This may not be the popular opinion, but is anyone else bored to tears by Cormac McCarthy? The Road was decent, but I think the fact that it was almost novella short helped quite a bit. I'm now a third of the way into Blood Meridian and having serious problems paying attention to this audiobook. There's just no story to it. Things happen, but you wouldn't call them plot points, because there's no overarching plot. Much like in The Road, they wander around and find dead people while random, nameless, non-character people try to kill them. I'll give you that the prose is pretty, but it's usually in a grotesque sort of way, using elaborate language and imagery to describe rotting corpses, gangrene, dying horses and such. What is the point of this book? Seriously. On a brighter note, I took a much needed break from the McCarthy book and listened to The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. It was brilliant. The concept was creative and well executed, and the plot was exciting clear through. After the Mistborn trilogy, it's the second best thing I've heard this year (out of over thirty.) I highly recommend it for fans of high-concept/low-tech sci-fi, something along the lines of a Blake Crouch novel. 4.5 stars.
He's in my top 3 but definitely isn't for everyone. You kind of have to go into it knowing you're going to get bombarded with prose and imagery and not much else. No Country for Old Men is a very notable exception.
I kind of liked The Road but I'd already seen the movie. Tried to read Blood Meridian and just gave up on it. I intensely disliked every single character in it, didn't like the prose style, and, well, it just had nothing appealing to me. Some authors seem to write to win literary awards. John Irving is one, and I somewhat feel that McCarthy is another. So yeah, I feel you.
Intensely disliking every single character in a Macarthy novel is the norm. Started all the way back with Outer Dark, which is simply a miserable little novel. Bleak outlooks on bleak environments, with already downtrodden characters whose lives will get lot worse. You gotta be in the mood to deal with one of those.
I think The Road and No Country for Old Men are the most accessible. For me, The Orchard Keeper was the most difficult read. I had no idea what was going on. I read a chapter breakdown after the fact and was amazed at my own stupidity, haha. Anyway, I'd recommend reading chapter breakdowns live with these type of books because they keep you on track. Read a chapter and then read the notes, then continue. You'll be able to follow better. I'm reading The Count of Monte Cristo right now. What a story! I really liked The Three Musketeers, so it's no surprise that this is of the same quality. I can just imagine reading this as it came out, serialized. I like to imagine guys in cravats, drinking bourbon in smoky parlors, eagerly discussing where they thought the story would go. Or even people borrowing a copy so they could join in too. It's exactly the kind of old book I love.
You read his recent, The Passenger, that came out in December? I can't remember ever reading a book that made me want to weep by chapter 3 because I hadn't had any new Cormac for 15 years, but had me tossing it across the room by the last chapter like, what the fuck was that? I don't want to dig too deep here, but Cormac must be the worst lover in the universe. He can tease better than anyone, but he can't deliver the goods when it counts.
I haven't gotten to that one. Looks like the reviews are divided because it's "strange," and that seems to be a consistent consensus. I'll get to that one eventually but I'm trying desperately to get through classics right now. I figure I can get maybe 100 of them under my belt in the next year or so. That way when I look at my bookshelf I can say that yeah, I've read that whole row of Easton Press. They're not just for show. Right now they're just for show, but I'm getting there . . .
Finished House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski (it's now tied for first in my list of favorite books), started The Shuddering by Ania Ahlborn. I'm reading it with a friend, and I read faster than they do, so I decided to read something else while waiting and accidentally read the entirety of The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides in a couple of hours. I guessed the twist before the book revealed it but I wasn't even a little mad about it because I had such a fun time reading it. Now I have to figure out what book to bring tomorrow for my lunch break because I promised my friend I wouldn't read ahead. I also finished Desolation Angels by Kerouac which brings my total to the year so far to 30, minus a few I didn't write down for lack of considering them on the "official" list. In reality I'm probably closer to 40 books so far, which might not seem like many but I only read 12 last year, so I'm rather pleased with my return to reading.
Excellent! That book was something else. The early chapters where the guys are trying to figure out why the house is just a little bigger on the inside than the outside remind me of an Asimov plot. I mean it could just be a measurement error after all. It would have to be, right? What's smart about it is the modest scale of this profound discovery. It's just a couple of buddies checking out the house, after all. And then of course everything escalates. It really spoke to me because that idea of infinite corridors is a common nightmare of mine. Anyway, that book is excellent dark fiction and I'm glad it didn't disappoint you.
Asimov or Heinlein? I thought I knew what you were referring to at first but the memory I had came up as Heinlein's ----And He Built a Crooked House (link to Wikipedia, not copyrighted material). If there's an Asimov in the same vein I'd love to know about it.
Was in the library looking for some reference work. I browsed the fiction section and came across five titles by Kim Stanley Robinson I had never seen. The fly leaf on one named protagonist Fred Fredericks, the protagonist in one of my favorite all time novellas, Escape From Kathmandu, so I checked it out. Red Moon.
"March" by Geraldine Brooks (★★) "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas (★★★★) "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (★★ 1/2) "Moby-Dick or, the Whale" by Herman Melville (★★★★ 1/2) "Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World." by Jonathan Swift (★★★★) "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck (★★★★★) "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer (★★★★) "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London (★★★★ 1/2) "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (★★★★ 1/2) "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway (★★★) "The Fatal Eggs" by Mikhail Bulgakov (★★★ 1/2) "Rabbit, Run" by John Updike (★★★★★) I continue my 2023 lit-flex by reading titles which I should already know. For me, a classic should be an easy 4 stars with the fifth more of a bonus for personal preference. The book has earned its place. Shouldn't it be better than average? A 3-star classic is somewhat weak. A 2-star is a disaster. That's just what the rating is expected to be. I still decide honestly, but I'm expecting at least a 4 because of the significance of the book. ----------- "March" by Geraldine Brooks (★★) (Pulitzer winner, 2006.) Move over Jesus, cause there's a new Messiah in town. His name is March. Robert March. He takes his alcohol-free Shirley Temple shaken, not stirred. He's here to preach to the armies of the Northern forces during the American Civil War and teach the freed slaves to read/write. He's a pacifist, vegetarian (super-vegan? The wool and manure belong to the animals, you anthrocentric thief!), collectivist, anti-capitalist, environmentalist, colorblind lothario. You say that's strange for this time period? Why, yes. He seems more like a product of the modern day, a philosophical time traveler, but apparently his inspiration really did exist. (The original author's father.) The book reads like chick-lit. So many of the constructions are amateurish. I can't believe it was the best book of the year . . . While not my least favorite Pulitzer, it seems strangely undeserving. Fan fiction has no place here. Did I mention that this is "Little Women" fan-fic? I hope you don't care for those characters. They're about to be mistreated. "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas (★★★★) Edmund Dante is falsely imprisoned. His promising career is lost. His bride-to-be is stolen away. His father starves and dies. When Edmund escapes from his dungeon, there will be hell to pay. The first part of this book (up to the point where Edmund finds his treasure) is five stars. After that the story fragments among the families he seeks revenge on, which weakens it, IMO. It's very repetitive in people being amazed at Edmund's style and wit, but mainly his cash. They constantly affirm his greatness. Have you ever watched One Punch Man? Bear with me during this strange comparison . . . The first section is Season 1, more locked into a single character, and it's rad. Season 2 talks about these side characters, who are okay, though they tend to easily faint, and you really want to see Edmund Dante one-punch fools. There's a decided loss of quality between Season's 1 and 2. The book has this same progression. It's still pretty good though. "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (★★ 1/2) Youtubers Hester and The Preach have hooked up. Their sponsors find out. They lose their subscribers. The Preach is forced to wear a scarlet POG. Let it be a warning to all maidens: His pull out game is weak. I guess that would be "The Scarlet Letters." Whatever. I really want to know how these two consummated the act. Okay, I know how, but who seduced who? It's never explained, it's the most fascinating aspect of the story, and yet it's completely omitted. I suppose they could have just been strolling toward each other, simultaneously tripped and had their clothes fly off. It's the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup stratagem. I would have gone with that before the tribunal. Anything is better than the scarlet POG. Anyway, this is the most joyless book I've ever read. I mean that. Moby-Dick, Crime and Punishment, even Farewell to Arms have moments of levity. (Canterbury Tales has it in droves.) This book has all the humor of an orphan's funeral. (Hmm . . . why does Goodreads spell Scarlett with two T's? Just noticed that. They misspelled the title?) "Moby-Dick or, the Whale" by Herman Melville (★★★★ 1/2) This is a complicated one. You already know the plot and you know most people don't like the book, but holy smoke is it on another level. It would take multiple reads to fully grasp what's being said. The reason it's so difficult is because the book switches style/tone so much. There's the main plot with action, which is top-notch, intense, active, and often pretty funny. There are the existential sections which can soliloquize like a Shakespearean stage play and are really quite beautiful and profound. Then there are the encyclopedic sections, the "cetology" chapters as the author names them. Those are interesting, but they're very removed from the main plot. I think they're so jarring that they frustrate the reader, which I understand. The story is not really about revenge. It's metaphorically about a man's search for knowledge. The main character accepts the ways of the world. He's a super-pantheist. Every religion is valid for him. Ahab is focused on one truth, and it destroys him. Also, the MC is not named Ishmael. There's a reason you never hear anyone refer to him by that name. So the famous opening line is a metaphor. Ishmael is a lost wanderer from the Bible. Melville wants you to think of him that way. (There is some debate concerning this, but I'm on Team Melville-is-the-MC.) (There is a second theory that the narrator is actually Ahab, but I don't buy that. "The first rule of Whaling Club is: You do not talk about Whaling Club!") "Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World." by Jonathan Swift (★★★★) Gulliver visits four lands: a land where he's gigantic, a land where he's small, a flying island piloted by super-scientists, and a land ruled by horses. I liked the bawdy sections where Gulliver put out fires and witnessed bizarre medical experiments. That's just my way. "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck (★★★★★) This is a village novel, that is, there is no central plot. The point is to explore the life of a town through a variety of characters' stories. Immaculately composed. Among all the books I read for this dozen, this book is the most expertly written. The stories are pretty interesting too. It's a very accessible classic book and not too long. If you're aiming to get a classic on your "I've read that" list, here is an obvious choice. Steinbeck is such a Chad. If Steinbeck and Hemingway got in a fistfight, Hemingway would win (because he fights dirty), but Steinbeck would leave with the girl. "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer (★★★★) Chaucer was some sort of genius. He humbles himself and his abilities in the text, but he really shouldn't. I cannot believe he had this breadth of knowledge, but he'd have to have really known all this material and its allegories. No internet, limited resources. He just knew all of this. Amazing. This is a verse tale about a bunch of travelers regaling each other with stories. The stories aren't really about the teller, which is what you would think, but are really the best stories each traveler knows. The best parts of Canterbury Tales are not in student textbooks, and so you missed the good stuff. I cannot believe some of the insanity Chaucer committed to paper. Har har har! This was apparently a scandalous book back in the day (as was Moby Dick, for its strange religious stance). Canterbury Tales didn't hesitate to ridicule the Church and its priests, hence its past notoriety. "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London (★★★★ 1/2) A polite city-dog begins a corruption arc where he becomes some sort of canine ubermensch. He slaughters his lessers. He's a four-legged Walter White of the Klondike. At the end he transcends into myth and legend. Some of the descriptions are quite good. Those parts are the most poetically elevated I've ever seen in a kids book. I concede that that is what this tale is. There's still plenty of action for kids though. "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (★★★★ 1/2) Rodion Raskolnikov murders a money lender because . . . well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. He felt compelled by fate to kill her. He'd been thinking about it and then all the pieces fell into place, and so he dispatches her (and her intruding sister) with an axe. He isn't really able to capitalize on the crime, and his life spirals out of control as the forces around and within him seek justice. "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway (★★★) An American mechanic in the Italian army fights in WWI. Circumstances force him to go AWOL. I liked parts of this a lot, but then it would go into these quiet chapters where the MC just mills about recouping which didn't do much for me. This is a minimalist story and the dialog is so understated that (IMO) it becomes trite. It was an okay story, but I sure expected a lot more from it. "The Fatal Eggs" by Mikhail Bulgakov (★★★ 1/2) Anti-Soviet novel. Bulgakov wrote this while witnessing the horrors of the Russian Revolution and the catastrophe of what followed. The story is about a scientist who finds a way to quickly hatch eggs into giant animals. He's going to study this new technique and raise giant chickens to deal with food shortages, but then the government intrudes and takes his rapid-growth ray (which is red, get it?). They accidentally release a Sharknado of giant snakes upon Moscow. A bloodbath ensues. "Rabbit, Run" by John Updike (★★★★★) Rabbit is a POS. He has a mid-life crisis and abandons his wife to deal with her pregnancy. Meanwhile, Rabbit hooks up with a local prostitute. A minister tries to help Rabbit and steer him straight. Rabbit tries to seduce the minister's wife. The lady is aghast, but hey, that's Rabbit Angstrom, one of the most vile characters in literature. She should have known. We all should have known. It's possible to have an MC with a 1-star morality lead a 5-star book. Some of the Goodreads reviewers don't seem to realize this. It's okay to be disgusted by a character. You don't have to hate the book for it. You don't need to denigrate the book to prove your own high ethics because this is not a morality tale. It's fiction. Going back to the first book in this massive list, "March," Rabbit is the opposite of its near holy MC. He allows for a much better story. Yes, he's detestable. He's loud, brash, a know-it-all out for sex. He's in it for himself. Makes me think of that loudmouth guy from "The Office" who Michael Scott thought was the best, but everyone else hated. (Todd Packer was his name, I think.) Rabbit is a very complex character. His strength is his impulsiveness, but that also leads him, and those around him, to ruin. Oh, explaining the title. Rabbit is running away from his wife. He's really escaping from the life which HE has chosen for himself. His situation is his own doing. The title is referring to his midlife crisis and his taking the easy way out.
Interesting. I didn't know he was a lost wanderer, my own research turned up he was a king who did something really bad (I forget what) and was killed and his own dogs licked up his blood, which is a way of saying his people no longer liked him much. I also never picked up on 'Ishmael' being a super-pantheist as you called him, and Ahab being intensely focused on The One Truth (and believeing he's in possession of it). But that does put things into some perspective. It makes sense Melville would be the MC, because he did work on a whaling ship. Are you familiar with the real story on which Moby Dick is based? The sinking of the whaling ship Essex, by a whale, and the crew turning to cannibalism in order for two of them to survive? Incredibly horrific. Apparently once Melville's ship hailed another ship in the way that was done so many times in the story and he talked to a nephew of Owen Coffin, one of the survivors, who lent him or gave him his uncle's journals to read as research material. If you look into that event (the sinking of the Essex) it's really intense stuff, in some ways more powerful than Moby Dick (though of course not as well written).
Did you purposely focus largely on what Wreybies would call 'Travelogues' for this session? I see several on the list.
It might already be on your list, but don't forget to pick up Sweet Thursday. It's the sequel to Cannery Row from 1954. It's been several years now since I read it, but I think I remember enjoying it almost as much as its predecessor. I mean, I haven't come across a Steinbeck I didn't love, so of course it was good. I've only read five of his, but I get the idea you really can't go wrong with him.
I watched a big college lecture on the book after that. They mention Melville's strange pantheism as a major element of the writing. You see it in the book when Melville willingly and unironically worships "Yojo," Queequeg's idol fetish, and offers it food. Apparently, Melville was big on this sort of thing and mentioned a lot of his philosophy to Hawthorne in his letters, just this willingness to embrace every faith. So it's not a pantheism like you'd find in Hinduism, because that only recognizes Hindu gods, but a belief that accepts every god of every religion. It's also worth noting that Melville lived with cannibals for a while and most likely adopted some of their religious ways. I always wonder if he ate any of their victims? Yeah, the whole thing is based upon the Essex. So it's a fictionalized self-insert into a dramatized history. I miss Wreybies . . . smart guy. I think these books just turn out this way because I keep choosing classics. With the travelogues, I mean. It was a famous style of the day.
That's what I've been finding too. I've read Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath, and Cannery Row, so only 3 for me. I've heard that "East of Eden" is his triumph, so I'm thinking I'll sneak a couple smaller books of his in first. I'll add Sweet Thursday to that list (which includes "The Pearl" as well). His style is nearly perfect. It's this light elegance where he seems capable of saying anything in the profoundest way. It just seems effortless.
Wow, true. I knew he did, when he wrote some of his earlier travelogues about the South Pacific islands, but somehow I never connected that up. I might not have known it until after reading Moby Dick, I probably went into research mode and learned it then.
East of Eden is next on my list. I have the audiobook on my phone. (I have around 300 audiobooks on my phone, but it's on the short list, at least.) We read The Pearl in 5th, 6th grade, something like that. At the time, I just thought it was a serious bummer, well written, but a bummer. John Steinbeck rains shit on his characters sometimes. (I wonder if that's where I get it.) I read Of Mice and Men (my favorite so far) and Grapes of Wrath. He's such an effective writer. You really live the lives of his characters, I think, as harsh as they are half the time, and I'm always impressed by his pacing. His stories flow as steady as real time, even in moments that would constitute a slow spot in someone else's novel. Have you gotten to Faulkner yet? I couldn't finish The Sound and the Fury. It drove me up the wall, but As I Lay Dying was quite good. It reminded me of a Steinbeck in ways. Their styles and approaches are different, but the characters and the setup were very Steinbeck. I thought so, anyway.
Oh, my bad! No, that was Ahab. King Ahab was a Biblical character, the one who was killed and his blood licked up by dogs. I probably didn't look into who Ishmael was in the Bible, or just didn't remember.
Ishmael was the first son of Abraham, according to Genesis he lived to be 137.. he was conceived with Abraham's wife's maidservant because his wife Sara was unable to have children, when god fixed that and Sarah gave birth to Isaac, ishmael was banished into the desert. the Quran holds that Ishmael went on to found Mecca
Aaaaah, he was THAT one! Ok, thanks. Basically the redheaded stepchild, until a real heir came along.
I've only read "The Sound and the Fury" by him. It was extremely tricky because of how the POV jumped about. Just bizarre. Probably wasn't the best Faulkner book for me to start with. My next one listed for him is "The Reivers." That was actually the book I should have started today, because I finished "To the Lighthouse," and "The Reivers" was at the top of my typed list to read, but I swapped in "A Tale of Two Cities" instead. "A Tale of Two Cities" is turning out to be a fantastic book, by the way. I'm loving its sarcasm and humor. It's genuinely funny. I think Faulkner's "The Reivers" will show up in my next set of a dozen books. It's one of the Pulitzers and I'm trying to get all of those read, so "Reivers" will be my next Faulkner. I'll keep your recommendation in mind though and bump "As I Lay Dying" up my list for the year.
