J. M. Coetzee

I am currently reading book #21, Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee. This is my fourth Coetzee book, and I have disliked all of them so far. I can't believe this author has managed to get 10 books on the list - the same amount as Charles Dickens! I just cannot see how Coetzee can be considered worth of 10 books on the list - fortunately they are all fairly short. I actually found a quote in Elizabeth Costello that describes my feelings toward Coetzee's work.

When talking about books - "that are going to be opened and read for a page or two and then yawned at and put aside forever..." If I didn't feel the need to finish any book I start, I would probably do this with Coetzee's books. And if I didn't feel the need to finish this entire list, I would never pick up another of his books again.

The Kreutzer Sonata

Book #810, The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy, starts with a man declaring "I am that Pozdnyshev in whose life that critical episode occurred to which you alluded; the episode when he killed his wife." The narrator then goes to describe his encounter with Pozdnyshev and the man's story of how this murder came about. It is a sad story of lust and betrayal and a man's realization that he never truly understood love. This is one of the best short stories by Tolstoy that I have read.

Went Book Shopping Today...

As I have said before, I love to buy books. Today I went to Half Price Books and picked up four more books from the list, as well as one from the 2008 version of the list. My new acquisitions are:

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Unless by Carol Shields
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (2008 list)

Now to get back to reading The Kruetzer Sonata!

The Death of Ivan Ilych

Last night I read book #829, The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy, and I must say it is the most depressing Tolstoy story I have read so far. The story follows the excruciating death of Ivan Ilych, who falls sick and the doctors cannot agree on what is wrong with him. I think the story wouldn't be so bad if it didn't dwell on the mental anguish Ivan Ilych felt while grappling with his imminent demise, but then again the story would have been far less authentic. And not only does Ivan have to deal with the pain of his illness, but he also comes to realize how unsatisfactory his entire life had been.

A great way to sum up the entire story is with the following quote: "'Why these sufferings?' And the voice answered, 'For no reason - they are just so.' Beyond and besides this there was nothing."

Reading Tolstoy

I am reading the last two Tolstoy stories on the list, which are contained in the volume The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories. I love Tolstoy and I can't see why only four of his books made it on to the list when other (less deserving in my opinion) artists have more. Tolstoy's book are usually sad, sometimes even downright depressing, but beautiful in their melancholia. If you haven't read anything by this author yet, I highly recommend trying. War and Peace can be daunting (though wonderful), but his short stories are just as good, as is Anna Karenina.

Mrs. Dalloway

Poor Clarissa Dalloway - she doesn't seem to know what she wants in life. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf follows Clarissa and several other characters throughout one day, ending with a party at the Dalloway home. The book tends to jump from person to person with little warning which made me go back and reread passages a few times.

Most of the characters in the story were tragic, but Septimus Warren Smith with by far the most pitiful. Septimus seemed to be suffering from what we now know as post-traumatic stress disorder, stemming from his stint in World War I. However, the two doctors he meets with in the book are not as sympathetic as they should be which causes even more problems. This also caused much strife in his marriage, because he felt "One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that." page 135

One thing I learned from this book is that whelmed is actually a word. I have heard of being overwhelmed and underwhelmed, but Woolf uses the word whelmed on page 172. According to Merriam-Webster online, whelmed means to cover or engulf something with usually disastrous effect. Who knew?

Missed One

In going through my books I realized that I had not marked King Solomon's Mines as read. So I checked my Bookcrossing account and sure enough I had read and released the book 2 years ago. This is why I use Lists of Bests to keep track of what I read - I read so many books that it is easy to forget what I have finished and what I still need to read.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I just started book #698, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and it is kicking my behind. I have never read anything by Virginia Woolf before so I thought I would start with the book I hear about most often. Maybe I don't have the patience for it right now, but I am kind of bored by it. I am hoping it will pick up soon.

Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut is a crazy book. That is the only way I can describe it. But crazy in a good way. Vonnegut has such an honest view of life that I can't help but love him. He is like the crazy old grandfather who shouts obscenities at his nurses. Embarrassing but forgivable.

The first thing I noticed about this book is that it seems to be written for aliens in the distant future. He explains even the simplest things and provides his own drawings to further the explanation. For example, Vonnegut compares a steam train whistle to "the voice boxes of mating or dying dinosaurs." He then describes a dinosaur as "a reptile as big as a choo-choo train." This is followed by a drawing of what looks like a stegosaurus. He then talks about how the dinosaur's brain was the size of a pea, and goes on to describe what a pea is and provides a drawing. Check out page 126 of the Delta Trade Paperbacks edition to see exactly what I am writing about.

If you are not afraid of an unflinching view of society, read this book. Vonnegut was an amazing writer and the world lost a great talent when he passed away a few years ago.

Love Vonnegut

I sometimes forget how much I like an author if it has been a long time since I read anything by him (or her). This is what is happening to me now. I put off starting book #340, Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, and I have no idea why. Probably because it has been years since I read Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. He is so funny and I can't put the book down. Now I remember why my husband likes Vonnegut so much.

(In case you don't know, the phrase "So it goes" is repeated several times in Slaughterhouse-Five. My husband got this tattoo because he is a big Vonnegut fan and he said it represents his apathy toward the world.)

July's People

Even if the violence of the events in the book did not reflect what really happened during the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the emotional reaction of the characters rings true in Nadine Gordimer's book, July's People. Gordimer was predicting what would happen when the black vs white conflict came to a head. The Smales family went through a huge transition of feelings toward the black people of Africa. At first they were left-wing sympathizers who wanted equality. Then after living with July's extended family for a while they acted more and more like they wanted nothing to do with the rural folk. I think the following quote shows the relationship (and repressed disdain) between July and the Smales quite well:

"What do the blacks think? What will the freedom fighters think? Did he join the people from Soweto? He took his whites and ran. You make me laugh." Page 128

I cannot even imagine what it would be like to go from living in a large house in a big city to a mud hut with no doors or windows, let alone luxuries like plumbing. This book makes me remember how fortunate I am to have what I have. I hope that I never will experience that kind of loss. But then again, I also can't image what it would be like to have a servant live in my yard, as July did with the Smales family.

Nadine Gordimer

Yesterday I started my first Nadine Gordimer book - July's People (#284 on the list). I don't know much about the uprising in South Africa against apartheid. July is a black man who works for the white Smales family. When the situation in the cities becomes too volatile for the Smaleses to stay, July takes them to his village to hide them. The Smales are a liberal family but they seem to be finding out that they don't treat July and his family as much as equals as they thought. This is an interesting narrative about the clash in South Africa and I feel like I am learning a lot.

Reading with Kids

I love reading to my children. Last Christmas I read A Christmas Carol to my 6-year-old at his request. He is now the only child I know that will hang a jump rope around his shoulders and say he is the ghost of Jacob Marley. But he is having the hardest time learning to read on his own. We go over and over sight words and get simple books from the library. Things just don't seem to click for him. Maybe I have spoiled him, but I want him to love books as much as I do. I guess we will just have to keep working at it.

Three Lives

I have finally finished Three Lives by Gertrude Stein, and I am glad to be done with it. All three women in the story were so tragic and sad but not particularly likeable. The one thing they all had in common was living in Bridgepoint - otherwise the stories had nothing to do with each other (unless one of the Mathildas in The Gentle Lena was the Mathilda in The Good Anna).

The most difficult thing about this book was that I kept feeling like I had already read it. There was so much repetition - complete sentences in their entirety were duplicated at different points in the stories - especially in Melanctha. I think I will be giving myself quite a bit of time off before I tackle one of the other Stein books on the list.

Still Working on Three Lives

I am slogging through Gertrude Stein's book - I thought I would finish it over the weekend but didn't read as much as I expected to. The Melanctha story is getting more repetitive as it goes along. Melanctha and Jeff Campbell, the man she is in love with, seem to have the same conversation over and over. They also like to say each others' names many times during the conversation which seems awkward to me. Hopefully I will finish soon.

The Good Anna

I just started book #756, Three Lives by Gertrude Stein. The book is broken up into three stories - The Good Anna, Melanctha, and The Gentle Lena. I finished The Good Anna and have started on Melanctha.

I really think The Good Anna should actually be The Meddlesome Anna, or The Exasperating Anna - something not so flattering. Anna is a stolid and stubborn servant who works for a few different people. She will only work for people that will allow her to control every aspect of their lives. She gets upset at any money her employers spend, yet wastes all of hers on friends who overspend on themselves. She is hostile and unreasonable when interviewed for a job. She scolds her friends when they do something she doesn't like and they are afraid of her wrath.

So far Melanctha is a much more affable character, but the writing is getting more and more repetitive. Stein finds phrases that she likes and uses them over and over, sometimes within the same paragraph. If the author's other books on the list are as repetitive (and I have read that The Making of Americans is more so and over 900 pages long), it may be a chore getting through them.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

I finished Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston a lot quicker than I expected. I still don't like the phonetic speech, but once I got a little further into the book I couldn't put it down. I really enjoyed the main character, Janie. She was so easy to relate to and her pain was very real. Even though she left one husband and buried two more she didn't let life beat her down. In the end she found peace, which might be her greatest achievement.

As you may have noticed, I like to find specific quotes from the books that either strike a chord with me or tend to sum up the experience of the book. Here is one that speaks of Janie's second marriage:

"She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over." Page 68

Who hasn't felt that way at some point in life? Not just about a spouse, but with any sort of relationship. Hurston has a way of putting visceral emotions into words that anyone can understand.

Just Moseying Along

I am having a hard time finding a book that I truly love lately. I started Their Eyes Were Watching God (book #609) yesterday. This is one of those books where the speech is written phonetically, which I have always had trouble reading. I did want to share a quote that I found amusing:

"...he talks tuh unlettered folks wid books in his jaws..." page 46. I love the imagery that line produces.

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

A soccer-goalie-turned-construction-worker decides that a casual glance from his foreman means he is fired, so he leaves his job and starts wandering aimlessly around his city. After stalking and killing a movie cashier, he leaves and wanders around another town.
The back of the book describes the writing as "fractured prose" and I definitely agree with the description. I know that the style is showing the increasing paranoia of the main character and his crumbling sanity, but sometimes it gets confusing. For example, here is an excerpt from page 38:

'Even though the window was open, it was impossible to see into the customs shed; the room was too dark from the outside. Still, somebody must have seen Bloch from the inside; he understood this because he himself held his breath as he walked past. Was it possible that nobody was in the room even though the window was wide open? Why "even though"?'

As the story progresses, the writing gets even more choppy and baffling. From page 77: "To his left he saw...To his right there was...Behind him he saw...He got hungry and walked away."

You will need some patience to get through this book if you are not a fan of this writing style. The book also feels unfinished, but I suppose you can infer what eventually happens to Bloch. The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke is not casual reading.

Fear and Trembling

If you have problems with your manager(s) at work, read Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb and you will be happy your boss isn't Mori-san or Omochi-san. This is a true account Nothomb's move from Belgium to Japan to work for the Yumimoto Corporation. Her immediate supervisor, Mori Fubuki, is bitter when Nothomb is given an assignment that Mori-san feels is to good for our heroine. Mori-san then proceeds to make Nothomb's life a living hell by giving her the worst assignments she can think of. Nothomb spends several months cleaning toilets, even though she is supposed to be working for the import-export division.
This book catalogs the humiliation the author endures for an entire year with the company. I had a horrible boss at the end of my career with The Callos Companies, but it was nothing like this. While this book may not make you like your supervisor more, you just might appreciate that he or she could be much, much worse.

Now What?

I finished Out of Sight, and am trying to decide what to read next. The problem is that I have too many books. I literally have over 700 books in my house because I love to buy them, particularly at bag- and box-sales. So now I can't make a decision. Right now it is between Time's Arrow, a Tolstoy book with both the Kruetzer Sonata and The Death of Ivan Ilych, or The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. Any opinions on what to read next?

15% Finished!

In looking at my list on Lists of Bests, I realize that Death in Venice has put me over the 15% mark! Only 850 books to go - easy right?

Possession

I would like to share my favorite poem from Possession by A.S. Byatt. I enjoyed this poem so much that I wrote it down in a notebook so I wouldn't forget it after I passed the book to the next person in the bookring. Possession was a good story, even if the Maud character had a strange obsession with the color green. This poem was written by Randolph Ash in the book.

And is love then more

Than the kick galvanic

Or the thundering roar

of Ash volcanic

Belched from some crater

Of earth-fire within?

Are we automata

Or Angel-Kin?

After Death in Venice and Naked Lunch, I needed to take a break and read something a little - simpler. I am reading Out of Sight by Elmore Leonard, which is not on the 1001 BYMR list (even though Leonard's novel Get Shorty is, I really wanted to read this one).

Death in Venice

Just finished book #750, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. This book is only 62 pages, but it took me 4 or 5 days to read. It is a dense novella about a man who suddenly decides to travel in 1911. He makes his way to Venice where he begins observing a Polish family. He ultimately falls in love with the young Polish boy Tadzio. It is hard to say much else about the story without telling everything, so I will share my favorite quote from the book:

"Yes, even on a personal basis art is an enhancement of life. It makes you more deeply happy, it wears you out faster." Page 11 Dover Edition

Naked Lunch

 

I thought I would have finished Death in Venice by now, but I have been falling asleep as I read it. So I wanted to talk about the book I finished a few days ago, Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.

A long time ago I tried watching the Naked Lunch movie and was never able to get through it. I do remember the beginning having a lot to do with an exterminator who was addicted to the powder insecticide. So when I started reading this book I expected to start reading about an exterminator. Nope - not at all. In fact, I found one short section about an exterminator, but it was in the last 3rd of the book and a pretty negligible part of the story.

I don't know what to think of this book. Even though I finished it less than a week ago, I can't seem to remember anything concrete about the story. This is probably because it was the disjointed ramblings of a man addicted to opiates. Burroughs himself states in the introduction that he doesn't remember writing it, at least how he felt as he wrote it. These were notes he took while drifting in his junk-induced dream state. So I guess it isn't all that surprising that the book feels like some kind of bad dream, the details of which keep slipping through my grasp.

Ready...Set...

I have decided to blog about reading through the "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" - the 2006 edition. I have the actual book, but am using the Lists of Bests list to track my progress. The Lists of Bests list is in reverse chronological order, opposite to the book, for some reason. Here is what I have read so far:

1. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Saturday - Ian McEwan
5. Adjunct: An Undigest - Peter Manson
11. The Lambs of London - Peter Ackroyd
16. Thursbitch - Alan Garner
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
24. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
42. Atonement - Ian McEwan
45. The Body Artist - Don DeLillo
48. Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
49. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
67. House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
75. Fear and Trembling - Amelie Nothomb
77. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
86. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
92. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
93. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
106. Forever a Stranger - Hella S. Haasse
116. The Reader - Bernhard Schlink
117. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
135. Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War - Sebastian Faulks
141. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
143. The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
147. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
183. Possession - A.S. Byatt
187. Sexing the Cherry - Jeanette Winterson
190. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
195. Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel
196. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
223. Beloved - Toni Morrison
227. Watchmen - Alan Moore
232. Foe - J.M. Coetzee
236. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
237. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
240. Less Than Zero - Brett Easton Ellis
241. Contact - Carl Sagan
242. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
243. Perfume - Patrick Suskind
254. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
258. Neuromancer - William Gibson
259. Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes
266. Life and Times of Michael K. - J.M. Coetzee
272. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
293. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
301. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
320. Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
349. Sula - Toni Morrison
350. Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
351. The Breast - Philip Roth
365. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
367. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
368. Mercier et Camier - Samuel Beckett
375. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
379. The Godfather - Mario Puzo
389. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
390. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
399. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
400. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
408. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
413. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
427. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
428. The Graduate - Charles Webb
433. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
437. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
438. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
444. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A Heinlein
445. Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
451. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
456. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
461. Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
472. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
486. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
487. The Wonderful O - James Thurber
494. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
496. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
508. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
520. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
521. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
526. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
527. Foundation - Isaac Asimov
529. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
536. The 13 Clocks - James Thurber
539. I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
547. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
549. Disobedience - Alberto Moravia
561. Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake
564. Animal Farm - George Orwell
565. Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
574. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
579. The Outsider - Albert Camus
592. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
603. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
608. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
610. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkein
619. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
649. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
667. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
671. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
695. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
699. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
708. A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
717. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
747. Tarzan of the Apes - Edgar Rice Burroughs
752. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
780. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
781. The Hound of the Baskervilles - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
790. The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
791. The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
794. Dracula - Bram Stoker
797. The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
801. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
809. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
831. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
838. The Red Room - August Strindberg
840. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
848. Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
854. Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There - Lewis Carroll
857. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
863. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
866. Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne
867. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
868. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
876. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
886. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
890. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
896. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
897. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
902. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
904. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
905. Vanity Fair - William Thackery
911. The Pit and the Pendulum - Edgar Allen Poe
913. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
916. The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allen Poe
919. The Nose - Nikolai Gogol
931. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
933. Persuasion - Jane Austen
936. Emma - Jane Austen
938. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
940. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
959. The Sorrows of Young Werther - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
961. The Man of Feeling - Henry Mackenzie
962. A Sentimental Journey - Laurence Sterne
982. A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
989. Oroonoko; or, A Royal Slave - Aphra Behn
992. Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes
996. The Thousand Nights and One Night - Anonymous
1001. Aesop's Fables - Aesop

Some of these books I read so long ago that I have little memory of them. Some of them, like A Suitable Boy, Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace (and many others) will stay with me forever. I will talk about the books as I read them and go back and discuss some of the previously read books once in a while.