, also forces his daughter Pansy to do the same. After years in a convent, Pansy is brought out to see the world, but must not marry unless the prospective husband meets the high standards of beauty that her father sets out for his daughter.

The final moments of the book leave the reader feeling dissatisfied. Almost no one in the book is happy and it ends leaving the reader hanging wondering what the point of it all was. The only redeeming feature of the book is Ralph Touchett who is Isabel's cousin. A physically ill man, Ralph falls in love with his cousin and gives her the means she needs to explore the world to see what she will do with herself. By releasing her to her fate, he comes closest of anyone in the whole novel to actually representing a picture of true love. I was rooting for him the whole book and was happy there was a very least a token of recognition from Isabel of his love.

Here are some cute things the book has to say about love.

"Dear Isabel, life is better; for in life there's love"

"In such hours as this, what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing; there something deeper"

"But love remains"

"Ah but, Isabel--ADORED"

Sigh. I wanted to so badly to love this book about free will and what we make with our lives, but I just couldn't do it. Both of Henry James' books have left me feeling nothing but the vanity of high flying morals and that real life, lived in the trenches is far better than holding rigidly to some philosophical ideal. I suppose since that is probably the point of the novel it succeeded in meeting it's purpose, but I can't say that I enjoyed the process!

Next up? Women in Love.

Book 28-Gravity's Rainbow (42 book of 1001)

Book 28 was Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I wasn't sure going into this book what to expect but I knew that Thomas Pynchon was a weird writer and I wasn't disappointed there!! The book was filled with drugged out hallucinations, communications with the dead, immortal light bulbs, and whole lot of graphic sexual content.

I am not a fan of war, so I probably had it out for this book before I even began. One thing that it did teach me though was how horrific it would have been to be in London during the Blitz. I have always had a  trauma response to anything from the First World War. I can cry at a drop of hat when someone starts whispering to me about Legend's of the  Fall, for instance! I just think it would be so horrible to be stuck in  trench, covered in mud, half starved and running into bodily harm  knowing half of you aren't going to make it. This book showed me that it would be equally horrifying to always have to look over head during the Second World War. The book centres around a rocket, the V2, which hits and then makes a sound. If you hear it you are still alive. The reversal of the sound first, then hit principle makes a backdrop for an interesting discussion about cause and effect. "You will want cause and effect". This is followed up by a discussion of Pavlov both with some experimental dogs that they training as well as Slothrop, one of the main characters who's penis seems to predict where bombs are going to hit. The book calls into question how much of our behaviour is actually in our control and how much of it is based on outside influences.

"You had dispensed with God. But you had taken on a greater, more  harmful, illusion. The illusion of control".

"all in his life of what has looked free or random, is discovered  to've been under some Control"

Slothrop, the character whose penis is believed to predict where a bomb will hit, becomes extremely paranoid and thinks that everything in his life is under someone else's control. He has a frightened reaction when he walks into a casino because it is a place were you would expect pure chance however he feels that everything is staged for his benefit.

"When They chose number, red, black, odd, even what did They mean by it?"

The book has a lot of repeated phrases and ideas that it plays with. They/we, Preterite/Elect, Life/Death. The novel seems to state that for every part there is a counterpart and one cannot survive without the other. The book also makes several references to the Zero. It seems to hold this out as one of the ultimate goals of life to reach the Zero, to be completely nothing, to die. Half of the book is a quest for the 00000 rocket which everyone knows to be in existence but no one knows where it hit.

"Preterite, the many God passes over when he chooses a few for salvation"

This book is just plain weird. Characters frequently burst into random lewd songs. There are immortal light bulbs named Byron, a several page long description of various ways to eat bananas and a lot characters running all over the "Zone" frequently crossing paths. That should have been funny and made the book interesting to read, but I just wasn't feeling it. Maybe it was the timing, since I read it during a busy month and felt the time crunch to return it to the library. Maybe it was the fact it was set during a war which I hate. Maybe it was the lewd content, which didn't really seem to have a point in the story. Either way, I did not enjoy the process of reading this novel....although I did have a few giggles, and head shakes at the stuff I was reading.

One thing I did like about the book was the feeling of being on a quest that occurs during the last half of the book. As several characters traipse around the Zone in search of the illusive Schwarzkommando and the 00000 you feel like you are on a quest from a fairytale. Despite that fact I still wouldn't rate this novel very highly. It wasn't the worst book I have ever read, and it certainly wasn't the best. I would love to read another  Thomas Pynchon novel though to see if it was just the topic that threw me. I will hopefully pick up another one from the 1001 books to Read Before You Die as I know there are several of his books included in the list.

The One Thousand and One Nights (41st book)

I finally finished a book I started two years ago,  The One Thousand and One  Nights. I picked up this book at a used bookstore for $6 a few summers ago and when I took a trip to Victoria, BC that I called, "Operation Valentines Retreat" I decided it was the perfect book to read while on a holiday. The sole purpose of "Operation Valentines Retreat" was to pamper myself on Valentines when the world tells us that someone else should be doing it for us.  I booked myself a hotel, had coffee and tea in a different shop every couple of hours, and took long bubble baths in hotel while reading. I think this book will always be tied into that time for me and it seems to fit with the book which is definitely a divergent from real life. When I arrived home however, I kind of let the book fall by the wayside even though I only had a hundred or so pages left. Thankfully when the book was the book of the month on the Goodreads "1001 Books to Read Before you Die" group I decided to finally finish it. I can finally tick this book off the list that I have read, even though I have mostly been done for 2 years.

Told as a series of tales to a King who was bent on killing Shahrazad his virgin bride after he had his way with her  the stories always ended leading into another one, so the King would be desirous of keeping her alive for one more night. The stories are very tied into Middle Eastern culture and I was fascinated to learn a ton of new words including Jinn (which is a genie), Wezir (advisor), Khan (hotel I think) and many others. It was also very neat to see how tied into everyday life their faith and religion were. Most stories have profuse praises to God when the characters are spared a horrible fate or granted an unexpected blessing. I loved the phrase, "till they were visited by the terminator of delights and the seperator of companions".

I was saddened to learn that the Harvard classics version that I had was misisng quite a few stories from the longer complete addition. It was also apparently "bowdlerized" or had all the inappropriate sexual content taken out. I always feel that if I am going to read something I need to do it right with the full length, non abridged version. I don't, however, think I loved this book enough to go through the trouble to find the more extensive version to read the nights that I am missing. I think my version ends on night 756 out of the 1001. I was pleased however that it included Ali Baba and the 40 Theives and Al-ed-din or Alladin and the Lamp. These two stories were believed to be an add on not included in the original text. As such they are usually tagged on to the end of the book as a supplement as they were in the case of the book I was reading.

Alright that is my review of 1001 nights. Now that I have finished this I might see what other books I can finish on my shelf that I have half done!

Book 27-The Man Without Qualities (40th book)

I finally finished book 27- The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil. As I set out to write this I have no idea how I am going to summarize a three volume mega novel with a philsophical bent. The first two volumes I didn't like very much, but the third volume I adored. I am not sure what that makes the average for the entire novel in terms of rating, but I guess over all it falls somewhere around a 3 star novel.

The novel, featuring a man named Ulrich who opts out of life by taking a year holiday and doing nothing but thinking through life, has very little action in it. The essential plot follows a cast of characters who have banded together for the collatoral campaign, a project that is trying to come up with one idea to symbolize  the monarch's jubilee. Most of the novel consists of Ulrich playing the devil's advocate through a whole host of conversations with various people. He argues a great deal of the time from both sides of every argument which a lot of the time is highly irritating. The last novel takes place after his fathers death when he reunites with a sister he hasn't seen in years. They have an almost incestuous relationship as they both see each other as two halves of a whole. Ulrich's philosophy is finally solidified at this point in the novel.

One of my favorite tangents in the novel was Ulrich playing with the idea of soul. I actually really like the idea he has which is essentially that the soul is all the empty places inside of us not filled up by personality, societal views or personal feelings. Here are some quotes:

"Every dweller on earth has a tenth character, which is nothing more or less than the passive illusion of spaces unfilled"

" some people even think away out and beyond everything, of a God who has the missing piece of themselves in His pocket"

"all roads to the mind start from the soul, but none leads back again"

"the loved person seems to stand where otherwise there is always something missing"

"I called it the acoustics of the void"

The book also had a great deal to stay about the idea of "mystic rapture". I was ecstatic to feel what I have felt many a time  (and often describe as "so excited I could scream" ) laid out in such fantastic words. It made my heart burn with the excitement the book was describing. It is for this reason, that I can't say I hate this book. It is also this idea of connectedness with the larger world beyond that makes me love literature. When you see something of yourself, outside of yourself it is very heart warming and leaves you with a feeling that all is not lost in the world.

"all moments that had meant something decisive in his life ahd left him with the same feeling"

"all decisive moments of his life had been associated with such a sensation of amazement and lonliness"

"every sort of excitement that exceeds the normal very soon mists over with a patina of melancholy, absurdity and satiation."

"They call it an undoing of self, and at the same time declare they live more fully than ever"

"The heart 'ravenous and satiated' , as they say- suddenly finds itslef in those utopian regions that lie somewhere and nowhere between an infinite tenderness and an infinited loneliness"

The book also has a lot to say about love and what it means between a man and women, but also the love of ideas. Most of the characters are in love with someone, or over the course of the novel several someones. Diotima, Ulrich's cousin is intellectually in love with a member of the collatoral campaign and debates the entire novel whether to take this into the physical realm.

The most fantastic quote that Ulrich aid to Diotima was this:

"to strip to the skin, put arms round each other's shoulders and instead of talking, burst out singing"

and also encouraged her to  'so to speak touching him under his pscyhological loin cloth without shuddering"

There were a lot more that were interesting including these;

"...had entered the territory of intimacy where one reveals oneself to the other person in all one's emotional disorder"

"When do you understand another human being? You have to play along with him"


"It goes back a very long way, this desire for a doppelganger of the opposite sex, this craving for the love of a being that will be entirely the same as oneself and yet another"

"true love-sickness is not desire for possession, but only a gentle unveiling of the wordl itself"

Finally there is a lot that talks about morality. Ulrich never really officially pins down his philsophy of life, but essentially you are never left feeling that the world doesn't have meaning or that there isn't a God. Despite several arguements about good and evil and deconstructing them Ulrich still believes that they exist. This book talks a lot about how morality should be fun and that living a life consistent with your own philosophy of life should not be boring. It left me excited about life and with a feeling that one can have a personal view of the world, still believe in some form of universal truth, but yet also be open to the differences amongst people. By playing both sides of each arguement I really feel like Ulrich comes closer to the truth about life than a lot of other people. He plays with the idea of a both/and philsophy and also that the truth lifes somehwere in between polar sides of an argument.

"We ourselves must work out the sum he sets us"

"he regarded the problem set by every human life as one of these" (a math problem with a specific answer but no general one)

"nowadays every truth comes into the world split into two mutually antagonistic falsehoods"

"perhaps they're potentially good human beings. They don't lose that even as criminals"

"Why should moral people be so dreary...when their intentions are good ought to be the most delicious, the most difficult, the most enjoyable thing anyone can possibly imagine"

"All moral propostions, "Ulrich confirmed, ' refer to a sort of dream condition that's long ago taken wing and flown away ot of the cage of rules in which we try to hold it fast"

"For him morality was neither conformism nor the sum of acquired knowledge: it was  the infinite fullness of lifes potentialities"

"morality is imagination'

This book was fun, Ulrich never takes himself seriously and you feel light hearted and silly about everything the whole time. It is long, though, and daunting. Large chunks of the book at times seem unnecessary and the action is slow moving.  The book also doesn't come to a conclusion either because the author never finished the novel or he purposely leaves it vague. Either way, this book is likely not for everyone. I love philosophy and playing around with ideas in my head so for that I mostly enjoyed the book.