Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was exceedingly more interesting than I’d expected.  My only knowledge of the story was that Dr. Jekyll drinks a potion and turns into a monster, Mr. Hyde.  I’d actually had the two confused, imagining the one with the name Jekyll as the evil one.  I think the only real image I had was from the Tweety Bird cartoons.

Robert Louis Stevenson (who also wrote Treasure Island) did a wonderful job of keeping the plot confusing, and building a true mystery.  I came into the book already knowing the story, or the punch line, and I was still made to believe that Jekyll and Hyde were two different people.  

His writing style is a lot like Lovecraft, in the sense that he sets a mood of terror among an air of mystery.  Similar to Lovecraft, he has many characters “confessing” to “images of horror.”  This is my favorite type of horror novel – the kind that haunts you with possibilities, rather than spelling it out in graphic detail.

Lloyd Obsourne, Stevenson’s stepson, recalls, “I remember the first reading as if it were yesterday. Louis came downstairs in a fever; read nearly half the book aloud; and then, while we were still gasping, he was away again, and busy writing. I doubt if the first draft took so long as three days.” (wikipedia)

The best part of this book is learning exactly what Mr. Hyde was.  He was the representation of evil in all of us.  Dr. Jekyll was obsessed with the duality of man, realizing that if he had good in him, he had to have evil as well.  He concocted a potion that brought out Mr. Hyde – a much smaller, twisted and knotted version of himself.  Since Dr. Jekyll was primarily a good man, his normal body was sturdy and thriving;  since he was only partially evil, Mr. Hyde was childlike in stature, and underdeveloped, almost deformed.

This quickly changed.  As Mr. Hyde committed all of the atrocities that Dr. Jekyll secretly longed for, the balance of his good/evil began to shift, and Mr. Hyde started to take over the body by will alone – whether the doctor drank the potion or not.  His body grew bigger and stronger, and sometimes the doctor would go to sleep as himself, and wake up in the gnarled body of Mr. Hyde.

This is an interesting concept, especially for the time (1886), that human nature is comprised of both good and evil, and that we should allow for both, or else one might surge and suffocate the other.  It’s about balance, and accepting both the virtuous and the depraved parts of ourselves.  Even when Dr. Jekyll was living his “good” side, before Mr. Hyde’s appearance, he felt tortured and out of place, like he was living a lie.  How many of us haven’t felt that way at times?

Buy the book.

Great Expectations

The first 250 pages were boring to me, except for the interactions between Pip and Estella.  There was way too much back story, though it did lead to some great character development.  It all leads up to a pinnacle moment, and once that moments is reached (no spoilers!), it’s like a rollercoaster soap opera, with one twist after another, til the very end.  Unfortunately it takes about 300 pages to get there, but once it’s there you won’t regret having picked up this book.

I was a little biased toward this book because I am in love with the movie, and while the characters are the same (though not their names – awkward), the differences are such that it makes it seem like a different story.  But the actors chosen for the movie couldn’t have been a better representation of Dickens’ characters, and having seen the movie really enriched my experience with the book.

The book offered twists and haunting scenes that weren’t in the movie, and one in particular that the movie should have adopted.  The book was also a lot more dramatic than the movie, tying everyone together in the end, where the movie left things more to the imagination. 

In one of the last scenes in the book, I actually got goosebumps, which books don’t generally do for me, so for that reason alone I’d recommend it.  I actually recommend seeing the movie first (which I immediately ordered on Amazon for nostalgia’s sake), to get a really vivid image of the characters.  Here’s a trailer/video that highlights it pretty well, though I can’t find enough on the unforgettable Miss Havisham/Dinsmoor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of6AVghH3Uo

Watch the Movie. Read the book.  In that order.

Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 is written so poetically, I was compelled to read it out loud (which I did for the first 20 pages, until my partner got tired of hearing me talking even more than usual).   Ray Bradbury is a passionate writer;  you can tell by the way his sentences flow so beautifully that he throws himself into each one of them.  I’m always amazed to find such romance coming from a male author. The story was short, yet gripping from start to finish.   It’s a utopian story about the future of our society, where we’ve become so overstimulated it becomes a crime to read, because books incite thought in our already overstuffed brains.  In the Afterword Bradbury gives examples of how this is happening today, with censorship and political correctness killing our imaginations.   

Here’s a brief excerpt, so you can see the beauty of Bradbury’s style:

How rarely did other people’s faces take of you and throw back to you own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?  What incredible power of identification the girl had;  she was like the eager watcher of a marionette show, anticipating each flicker of an eyelid, each gesture of his hand, each flick of a finger, the moment before it began.  How long had they walked together?  Three minutes?  Five?  Yet how large that time seemed now.  How immense a figure she was on the stage before him;  what a shadow she threw on the wall with her slender body!  He felt that if his eye itched, she might blink, and if the muscles of his jaw stretched imperceptibly, she would yawn long before he would. 

Once I’m done with this list, I’ll definitely be coming back to Bradbury, but for now I’m moving on to Great Expectations.

The Great Gatsby

For the record, The Sun Also Rises ended just as anti-climatically as the rest of the story suggested it would, and I took absolutely nothing from it except a decent description of the Running of the Bulls, which I found entertaining.  Otherwise, the story ended with the main character and the leading lady both denying their true feelings, and being in the exact same position they were in at the start of the book.  Big disappointment.

I’m moving on to The Great Gatsby.  I know nothing about this book, except that Mia Farrow played the lead female role in the movie, and she was the voice of The Last Unicorn, which is enough to make me happy.  I’m only about 10 pages in, and already I love Fitzgerald’s writing style.  It’s rich with description and he immediately made me fall in love with the main characters. 

This is a short book, I should be done tomorrow.

Edit: Nov. 9, 2009

Finished The Great Gatsby tonight.  It had a tragic ending, not at all what I expected.  It was a very short book, (though this may be because I just finished 800-page Anna Karenina), but I didn’t feel there was enough time to get to know Gatsby before the ending came.  I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I will just recommend that if you haven’t read this book yet, you definitely should.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but having the image of Robert Redford and Mia Farrow really helped establish the characters for me.  In a way, Gatsby reminds me of so many people I know, constantly “entertaining,” but developing no real friendships.  The love story is the part that really tore me up though.  I have such high expectations for passionate love, and this is the second book in a row that left me feeling empty about it.

Definitely going to read some more Fitzgerald in the future though.

Anna Karenina – Part Deux

Finished!  Vertig!  I did NOT like this book!  I pushed myself through the last 300 pages, just so I could legitimately finish it, but even that was borderline torturous.  The book started out so romantically; it’s the story of two couples and their tumultuous relationships.  In a nutshell, the relationship that was built on pure passion ended in tragedy, and the one that was more logical seemed to flourish.  It almost feels like Tolstoy was following the times by refusing to allow an extra-marital affair to survive, and instead made Anna go mad in the end, taking her own life. 

I guess I have to give him credit for not letting everyone live happily ever after. 

This book has been regarded by some to be the “greatest novel ever written.”   It simply wasn’t that interesting to me, nowhere near the likes of Atlas Shrugged or Lolita. 

This quote summarizes Anna Karenina better than my words ever could: “The central theme of Anna Karenina is that a rural life of moral simplicity, despite its monotony, is the preferable personal narrative to a daring life of impulsive passion, which only leads to tragedy.”

And now, back to Gatsby.

Anna Karenina

 
Sadly, I lost my book

In the meantime, the library called and my reserved copy of A Clockwork Orange is in, so I’ll be heading down there to get it. I imagine they’d have The Great Gatsby there, and if so I will resume tomorrow
In the meantime I picked up Anna Karenina off my shelf and accidently fell in love with it.  It’s an 800 page book, so I’m in it for the long haul.  I have a feeling I’ll now be reading 3 books at a time, which is usual.

About 100 pages into Anna Karenina, I am already deeply entrenched in the lives of the characters.  While Anna herself seems a little TOO perfect, I’m rooting for her, and am glad to see real passion in all his characters (nice relief from the Sun Also Rises).  Tolstoy claims this was his first attempt at a novel.  One could only hope for such success.  I read a bit of the forward, and sadly it contained some spoilers(!), so I’m already aware that Anna dies in the end, which kind of killed the whole book for me, but it’s like watching the various versions of Romeo and Juliet – even though you know the final outcome, the ride there is well worth it.

The Sun Also Rises

I’ve gotten 50 pages from the end of this book, and I have to say, it’s boring as hell.  I had higher hopes for a Hemingway novel, as I loved The Old Man and the Sea, but this one is just uninteresting.  It’s written very dispassionately, and has a lot of, “and then we did this, and then we did this,” with very little inner dialog. 

There are a couple of noteworthy themes in this book, one of which is the aimless, bitter outlook of the post-war society.  All of the characters seem to just accept life as it is, with little hope for greatness, spending all of their time partying and drinking.  What’s especially frustrating is how none of the characters really fight for what they want.  There are a lot of unfulfilled desires.

One supposedly noteworthy theme of this book is the free-spirit mentality of Lady Brett Ashley.  I know she is an important literary figure, having heard her name several times before, but I just don’t see what’s so special about her.  I guess for the 20’s she’s pretty sexually forward,  but she doesn’t seem to have real independence as she jumps from one relationship to another, most of the time having affairs.  She is obviously in love with the main character, and won’t do anything about it.  I don’t know. . . seems like a poor example of an independent woman. 

So far I’m sadly disappointed in this book.  I assume the last 50 pages will be as boring as the first 200, but I’m gonna plow through. 

 

The Book List

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess

A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole

A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce

A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster

A TALE OF TWO CITIES by Charles Dickens

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser

ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by LM Montgomery

AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner

BLINDNESS by Jose Saramago

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh

CATCH 22 by Joseph Heller

CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

CRYPTONOMICON by Neal Stephenson

DELIVERANCE by James Dickey

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO by Boris Pasternak

DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes

DRACULA by Bram Stoker

DUNE by Frank Herbert

EAST OF EDEN by John Steinbeck

EUNOIA by Christian Bok

FARENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury

FAUST by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce

FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelly

GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS by Jonathan Swift

HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad

HOUSE OF LEAVES by Mark Danielewski

HUNGER by Knut Hamsun

I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves

INDEPENDENT PEOPLE by Halldór Laxness

INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison

JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte

JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN by Dalton Trumbo

KILLING PABLO by Mark Bowden

LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER by DH Lawrence

LAMB by Christopher Moore

LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa Alcott

MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert

MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie

MOBY DICK by Herman Melville

NATIVE SON by Richard Wright

OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham

OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck

ON BEAUTY by Zadie Smith

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST by Ken Kesey

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen

PYGMALION  by George Bernard Shaw

ROBINSON CRUSOE by Daniel Defoe

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury

SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence

SOPHIE’S CHOICE by William Styron

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein

TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain

THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin

THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler

THE BROTHERS K by David James Duncan

THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London

THE COLOR PURPLE by Alice Walker

THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas

THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN by John Fowles

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME by Victor Hugo

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS by James Fenimore Cooper

THE LORD OF THE RINGS by JRR Tolkein

THE LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry

THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett

THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT by Oliver Sacks

THE METAMORPHOSIS by Franz Kafka

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE by Stephen Crane

THE REMAINS OF THE DAY by Ishaguro

THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodges Burnett

THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner

THE STAND by Stephen King

THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway

THE THREE MUSKETEERS by Alexandre Dumas

THE TIN DRUM by Günter Grass

THE TURN OF THE SCREW by Henry James

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf

TREASURE ISLAND by Robert Louis Stevenson

TSOTSI by Athol Fugard

ULYSSES by James Joyce

VANITY FAIR by William Thackeray

WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams

WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte

About this Blog. . .

I have decided to take on the daunting task of creating a list of “100 Books to Read Before I Die,” and unlike most people, actually following through with it.  Granted, I am the same person who has opened and closed three businesses, started and stopped smoking five times, purchased and sold a total of three exercise machines, not to mention my complete inability to commit to a relationship longer than 4 months (current relationships excluded), so we’ll see how this goes.

I’ve decided to create a separate blog from my Let’s Eat Cake! The Inner-Workings of Non-Monogamy, because I really want to dedicate that blog to people who are interested in the poly lifestyle, without making them filter through dozens of book reviews.

That said, welcome to 1 Million Words!  I’ll be posting each book as I go, and chronicling my thoughts on these “classic” novels, to see if they really are worth reading (accoring to yours truly).  I understand that most books become classics because they represent some kind of movement, or new way of thinking, or personification of a genre (new or improved) for the era they were written in.  I feel my list is missing some important books from OUR time, but I also understand that a classic is often defined by its staying power.  While I think Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a must-read, whether or not it will go down in history has yet to be seen. 

It should also be noted that this list does not include books I’ve already read, so don’t panic if 1984 or Atlas Shrugged isn’t on the list.  As much as I appreciate suggestions, I’ve already painstakingly filtered this list down to the ones I find essential.  Who knows, maybe after this I’ll start a NEW list, and torture you all further.  So, without further ado. . .

They say you cannot be a great writer until you are first a great reader.  I feel this is a double edged sword.  How can one be confronted with greatness, with any type of literary genius, and come out unscathed in the end?  It’s a trip back to the memories and horrors of middle school, where you are torn between wanting so desperately to measure up, and your need for unique self-expression.  It’s all been written before, yet there are still authors that can floor me with their brilliance, with the perfect structuring of a six-word sentence.   ~Me

‘For sale: Baby shoes; never worn.’ ~Ernest Hemingway