Books: 2008

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Faust by Johann von Goethe
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin
Critical Literacy/Critical Teaching by Dozier, Johnston, and Rogers*
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Dubliners by James Joyce
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier
Smith of Wootton Major / Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien
Quantity and Quality in Social Research by Alan Bryman*

Next: Middlemarch by George Eliot
(But first some nonfiction)
*Nonfiction

Young Adult Fiction

I recently read three young adult novels: Wicked Lovely, Elijah of Buxton, and I am the Cheese. I wasn't going to add them to my list of books read since none is particularly challenging. However, they are all full-length novels, and the shortest among them -- Cheese -- was also the best and most "literary". They aren't books I would normally pick up and read, but since they were also on the list of summer reading books for school, I figured I should be familiar with them. Elijah (written by Christopher Paul Curtis) was like the Canadian version of a poor man's Huckleberry Finn, though the second half was much better than the first, unlike the Twain novel, which got worse as it went along. The book is written in dialect, but it's not as intense a dialect as Huck Finn. The story isn't nearly as interesting, either. It's a coming-of-age story of a free-born black boy (about eleven years old) who lives in Buxton, Canada, in the mid-nineteenth century (antebellum). It's a good story for students to have read before tackling Huck Finn because it lends itself to many comparisons, but I wouldn't assign it to them as it's rather slow-moving. The ending is a bit dissatisfying as well.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr was better, but still only middling. Now this is going to sound sexist, but I'll comment anyway. It seems that the woman who wrote the book doesn't understand what women really like in guys, nor does she have any understanding of guys in general. The main male love interest is the type of guy who girls think they would like but in reality would quickly lose interest in: popular and self-assured but not arrogant, he really listens to her and supports her, he's strong but understanding, selfless, he likes to cook and keeps a clean house, he's independent but not afraid to commit to her, he doesn't push her romantically and is happy to go at her pace, he's jealous but not overly so, he wants to be friends and more-than-friends with her, he's self-sacrificing, and he isn't at all bothered when she doesn't want to sleep with him. In short, he's a metrosexual artificially-constructed pseudo-rebel and totally unbelievable, although I could certainly picture pubescent girls swooning over him. The author just can't write males. In fact, the main male rival for the protagonist's affections is almost immediately won over by Keenan's charm. The ending of the novel was stupid and the author refused to make any choices. None of the characters suffered significant and permanent loss, nor did they seem to change significantly. I would not have been surprised to find out that the book was actually written by a thirteen-year-old girl. The book did have some interesting scenes, but overall it was so slow-moving that I suspect the author dragged things out from a lack of ideas. I can see the appeal to young (female) readers, but I don't think many young males would like it.

I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier was excellent. Typical Cormier, which is to say unflinching, compelling, interesting story, dramatically tense. It's a difficult book to read, since the reader is forced to put a lot of pieces together, though Cormier gives a lot of help at the end of the book. The description is cliche at times and minimal. It moves forward steadily (the whole book is only 214 pages) and was certainly the best-paced novel of the three. Talk about making tough choices. Cormier's loyalty is to the story, not the characters (unlike Marr), and his ending supports that philosophy. I enjoyed The Chocolate War, though the ending was tough to swallow, and this novel did not disappoint either. This would have been a good novel to teach in school, since it was challenging and had many opportunities for discussion and making predictions. The novel unfolded like an origami, eventually bringing the reader full-circle.

All-in-all, I'm glad I read these. As an English teacher, it's important to connect with adolescent fiction, and it's satisfying to be able to chug three novels in a week, as opposed to my ten-day excursion on the Pequod, or the 100 hours of solitude I was forced to spend with Marquez's masterpiece.

Moby-Dick

This book would probably make my Top Five list, never mind my Top Ten. I can see why it's so well-considered among scholars. Brilliant descriptions, mesmerizing plot, captivating characters, scintillating prose, and memorable scenes. Loved it, loved it, loved it! I'll definitely read this one again, probably next summer.

I had heard about the "hundreds" of pages of descriptions about whales and whaling, and I was ambivalent about them. I tend to enjoy that sort of detail, but many people are turned off by those sections. I was about halfway through the book, still looking for those endless chapters of boredom, when I realized that I had been reading them all along. I had been enjoying them so much that I didn't realize I was "supposed" to be bored by them. (Except the one entitled "Cetology". I was pretty bored by that one.) I found the technical discussions fascinating and useful. I would have appreciated some additional ones about boats, however. (I don't know a top-gallant sail from a forecastle.) The incredible quantity of references, mostly Biblical, was most impressive. I'm fairly literate, but I didn't recognize half of Melville's allusions, except that they came from the Bible and classical literature, history, and mythology.

The characters were great: Ishmael, Queequeg, Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, and of course, Ahab. I was disappointed by Ahab, though. Found him a bit too one-dimensional (I guess he was supposed to be). Still, I would have liked more background on him. Melville seemed more intent on giving information about whaling and whales than about providing character background. I found this refreshing (if I can say that a 150-year-old book is "refreshing") because of the modern novelist's habit of providing too much character background (c.f. Stephen King), a tendency I find over-indulgent. Queequeg was easily my favorite character. From his bravery at saving Tashtego, to his ever-present optimism and his choice to not die when he was sick (talk about opposing the theme of Fate!), I enjoyed reading about him the most.

I thought the battles with Moby Dick were too fast and some of the descriptions difficult to follow, but there were some great scenes: Moby Dick rising quickly from the depths to bite Ahab's boat in half, surfacing beneath Ahab's boat, the Parsee lashed to Moby Dick's back, and the exciting (okay, symbolically-heavy handed) ending. (I'll probably re-read the final three chapters after the novel has "settled". I was a bit tired from having read the final hundred pages in one morning; I'd like to enjoy the chases again when I'm fresh.) Speaking of which, when I first saw "Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan" I was particularly impressed by Khan's curse to Kirk: "From hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee." I remember thinking, "That sounds like an allusion." As I was reading "Moby Dick," I thought, "This is probably the book from which Khan's quote was taken. It would be perfect." I figured it would occur -- if it did at all -- when Ahab encountered Moby Dick, so I kept an eye out for it. But I didn't see it, didn't see it, didn't see it, and ultimately I was almost disappointed. Almost. Best line of the book.

I feel like I should talk about themes, but there simply isn't room here. Nor do I have the time.

Final comments: A profound book. Ahab is appropriately larger than life, although I found Wolf Larsen to be more intimidating as a captain. The prose is muscular but dense at times. The novel resonates like nobody's business. I'm glad I waited as long as I did to read it; I needed all the seasoning I could get to enjoy it. I hope I'll be able to teach the novel some day.

Note:  It is now five years later, and I have had the chance to use Moby-Dick in my Advanced Placement Language and Composition class three times.  The first time did not go over that well, as most of the students (to my later disappointment) did not read the book.  The next two groups mostly did (I think).  The final group (2012-13) was academically better prepared for the task and more intellectually curious, so I'm pretty confident they read it.  Many of the students even said they enjoyed it.  I use the book to help the students grapple with archaic prose, and the novel is well-suited to do that.  I also want to share with them my love of the novel.  I recognize that the book is massive, so I edited the book down for them, cutting out about 1/3 of the novel.  I hope some of them go back and read the whole thing, and I know that several this past year did accomplish that task.  I am proud of those who completed it as well as those who even attempted it.
-MF

The Sun Also Rises

This is my third Hemingway, though I read The Old Man and the Sea quite a long time ago. I enjoyed this one, though not as much as A Farewell to Arms. Seemed less polished overall--the prose, I mean. I liked the characters: they seemed realistic and compelling. The fiesta section of Part 2 was great, and I found myself eagerly anticipating the descriptions of the bull-fights. Parts dragged, but it was a quick read and I liked it. Not a favorite, though. I figure if I read one more--For Whom the Bell Tolls--I can allow myself an informed opinion of him as a writer.

Faust

Impressive work! Reminded me of Paradise Lost, probably because of the religious theme. Difficult to read at times, but worthwhile. Before reading this, I had been considering the reasons for human existence, and I was pretty pleased with myself when I came up with "striving." I figured that humans--and all life on the planet, in fact--were put here to strive and work and improve themselves as individuals (sorry Darwin!). I thought I had something really original there, until I realized that Goethe had figured out pretty much the same thing a few hundred years ago. Whatever. At least I had the same thought as Germany's great uber-literati.

Next...

I am reluctant to do this, but I will have to put aside much of my reading for enjoyment in favor of professional texts. I am going to turn more to nonfiction as I prepare for my next (and possibly last) major academic endeavor which I anticipate will take much of my free time for the next few years. I will still continue to read, but not nearly at the same pace I have been doing for the past couple years. Ah, well. I have to prepare myself for more sacrifices in the future (e.g., fiction, poetry, and NaNoWriMo). I am sure it will be worthwhile, though.

The Grapes of Wrath

Blew me away! I had not been looking forward to this novel. For some reason, I thought it would be boring or difficult to read. It was neither. The story and characters were so compelling that I couldn't put the book down. I loved the dialect Steinbeck wrote in for much of the book. Too often, even skilled novelists who try to write in dialect either can't get the intonations and speech patterns across accurately/effectively, or they try too hard and end up confusing the reader (as in Wuthering Heights). Steinbeck struck the right balance, and after a while, I found myself reading in an "Okie" accent.

I liked his intermediary chapters which mixed nonfiction with fiction to give the reader a sense of what was happening in the world. Sometimes the Joads fell victim to the worst-case scenarios presented in these chapters; sometimes they avoided them. I found myself looking forward to reading them to see how the Joads would handle them. Clearly, they were meant to foreground some issue or event in the novel, to provide some kind of real-world possibility of what might happen.

The characters were varied and realistic, even as they attempted to illustrate the archetypal migrant farmers. The family dynamic, the politics, the social reality -- all were portrayed vividly in immense complexity. There's so much I could say about this novel, but there just isn't space here for it. Loved Ma for her strength, Tom for his steadfastness, Al for his loyalty despite his urge toward independence, Pa for his work ethic, Uncle John for his self-loathing and guilt, Casy for his back-country philosophy, and the dog for his early flattening on the highway.

Ending was ambiguous, but I'm sure Steinbeck intended it that way. We don't know what happened to Tom, Noah, Al, and the rest of the Joads. I am reluctant to assume the worst, despite the harshness of the impending situation (i.e., three months of unemployment looming and no money cushion) because they had escaped hardships in the past. The final scene in which Rose of Sharon suckles the starving man was a disturbing end to a disturbing book.

The way the family faced adversity was truly inspiring. I don't know where Ma got her strength, but it was there when she (and the family) needed it. One of the most memorable quotes from the novel, and which sums up all that is admirable about the attitude of the Joads, was spoken by "Family-First" Ma as the flood waters are rising, threatening to wash them out of the railroad boxcar in which they are living: "Worse off we get, the more we got to do [for each other]." Amen.

A Farewell to Arms

Well, my first major Hemingway (I don't count The Old Man and the Sea as a "major" work, though it was pretty cool) in my back pocket. Pretty good. More "literary" than I thought. There was a delicacy and an intelligence beneath the surface of the text that I had not expected. Kind of like reading the poet Michael Berry: deceptively complex, touching, and graceful. I was impressed. I can easily see why Hemingway is Berry's favorite author (or one of his favorites). I enjoyed the sparse prose and the inexorable, consistently-paced movement of the plot which I found easy to read and enjoyable. There were several scenes I did not anticipate, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. The unexpected shooting of Aymo, the near-shooting of Frederick, the escape into Switzerland (and his near-capture). I appreciated the atmospherics of the novel as well. The discussion between the two provincially-partisan Swiss guards after the border-crossing as each extols the virtues of his home territory and attempts to convince Frederick and Catherine to visit (with all their money, of course). This novel was quite a change from the dense Victorian prose of Dickens and a startling contrast to the flowing, poetic style of Nabokov. I'm looking forward to The Grapes of Wrath next. This would be an interesting work to read right after having finished Catch-22. Both have similarly cynical (maybe disillusioned?) takes on different wars.

Lolita

I wasn't really looking forward to reading this book. The only other Nabokov book I read, The Defense, was about chess (a metaphor) and wasn't particularly interesting. Perhaps it was my age (early twenties). Perhaps the subject of the book. Who knows? Lolita, on the other hand, was wonderful! The subject was disturbing, to be sure, but the style was poetic and beautiful, and Nabokov did a great job making this pervert simultaneously disgusting and sympathetic. We appreciate the honest portrayal of his emotions, his desire for Lolita, who is herself a spoiled, vicious, unpleasant, self-centered, rude brat. But we also turn away from the actions of this lust-filled pedophile who repeatedly rapes a twelve-year-old then listens, sexually satiated, as she cries in her bedroom. We feel bad for him as he tries to make the best of a sham of a life with Lolita, while trapping her--his sexual slave, literally--in a twisted relationship from which she cannot escape. Masterful!

The book is filled with surprises and interesting twists of the plot. The language is beautifully poetic and sensually imagistic. Sure, it dragged in sections, but overall the writing was easily strong enough to hold the book together. Nabokov constantly reminds us of Humbert's perversion and Lolita's youth throughout the text, just to make sure we are never won over by the haunting and hypnotically poetic prose. I especially like the elliptical references to sexuality incorporated throughout the book. Humbert seems to be disgusted with himself and cannot even bring himself to discuss his lust in the frankest of terms, treating their unions with delicacy and tact. I could not put the book down, finishing it in two days. The only question is, what book on my Top Ten will be replaced by Lolita?

To the Lighthouse

Hmm, interesting novel. It took me a long time to figure out if I was enjoying the novel. I'm happy I read it, certainly. It was an unusual novel, having very little dialogue, little "plot" in the traditional sense, no protagonist, and no main conflict. However, it did portray the sensibilities of several characters, and the fact that it lacked the elements found in traditional novels was appropriate since Woolf was attempting to portray the inner lives of people as closely as she could. Life has no "plot", and what happens inside ourselves--our perceptions of life and each other, and what we make of our experiences--is as important as what happens outside ourselves (i.e., the experiences themselves).

The novel struck me as autobiographical, though I know little about Woolf. I remember reading a brief excerpt from her nonfiction that was used on an AP Language and Composition test one year. In it, she recounted an experience on a boat with her father and brother, a scene which closely mirrored the trip to the lighthouse with Cam, James, and their father. It seemed to me that Cam was supposed to represent Woolf in the novel, although Lily also seemed to share some of her sensibilities as well and was the same age as Woolf when she wrote it. The text was difficult to follow at times, and I found myself drifting off on several occasions, scanning whole paragraphs without really reading them. Although the novel was very short--barely 200 pages--it took me longer to read than I thought it should. The lack of dialogue, the long paragraphs, and the serpentine, complicated syntax was off-putting but still artistically impressive.  I can see how the book can be considered the quintessential Modernist novel. She definitely moved beyond the prose style and novel structure of most other novelists of the time.

This is a novel I'll have to return to eventually.

Dickens

Great Expectations

This is the second Dickens novel I've read, A Tale of Two Cities being the first. The novel was well-polished and fun to read. An awful lot of coincidences, which detracted from the novel's believability, but I didn't really mind since the story was so interesting. I was familiar with much of the plot ahead of time, which allowed me to concentrate on the novel's style and structure. (I think I mentioned in an earlier blog--due to a comment made by fellow literatus Michael Berry--that I seem to focus more on the stylistic and structural elements of a novel than on character or theme.) Although the coincidences were off-putting at times and the novel as a whole had a melodramatic tone, I was able to get past those elements and immerse myself in the language. It was a beautifully-written piece of work: the descriptions, the point of view, the narrative, all were varied yet all flowed seamlessly. I enjoyed reading it more than A Tale of Two Cities, although the latter is a more significant work. (I also read Cities several years ago, so my memory is a bit hazy.)


Oliver Twist

Part of me didn't want to jump into another Dickens novel right away. Two Nineteenth-century novels in a row is kind of like eating at two buffets in one day: a lot of substance, a lot of chewing. I'm glad I did, though. My basis of comparison is much clearer than it had been with A Tale of Two Cities. I can confidently say that Oliver Twist was my least favorite of the three. The prose was slightly more dense, it was much more maudlin, and I didn't care for the sarcasm that pervaded the text. I mean, it was constant. So much so that it became annoying. The title character was surprisingly absent through much of the story, which was okay with me since I didn't care for him in the slightest: The kid was annoyingly pure and incorruptible.  The only part of the story in which he appealed to me was when he actually fought back against Noah Claypole near the beginning. Despite that single scene, Oliver was the least interesting of all the characters. This book also had numerous coincidences--a hallmark of Dickens, apparently--but they seemed to work less well for me than they did in Great Expectations, though this may only be due to the fact that I had endured so many of them and their prevalence in the other works of Dickens made me particularly attentive to them as I read. I didn't know much about the novel, but I was able to predict much of it because of this. I could tell from the less-confident prose and overly-complex conclusion that this was an earlier Dickens. It was okay, but I won't read it again.