Monday, October 31, 2011

Tis the season for face shooting murders

I was a little weary about reading a true-life suspense/thriller (can I classify it as such?) genre, but In Cold Blood was not what I was initially imagining. What I was thinking it would be, was something along the lines of Dateline with stock photo-esque imagery meant to illustrate generic small town settings, with a syrupy voiceover. Instead, from the very first sentence, Capote had me respecting the difference. Though the story is non-fiction, it read like any well-written novel. The author took care to understand every character so that the reader was able to trust the facts as accurately depicted. There is emotional depth, and no biased finger-pointing in any direction but to state the facts as they were given.
I thought the first few chapters before the murders were artful. Chapters weaved in and out, trading perspectives between the killers' and the victims', which was a very successful way to keep the reader interested and attached. It is also interesting to me how much I liked the Clutters...their clearly religious (and fairly virginal), Southern ideals would most certainly ordinarily have bothered me, but I felt nothing of the sort. I do admit that perhaps Capote went too far into idealizing the members of this family, but perhaps it's true that this is the way they were perceived by the community.
I'm very attracted to the way Capote writes, and am interested in reading more of his books. I can see very beautiful stories coming in the context of lighter subject matter, but for him to have executed a story of murder in such a gentile way lends a favorable eye to his talents.

As for the next book, I've finally gotten a hold of Contact and I'm very excited. While meeting a friend after work, I stopped by the Barnes & Noble which, for some reason was filled with teenagers at 8.30pm. Is that the cool thing to do these days? There could be much worse things, I suppose. Anyway with the loss of Borders it seems as though I'm going to (regretfully) have to become a B&N fanboy.

In other news, over this Halloween weekend I have caught a terrible cold/flu(?). I'm pretty sure it's from touching things on the el, which is a very disgusting thought that I try not to dwell on. My throat is terribly angry with me, and I feel like dying. It has deprived me of sleep and this morning on my ride to work I almost fell asleep on 94 a number of times. Misery. This may in fact be the death of me if this persists.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

50/1001!!

It's cause for a little celebration! I have reached 50 books read from the list, boosting my confidence a smidgen to the possibility of actually completing all of the books at some point in my lifetime.

The fiftieth book was The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. The novel fit in with the usual style in the interest of the person whom I received it (one such previous book received is most notably, Saturday) -- minimal plot pervaded by a stillness short of despair. Loneliness blanketed every aspect of Kundera's characters and my reaction was a pitied distaste at their incapabilities of being happy. It isn't that I needed them to be in fanciful relationships, I appreciate that there was turmoil in even the truest of "love", but I think mainly I just couldn't agree with most of the ways that the characters reasoned. Tereza, especially, did not appeal to me as I was incredibly turned off by her weakness. In Sabina I found the most connection and her hold on Franz as an idealic ghost resounded in me of its purity and beauty.
It was striking to me that the most emotional part of the story was represented by Tereza's love for a dog. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this...at first I was displeased by it because it seemed to me ill-fitting and reaching out to some sort of niche category of melodramatic (though powerful) stories about man's love for animals, but now I find value in the dog's role. He is, after all, the only character without any ugliness whatsoever. That is true to life.

For my next read, I was dead-set on reading Carl Sagan's "Contact", but having gone to both a used and new book store today (which, as a sidenote, reaffirmed my infinite love for bookstores which have the magical power to inflate me with the warmest of happiness) and was unable to find it, I think I am going to have to order it online. I didn't want to waste valuable reading time while I wait, however, so I bought Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. I see at least a few nights of being scared alone in my apartment coming on.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

#445

While I am still reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I was simultaneously enjoyingFranny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger over the past few days via internet. I chose it for its brevity, which I assumed would be more readily available for online viewing (especially since I am technologically inept and have a hard time finding anything for free. sad face).

I had been interested in the book for about a year because a favorite professor of mine had recommended it, but could not bring myself to buy it due to its thinness in comparison to many of th
e other books on the list. Therefore I am happy to have been able to find it online, especially as I did enjoy it and am glad to have been afforded a free fulfillment of entertainment in my time of dire need (I am at the poorest I have ever been in my entire life. The times are not lending themselves very well to the youth in terms of being able to claim these years as the best of our lives).

I think penning a boy named Zachary as Zooey to be quite charming and fitting of his East-Coastian academically high-brow nature. I did, however, have an erroneous pre-conception that the stories were about two girls, and therefore had to keep reminding myself that Zooey was the brother.

"Franny"-the first story-reminded me of Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants in its style and tone, which I have a certain fondness for that I have no idea wherefore (perhaps for its ability to unsettle me? Anyway, I do love me a short story without a visible plot. I used to yearn to write in such a way as that story while I had short story classes in college, in the face of a teacher who adamantly preached otherwise). This first story actually had me missing university (mind you, not college, as I attended art school and not a real university), but in the sort of way that I was missing experiences that I never actually had. Strange, really, because I was feeling like I actually did have those memories. I do find it interesting though how vividly the story leaves an impression of pregnancy. I read a few criticisms of the work after I was through and they all shared that feeling with me, which I find queer.

I like both parts, but emotionally, "Zooey" was a bit more captivating. Stronger dialogue and deeper revelations. I think Salinger successfully illustrates familial love and personal uncertainties here, in the way of young people. Franny goes from being a sort of annoyingly juvenile young person, to a snotty well-to-do student, to a relatable young person contemplating her values. I encourage this read wholeheartedly.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

"It's pleasant sometimes to detain a holiday midnight for a while,"

said Woland.

I've finished The Master and Margarita (translation by Mirra Ginsburg), which proved itself to be one of the leisurely activities that I looked forward to during my downtime, as I have gotten a bit busier than I had been. Bulgakov's Satan is a rather charming and cultivated gentleman, who is more readable as human than any others of his sort I've ever come across. The reader becomes unassumingly attached to the evil group, and it is a wonder that though Woland and his crew's inner feelings are never mentioned, they carry more depth than any of the other sympathetic characters (though another part of it may be that I am terrible with names and had a hard time connecting with, let alone keeping straight the many long Russian names that were introduced).

I have to share, as it won my heart over ultimately, my favorite excerpt of the book;
"The tom, covered with dust and standing on his hind legs, was in the meantime bowing to Margarita. Now he had a white evening bow tie around his neck; a ladies' mother-of-pearl opera glass dangled from a ribbon on his chest. Besides, his whiskers were gilded
"What's this now?" cried Woland. "Why did you gild your whiskers? And why the devil do you need a tie if you have no trousers?"
"A cat isn't supposed to wear trousers, Messire," the tom answered with great dignity. "You will tell me to put on boots next!...But have you ever seen anyone at a ball without a tie? I don't intend to make myself a laughing stock and risk being kicked out!..."

A cat with gilded whiskers, imagine. How darling. And yes, I am a child for being amused so by that.

In short, the novel lives in the realm of the fantastic. I cannot say that I got all that I should have from it based on my frequent confusion, which renders this reading somewhat useless. I definitely need to go back and read it again in between some other readings to grasp its full merit, and so I will only really comment on its blatant surrealism, and my appreciation for its success in depicting an antagonist as both protagonist in the minds of the reader, as well as one that is emotionally favored.

It is also necessary for me to acknowledge my despair at the closing of Borders. Oh it is like my childhood love dissipating. Heartbreak. If it means a step toward the death of paper books it is a very sad thing indeed.

Next on the agenda, #256. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Another book that was charitably given to me.

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Working my way through historical Europe

I must admit that after writing that last post, my appreciation for A Tale of Two Cities improved rather greatly. The novel ended on a much more personable attitude than I had perceived the rest of the book to be. It was not to the point that I should label this work to be the best of Dickens, but the climactic build was successful, and there was enough drama (and care in the reader) to cause for the typical cheers and heartbreaking for appropriate moments. How poetic for Miss. Pross to lose her hearing, and for Carton to die blissfully as the young couple whom he saved is innocent in their oblivion.
My copy of this book was afterworded by Stephen Koch. I did not much agree with his points (he stressed sexuality and rape to a point which I found annoying especially). I know that one must speak with boldness and confidence in writing such a thing, but his tone somehow seemed arrogant and absurd. Mr. Koch claims that the modern reader cannot appreciate Lucie in the way that she was intended -- I do not agree with this at all. A reader, in this day, who is literate enough to grasp the madonnas of yesteryear are educated enough, I think, to understand exactly what she is; her naivety and virtue are not borne of simplicity, but as a physical imagining of purity. Obviously. And I think that it was a strength of Dickens', with just a small glimmer, to introduce the young girl at the gallows to have just as much if not more courageous strength in purity and character/emotion than the heroine. I am, however, a big fan of the name "Lucie". How precious and cute in its spelling.

Anyway, speaking of supporting literature, I have also just finished Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky), which was given to me from the beau as a birthday gift. This translator duo is amazing. Unlike my experience with Koch's writing, I hung on to almost every word in the foreward for Notes with a wonder similar to what I feel for the foreward in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Translation is an art, as I've come to learn, and Pevear and Volokhonsky do it with finesse and respect. They explain their strenuously particular word choice in comparison to other translations, and this is a dire importance. The folks know what they're doing, and it is appreciated so that I as the reader can get the full value and meaning of the work (or as close to it as possible) without learning another language -- though I'd love to. They write beautifully themselves, aside from this as well; "In fact, we do not really see [the author], we only hear him, and not through anything so respectable as a window, but through a crack in the floorboards". Superb.

The book itself, is the isolated melancholy of a solitary man typical of Dostoevsky. His self-inflicted torture is hard to read at times, with little sympathy being afforded to the speaker. A ray of possibility of escape from this is brought with Liza (whom I cannot help but to imagine as Marion Cotillard, though I know that it's inaccurate), but she too is quickly gotten rid of, disappointingly, and the work ends somewhat abruptly...but also fitting of the hopelessness of the character. I appreciate the simplicity of this work -- the narration seems honest, and makes me wonder about Dotoevsky's own mentality, though it seems that these pessimistic tones are more reflective of the people who interested him rather than he himself. Taking Notes more as a train of thought than as a story, I enjoyed it as something between a character study and a release of thought/ideas and point of view.

Next up is another Russian novelist (also a part of the birthday gift previously mentioned): The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. My Lithuanian boyfriend seems to favor the eastern european regions.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The past few months

I regret to confess that I have been holding off on updating my progress of the List -- mostly from laziness -- for the past month and a half, with no excuses.

In fact, I finished "Never Let Me Go" quite a while ago, and very quickly, and was putting off writing about it until I had finished my current endeavor of "A Tale of Two Cities" because of the speed with which I had read through it. This obviously proved to be a mistake, as the latter has been a laborious read for me that seems never-ending.

I will have to apologize for my glossed over account of this novel, as I have most likely forgotten any slightly-profound input I could have acquired during my reading it. Anyway, I was excited to read "Never", as I am very limited in my Japanese literature (if it can be lumped there, since he is technically a British author), and have heard such great things. I will have to say though, that I was disappointed, and not too taken with Ishiguro's novel. I found it rather dull and incredibly predictable. I am not the biggest fan of romantic literature, but I had begun the work thinking that it would outdo that genre. The characters seemed too juvenile, despite the plot of their sheltered lives, and I honestly felt no deep emotion for the characters whatsoever. There were a number of scenes with potential of being powerful, I think, but Ishiguro did not build and end them in the way I would have liked, rather letting them fizzle out. For example, Tommy's drawings seemed interesting, but were handled very immaturely, as the subject was illustrated without the intricacies that the drawings were supposed to hold. Interest in the artwork, that was supposed to be beautiful, was quickly lost. The same goes for Ruth's encounter with her "possible".
The adults were the most intriguing part of the novel, and I enjoyed the memory moments that introduced them, and shed light on fragments of their tormented psyche -- perhaps Ishiguro's talents lie in writing in the adult person, and not as an adolescent's. I think that I rather liked the ending for its simplicity, but again, I really don't even remember, so that must prove how forgettable this read was for me (even despite my poor memory).

And as for "A Tale of Two Cities"; I am not at all experiencing the favor I had for Dickens' "Great Expectations" in this work. I feel like I've been reading this for so long and still I am not done. In fact, I often fall asleep to it (though I do not think it is worthy of labeling this title as a snooze-fest, it is just something that ends up happening). I admit, this novel is much more mature and sophisticated than "Great Expectations", but what I yearn for in a book is depth in personality and character development, not edge. I cannot deny the power behind Dickens' writing -- his mastery of drama is artfully elegant, and he blends historical references and feelings with narrative rather well, but it just doesn't seem enough to keep me ultimately engaged. Perhaps my opinion will change when I actually finish. Only 43 pages to go.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Wishing for someone to endow me with great sums of money

Damn me for not aiding convicts in graveyards at a young age. What was I doing instead? Playing with stuffed animals? Mistake. Maybe then I would have been rich by now. Not to mention, a respectable lady.

I enjoyed Great Expectations very much, and thought it rather darkly compelling in a sunlit way (if that is to be taken with the mindset that I am a fan of American gothic) with the misshapen faces in Jaggers' office (as well as Jaggers himself, and Ms. Havisham too) serving as the centerpoint for such moods.

I really honestly like most of the characters in this story. Favorite = Wemmick. Runner up = Herbert. Obviously. These characters are so fleshed out and amiable that one cannot help but to love them dearly. The working up to Wopsle's wedding was basically the cutest thing to ever happen (Halloa!).
Pumblechook, I disliked immensely, in not a hateful way, but more of an annoyance in a way that in the moments where he was introduced into the text, I was hurriedly reading waiting for him to take leave. He is like that annoying fly buzzing around your head that you want to ignore but simultaneously irritates you to the point of outrage until you cannot leave it alone (and must act out on, as Pip does). Estella, too, I could not grow to like as she was a very flat character, dismissible herself -- in just the way that she could not take to any man, I found no fondness for her.

I was not pleased with the ending, which seemed faded and like an afterthought. The version I was reading held Dickens' original ending without a marriage, and though I understand that the latter was frowned upon, I would have to say that the original is not much better. To spoil such a wonderful novel as the rest of it proved to be with such a quick end was a discredit, I think, mostly because Dickens' ability to end romantically was prevalent in other chapters: "At about six o'clock of the morning therefore, I leaned over her and touched her lips with mine, just as they said, not stopping for being touched, 'Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her.'" (Chapter XLIX), as well as the chapter containing Provis' death.

Speaking of romanticism, I finally cracked open J.S. Foer's very expensive paperback. Fragile to read, as the pages were often tangled upon themselves, but interesting to look at. The narration was poetic in a way that Foer is a master at, but the afterword, to me, was the more compelling. This man is a sensitive genius, I swear it, and I love everything he has to say through prose. His soul is beautiful, and he makes being Jewish a profoundly poetic thing. And he should rightly be very proud.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

From Killick-Claw to London


Finished Annie Proulx's The Shipping News (#133) yesterday. I really enjoyed this one; duly deserving of all its pomp and fanfare of awards and titles. What a pleasant read: subtle plot, complex and realistically human emotions, a fine balance of fantasy and reality, and thoughtful humor. Quoyle, the protagonist, is simultaneously tragically pitiful and yet endearing and surprisingly lovable (the fact that he is such a good father melts the heart), and there is a tenderness in Bunny that is very maturely drawn.

This is a book that makes me glad for text - I would not ever want to see this novel in its movie form. I can picture Quoyle and Wavey, but harbor not an ounce of desire to see them as a real-life entity represented by actors. They are like beautiful dreams or paintings in my head, sharp yet blurred at the same time in a complex way that I wish to remain so.

I have great respect for Proulx. Her imagery (and therefore, her imagination) is so vibrantly fresh and unconventional. Take this example, in Chapter 7 (The Gammy Bird); "...the wall behind him covered with oilcloth the color of insect wings. His face: wood engraved with fanned lines...Bushy eyebrows, a roach of hair the color of an antique watch". The book's end, is my favorite. How gracefully she managed it: "For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light...it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery".


So on my see-saw between eras, I now return back to the 1800s, with Dickens' Great Expectations. I am hoping that The Shipping News has started a trend, tunneling out of the darker, more pessimistically mooded stories, but considering the context of this book centering around an orphan, I am not exactly confident that it will be so. I should, also, probably know more about classics such as these already, but I will throw in the towel and acknowledge that I am a complete n00b to many literary classics. But hey, that's what I'm working on, by reading through this list, right?

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Psychotic Two-Dimensional Characters Make Nami An Irate Girl

It's unfair to say that I gave Mr. Palahniuk a fair chance, having gone into this with a preset distaste for his writing. But honestly, he could have proved me wrong, delivering something substantial and interesting...albeit the "edgy" tone which is so common to him, and which I dislike (though can appreciate through my prejudice in other writers).

Palahniuk is compared to Vonnegut? I don't know about that. I rather think that he is a cliché and that he tries too hard to be crude in order to be cool - which, he doesn't accomplish well. Sex, grit, and insanity? Typical. Try to be a little more creative, please. First chapter was so overdone it was painful; calling the main character as an innocent child an array of bastardizing and profane adjectives is not new, interesting, or funny - it's just sad, because there is less respect that I can give C.P. for what he's doing. It isn't style, it's just a lack of talent in being able to make a weighted plot. I didn't give two shits about a single one of the characters in this book - and not in the way that the author would have liked. This only means that he doesn't know how to sculpt a character...to make them three dimensional, and actually human. And the excessive use of lists is just plain annoying. I was constantly begging for the last page to come.

It may not have been a wise decision, on my part, to be simultaneously reading two books about psychotic mothers either (not that I planned it this way), as I am now more than halfway through The Memory Palace. But that may be the problem in my aversion to these books; I don't like either, which is making my dissatisfaction at the both of them much greater than had I taken either of them alone.

Bartok's book isn't bad. In fact, her interests in topic and style are very similar to mine. What's bothersome, is the self-pity. On top of that, is the TERRIBLE editing, which I can't forgive. The spelling errors/typos are too numerous to go unnoticed (and although it is her first novel, it is not her first book). And on top of that, I don't like her art, which she has managed to not-so-nonchalantly scatter throughout the work. I envy her life (minus the schizophrenic mother): teaching at the Field Museum, going to Europe, becoming a somewhat successful artist, etc etc. She went to SAIC like me, and managed to do things that I only dream of doing (how the hell did she even get these gigs, I would like to know) and yet her art is not that good. Why!? Tell me, what the hell is it that my friends and I, post grad, are all doing wrong that this person can be as successful as she is? If it is just that she is exploiting her rough family life, then she will have to leave that heartache she's sparing for herself in due to her mother behind, as there are plenty of us with happy pasts who are struggling. The balance seems at this point, somewhat leveled. This all just comes down to bottom line, SOMEONE HIRE ME.

Not quite sure yet which book is next to continue on with the list, but it will be interesting to see where my mind will wander next in course of whatever it may be.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Having Been to the Galleys and Back

At an almost completely four month stint of living alongside Jean Valjean/M. Fauchlevant/M. Madeleine/etc etc, I have finally reached the end of the road. It was a very tragic and divine parting of ways, with the final scene depicted in the vein of a Chiaroscuro painting.

Hugo's characters are incredibly black and white. It is easy to hate the coal-hearted villains, but it was much more difficult for me to swallow the naivety and carelessness of the innocent (especially in Cosette, after her marriage - so Audrey Hepburn of her to be so blinded by love as to throw all other, more crushingly important and urgent matters out of mind). Even so, you cannot help but to love and admire them, and in the end, it is all resolved in the most pleasant of ways anyway, which is good, as I would not have liked to have ended a novel such as this on some kind of open ended or doomed situation, as modern writing may encourage. I don't mind that the characters are ideals, or that they are sometimes two-dimensional. I love Jean Valjean for his innate goodness, Fantine for her will, and Cosette for her innocence (Marius, on the other hand, was rather forgettable and lackluster...he is good, but his purity is unconvincingly adolescent).

The book for me was a welcome cliche of an escape. For moments at a time, I was not on the el on the way to a dead-end job at the Marriott, nor was I pondering all of the failures in my current state of affairs. It was, possibly for the first time (at least, in terms of causing me to think about it as it happened), that experience that people always describe reading as; an experience removed from reality, allowing me access to not so much actions and setting, but direct, weighted emotions that tied my real anxieties and happinesses in some kind of moving, full-circle way. To intermittently be Jean Valjean for four months was somewhat of a blessing, at this point in my life.

And now, time for me to make my way onward as other literary hero(in)es. Seeing as I have some sort of pattern going with classics, to (more) modern, and so forth, I will come back to an era closer to today. One of my best friends gifted to me numero quarante-huit, Choke by Chuck Palahniuk this past December (which, I am grateful for, as I do not have favorable ideas of him, and therefore would not have been happy to purchase the book myself), so I figure now is as good a time as any to test my thoughts on this author. Can I just say that Lullaby was atrocious, and almost unreadable? Disgusted. Still, I will give him another shot, as I have heard some good things about Choke (whether or not I trust their literary merit is up for grabs). I am expecting this read to go extremely quickly, by standards of his writing style.

On a side note, I have recently also acquired (among other books on the list, which will not be named until it is their turn to be read) The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok based off of an interesting review I read in some women's magazine I fail to remember now, as well as Jonathan Safran Foer (LOOOOVE!!!)'s Tree of Codes, a rendering/artistic take on Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles (which I also intend on reading, once I can get my hands on it). I must confess I spent an absurd amount of money on the Safran Foer book, as it is a first edition, and am still hesitant to unwrap its original wrapping as if it were something holy. I will be making time to read these in between 1001 list projects.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

#873


Les Miserables! Victor Hugo! 829 pages, abridged! Vive la France! and...GO!

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Chance Happenings and the Moon

Finished Moon Palace just now. Definitely my favorite of the lot, so far; I'm fond of the preposterousness of chance happenings worked through the plot, with its obvious scatterings of motif a la lune. And a cliffhanger ending too? Come on, cheese factor off the charts, but I'm eating it up.

On a side note, since we all know my obsession with Nathaniel Hawthorne, at one point in the novel (page 144 in this copy to be exact), a minor, untalented writer character is mentioned as the son of the Great. Brownie points for a good shout out with bad irony.

And then on page 122, a few things I had highlighted, as they seemed profound at the time of reading:
"The world enters us through our eyes, but we cannot make sense of it until it descends into our mouths".

and

"More to the point, the same brick was never really the same".

How philosophically artistic.

Finally, the book ends in a full moon behind Fogg. Can I just say that tomorrow is the full moon? At least, according to my new 2011 calendar.

On to further business, I have acquired a handful of new books (thanks to Christmas, and other CHANCE happenings that dropped Les Mis into my fateful hands) from the List to progress my reading for at least another couple months. I will be well-read in no time.