I don't know if I've ever read a Dickens novel that I didn't like, and Nicholas Nickleby is no exception. It's Dicken's third novel and has a much more continuous, cohesive story than Pickwick Papers, but it isn't quite as funny or light-hearted. If you're trying Dickens for the first time, I'd say this isn't a bad place to start.
I'd love to write more, but my backlog of reviews is growing, so these next few are going to be pretty short :-/
Labels: classics
Hi!
Okay, reeeeally long break there, I actually gave up on posting for awhile. :-p In between moving back to Texas, buying and moving into a new house, and adopting a pair of adorable dogs, I haven't had much time to angst over postings.
And that was the problem really :-p I'm thinking that I might just keep this blog as a record of what I'm reading, instead of trying to do in-depth reviews of everything, and taking forever to actually post.
So, here's my two latest reads:
The Wall and the Wing by Laura Ruby, read by Renée Raudman
A kid's book that I picked up because I found the audiobook for ridiculously cheap, along with a handful of the Narnia audiobooks. It takes place in an un-named city (*cough* New York *cough*) where people can . . . fly? Except for the main character, an orphan girl, who then discovers that she can turn herself invisible. Adventure ensues.
It's good fun, once you get past a big dose of weirdness and the narrator's over-the-top voices, but better for kids than for adults that just have fun with kid-lit, imho.
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
I mostly tackled this one to earn another feather in my literary cap, and it turned out to be enjoyable, although a little slow from time to time. The edition (can't find the narrator, but it was Blackstone Audio) was quite good, it even cut out the two prose tales that were supposedly the most mind-numbingly boring of the whole lot.
I remember reviewing Canterbury Tales in junior high; we just learned about Chaucer, the basic premise of the work, and it's historical significance. I walked away with the impression that we didn't actually read any of the stories because they were a) too hard and b) too long. Turns out that it was actually because several of the tales were nowhere near suitable for a junior high class ^o^ Scandalous stuff!
That's all I've got for now, lets see if I can keep this up!
I could take the easy way out (and help catch up on my growing backlog of reviews to write) by summing up this book in one word: torture. And half way through the book, that's about what I was ready to do, but I persevered for your sake, dear reader. (or was it because I'm too stubborn for my own good? I always forget :-p )
Oh well, I wasn't actually expecting to enjoy Slaughterhouse 5; I'd heard it compared to Catch 22 far too many times for that. But I'll give most books a try, especially if they are as influential as I've heard S5 to be. On the whole, I definitely don't consider my time wasted and I'm glad I finished it--the ending (and particularly the afterward) made it worth reading.
Overview
The book's introduction tells of an encounter between Vonnegut and the wife of his old war buddy, when he visited their home to pick up material for his book. She accuses him of writing another war story that will be turned into a Hollywood thriller, with dashing, heroic men playing the lead roles, when in reality the soldiers were nothing but scared boys. She fears that his story will inspire more babies to run off to war and spill their blood needlessly, but he promises her that there will be no role in his book for John Wayne or any other Hollywood hero. He kept his promise, and there is nothing in his book to inspire war lust or heroic fantasies. But neither is there anything to inspire a reader to love his fellow man, cherish his family, or care for anything in the world.
Plotwise, the book follows the life of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has become unstuck in time. Billy experiences his life in stops and starts--his wedding night one instant, and a night in a German prison camp the next. This tends to make Billy very detached, and we watch his experiences in WWII Germany running side by side with his life before and after the war. His war experiences are more or less linear though, so we follow him up to and through the fire-bombing of Dresden. Oh, and somewhere along the line, Billy gets abducted by time-traveling aliens. Well, not really time-traveling, more like time-exempt--they can see and move in the fourth dimension as easily as we can move through the third. (Yeah, it's supposed to be random)
Recommended for: Anyone interested in reading Important Books. (not a bad reason, that's why I read it :-p )
Parental Worries: Lots. Sex, violence and utter despair, in detail.
Audiobook Comments: Read by Ethan Hawke, which goes to show that if your book is famous enough, you can get a big name to read it. Hawke has a beautiful voice and he does a good job, but for some reason it makes me smirk.
Ramblings (Spoiler Threat: Moderate)
The thing that gets me about this book is the utter detachment. There is no affection between any of the characters, the closest we get is brief recognition of a kindred spirit in passing. Billy has no love for his wife, his children, nothing. He probably loves the porn star that the aliens bring him as a mate, but I'm pretty sure that was all a delusion anyway, so it doesn't count. The main theme of the book is inevitability; Vonnegut isn't calling for an end to war, he merely illustrates its horror. The theme of inevitability is at least partially responsible for the book's detachment--since Billy knows what is going to happen throughout the span of his life, he has no drive to change things or react in any way.
One device Vonnegut uses that really gets under my skin is the use of the phrase "so it goes". Supposedly, that's what Billy's aliens say whenever someone dies, because they not only see the event as unavoidable, but they also see all time at once, so that the person is never really gone. On the surface, it's a beautiful sentiment--death is inevitable, so accepting it and remembering the person's life is a good response. However, he uses it ad nauseum--any time death is mentioned, whether its a person, an animal, an insect, a figure of speech. This takes it from a beautiful idea to a way of belittling human life and the magnitude of its loss, of making it insignificant.
I have to say though, despite all my whining, that this book probably wasn't meant to be enjoyable. It describes horrible events, but for the most part events that actually happened and should not be forgotten. I'm slightly torn as to whether the stark, bleak way the entire story is presented was unnecessarily morbid, or if it the tone was needed to convey the actual shock and horror involved in the WWII events. I'm not referring to the descriptions of the war, (I have no problem with those being as stark and ugly as they really were) but the events in Billy's life afterwards and their juxtaposition with the war stories evoke a special kind of horror and disgust all their own. For instance, we flip between Billy's night in a prison camp to his wedding night and back again. I'm leaning towards unnecessary.
Again, I don't consider my time wasted, but I won't be re-reading S5 if I can possibly avoid it.
A couple of years ago, a movie called The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came out, based on a series of comics by the same name. I had high hopes, because it was described as a kind of Justice League with literary characters instead of superheroes: Dr. Jekyll, Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Tom Sawyer, Mina Harker and more. I still think it's a fascinating idea and the movie was definitely fun, but it was also a bit of a disappointment. Several characters were very inaccurate, the worst of which I'd have to say was portraying Mina Harker as a vampire, when the entire point of Stoker's Dracula was to prevent that very occurrence.
But anyway, one thing that piqued my interest was that the pseudo-main character (at least in the movie) was a character I'd never even heard of: Allan Quartermain. How could this be? A literary hero of enough fame to stand beside Nemo and Jekyll, and yet I'd never heard of him? Turns out he's the hero of several works by H. Rider Haggard, the first of which was King Solomon's Mines. So, when the chance came to read it, I jumped. Maybe it was a wonderful story, fallen from popularity and fame, but ripe for rediscovery!
Overview
So, it turned out to be not so much ripe as starting to spoil. A fun adventure story, but rife with melodrama and uncomfortable racial issues. I can see why it was ridiculously popular and groundbreaking, but I wouldn't say worthy of resurrection. According to Wikipedia, it was the founding novel of the 'Lost World' genre, and inspired works such as Edgar Rice Burrough's The Land that Time Forgot, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, and Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. I haven't read any of these later lost world books, but considering the authors, they might be worth checking out. I wonder if Journey to the Center of the Earth would also fit the bill? Probably.
Anyway, the plot of Mines is that the wealthy Sir Henry has discovered that his younger brother ran off on a wild goose chase after the legendary diamond mines of King Solomon, and hasn't been seen since. He enlists the help of one Allan Quartermain, a skilled hunter, wise in the ways of Africa, and our narrator, to bring him back. As luck would have it, Quartermain happens to have some secret information about a possible route to the mines, and although he is fairly certain that none of them will make it back alive, agrees to join Sir Henry's expedition. After a long and deadly journey, they make it to a land of paradise, home to . . . a lost civilization, what else? And then even more adventure happens.
Recommended for: Boys and tomboys between the ages of maybe 8 - 13 (I'm usually not that specific, but there's a fairly narrow range between being old enough to handle the violence but not old enough to mind the painfully written melodrama)
Audiobook Comments: Read by John Richmond who does a pretty good job. The part I found amusing is that although the LoEG movie had Sean Connery play Quartermain, it's actually Sir Henry that sounds like Connery's rough British adventurer, while Quartermain has a much more polished, polite sound.
Parental Worries: There's a fair amount of violence, but not above PG13 level. There's also a pair of mountains called 'Sheba's Breasts', if you have a problem with anatomical geography.
Ramblings
I guess this is the part where I discuss the racial issues I mentioned earlier. It's mostly an effect of the times--this was one of the first novels set in colonial Africa and shows the mindset of Victorian England towards the natives. In its favor, it was probably actually fairly revolutionary for the time--Quartermain in particular has a very high regard for Africans. He talks about having met several natives more deserving of the title 'gentleman' than many of his fellow Englishmen, and several of the book's characters illustrate this. On the other hand, the
English characters do not hesitate to assume the guise of visiting gods when they reach their lost civilzation, and there's a whole string of natives willing to nobly sacrifice themselves for the Englishmen. I don't consider myself to be very sensitive towards racial issues, but even I found it to be somewhat stomach-turning. (although I couldn't say how much was due to the melodrama and how much was the condesension) So, all in all, Mines was a fun trip back in time if you don't take it with any kind of seriousness, but not a timeless classic by any stretch of the imagination.
With the exception of A Christmas Carol, all of Dickens' novels require a serious commitment (600 t0 800+ pages worth), but it's almost always worth it. This was Dickens' first novel, and I can easily imagine that it made him an instant hit. Just as a measure of its popularity and impact, there's at least one literary device (Wellerism) and one medical condition (Pickwickian syndrome) that derived their names from this novel. I also remember the Little Women girls playing Pickwickians, and although I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about at the time, in hindsight this is exactly the type of book that would be fodder for children's playtime. I've liked the Dickens novels that I've read in the past, but this one is my favorite so far.
Overview
The opening chapter is presented as the minutes of a meeting of the 'Pickwick Club'. It is by far the least-organized and most difficult chapter of the entire book. Fortunately, it's also unique, so if you can make it through, stuff starts making more sense almost immediately. The general idea of the first chapter is that the esteemed and venerated Mr. Samuel Pickwick has agreed to travel the countryside with three companions and provide the club with the complete record of their adventures for the education and entertainment of the members.
Mr. Pickwick's three young companions are introduced at this point: Mr. Tupman, the romantic; Mr. Winkle, the sportsman; and Mr. Snodgrass, the poet. As the story progresses, Mr. Tupman's conquests include almost winning the heart of someone's spinster aunt, before she runs off with another scoundrel; Mr. Winkle's sportsmanship consists of accidentally shooting Mr. Tupman in the arm; and although none is ever offered, I will let you take a guess as to the quality of Mr. Snodgrass' poetry.
The first half of the book follows Mr. Pickwick and co. through several seemingly random visits to small English towns, where they take in the sights, mix with the local color, and generally manage to get themselves into plenty of trouble. They also collect and record any stories that their acquaintances have to tell, and these can range from tragic to hilarious to just . . . strange (but always entertaining). The last half has more direction and slightly more cohesiveness; it follows several storylines and has a more subdued tone, although there's still plenty of humor involved.
Usually, the only books that leave me laughing out loud are Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, but this one had my husband slightly worried because I kept randomly chuckling while working in the kitchen.
Recommended for: Anyone with enough time
Parental Worries: Umm, it's Dickens. Wholesomeness is basically a given.
Audiobook Comments: Read by Patrick Tull, who does a splendid job. I would highly recommend tackling this book on audio, for several reasons. The names that Dickens gives his characters are a joy to hear aloud; their humor and appropriateness are not quite as effective in print. Also, (and I had to check the print edition to make sure of this) the wonderful accents in the book are actually spelled out, and I at least would find reading it to be fairly tedious at times. (as with any heavy accent, they require a bit of translation that isn't necessary when read aloud)
Ramblings
Dickens is famous for his characters, and several of his most memorable come from this work. The title character is so lavishly and outrageously praised by the narrator that I almost expected him to be the complete opposite, but he turns out to truly be as good-hearted and lovable as the narrator claims (although perhaps not as dignified :-p ). My favorite character by far though is Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick's manservant. Sam is not a trained valet, but was originally a bootblack who became mixed up in the affairs of the Pickwickians and was subsequently hired by Mr. Pickwick, who found his originality and wit refreshing. Sam is not only great fun but one of the most virtuous characters in the book. He and his father also have a charming accent that I'd never heard before--all of their v's are pronounced as w's, which means that things are 'wery nice' or 'conwenient'.
As with any of Dickens' novels, The Pickwick Papers is chock full of social commentary. However, most of it is lighthearted satire, with one notable exception. The debtors' prisons of London, which lock away men who would work to clear their debts, but provide good-for-nothings with the life of leisure that they desire, are not a matter for levity. It's interesting to look at Dickens' development over the course of this novel, which was released in serial form over a year and a half--he starts out with a very unconnected, piecemeal story with a light tone and eventually builds to a serious condemnation of a social injustice that strikes close to him personally. (Dickens' father spent some time in a debtors prison when he was about 12 years old, bringing a harsh end to an otherwise happy childhood)
Another thing that really made me smile is Dickens' lawyers. Dickens does not like lawyers, and it shows in all of his books. Remarkably, only two of the lawyers in this story are truly despicable; the others are merely amusing, although his criticism of lawyers in general and the justice system in its entirety is still very strong.
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