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
Book Review: Waiting for Godot (Beckett)
Have I read this before: Yes. Couldn’t tell you when, but I’ve read it before.
Review: I…I didn’t enjoy this as much as I remember enjoying it the first time. I remember being much more amused and intrigued when I read it before; this time I was not as invested. I don’t know why. Maybe I had built the story up in my mind to be more than it actually is. Who knows.
Favorite Part: One thing I did still like was the pacing. This moves along at a good clip but, at the same time, seems to not move at all due to where the play is set and how little actual motion occurs during it. It’s an interesting contrast and makes things more interesting.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Travels with Charley (Steinbeck)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: This is Steinbeck + dog Charley traveling across the US in a camper. It’s basically the great American road trip with a lot of reflection about the state of America and the American people. He makes sure to note the differences in the people and cultures from state to state, especially as he hits the Midwest and then the West. It’s a summary of the flaws of a country and its people from someone who’s really good at describing the flaws of a country and its people.
Favorite Part: A few good quotes:
“I have always heard that Maine people are rather taciturn, but for this candidate for Mount Rushmore to point twice in an afternoon was to be unbearably talkative.”
After getting a flat tire: “It was obvious that the other tire might go at any moment, and it was Sunday and it was raining and it was Oregon. If the other tire blew, there we were, on a wet and lonesome road, having no recourse except to burst into tears and wait for death.”
“Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners. And descendants of English, Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, Polish are essentially American. This is not patriotic whoop-de-do; it is carefully observed fact. … It is astonishing that this has happened in less than two hundred years and most of it in the last fifty. The American identity is an exact and provable thing.”
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Sons and Lovers (Lawrence)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: Can a novel include a normal, healthy relationship or is that too boring? Of course, this is the guy who wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover, so. Paul’s relationship with his mother is the most co-dependent relationship I’ve read about in a long time. I should shut up because I’m super close to my mom too, but not in the oddly terrifying way he is. It’s a pretty sad book if you think about it.
Favorite Part: Pauls’ thoughts on his lover Clara:
“’What is she, after all?’ he said to himself. ‘Here’s the seacoast morning, big and permanent and beautiful; there is she, fretting, always unsatisfied, and temporary as a bubble of foam. What does she mean to me, after all? She represents something, like a bubble of foam represents the sea. But what is she? It’s not her I care for.’”
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: The Razor’s Edge (Maugham)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: I enjoyed this one! I like how Larry is introduced via interactions with several different friends, including Maugham himself. I think this paints a very realistic picture of how a person can be affected by war once said war is over. The other characters were enjoyable as well; you feel sympathy for Gray after the stock market crash, you feel frustrated at Isabel’s treatment of Sophie, and you feel sorry for Elliott both due to his own wants and just in general.
Favorite Part: The opening of Part Six:
“I feel it right to warn the reader that he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of such story as I have to tell, since for the most part it is nothing more than the account of a conversation that I had with Larry. I should add, however, that except for this conversation I should perhaps not have thought it worthwhile to write this book.”
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: The Quiet American (Greene)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: Greene has an interesting writing style. I definitely liked this one better than The Power and the Glory. It held my attention better, even though I’m not a huge war novel fan. Perhaps it’s the characters and how Fowler expresses a very real range of opinions of Pyle depending on what’s going on around them and between them.
Favorite Part: Fowler’s and Pyle’s conversations when they were stuck in the guard tower and their eventual escape.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Oliver Twist (Dickens)
Have I read this before: I think I had started to read this back in like junior high but couldn’t get into it.
Review: Dickens is good at writing characters who are absolute fart bags but are also so intriguing that you want to see what happens to them (and hope that karma will get them in the end). Sikes is a good example of this. He’s also good at introducing characters and character relationships that are fleeting when first discussed but come up as major plot points (or the main plot point) later. I remember Great Expectations had a few instances of this; Oliver Twist does, too.
Favorite Part: Sikes getting his comeuppance. He bugged me.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Douglass)
Have I read this before: I think we read some excerpts of this in high school.
Review: I don’t think reading excerpts of this does the narrative justice, as you really do need the whole thing to see exactly how Douglass is shaped by his experiences, especially in terms of his desire to learn to read and write. I actually have no idea why we didn’t just read the whole thing; it’s not that long and it’s so much more impactful in its entirety.
Favorite Part: When Douglass beats the hell out of Covey. Cathartic.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: A Moveable Feast (Hemingway)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: Want to experience the Lost Generation via Hemingway? Then read this and skip The Sun Also Rises. This is much more real and raw, obviously in part because it’s based on Hemingway’s actual interactions with other prominent individuals of the time. It’s a memoir, and it’s a good one. Also, the Kindle edition has a bunch of photographs and letters at the end, which is super cool.
Favorite Part: His description of F. Scott Fitzgerald:
“Scott was a man then who looked like a boy with a face between handsome and pretty. He had very fair wavy hair, a high forehead, excited and friendly eyes and a delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of beauty. His chin was well built and he had good ears and a handsome, almost beautiful, unmarked nose. This should not have added up to a pretty face, but that came from the coloring, the very fair hair and the mouth. The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.”
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: The House of Mirth (Wharton)
Have I read this before: No.
Review: Of the characters I’ve disliked in the books on this book list, I believe all of them so far have been dudes. But now we can break that pattern and throw Lily Bart on the “obnoxious as hell” list. Like, I get that that’s kind of the point of her and that she acts as a symbol of the flaws with social standing, moral corruption, etc. But ugh. She was hard to read about.
Favorite Part: With the above in mind, it was nice to see her experience the consequences of her actions over and over, at least until it all builds up and becomes too much for her. Then, of course, it’s sad.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)
Have I read this before: I got through like ten pages in junior high and was like NOPE
Review: So. Steinbeck. I stand by the claim that this should NOT be your first exposure to Steinbeck. Read The Pearl or East of Eden or Of Mice and Men first. I’m not saying The Grapes of Wrath is bad. It’s not. It’s very compelling. But it’s a slow burn at the start. And I mean sloooooooooow buuuuuuuuuuuurn. Like “trying to set water on fire” kind of slow burn. I’m sure that was why I had trouble getting into it when I was younger. But once you do, it’s definitely worth it. I owe Steinbeck an apology for hating on him since like 7th grade, but in my defense, SLOOOOOOOOOOOW BUUUUUUUUUUUURN.
Favorite Part: The ending scene. It’s very jarring and heart-wrenching and really shows the desperation of the time.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Emma (Austen)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: Matchmaking + jealousy = nothing working out until everything does. I feel like I’d appreciate this story more if I hadn’t been inundated with similar stories on this list. At least Austin’s writing style is tolerable, but man I’m sick of the “I’m English and I want love but I’m also slightly manipulative and good at getting into situations where communication would solve everything but I refuse to communicate.”
Favorite Part: I don’t really know if I have one. Again, it’s probably influenced by what I’ve been reading as of late, but this felt almost…generic.
Rating: 5/10
Book review: The Call of the Wild (London)
Have I read this before: I don’t think I’ve ever read this, but I did listen to an audiobook version of it back when I was working at Pima in 2012. I had to tag PDFs for read-aloud accessibility software – super mundane – and I listened to a good number of audiobooks while doing that.
Review: It’s so refreshing to read a book that’s not yet another exploration of class struggles in 18th- or 19th- or 20th-century England. I mean, I guess I just finished Breakfast of Champions, which was a great departure from what has been a typical theme/setting on this book list, but still. This one is from a dog’s perspective. About as different as you can get. And honestly, it was easier to empathize with Buck than it has been for a number of the English characters I’ve read about over the past few years, despite the fact that I am assuredly not a sled dog (at least in this lifetime).
Favorite Part: I like how this book almost reads as a fable. There’s something fantastical and legendary about Buck and his trials and eventual response to the “call of the wild” could easily be argued as teaching a moral lesson.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Breakfast of Champions (Vonnegut)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: Vonnegut is great, guys. I really like the absurdity of his stories and style because it doesn’t detract from what he’s trying to say (which I think is easy to do with an absurdity angle) but instead heightens it. This is also one of his stories that contains his own illustrations/drawings as well. If you want to be able to say “I read the Vonnegut book where he drew a vagina,” this is your choice. And if you want a very engaging and sometimes humorous examination of mental illness, this is your choice as well.
Favorite Part: Some quotes:
“The words in the book, incidentally, were about life on a dying planet named Lingo-Three, whose inhabitants resembled American automobiles. They had wheels. They were powered by internal combustion engines. They ate fossil fuels. They weren’t manufactured, though. They reproduced. They laid eggs containing baby automobiles, and the babies matured in pools of oil drained from adult crankcases.”
“Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap dancing, warning the people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained Zog with a golfclub.”
“I had to think fast about who was on the other end of the telephone. I put the first most decorated veteran in Midland City on the other end. He had a penis eight hundred miles long and two hundred and ten miles in diameter, but practically all of it was in the fourth dimension.”
Rating: 7/10
Book review: The Adventures of Augie March (Bellow)
Have I read this before: No. And I wish that was still true.
Review: Jesus FUCK
So a title like “The Adventures of Augie March” implies that the book is likely an exciting, romping tale of the trials and tribulations of the interesting titular character, right?
WRONG-O!
Oh my GOD this was boring.
Oh my GOD Augie was a passive, easy-to-manipulate bag of farts (I know this was half the point, but a line has to be drawn somewhere)
Oh my GOD I grappled with “do I actually have to read this or can I skip it?” more than I have with any other book in recent memory.
At no point did I care what happened to this guy. There was nothing about him that gripped me as a character and none of his “adventures” (apart from maybe the eagle training thing) were exciting. And the eagle training thing was only exciting because the eagle was the only being that exuded any sort of personality in this entire book.
Augie’s brother was ANNOYING. Every woman Augie encountered was ANNOYING. Augie himself didn’t have enough of a personality to be annoying, which itself was ANNOYING.
Like, there were attempts to give him an ounce of snark every 100 pages or so, but those attempts failed and just made him sound like an inconsistent character (and not on purpose).
Also, I had no motivation to care about Augie. He just wasn’t interesting to me at all. John Irving does the “regular character but interesting” thing really well; Bellow does not. I mean, it’s like:
Irving: here’s a character. You should be invested in him.
Me: why?
Irving: here are reasons.
Me: oh, okay.
Bellow: here’s a character. You should be invested in him.
Me: why?
Bellow: fuck you. Here are 17 pages about a button.
Seriously, this and The Optimist’s Daughter are going to be duking it out for my “worst book of 2022” title. At least The Optimist’s Daughter was relatively short.
Favorite Part: Seeing the “100%” in the corner of my Kindle so I could close this book and never have to look at it again.
Rating: 2/10
Book Review: The World According to Garp (Irving)
Have I read this before: Nopers.
Review: I dug it. There’s something about Irving’s writing style that makes his books very easy and enjoyable to read. He also has this way of making it seem like nothing is “happening” in his books until you realize that a whole ton of stuff has happened and it’s all been interesting and amusing and intriguing. I felt that way with Owen Meany and I felt that way with Garp. Garp didn’t quite have the payoff that Owen Meany did (where everything came to a brilliant, unforgettable, incredible climax), but it was still interesting.
Favorite Part: Lotsa good quotes and imagery.
“Fowler was killed during a crash landing on an unpaved road. The landing struts were shorn off in a pothole and the whole landing gear collapsed, dropping the bomber into a hard belly slide that burst the ball turret with all the disproportionate force of a falling tree hitting a grape.”
Garp making a very relatable comment about running: “In my neighborhood there is no place to run…the sidewalks are threatened by dogs, festooned with the playthings of children, intermittently splashed with lawn sprinklers. And just when there’s some running room, there’s an elderly person taking up the whole sidewalk, precarious on crutches or armed with quaking canes.”
“In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”
Rating: 7/10
Book Review: The Turn of the Screw (James)
Have I read this before: Yes, back in 2010 I think. I had trouble with it.
Review: You want to read a ghost story (kinda) and get absolutely NO enjoyment out of it? Read this novella. The concept is there, but Henry James’ writing just sucks the life out of it all (no pun intended). I don’t know if it’s just me, but this was a struggle. Bro needs to stick to novels; Portrait of a Lady is written SO much better.
Favorite Part: The ending was…okay, I guess.
Rating: 3/10
Book Review: Sula (Morrison)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: This was a good book. I enjoyed how the neighborhood of Bottom is both characterized through and seen through Sula, her actions, and her personality. It’s almost like she holds the neighborhood together, despite the resentment the people seem to feel for her when she returns. The contrast between Sula and Nel is also interesting, especially given how many parallels exist between the two very different characters.
Favorite Part: It sounds bad to say it, but I thought the death of Chicken Little and Sula’s response to it was very well-written. It’s probably the most memorable part of the book to me.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: Did you know the full title of this book is like a chapter all on its own? “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself.”
This was an okay book. As we all know, I like stories that involve the sea, but this was much less focused on the seafaring than on the “oh crap I’m on an island and I need to survive” stuff. Which was fine. This is another one of those books where a lot of people know the basic premise and characters but may not have actually read it.
Favorite Part: I love how Robinson’s first sea adventures as a younger boy involved getting shipwrecked TWICE before getting back home, and then like forty years later he’s got the chance to adventure again and he’s like, “nah, I can’t get shipwrecked a THIRD time, let’s go!” and then GUESS WHAT
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: The Portrait of a Lady (James)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: I can see how the concept of Isabel was a novel one at the time this was written. But it seems like there’s been so many Isabels since then that that type of character is overdone and tired. Like just think of how many books/shows/etc. have a free-spirited woman who gets ALL THE PROPOSALS but rejects ALL OF THE PROPOSALS because she’s so free-spirited? I get it, I like the message, but this is so overdone today.
Favorite Part: I did like this brief part of a conversation between Ralph and Isabel:
At last she said abruptly: “I don’t see what harm there is in my wishing not to tie myself. I don’t want to begin life by marrying. There are other things a woman can do.”
“There’s nothing she can do so well. But you’re of course so many-sided.”
“If one’s two-sided it’s enough,” said Isabel.
“You’re the most charming of polygons!” her companion broke out.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Othello (Shakespeare)
Have I read this before: Yes! I actually don’t remember if we read this in school or if I read it on my own. It seems like every play we read in high school involved a “live reading” where we each picked a character and read the play aloud. I don’t remember doing that with Othello, so I must have read it on my own.
Review: I remember a lot of dickish manipulation by Iago, but I’d forgotten the extent of it, haha. His manipulation tactics are strong and clever and I like how things kind of build up throughout the play and give more power to his lies and deceptions.
Favorite Part: the whole handkerchief thing was probably my favorite thing. Again, lots of twists and build-ups to make everything just work out for Iago’s motives.
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: Eh. This one wasn’t my favorite. Like, To the Lighthouse was okay, but I don’t think Woolf’s writing style really jives with me. The story itself was okay I guess, but I wasn’t really a fan of the way it was conveyed. Also, it’s YET ANOTHER STORY SET IN ENGLAND, as if we need that.
Favorite Part: The death of Septimus. Super sad.
Rating: 3/10
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