ONE HUNDRED BOOKS

THE SUN ALSO RISES

2010-06-15T00:11:00.000-07:00

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway is another book that I read in high school that made little sense to me. The reason, no contextual knowledge to connect the novel to in any meaningful way. All that I recalled about the book was bull fighting, drinking and the eating of boiled eggs. Ironically, the book can be summed up, in the most simple terms, as being about bull fighting and imbibing heartily, to say the least. I’m not sure where the boiled egg imagery came from, although I think the characters do eat chicken embryos once or twice during the course of their adventures.

Hemingway, like Fitzgerald and Joyce, was an author whose work reflected life. He was an expatriate that moved to Paris, after serving in WWI in the early 1920s. He spent his time with other inteligencia such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Ezra Pound. Hemingway spent hours having lively, stimulating discussions in Parisian cafes and logged in many hours wandering the streets of Paris completely intoxicated. The Sun Also Rises was not a big stretch from his everyday existence.

The novel focuses on several friends, most of whom served in WWI, who post war spend their time with no real meaningful purpose besides drinking, dancing and traveling about Europe (which, trust me, I have no objection to…..sign me up!) The band of less than merry characters consists of Jake Barnes (who I think of as Hemingway, minus the impotency), Brett Ashley (the love interest of every male that crosses her path, including Jake Barnes), Bill Gorton (a friend from New York who has come to join Jake on a fishing trip to Spain), Richard Cohn (a novelist, who surprisingly meets with success) and Mike Campbell (surely the chief imbiber of the group and fiancé of Brett Ashley). They meet with each other in Paris, some stay, some go and they all eventually end up in Pamplona at the “Running of the Bulls”.
I did like the book, which I didn’t necessarily expect to. Hemingway, unlike Fitzgerald, is one of those authors people have mixed feeling about. Some people think he is brilliant and some…. Well…. some people just don’t. I was emotionally involved with the protagonist, Jake Barnes and wanted to see what would become of him. The relationship between he and his friend Bill Gorton is by far the highlight of the book, often humorous and very tangible. The other characters, especially Brett Ashley, are somewhat annoying in their narcissism and self destructiveness, but I suppose are necessary as contrasting personalities, which this novel is heavily based.

I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone, except maybe recovering alcoholics, it is disturbing how the characters are hell bent on destroying their livers and yet it still makes the reader want to go out and get a drink. I read it in a couple days and found an appreciation for Hemingway. I will also be reading “A Farewell to Arms” next, as I have the tendency to stick with an author before I move on to other books on the list. I am very interested to see some other opinions on Hemingway, so fire away.

I, CLAUDIUS IS THE BOMB DIGGITY!!

2010-04-15T18:13:00.000-07:00

I, Claudius published in 1934

I, Claudius is salacious wicked good reading!!
English writer Robert Graves needed some cash to pay for his house or foreclosure was knocking (sound familiar?). So, after long hours in contemplation of his problem, he decided that writing a book and getting rich would be the solution to all of his troubles. That night when he closed his eyes to go to sleep he was visited by Claudius, the fourth Roman Emperor (41-54 AD), in a dream. Claudius basically told Graves, you are the man to tell my story! The story of the Julio-Claudian family, which included such characters as Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and that rascal Caligula.
The book is written in an auto-biographical style causing the reader to devour the pages. I couldn't put that thing down!

It was said by Claudius' own family that he should have been abandoned on a mountainside to die. It was said that he was dimwitted, a gimp, a stammerer and a dullard; however, quite the opposite was true. Claudius was a scholar and historian and survived a venomous maze of treachery by playing the fool. His own Grandmother Livia, wife of the Emperor Augustus, poisoned not only Claudius' real grandfather (Tiberius Nero) but also attributed to the death of some of her own children and grandchildren. Claudius dishes the dirt on everyone for posterity and spares no details, including many humorous self deprecationing revelations such as his forced marriage to a 6'4" line backer he was compelled to conjugate with to the amusement of his demented family. Shockingly and to Claudius' great distress, at the age of forty-nine, he was declared Emperor after Caligula and his family were torn to shreds.
Surely this description has been enough to tantalize any reader into cracking the spine on this scandalous read! And, the beauty......there is a sequel! Claudius The God (1935)

THE GRAPES OF WRATH

2010-03-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

John Steinbeck
Published 1939

Back sometime ago I proposed the question, “What is the worst book you’ve ever read?” on my book blog site. Since that time, the list has developed a life of its own where I periodically check in on it every few weeks. Surprisingly, some readers reported John Steinbeck novels as an experience they had to suffer through. I wondered if it was because they had experienced his books when they were younger (that happened to me with “Catcher In The Rye”) and didn’t have the life experience to appreciate Steinbeck. But, I know there is also a possibility that some readers just don’t care for Steinbeck’s style or the subject matter of his books (I.e. I’m not a big Forster fan).
Anyhow…… I love Steinbeck, especially “The Grapes of Wrath”. This is the third time I’ve read the book and I’ve seen the movie, starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, at least three or four times. The Grapes of Wrath is exceptional in its humanity, humor and history. If you haven’t picked up Steinbeck before read the following excerpt. It encompasses Steinbeck’s talent for brilliant dialogue. Even if you have read other works by Steinbeck, check out The Grapes of Wrath; you won't regret it. Every time I pick up this book it inspires me to laugh, cry and to appreciate my life and opportunities.

The Great Depression, a family struggles to leave dust bowl ridden Oklahoma behind and find new opportunities as migrant workers in California. Tom Joad and his ex-preacher friend Casey have to find a new part for their truck which has broken down on the side of a Texan highway en route to California. They have limited supplies, food and money. Finding the part and getting back before dark is going to be a miracle. They come across a junk yard and encounter a one eyed, self-loathing simpleton who hides and slaves for an abusive opportunist.

A specter of a man came through the dark shed. Thin, dirty, oily skin tight against stringy muscles. One eye was gone, and the raw uncovered socket squirmed with eye muscles when his good eye moved. …. The man blew his nose into the palm of his hand and wiped his hand on his trousers. ‘You from hereabouts?’
‘Come from east -goin west.’ replies Tom
‘Look around’ then. Burn the goddamn place down, for all I care.’
‘Looks like you don’t love your boss none.’
The man shambled close, his one eye flaring. ‘I hate im (his boss),” he said softly. ‘I hate the son-of-a-bitch. Got a girl nineteen, purty. Says to me, “How’d ya like ta marry her?” Says that right to me. An’ tonight-says, “They’s a dance; how’d ya like to go?” Me, he says it to me!’ Tears formed in his eyes and tears dripped from the corner of the red eye socket. ‘Some day, by God-some day I’m gonna have a pipe wrench in my pocket. When he says them things he looks at my eye. An’ I’m gonna, I’m gonna jus’ take his head right down off his neck with that wrench, little piece at a time.’ He panted with his fury. “Little piece at a time, right down off’n his neck.’
‘Why don’t ya role? Got no guards to keep ya here.’
‘Yeah, that’s easy to say. Ain’t so easy to get a job not for a one-eye’ man.’
Tom turned on him. ‘Now look-a-here, fella. You got that eye wide open. An’ ya dirty, ya stink. Ya jus’ askin’ for it. Ya like it. Lets ya feel sorry for yaself. Course ya can’t get no woman with that empty eye flappin around. Put somepin over it an wash ya face. You ain’t hittin nobody with no pipe wrench.’
‘I tell ya, a one-eye fella got a hard row’ the man said. ‘Can’t see stuff the way other fellas can. Can’t tell how far off a thing is. Ever’things jus flat.’
Tom said, ‘Ya full a crap. Why, I knowed a one-legged whore one time. Think she was takin’ two bits in a alley? No, by God! She’s getting’ half a dollar extra. She says, “How many one-legged women you slep with? None!” she says. “O.K.,” she says. “you got somepin pretty special here, an’ it’s gonna cos’ ya half a buck extry.” An’ by God, she was getting’ em, too, an’ the fellas comin’ out thinkin’ they’re pretty lucky. She says she’s good luck. An’ I knowed a hump-back in a place I was. Make his whole livin’ letting’ folks rub his hump for luck. Jesus Christ, an all you got is one eye gone.’…..
‘Cover it up then, goddamn it. Ya stickin’ out like a cow’s ass. Ya like to feel sorry for yaself. The ain’t nothin’ the matter with you……’
‘Well, ya think a fella like me could get work? Black patch on my eye?’
‘Why not? You ain’t no cripple.’
‘Well could I catch a ride with you fellas?’
‘Christ, no. We’re so goddamn full now we can’t move. You get out some other way. Fix up one a these here wrecks an’ go out by yaself.’
‘Maybe I will, by God,’ said the one-eyed man.’

This is John Steinbeck……..

AMERICAN TRAGEDY

2010-02-27T11:45:00.000-08:00

“American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser published in 1925

Oh, Clyde, what did you do?

If you’re familiar with Theodore Dreiser’s work (Sister Carrie), you may have noticed the foreboding, lurking menace that follows around his characters. Dreiser‘s novels necessitate peeking through your fingers while reading; you just know it isn’t going to end well. That being said, tragedy sometimes being clichéd and predictable, Dreiser’s stories are very real, almost inspired from news paper articles that give us that lil’ spark….”this would make a good book!”
American Tragedy is the story of Clyde Griffiths, a wretched young man who from an early age is schlepped around by his destitute missionary parents to sing and preach on the street corners of Kansas City. These experiences inspire Clyde to desire a different life and to visions of grandeur that eventually lead to his demise.
As soon as age allows, Clyde escapes the life of religious servitude and becomes a bell-hop at the Green-Davidson, a swanky hotel in Kansas City. As one can surmise, Clyde swan dives into debauchery with his new found freedom, gets drunk, gets laid, chases girls and gets into a serious scrape that requires his leaving Kansas City amid scandal.

After drifting for a couple of years, Clyde finds himself employed at another hotel where he inadvertently meets his wealthy Uncle. Wealthy Uncle listens to Clyde’s woes and makes provisions for him to move to Lycurgus, New York to be employed at his collar factory. But, alas this is no free ride and upon arrival Clyde is met by his anal cousin Gilbert Griffiths (who incidentally Clyde resembles to a disturbing degree … but of course better looking) who puts Clyde to work at the bottom. Eventually Clyde crawls out of the basement and is given a department to run. Here enters poor, sweet, never been kissed, bound for tragedy Roberta Alden who is caught in a magnetic maelstrom with her immediate supervisor Clyde Griffiths. Needless to say, this is a huge factory/family NO! NO! So, the clandestine lovers meet on the sly and eventually get horizontal despite Roberta’s best efforts to stay upright. The two are genuinely in love, but Clyde’s monster social ladder appetite leads him to Queen Bee Sondra Finchley.

Now at this juncture, even if not familiar with this novel or “A Place In The Sun”….the foreboding starts to creep in, does it not? Oh Gee, what’s going to happen to poor ol’ down trodden Roberta? Breaking up would just be too simple because…..yup, she’s pregnant! And going further into the story (if you haven’t read it) would ruin the whole ending….but keep in mind, the novel is entitled “American Tragedy”.

Coincidentally, it is Turner Classic Movie Oscar month and “A Place In The Sun” was featured about a week ago (when I was ¾ of the way through this almost 900 page leviathan). I had seen it years back and am a Montgomery Clift fan (Clift being Clyde) so I decided since I had already seen the film I wouldn’t be ruining the ending. However, “A Place In The Sun” (also starring Shelly Winters and Elizabeth Taylor) is an adaptation by Patrick Kearney which came out in 1951, while the novel was set in the 1920s. Besides the basic premise of “troubled poor boy meets troubled poor girl, becomes successful and overreaches which ends in tragedy” , I found the movie and the book to have distinctly different flavors, to me it just isn’t the same story at all. The biggest discrepancy being the character of Roberta Alden, who in the book is a fully developed central character. In the movie, she is reduced to a sniveling, fleshy, simple pilot fish. So, I ended up shutting the movie off when Clift and Winters were in the canoe, knowing the forgone conclusion.
The other aspect of this book was… “hmmm, what kind of lessons can be taken away from this tragedy?”

Don’t raise your children in a religious militant fashion because they’ll turn into heathens.

If you ever meet a wayward poor relative, whatever you do, don’t extend a helping hand. Your name will be disgraced and you’ll have to leave town.

Avoid office romances with your superior or prepare to grow gills

Use reliable birth control (always a sound move)

If you are poor and uneducated, stay that way, striving for something else is just going land you in hot water

If your relationship is on the rocks, avoid canoes and romantic lake trips

Hmmmm, not sure. I don’t think there are any lessons. That is part of the attraction of this novel. It is extremely contemporary and if you turn on CNN there is probably something similar airing right now. I can hear Nancy Grace berating Clyde Griffiths and recapping the details ad-nauseam.

Lastly, I love recasting movies, so for the new release of “American Tragedy” Clyde is Christian Bale, Roberta Alden is Rachel McAdams (Not a Shelly Winters type….total miscast), and Sondra is Scarlett Johansson (or Megan Fox would be a dead ringer, but I have no idea if she can act or not…????) Anyway, that’s my vote. What’s yours???

ARE YOU A BOOK ABUSER??

2010-02-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

I hate to admit it (Hi, I'm Kris. I'm a book abuser. I abused my last book this morning!) but I am seriously rough on the books I read. When I'm done with them, no one else wants them with all the underlines, dog ears, and coffee stains (amongst other things). But that is how I enjoy reading, who can resist not underlining a really superb snappy comeback (Vonnegut) or a character description that is so effective you immediately say, Ahhh yes, I know that guy (Dreiser)! Or, just the beautiful way words are weaved together to create poetry or a fresh interpretation (Nobotov).
I take notes in the margins, shove my books in my purse and cram them into laundry bags. It would be interesting to interview a book that has to travel around with me until completion. The book could review me maybe.

Here we have the book "American Tragedy", who prefers to be called A.T.

Interviewer: So A.T. what was it like to be read by Kris Daniel?

A.T.: I feel violated for one and am now in therapy. I don't think when Mr. Dreiser poured years of his talent into me he pictured my being used as a coaster by said person's coffee mug!

Interviewer: So it sounds like you're a little irritated, would that be a correct assessment?

A.T.: I moved past irritated the day I was thrown into a dirty clothes basket so Ms Thang could take me to the laundry mat and pass the time crinkling up my pages while she was eating a strawberry danish. But I confess the danish was light and fluffy with a tangy strawberry filling. There is still some left on page 87 if you want to give it a try.

Interviewer: No I think I'm good, but thank you. What are your hopes for the future A.T.?

A.T.: Well I just hope I get placed in better hands next time but let's face it I'm all tatooed up and my back cover fell off. People cross the street when they see me. Although, I do have some good things going. I've started a group for abused books which is very rewarding.

Interviewer: So, it sounds like you have turned a negative into a positive.

A.T.: Yes, and we also are insisting that all new books be printed with a warning label so as not to find themselves in the hands of such readers.

Interviewer: Thank you very much Mr. American Tragedy for sharing your story with us today.

WORST BOOK YOU'VE EVER READ??

2010-02-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

Back in October of 2009 I put forth the question to book bloggers, "What is the worst book you've ever read?" And, recently (December) an article came out in the Wallstreet Journal by Alexandra Alter reviewing a list of "Worst Books". (visit link to article) To my surprise, Ms. Alter actually contacted me for an interview about why I raised the question.

Hello,

I write about books for the Wall Street Journal and am putting together a story about some of the "worst books" lists coming out. I saw a thread on books blogs by Kristina Daniels, who asked "What is the Absolutely Worst Book You've Ever Read?" and I hoped to interview her about why she raised the question and whether the responses surprised her.

I can be reached at the number below, or if you prefer, you can email me your contact information and a convenient time to call.

Thanks very much,

Alexandra Alter
The Wall Street Journal
1211 Avenue of the Americas, 4th floor
New York, NY 10036

Story of my life, I just got the email and think it is too late to participate in the reviews, but here are some of the books avid readers contributed:
Twilight (by far the most reported "worst book")
The Secret
Catcher In The Rye
Vampire Diaries
Gulliver's Travels
Time Travelor's Wife
Wicked
Digital Fortress
Blonde Roots
Skystone
Citizen Girl
The Gargoyle
The Life of Pi
The Polished Hoe
The God Whale
Passage To India
Ethan Frome
Women About Town
A Partisan's Daughter
Julia's Chocolate
and readers also responded with disliked authors and genres: Patterson, V.C. Andrews, Self Help Books
(to see more visit link above)
I guess I posed the question because I'm reading the top 100 books and wanted to investigate how many responses would include novels from that list. Random House.
For those of you that read my blog enteries on living through "Ulysses" (see archives), or have struggled through a monolith yourselves, the question "Worst Book?" is something readers like to share. Let's face it, we are more likely to respond to something we disliked than something we loved.....i.e. people will share a bad restaurant with more people than a good one.....or something like that. So book bloggers, What bad books have you read lately?

LOLITA MEETS AMERICAN PSYCHO

2010-01-19T12:27:00.000-08:00

LOLITA was published in 1955 and released in the U.S. in 1958. I cannot stress enough Vladimir Nabokov’s Afterword in fully understanding Lolita. This is probably one of the best, if not the best, books I’ve ever read. The writing style immediately reminded me of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, which also produced shock and disgust while generating appreciation for its satirical and gory theme.

Patrick Bateman is the protagonist in American Psycho who embodies all that is superficial and materialistic in society.

“I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.”

Just as in American Psycho, Lolita’s theme is repulsive. And, Humbert Humbert (a name subliminally effective like Dick Diver in Tender Is The Night by Fitzgerald) is the lead in this debauched story. He doesn’t generate any sympathy; albeit, his sociopathic, matter of fact style is married to a morose dark cynical humor that is irresistible to the reader. In discussing Lolita, it’s a feeling akin to when someone says “my wallet is missing” and even though you didn’t take it you feel guilty and must establish your innocence. Just as now, I feel the compulsion of stressing my disapproval of the subject matter of Lolita and was squeamish many times throughout. I also questioned the nature of the author. It didn’t seem possible that someone could write in this kind of narrative style and present a character so real without sharing some components of that character’s personality. This is why Nobokov’s afterword is necessary for the reader. It answers all those nagging questions that come up.

“Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.”

The additional component that is extraordinarily impressive is the perfection of Nobotov word usage (especially considering English was a second language to his native Russian). I rescanned many passage just for the sheer beauty of the writing; it literally is poetic! This is why on “Kris’ Rating List” (see below) I have placed Lolita as number one. I welcome other impressions.

LA JOLLA LOLITA

2010-01-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

Okay, first of all, in looking over my hasty entries lately I have noticed several embarrassing typos and spelling errors! (Blush, blush, wagging foot with down cast gaze). Well I'm out of Maine and in La Jolla, California where it is absolutely gorgeous. I walked along the beach today with my two boys ten and eight and we saw all the seals basking in the sun and they had lots of babies as well (which of course are the cutest things on earth with their big brown eyes!) I can't help but worry for them that they will be shark bait. How horrible!

In my winter travels from Hawaii to Maine to California I have managed to read quite a few books: Howard's End, A Room With A View, A Passage to India (all by Forster), Deliverance (Dickey) and Lolita (Nobotov). There are so many aspects to Lolita that I don't even know where to begin. So that will be for another day. I'd love to hear impressions of Lolita from other bloggers!

DELIVERANCE

2010-01-05T10:34:00.000-08:00

DELIVERANCE BY JAMES DICKEY
PUBLISHED 1970
"The setting is the Georgia wilderness, where the state's most remote white-water river awaits. In the thundering froth of that river, in its steep, echoing stone canyons, four men on a canoe trip discover a freedom and exhilaration beyond compare. And then, in a moment or horror, the adventure turns into a struggle for survival as one man becomes a human hunter who is offered his own harrowing deliverance."

Deliverance makes you think, how would I handle a situation like this? What compromises would I make? Could I be a hero?
Drew, Lewis, Ed and Bobby are just regular guys. We all know them or have met people like them. Drew is that guy you met in college briefly and then happen to run into years later to discover he's just the way you thought he would be. These fellas are your boss, your brother, your husband.

Do you want to commune with nature, but it's somthing you put on the side burner?
I have too much work....
It's too much energy; I would have to get off the couch.....
There are bugs, and bears and Big Foot.....
I don't have the gear....etc etc etc
And these guys are no different, they want to go but they have their doubts and aren't exactly conditioned for the wilderness like their friend survivalist and bow hunter Lewis.
Although ladden with doubts and lots of complaints, they decide to do a river run in the remote mountains of Georgia. In the beginning, things are good. The men are awakened, enlightened, and Ed experiences a self awareness he doesn't feel back in the city working 9-5 at his advertising business. His friend Lewis is an excellent archer and Ed has become proficient himself. He's looking forward to actually making his first kill (little does he know, his first kill will be another human being). However, suddenly without warning....things take a decidedly nasty turn as Bobby and Ed, in one of the canoes, happen upon two foul and filthy hillbillies (dueling banjos commence) who are in the mood for romance! As one exclaims, "You ain't going no-where!" Triple YIKES!! And, you can feel the creepy crawlies on that banjo string..... twang!!
This is where my mind went nuts, "Ed shouldn't have said they were alone!" "They definately should have not let the other guy go!" "OMG, what would I do if that was me?" And so on.......
If you haven't read Deliverance it is an emotional ride for sure and can be read in a day. It really made me question what would I be able to do if a situation warranted killing to survive? Would I be able to act? Or would I freeze and blubber like a baby? Most of us haven't found ourselves alone in the woods with randy hillbillies (Thank God!) but have needed deliverance from other scary situations. I wonder if most of it is innate (survival instinct) or training?? Thoughts?

BLOG NEGLECT!

2009-12-28T11:08:00.000-08:00

The worst thing to do, if one has a blog, is to neglect it! But since coming to Maine I haven't had access to a computer regulary and with the holidays...well....need I say more!
Last time I checked in I was putting out a call for impressions of Forster and his works! A couple of takers thus far so will continue to put that together. I have however finished reading all of Forster's novels on the Random House list: Room With A View, Howard's End, A Passage to India.
Currently I am reading Deliverence. I wanted to get away from the never ending spew of English hyper-steriod etiquette:
http://www.roadjunky.com/cultureguide/1404/etiquette-and-manners-english-culture-guide
"In a desperate bid to avoid emotion, the English have developed an entire language around the evasion of embarrassing situations:
"Oh Dittums, can you ever forgive me!"
"Dash it, that was rather a blow.’

‘I don’t suppose you could possibly..’
‘I’m terribly sorry…’
‘Would it be too much trouble to…’
and the like.....
I can't think of a more pertinent 180 degree turn!
Which author would you rather read?
Forster of Dickey?

2009-12-14T12:40:00.000-08:00

What I've decided to do for Forster is to collect other blogger's experiences, thoughts and reflections on the following novels: Howard's End, Passage to India, Room With A View (or Forster). Just a little something...literally a few sentences is fine or a small review is great. I know everyone is busy this time of year...but the season is about sharing and caring so I thought it would be nice to read and share different reflections on the same novels.

Send comments/reviews to my email: bookreviewsbykris@gmail.com

and include your link! Thanks!

HOLY BUSY

2009-12-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

I am now here:

But had been here a few days ago......

Needless to say, I'm a little crazy after 15 hours of travel time with a 9 and an 8 year old...not cooperative travlers to say the least....Them: "I need a snack" "He hit me" "I want the window seat" "He took my PSP" "He called me a dummy"
Me: "Okay, you just ate you're going to be okay" "No hitting please we are on an airplane" "You'll get the window seat on the connecting flight" "Share the PSP or I'll have to take it away" "No name calling guys" then it goes to threats "Shut up right now or when we get off this plane......" "I've had it, you're both selfish, other people have paid good money to be on this plane" (as if they're concerned with this) and finally, "You're not getting anything from Santa...you're on the the bad list for sure"
It's amazing how children can hold adults hostage and reduce them (me) to blubbering messes in very little time.
Okay....so that is why I haven't been on my blog...time change, mental breakdown, etc.
I finished reading Howard's End and am finishing A Passage to India (snore). I have had the most trying time writing a review for Howard's End....a complete block. Anything I write sounds contrived or completely boring. I'm not sure why. I would be interested in posting two contrasting reviews of Howard's End if anyone out there would be willing. Let me know! Okay, off to fight some more battles in the name of parenthood. Wish me luck...I might be Baker Acted by Christmas.

AUTHOR'S ALLEY........ E.M. FORSTER

2009-11-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

Don't forget to enter the Vonnegut 'Look At The Birdie' give away. It's a great chance to read a great author! Just follow the link on the sidebar, become a follower of 'One Hundred Books', scroll down post and enter a comment! Easy Easy!!

Currently I'm reading A Passage to India (#25 on the list) and Howard's End (#38) by E.M. (Edward Morgan) Forster. I have not done this kind of thing before.....said the little lamb.....No, I mean reading two books at the same time! Get your mind out of the gutter! But I'm giving it a whirl to do a bit of comparative reading. So far I am way more into Howard's End, but we'll see what happens.
E.M. Forster was born January 1, 1879 and lived to a ripe old age dying June 7, 1970. His father died when he was young and he lived with his mother, in London, until her death in the 1940's. He won countless awards for his writing and turned down a knightship in 1949 (probably due to England's Imperialistic policies). After reading several different small bios and factoids on Forster, the preeminent feature of his life and writing seems to have been making a stand against Imperialism, racism, homophobia, and sexism. He did this by having the characters in his novels embody different elements that would clash to reveal an inner truth about human nature and enlightenment.
His last novel A Passage To India is drawn from his time spent there in the 1920's where it is believed he had an on-going relationship with an Indian man. I'm sure the injustice of Imperialism and racism was cause for his spot lightening the English attitude toward Indians in their own country. Also on the top 100 list is A Room With A View (#79).

GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE-DE-GOOK

2009-11-26T14:47:00.000-08:00

This is too cute. It looks like my Uncle Herbie (God rest his soul). Happy Thanksgiving to all those happy book bloggers out there that have shared so many good (and sometimes not so good) books and their insights, recommendations and humor. I'm thankful I've actually made some unexpected like-minded friends by creating a "book blog".
I was thinking last night about the learning curve of creating a book blog. At first, I just thought I'm going to read these top 100 books, which I've always wanted to do. If I create a blog maybe someone will read it and it will create an embarrassment factor if I give up! That is literally how my sick mind works, disturbing yes! Then I met some wonderful people and started enjoying their blogs and then discovering more blogs through their blogs.
But then a whole new set of issues arose....blog inadequacy issues! "Hold the phone, WTF is a widget, winky, Mr. Linky, RSS feed, tweet-twitter, google reader, html codes, site meter, follower, gadget gobble, gobble gobble-de-gook? Then I somehow ended up following myself not once, but twice and didn't know how to get myself off there until Stephanie at Misfit Salon took pity on me! How embarrassing! And, Cara from Oh...Books tried to help me out as well with 101 Blogging, but I'm too challenged.
Then if all this weren't confusing enough, I started worrying about this phenomena "blog etiquette" and wondering if I had maybe done anything to offend another blogger or didn't comment enough etc. Now at this juncture, neurotic would be an appropriate diagnosis. As one may notice, I still have the most basic of basic blogs for fear of messing anything up beyond repair. So for now I just have to stick with enjoying books and ruminating about them using all my "quotation" marks and lots of !!!!! and endless (parenthesis) because I always enjoy sharing internal monologue (see below).
Well off to engulf some turkey and the trimmings until I fall into a gelatinous mass on the sofa all drugged up on tryptophan (which I think is literally being sold on an infomercial now) As if I need to buy something that makes me more lethargic!
Happy Thanksgiving Uncle Herbie!!

VONNEGUT: NEW SHORT STORY RELEASE!

2009-11-21T13:10:00.000-08:00

Again, I love Kurt Vonnegut! I had a smile on my face after reading "Slaughter House Five" and internally noted, "yes, this is why I'm reading all these novels!!"

So imagine my delighted exuberance at opening my favorite obsession "Vanity Fair" and seeing that there was an on-line exclusive on a never released short story by Vonnegut!
"Kurt Vonnegut may have died in 2007, but his brutally witty fiction lives on. Read "Shout About It from the Housetops" a never before published story from his upcoming posthumous collection, Look at the Birdie, at vf.com/go/vonnegut."

Excerpted from Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction, by Kurt Vonnegut, to be published October 20, 2009, by Delacorte, an imprint of Random House, Inc. Text © by the Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Trust. Illustrations © 2009 by Kurt Vonnegut and Oragami Express.
I read it. I guess everybody in Vermont read it when they heard Hypocrites’ Junction was actually Crocker’s Falls.
I didn’t think it was such a raw book, the way raw books go these days. It was just the rawest book a woman ever wrote—and I expect that’s why it was so popular.
I met that woman once, that Elsie Strang Morgan, the one who wrote the book. I met her husband, the high-school teacher, too. I sold them some combination aluminum storm windows and screens one time. That was about two months after the book came out. I hadn’t read it yet, hadn’t paid much attention to all the talk about it.
They lived in a huge, run-down old farmhouse five miles outside of Crocker’s Falls back then, just five miles away from all those people she gave the works to in the book. I don’t generally sell that far south, don’t know many people down that way. I was on my way home from a sales meeting in Boston, and I saw that big house with no storm windows, and I just had to stop in.
I didn’t have the least idea whose house it was.
I knocked on the door, and a young man in pajamas and a bathrobe answered. I don’t think he’d shaved in a week. I don’t think he’d been out of the pajamas and bathrobe for a week, either. They had a very lived-in look. His eyes were wild. He was the husband. He was Lance Magnum in the book. He was the great lover in the book, but he looked like one of the world’s outstanding haters when I met him.
“How do you do,” I said.
“How do you do?” he asked. He made it a very unpleasant question.
“I couldn’t help noticing you don’t have any storm windows on this beautiful old home,” I said.
“Why don’t you try again?” he said.
“Try what?” I said.
“Try not noticing we don’t have any storm windows on this beautiful old home,” he said.
“If you were to put up storm windows,” I said, “do you know who would pay for them?” I was going to answer the question myself. I was going to tell him that the money for the windows would come out of his fuel dealer’s pocket, since the windows would save so much fuel. But he didn’t give me a chance.
“Certainly I know who’d pay for ’em—my wife,” he said. “She’s the only person with any money around here. She’s the breadwinner.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t know what your personal situation here happens to be—”
“You don’t?” he said. “Everybody else does. What’s the matter—can’t you read?” he said.
“I can read,” I told him.
“Then rush down to your nearest bookstore, plunk down your six dollars, and start reading about the greatest lover boy of modern times! Me!” he said, and he slammed the door.
My conclusion was that the man was crazy, and I was about to drive off when I heard what sounded like a scream from the back of the house. I thought maybe I’d interrupted him while he was murdering his wife, thought he’d gone back to it now.
I ran to where the screaming was coming from, and I saw that an old rusty pump was making all the noise.
But it might as well have been a woman screaming, because a woman was making the pump scream, and the woman looked like she was just about to scream, too. She had both hands on the pump handle, and she was sobbing, and she was putting her whole body into every stroke. Water was going into a bucket that was already full, splashing down over the sides, spreading out on the ground. I didn’t know it then, but she was Elsie Strang Morgan. Elsie Strang Morgan didn’t want water. What she was after was violent work and noise.
When she saw me she stopped. She brushed the hair off of her eyes. She was Celeste in the book, of course. She was the heroine in her own book. She was the woman who didn’t know what love was till she met Lance Magnum. When I saw her, she looked as though she’d forgotten what love was again.
To see the rest of this excerpt visit Vanity Fair on-line!

BRAVE NEW WORD

2009-11-17T14:07:00.000-08:00

Brave New Word

Aldous Huxley

Published 1932

"Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I.
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in't"

Brave New World takes place in AD 2540, where natural childbirth and nuclear families have been abolished. There is no "God" in this mechanical age; there is "Ford", yes as in Henry Ford ( i.e. "Oh my Ford, you just scared the daylights out of me!! Apparently Huxley didn't know how badly Ford would be tanking in 2009.) Any of the reasons that are cause for war, crimes, competition and even love have been eliminated because these things cause pain and interrupt production and consumption. The leader of this society (The Controller) Mustapha Mond explains it to a man (John Savage who has come from a contained reservation that is not civilized).
" Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended.... there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren't any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. There's no such thing as a divided allegiance; you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed....that there really aren't any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma (a drug that is similar to alcohol, heroin, cocaine without physical damage or addiction) to give you a holiday from the facts."

Some ways of life in the Brave New World (London) are attractive: no illness, no significant aging, no prejudices against sexuality/orientation or religion, no war, no starvation etc. But the cost of these benefits are high: no individuality, love, companionship, family, art/creativity, passion or freedom of choice (self will). "Everybody belongs to everybody" is a Brave New World mantra.

There are two main characters in the novel, Bernard and John Savage, who represent a juxtaposition (Bernard being from the Brave New World and John being from an uncivilized reservation, although he has been educated by his mother and has spent years reading an old copy of Shakespeare's works.) The Brave New World is one of genetic engineering where people are created in a test tube to be either Alphas, Betas, Deltas or Epsilons. Each person is geared to certain jobs/tasks; in example, Epsilons are the lowest life form and purposefully designed to be of a lesser intellect and physical stature. Because they are specifically designed for mindless labor the possibility doesn't occur to them to be anything different; therefore, there are no power structure conflicts (they're referred to by Alphas as "Epsilon Minor Idiots". Nice!!)
Bernard (an alpha which is physically and mentally the most superior) finds John Savage on a contained reservation. John is the product of a women (Linda a Beta) who was lost (on a scientific expedition) while visiting the reservation. More than twenty years has past when two alphas, Bernard and Lenina (his sexual partner for the trip) find Linda and John who have been taken in by Native Indians. Because they are considered outcasts by the Indians, they are ostracized and degraded. Linda (who originally was a fine specimen is now an obese mess with missing teeth, which horrifies the Alphas and the Betas) , is unaccustomed to the concept of motherhood, is at first horrified she is pregnant and by the idea of motherhood (a dirty word). However, her son John becomes her comfort and connection to "her world" in the midst of chaos.
Bernard brings them back with him as objects of "scientific curiosity". Bernard has always been "different" then the other Alphas. Although Alphas are bred to be similar in every way, there are a few (maybe genetic throw backs) who cannot escape the desire for individuality. I feel that the novel is more about John's journey in what he has christened the "Brave New World." Does he embrace his genetic homeland or does he return to savagery (these are the only two choices Huxley provides)?
Of course, reading this in 2009 one can see things that are ridiculous like the creation of individuals for mindless labor jobs, where as we know these kind of jobs are fewer and fewer as technology has taken over. One notices little things like a person assigned to operate the elevator, which would be common in 1932. To Huxley's credit, many things are accurate, the obsession with anti aging, drugs for every conceivable problem, fixations on cleanliness, sexual freedom and secularism.
It took me awhile to get into the novel due to it being science fiction, not my favorite genre; however, it is a book worth reading. It challenges the mind to think about issues that we are facing currently in the world and to what ends we will go to for medical advances and global and environmental stabilization. I think Huxley was brilliant and "Brave New World" is a must read!

"THE AGE OF INNOCENCE"

2009-11-14T18:13:00.000-08:00

"The Age Of Innocence"
Edith Wharton
Published: 1920
As a history teacher, the enjoyment of this novel was twofold. The historical element afforded new perspectives and references for life in 19th Century New York; and, the novel was also (although ridiculous by today's standards) worth reading for the characters and their societal, cultural, and emotional involvements.
I taught a unit on the Industrial Revolution to my students called "Engines of Change" for years as part of the curriculum. The focus predominantly was placed on reformers, inventions and immigration. I highly recommend "Five Points" by Tyler Anbinder if this era is of interest. It covers the immigration into New York's Five Points, a chaotic jumble of Italian and Irish Gangs, African Americans, Chinese, prostitutes, drinking establishments, and of course extremely corrupt politicians (Tammey Hall/Boss Tweed). Conversely, "The Age of Innocence" took place roughly six miles away (5th Avenue), but for all practical purposes it was worlds apart and integration of these worlds was nonexistent.
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was a product of this gilded world. Born Edith Jones, her family's name literally spawned the saying "keeping up with the Joneses." Needless to say, she didn't have to spend relentless hours researching for this novel and was an accomplished writer at a very young age. Wharton was one of the few that made the journey from high society to intelligentsia and befriended many accomplished writers and artists (Henry James was a close confidant). She also, in 1921, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for "The Age of Innocence".
The novel is reflective in many ways of Wharton's transition between different two different societies and cultures.
The gradual death of old world customs and the birth of the modern age (Twentieth Century) is metaphorically represented in the characters of Newland Archer, the Countess Olenska, and May Welland. Newland Archer, 19th Century metro-sexual, goes through a myriad of changes as he awakens from a life of slavery to conformity to what is truly important in life. This awakening is caused by his fiances' (May Welland) cousin, the Countess Olenska whose nature is not congruent with Newland's world (a world where a guest could cut off his thumb at dinner with a steak knife and be accused of causing a dreadful scene). Eventually he is ready to throw it all away, his marriage, fortune and prestige for Olenska. This love is vanquished by his marriage and the impending birth of his first child. Archer steps back into the stifling gilded cage that he so desperately wanted to escape and although not entirely miserable, sleep walks through the remaining years of his life. His only consolation a few brief moments in time when he could have been a different man who led an entirely different life.

Again, I appreciate this journey because it provided me the opportunity to experience a novel that had been procrastinated! So life goes....

"The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else." Edith Wharton "The Age of Innocence"

WILL I MAKE IT??

2009-11-10T18:06:00.000-08:00

Will I make it? All these books in one year? Probably not, I have to face the facts. But, I will do the best I can with the goal of enjoying the novels, not speed reading just to say, "I'm done!!" After all, the joy is the journey.

I survived Halloween and my son Domenico's birthday all while living in a studio in Hawaii. We moved out the beautiful house we were renting, a $2000. rent (YIKES!) And now are in the midst of "What do we do next?" We camped two weeks on our kid's school vacation. Then we rented a studio. Now, we are contemplating a move back to our house in Maine, not the most comforting thought during the winter months. But, my husband moved here for work and his job was eliminated. How long can you sit around a place, no matter how beautiful, without gainful employment. Also, our schools have closed every Friday due to lack of money in education (don't even get me started on where the money went!!)
So, what to do, what to do??
This makes it a little difficult to make reading my priority, although I am doing my best in the evenings. One Dr. Kilby came across my site and was certain he had read my time frame incorrectly. He emailed me to ask, "Umm, are you sure about the 365 day thing?" (that isn't verbatim). To which I replied, "No, but I am a person that has to set outlandish goals to accomplish anything." When I went to graduate school, I had three children, two under the age of two! My peers thought I was a little crazy, deservedly, given we had to teach full-time, take 33 credit hours, and I also owned a retail business. But, I'm all for throwing myself into the fire.
Dr. Kilby is a very well read individual and I thought he had some great insights and ideas to share about many of these novels. So I'll share them as well......

I read An American Tragedy last year. It was overly long and kind of a soap opera, but I enjoyed it overall. He has interesting insights into psychology and our complex motivations, but his writing is downright cumbersome at times. Like the Studs Lonigan trilogy I just finished, it is on these lists less because it is a “timeless classic of literature” and more because of how it pushed boundaries and was wildly popular in its time. That’s my opinion anyway.

Gone with the Wind is kind of like that, too (I think it’s on the Time/American list but not on the Random House/British list). Difficult to rank with the greatest literature on its own merits, but rather because of what it represents historically—like Harry Potter, it revolutionized the reading habits of the entire US (and much of the Western world?), not by changing University reading lists but by capturing the attention of the everyday public. It’s fascinating that Mitchell and Rowling also each spawned the most critically acclaimed blockbuster films of all time. There have been attempts at movies relating to Finnegans Wake, Ulysses, and Portrait of the Artist…but they’re not very memorable! And I’m betting not many mill workers tucked dog-eared copies of these books into their lunchboxes like they did An American Tragedy and GWTW and Studs Lonigan! (My 13 year old recently snuck and tried to read Ulysses because he heard it had been banned and censored…he reported back to me that “you would have to work pretty hard to get turned on by that book!” I agree—in this age of free internet porn, it is difficult to imagine the titillation of poring through 100,000 cryptic words in order to uncover something about how eating undercooked kidney ties in with Freudian fantasies of carnal sexuality…) The memory of Studs Lonigan that will remain with me forever actually comes from the deleted/censored alternative final 20 pages or so…after all his timid waffling about trying to be good and what is morality, etc, he is screaming “F#%$ my mother, f--- the ten commandments, I am the AntiChrist…” Wow, you can see how that never saw the light of day circa 1934.

Dreiser talked about the same themes that great literature has for centuries—struggles to overcome social stigma, the inability to rise out of your social caste, the consequences of unbounded ambition, etc….But he faced it head-on in a way that Victorian writers never would have dared…(Shakespeare was more likely to tell it like it was than most of the writers for the next 200 years that followed, wasn’t he?): ”What if your sister was a prostitute and had to go hide in a dirty motel to have a baby out of wedlock? What if you were tempted to murder an innocent woman in cold blood in order to continue a meaningless affair with a well-to-do society girl?”

I have not read Sister Carrie—it’s one of the next books on my list.

2009-11-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

"Slaughter House Five"

Kurt Vonnegut
Published 1969
I know this a long review but please read it because I highly recommend this book!! And this is why I chose to read the top 100 novels because I wouldn't have had this experience otherwise.

What can I say, I love Kurt Vonnegut! His frank, dark and often self deprecating humor causes a desire in the reader to literally ingest "every word". It truly is a 2 a.m. book that is put down when your contact lenses are burning and you're out of eye drops. Vonnegut uses his past in WWII as a p.o.w. in a German Camp and the bombing of Dresden as one of the many dimensions experienced by Billy Pilgrim (the protagonist).
Billy Pilgrim is an ordinary man from Iliad, New York. He's a scrawny pipe of a guy, weak, weary and prematurely gray/bald in his twenties. His time traveling starts during the war, as he has crossed enemy lines with 2 scouts and a pain in the ass named Roland Weary who is described by Vonnegut as eighteen and from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
"He had been unpopular in Pittsburgh. He had been unpopular because he was stupid and fat and mean, and smelled like bacon no matter how much he washed. He was always being ditched in Pittsburgh by people who did not want him with them. When Weary was ditched, he would find somebody who was even more unpopular than himself, and he would horse around with that person for a while, pretending to be friendly. And then he would find some pretext for beating the shit out of him."

When Billy is about to be 'done in' by the bloated Roland, Germans come along and capture both of them sending them to Dresden where they are housed in "Slaughter House Number Five". Billy time travels to all different points in his life.
The Tralfamadorians (aliens) show up at a certain time in Billy's life and kidnap him to guide him through his fourth dimension experiences.
Billy can visit any point he would like to in his life. The Tralfamadorian view of life can be described as such:

"All moments past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.....So it goes."
I like that!

Billy can be riding in the train as a p.o.w and the next moment he is visiting :
*His forties as a successful Optometrist.
*His marriage to the Senior Optometrist ample daughter Valencia.
*Different points in his children's lives.
*Visiting an impatient mental institution reading Sci-Fi novels by Kilgore Trout
*Has an airplane accident
*His wife dies of carbon monoxide inhalation
*Starts going on radio talk shows revealing his times as a captive of the Trafamadorians. When he was kept naked in a Zoo.

He had to be kept in a Zoo, where the conditions of earth were simulated. He was naked at all times, but his Zoo environment was quite nice with furniture and modern appliances stolen by the Tralfamamdorians from 'Sears and Roebuck'. At all times he has a Tralfamdorian audience, which at least leads Billy to finally have 'body confidence' because they think everything he does is just the most spectacular thing they've ever seen (especially when he uses the bathroom). But just Billy isn't enough, so the ever considerate and accommodating Tralfs provide Billy with a partner to mate with, Montana Wildhack (a B movie actress), "and so it goes".

This novel was so enjoyable that I was laughing aloud or shaking my head every few pages. But on the flip side, it demonstrates the inhumanity of war/life in it's harshest form:
"I myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen, who were proud of fighting pure evil at the time. This was true. Billy saw the boiled bodies in Dresden. And I have lit my way in a prison at night with candles from the fat of human beings who were butchered by the brother and fathers of those schoolgirls who were boiled. Earthlings must be the terrors of the Universe!"
"Slaughter House Five"......Read It!

MY BOYS AND HALLOWEEN!

2009-10-31T19:58:00.000-07:00

It's almost the witching hour when I will go out with my two little spirits and watch them engorge themselves with sugar until they fall into a diabetic coma!! Of course this happens only after they have organized their candy, made strategic trades and then bounced off every wall like ping pong balls. Then they literally collapse in a heap with chocolate smeared all over their faces! It's quite scary to see! They are both "Scream". I'm not sure what happened to the cute little costumes: bumble bees, Zurg, Buzz Light Year, Winnie the Pooh, etc. Now it is all about blood, gore and ....blood and gore! They're both obesessed with Chucky even though they've never seen the movie and keep referring to "it" as a "she". I've corrected them and told them, "No, Chucky is a he, hence there would not be a sequel entitled 'Bride of Chucky'." They don't seem to understand what I'm saying and go about their business with one pretending to be Chucky while the other says, "Chucky doesn't have an axe, that's not fair. She only has a kitchen knife!"

Anyway, finished "Slaughter House Five" and absolutely loved it so review to follow. Happy Halloween All, keep checking your sugar count!

ALIENS, TIME WARPS, B-MOVIE ACTRESSES!! YIKES!!

2009-10-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Slaughter House-Five (as the title may suggest) is on board for the Halloween festivities! What could be scarier than aliens, time warps and B-Movie actresses??? This novel, is number 18 on the list! Slaughter House-Five, like Ulysses, has a nonlinear narrative, which should prove to be exciting and easy to follow. The main character is Billy Pilgrim who is captured by the Germans during WWII . Here is a little description of what happens then...
Billy " is kidnapped by extraterrestrial aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. They exhibit him in a zoo with B-movie starlet Montana Wildhack as his mate. The Tralfamadorians, who can see in four dimensions, have already seen every instant of their lives. They believe in predestination. They say they cannot choose to change anything about their fates, but can choose to concentrate upon any moment in their lives, and Billy becomes convinced of the correctness of their theories."
Okay, I gotta go! I have a book to read!!

VAMPIRE VEXATION

2009-10-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

Vexation: (noun) 15th century: troubling/irritation/affliction
Apparently Ann Rice is at it again with her new book "Angel Time". What does this have to do with my endeavor to read the top one hundred list, absolutely nothing! But, since I'm deciding what new book to read today I figured I'd toss some ideas around in regards to this "VAMPIRE" vexation I have! Which, apparently Rice now shares since her conversion to Catholicism. I guess her new character, an "angel", has to go around cleaning up this vampire mess she made back in the 90's.
All of sudden the new big thing is Vampires! (New??) I thought Bram Stoker pretty much summed it up, but then Ann Rice came out with "Interview With A Vampire" and everyone was blood lusting to be bit by Lestat and/or Louis depending on one's taste.

I'll admit, I was a huge Rice fan and then I recall in one of the later books Lestat suctioning himself back together out of nosophoros primordial goo under some house and then becoming a rock star and that's when I said, "Okay, too much suspension of disbelief for me!" Now here we are with all these new vampire series piggy backing off each other getting anemically worse by the second. I just took my kids to "Where The Wild Things Are" (great book/great movie), and on the marquee I saw a new movie entitled, you guessed it, "Vampires". There is something in the simplicity isn't there?
My spouse said this post is too negative! Maybe it's the time of year???

BEELZEBUB AKA "THE LORD OF THE FLIES"

2009-10-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

"The title is said to be a reference to the Hebrew name of Beelzebub (בעל זבוב, Ba’al-zvuv, “god of the fly”, “host of the fly”, or literally “Lord of Flies”), a name sometimes used as a synonym for Satan. The title of the book, in turn, has itself become a metaphor for a power struggle in a chaotic situation."

A CHAOTIC SITUATION: Living on an island can sometimes leave you with a condition called "Island Fever" which I am currently suffering from. I long for civilization and the streets of Manhattan. Sometimes I have pondered, what would happen with all this H1N1 or some other scary disease (maybe a zombie type) broke out and we were stuck here in the middle of the Pacific. Things would get downright hairy super fast! Of course there would be no imports so the residents would have to survive off the land. Now, for native Hawaiians this probably wouldn't be that big of a deal. Most Hawaiians know all the edible fish, fruits, vegetables etc. And, of course there are wild boar on the island just like in "Lord of The Flies". Things would get primitive pretty quick and different "camps" would be established as to who had access to what. There are more components to this scenario not being a native Hawaiian but I can't get into that!

People come in all varieties and some are more prone to the democratic process, organization, and logic (Ralph, Piggy and Simon). Others are more prone to survival of the fittest (Jack Merridew & Co.). I say, a person needs a certain balance of each. After all, you can have a 160 IQ and not a lick of street smarts. If my family was hungry I'd definitely do in a pig or two without losing much sleep. The chaos isn't in the hunting; it's in the social organization of people. Brawn over brains seems to prevail in these types of survival circumstances. It's a wonder that we're as civilized as we are, but of course all one has to do is turn on the news for that warm and fuzzy feeling to go away.

There have been many debates and books on this topic, social/political order and the nature of man, (Animal Farm, etc). I'm having a hard go of it trying to get into this book (again, one I read in high school) because it isn't a novel concept in 2009 like it was during the "Cold War". And, when I was a teacher in Maine, I taught at the school that serviced all the incarcerated (lock downed) kids in the state of Maine. It was "Lord Of The Flies" everyday in that place. I'm "flied" out!

SEX IN THE CITY? "SISTER CARRIE" BRADSHAW

2009-10-24T14:57:00.000-07:00

If you're a "Sex In The City" fan like I am, you're obsessed with watching Carrie Bradshaw's suave success as a columnist with a major New York paper. She journals about her life and her friends and all that encompasses life in Manhattan. Besides that, they are slaves to fashion, covetously looking at Jimmy Choo shoes at $5000 that are a must have. I guess I like watching it so much because A) it is hilarious and B) it is nice to imagine that I could just walk into some high end boutique and slip into an Oscar de la Renta creation. Not that I don't think the cost of fashion is ridiculous, but I do love the art.
So, what does this have to do with "Sister Carrie" by Theodore Dreiser, which was first published in 1900? The first sketches of life in Chicago find Carrie at her sister's austere, barely meat and potatoes flat. Her sister and her dullard blank staring cow faced husband are as much fun as getting a Brazilian wax! Carrie wants to see CHICAGO! She has just fled a sleepy town which suffocated her ambitions.
Obviously we have a separation of little over a hundred years between these two Carrie's but their character's are of the same guild. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Now, I don't know if you remember when Sarah Jessica Parker started off as a poor orphan who later was adopted by "Daddy Warbucks", then unfortunately she became a big nerd referred to as "String Bean"on a show entitled "Square Pegs", then she was a redneck in "Footloose", following that there were some less than noteworthy bit roles. Later, I saw her in a hilarious movie with Steve Martin (L.A. Stories) where they were dating. The scene that stood out the most was when they took a romantic get away. The first night in bed together Martin abruptly throws up the sheets and declares, "Good God, what are wrong with your breasts?" To which she replies, "Oh they're real". That stepping stone lands her into the heart of Manhattan where she turns into the fashionista diva, Carrie Bradshaw!
*Sister Carrie, poor unrefined bumpkin, naive as a babe in the woods shows up in Chicago. Her first job is in a shoe factory (Oh, the monotonous dreariness). She is a shabby hidden butterfly who covets all the glamor that surrounds here.
*Then she hooks up with a sport called Drouet who is a sleek looking and slick talking character that really does have a good heart but wandering nether regions. He helps Carrie and sets here up in nice quarters and clothes. (This is the beginning of the clothing obsession). No Jimmy Choo shoes but pearl buttons, parasols, leather patten lace up boots, silks, bejeweled purses, hats...and so on. She and Drouet live together but then it just doesn't work out. Like Carrie Bradshaw she seems to have commitment issues.
*She than hooks up with an older esteemed gentleman, Hurstwood (Mr. Big) who sweeps her off her feet with his position, power and of course MONEY.
*One little problemo, he's already hitched to a Stepford nightmare wife and has two bratty self indulgent adult kids.
*Hurstwood (after some moral deflation of the most unscrupulous variety) flees to New York with Carrie, and as his decline becomes inevitable her rise as an actress is a forgone conclusion.
*Hurstwood withers to the point where he is unrecognizable. He ventures into the dregs of society as Carrie becomes Manhattan's "IT" girl.
*And, of course there are new love interests and the ever present obsession with fifth avenue.

Now, this is a ridiculous review of this novel. But, the social, sexual, Victorian caste system analysis can be read anywhere. But, if I really wanted to say something about this book, I would have titled it "It Is But The Work Of A Moment". It really is Hurstwood's story and he is by far the most compelling character. Dreiser's narration style reminds me of Dickens. And, I also kept thinking about the angel in "It's A Wonderful Life" giving us the characters little backgrounds and inner feelings as they would provide the proof. Recommend*** Ahh, Yeah!

HALLOWEEN READ?

2009-10-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

Well it's that spooky time of year, which always felt spookier in Maine vs. Hawaii. My house in Maine was built in 1875 (old farm house) so it lent itself to being quite creepy naturally. I'm wondering what book I should read off the list that would give me a lil' of that "chill up the back" feeling. Thinking maybe "Deliverance". Any suggestions???

Off that topic, somehow how I ended up as one of my own followers if that makes sense. How do I get myself off there? I'm a slight bit challenged.

"LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER" HOLY HOT!

2009-10-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

"LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER" by D.H. Lawrence was a delightful surprise. Unfortunately since I am currently a hobo, bouncing from place to place, the book is buried somewhere in my pathfinder. I've been camping for two weeks with my family and now I'm in a small studio. We are looking for a permanent place, but until then it is quite interesting to fulfill all my obligations living out of a suitcase. At least I don't have to hop any trains! Anywho...... yes that was me making fun of "Lady Chatterley" not so long ago! But, (blush, gush...gush) I have been over swept by the romantic tide of D.H. Lawrence. The steamy love scenes between Connie Chatterley and her Game Keeper are something else! And, if you've ever been passionately in love (especially for the first time when you really go out on a limb and get a little crazy) the book will have you visiting some far away delightful memories! I know there have been several movies made of this book, but I have never seen any of them and don't intend to! The beauty of "Chatterley" is in the language. The exacting expressions of love, passion, fear, lust, insecurity and the visual imagery along with personal connections are nothing that could possibly be conveyed in a movie. It takes awhile to get into, but it's worth the effort (and there is not hidden meaning in that statement!;)

BEAUTIFUL HAWAIIAN (NANI HAWAIIAN) WORDS..........

2009-10-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

FIRST OFF, HAVING MAJOR TECH PROBLEMS WITH MY PAGE! ANY SUGGESTIONS APPRECIATED!

I'm almost done with "LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER", literally maybe 15 pages and then will write a review. I like trying out other blogger's themes i.e. OHH .....BOOKS reactions to the first few lines of a new book. In this post, I'm borrowing an idea from THE CAPRICIOUS READER, "Wondrous Words Wednesday".

Since I have to stick to my goal of reading the top novels and have to finish the book before I can write a review, it's fun to venture off on some other roads. Living in Hawaii, your ear has to become accustomed to the language and it is no easy task to pronounce Hawaiian words. When I first got here three years ago, I called to set up new doctors, etc. for my kids. Of course, I had to ask for directions. This was a challenge, not only to understand the street names but also the vernacular. The women on the other end of the phone replies, "Ok so you take Kuakini to Hualualani Road, then take a right on Palani, left Luhia street, left on Nani Kailua and then you're there! DAHHH, HUH??? Can you spell that? So after much practice and mutilation, I do have some of it down. Here are some beautiful Hawaiian Words:

Aina (eye na): earth

A Kamai (ah kamy): smart

Aloha: Hello/Goodbye

Mahalo: Thank you

Wahine (Wa heen knee): women

Kane (ka-nay): men

Kumu (koo moo): teacher

Nani (nah knee): beautiful

Kai: The Sea

lani (la-nee): The Heavens

Imu (E-Moo): pit (which they roast pigs in, and yes I've tried this, yum!)

AND THE PIECE DE RESISTANCE:

humuhumunukunukuapua'a

WHICH MEAN TRIGGER FISH AND NO, I CANNOT PRONOUNCE IT! BUT GIVE IT YOUR BEST SHOT!!

WORST BOOK YOU EVER READ?

2009-10-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is negative, but on my book blog site I posed the question "What is the worst book you've ever read (or author)? Because good recommendations are just as valid as bad ones! Of course we tend to read books in the genre that we like. And, I can't sustain attention if a book is really horrible. I toss it aside or give it away. Here are some of the responses:
THE TWILIGHT SERIES (listed by more than one person)
THE LOST SYMBOL
GERMILA
KAROLINE
CITIZEN GIRL
MERMAID CHAIR

AUTHORS PEOPLE DIDN'T CARE FOR
STEPHEN KING
JAMES HERBERT

SO, WHAT IS THE WORST BOOK/BOOKS/AUTHORS YOU'VE EVER ENCOUNTERED?
GO TO BOOK BLOG SITE http://www.bookblogs.ning.com/profile/KristinaDaniel
OR EMAIL ME AT bookreviewsbykris@gmail.com
OR JUST LEAVE A COMMENT
THANKS!

LADY CHATTERLEY'S HARELQUIN ROMANCE

2009-10-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

"Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence was first published in 1928. It also graced the banned book list along with "The Catcher In The Rye".

I've decided a good technique is to put myself in the era in which the novel was written because modern mentality tends to precipitate an unfulfilled experience. This happened right away when I cracked the first pages of "Chatterley". The book seemed hokey and cliched. I recall seeing a shelf full of Harlequin romance novels at my Grandmother's house when I was a kid. The writers (mostly women) used terms like: throbbing member, hot virile shaft, achieved a climatic eruption. And, I was like... Wow! This is really lame! This novel was definitely the precursor to all Harlequin romance novels. BUT, the writing is superb and besides the "sex" scenes and some contrived content it is a pretty good story so far. If I can get over a description like this (I have to detach myself from 2009 and go back to the 1920's when nobody really was writing material like this) then I'll be okay.
"Connie found it impossible to come to her crisis before he had really finished his. And he roused a certain craving passion in her, with his little boy's nakedness and softness, she had to go on after he had finished, in the wild tumult and heaving of her loins, while he heroically kept himself up, and present in her, with all his will and self-offering, till she brought about her own crisis, with weird little cries."
See what I'm saying?
Oddly enough Lawrence uses these kinds descriptions, but then busts out with a couple of F-BOMBS by page 35, way before "The Catcher In The Rye". It leaves me asking why the squishy, squirrely loin talk?

The main character is of course Lady Chatterley and unfortunately for her, her husband was paralyzed in the WWI. I say unfortunate for her, because Lawrence describes him as someone who really didn't care about sex when he still had the ability to do it. Thus far in the novel, he doesn't seem too distraught over his condition, which of course is extremely peculiar. So, as one may guess, the book is about Lady Chatterley trying to "get her freak on"! Yes, I did just bust out with that expression!

HAVE A GOOD VOCABULARY!

Words in the first few chapters:
bucolic
supercilious
tremulous
simulacrum
laconically

Words Used Over and Over AND OVER:
loins, loins and more loins
crisis (huh? figure that one out!)
bitch goddess
nakedness
erect

TOO HARD ON "THE CATCHER IN THE RYE"?

2009-10-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

I too, like Salinger, have a tendency to be a bit cynical at times. My mother says it comes from my father's Scottish side. One argument in that family and they don't speak years! Maybe I was too hard on "The Catcher In The Rye" by not mentioning other facets of the book that were subtly weaved within the context. Cara, whose site OOH....BOOKS is definitely an inspiration to all book bloggers, reminded me of this in her comments:

"One interpretation of this book that may be missed is that it is about grief. Did you mention that in your previous post? I can't remember. Anyway, part of why Holden is the way he is is that he recently lost his brother. His parents just shipped him off to boarding school where he's expected to go on like nothing's happened. I never liked A Catcher in the Rye, but this interpretation makes me appreciate it more."

It is true that Holden Caulfield was a boy that was ignored. He brings up his mother's careful selection of ice skates for him, but mentions nothing more except that she has a very nervous nature. His father's career is mentioned but their relationship is never touched on, which suggests that it wasn't positive or negative, it was nonexistent. Holden focuses on memories of his brother Allie who died from cancer when he was very young. It is obvious that he misses him terribly but life seems to have gone on for everyone else in the world as if Allie didn't even exist. Holden is alive but holds the same distinction as his brother Allie, invisible. He mentions several times that he just wants to "disappear"; he wants to go away and maybe he'll show back up twenty years later just to say "hi"; he will punish his family by really disappearing and then how will they feel?

He focuses on his relationships with his other siblings as proof that he does exist and he derives a sense of pride from his older brother's and sister's accomplishments. He doesn't feel he has any noteworthy talents or accomplishments himself.

Caulfield is a boy on his own. How else could he leave school and be running around New York City, staying in hotels, hiring prostitutes, spending copious amounts of money and his parents have no idea of his whereabouts. He states that his parents will get over his dismissal from school in a few days.

I thought the saddest part was when Holden, toward the end of the book, sneaks back into his house to visit his sister while his parents are gone. They are obviously very close (she is younger); she is very upset that he has failed out of school again. He needs someone to care. After a short visit, he has to find somewhere to go and he doesn't want to be alone. (One of the major themes of "The Catcher In The Rye" is his never ending quest to find someone to be with, anyone. It really is quite sad, as he calls people who are mere acquaintances just to have someone, anyone to talk to.) He calls a former teacher who he feels genuinely cares for him. Holden describes his former teacher as a man who is quite well off because he married a much older wealthy woman (I knew where Salinger was going with this). Holden has stayed at his house many times in the past. His teacher, Mr. Antolini, tells Holden to come right over. They a have a chit chat about Holden's wasted potential, as Antolini slurps down a steady stream of burbon. Holden receives blankets and a sofa to sleep on but is awoken by Mr. Antolini stroking his head. Of course, Holden is scared to death and asks him what in the hell he thinks he's doing. Antolini replies, "just admiring". Of course, this is heart breaking because this is one of the only adults Holden felt cared for him genuinely. He comments that he knows a perv when he sees one because this has happened to him many times before. Again, evidence that he has been on his own for along time. No wonder he is so disenchanted with life.

The people who care about him in life are so few. This is probably why he feels people are so "phony" and they just pretend to care about people when in actuality they only care about themselves.

A dilemma I'm facing is whether I should read about the author before picking up the book? Admittedly, I do not care for J.D. Salinger, but that doesn't mean this book is without merit. Salinger controlled his wife, and kept her completely isolated, until the point she almost killed her infant daughter and herself just to escape his domineering often cruel treatment. His wife Clair commented:

"She remembered that Salinger would chronically leave Cornish to work on a story "for several weeks only to return with the piece he was supposed to be finishing all undone or destroyed and some new 'ism' we had to follow." Claire believed "it was to cover the fact that Jerry had just destroyed or junked or couldn't face the quality of, or couldn't face publishing, what he had created."

Salinger would change his beliefs from one ideology to another so quickly that his family couldn't keep up with his excessive demands to adapt. He wouldn't let his wife seek medical treatment for their children because he was on a "Scientology" kick. This is when his wife finally decided their marriage was over.
Salinger, in his fifties, wrote to a young old girl who wrote an article for "Seventeen" magazine and told her she could interview him. Needless to say she abandoned school and all her potential to live with Salinger. I guess I find this kind of behavior very predatory and selfish and this does seep into my opinion when reading the novel.
Something to ponder on whether I should forgo reading about the author. What do you think?

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BASEBALL!

2009-10-08T14:38:00.000-07:00

I remember picking "The Catcher In The Rye" off a list when I was a freshmen in high school because I thought it had to do with baseball and I had heard it had something really filthy in it! OOOOH, I thought, I wonder what it is? All a teenage kid needs to hear are the words "banned" "swearing" and "sexual content" and we're all over it! There wasn't too much exposure to this sort of thing when I was growing up. I came from a small town in Maine where our TV had rabbit ears and we could only pick up ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS! That was it! Staying up to watch the "Gong Show" was a big deal. Then one dark and seedy night, when I was around twelve, I stayed at my friend's house in town who had just hooked up cable. What a novelty, the Darwin de-evolution of the human mind had begun! I turned on HBO and the movie "Dressed To Kill" with Angie Dickinson was on. What a shower scene and she was totally "NAKED" and then some dude got in the shower with her, OMG!!

Now, today it seems foolish that anyone would get their under garments in a twist over this book. And, what is even more foolish is that movies that were rated R like Rambo seem tame next to P13 movies today. In that light, reading "The Catcher In The Rye" doesn't seem that big of a deal. The swearing becomes gratuitous and annoying. I thought I had missed all the "F" words when they all showed up in the last few chapters. How exciting! So Holden Caulfied is this rich, confused kid that keeps failing out of prep schools. He swears, drinks, chain smokes, is obsessed with sex (imagine it, a teenage boy obsessed with sex), has the dough to take off from school, gets a hotel room, hires a hooker (then gets stage fright), is super negative, hates everyone, is impulsive, has ADD, is deluded, depressed and feels lonely. Ummmm, sounds like many teenagers I've come across. Except he doesn't, like other socially elite kids today, have a sex video on UTUBE or his own reality TV Show.

Holden Caulfield is more intelligent than most kids his age and is overly obsessed with people being "phony", which is a Salinger personality trait. In comparison, I remember sitting in my room as a teenager, listening to soulful music, ruminating about everything that sucked (especially my parents) and how was I going to keep myself from becoming one of "them" or their lame-o friends. I used to write for hours about dreamy fantasy's with boys were I gave them "love potion number 9" so they would only have eyes for me, or how I would become super successful and show all those snobby losers how wrong they had been about me, or maybe I'd just be a fashion model with a PHD! Oh, the choices were endless! And, then reality......

"The Catcher In The Rye", will take you back to that time in your life and for that it is a great book. How often do we get to go back and visit our angst filled adolescence. But there is something odd, the fact that Salinger as an adult could so easily slip into this personality and embody so fully the language and thought process of Holden Caulfield, makes me believe he is emotionally immature. And, if you visit his bio. this is very much evident. I don't really care for Salinger. His history seems to show him as a very narcissistic, inappropriate and controlling person. For me, this book really isn't top 100 material, but because it personifies the rebelliousness of a certain generation it is # 64 on the list. In my opinion, Salinger is no Fitzgerald or Steinbeck and isn't entitled to this attitude of snobbery in regards to his talent. I don't think Salinger published anything else noteworthy because he knew he couldn't write anything better then "Catcher" and he is not someone who can handle the embarrassment of failure or the criticism. It is safer to remain a recluse and laze on you laurels. Salinger is 90 years old now and is looking down from Mount Krumpit hating the Who's. I can see him telling a young woman at the local store, "hey, maybe you've heard of me, I'm kinda a big deal. I wrote a lil' book called "The Catcher In The Rye". To which she responds, "Like, what are you talking about dude?"

Coming Through the Rye by Robert Burns
(1759-1796)

Coming thro' the rye, poor body,
Coming thro' the rye,
She draiglet a' her petticoatie
Coming thro' the rye.

O, Jenny's a' wat, poor body;
Jenny's seldom dry;
She draiglet a' her petticoatie
Coming thro' the rye.

Gin a body meet a body
Coming thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body -
Need a body cry?

Gin a body meet a body
Coming thro' the glen,
Gin a body kiss a body -
Need the warld ken?

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

2009-10-03T22:43:00.000-07:00

Well, let's see, I've completely neglected my reading and visiting my friend's blogs, which I love to keep up with, always finding little pearls. We (my family) decided to downsize from a $2100. rent in Hawaii and were looking for something cheaper (economy, economy, economy blahh blahh blahh!) So, we secured a place and at the last minute it was rented out beneath us for more money apparently (someone willing to pay a lil' more).

Anywho, now we are hobos. We stayed at a friend's for 4 days, and my kids certainly wore out that welcome. Familiarity breeds contempt! Now I'm sitting on a hotel bed (of course after stripping the bedspread. Always do that if you haven't been..... I could tell you one sick forensic story!) We are here for 3 days, and then since my kids are off from school for 10 days we're going camping in the Kohala District of the Big Island. I told my friend where we would be camping and she said, "Oh, just so you know a lot of homeless people camp there." So, we'll fit right in. Hopefully I'll be reading and blogging from the beach and no one will steal my can goods or my computer.

Started "The Catcher In The Rye" a book I had read as a freshmen, and again like with The Great Gatsby was like HUH? I was rather slow in high school and now only marginally improved. I'm going to take Cara's (Ooh .... Books!) approach with the beginning of this book and blog my first reactions....

Salinger writes:

"IF YOU REALLY want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

Well, he sounds like a self centered, know it all kid, just like we all were. And, tragic of course (the Copperfield reference) all kids think they are living akin to "Angela's Ashes" when they're told they can't use the car on Friday night. My first thought was "No! I do not care to hear about your life! And why would you think anyone would want to hear about it? Awfully conceited aren't you?" But , he grows on you, Holden Caulfield. He is sixteen and quite clever and impressed with himself. His adolescent attitude, amusements, judgments, and irritants remind me of myself or a piece of any sixteen year old. I'm only on Chapter Six, but it's a short book that I'll probably complete by tomorrow. Apparently, "one diligent parent counted 237 appearances of the word "goddam" in the novel, along with 58 "bastards", 31 "Chrissakes" and 6 "fucks". Now in the 1950's when this became the book all "Marlon Brando look a likes" had to read, it caused a huge ruckus. And, apparently still does among some "others". No Comment! Everyone knows Wicca membership has grown exponentially since "Harry Potter" came out, all those nutty kids wanting to be witches and wizards!! We'll have to see if I swear more after reading The Catcher In The Rye or pull similar shenanigans as Caulfield. I'll keep track of my progress.

Tomorrow, reading by the hotel pool......

MOVING! ARGHHHH!!

2009-09-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

HAVEN'T BEEN ON. MOVING INTO DIFFERENT HOUSE! WHAT A NIGHTMARE! HOPEFULLY WILL BE ABLE TO SIT DOWN TOMORROW NIGHT.

"Ulysses Seen" One Cool Site!

2009-09-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

Ulysses Seen is (you guessed it) all about the process of getting to know the 20th century's most dreaded and feared book! There is a new illustrated version being created by Robert Barry. And, it features a man's journey to read Ulysses for the first time. Sound familiar??
See below for excerpt from the site Ulysses Seen:

New Comic Pages October 5th!

September 25th, 2009 Throwaway Horse, LLC will be presenting new, weekly installments of its comix adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses at our web site, www.ulyssesseen.com, beginning October 5, 2009 and running through December 7, 2009. In addition to giving readers 40 new pages of the comic, Throwaway Horse will add new features and a new schedule of regular content.
The comic will now update on Mondays with four new pages. The Reader’s Guide, our online annotation for solving some of the mysteries of the novel page-by-page, will follow with daily analysis Tuesday through Friday of each week.
In addition, Throwaway Horse is happy to introduce Michael Perridge as a regular contributor to the site. Michael will be blogging about his experience as he reads Ulysses for the first time, wrestling with what many consider to be the most difficult, if ultimately rewarding, book ever written. If all goes well this should be like watching a one-man Oprah book club suddenly finding itself on the set of Survivor.
“Ulysses Seen” garnered considerable notice and comment with its first installment on June 16, 2009, known as “Bloomsday” to Joyce fans the world over. New Yorker magazine called “Ulysses ‘Seen’” “real fun,” and found Berry’s art work “lush and comical.” No fewer than 16 online blogs and magazines reviewed and reported on the project, including Paste Magazine, all of which are collected in the site’s “Press” section. The “Twittersphere” was abuzz with comment as well, with tweets coming from everyone from musician Mike Watt, to Random House, the original publishers of Joyce’s Ulysses, who called the project “V. interesting.”
Throwaway Horse LLC is a company dedicated to fostering understanding of public domain literary masterworks by joining the visual aid of the graphic novel with the explicatory aid of the internet. “Ulysses ‘Seen’” is its inaugural project. Comic book artist Berry and Joyce scholar Mike Barsanti conceived of the project as a forum for both the first time reader and the Joyce expert to discuss, explore, and debate a book considered to be both one of the most important books of the 20th century and one of the most difficult. Throwaway Horse LLC has posted the ulyssesseen.com website as a kind of “alpha” web 2.0 project in which visitors can help shape content and direction of the site itself. The project is being presented in serialized form, like the original novel, with the hopes it can be completed in slightly less than the 10 years it took for Joyce to write the novel itself.

NOW I'VE SEEN IT ALL....

2009-09-25T00:14:00.000-07:00

If you have a baby shower coming up, may I make a suggestion? After all children do enjoy a good bedtime story by James Joyce. My seven year old is a huge Ulysses fan and wants to be Joyce for Halloween. Last year he was a pirate so we're just going to recycle the eye-patch.

OTHER BLOGGERS

2009-09-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

Visiting Misfit Salon, a great site whose creator is actually reading Ulysses by James Joyce, I discovered another site Reading Ulysses For The First Time . What I have noticed about these two blogs is that it takes a person with a good sense of humor to get through Ulysses. My husband claims that Ulysses is an exercise in conceit, but then being the thespian he is, he starts contemplating how it would have been a lot better if Joyce didn't base the story on The Odyssey, but Shakespeare plays instead. After visiting Italy this summer and meeting his sister's father-in-law who is a psychiatrist and Shakespeare lover, he has all new insights into the plays. Then he started doing Richard III for me, with his new understanding of Shakespeare issues with his mother! OMG!! This psychiatrist has psychoanalyzed all the characters and has a book in the works. Now, this does sound interesting to me, even though I am as literate in Shakespeare as I am The Odyssey. Anyway, my sincerest sympathies to those who are mired in Ulysses right now. When you finish you will feel that you slayed the big, mean, drooling dragon and if you come away only missing a few limbs count yourself lucky.

HALO OR HORNS?

2009-09-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

The story of The Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man is James Joyce’s story.
His grandfather and his father both married affluent wives (like Fitzgerald’s family). Depressingly though, Joyce’s father John was horrible with money and the drink. He had to declare bankruptcy and subsequently lost his job. Joyce goes from a life that is tinted with rose colored lenses to being plunged into all that is dark and dismal in life.

Joyce attended Clongowes Wood School when he was young but when the funds dried up his family was forced to give up their home and moved to Dublin. Where Joyce’s life and Stephen's seem to separate (because I cannot assume everything in the book is based on Joyce’s life, but more than likely he kept drawing off his own experiences) is when Stephen enters Belvedere College and embraces the monastic lifestyle of the Jesuits. This fervent religious awakening comes from Stephen’s attending a religious retreat where the fires of hell lick at his feet and his guilt at having frequented so many prostitutes consumes his every thought. He is quite sure he is beyond redemption but believes just maybe if he confesses, repents enough and lives an austere life, he might not be swallowed up in ever lasting darkness. Like Stephen, Joyce completely gives up Catholicism at sixteen.

In Chapter Three, there is a massive sermon delivered that describes hell in all its graphic gore. Now, you might be asking yourself as I did, who is visiting hell and coming back with the details? Supposedly, these details come from the visions of saints. I’m sure if I starved myself, wore a hair shirt, flogged myself daily, and was terrified of evil spirits, I could conjure up hallucinations of hell that would put St. Frances of Rome to shame (this happens if I don't have enough coffee!). I have heard of saints who lived in caves and others who sat on top of poles where everything had to be hoisted up to them. What is the purpose of this kind of behavior? I don’t recall in the Bible Jesus doing any of these shenanigans. He helped the poor, the sick, the weak and shared his message with thieves and prostitutes, nobody was beyond redemption. But, he did go into the desert for forty days and nights and was tempted by satan, but why would someone want to relive that part of Christ‘s life? My husband has a friend who doesn’t go to church all year, can kill a thirty pack at one poker game and then gives it all up for lent. “My husband asked him, don’t you think God would rather you not imbibe in your vices all the rest of the year and then you can go hog wild for forty days?” He didn’t seem to understand what he was saying.

According to the sermon in Chapter Three, hell is so packed with people that one cannot move their arms to swat away a worm gnawing on their eyeball. It is perpetually black, not one drop of light. The damned are screaming and cursing themselves and everyone they ever knew. Their dirty deeds are relived in their minds constantly, but through God’s eyes so they truly know how vile and filthy they are. After, hearing about forty pages worth of this rant, all as dismal as the aforementioned description above, Stephen decides he better change his lustful whoring ways. He sits in the most uncomfortable positions, in the coldest parts of the room, curbs his diet to the most blandest of foods, deprives himself of all worldly joys and prays continuously for forgiveness, because he never knows if it is enough. Finally, after being observed by the leaders of the Jesuit school he is singled out and asked to consider a career in the church. Stephen ponders the idea of what that life would be like: walking the Jesuit walk, eating with the community, clothed in the same garb, getting up at the same hour every day for the rest of his life, assigned to the same room until he dies. Stephen tries out the title:
“The Reverend Stephen Dedalus, S.J.”
“His name in that new life leaped into characters before his eyes and to it there followed a mental sensation of an undefined face or colour of a face. The colour faded and became strong like a changing glow of pallid brick red: Was it the raw reddish glow he had so often seen on wintry mornings on the shaven gills of the priests? The face was eyeless and sour favored and devout, shot with pink tinges of suffocated anger.”
WHAT A DESCRIPTION!

After the most depressing of thoughts of what that life would entail, Stephen basically says thanks but no thanks, and decides to go back to his heathen ways figuring he’d end up there sooner or later anyway. “The wisdom of the priest’s appeal did not touch him to the quick. He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdom of others himself wandering among the snares of the world.”

SHARING A ULYSSES REVIEW BY MISFIT SALON

2009-09-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

Ulysses (Urghhhh)
Anyone read this book? Can you tell me what it's about because I'm halfway through and I still have no clue. I believe, although I am not 100% sure, that it is in the English language.
The literature majorette in me vows to persevere since this has been touted as The Novel - the one that changed everything that came before it. I can see how it is different from not only what came before but anything that resembles or claims to be a book. To say Ulysses is nonlinear is an oversimplification of it's, and this is a legitimate literary term I learned in English Lit 101, What the F#$%&*@#%!k quality.
Ulysses makes The Sound and the Fury look like Mother Goose.
no discernible plot - check

stream of unconsciousness - check

multiple points of view switcheroos (even mid-paragraph) - check

unfollowable conversations - check (right, unfollowable is not a word but if Joyce can make up words willy nilly and be published AND be touted as a literary giant, so can I!)

obscure and random literary allusions - check

just plain random - check

For the first time in my life, I am considering consulting a Cliffs Notes.
But - here and there are more than lucid, actually quite breathtaking sentences, phrases even, which remind me that Joyce is not random. That he is in full possession of his keishter. That maybe I'm just a dumbass for not getting it.
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
BY: MISFIT SALON STEPHANIE

THE FIRES OF HELL.....

2009-09-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

Last chapter I read in The Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man was like Dante's Inferno. Talk about fire and brimstone! Joyce recounts a religious retreat where a priest gives lectures on those unrepenting sinners who end up in hell and I have to say it is scary. I'll get some good quotes to post tomorrow as I am currently not home. I grew up in a very religious household "Bible Thumping Baptists" and can relate to the constant dread of "I hope I'm saved and it really counts this time, because I don't want to burn in hell." And, I was thinking this when I was five! Not good!
My son had his first tackle in football today. He's nine and bruised from head to toe. They take this football business very serious here in Hawaii. It was a great day, sun shining, breeze blowing and could see Maui across the Pacific. Oh, life is rough!!

THE PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

2009-09-19T15:55:00.000-07:00

I’m about halfway through The Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man , it is the prequel to Ulysses and I couldn’t suggest strongly enough to read it first!! I, lacking the intellectual capacity to fully enjoy Ulysses, would have benefited greatly from reading this book first. Now I look back on some of my interpretations of Ulysses as entirely wrong (I.e. the reason why Stephen wouldn’t kneel at his mother’s deathbed). It is also imperative to read Joyce’s biography before delving into The Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, the book follows his life story almost verbatim. The title has a literal meaning, the artist and the young man being Joyce.

At first it starts with the same mental gibberish that is throughout Ulysses. The thirty page introduction by Don Gifford was a bad omen when I first opened the book. “Good Grief!” I thought, this needs that much explanation, “please tell me I don’t have to buy another study guide.” The opening finds Stephen as a baby and describes the infantile wanderings of his developing brain (that was not a good sign either)! He eventually goes off to a boarding school and Joyce displays his insecurities and fears for the reader. It’s amazing how Joyce can remember how he felt at so many different intervals of his life. I would have liked to have counted the use of the words: queer, wet, cold, and damp. But, I’m lazy and didn’t want to go back and do the tally. He even writes, “the sunlight was queer and cold.” WHAT? Most of these chapters are in a narrative style with little dialogue which is difficult to follow. I had the same issues with Ulysses, Who is talking, what relation is this person to Stephen?

To my thankful delight, the book takes a 180 and becomes thoroughly enjoyable. Joyce as a young man is intriguing, brilliant, isolated and struggles with immorality. The other characters in the book are so tangible that you will think of them as being like several people you have met or know. So, clichéd I know, but you can’t judge a book by its cover or in this case the author.

Interestingly enough, Joyce while seeking treatment for his eye in Zurich brought along his daughter Lucia who suffered from schizophrenia. She was examined by Carl Jung who felt she and her father suffered from schizophrenia from reading Ulysses! Apparently, the book should have a medical disclaimer on the front of it. According to Jung, she and her father were two people heading to the bottom of a river, except that he was diving and she was falling.

TENDER IS THE NIGHT

2009-09-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

Tender Is The Night was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925 but was not published until 1934. This novel is the most reflective of Fitzgerald’s life. And, it is depressing in the sense that Fitzgerald relays the story like he is sitting by a fire recounting his life, knowing all the mistakes but being resigned that there is nothing to be done to change any of the circumstances. It is destiny. The French Riviera, Paris, Zurich, and Rome witness the opulence and the decline of these expatriates’ lives. Dick Diver is the main character, a doctor trained in psychology. He marries Nicole a woman from a wealthy Chicago family. They are stunning people who live on the French Riviera occasioning Paris when the mood dictates and always in extravagant style. Since money is no object, their lives consist of socializing with other affluent people and artists, artists being the only acceptable poor people the rich feel inclined to entertain. The bronzed, handsome couple have two children who wander in and out of the story just as in real life they are ushered in and out by nannies.

Soon the couple meet a young American actress named Rosemary on the Riviera. She becomes part of their circle and is in love with the Diver’s sophisticated cosmopolitan lifestyle. “The Divers represented externally the exact furthermost evolution of a class, so that most people seemed awkward beside them.” Rosemary is much like Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (but with a practical financial side having come from nothing) in the sense that she is whimsical and foolish acting much of the time. The first day she meets Dick she is madly in love and confesses her hopeless situation to her manager mother. Oddly enough, her mother encourages her to go for it without reservation. Rosemary is quite forward and throws herself at Dick when she is invited to a party at the Diver’s Villa. Dick pretends he doesn’t know what she’s getting at and tries to enforce that she is just a kid and he and Nicole would be happy to have her friendship. Everything seems perfect, two beautiful people, in beautiful surroundings, who are actually in love. The crack in the façade appears when one of the dinner guests, Mrs. McKisco, returns to the dinner table and announces that she has just seen Nicole in the powder room and something is definitely wrong. On the precipice of her revelation, she is figuratively slapped down by Barban, a blood lusting mercenary who frequents the Diver’s social scene. He holds Nicole Diver on a pedestal and will not see it tipped over. Mr. McKisco, (who is described earlier in the book as an author who wrote a guide to “Ulysses” of all things and then plans to write a new version but instead of the story taking place in one day, it takes place over 100 years in the mechanical age!! OMG!!) jumps to his wife’s defense and ends up in a real duel with Barbon. This is just one example of the little anecdotes that Fitzgerald throws out, leaving one wondering if these are true stories.

The book is divided into three sections. The first dealing with the most happy time in Dick Diver's life. I think Fitzgerald wanted to start out with the best memories of his own life and his relationship with his wife Zelda. Fitzgerald writes, “But to be included in Dick Diver’s world for a while was a remarkable experience: people believed he made special reservations about them, recognizing the proud uniqueness of their destinies, buried under the compromises of how many years. He won everyone quickly with an exquisite consideration and a politeness that moved so fast and intuitively that it could be examined only in its effect.”

Part two describes how the Divers' came to find themselves together. Nicole was a patient in an institution in Zurich, suffering from schizophrenia (Zelda also suffered from schizophrenia). Placed in the hospital by her father, it is revealed that her emotional breakdown was precipitated by the death of her mother and the subsequent sexual molestation by her father. Dick is a doctor returning from World War II, an American who has decided to stay in Europe. Nicole is stunning, desirable and there is something in Dick that wants to save her. He is a mentally, intellectually, and emotionally strong man. And, for many years he can bear the weight of Nicole’s repeated breakdowns.

Part Three reveals the eventual degeneration of Dick Diver into alcoholism as he is wasted away by his wife’s needs as well as the resentment of being a kept man. In the novel Dick’s father was without means, but his mother did inherit enough to make the family comfortable. This is an exact parallel to Fitzgerald’s life. When Dick married Nicole he gave up his aspirations to be a great psychologist and made his wife his career. When Fitzgerald ran out of money to pay for his wife’s reoccurring hospital bills, he was forced to forgo his writing to do screenplays in Hollywood. Nowadays this would akin to Robert Deniro having to do soap operas for money. Fitzgerald was the preeminent writer of his time. The resentment that builds in Dick Diver’s character turns him more and more to the bottle and he starts to rapidly deteriorate where he is spoken about as an embarrassment and a bore. Did Fitzgerald hear these kind of rumors about himself?

The book ends with Dick simply and quietly drifting away, the last fluttering sparks of an extraordinary firework. The reader is left not knowing what really becomes of him but assuming the worst.
The most interesting aspect of this novel to me is the intense examination of the downward spiral into alcoholism and all its tragic outcomes that only through experience can be retold. It is as though Fitzgerald’s fate was so intertwined with this book that he believed it could have no other ending. There would be no recovery, comeback or happy ending for Dick Diver. Fitzgerald and his wife were both, according to many sources, degenerate alcoholics and lived extremely destructive lives. There co-dependency probably kept them together regrettably to a unfortunate premature end.

The 1920's and Today....

2009-09-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

In The Great Gatsby you could rent a summer house on Long Island Sound for around $12,000. This was for the “the season” which typically was understood as July and August. Now, in Vanity Fair’s July Issue (my favorite magazine/could not live without) you can rent a quaint little summer place from Vincent and Louise Camuto for $950,000. Or, you might want to contact the Noel’s and rent their vacation home for $350,000 for July and $375,000 for August. According to Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Jane Gill, “ I had one client who demanded $125,000 for August. An oceanfront house with pool. I got a customer who offered $90,000. The owner balked: ‘My husband says we can’t take less than $120,000.’ Finally, after a week, she said O.K.. By then the customer was irked. ‘My new offer is $69,000,’ he said. ‘Throw that at them.’ Now you may be asking yourself ‘how can we mere mortals get such spectacular deals?’ The economy, economy, economy! It is a predators market for those who have disposable means to swoop in and grab up elite properties at all time lows (let me get my checkbook).

Why are these ultra wealthy people not using their vacation homes this summer? They all have one thing (yes I said ‘thing’) in common, Bernie Madoff. If you don’t know about Madoff and his bogus Ponzi Scheme, that he somehow managed to pull off for years without being caught, you must check out the series of articles in the last few issues of Vanity Fair. It really is the epitome of corruption, avarice beyond description and sums up with the greatest efficiency the current banking/lending/investment nightmare.

“The crisis was triggered by the crash of US-based Lehman Brothers -- the 158-year-old firm that survived the American Civil War, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War and 9/11 but not the sub-prime mortgage bubble. Based on historical precedent that in America property markets had never ever declined by more than 5 per cent, the firm had thrown the dice.”
http://news.in.msn.com/business/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3225082
Essentially everyone was involved in lending money without the capital to back the loans (sub prime lending practices) and taking investment money without the capital to back payoffs. And, the government still has no laws as of yet to regulate this nightmare!!

Just as the rich prospered in the 1920’s before Black Tuesday, the rich of today partied until the end. Madoff actually knew his jig was up, and had his supposedly innocent wife withdraw millions in funds in the days before he was arrested. Then he threw a Christmas bash for his employees who would find out the next day that they had, along with thousands of others, been scammed by a major con-artist (MERRY CHRISTMAS!). Now, most of the public has no sympathy for these Madoff people because they are still affluent; hower, some lost their life savings. Comparatively people in the 1930’s wanted to crucify the Captains of Industry. Groups of employees protested outside of Woolworth’s while Barbara Hutton, who knew nothing of the business her grandfather created and hadn’t worked a day in her life, cried in her silk covered bed, “Why do these people hate me?”

Who is Charles Ponzi?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi

June Issue Vanity Fair Letter to the Editor
PORTFOLIO OF LIES
I AM TIRED of listening to investors who supposedly “lost everything” with Bernie Madoff didn’t take and spend all their money; he paid most of it back to them in annual payouts at the rate of 10 to 12 percent a year. Some of his investors funded charities with their returns. Many lived extravagantly for years off these annual payouts, and many have recouped their original investment and become even richer. Now they demand a U.S. taxpayer bailout. They were blinded by greed and seduced by high returns, and want me to reimburse them for their lack of proper due diligence. Ask anyone who has invested in Citibank, G.M., Bear Sterns, or Lehman Brothers over the last couple of years how their investments are doing. I’ll take Bernie’s returns any day.
Timothy Corsini
London, England

A Post From Padfoot and Prongs/The List

2009-09-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Comment: Padfoot and Prongs - Good Books Inc. said...

What an excellent book!! And we love your site...this is a fantastic idea! Although...we prefer the reader's choice of 100 best novels...but the board's list is still great!

Response: Thanks for commenting! Yes, I looked at both lists and considered which to use. I have read Ayn Rand books but felt that obviously readers (die hard Rand and Hubbard fans) voted numerous times to get their choices high on the list (kind of like calling in for your favorite on American Idol contestent numerous times). I don't have anything against Rand or Hubbard but believe the books are more about philosophical beliefs and promoting those beliefs than literature. I decided to go with the Random House List, even though I wanted to read some of my favs on the readers list, because it included books I have not read but believe to be some of the greatest books ever written. So thanks for contributing...........

Fitzgerald's Characters........

2009-09-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

Fitzgerald’s eloquence of writing is unsurpassed. His mastery of words on paper are equivalent to Renoir’s mastery of light on canvas. One can be engaged in foretelling the next scene and then it is laid bare in the most artful way. It could not exist or be written in any other way by any other person.

A Look at the Characters……..

Nick Carroway: A oddity in the sense that he is a man who reserves judgment and therefore can see more clearly into peoples motives, desires and insecurities. “I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.” He is from the mid-west. He is a sensible guy not prone to the fancies of the rich but is able to mingle in their presence without feeling inferior. Nick is well educated and is a bonds trader at a large firm in New York. He becomes a New York denizen for the excitement and vitality that life will bring. Nick dipsticks into the lives of Gatsby, Tom and Daisy by accompany them on journeys most would not I.e. traveling with Tom as he goes to visit his mistress. He hangs out all night with a ragtag crew passing a bottle, taking in the different personalities and situations until Tom’s mistress Myrtle gets her nose busted. Some of Nick’s best descriptions are of Tom Buchanan. “There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind.”

Tom Buchanan is described as a strapping dark and handsome man from a wealthy family. A man who can carry off a riding suit without looking ridiculous. He is well educated, cultured and worldly. He has the way of the wealthy, feeling comfortable to spout off details of this or that which having nothing to do with the conversation at hand. “Have you read ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ , by this man Goddard? Well, these books are all scientific. This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.” Another time, he informatively tells his company that he has read that the earth is heating up; the sun is getting hotter (hmmm).
Tom has the means to indulge his whims. He has a mansion, an appropriate wife, his first child, a mistress and believes that all of these things are fitting of a man of his stature. He goes slumming with his mistress and then goes home to socialize with the upper echelon who wouldn’t even contemplate giving his mistress the dignity of a disgusted grunt. When he discovers his wife’s indiscretion with Gatsby, his world is momentarily cracked. “Things get out of order: Self control…I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out…Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white. Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.”
In the end, by sheer magnetism and the unequivocal belief that he is superior to Gatsby in every way possible he takes control of his indulgent childish wife.
Daisy is the epitome of the wealthy society woman of the 1920’s. She purposefully appears to be in a constant daydream and says ridiculous things only someone of her station could get away with. I can imagine a dust soaked Okie saying “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year then miss it?” She is described as intentionally speaking in a soft whisper so those around her would have to lean in. She knows of her husbands affair and talks about it like she’s retelling the details of an afternoon picnic. She has her brief affair with Gatsby and then the tragic accident. After, seemingly without regret, she scuttles back into her safe glided cocoon, needing Tom to take control and leaving the carnage behind for others.

Jay Gatsby, handsome and mysterious comes off in a lot of ways as a bore. Fitzgerald over emphasizes Gatsby’s careful self programming, his ardent self discipline to be someone he is not. Gatsby’s “I say Ol’ Chap” umpteen times, leaves one saying, “I’ll Ol’ Chap you in a minute!!” He seems to use it even more as his façade crumbles, desperately grabbing onto those so carefully learned expressions and affectations. He is almost robotic in his descriptions of his past as though he is reading the information off a mental cue card. Nick describes his stories as “threadbare”, again Fitzgerald precision. “I talked with him perhaps half a dozen times in the past month and found, to my disappointment, that he had little to say.” And, it continues that way throughout the book. Fitzgerald describes his past in a narrative style; it isn’t told by Gatsby himself. His obsession with Daisy is more about himself than of any real love for her. He is from a poor simple background. “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people-his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.”
It is suggested that his fortune came from scandalous business (possibly bootlegging). He has no real friends and maybe I’m way off but he seems to be a bit sociopathic in his interpretations of the world and his inability to connect with people in a genuine way. After the tragic accident, which is quite brutal, he is only concerned whether he gets his prize. He is at that point pathetic, sniveling, desperate and entirely delusional. He is a sad character and maybe embodies Fitzgerald’s rise and fall within high society in the form of a person, Jay Gatsby.

THE GREAT GATSBY

2009-09-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

The Great Gatsby (a book I read as a freshmen in high school, which literally makes no sense contextually to a fifteen year old) is a book that can be read in an afternoon. It personifies the Jazz Era in which Fitzgerald belonged. And, if one is a lover of this era as I am, Fitzgerald makes tangible all the embodiments that made the time fabulous. Of course this was the time period when 2.3% of Americans held around 70% of the wealth and others toiled in sweatshops all day with neither health insurance nor labor rights. I recall my grandmother telling me the story of her father’s struggle to survive, both his parents died in the 1918 influenza outbreak. He was in his early teens and went to live in the woods preparing meals and being a general servant to all the lumberjacks who worked in the Maine woods sending huge logs down the rivers to paper mills. It was a harsher time for the disenfranchised and when he married my great-grandmother in the 1920’s and became ill with children to support he sought help with an Uncle who promptly told him to go “beg to the town or cry to church.” So, it wasn’t all “Yes, we have no bananas today!” for everyone. And that is something to be kept in mind as one is envisioning all the glory that was the “Roaring Twenties”.

People generally know this story, have read the book or saw the pitiful (1974)movie with Robert Redford playing Jay Gatsby (appropriate), Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan (talk about melodrama), Bruce Dern acting as an incongruent Seinfeld Kramer/Tom Buchanan. Who was the casting director??? Sam Waterston chosen to play Nick Carraway and joined Redford as the only other successfully cast actor. And, Karen (Crazy Eyes) Black as Tom’s mistress Myrtle Wilson. There were also two other versions produced in 1926 and 1949. The first thing I had to do was obliterate these faces (except Redford of course) as I began the book. It took a few chapters before they ceremoniously disappeared. That is always a problem when seeing a movie and then reading the book.

A quick review of the story line (because it is available everywhere, see link to the right) Jay Gatsby, man of mystery moves to West Egg on Long Island Sound. He purposefully has no friends, only acquaintances. No one knows how he became ultra wealthy and rumors swirl as to his background. Nick Carroway (the narrator) lives in a little dump next to Gatsby ostentatious mansion where weekly parties last for days on end. Nick’s second-cousin Daisy and her husband Tom (picture Clark Gable not Brue Dern) live in East Egg (the more fashionable side of Long Island Sound). Rich New Yorkers escape the heat of the city and travel to their estates to socialize with the crème de le crème of society. Gatsby, once the beau many years ago of Daisy, secretly pines away for her across the bay. Everything he does is to recreate the past and hopefully reunite with Daisy. The story involves affairs, murders, unrequited love, scandal, and abandonment.

The Great Gatsby was dedicated to Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda who suffered from schizophrenia, this combined with Fitzgerald’s alcoholism caused tragic ends. I think in commenting on this book over the next couple days the focus will be more on the parallels between Fitzgerald’s life and his books versus a rehashing of a very well known and well read book. Fitzgerald’s life is very present in his writings as someone who lived among the upper crust but often did not have the means to do so. He understood being the toast of the town and he knew when the party was over.

THE END OF ULYSSES

2009-09-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

The end of Ulysses was like finishing that statistics class, the one holding you back from your degree. At times I thought "Hey, this stuff is kind of interesting" but most of the time I dreaded it! The characters in Ulysses, Stephen, Mr. Bloom, Bloom's wife, etc. were characters I definitely were interested in. I suppose if I was a literature professor at Harvard, I would gobble this up with a spoon. But Alas, I am but a lowly high school teacher, who has not read the Odyssey or other Joyce works leaving me eating my peas with one chop stick. It is telling that I could find only one guide for sale explaining Ulysses (that being the one by Gilbert last put out in the 50's). I'm afraid Ulysses will not be part of Oprah’s book club this year and you won't see Mr. James Joyce on her program anytime soon saying "I'm sorry I said the book was true; no I've never hallucinated about my mother's dead corpse while soliciting prostitutes.”

So far I have yet to find anyone I know who has read Ulysses. I'd brag but no-one would know what in the hell I was talking about. Does that say something about the company I keep? Hmmmm.

The religious component, the relationship between the characters and who they were interested me. Guessing the scene, the hour, the art, the symbol, the technique, exhausted me! Some of the inner dialogue droned on endlessly leaving me glassy eyed and needing a drink! (Ulysses Turns Woman Into Alcoholic! That might get me on Oprah) Honestly, it was just too hard sometimes to figure out what the (explicative) was happening. Maybe like trying to go to work while on LSD, not that I know anything about that (I really don't, feel free to share).

For example, the brothel scene has Mr. Bloom hallucinating (I don't know why he is hallucinating) that he is a woman who is now being violated and has a fetus??? Stephen is dancing around with a bunch of hookers while the dead stinking corpse of his mother flies around??? All this is suppose to represent something and have parallels galore but I couldn't tell you what nor care to find out.

The simplest description of the book would be the father and son relationship between Stephen ( Christian) and Mr. Bloom ( Jewish). In Judaism they await the return of the son of God while in Christianity the son returns to his father. Stephen rejects his real father and Mr. Bloom's son died young. Moreover, Mr. Bloom discovered his own father post suicide and Stephen is horrified by his mother's death.

All three characters, Stephen, Mr. Bloom and Mrs. Bloom dream about the far east and its exotic offerings maybe as a juxtaposition to life in Dublin or as a file in which they stow away all their fetishes and desires. Mr Bloom describes his wife as having Spanish, Jewish and Moorish descent, which encompasses a matrix of intertwined beliefs and symbolism.

In the end, Stephen and Mr. Bloom come to recognize their counter point in each other. I don't think the relationship lasts; It is a fleeting moment recognized by both as being a defining moment in their existences.

The End……

I HATE EXCUSES!

2009-09-08T18:57:00.000-07:00

I'm turning into an excuse mess. Although I have kept up with reading and am done with Ulysses, circumstances have kept me from keeping up with my blog. First, had to give notice at our current house because they are putting it back on the market. We own a home in Maine but rent here in Hawaii. However, we had already invited about 40 people for a huge bbq Friday night so continued with that with some friends spending the weekend. Lastly, our landlords (who are very "particular" informed us that they want to go through the place with a fine tooth comb by tomorrow!!!! ARGHHHH! Usually, this is not the practice. But there is no point in arguing or it will turn into a nasty battle. We have kept the place immaculate, so hopefully it will go down without too much fanfare. We;ll see. I hate being subject to others rules and regs. "I am a rock; I am an island." Yeah, right!

Getting There.....

2009-09-02T15:56:00.000-07:00

Okay, so not really doing what I should be with Ulysses. I need to be done by tomorrow and I want to look at the religious component of the book and the relationship between the two main characters obviously, but then it's time to move on. So hopefully I will having something more indepth to write tomorrow. Today, my 9 year old was taking a shower in his room. I walked into my bathroom with sewer pouring out from under the flush and the shower because the water was backing up. The floor had about an inch of standing muck that smelled like the devil's bowels (honestly, it is the grossest thing I've ever encountered!!) So I may have ecolli, and if not the gallon of bleach I had to use definitely burnt out half my brain cells. The upside is if I don't die from ecolli and just have a semi nasty case of it, I might drop 20lbs. Anything in the pursuit of weight loss! Yes, I am shallow. Or if I can't finish all 100 books, I can blame it on brain damage. A man (who has a stronger stomach than mine) came out and "SNAKED" it and now everything is back in working order. He was also kind enough to tell me the things he finds in other peoples' septic systems.....Use your imagination! All I could think of was the movie Christmas Vacation, Randy Quade outside his RV in his robe and underwear, when the yuppie neighbors come out horrified. He's got that long tube from his septic tank going into the street. "Don't mind me" he says, "Just emptying the shitter!"
Oh, and the "SNAKE GUY" said only use Scott single ply T.P.
Ever Onward.....

JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, MYSTICISM, BUDDHISM

2009-08-30T20:47:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm going to think about the connections Joyce was making between belief systems and the backgrounds of each. For instance, Stephen was a Jesuit, considered extremely devout. He wouldn't kneel down at his dying mother's bedside because of the belief Exodus 20:3 "Do not have any other gods before me." His beliefs would seem incongruent to most. Stephen is a Shakespearian and travels off into eastern religions and relates to Grecian myths. And, I am aware coming right up, he and Mr. Bloom find themselves in a brothel, sooooo. I'll put my thoughts together. It would be nice to have a chit chat with a Ulysses Expert, but I'm sure they're a rare breed!

Speaking of Grecian myths, I remember from childhood liking the hideous beasts i.e. midesa (a gargon/Clash of the Titans) with her snake hair and the ability to turn men into stone (I think she was hotty at one time and something happened. I can't quite remember the details). The cyclops (Nice Eye!) , the sirens (beauty has led a lot of men to do stupid things), cerberus (not a good city dog, twice the food, twice the clean up), Hydra (with nine heads, a creature to avoid taking out to dinner, go for an all you can eat buffet) and a bunch of giants and half horse, goat, things.

But nothing compares to the beast I found in my bathroom this morning. A Hawaiian centipede!! CENTIPEDUS with two sharp and poisonous heads. Yes, if you cut it in half, you have two for the price of one (imagine if people were like that). It was only about 8-9 inches long. I went and got an iron skillet. You have to have something flat, big surface, where there is NO wiggle room. Pan + ceramic tile, push down, snappy, crunchy NO' MO' CENTIPEDUS! This is no smacking it with a flip flop deal!

ALREADY NERVOUS!

2009-08-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

I'm already nervous. Obviously the idea is to enjoy the books, not just speed read through them or what would be the point. If I read two books a week (I realize they are different lengths and commitment levels) then I would accomplish my goal. Maybe reading Ulysses first is better because everything will be easier after this. Nice thought, but Joyce is on the list two more times. And, my one and only follower has warned me on D.H. Lawrence. #2 Is the Great Gatsby, which will be a reread for me and I thoroughly enjoyed it the first time. It will be a reprieve after Ulysses, but I do not regret the time I have put into it. Off I go to ingest more.

DEATH

2009-08-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning to my son holding a dead, dried up lizard in my face. "Look Mom! It has yellow stuff in it! His name is Scarface." I looked at it and then really looked at it. It's side was torn open. Who's to say what happened. The cat looked guilty, maybe Konan got him. He was avoiding eye contact at breakfast. He has been known to eat lizards and cockroaches and then barf up the whole boulibase like mess on the floor.
Nice!! "Put that thing outside, it's got all kinds of diseases and then go wash your hands!" That is life I guess. Here one moment, dried up lizard the next.
I'm not sure about this transmigration theme in Ulysses (reincarnation) but if it is true, was the lizard on his way to being human, or was he a human who was on his way to being a lizard? Is it forward and backward or both? I can see this reptilian conversation:
"Hey, I'm Gill but I used to be Mao. Maybe you heard of me; I was kinda a big deal."
The other, "Really, I just want to eat flies. I have no idea what your talking about!"
What would Hitler and Stalin warrant, something less like a mosquito, a fly, a gnat? All fitting, but I don't want to insult any of the aforementioned.
I'm sorry to say, there was no glamorous send off for the crusty lizard. I think my son threw him into a bush, kind of depressing, like being put in a paupers grave.

A focus in Ulysses is the funeral for Dignam, a friend of Mr. Bloom. Attending this funeral are several other people including Stephan Dedalus' father (although Bloom and Stephen have yet to meet). This is the same funeral that the irritating M'Coy wants Bloom to put his name on the registrar so he doesn't have to bother attending. Humans are beastly sometimes, and some more than others. Mr. Bloom's mind roams all over the place as the eulogy is delivered, as all our minds do at such an event.
"The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the coffin. Mr. Bloom turned his face. "And if he (Dignam) was alive all the time? Whew! By Jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of course. Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some law to peirce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of Distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer."
And then he moves onto thinking about saving space by burying people upright. Lastly, he thinks of his father's suicide. "Thought he was asleep at first. Then saw yellow streaks on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed....Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he's doomed."

How can we be thinking of what's for lunch at a funeral, or anything else but grief and the dear departed.  I thought back to funerals I've attended. My grandparents whom I loved dearly. Thinking, who is going to speak? Who will break down? Who won't? Who is worried about the will? It seems absurd, but we all do it.  It is worse if you really don't know the person that well. In example, being at a distant relation's funeral, who was quite substantial especially in the hind quarters, and thinking does this cost more, like the airlines. I guess he won't be around to file a discrimination suit. How does a conversation like this go down? Imagine having to deliver that news.
"Mr. and Mrs. McDonald, I realize this is an emotional time for you both.  However, your father was a substantial man of the heart and in other ways as well."
I guess these distractions are our way of not thinking about death. Or to remove ourselves from the inevitable? "We are but a dried up lizard tossed in a bush."

JUNE 16 1904

2009-08-27T16:37:00.000-07:00

Everything in Ulysses happens in the span of a day in Dublin, Ireland, the home of James Joyce. After three chapters spent with Stephen Dedalus, who is destined to meet his kismet/spiritual father Mr. Bloom, the book introduces us to Bloom and his wife. His wife is a famous opera singer and a Spanish beauty. Her father is Spanish and her mother is Jewish as is Mr. Bloom. Mr. Bloom seems a very affable fellow as he goes about his morning business of feeding the cat, taking care of Mrs. Bloom, and visiting the outhouse. Typical examples of Joyce's writing: (this is the cat thinking..."Wants to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back to the fire too."

Another Joyce example, this time Mr. Bloom after he eats his breakfast: "He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood up, undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him." He finds a magazine and makes his way to the outhouse. "Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but resisting, began the second. Midway, this last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone."

After waiting on his wife, which is a typical occurrence every morning, and uncomfortably pondering her affair with a man named Boylan, he saunters (on his odyssey) down the street. He needs to get ads published for his clients. He picks up a letter from his mistress. He runs into an asshole M'Coy who brags about himself and his wife and asks Mr. Bloom if he is going to a mutual acquaintance's funeral. The man then makes up some lame excuse as to why he cannot go and tells Mr. Bloom to write his name down on the attendees book. Adding insult to injury, M'Coy is blocking Mr. Bloom's view of a women pulling up her stockings (the NERVE). Mr. Bloom has thoughts about eastern religion and life (a reoccurring theme with Stephen and Mr. Bloom). There is a lot of book time devoted to eastern religious beliefs and transmigration (reincarnation). Episode Calypso ends (Calypso is personified in Mrs. Bloom... a nymph) and episode the Lotus Eaters begins. Mr. Bloom goes to a pharmacy to have lotion made for his wife and ends up grabbing some lemon soap for himself. Back out on the street, his mind wonders from the chemist at the pharmacy, drugs, opium in the east and the reasons why people use drugs or numb themselves with other things such as religion (anything that people follow blindly without any self examination).

"The chemist turned his back page after page. Sandy shriveled smell he seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. ... Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes you character."

Focus/Comments: Joyce's understanding of examined and unexamined lives is obvious and a major point throughout his writings. And, the predisposition for people to be lemmings straight into the grave. I used to wonder how people became addicted to a drug like heroin. Who would grab a needle and shove it into their arm. Insanity. Then a sibling of mine developed an opiate addiction. It was horrible, devastating, there is no way to describe it in words. It's worse than death because the person is still walking around like a ghost, an empty shell. In hindsight, I see that she wanted to get away from an unhappy life, but she felt so powerless that she couldn't do it on her own. Of course it does not start with the hard stuff, or being an intravenous drug user. It is insidious. It starts tiny, like any parasite, and then mushrooms into a bloodsucking beast, hollow eyes, walking dead. I didn't even know her anymore. It is still shocking to think this started from an individual's inability to take control of life, to leave, to chart a new path alone. That it was preferred to become numb and avoidant, until you're dead inside. It's been along road back.

Not well today.

2009-08-27T00:34:00.000-07:00

Have had headache for 3 days....maybe it's Ulysses. Did manage to read 4 more chapters and will get on early tomorrow Hawaii time...
I wouldn't suggest anyone starting this endeavor with Ulysses! Save it for a grand finale. It's a full time job!
I thought reading was fun! :(
Thanks to my first follower. I really love your blog and thanks for responding.
Kris

Moody

2009-08-25T17:59:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, overcast and I'm grumpy and not in the mood for Ulysses or anything else! So, I made my 7 year old read it for me. He looked at it, tried to read a few sentences and told me it was giving him a headache. I swear I have had a migraine for two straight days!!
Getting through episodes 1-3 involving the young man Stephen I think are the most difficult. He is frequently going off in his mind to all kinds of destinations, metaphysical, mythological, theological, Shakespearean, you name it. Joyce was so well versed, that I think this book was the embodiment of his brilliance. His references to all of history is unfathomable.

Stephen has a turbulent relationship with his father. You can see that in his inner thoughts (he plays out scenes and conversations where his father is essentially mocking him.) His father does not value Stephen's lifestyle or his brand of intellect. This gives me a hint into his insecurities. He recalls his mother's unpleasant death from sickness.

However, I choose to only tackle one issue tonight. That of the conversation with Mr. Deasey. The proprietor of the school where Stephen works. I think I was wrong in saying that Stephen was mocking him. I think he was more just observing Mr. Deasey and his personality, objectively studying him. Mr. Deasey calls Stephen in his office to give him his pay. Mr. Deasey goes off on a tangent about Jews taking over England and pretty soon the whole culture and economy will be lost. The idea of prejudice was quite different at the turn of the century but Joyce seems to already have a modern view and understanding of it. Deasey makes comments in regards to their stinginess, their money lending, and the fact that they have no homeland so therefore permeate and contaminate other cultures. Stephen seems to listen without much reaction. Mr. Deasey states: "They sinned against the light. And you can see the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth till this day."
Stephen replies: "Who has not? History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
The end of this episode describes how Deasey is shoving his money into a box that is divided for different coins, bills etc. And then he gives Stephen advice on basically hoarding money (an obvious parallel to his description of Jewish people.) I want to come back to Stephen's comment briefly tomorrow.
I'm not sure what Joyce's purpose was in creating this character Deasey and his antisemitic personality, unless it was just to represent that this is how some people are.
I recall not too long ago seeing this HBO documentary on the election. The interviewer (a woman) went to the Daytona 500, to where the people set up their RVs. She interviewed a bunch of "southern good ol' boys". As they got drunker and drunker, one big galoot actually started crying. He said something like.... "This country just aint ready for a black president. If this happens I'll move from this country. I don't even think women should be voting." And then he actually broke down crying!!! It was quite moving in a -Wow this can't be for real way-! The fear on his face was tangible. It was obvious he felt extremely disenfranchised (but he didn't know why he was so "scart"). Some people are really terrified of change. Having a black president I doubt was going to change anything for this man in the literal sense; it was what it was doing to his myopic view of the world. It was as though, Darwin, Gloria Steinhem, Malcolm X, Karl Marx, Harvey Milk and maybe Hanoi Jane had him surrounded on the battle field. He was ready to pull a hari kari!
I frequently hear people say, "The world is going to hell in a hand basket." "It is worse off now then it ever has been." I think the world has always been the same. There have always been bigots, pedophiles, rapists, murderers they just didn't have the range they have today with television, media, the web. Additionally, people just didn't talk about issues like rape or being molested even 30 years ago. One just pushed it down and went on...that is how these predators kept victimizing people. Now, it has more exposure and this scares people. The issue of prejudice isn't tolerated anymore, it is a negative subject (with guilt attached to it) and it is unpleasant for some white people to hear about it. Or, the acceptance of people who are homosexual, same thing, it makes people who survive in a comfy bubble upset. They cannot reconcile it with their belief system. They have one of two choices, changing their mind, which is doubtful let's face it! Or, pretending it doesn't exist, what an existence experiencing your whole life with blinders on..................and then you die).

Some Clarity........

2009-08-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Hawaii. The sun is shining and the birds are chirping.
I spent all evening going over Ulysses and then turned to the study guide I bought at the used book store. It was fortuitous. It is by Stuart Gilbert and the last time this particular version was published was in 1958. After being 8 episodes deep in Uylsses cross eyed and having drool dripping on my bib, I thought, somethings gotta give. I have a tendency to be lazy (admitting it is half the battle) but always am proud when I put in the effort to understand something to the best of my abilities. Of course, I am under a time restraint. If I read 2 books a week, I will achieve my goal of a 100 books in 365 days (I am having trouble with the countdown clock, I'm working on it.) Ulysses is a commitment of longer devotion; whereas some books will take less devotion. I would like to also pick up a copy of The Odyssey. So, I would say so far one would need a study guide, The Odyssey and the book to have a somewhat cohesive experience with Ulysses. We'll see.
After reading and then going to the study guide, it was like seeing the dawn. I also went to wikipedia and checked out a site summarizing The Odyssy (not Odysseus, that is the main character). It was beneficial to have an overview. Ulysses is a latinized version of the name Odysseus. Ulysses is also the sequel (kind of) of the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen Dedalus is the main character of this story (which is on the list #3). Mr. Bloom is the main character of Ulysses (he is Ulysses or Odysseus). It is his odyssey.
I realized that the book is divided into the same episodes as the Odyssey, so it will be easier to draw the parallels. The inner monologues and silent monologues apparently are what set this book apart at the time of its release. Even though this is the hardest part to follow, I feel a renewed optimism to retackle the narrative pieces. I started reading the guide right at page 1, reading it beforehand did nothing for me because it had no contextual meaning.
I'll end with an excerpt from Gilbert (who by the way interviewed Joyce) that really hit home.

"It is possible to read Ulysses as most of us read the book of life, uncritically, forgetfully, following the line of least resistance; and, though a greater vigilance would afford a richer pleasure in perusal, the casual reader will reap a reward proportionate to his effort....... But the bliss of ignorance is a short and sorry affair beside the subtle delectation of the connoisseur. The slow ascent of the tree of knowledge is not labour lost; it is from the topmost branches, unseen by followers of the beaten track, that its choices fruits depend."

Started Ulysses

2009-08-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

Started Ulysses and I think I have the countdown set. I'll see next time I log in. Problem... Since I'm the only one on here I guess I won't worry about it too much....but my service went down and won't be fixed for 4 days. Not a good way to start a daily blog, but that is the way it is. I'm at Borders using the service. Of course they want a daily fee to use their service. I tell ya, they get ya coming and going!

In regard to Ulysses ummm, yeah! So I went to the used book store, tons of James Joyce, but only one binding that said Ulysses so I grabbed it and went on my merry way. When I got home I noticed it was the study guide which made no sense to me at all. Then I came to Borders and spent $22. on a new copy of Ulysses. My husband said, "How much was that?" To which I told him "$22.". "$22. the guy died like 70 something years ago, what the hell?" As if because the book was written along time ago, it should be like buying a VHS recorder at a yardsale!

Anyway, the guide was so confusing I couldn't imagine what the book would be like. Apparently it follows Homer's Odyssius (spelling???) which I have never read. I took Greek mythology years ago, so I'm not completely inept, but almost. I know the basic premise of the story but not sure it's helping at all. Especially with the inner thoughts of the main character Stephen Deladus. Wow! Chapter 3.... holy horrors. A person, who will remain nameless, who also read the book years ago (I'm sure one can figure out who said person is) thinks that Ulysses is one of those books written for intellectuals so they feel they have to understand it and rate it as the #1 book because they're snobs, but for the common person it is ridiculous and wouldn't even be on any list, unless it was the "I will only read this book if Assigned and hate every minute of it List" . I don't know, I do like the characters and the dialogue. The narratives jump around so much it is hard to follow much of the time. It is like listening to a conversation through a door (not that I would ever do this), you're catching bits and pieces and kind of get the gist of it, but have to make a lot of assumptions.
I don't have the book with me, didn't want to bring it back into Borders and be accused of jacking it (at this point probably no-one would believe anybody would want to jack Ulysses), so I can't really comment on it too much.
The main characters are : Stephen, Mulligan, (some English guy, I'll get back to him), Mr. Bloom and Mrs. Bloom. The book is quite graphic in some spots, which is no biggie today, but I can imagine the scandal in the 20's. Anyway, I'll read it until Wednesday and then log back on, unless I drag myself over here in the mean time.
All for now.
Kris

My first post

2009-08-20T14:54:00.001-07:00

Okay, getting started. I'm going to start my first post after I read Ulysses. Not sure how this going to work, but this is a work in progress. Maybe I should just comment as I go, I'll think about it tonight. So
a) I have to finish a book and then start commenting (which I probably would forget certain items of interest) and while commenting on the previous book be reading the second (if that makes sense) or
b)just comment as I go
I think b is going to prevail and I'll change the directions page.
It is overcast in Hawaii but of course warm. I'll be going to our used book store later. It is an awesome place. If you ever visit Kona Hawaii, it is a must. That is where I found my 1920's 30's Vanity Fair Calvacade by Cleveland Amory and Frederic Bradlee. My favorite magazine. Wow, those Madoff articles (won't go there).
Ulysses is my first book, so I'm going to go and find it! Wish me Luck.