Book meme from hamsterwoman and sheiannasherra. In case anyone was worried that I'd stopped caring about books lately...

( Of course, I've said most of this before. )

People recommend books to me. I read other books. Fail? Yes, sort of fail. But not entirely fail, since at least I can cross something off my reading list...

Anyway, this time the book is Steinbeck's East of Eden. I think I started reading it ten years ago. I made it through the first three hundred pages or so, and then gave it up, bored to death of both the plot and the characters, and thinking that everything about it felt too contrived -- far too contrived for Steinbeck, especially. I felt like he was stepping out of his league.

I don't know if it's just because my expectations have changed, or whether the second half of the book was really so much better than the first half (it did get better as it progressed, even within the second half), but having finished it, I can say that I underestimated Steinbeck, and that although East of Eden could probably have been better, it was very good. It did what it was meant to do.

( Some general thoughts on Steinbeck. )

Last post on this subject for a while. I promise.

I said yesterday that Tolstoy was a mediocre philosopher. He is. I also said he was a good writer. That was an understatement. ( So here's a more balanced report. No spoilers. )

I don't know what I'll be reading next. The reason it occurred to me how far I'd underestimated Tolstoy is because I've been trying to start on some other book, but nothing I pick up comes anywhere close to Tolstoy's eloquence, and I find myself doing more criticising than reading. So far, King Lear is the only thing I've tried that I haven't been able to find fault with. ...So much for lighter reading. :P

Well, I've finally finished reading War and Peace. It turned out to be, at bottom, a 1400-page treatise on determinism. I feel it only fair to warn those of you who may be interested in reading it. The characters are good, the writing is good, it's easy to read, and there are some interesting ideas along the way. But ultimately, the point is that free will exists only as a kind of necessary unknown factor without which we could not call ourselves human, but has no meaning; ultimately the point is that everything done by anybody was predestined by God from the dawn of time (or rather outside of time), and no one could ever have acted any differently than they did. Especially not Napoleon, which is what makes him the most odious of all. Apparently.

I will also add, though of course this is entirely my own opinion, that Tolstoy is a thoroughly mediocre philosopher. His arguments, when they aren't the same ones that have been advanced for centuries, are almost irrelevant; his metaphors are mostly complete nonsense; and even when he makes a valid point, he often does so by proofs which are completely inscrutable. Dostoevsky made a better argument for determinism in five or ten pages of Notes From Underground -- and Dostoevsky didn't even believe in it.

I think it may be time for some lighter reading.

A couple of people on my f-list have now made lists of books to read in 2009 (or, more realistically, let's just say in the near future). This is in no way a complete list of books I need to read, but I'll keep adding to it as people recommend things. (If you've recommended something and I've forgotten to put it on the list, remind me! Or if you have anything else to add, of course. :)

( Books to Read )

I could probably do with some recommendations for short story collections (about which I know almost nothing, since I rarely read short stories, but probably should start).

Items:

1) The Spirit has reminded me why I never go to the theater. ( Ten dollars for *that*? )

2) I'm a bit over 300 pages into War and Peace. I was worried that it would be slow reading, and 1400 pages of it, at that -- but it's actually surprisingly fast-paced; more so than a lot of other authors of the period, anyway. My only difficulty with the book so far is in keeping track of its ( typical Russian superabundance of characters. )

Oddly, War and Peace is also having the unexpected side-effect of making me ( really excited about Napoleon. )

3) I guess this post would be the place to tell me what books I should buy with my gift cards. ;) Of course, I've already got a list; foremost among the books I'm planning to buy are ( these. ) But anyway, I'm shopping at Bookman's, where everything is used and cheap, so if I have any money left over, I'll want to know what I should spend it on. And it's always nice to have options! :)

At long last, finals are over. I have no idea how I did on my College Algebra final, and luckily I don't have to care, because unless I utterly failed it, I should still get a B in the class. And if I did utterly fail it -- I'll still get a C.

So. It's time once again for my embarrassingly short list-of-books-I-read-this year. I'm still a hell of a long way from "read your height in books," but I did better than last year, anyway. (And as usual, I'm not including stories and plays from collections -- just whole novels.)

Here, then, are the books, complete with commentary of great prolixity and spoileriness.

( Toilers of the Sea )
( er, here, have some extended rambling about Hugo and Melville )
( Brief Lives )
( Frankenstein )
( Coraline )
( Nineteen Eighty-Four )
( reread: The Man in the High Castle )
( V for Vendetta )
( Atlas Shrugged )
( Tao Te Ching )
( The Stranger )
( Big Fish )
( Lots of Batman stuff... )
( Watchmen )
( The Golden Compass )
( The Valley of Fear )
( The General in His Labyrinth )
( Dracula )
( This Side of Paradise )
( War of the Worlds )

Aaaand there you have it. I may not read much, but I sure do make long posts about it...

Because BOOKS > RL.

( Holy gigantic book meme, Batman! )

EDIT: Okay, maybe BOOKS > RL is not a perfect equation, because sometimes RL has ( BABY CHICKENS )

Also, if you haven't given me your address already: DO IT so I can send you a card. :D

I finally watched "The Crooked Man," after waiting as long as I could (and watching "The Naval Treaty" a second time with my sister). Not bad. I mean, it wasn't much of a mystery, like, at all -- but that's Doyle's fault.

Watson was better in this one, on the whole, although he had a few moments of headdesk-inducing idiocy right in the middle. I'm starting to get the impression that Watson is just there to keep people from getting too irritated at Holmes' utter disregard for social etiquette. Holmes almost never greets anyone, shakes hands, acknowledges gratitude, or anything of the kind. Luckily, Watson is there to be polite for him.

Anyway, the last scene was pretty adorable. :D

And from hamsterwoman: ( another book meme. )

After more than a month, I finally finished reading Gabriel García Márquez's The General in His Labyrinth. (Not that it's long -- it isn't. I just haven't had much time for reading lately.)

It was very good. It's a historical novel -- a fictionalized account of the last months of the life of General Simón Bolívar, "The Liberator," who secured independence from Spain for a number of Latin American countries. But the story isn't about heroics, conquests, or successes of any kind. The General is mentally and physically exhausted, and indeed almost an invalid, at the age of 47. The themes are much like those of One Hundred Years of Solitude -- decline and disillusionment and destitution. And, well... solitude.

I'm not sure what to say about it except that it's Márquez: simple and vivid, bleak, sincere, unforgivingly human, at once profound and mundane. I can't even put spoilers behind a cut, because there are no spoilers. It's not that kind of novel. There isn't climax or resolution or twists or surprising revelations... there's just this meandering account of the General's final journey, interwoven with memories and reflections on his former glory, successes tainted with the growing realization of futility.

Needless to say, I enjoyed it a great deal. I need to find more books like this one.

(ETA: Oh, hey. I just found this One Hundred Years of Solitude icon I made for a roleplay sockpuppet, like, two years ago. *keeps it*)

I finished reading Frankenstein last night. In spite of all the fun I've had mocking it, ( it wasn't that bad. )

So. Back to reading The Red and the Black now, I suppose. Or something else. I'm sort of inspired to reread Paradise Lost now, actually...

Dude. What.

So, Frankenstein is another one of those books I've been meaning to read forever, but never quite got around to. I'm about halfway through it now. It's a pretty easy read, even in spite of its often needless verbosity. I'm... enjoying it, actually, I guess, even though the plot is not particularly engaging, and the style is rather unremarkable. Maybe I'm just so delighted to have a break from reading about Julien Sorel's tedious exploits that almost anything seems enjoyable... Ahem.

But apart from all that: Dude. Seriously. This is one hell of an eloquent and erudite two-year old monster. The thing is making offhanded references to Paradise Lost. What.

Frankly, if I were Mr. Frankenstein, I would be much less terrified by the fact that my gigantic, livid, misbegotten undead beastie was thundering toward me in a desolate place than by the fact that this thing's first words to me, rather than "Uuuuurgh," or even "Daddy," were, "I expected this reception." Followed by an outpouring of carefully enunciated entreaties sprinkled with biblical allusions. And angst.

Oy, Shelley. I'm sorry, mam'selle, but you -- are a silly person.

(The quote in the title, by the way, is not from Frankenstein. It's from a Russian folktale called "The Jester," which, alarmingly, is actually far much more sensible than this maddening "science" which the preface of Frankenstein boasts as "not of impossible occurence"...)

Okay, and now for some separate, spoilery comments on Moby Dick, now that I've finished it. It is the strangest and most fantastic thing I've read in years. In fact, although my favorite book remains very certainly The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, I don't think Moby Dick can be too far behind; and Melville may possibly have drawn even with Hugo in my ranking of favorite authors, just a short step below Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. Which, by the way, came as a complete surprise.

( Spoilers ahoy. Many, many spoilers. )

Now I understand why 2addersfanged wanted me to write Melville/Hawthorne slash. But you know... I'm not sure Hawthorne deserves the honor. In any case, Melville: my hat is off to you, sir. My hat is plucked straight from my head and deposited somewhere in the vast Pacific. You are a strange and wonderful man.

(I wrote this a few days ago, thinking I'd be able to get online sooner. It's therefore a bit outdated; I've actually finished reading Moby Dick now, and a post about that is forthcoming. In the meantime, I'm leaving this post as it is.)

Contrary to what most people think, I'm not actually a very prolific reader. At all. In fact, I've read exactly ten books this year -- or eleven, if I finish Moby Dick before January -- and that includes three short children's novels. I mean, I read pieces of other things… I read about half of a collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories, several chapters of The House of the Seven Gables, the first quarter of The 1,001 Arabian Nights (which I'm still reading; at the moment I'm about halfway through the story of Aladdin), and a few chapters of The Iliad, The Red and the Black, and Nietzsche's Antichrist. I intend to finish reading all of these at some point... hopefully within the coming year...

In any case. Some of you have been trying to "read your height" in books, or read a book for every week of the year, or something of that sort, and then commenting on those books in your journal in little blocks. I've entered on no such ambitious enterprise, but now that the year is out, I figure I'll take a moment to comment briefly on the books I did manage to read this year. No spoilers, or at least only very minor, oblique spoilers. In the order in which I read them, then:

( The Master and Margarita )
( Lolita )
( One Hundred Years of Solitude )
( The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger )
( Number the Stars )
( The Devil's Storybook )
( The Devil's Other Storybook )
( Lord of Light )
( Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows )
( Guards! Guards! )
( Moby Dick )

I finished reading Lolita about an hour ago. I'm sure I don't have the energy to write up the kind of commentary that would do it justice, but I'll make an effort and throw my scattered thoughts into a post anyway. Spoilers, naturellement.

( In here. )

More later, maybe, or probably not.

Thanks to everyone who took the poll! It looks like the mouse icon wins. :) I may use one of the "I corrupted them all" icons later, too.

I tried to find another way to use Dostoevsky's picture, and this inspired a small set of author icons with handwriting and signatures, like so:

        

( Dickens, Diderot, Dostoevsky, 2 Eliot, 2 Gaiman, Hugo, 2 Joyce, 2 Nietzsche, Stoppard, Vonnegut, Wilde. )

ETA: ( Second batch: Austen, Byron, Doyle, Dumas, Fitzgerald, Poe, Pratchett, Tolkien, Shakespeare )

EDIT: Fixed it so that the images work again, and added a bunch more.