Book Review: Murder on the Orient Express (Christie)
Have I read this before: Nope. I’m not really a murder mystery/detective book person.
Review: This was pretty good. Probably the most surprising thing was me figuring out the ending before it happened because, like I said, this is not my genre and I’ve never considered myself good at figuring out mysteries. But once some more facts came out about each of the characters, I kinda figured where things were going.
Favorite Part: The pacing was good in this one. It never dragged but also never felt rushed. It held your attention and made you want to keep reading to figure out how everything was going to connect at the end.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: The Last Tycoon (Fitzgerald)
Have I read this before: Nope. The was another book added in my most recent “300 Books” expansion.
Review: I love Fitzgerald. I love the way he writes. He has this wonderful ability to create a fully realized character in the first sentence written about them or in their first line of dialogue. He also has this carefree feel to his writing that encapsulates the time period in which his stories are set that I’ve never seen replicated quite the same way. This book (or partial book – it was left unfinished at Fitzgerald’s death) is no different in the characters and style. And even though it is incomplete in terms of plot and resolution, because of these unique features, I’d still give it a better score as a book overall than some of the other things I’ve read off my list (*cough* The Adventures of Augie March *cough*) because it still drew me in and made me keep reading.
ALSO, my freaking Kindle faked me out on when the book was going to end. I knew it was an unfinished novel and thus expected an abrupt ending at some point, but beyond that I didn’t know when this ending would be. So I was reading along happily – with my Kindle saying I was still only 68% of the way through – when the actual book ended and the rest of the Kindle edition (which contained discussions of the book as well as some snippets of other works) began. So it was a very abrupt ending, haha. But I was cool with it.
Favorite Part: Another thing I like about Fitzgerald is he just sprinkles in some absolutely beautiful little lines/descriptions every once and a while. Like this one about an earthquake:
“We didn’t get the full shock like at Long Beach where the upper stories of shops were spewed into the streets and small hotels drifted out to sea – but for a full minute our bowels were one with the bowels of the earth – like some nightmare attempt to attach our navel cords again and jerk us back to the womb of creation.”
Love it.
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: Jude the Obscure (Hardy)
Have I read this before: Nope. In fact, this was one of the books I added in my most recent “300 Books” expansion, as I’ve read some Hardy and enjoyed him.
Review: Thomas Hardy. Friend. If the purpose of this book was to introduce one of the most frustrating female characters ever into the vast realm of English literature, mission accomplished. Like…I know Hardy can write enjoyable female characters, as Tess (of d’Urbervilles) and Bathsheba (from Far from the Madding Crowd) were both somewhat frustrating but still enjoyable and “root for”-able.
But fucking Sue, dude. I get that she’s supposed to stand in as a representation of the conflicting influences of religion and sex and marriage on a woman (or a person in general), but I feel like such conflicts could still be portrayed without making me want to punch her through a wall whenever she was in the scene. Even Arabella was obnoxious with how she used Jude and how Jude’s character basically started to deteriorate as soon as he met her.
Just…ugh. Frustrating characters and not in a good way, man. You know it’s rough when the most sympathetic character in a book is a creepy weirdo kid who commits murder-suicide.
Favorite Part: I don’t know if I have one. The fact that they referred to their creepy weirdo kid as “Father Time” was kind of…creepy and weird, I guess.
Rating: 4/10
Book Review: The House of the Seven Gables (Hawthorne)
Have I read this before: I THOUGHT I had, but holy hell, I don’t remember any of this stuff. I do vaguely recall checking this book out of our junior high library, which means it was one of the first books I read on my list way back when and I was probably…twelve? Thirteen? So yeah, who remembers anything about anything involving one’s tween years?
(I do but LET’S NOT GO THERE)
Review: This was good, mainly because I like Hawthorne’s writing style. I like how the house itself was basically described as a living (and haunted) thing and how the Colonel’s portrait on the wall reacted to events taking place in the house. The ending was a bit of a letdown as I was expecting something a little more…not grandiose, necessarily, but impactful.
Favorite Part: Just the writing style. It flowed very nicely and was easy to read in the sense that the style basically prompted you onwards. I like that kind of style.
Rating: 5/10
Baby Books for Babies: An Update
Current list of childhood books I’ve re-read:
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Judy Blume)
- The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Barbara Robinson)
- Holes (Louis Sachar)
- A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L’Engle)
- An embarrassingly large number of Babysitters Club books
I actually just finished reading Holes yesterday, and that book is even better than I remember it. It’s surprisingly…intricate?…for a kid’s book. It’s not hard to read or anything like that, but everything ties together in more ways than you typically see in a lot of kid’s books. I also really like Sachar’s writing style and characters; I actually bought a physical copy of his Sixth Grade Secrets because I used to love that book as a kid. So if you haven’t read Holes, read it!
A Wrinkle in Time was a disappointment. It wasn’t nearly as good as I remember it being.
Now I need to figure out what to read next!
Book Review: Gulliver’s Travels (Swift)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: So you know the most famous part of this book? The first part when Gulliver goes to Lilliput, the island full of little dudes? That’s the most boring part of this whole story. The visit to the island full of giganto dudes (Brobdingnag) was much more engaging, and the visit to the island full of the talking, rational horses (the Houyhnhms) was the most reflective. So if you can get past the Lilliputians, you’re golden.
Favorite Part: I think the part that stuck with me the most was when Gulliver’s little house (basically a shoebox) on Brobdingnag was scooped up by a giant bird and then dropped into the ocean. He describes this from within the sealed box, unable to see what’s happening, and once he starts feeling his house being towed in the water, he assumes that one of the giant Brobdingnag citizens swam out and is bringing him back to land. But then he hears people speaking English and realizes that human sailors have found him and he calls for them to open the box. They reply that they need some time to try to get it open, and he wonders why they don’t just lift the lid off because he’s so used to being around individuals large enough to do so. Swift portrays that feeling of Gulliver being small so well that I also was like, “why don’t they just take the lid off?” before realizing that Gulliver was back with people his own size, haha. It was a good illusion.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway)
Have I read this before: Yes! I read this during the summer of 2008. I remember reading it in the Wallace basement during our breaks on that U of I cleaning job.
Review: I vaguely remember that this book’s ending making me cry the first time I read it. It didn’t provoke that reaction at all this time, but it was still an impactful ending. And my opinion of any given book is heavily swayed by its ending. A Handmaid’s Tale? Not a fan, strictly because I hated the ending. A Prayer for Owen Meany? It was good throughout, but the ending nailed it for me and made it one of my favorite books. The ending didn’t “make” this one for me, but it was a good ending and it was a memorable book. I like Hemingway in general.
Favorite Part: Probably the ending, hahaha.
Rating: 6/10
Clubby-Sitters Babe
So a few weeks ago I mentioned that I wanted to intersperse my classics reading with some books from my childhood. And a HUGE series for me as a kid was the Baby-Sitters Club series. My favorite character was always Claudia because a) same name! and b) she was artistic and wore funky, artsy clothing. But I remember liking all of the characters.
So I decided that some (or a good portion of) my “childhood books” list will be all the Baby-Sitters Club books I can get in Kindle version.
Which turns out to be…all of them?
Nice.
I’m not reading them in order, but that’s okay. I’ll probably start with some of the Claudia-centric ones and branch out from there.
Woo!
BOOK ‘EM, DANNO
Yo.
So thanks to my Kindle, I’ve been burning through my original “200 Books” list quite rapidly, to the point where not too long ago I turned it into a “250 Books” list.
I’ve updated it again!
It now contains 300 books. Because.
Take a look here.
I’ve also decided to color my top five books on that page just so that random passers-by know that The Caine Mutiny is the best goddamn book ever my literary preferences.
Bye.
A Confession:
If you were to take a look at the books on Kondle (my Kindle, in case anyone forgot. Yes, he has a name. Eat it.), you would no longer find just classics.
Instead, you would also find several children’s books that were popular in the early- to mid-1990s.
Why?
Because I’ve been in major “book nostalgia” mode and have been wanting to re-read books that I remember from my childhood.
So I’ve decided to intersperse my classics with said childhood books. First up is A Wrinkle in Time, which I think was read to us by our teacher (Mrs. Lohrmann) in sixth grade.
Do you have any stand-out books from your childhood? Let me know, ‘cause maybe I read them too and am just forgetting them, haha.
Book Review: Don Quixote (de Cervantes)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: Okay, so I knew nothing about this book other than there was something in there involving windmills and that the word “quixotic” came from it. So I didn’t know what to expect going into it, which made it so much better.
Parts (swaths) of this are absolutely hysterical. It’s easy to feel badly for Don Quixote ‘cause the dude’s delusional, but it’s hard to feel bad for Sancho Panza because he’s in full possession of his faculties but keeps following Don Quixote around EVEN THOUGH THEY ALL GET BEATEN UP LIKE EVERY FIVE PAGES. Y’all should read it if you haven’t. It’s a classic for a reason.
Favorite Part: Like I said, parts of this are absolutely hilarious.
1. Sancho Panza being like “are you absolutely nuts?” when Don Quixote starts charging “knights” – and they’re actually sheep:
Sancho called to him, saying:
“Your grace, come back, Senor Don Quixote, I swear to god you’re charging sheep! Come back, by the wretched father who sired me! What madness is this?”
2. That whole scene when Sancho and Don Quixote puke all over each other.
3. Andres wanting absolutely nothing to do with Don Quixote because misfortune follows him everywhere:
It is certainly true that when he left, he said to Don Quixote:
“For the love of God, Senior Knight Errant, if you ever run into me again, even if you see them chopping me to pieces, don’t help me and don’t come to my aid, but leave me alone with my misfortune; no matter how bad it is, it won’t be worse than what will happen to me when I’m helped by your grace.”
4. When Don Quixote stabs the hell out of a bunch of wine skins while asleep, destroying them all, thinking that they’re parts of a giant.
5. When he absolutely demolished Master Pedro’s puppets because he thought they were real.
Rating: 7/10
Top Books of 2023 (LIES IT’S ALL LIES)
Yo.
So I had every intention of doing a “Top Five Books I Read in [insert previous year here]” thing like I’ve done the past several years. But…
a) I only read 12 (?!) books this year, and
b) Nothing even remotely compares to War and Peace.
I’m not kidding. I can’t make a “top five” list because all the other books are all at the same-ish level and War and Peace stands mountains above them all. I guess maybe Andersonville is a bit higher than the others, but still. A “top two” list? Nah.
War and Peace is my “top books” from last year.
Fight me.
Book Review: A Christmas Carol (Dickens)
Have I read this before: Nope! I’ve seen all the standard movie adaptations, though.
Review: So the adaptation that I had in my mind going into this book was the Muppet version, so as was the case when I read Treasure Island, all the characters had their respective Muppet/human voices as they spoke in the book. I was actually surprised at how much of the narration (especially at the start of the book) and dialogue was honored in the adaptations I’ve seen, but I guess that’s part of the classic tale.
Favorite Part: Stave Three, where we follow Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present. I always liked the idea of the Ghost of Christmas Present having such a short life because he only exists in the present and another “present” is always on the horizon.
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: Andersonville (Kantor)
Have I read this before: No. I know we had the book in our junior high library, though, and I considered it during those very first few months of using my Book List. Never did read it, though.
Review: Oof. This book. This was a hard read because basically every chapter was “here’s this soldier’s life from birth until he gets to Andersonville. Get invested in him, he’s interesting. Oops, now he’s died the most horrible death imaginable!”
Of course there was a main storyline threading through the whole thing, but that’s what a majority of this book felt like.
It was very well-written. Very impactful. You don’t really think about those types of prison conditions in the US, even back then, but the real Andersonville Prison was probably even worse than in these fictionalized tales.
Favorite Part: the interaction between Coral and Naz near the end. That whole segment of the book was the most emotional part, in my opinion, because of everything building up to it and how so much of their relationship was built wordlessly and was based on their circumstance and histories instead. Easily the most memorable part of a very memorable book.
Also, these few lines (which was pretty much the only humor in the whole book) between Coral and Naz.
“What’s them?”
“From tropic lands. From many an ancient river, from any a palmy plain.”
“Hain’t you smart with your rhymes and truck!”
“It’s a hymn.”
“Don’t care if it’s a her.”
Rating: 6/10
Take a Look / Don’t Date a Book
I just realized that unless the weather gets SUPER CRAPPY over the next month or so, the number of books I will have read this year will be really low.
Because yes, I only ever read (fiction) when I’m on the treadmill.
So maybe we won’t get a “Top 5” list for this year, but I’ll at least give a Top 3.
Book Review: War and Peace (Tolstoy)
Have I read this before: Technically, yes. I read it in either 7th or 8th grade because the kid I liked was reading it and I wanted to be like him. Or with him. Or better than him. It was complicated. Anyway, I finished it and he didn’t but I’ll be damned if I remembered anything other than one of the characters being named Pierre. Note that I discuss my history with this book in this blog post, so you may want to read that first. You know, if you actually care.
Anyway.
Review: Where do I even start with this? Do I start with how there are about 80 characters but they’re all written so distinctly and thoroughly that you truly get a sense of their different personalities and backgrounds? Do I start with the fact that I knew approximately NOTHING about the Napoleonic Wars going into this thing but now all I want to do is read about that period in history in even more detail than it’s described in War and Peace? Do I start with the way Tolstoy portrays how the war effects everyone – especially the young people – is simultaneously so subtle and so blatant that you get both the “during” and “after” perspectives of this chunk of history? Can I talk about how great this particular translation is, because it certainly doesn’t even sound like a translation and sounds like you would suspect Tolstoy wrote it to sound?
WHERE DO I START
I loved this book, friends. Absolutely loved it. It’s been quite a while since a book was that engaging for me (probably not since Lonesome Dove, and before that it had been even longer). I know it’s a massive tome, but if you haven’t read it yet, READ IT.
READ.
IT.
It will capture your soul.
Hell, I don’t even know if I want to read another book for a while. What could compare to this, honestly?
Favorite Part: Again, where do I start? I just checked my Kindle and I have a ton of pages bookmarked for quotes, incidents, and descriptions that I especially liked.
Some are funny, like Bilibin’s discussion of the generals:
“Except for your man Kutuzov, every single column is commanded by a non-Russian. Look at the commanders: Herr General Wimpfen, le comte de Langeron, le prince de Liechtenstein, le prince de Hohenlohe, and then there’s Prshprshprsh-all-consonants-and-no-vowels – like all Polish names.”
Or Pierre thinking he’s destined to destroy Napoleon single-handedly because he did some stuff with numbers and found out their names were the same numerically.
“If you use this system to write out the words l’empereur Napoleon numerically, the sum of the letter-numbers comes to 666 (allowing 5 for the e omitted from le), which makes Napoleon the beast prophesied in the Apocalypse.”
…
Once he applied the system to his own name in its French version, ‘Comte Pierre Besouhof”, but the total was miles out. He changed the spelling, substituting z for s, added de and the article le, but he still couldn’t get what he wanted. Then it occurred to him that if the answer he was looking for was to be found in his name, surely his nationality ought to be mentioned as well. He tried Le russe Besuhof and this came to 671, only five too much and 5 was the value of e, the letter dropped from the definite article in l’empereur Napoleon. Dropping the e again (quite unjustifiably) Pierre got the answer he was after in the phrase l’russe Besuhof – exactly 666! This discovery shook him.”
That’s hilarious.
Many of them are the beginnings of long stretches of philosophical discussion about war (way too long to type here). Especially near the end, Tolstoy interjects every several chapters or so with a chapter dedicated to some sort of philosophical examination of some aspect of war, the character of man, history’s interpretation of events, etc.
There are also parts that I wouldn’t have gotten as much out of if I wasn’t learning French:
“He kissed her hand and called her vous and Sonya. But their eyes when they met were on tu terms and they shared a tender kiss.”
Also, a completely unintentional hilarity was included since the translator (or Tolstoy himself, I’m actually not quite sure) included a “Summary of Chapters” section in which every single chapter gets a one- or two-sentence summary. Some of the summaries are hilarious just because they make no sense unless you know how the chapter is structured (is it part of the plot or is it a “Tolstoy Philosophy Power Hour” section? Or both?). Best example: “Alexander renounces power. Why do bees exist? For no single reason.”
Rating: 9/10. This is in my Top Five.
Mes livres de français sont arrivés !
Yay!
One is (obviously) a French-English dictionary; the other is a book on conjugating French verbs.
Apprendre le français est agréable !
Let’s get PHYSICAL
And by “physical” I mean “a physical copy of War and Peace.”
It’s here and it’s enormous.
I can’t wait to finish it, but at the same time, I don’t want to finish it, because what the hell can follow this book?
So I’m reading War and Peace and MAN
I got NOTHING out of this when I read it the first time.
I suppose story time is in order, here.
Back in 7th grade I made a list of about 150 “classics” that I wanted to read. My current “250 Books” list is an extension of that original list. I don’t know why I made this list – I probably just wanted to look smart – but I started working through it immediately, selecting books that our junior high library had.
One of these books was War and Peace.
Now, I don’t remember if I decided to read it first and then the kid I liked (Lead) decided to read it as well or if he decided to read it and I chose to read it because of that, but somehow we both ended up reading it at the same time. I don’t know where he got his copy, but I had the junior high library’s copy, which was this massive tome of a thing where the text was in two columns on each page (like a dictionary). I took this thing everywhere and read it at every opportunity with the sole goal of just getting through it and showing Lead how smart I was (he actually never did finish it and I did, so that’s kinda cool I guess).
But I remembered NOTHING from it apart from the fact that one of the main characters was named Pierre.
Now in my defense, there ARE a lot of characters in War and Peace and they all have very Russian names. And if you’ve ever read any Russian lit, you’ll know that one dude can be referred to by like seven different names. So that was rough.
Also, I don’t know what translation I had, but I have a feeling it was one of the worse ones. I can’t blame my lack of comprehension entirely on the translation, but it’s worth noting that I was reading other books around this time that were objectively “as hard” or “harder” vocab- and grade-level-wise compared to War and Peace (e.g., Of Human Bondage, As I Lay Dying, The Bridge of San Luis Rey) and had no problems understanding those. So.
Anyway, let this be a gentle prompting to revisit books you read in your youth (especially any of those “classics” that you HAD to read for a certain class) and give them another chance. Perhaps you’ll find something you really enjoy.
Book Review: Treasure Island (Stevenson)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: It was impossible to read this without hearing each character in the voice of the Muppet (or human) who voiced them in Muppet Treasure Island. Captain Smollett? Kermit. Mr. Arrow? Sam Eagle. Long John Silver? Tim Curry. Squire Trelawny? Fozzie. I was actually surprised at how closely Muppet Treasure Island followed the actual book. I realize this is more of a review of Muppet voices than anything, haha, but I did enjoy the book! Needs this scene, though.
Favorite Part: Ben Gunn. He was an enjoyable character.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: The Mill on the Floss (Eliot)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: Of the George Eliot works I’ve read, this is probably my least favorite. I didn’t hate it, but the characters weren’t as engaging as those in Silas Marner or Adam Bede. In some parts Maggie is insufferable (but isn’t that the case for all of us?), but her secret relationship with Philip was genuine and sweet. I also like how she almost seems to “lose her way” given her circumstances, but comes back to her senses despite the consequences she must face. I felt a lot of sympathy for Tom, too.
Favorite Part: I loved Maggie’s and Philip’s walks in the woods. Like I said, that felt like the most genuine and interesting part of the story to me.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Lorna Doone (Blackmore)
Have I read this before: Okay, I SWEAR TO GOD I’ve read this before. I distinctly remember propping the U of I Library’s copy up on the elliptical machine at the rec center back in, like, 2007. I swear. But I did NOT remember this book at all, apparently. So.
Review: This is a long-ass book for a relatively simple plot, in my opinion. It meanders all over the damn place at the start with little John Ridd, but I guess it kind of has to in order to set up his back story and socio-economic status. And there’s surprisingly little Lorna Doone for the first portion of the book given that the story is named after her. I guess we get a bunch of her later in the book, though. Am I bad for picturing the Doones like Cletus and his family from The Simpsons?
Favorite Part: This freaking duck part. It sticks out so much from the rest of the book, hahahaha:
“Thereupon Annie and I ran out to see what might be the sense of it. There were thirteen ducks, and ten lily-white (as the fashion then of ducks was), not I mean twenty-three in all, but ten white and three brown-striped ones; and without being nice about their color, they all quacked very movingly.
…
Annie began to cry ‘Dilly, dilly, einy, einy, ducksey,’ according to the burden of a tune they seem to have accepted as the national duck’s anthem; but instead of being soothed by it, they only quacked three times as hard, and ran around till we were giddy.
…
Therefore I knew at once, by the way they were carrying on, that there must be something or other gone wholly amiss in the duck-world.”
(It’s just so freaking random)
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: The Good Soldier (Ford)
Have I read this before: No? This is one of those books that feels super familiar, but I’m not sure if I’ve actually read it, haha. If I have, though, it would have been back at the very start of using my list given how vague my memory is of it (so like 7th grade).
Review: I love the opening line of this book: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” Instant hook. There’s so much going on with each of these characters under the surface and so much deception amongst them that it’s almost hard to keep track of it all. I like how even the Wiki article describes the narrator as follows: “he is either a gullible and passionless man who cannot read the emotions of the people around him or a master manipulator who plays the victim.”
Favorite Part: This beautiful line:
“And it was a most remarkable, most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me.”
That’s just…that’s so simple and beautiful.
Rating: 5/10
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