Just finished The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. It's the opening salvo to what would become a pervasive flood of Gothic literature in the English cannon for the next hundred years. More of a novella than anything at its thirty odd thousand words, but an interesting piece of history nonetheless. It's also the only piece I've read that starts off with a prince getting crushed by a giant, inexplicable helmet. It isn't particularly well written because it is one of the early examples of novels in the English language, so you have to give it room for some industry standards that just didn't exist at the time. The paragraphs involving multiple people speaking aren't broken up, for example. This is very difficult to read this way, so I suggest reading it on Project Gutenberg for free if you get the chance. It's manually separated there and much more accessible. There's also an insane amount of emdashes covering the work, which are very distracting. Otranto is maddening in its treatment of characters as well. The women are all basically wooden from the start. They stay irritatingly true to their filial and marital relationships, even though they are so far gone that divorces are occurring in a strange sort of accepted state and daughters are just tossed around as bargaining chips. Somewhat true to the day being depicted, but a bit just too far off the deep end of believability. Then there's this emotional conversation between the three main women that is just silly. All sorts of fainting and holding each other up. Walpole trying to write women is just over the top. He does, however, write some of the men quite well. Manfred is a very believable villain and actually the most dynamic of them all. He's the core of the drama and his bouts of fury are kind of exciting because you don't know what madness he will decide that irrevocably changes the environment around him. Most of the novel, unfortunately, is telling and big gasping moments (or they are intended to be) that would have shocked some readers of the day, but ultimately fall pretty flat in this day and age where we are numb to it. It's an interesting bit of Gothic history, but if you're reading it as a fun and relaxing beach read, I would suggest something else. Later this week I'm starting the first horror novel in the English language: Matthew Lewis' The Monk. I've heard it's pretty wild and grotesque, despite its age. Exciting for me.
Manifold Space by Stephen Baxter. Pretty good. Standard sci-fi fare in the vein of Asimov and Clarke, complete with zero characterization, which is fine since the book doesn't pretend to care a whit about its characters.
Anyone tackle 1Q84 by Murakami? Thoughts? Slow burn but I'm certainly intrigued and Murakami's writing speaks (reads?) for itself.
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. Picked it up at B&N expecting dry academia but it's interesting from both a reader's and a writer's standpoints, and a hoot to boot. Re: the main character in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon: "...the rain cleanses her of illusions, and the false ideal of beauty. The experience, of course, destroys her, and she soon dies of a broken heart and overwatering."
I finished Matthew Lewis' The Monk yesterday and I have to say, despite its age, it is phenomenal. It is the first horror novel written in the English language, and yetit feels like a great one still, even after pioneering the off-shoot genre. The book comes straight out of British fear of Enlightenment related revolution, much like was happening in France at the time. That brings with it a multitude of Anti-Catholoc and Anti-Enlightenment digressions, as well as on overall negative outlook. It's visceral, rather fast paced, and incredibly well written. Where Radcliffe tends to fail in my eyes for building up terror and then dropping it to explained supernatural, Lewis instead drives the scene forward into its horrid realization. Its never really gratuitous in its violence or depravity, but it gets there. What it is is convincing. I believe the world he creates there and understand it. The plot is full of storylines within the main tale whichactually support or build up the main narrative nicely. Everything feels naturally conveyed and less artful. The writing is nearly modern at times, using stylistic stratagems I havent seen in most any other work of the time. It's worth the twelve hour read.
So far this year I've read: - Animal Farm by George Orwelll - 1984 by George Orwell - A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - Flashman's Lady by George McDonald Fraser - The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins I'm now reading Dragonfly in Amber by Diane Gabaldon and I've got How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie sitting in my bathroom being read whenever I'm doing my business. I'm definitely on track for my book-a-month goal.
I'm about half way through A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin. I've been reading it for 2 weeks now. It's well-written, but it's very wordy!
Geared up to finish the Wastelands collection this morning, and then I'll stare at the shelf for what to read next. I ordered two books about the battle of Ardennes last night, but I might start one of my WWI books while waiting for them to arrive.
I'm reading a book about storm chasers right now, something my brother did back in the seventies and eighties when he was a meteorology student in college and later as a volunteer reporter for the weather service. Now that he's retired, I wonder if he'll climb back in the truck and go looking for tornadoes.
I vaguely remember the series and suspect I’d appreciate it far more now than I did when it originally aired. I’ve developed a real soft spot for the depiction of the upper classes. I love the idea and notion of friends getting together for a summer weekend back in the 1920s, held at some huge stately home in 300 acres of land... A game of croquet followed by tea and crumpets...
it's all that and if you want city life on the same lines Vile Bodies....Bridesmaid is just as much about religion..i find Waugh books either terribly good or poor.....
So I spent some time reading an odd portion of literary history this week: the Gothic chapbook. For those who have never seen them, they're sort of like short stories or novellas, but are mostly comprised of highly redacted variations of existing novels. This was made so readers such as the lower middle class could afford to read book instead of miss out on the full multivolume novels that were around at the time. Anyways, I took on a few and though they aren't that well written, they are rather interesting. They're basically little gloomy soap operas in literary history. They hit all the action and drama, leaving out most of the fluffy stuff or heavy description. So anyways, I think my favorite out of the three I read was Monster Made By Man which is, naturally, a Frankenstein rip off. Well, actually, its a rip of a play of the same name which is a rip of Shelley's classic. But in any case, it really captures the cinematic style that we all know of the monster in the films. Interesting stuff and quick to read. Little literary mushrooms.
It's probably already on your list but Melmoth the Wanderer is also great, though pretty messy (I think of it as the Moby Dick of gothic novels). The anti-Catholic polemics get really ratcheted up in that one too, to pretty comical levels (Charles Maturin was a priest of the protestant Church of Ireland).
my audio for Dark Archive expired while I was at the end of it.... I have to way "12 weeks" for it to become available again (the word spread about this book now EVERYone and their mother wants to read/listen to it, it seems.... I think I'll jump back on the Fiction wagon and read The Five Wounds by Kristin Valdez Quade, and Smoke Bitten by Patricia Brigs (i've had it on my shelf for a while now)
I tried reading The Monk a few years ago, but it seemed like such a pretext for Roman Catholic bashing that I gave it up. Ironic, because my own beliefs are more in line with those of the C of E. That said, Hector Berlioz considered writing an opera on the novel, and I'm sorry he never was in the financial position to do it. And who knows, I might try reading it again.
Just downloaded Oil! by Sinclair Lewis, the basis for There Will Be Blood. Just a few pages in, but so far I'm loving it. It's in 2nd person, well parts of it are. it switches between calling the MC the boy and you. Very strange, and it has a soaring literary feel to it. And as most books were in days bygone, it's almost all telling, but doesn't come across as passive or filtered, but rather it's like a stream-of-consciousness trip through the kid's mind. Either the kid grows up to be Daniel Plainview or he's HW—Plainview's son, I can't tell yet.
Oil! and The Jungle are both books I have on my very long list to read. They both have been there for like ten plus years. I think I'll try to clear them off as soon as this degree is over.
Turns out the dad is the Oilman, called Daniel Plainview in the movie, but their names are different in the book. The boy went by Bunny when he was a child and Bun now. Often when the second person is used it's in the theoretical (if that's what it's called), like 'It's the kind of road where you get your speed up to 50 and, if no cars are approaching in the other direction, you drive right down the middle.' But sometimes he's definitely referring to the boy as you. I've never seen a book switch randomly between third and second person like this, and yet somehow he makes it work. This calls for some study. The story is very different from There Will Be Blood. The movie started before the child was born, showing the growth of Plainview's oil operation from its humble beginnings. Here that's long in the past, the boy is already 13.
It's been years since I last read it, so I'd have to reread it again to address your specific questions, but the White People is one of my very favorite weird stories. The Green Book is what makes it great- I agree the introduction and epilogue with the two gentlemen chatting about the nature of evil are a bit tedious. The key thing about the Green Book is that there are meant to be enormous gaps in what is being said- the girl is not giving a blow by blow account but making notes to herself, sometimes in terms she alone comprehends, about her experiences, which provide only hints to the reader of a broader terrifying reality. Have you read other of Machen's stories? You might appreciate the White People more if you are more acquainted with his general style and outlook. "The Shining Pyramid," "The Inmost Light," "The Novel of the Black Seal", and, of course, "The Great God Pan" are all great and maybe a little more accessible than the White People.
I finished reading Deception Point by Dan Brown. Previously finished reading the books in the Robert Langdon series that includes Origin and Angels and Demons. Deception Point is one of his stand-alone novels and it was a satisfying read. If you want a book that has you in suspense from the first page, that would be the one. I recommend it to anyone who wants to read a book that holds you in suspense the whole way through. The outcome of the story was satisfying if not a little average. But this book is a page-turner nevertheless.
Just finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, what a mind bending book that was. They could make a pretty good movie from the Phaedrus story line, but that would leave so much of the book out...
