Book 43- Fathers and Sons (70th Book)

Book 43 on the list was Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. I was curious to read this book, because I love Russian authors and I had never read any of Turgenev's books. I love Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy truly, but the lesser Russian authors I find harder to get along with.

Turgenev's novel sets out to show the disparity between two sets of Father's and Son's ideological views. The younger generation has become infatuated with Nihilism and the older generation holds steadfast to faith and tradition. Bazarov is the extreme example of the new generation and his friend Arkady closer to the middle. Arkady's uncle Pavel is the extreme verison of the older generations belief in faith and traditions while his father, Nikolay has a more shaded and rounded version of the older beliefs.

While I found this book to be somewhat preachy and a little too blatant with the discussion on the difference between fathers and sons, I did find a lot of the classic Russian themes that make me love Russian authors. This book has flawed human characters who are lovable even though they are flawed. It also has a theme about the greatest of love and it's ability to overcome many things. I also love that Russian authors devote a great deal of time to the poor. In Turgenev's case, his novel is set shortly after the emancipation of the serfs and follows some of them as minor characters.

There are several phrases that hit quite close to the theme. Here are a few that stood out for me:

"of course you can't understand me; we belong to two different generations"

"that definite twilight period of regrets which resemble hopes and of hopes which are akin to regrets, when youth is over and old age has not yet started"

"You are here to take our places"

"my parents I mean, are occupied and don't worry about their own nothingness"

The book really draws no conclusions as to who is right  in the debate between Fathers and Sons. Bazarov, is a tragic hero who dies by the end of the book, felled by an illness he is treating in his father's provincial village. Pavel is shown, to be truly unhappy and roams about the earth never really settling down. Both Arkady of the younger generation, and Nikolay of the older generation are shown to be happy. They are rounded characters who have found love and hold beliefs from both camps.They allow themselves to see life as it is, rather than trying to fit it into an ideology. Bazarov utters a truismin in his discussion with Madame Odintsov, who he loves. "perhaps really everyone is a riddle".

Bazarov also says, "that's how it is with the luggage of life; we would stuff it up with anything rather than leave a void". Although that is a bitter phrase, uttered to Arkady at his parting from him just when he is about to get married, I think in a lot of ways it is true. As humans, we are not fond of leaving voids in our life and we fill them with all kinds of things addictions, obsessions, activity, and people, rather than truly feel alone.

My conclusion? This isn't the greatest Russian novel of all time, but it is a worthy read.

Book 42-The Scarlet Letter (69th Book)

Book 42 was The Scarlet Letter. I was excited to read it because I had visited Nathaniel Hawthorne's grave in Sleep Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. It was interesting because the beginning of the book starts off describing the sea port of Salem. I was there too and loved the historical significance of  a town based on the witch trials. The story is told as though it tells the true account of a woman who left a diary that was found in an old Custom's House, which is a place where Nathaniel Hawthorne actually worked. The author sets out to tell her story based on the diary.

I wanted to love this book after being excited about the setting, but I didn't. It didn't hold and captivate my attention the way that I wanted it to. It did have some interesting points to say about good and evil and what makes a person strong.

The one thing I did like about the book was the description of the pastor who slept with the adulterous woman, Hester Prynne. He never told and his secret sin ate him alive. As the book progressed he got sicker and sicker eventually leading to his death. It shows how although the trial of wearing a Scarlet Letter was a hard one for Hester she was able to sleep at night knowing that people knew the worst thing about her and still interacted with her anyway. The words laid out in the book, which signify the principal underlying why one of these two characters thrives, while the other dies slowly is this, "Be true. Be true. Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred". There is freedom in being known by others and loved anyway. Pastor Dimmesdale was seen as a saint in the community, but deep down he knew himself to be flawed.

Puritan New England would be a frightening place to live.Everyone walked around with a feeling of superiority over other people, and yet they were all human. I liked a line in the story that shows that we are all flawed and that none of us would be safe in a legalistic community like the one described in the book. "if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom".

This book was run of the mill for me, although I didn't hate the book, I wasn't fascinated with it as I hoped. It is great to see that it has become so iconic though, because the author sold very few copies in his life time.

Book 41-Pride and Prejudice (68th Book)

Book 41 was Pride and Prejudice and after my last experience with Molloy etc. I was happy to be reading something fluffier. I have never been a Jane Austen fan because I always thought them too fluffy for classic literature, but this novel was an enjoyable read. I borrowed my Jane Austen obsessed friend's hand bound copy that I purchased for her several years ago. (see picture to the left) It was fun to be reading something that was so fancy.

I don't have a lot to say about Pride and Prejudice other than that I was pleasantly surprised, as I was when I read Emma. The books are enjoyable I will give them that. I read through the book fairly quickly and had a good time with it. They  aren't deep, they don't make me think about myself in a new and surprising way, and they don't stay with me long after I  have read them. That, to me is the mark of classic literature, but the easy readability of the novels and enjoyment that people have had out of them over the years, has proved that they can stand the test of time.

I found some great quotes in the book which I was not expecting. I really enjoyed the thoughts on pride and what that means. "A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us". I also loved the quote about the fact that "we are none of us consistent".

I was laughing at the beginning because my friend who lent me the book said, "Enjoy Mr. Darcy" and at first I didn't. I got sucked into what Elizabeth felt, and thought he was arrogant. It turns out he was just unwilling to follow society's rules about dancing, and mingling and stuck mostly to himself. That is what I would have done too! He is an enjoyable character, as are Elizabeth and Jane.

And, that folks is one of my shortest reviews ever.

Book 40- Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable (66th and 67th books)

So here is my review of "book 40" aka Molloy + Malone Dies + The Unnameable. I love how the author of the Novel 100 does that! What is dubbed one book is actually three. In the list of 1001 books it is interesting to note that they are listed separately and the third book does not make the cut at all.

So here are my star reviews for each of the books because they vary QUITE vastly.

Molloy 5 out of 5 stars
Malone Dies 2 out of 5 stars
The Unnameable 2 out of 5 stars

Over all rating 2 out of 5 stars

Molloy is by far the best of the three books. I started it a few months ago and read through it in almost one night. I was curious about who this character was and why he was roaming the world aimless and confused. The portrayal of Molloy is a rather accurate description of some of my clients I used to work with when I was a Homeless Outreach Worker. I was stunned by being thrown into his brain and the horror of the world it portrayed. In the last half of  his section, Molloy's leg causes him grief and he stumbles and crawls through the last section. This too is accurate of a large portion of the homeless population who have mobility issues. The last half of the novel is a similar adventure by a character named Moran who is sent out to recover Molloy and find him on the road. He slowly loses his mind and returns home with his quest unsuccessful. This is the most coherent of the novels and I was readily able to follow the story. It is is curious to note that Samuel Beckett who wrote the novels appears to be obsessed with chronicling death and decline. It is noted at some point in one of the three novels that this is something that is not usually done, and I can't think of very many novels that follow that pattern. Buddenbrooks is the only one that is springing to mind at the moment which follows the ruin of a family and ends worse off than when it started.

Malone Dies is a story of a man in a hospital of some sort. He, and thus the reader, are unclear as to how he got there, why he is there, and whether there is anyone else around. The narrative follows his dying thoughts as he attempts to create the story of his life. He states in the beginning that he plans to tell us stories, "One about a man, another about a woman, a third about a thing and finally one about an animal, a bird probably." This book is confused, and wandering. The topic and characters switch a few times throughout the story and it is very difficult to follow. It is not a pleasant read, and I don't feel I learned anything great while reading it. I did find one interesting philosophical thought which made me pause and think. "Nothing is more real than nothing". I still haven't decided what I think about that, because it is a concept I used to try to grasp, but could never quite get. It is, I think, impossible to truly know "nothing". The narrator talked about a goal to "live and invent". I quite liked that and really feel that is what life is about. We invent the kind of person we want to be and create an existence in the world.

The Unnameable is a hopelessly difficult treaty on the self, trying to speak purely of itself. It is the authors attempt at drilling down his narrative to speak only of himself. "To make believe I have an ego all of my own and can speak of it". He cycles through all the identities we have heard through the previous two novels, Molloy, Moran, Malone, etc. and also adds Worm and several others to the mix. The narrator/author? cycles through all these identities quickly discarding them all until the end. I like philosophy, there were a few deep thoughts in the novel, but I just wanted to be done reading it. I am not sure if it was the time when I was reading it or if I had been in a better space whether I would have felt differently, but I did not find this novel enjoyable. (It didn't make it in the 1001 and books to read before you die so that is saying something). I also found the author rather pretentious and his experiment with words and consciousness was too much. I never managed to highlight any of the really horrible sections, but I read several out loud to my boyfriend who often wonders why I proceed to read these books if I don't like them. I am stubborn when I start a task for myself and although I am certain I won't complete the list of 1001 books I am determined to read the list of 100 in is entirety. I did find a great phrase about the human condition though. "Ah a nice mess we're in, the whole pack of us, is it possible we're all in the same boat, no, we're in a nice mess each one in his own peculiar way".

I am so glad to be done with this book. and have nothing else to say!

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (65th Book)

The novel 100 book I am reading this month is very bizarre and extremely difficult to read. I chose the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a light fluffy read for bed. It turned out be a book that was not only enjoyable to read, but also uplifting. I knew a bit about the story, in that I knew it was someone who had two parts to their personality, but I was surprised by the philosophical bent to the novel.

The novel follows a friend of Dr. Jekyll's as he converses with a mutual friend. On a walk one day they pass a strange house that they rarely ever see anyone go into. The narrator's companion tells a horrible tale of a man who stumbles over a child and doesn't even care. This heartless tale that affects both of them deeply turns out to be a story that is much closer to home for them.

The premise is that Dr. Jekyll doesn't like the fact that he has a conscience and would like to separate out the two pieces of his personality so that he would be either all good, or all bad. As he experiments with this, being a chemist, he happens upon a chemical that does just that. The only trouble is that it separates out the bad  part leaving the other half with a conscience and knowledge of the wrong doing. In time, the chemical requires a stronger dose to maintain, and there comes a point where Dr. Jekyll get's trapped in Mr. Hyde. Rather than face life as horrible person knowing the wrongs he is likely to commit, he kills himself. The story is finally revealed through a series of letters that he leaves for his various friends.

The story, is engaging, and interesting. It is a true Gothic novel with a dark theme and even darker descriptions. It has elements of mystery to it as well, although the story is so well known, now that modern readers will lose a little of this facet of the story. What surprised me the most was that it also had a moral: the fact that human nature leaves us trapped with both a good and bad side to each of us. Try as we may, there is no way to separate the fact that as humans we are both good and bad. "all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil". One of the deepest statements in the novel about the nature of good and evil is this: "...two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said  to be either, it was only because I was radically both". No matter whether someone is described as good or evil, a nice person, or a bad person; we are all a mixture of both. It is only a matter of perspective as to what the world sees. I like this theme, dark as it is, because it is one of the basic tenets of my belief system. I have a magnet on my fridge that says "we are all junkies and prostitutes". I get a lot of comments on the magnet as people question what it means and why I like it. The reason is this: we all have our weaknesses that make us chase after certain things and we all have something for which we would sell ourselves. In our basest nature there is very little difference between the homeless man on the side walk with his addiction and the Wall Street CEO with his obsession with money. What separates the two, is merely the degree of social acceptability of their foibles. I try really hard never to judge anyone because I haven't had to live in their shoes. With the work I do in homeless outreach and youth outreach there are often very traumatic stories hovering just below the surface. I can't say that I would end up any different if I had to live their life. We are all valuable human beings, no matter what we have done. This is one of the deepest parts of my faith and a part I have held very dearly. As a teen, to express this to the world, I took the idea to the extreme and created a fake company called "Serial Killers go to Heaven, too: A branch of the Charles Manson Christian Fan club"! As horrible as it sounds it was a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that I believe I was no better than the worst human being on earth.

 I like that this book gets across the idea of human nature in an interesting and engaging way. It had me thinking through deep philosophical questions while being thoroughly entertained. That is a sign of good fiction.

Thank You, Jeeves (64th Book)

So I read a quick little read last month, shortly after finishing Robinson Crusoe, but I never managed to blog about it. This is mostly because I don't have a lot to say about it. I chose it because I thought it would be a light fluffy read and it certainly was. I have no idea what genre this book fits into, but I picked up thinking it was a British style mystery. Turns out it is a British-style mystery sans the mystery!!!! The series follow Wooster and his traditional style butler, Jeeves through a series of shenanigans. Jeeves seems to be the brightest of the pair and is constantly having to save his bachelor employer, Bertram Wooster from a series of socially awkward situations. This is apparently book 13 of the series but the first full length novel.

I had heard a lot about PG Wodehouse, and contemplated picking up a novel while I was browsing book stores in London. I purchased this book on my Kobo during a 30% off sale and I am glad I did. I don't think I am going to become a Wodehouse fan. Although it was a rather silly little read, I didn't gain anything by my perusal of this novel. I am a huge fan of British humour but minus the mystery part, this novel didn't quite have enough going for it. As a stand alone read it was enjoyable, but I can only imagine, that Wooster would start to drive me crazy because the series appears to focus entirely around Wooster's near misses, and social faux pas with various ladies.

If you like British humour, you would probably find this book slightly enjoyable. If not I would pass this book by unless you are reading the 1001  Novels. It was a quick easy read off the list, but that is all it had going for it.

Robinson Crusoe (63rd Book)

I have lost count how many books I read in March, but I think it is the most books I have read in any given month in my entire life! This past weekend I was in Vancouver visiting my boyfriend for the Easter Weekend. He had some work to do for the first few days so while he typed away in coffee shops I had the enjoyable experience of motoring through The Moonstone. God bless Kobo and ereaders, though, because rather than lug around a stack of novels I was just carrying around my  light ereader in my purse. This is also fortuitous because I had started the weekend believing I was going to read Thank You, Jeeves which I purchased for just such an occasion. After the many references to Robinson Crusoe in The Moonstone I felt I HAD to read it. Luckily it was a free novel and I already had it loaded on my ereader. For those who don't know, I originally started the list of 100 greatest novels of all time as an ereader project. I believed that most of the classic novels on the list would be free or low cost. While this hasn't held to be entirely true (some are more expensive, or the older ones are too difficult to find), there are several on both the list of 1001 books and the Novel 100 which will be 100% free thanks to being past the 50 year cut off for copyright enforcement.

I knew a little about Robinson Crusoe but was pleasantly surprised by the actual experience of reading it. I was in a good space to absorb the theme which is predominately one of thankfulness for what you do have, rather than looking at what you don't have. "We may always find in it something to comfort ourselves from, and to set in the description of good an evil, on the credit side of the account". Robinson survived his 28 year solitude on the island by continually  looking at the blessing of having been saved from so many crazy ordeals, and being thankful for the supplies that were saved, rather than the things that he didn't have. ""All our discontents about what we want, appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have" The book does a fantastic job of chronicling the everyday things that we take for granted. Everyday things took him much longer to by simply not having the modern day conveniences that we are used to. Carving a boat, took many days to cut down the tree without the use of a proper axe, hollowing it out took even longer without proper implements.

I started reading the book because of the many references in The Moonstone to this novel. Gabriel Betteredge, the servant in the story, had a habit of finding predictions of the future in the pages of Robinson Crusoe. This made me giggle because I have had this happen with the Bible, and other random songs, books and stories. There have been moments when words leapt off the page at me and I knew they were meant just for me. The fact that Betteredge had found one random book that spoke to him in the same way made me grin. The great thing for me as I read Robinson Crusoe is that he too had the experience of words leaping off the page as he started to turn toward God in his long exile. One of the most poignant ones that starts his whole journey back to faith is "Call on me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me". Another reference that stuck out to Robinson was the scripture about counting the cost before beginning a work. I was in the right head space when I started this, book because I was touched beyond reason, by the references to faith in the novel. I was so happy that this fictional character was able to find that God was faithful even when He seemed like He wasn't around. I started this novel during Easter Weekend when I too was reflecting on the many things that God had done for me. This novel actually helped to revitalize my faith which had fallen by the wayside in the busyness of life.

I was pleasantly surprised by this side tangent in reading, and glad that I took the detour after all the references in The Moonstone. The next novel I started reading, Thank you Jeeves, also had references to Robinson Crusoe too so I was even more grateful that I had read it.