Book 4 of 2009: Treasure Island

Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson

I was hoping that Treasure Island would be a palate cleanser of sorts. After failed book after book, I actually managed to make it through this in varied 20-30 minute bouts of reading.

What I liked: an actual plot. I'm so immersed in literature that prides itself on a non-traditional plot that I'm bubble-gum-brained-drawn-to a story arch that actually builds. The narrative frame was helpful, too, because I never got lost, even when I fell asleep in the middle of chapters or read half-paying attention to the tv (Take that, Beckett!).

My favorite thing? The preface and afterward. Seriously. Reading about Stevenson's life was preferable to the story itself. Reading criticisms about how his characters purposely are drawn flat, without women, etc was the highlight of the whole thing.

Not to mention my husband's excitement in explaining how this single book began the modern pirate phenomenon we know and love today.

YaaArRrggG. Now I'm hankering for Disneyland. And I've learned quite a bit more about my reading habits, curiosities and interests (Not that I ever really questioned them).

+++

Book five will be something a bit more to my taste. The choices are accumulating.

What to Read?

I'm having a difficult time staying focused on a book. McCullers' is the second book which I've picked up, read 50 pages, and then left at my bedside for weeks and weeks (though, in all honesty, this is a character flaw I've had for a great many years, this book being perhaps the last of an upwards of 100 which have befallen the same fate).

In an effort to address this atrocity, I'm reminding myself of the list of what I'd like to read in 2009. It has grown some since its conception, but I'm hoping the selection will make it easier to produce results (as in, completed books in a timely fashion).

As it stands now, these books are on the forefront:



Now, I've read some of these and plan to revisit them. Others I've never managed to get through or find the chance to read. A lot of this whole List of 2009 business is to acquaint myself with supposed canonical "classics" for which I never was exposed to in my English studies (and for which I'd like a working knowledge of in case I, for example, manage to get my head out of my ass and begin writing critical work again).

The Joyce and the Hemingway will be read alongside the husband in an effort to both have quality, critical discussions and see the work from a trained poet's viewpoint rather than just my novel-loving brain (and besides, it's way classier than challenging one another at Jeopardy).

I'd also like to mix in a bit of Turgenev because of his influence on Miller and Bukowski.

Beyond that, I'm lost. I've got shelves on shelves at my disposal; American, British, World Lit and Theory:



And then the Poetry, Pop Culture, Media and Travel Sections:



Then there's the Mythology and Religion shelves and the Reference Shelves that are on their own, but perhaps are not the most riveting or commanding in page-turning.

And then there's the TV.

Book 4 of 2009: Epic Fail 1

I began Austen's Emma with the best of intentions. Coming right off of Bronte I figured there would be no better time.

I've somehow earned two degrees in English, taught it for years, but have never actually read Jane Austen. Everyone says how clever and wonderful she is. I was looking forward to it.

40 pages in and I gave up. I just don't think I can make myself finish the book, particularly when there is a good 300 pages remaining.

Therefore, Epic Fail 1 of the 2009 Reading List: Emma. Shrug.

Meanwhile, Book 4 is now The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter for which in the first 50 pages is already redeeming my decision to jump ship and go full steam ahead number of decades.

Book 3 of 2009: Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys

"As for my confused impressions they will never be written. There are blanks in my mind that cannot be filled up" (45).

"...If I was bound for hell let it be hell. no more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We'll see who hates best. But first, first I will destroy your hatred. Now. My hate is colder, stronger, and you'll have to hate to warm yourself. You will have nothing" (102).

"I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it" (103).

Notes: I was excited to start this when I learned it was a prequel to Jane Eyre, specifically noting the relationship between the crazy wife in the attic and Rochester. I was a little distracted by the Carribean-Creole emancipation nature of it, but at the same time felt it worked to add a whole new depth to the contrast of characters in a post-colonial way (Rochester being English and unable to fit and Antoinette/Bertha being from an ex-slave owning family but also of the Carribean, also marginalized by her very essence). It was very short and sudden and I'm not entirely clear what happened and how to make sense of it--one minute things are building in tension and the next she is being drugged in bed and quieted by Voodoo practices. I'm still not sure if her insanity was caused by real madness or the practices of the island. The Norton edition, as always, helped a great deal but I found myself getting caught up on footnotes and historical/biographical information and losing my place in the actual text. I intended to enjoy the shifting narration, but found it a messy kind of stylistic choice that didn't fit with such an exacting and complex composition (unless of course, that was entirely for the irony that I realize just now in saying so. In this case, it is a metaphor for the entirety of the work, the confining of emotion/self and the essential ability for these things to sneak out. True of WSS and particularly of Jane Eyre. Regardless, I feel it could have been executed in a cleaner way.)

Book 2 of 2009: Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte

"I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an individual not beloning to Gatehead, and not related to Mrs. Reed" (18).

"...[I]t is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear" (56).

"Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs: and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key" (223).

"In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty land--Mr. Rochester is not there: and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course, [...] I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost..." (411).

Notes: I remember everyone hating his book in school. I never had to read it. It is not without fault, quite clearly, starting with trite and confined narration. But there is charm to it still... I didn't begin hating it until after Jane and Rochester were engaged, though I knew little would become of such a happy ending only half way through such a tome. I feel all the characters were flat, speaking as though on stage. But, because of that, I enjoyed Jane's non-feminine, non-realistic confidence. I enjoyed her suffering when she believed Rochester was to marry another. I hoped it would have kept that tension, Rochester marrying another and Jane brood over it on a daily basis. Overall, I liked it but felt it lacked depth and strong character representations like that of ol' sis' Wuthering Heights. Now we will see if the story comes across any better in Wide Sargasso Sea. Next up.

Book 1 of 2009: Fear and Loathing

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
by Hunter S. Thompson

"...Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas. To relax as it were, in the womb of the desert sun. Just roll the roof back and screw it on, grease the face with white tanning butter and move out with the music at top volume, and at least a pint of ether" (12).

"But our trip was different. It was a clasic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country--but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that" (18).

"I began to drink heavily, think heavily, and make many heavy notes..." (40).

"Every now and then you run up on one of those days when everything's in vain...a stone bummer from start to finish; and if you know what's good for you, on days like these you sort of hunker down in a safe corner and watch. Maybe think a bit. Lay back on a cheap wooden chair, screened off from the traffic, and shrewdly rip the poptops out of five or eight Budweisers...smoke off a pack of King Marlboros, eat a peanut-butter sanwich, and finally toward evening gobble up a wad of good mescaline...then drive out, later on, to the beach. Get out in the surf, in the fog, and slosh along on numb-frozen feet about ten yards out from the tideline..." (199).

Notes: Great pacing, something I've always loved from Thompson. No matter how insane, grotesque, ridiculous, I'm following him from page to page with complete adoration and trust. It is interesting to see how his craft changed from Rum Diary, but that underlying skill is still there. I could hear all the dialogue in my head, for better and for worse, in a bevy of Thompson impressions.