Anna Karenina is a staggering work of over 700 pages containing over one hundred characters. It was quite the undertaking and commitment to read. I started it in the summer of 2008 and finished it in the summer of 2009 (I did a thesis during that year, which could account for why it took me so long to read).

The book begins with one of the most famous first lines of a book: Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It opens to the turmoil of the family of Prince Stephan Oblonksy after his wife, Dolly, has found out about his affair. Even with the house in this turmoil, Oblonsky goes about his business reminding the household that his married sister, Anna Karenina, is to arrive and conducts business as usual. In the meantime, Oblonksy’s friend Konstantin arrives in the city to propose to Dolly’s younger sister, Kitty (Princess Katerina Shcherbatskaya), only to find that there is another suitor, Count Alexi Vronsky. At the train station waiting for his sister, Oblonsky meets Vronsky. The two talk and when Anna and Vronsky’s mother arrive, Vronsky is quite taken with Anna. Levin arrives at Kitty’s home and proposes. She declines because she is waiting for Vronsky to propose.

At the house, Anna makes her mark convincing Dolly to forgive Oblonksy for his affair and stuns Kitty with her beauty and demeanor. The families all attend a ball and Vronsky opts to dance with Anna rather than Kitty. The later realizes that despite Vronsky’s attention he had no intention of proposing to her and has fallen in love with Anna. Anna is astounded by her response to Vronsky and his attentions. On the train home, a train Vronsky also happens to be on, Vronsky tells Anna that he loves her. Anna refuses and returns home to her husband and young son only to find that she is now physically repulsed by her husband.

The characters continue on through society as Kitty becomes physically ill with heartbreak, Levin throws himself into work, Anna and Vronsky begin a tumultuous affair with both personal and social repercussions, the Oblonsky’s, despite their introduction as the troubled family, try and mediate the trouble between Anna and Vronsky, Kitty and Levin, and Anna and the rest of Russian high society.

The book is complex, especially with the countless Russian long names, but Tolstoy, quite adeptly, develops a unique personality to each character (in both writing style and content) following the ups and downs of what seems like a normal life. He does a beautiful job of the way each of his characters internalizes their feelings, actions, and the consequences and rewards of those actions. He also tackles the idea of morality v. impulsive passion.

This book is definitely worth your time as it tackles many of the feelings that occur in everyday life.

Wuthering Heights is a story about the life and love of Heathcliff. Orphaned at a young age his is adopted by a Mr. Earnshaw and lives with his two children Hindley and Catherine. The three grow up together and Mr. Earnshaw be more involved with Heathcliff than his own children. Eventually, Catherine’s demeanor to him softens and the two become close. After Mr. Earnshaw dies, the entire estate of Wuthering Heights is inherited by Hindley, who treats Heathcliff as a servant. Catherine, who has become friend with the Linton family, confesses that she wishes to marry Edgar Linton as it will give her status. Heathcliff leaves the estate.

He returns years later after having transformed himself into a wealthy gentleman hell bent on causing the destruction of those who have wronged him. He enacts his plan with cruelty unprecedented by any of the characters. The final chapters of the book take an eerily familiar tone.

This book is one of the few book that reading it, I hated up until the final chapters when everything made sense and came together. The characters were just so wicked and dismissive of each other as humans. The only thing that made it good at the end was that their wickedness could be forgiven, karma could be served, and somehow the universe is balanced again. In the end, when I finally closed the the back cover I loved it, despite my feelings throughout the process.

The Satanic Verses tell the tale of two Indian men, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, whose plane explodes over London and survive. Their descent from explosion to the ground of England transforms them religious opponents. Farishta adopts the personal of the archangel Gibreel and Saladin transforms into the devil. The story continues as each man tries to put the pieces of his life together. The narrator, a divine omnipotent figure, looks in on both. It is never acknowledged whether the narrator is God or the Devil, nor do you get many hints through it’s brief monologues or its one-time intervention into the characters lives claiming ” the rules of creation are pretty clear: you set things up, you make them thus so, and then you let them roll. Where’s the pleasure if you’re always intervening to give hints, changes the rules, fix the fights?”

Another issue that is forefront throughout the book is the strain that Britain and colonization has caused for Indian identity. Chamcha is a character from India who aspires to be British, while he is a citizen, he does his best to ignore his Indian roots. While Farishta is an Indian actor famous for his portrayal of deities in Bollywood films, Chamcha is a famous voice actor in London. Chamcha is forced to reexamine his identity when he continuously is thrust back towards Indians and Indian aspects of culture that he despises and has fought so hard to ignore/deny.

While Chamcha fights to form a lasting identity after the accident, Farishta’s duty as the archangel Gibreel manifests in insomnia and schizophrenia. When Farishta falls asleep, he plays the archangel in the story of Muhammad. Farishta avoids sleep for as long as he can to escape his angelic duties. When he finally does succumb to sleep, he sleeps for days, only to awake in the belief that he is Gibreel in the dream state and in reality.

The book, dealing heavily with the Islam, was the epicenter of a controversy in which Muslims believe that the book contains blasphemous references. A fatwa was put on Salman Rushdie. Rushdie went into hiding with British police protection following the fawta. So far over 35 people have died in connection with the fatwa and numerous others have been injured.

I love this book; I own two versions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (one annotated and one not). In college, I lived down the street from a used book store with a rare book section. As broke as I was (It was a good month when I had $500 in my bank account), I seriously considered buying a $200 gold leafed edition that was printed using letterpress (believe me, I wish every day that I bought it).

I also love the book for some of the graphic design experimenting that went on to, many think, inspire the Dadaist movement. The design also is the same type of humor that Carroll displays through out Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
Check it out here: The Dormouse’s Tale

Most people know the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She follows the White Rabbit down the hole into Wonderland. In Wonderland she meets various characters including a hookah smoking Caterpillar, a lizard named Bill, the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, the Queen of Hearts. She takes part in a Caucus-Race; she shrinks and grows so his that she gets kicked out of a court room (“All persons more than a mile high to leave the court”); she plays croquet with a flamingo as her mallet and a hedgehog as her ball. All in all it is a fantastical adventure that is great for kids and adults.

Though it’s been acclaimed as part of the “literary nonsense” genre, I found that reading the annotated version helped me understand the humor and sense that the story makes. Example: In the pool of tears Alice is doing times tables: ” Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is – oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate” The annotation explains that even though her math is wrong, she will never reach twenty because times tables traditionally stop at 12 (I checked, they do). Even if she reached 4 times 12 (the highest she could presumably go) it would only equal 19 with the pattern Carroll has given us. A. L. Taylor has given us an alternative explanation which would make Alice’s math correct. Four times 5 is 12 when using a number system of base 18; 4 times 6 is thirteen using a base of 21; complicated, but it works.

I do have some reservations about the movie Alice in Wonderland. Actually, I’ve already decided I dislike it, but I’m trying to be diplomatic. I’ll have to watch it but I feel that a lot of the magic that is instilled in Carroll’s story will be lost. Burton’s all too predictable cast and style won’t be able to balance out the loss of the subtle, thorough nonsense with the exaggerated and wildly fanciful visual development. If this classic story can’t retain any of the magic we loved about it in the first place, super cool special effects and the sexy prowess of Johnny Depp just can’t save it (Personally Johnny Depp isn’t an asset to me I find that post-Pirates Captain Jack Sparrow throwbacks keep popping up. It’s hard to believe he’s the Mad Hatter when he’s got the copycat diction and  mannerisms of the swashbuckler, but that’s a whole new barrel of issues).

I know people who have had to read this for school or other books in the series. This sci-fi novel begins with looking Andrew “Ender” Wiggin. He doesn’t fit in at school and after a series of incidents the government moves him to an elite battle school. One instructor in particular recognizes Ender as one of the most gifted students at the school which causes the other students to dislike him. Despite excelling in the school, the isolation takes a toll on Ender. The school moves him higher and higher up to different sectors of the school testing his battle knowledge against other students.

We learn, through out the book, that Earth has experienced several devastating encounters with an alien race almost eliminating humanity. The government is looking for people to lead Earth armies against the alien race. We also learn that Ender’s family has a history with being gifted in the ways of battle, but due to certain “character flaws” others were denied the promotions that Ender has earned.

The battles become harder and harder for Ender, eventually taking physical, mental, and moral tolls on him.

I will admit that the plot is campy, but the book is enjoyable and makes you question the defining lines of intentional and unintentional moral actions and manipulation. It’s a good book to turn someone on to reading because it has action, adventure, etc.: all the drama & moral questioning one would expect from a movie (but better because it leaves something for the visual imagination). I would also say that if you’re going to undertake The Modern Library’s Reader List this is one of the books that is good to start with: it’s got an accessible writing style and the themes and concepts which are relatively easy to grasp.

As you know/heard/experienced, James Joyce is quite the undertaking, especially reading two of his books at once. I’m about 200 pages into Ulysses and 120 pages into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. These two books I’m going to review hopefully more in depth and discuss quote that I have pulled out from the text because up until this point, I’ve been reviewing books I’ve finished before this blog or have been experimenting with exactly the format I want the books to be discussed in. Hopefully I’ll get through those soon. Until then I’ll be doing retroactive reviews (there are still a bunch for me to get through, so no shortage of material. Don’t worry).

This book has two of my favorite things: it is written by Graham Greene and a main theme is the struggle between religion (not spirituality, the two are linked, but religion is much more rigid and earthly than spirituality I believe), morals, and human desire.

The main character, Major Henry Scobie, is an inspector in a British town in the West Indies. Scobie struggles to provide happiness for his wife, but doesn’t love her despite his conversion to Catholicism for her. Despite his belief of Catholicism, his practice of the religion is empty-hearted and fueled only by his wife’s devoutness. Through a series of events, an affair, and blackmail, Scobie struggles with the decision of each event in relation to what he wants and to his religion. He tried to make everyone, including God, happy with who he is and the situations around him.

I enjoyed this book. Exploring different ways and views on religion in life is something that really interests me. I read this about a year and a half ago so many of the details are foggy to me, but I do enjoy Graham Greene’s writing style and find some of his views and ideas interesting at how they are expressed.

I’m excited to watch the 1953 movie made of the book.

The book follows Holden Caulfield after he is expelled from his prep school. He travels through New York City. He contemplates his loneliness as well as growing up and the people who he perceives as “phonies.” The title of the novel comes from Holden’s desire to be a “catcher in the rye:” protecting children from the dangers of growing up and falling prey to society.

Reading Catcher in the Rye is almost a right of passage in North America. Many teens read the book in high school classes.

This is in honor of J.D. Salinger’s recent death. He died at the age of 91 and was one of the most reclusive people to create. He wanted people to read his work without consideration for himself as a celebrity. He made sure through the covers of his book and the removal of his picture that his writing would be seen for his writing rather than for the phony image that celebrity status usually denotes.

Billy Pilgrim is a POW in Dresden in a building called Slaughterhouse-5. He has become unstuck in time experiencing his life in a non-linear way. Through his jumping about in time he looks at the free will of humans as well as the inevitability of tragedy in life and the acceptance of this inevitability.

Vonnegut has been criticized for deprecating the tragedy at Dresden with quietist mannerisms in his characters, but I think that to take away from quietist aspects of the book would be to slightly undermine some of his major themes. If Billy reacts disgustedly to the events at Dresden while he is coming and going through time, he would seemingly have not have the ability to accept the inevitability of tragedy in life and would be impervious to the teachings of the Tralfamadorians. Also if Billy reacts, it would imply that time is linear because his reaction would be a clear lack of Tralfamadorian knowledge which he has gained while travelling through time, while the book suggests that time is not, in fact, linear and that Billy would be consciously taking in his surroundings and knowledge from different experiences and bringing them with him through time.

1972 trailerIt won the Prix du Jury at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival as well as two other awards. Vonnegut also praised the film version.

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much of it was mine to keep.”

Fear not; I’m still here