Laura
At first I didn't think this book was going to be any better than the other two in the Nikki Heat series. But with the ending and with further thought about how well it complements what's happening on the show, I decided I liked it quite a bit more. (Or maybe I was just less invested in the show when I read the first two books?) The books are mostly just official fan fiction, most of which I could take or leave, and the mysteries in and of themselves didn't really interest me (especially the second book). But the mystery played out really well in Heat Rises and was further enriched by how interestingly it reflected the show and served as Castle's recreation of the events around Montgomery's death and Beckett's shooting.
The ending was kind of heartbreaking – Rook taking the bullet for Heat when Castle couldn't take it for Beckett, with Heat at Rook's bedside in the way that Castle couldn't be for Beckett because she pushed him away. The story's resolution was also interesting as Castle's recasting of Montgomery's role in Beckett's mom's murder – Montrose was the one to lead them to the solution after his death, while Montgomery, similarly blaming and sacrificing himself, was only able to help to a point and refused to lead them to the truth.
And then of course Belvedere Castle (“looking upward at the castle that had been her salvation”!) and the Victoria St. Clair romance novel with Kate Sackett (Castle of her Endless Longing!) – more fan-fiction-fare! So many layers, and instead of just being amusing as in the previous books, they're much more interesting and even moving, because there is more at stake in their relationship now than there was in the first three seasons, especially with the secrets it looks like they'll be keeping from each other in the coming episodes.
From “On Books”:
“I do not doubt that I often happen to talk of things which are treated better in the writings of master-craftsmen, and with more authenticity. What you have here is purely an assay of my natural, not at all of my acquired, abilities. Anyone who catches me out in ignorance does me no harm: I cannot vouch to other people for my reasonings: I can scarcely vouch for them to myself and am by no means satisfied with them. If anyone is looking for knowledge let him go where such fish are to be caught; there is nothing I lay claim to less. These are my own thoughts, by which I am striving to make known not matter but me. Perhaps I shall master that matter one day; or perhaps I did do so once when Fortune managed to bring me to places where light is thrown on it. But I no longer remember anything about that. I may be a man of fairly wide reading, but I retain nothing.
“So I guarantee you nothing for certain, except my making known what point I have so far reached in my knowledge of it.
.......
“When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.”
For a contemporary fiction class. It was a good read and a both enchanting and viscerally unpleasant representation of re-education in China during the Cultural Revolution, but there was a shortage of oomph for me. I reserve the right to change my mind once we've actually discussed the work in class and I've had more time to think about it.
I wasn't sure of the reason for the chapters in the latter third of the book narrated by other characters. I didn't understand why the old miller was being brought back into the story or why we needed to witness this scene in the river from three different perspectives. It seemed to jar with the rest of the story and I'm not sure why the author let that happen.
The description of the books being burned was lovely, but I had a hard time believing that these boys would really have done it. Their eyes didn't shine over the Little Seamstress as much as they did over those books! I may have missed what it was that made her so important to them.
I'm just going to list out some of the different elements of the novel that I want to remember:
- Re-education, both for the boys and for the Little Seamstress; culture/knowledge and lack thereof each can be problematic. By why doesn't the Little Seamstress (or the narrator) ever get a name?
- The narrow path to the Little Seamstress's house with chasms on either side, his dreams about this path, and the significance of the red-beaked ravens.
- Looking for honest simple rural poetry in the bawdy peasant songs.
- Storytelling through books, films, oral tales; retelling and embellishment; the importance of performance in storytelling and the emotional power of stories.
- Reverence for the translator of the French novels in a novel itself written originally in French, translated into English.
I want to say something about how reading English translations from the French sometimes feels strange to me, but it seems wrong to hypothesize that since this is the language other than English that I am most familiar with, I can recognize the difference between what is translated directly or literally versus what is paraphrased, and this recognition of the translation in action as it were disrupts the flow of the story. I can't think of any good examples which is why my hypothesis is probably wrong but I'm just putting it out there.
Post-class notes: So the prof argued that there are two stories going on in this novel: the story of Luo and the Seamstress, in which the narrator plays a minor but increasingly significant role, and the story of the narrator‰ЫЄs development as an artist. So the three chapters from the miller's, Luo's, and the Seamstress's perspectives are the flexing of the new creative muscle the narrator has discovered in himself, and his recognition that he too has storytelling and creative powers in the way that at the beginning of the novel he felt only Luo had. Class discussion resulted in minor improvements in my opinion of the book but not enough to change the star rating. (Star ratings suck a lot.)
I really enjoyed the first maybe three-quarters, but then I started feeling queasy. The tone was great and the plot was tight, but it just got so sick and sad in the end that I hardly even wanted to finish it. A classic, certainly, but it felt too dark and pathetic to actually enjoy to the end. I love noir but maybe I'm a bit too soft for some of it?
The Emily of the letters is different from the Emily of the poems. She is overwhelmingly full of love and affection and sweet thoughts in the letters (of course this is just a selection) – a different tone from the poems. An intriguing companion but medium-weight in comparison to the poems.
I would've appreciated more annotations to some of the letters in this edition. The way the notes were presented in this edition were a bit awkward, coming as they did in the same heading and format as the recipient and date. But the little size, hard cover, and bookmark ribbon were very pleasing.
Maybe my personal first impression was modified by reading the introduction by Robert Murray Davis about Waugh's development of this novel from his short story “The Man Who Liked Dickens,” but after Tony leaves for his trip, the novel, to me, fell apart. The story was humming along very nicely before that happened. I was reminded more than anything of Willa Cather's The Professor's House, but this was by far more poorly executed. It did get interesting when Tony became sick, and I was intrigued by the endnote about the allusions in the name Todd. The similarities drawn between the “savages” of London and the “savages” of the Amazon were, I'm sure, perfectly acceptable around the time of publication, but I am not so comfortable with it. It kind of turned my stomach in the way the tribal sequence in the 2005 King Kong does. The alternate ending of the novel (used in the serialized version) was appalling but at least more in keeping with the novel as a whole.
I try to keep an open mind about what the young kids go on about these days, so I thought I would give this guy a chance and see what's what, what. But then I realized that Tao Lin is a year older than I am – I thought he was, I don't know, five years younger than me? which would help excuse him. But no. The story and the writing both reminded me of the diaries I kept late in grade school and early in high school (that is, the parts where I described social interactions, which weren't many). It also reminded me of this one guy on Diaryland I used to read who was depressed and self-sabotaging with a girlfriend and a pathetic mom and no money. Bobby or something? In any case, I was kind of depressed by the time I finished the novella, so I read some philosophy to restore my equilibrium.
Argh, the inadequacy of the stars! One star is missing only for all the people and events that went over my head (rather that I let pass by). But even at her most informal (or especially?), Woolf is striking. The last year (1940-1941; the war) is affecting enough to balance out that last stretch of the diaries that is not as concerned with writing as the preceding. The brevity and casualness of her “notes” and the repetition of her anguish and fear and anxiety with every book are somehow warming to me.
I didn't enjoy A Room of One's Own when I read it some months ago, which made me reluctant about Woolf. I only picked up this book from the library when I happened across a writer-blogger (whom I otherwise don't know) refer to it as a book she keeps on hand to refer to in times of inspiration-need. It shows every sign of becoming the same for me – it's helped to push me forward on some writing projects. I plan to buy a copy of my own and may even underline some passages and write comments in the margins – and I never do that! From here I'd like to read her essays (I started with “How Should One Read a Book?” this evening) and her novels (To the Lighthouse to start, I think).
Wonderful set of conversational pieces about interaction and communication. My favourite chapters were “How to Make Friends in a New City,” “Don't Pretend There is No Leader,” “Manners,” “Why Noise Music?”, “Who are Your Friends?”, and “Atheism and Ritual.” He talks a lot about the games, classes, and workshops he has led, and until about one-third through I kept expecting to be bored by these parts – since there are few things I enjoy less than group activities – but the way he talked about them made me consider what a silly ass I am. A smart, thoughtful, and thought-provoking book.
I read this during a week's holiday and finished it on the beach at Lake Huron, which may have made it that much better.
Re-read in non-chronological chunks in May 2013 directly after finishing The Enchanted April.
—–
I am probably too old for this but I still loved it! It is a classic, so it must be a sign of my youth-at-heart that I enjoyed it so much. But is it sweet or pathetic that I couldn't predict how it would end? (Although I rarely attempt to predict any book's ending, unless I really hate it.) I was thankful that Cassandra managed to avoid the same happily-ever-after as Rose, at least for now. The setting is one of my favourites – England between the wars – and the cast of characters was nearly a perfect set – not too many, not too few. The journal-writing conceit weakens partway through when she recounts long scenes that may as well be in a novel, but by that point it hardly matters, and Cassandra pulls her diaristic self together around the time her emotional self falls apart.
P.S. I watched the 2003 film afterward and sadly it was no good.
I read it in one day in two sittings, each interrupted by a nap. I was afraid the stories would veer off into too-strange territory and I would stop enjoying them, but they never went that far. The strange thing about this collection is that I can't pick out a favourite or a least favourite story – they were equally strong and enjoyable in different ways.
Lovely set of stories about art, academia, and relationships. “The Unfinished Novel” was a bit messy and drawn-out and “The Change” was probably my least favourite, which is not to say that I even disliked it. My favourite is a toss-up between “Beethoven” and “The Open Door”. Reading this was a bit of a test for whether I should look up more Valerie Martin, and it passed.
This was my last unread Pynchon novel. To very simply place it within my own hierarchy of his novels, Mason & Dixon is better than Vineland, Inherent Vice, and The Crying of Lot 49 but not as good as Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day, and V.
I can't bring myself to say anything more coherent than that at this time, so instead here are some excerpts:
” ... Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power, – who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.”
“‘What Machine is it,' young Cherrycoke later bade himself goodnight, ‘that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro' another Day, – another Year, – as thro' an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight ... we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Clarets, – we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop ... gather'd dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver, ... no Horses, ... only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity ....'“
“The Line makes itself felt, – thro' some Energy unknown, ever are we haunted by that Edge so precise, so near. In the Dark, one never knows. Of course I am seeking the Warrior Path, imagining myself an heroick Scout. We all feel it Looming, even when we're awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else, – sound, sky, vegetation, – may have announced it. Perhaps ‘tis the very deep sub-audible Hum of its Traffic that we feel with an equally undiscover'd part of the Sensorium, – does it lie but over the next Ridge? the one after that? We have Mileage Estimates from Rangers and Runners, yet for as long as its Distance from the Post Mark'd West remains unmeasur'd, not is yet recorded as Fact, may it remain, a-shimmer, among the few final Pages of its Life as Fiction.”
“‘Once the solar parallax is known,' they told me, ‘once the necessary Degrees are measur'd, and the size and weight and shape of the Earth are calculated inescapably at last, all this will vanish. We will have to seek another Space.' No one explain'd what that meant, however ...? ‘Perhaps some of us will try living upon thy own Surface. I am not sure that everyone can adjust from a concave space to a convex one. Here have we been sheltered, nearly everywhere we look is no Sky, but only more Earth. – How many of us, I wonder, could live the other way, the way you People do, so exposed to the Outer Darkness? Those terrible Lights, great and small? And wherever you may stand, given the Convexity, each of you is slight pointed away from everybody else, all the time, out into that Void that most of you seldom notice. Here in the Earth Concave, everyone is pointed at everyone else, – ev'rybody's axes converge, – forc'd at least thus to acknowledge one another,– an entirely different set of rules for how to behave.'”
I meant to get Basho's The Narrow Road to the Far North out from the library, but it was a very large square library-bound book that upon opening emitted that unpleasant smell of a book that is old enough to change scent while sitting unread on the library shelf but not quite old enough for that scent to be a good one. Also, the book included colour photographs from the 1970s which are the sort that seem to physically assault the sensitive aesthetic sensibilities of those of us who have grown up with the advantage of the hugely improved production values of the present age.
This book was close by, so I borrowed it instead. It is tiny and brief and allowed me to carry home a bunch of other books that I may or may not read (including a long study of the Japanese haiku for which I don't think I have the patience).
The haiku were lovely and the introduction was illuminating. Some of my favourites of Basho's:
“With a warbler for / a soul, it sleeps peacefully, / this mountain willow”
“A weathered skeleton / in windy fields of memory, / piercing like a knife”
“Through frozen rice fields, / moving slowly on horseback, / my shadow creeps by”
(That place between three and four stars is a place of torture.)
From “On Reading When You Are Old”:
“... you look down to see
what it says and find that none
of it makes sense because there were
no words, or only words so long
as you didn't try to read them,
and the knowledge brings you back,
and you wake in the early light
and look about you and see a book
on the bedside table with a bookmark
set somewhere near the beginning,
and you realize, how you couldn't say,
that you are the solitary reader.”
From “Book V”:
“... A book
knows that to touch others
you must fill yourself out,
be all that you are.
Pull down a book anywhere
from the shelf, and the rest
will breathe a long sigh
into the space where it was.
Read in any direction you like,
a row of books has two ends.”
Fun! I felt like a stingy old lady at the beginning, not really enjoying the sense of humour, but after the first day or two at the farm I was good. An excellent follow-up to Wuthering Heights, if your experience of it was, as mine, only three-star (maybe two and a half).
Also, I read the 2006 Penguin Classics edition, and there are these double- and triple-asterisks in certain parts of the text, but nothing to tell me what they mean! No footnotes, no endnotes, nothing in the Introduction (I think), nothing in the Note on the Text, nothing even on the copyright page! They seem to mark passages of especially florid parodies of the romantic rural style. Did a page explaining this fall out? I will probably never know.
The Wimsey stories are of course the best, “The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head” one of my favourites. I more or less plowed through the majority of the book, until I hit the Montague Egg stories, which took me a bit to appreciate (I kept imagining him as a literal egg in a suit, like Humpty Dumpty), and then the last handful of stories were interesting but not enough.
Murakami's one of those types for which I actually take a lunch break just to get some reading in at the middle of the day, for which I complain about having to go out socially instead of staying at home to read, for which I get annoyed with how the athletic rigours of ultimate frisbee render me unable to read for long without falling asleep – even though the language is somewhat stilted, the characters are always flatter than I expect them to be, and the ending always leaves me 10% unfulfilled.
Emily Carr seems to have liked animals much more than people, and this book is about how horrible people are and how wonderful dogs are. I first bought this book years ago because I enjoyed reading Klee Wyck for a class, and I probably would have liked this more had I read it back then. But I lean more toward compassion and understanding than I used to, so it was difficult to enjoy this.
However, her style of writing can be quite refreshing, and there were a couple of memorable passages:
“Poetical extravagance over ‘pearly dew and daybreak' does not ring true when that most infernal of inventions, the alarm clock, wrenches you from sleep, rips a startled heart from your middle and tosses it on to an angry tongue, to make ugly splutterings not complimentary to the new morning; down upon you spills cold shiveriness – a new day's responsibilities have come.”
“People in the house moved quietly. Human voices were tuned so low that the voices in inanimate things – shutting of doors, clicks of light switches, crackling of fires – swelled to importance. Clocks ticked off the solemn moments as loudly as their works would let them.”
Thoroughly enjoyable, in fact so much that after I finished it on Sunday morning I spent most of the rest of the day being sorry that it was over. Although I snobbishly prefer literary over mainstream novels, Berry managed to balance on the line between the two very well – although it doesn't read as literary, there is a lot to be found here.
I picked this up from the bookstore at random because the cover looked nice. I've been into the mystery/crime genre lately, and the first page was intriguing. This book makes up for all those times I bought books under the same impulse but ended up regretting it.
Also, I could not help imagining the book as a film. It would be an amazing cross between Dark City, City of Lost Children, and Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe.
I read this just less than a year after taking a class in eighteenth century British literature which ended on works that just preceded Radcliffe, so I was certainly helped along by what the endnotes were able to trigger of my memory of aesthetic theory of the day. One of the great things about Radcliffe is that, unlike other Gothic works such as The Castle of Otranto and The Old English Baron, all the supernatural goings-on are always revealed as having a physical, rational basis. The plot was ridiculous, the characters were flat, and poor Adeline became less likable as the story progressed – regardless, this book was so good. I will be reading more Ann Radcliffe this summer.