Monday, December 28, 2009
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Bookclub became playclub recently and we read Hamlet one evening. The evening's dramatic arc included a five hour undercurrent of the play, timely appearances by candles and a human skull borrowed from a (medical) friend, and the unexpected arrival of another friend, not normally in book club, who offered everyone a spliff. I think I need to re-read it.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I really struggled with this - it is really very inane stuff. I am determined however not to give up on any book (which is why I'm leaving Ulysses until last) so I persevered with Holmes. I'm not sure I would recommend it however. There were far too many neat Scooby-Doo type endings..."Oh my god, its Old Man Withers from the Haunted amusement park!". Perhaps Holmes was original in it's time and spawned the great crime infatuation we have today. With modern sensibility however I found the structure of the stories repetitive and the story-lines predicable.
The stories did get more complicated, exotic, and convoluted as they progressed - perhaps I wasn't the only one to make the above complaints.
I think perhaps that this is one of those books on this list of Top 100 that doesn't really deserve to be here (along with Bridget Jones' Diary which I'm not really looking forward to reading).
On a moonlit night at my uncles farm many years ago I read a book by Irving Wallace called The Fabulous Originals. Wallace explored the lives of extraordinary people who inspired famous characters in fiction. Dr Joseph Bell was the inspiration of Holmes because of his uncanny ability to make large deductions from the smallest observation. After reading about the real thing, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was a disappointment.
The stories did get more complicated, exotic, and convoluted as they progressed - perhaps I wasn't the only one to make the above complaints.
I think perhaps that this is one of those books on this list of Top 100 that doesn't really deserve to be here (along with Bridget Jones' Diary which I'm not really looking forward to reading).
On a moonlit night at my uncles farm many years ago I read a book by Irving Wallace called The Fabulous Originals. Wallace explored the lives of extraordinary people who inspired famous characters in fiction. Dr Joseph Bell was the inspiration of Holmes because of his uncanny ability to make large deductions from the smallest observation. After reading about the real thing, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was a disappointment.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
These are such a lovely, charming set of stories - I'm looking forward to reading them to my son when he's older.
I thought the copy we had on the bookshelves belonged to my wife, but then I saw an inscription in the title page; my father sent it to me twenty years ago this Christmas. It's said you alter the past to fit it to the present and seeing that inscription made me sad. But at the time it made me angry. I only ever met my father a few times and as a child would irregularly receive a Christmas or birthday gift. Usually they were a mismatch to my age - at 12 I was more interested in remote control cars than bear stories. I distinctly remember the gifts being proof that he knew or cared little about me (am I Eeyore?) and that made me angry.
But that was then. Now I know he had his own, typically English, baggage. An 11 year old in the '50s probably did like Winnie the Pooh. And it's easier to be forgiving of adults when you realize that adulthood isn't always so easy.
As it turns out I come from a long line of missing fathers. My father left me, his father left him, even my grandfather was fatherless at a very young age. I did worry before my child was born that perhaps the knowledge had faded from the genes. Was the example of a father necessary to be a good father yourself? To imitate or react against? I don't have an answer to that yet but I could never leave my son. Maybe abandonment was one example of fathership.
I can't wait to read Winnie the Pooh to my son. If I've learnt any lesson, it will be when he's about four or five.
I thought the copy we had on the bookshelves belonged to my wife, but then I saw an inscription in the title page; my father sent it to me twenty years ago this Christmas. It's said you alter the past to fit it to the present and seeing that inscription made me sad. But at the time it made me angry. I only ever met my father a few times and as a child would irregularly receive a Christmas or birthday gift. Usually they were a mismatch to my age - at 12 I was more interested in remote control cars than bear stories. I distinctly remember the gifts being proof that he knew or cared little about me (am I Eeyore?) and that made me angry.
But that was then. Now I know he had his own, typically English, baggage. An 11 year old in the '50s probably did like Winnie the Pooh. And it's easier to be forgiving of adults when you realize that adulthood isn't always so easy.
As it turns out I come from a long line of missing fathers. My father left me, his father left him, even my grandfather was fatherless at a very young age. I did worry before my child was born that perhaps the knowledge had faded from the genes. Was the example of a father necessary to be a good father yourself? To imitate or react against? I don't have an answer to that yet but I could never leave my son. Maybe abandonment was one example of fathership.
I can't wait to read Winnie the Pooh to my son. If I've learnt any lesson, it will be when he's about four or five.
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
We read this recently for Christmas bookclub, yes the same session that inspired this project. It was a heartening story, charmingly told. Wasn't sure there was enough development of the actual change in Scrooge but still a lovely thing to read at Christmas...particularly if you are feeling a little Bah! Humbug! leading into the season. I have to say I am feeling a little of that Christmas magic and nostalgia return - no doubt the effects of having a child. It's something I haven't felt since I was a child and I like it.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The sequel, if it is ever written, would be called Factory Farm. Mutant, drug pumped animals break out of their cramped cages. But this time instead of letting Jones flee, they torture him as revenge. I do find it a little coincidental that this topic should follow immediately from my last post. I am hesitant to write again about animal rights - about Animalism - it seems, interestingly, to be a sensitive issue for many people. But there's far too much written about the political allegories of Animal Farm.
In the preface of a 1947 Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, Orwell wrote about where the idea came from
"...I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat."
Exploitation is precisely the word for the modern day relationship between humans and farm animals. There is simply no comparison between the exploitation on the Manor Farm and a modern day factory farm (which comprise the absoltute majority of all farms in America today). It is interesting that back in 1947 Orwell captures the essence, in Old Major's speech, of the argument animal rights activists extol. This was before the Oxford Group, Singer, or Spira and perhaps shows that just little thought on the subject is needed to arrive at a similar conclusion.
If animals could speak they would say "Four legs good, two legs bad!".
In the preface of a 1947 Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, Orwell wrote about where the idea came from
"...I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat."
Exploitation is precisely the word for the modern day relationship between humans and farm animals. There is simply no comparison between the exploitation on the Manor Farm and a modern day factory farm (which comprise the absoltute majority of all farms in America today). It is interesting that back in 1947 Orwell captures the essence, in Old Major's speech, of the argument animal rights activists extol. This was before the Oxford Group, Singer, or Spira and perhaps shows that just little thought on the subject is needed to arrive at a similar conclusion.
If animals could speak they would say "Four legs good, two legs bad!".
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
I can't help but reflect on the similarities between Kurtz and the Copenhagen delegates. With the outcome all but determined, the parallels of self interest as motivator and ultimate destroyer are depressingly clear. Marlow says "I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice". But I am not choosing inaction in Copenhagen. I don't want to be loyal to this.
Full of beautiful writing and horrific ideas, this might be the shortest book on the BBC Top 100 but it is dense. In 76 pages there are lessons on death, journeys and endings, greed, destruction, the effect and transience of civilisation. The racism and descent into insanity reminded me of the Howard years here in Australia. And while I could spend considerable time on any one of those, the concept that is resonating most strongly with me after reading Heart of Darkness is never directly, or indirectly, discussed in the book: animal rights.
This is a timely issue in my life. After many years as a vegetarian I recently decided, after reading Jonathon Safran Foer's Eating Animals, I was being hypocritical and decided to become vegan. I couldn't help be struck by the similarities between the treatment and language used to describe the "niggers" Conrad writes about (his term not mine), and the way animals are considered today. Consider this:
"...slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant", or this
"Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles on, may be considered as a permanent improvement."
To a modern mind this is clearly horrific, unempathetic language more familiar today when discussing animals - or rather, when discussing food. Meat, that stuff in cling-wrap.
Animals are the modern day "nigger". They are voiceless, dis-empowered. They are commodities, completely dispensible, and unknowable. Marlow is the only character who bravely attempts a challenge, "well you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being inhuman." Hopefully someday the majority will examine the issue and find that even the inhuman don't deserve slaughter.
Conrad notes that when the civilized Roman's conquered Britain they brutalized the savages. Time changes goes the cliche and perhaps animals will someday have more than they do at the moment. (By the time you read this paragraph three thousand animals will have been slaughtered for food.)
One of the more beautiful lines of the book goes to Marlow who, in another moment of empathy, remarks on one of the African women. "Savage and superb, wide-eyed and magnificent". This attempt to understand or appreciate in relative terms is the beginnings of respect.
Full of beautiful writing and horrific ideas, this might be the shortest book on the BBC Top 100 but it is dense. In 76 pages there are lessons on death, journeys and endings, greed, destruction, the effect and transience of civilisation. The racism and descent into insanity reminded me of the Howard years here in Australia. And while I could spend considerable time on any one of those, the concept that is resonating most strongly with me after reading Heart of Darkness is never directly, or indirectly, discussed in the book: animal rights.
This is a timely issue in my life. After many years as a vegetarian I recently decided, after reading Jonathon Safran Foer's Eating Animals, I was being hypocritical and decided to become vegan. I couldn't help be struck by the similarities between the treatment and language used to describe the "niggers" Conrad writes about (his term not mine), and the way animals are considered today. Consider this:
"...slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant", or this
"Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles on, may be considered as a permanent improvement."
To a modern mind this is clearly horrific, unempathetic language more familiar today when discussing animals - or rather, when discussing food. Meat, that stuff in cling-wrap.
Animals are the modern day "nigger". They are voiceless, dis-empowered. They are commodities, completely dispensible, and unknowable. Marlow is the only character who bravely attempts a challenge, "well you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being inhuman." Hopefully someday the majority will examine the issue and find that even the inhuman don't deserve slaughter.
Conrad notes that when the civilized Roman's conquered Britain they brutalized the savages. Time changes goes the cliche and perhaps animals will someday have more than they do at the moment. (By the time you read this paragraph three thousand animals will have been slaughtered for food.)
One of the more beautiful lines of the book goes to Marlow who, in another moment of empathy, remarks on one of the African women. "Savage and superb, wide-eyed and magnificent". This attempt to understand or appreciate in relative terms is the beginnings of respect.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
(Or, how I learned to love the book and change my life)
You've probably come across it, the BBC or Guardian published a list (it's unclear who and probably bullshit anyway) of the Top 100 Books, and attached to this list is the claim that the average person has only read 6 of the 100 books. Ignore the fact that it's not even a Top 100 of...list. Just the Top 100. They must be good.
At our Christmas bookclub last week we decided to add up who had read what. The average was 50-something. My wife was the winner at 65. I had read 14. And trying to save my dignity I lied about some of them. You could have cut the silence with the disappointed looks. Hara Kiri crossed my mind briefly.
So my challenge for 2010 is this. Secretly read my way through as many of the books as I can before the 2010 Christmas bookclub. In the spirit of the The Julie/Julia Project (found here http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html) I might as well blog about it. These are not going to be book reviews (that's my wife's thing) - instead, they'll be records of the my journey into (mostly) great books. In case anyone out there is listening...
The list (which will be read in order of shortest to longest, remember, I'm trying to claw back my reputation!).
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (many)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
At our Christmas bookclub last week we decided to add up who had read what. The average was 50-something. My wife was the winner at 65. I had read 14. And trying to save my dignity I lied about some of them. You could have cut the silence with the disappointed looks. Hara Kiri crossed my mind briefly.
So my challenge for 2010 is this. Secretly read my way through as many of the books as I can before the 2010 Christmas bookclub. In the spirit of the The Julie/Julia Project (found here http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html) I might as well blog about it. These are not going to be book reviews (that's my wife's thing) - instead, they'll be records of the my journey into (mostly) great books. In case anyone out there is listening...
The list (which will be read in order of shortest to longest, remember, I'm trying to claw back my reputation!).
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (many)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
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