Monday, November 28, 2011

Book 20: Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

While reading a lot of older books, I have found that I really like stories about the old sailing ships.  There's just something fascinating about wooden ships, canvas sails and the sense of adventure needed to take one of these things out on the open ocean.  I've read quite a few books from the Age of Sailing Ships:  Lord Jim, Robinson Crusoe, The Sea-Wolf, Treasure Island.  I'm hoping that this one lives up to it's reputation and gives me some great high seas adventure.

Only 464 pages means 67 pages per day but, if it is as good as I hope it is I'll probably finish in about 3 days.

REVIEW:  This book really hit the spot.  I was looking for a good sailing ship adventure and it was perfect.  I knew I was on the right track when I saw that there was an illustration inside labeling all the sails on a typical ship of the time.  If the publisher thinks it might be useful reference to know which is the maintopmast staysail or the mizzen topgallant then, chances are, you’re in for some good nautical adventure.

The book is the first of a very long series of books with the two main characters.  It covers their meeting and events on their first ship together, with Jack Aubrey as the Captain of the ship and Stephen Maturin as the ship’s doctor.  There’s a good deal of ship’s activity that is documented as well as the exciting parts of ship to ship combat.  The combat scenes are fast paced despite the minutiae of which sails are being pulled in and which others are being raised. 

I found these details to be engaging, especially in a genre that tends to gloss over details in favor of action.  This book had both.  I’m definitely going to continue with this series and have already placed the next volume on my reading list.

Approaches being a classic-worthy novel and is certainly one of the best sea-stories that I’ve read.  9 out of 10.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Book 19: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

I never really cared for American Literature until I discovered Hemingway.  Now that I've read most of his works I'm expanding to Faulkner.  This book was probably assigned in high school English class so it's been something I always felt I should read.  
348 pages in this one, a leisurely 50 pages per day.

REVIEW:  This book took a little while to get into.  Not only is it a stream-of-consciousness style novel, but it jumps around in time and space and has a confusing cast of characters.  Along with the confusing cast and the jumps in time and space you also have sections with no punctuation and others where Faulkner gives dialogue from Southern black characters which he spells out phonetically, “Dont you dare come in dis do widout a armful of wood.  Here I done had to tote yo wood en build yo fire bofe.  Didn’t I tole you not to leave dis place last night befo dat woodbox wus full to de top?”

Once I got into the correct stride, however, the book became much more readable and I began to be able relax and enjoy it.  It’s a rather sad story about the downfall of a traditional Southern family.  Each of the characters feels the loss of status and property in different ways but it’s all pretty melancholy. 

What I found most interesting about the whole story was the relationships between the blacks and whites in the novel.  It’s a complicated interplay.  The blacks have been free for some time now, but they are still segregated into their own communities.  The town’s white population have a complicated view of their black neighbors and seem to spend a lot of time agonizing over it while the black population has the view of “You tend to yo business en let de whitefolks tend to deir’n.”

Probably my favorite passage in the book comes from this narrative and takes place when Quentin, the eldest son, reflects on the relationship between blacks and whites:

“When I first came East I kept thinking You’ve got to remember to think of them as colored people not niggers, and if it hadn’t happened that I wasn’t thrown with many of them, I’d have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.  That was when I realized that a nigger is not a person so much as a form of behavior…”

Well said.  All in all, I really liked the book, though it was rather sad.  I’d give it about an 8 out of 10.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Book 18: Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Well, I'm finally finished with the first four Song of Fire and Ice books.  I'll continue with the series whenever I pick up the fifth book but, until then, I'm moving on to other things.  First in line, another classic novel, a collection of five novels, actually.

Gargantua and Pantagruel was written in the mid-1500s and tells the stories of two giants: Pantagruel and his father Gargantua.  It's often cited as one of the best in world literature though, honestly, I'd never heard of it before I started this project.

So, here goes!  841 pages, which is less than my last 4 books and it has bigger type, woohoo!  120 pages a day or so should get me through the book in one week.

HUGE REVIEW:  It’s difficult to describe Gargantua and Pantagruel.  It’s like a combination of The Odyssey, Gulliver’s Travels and Don Quixote all mixed into one.  It’s an extremely crude book book by any standard, filled with drinking, sex, violence and… well… scatological humor.

Between the poop jokes, however, Rabelais actually has a lot to say.  The book is, essentially, very bawdy satire.  As such, it has biting commentary and even outright contempt for politics (with gluttonous, incompetent kings), religious orders (with monks that won’t defend themselves until their vineyard is under attack), the current state of education (with pedantic academics spouting overly-complicated nonsense words) and lawyers (with one judge who decides cases by throwing the dice). 

Rabelais doesn’t just criticize these institutions however.  He also adds his own ideas as to how they should behave.  As a product of the Renaissance, Rabelais believes that one should live fully and follow your instincts.  He preaches pleasure for the body as well as intellectual curiosity and study for the mind.  He was sincerely religious but skeptical of the excessive discipline and asceticism of the monasticism of his time.  It's really quite philosophical.

I would have attempted the French version of this book, but since it’s 500 years old, I didn’t have the confidence in my Old French as in my Modern French.  I can see though that, even through translation, Rabelais has a rare mastery of language.  He writes equally well from the perspective of the crude peasant as from that of the learned intellectual.  I’m sure the puns and plays on language in the book are that much better in the original.  The only real problem that I had was that my edition didn’t translate the many phrases of non-French: Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, German, Italian, Basque, etc.  My knowledge of some of these languages helped quite a bit, but I was thrown by phrases such as:  “Omnis bella bellabilis, in bellerio bellando, bellans bellativo bellare bellantes.  Parisius habet bellas.”  All I got was the ending, “In Paris there are bells.”

There are several chapters in the books that are essentially lists or catalogues  of various items, from insults to methods of fortune telling to lists of books in a library.  These can be quite tedious to get through, though they typically have quite a few wry comments interspersed throughout them and one of them, the list of books, produced my favorite title, “Of the Gentle Art of Farting in Company.”

All in all, Gargantua and Pantagruel is great social satire disguised as the adventures of two very crude giants and their associates.  Laugh out loud funny in parts, thought provoking in others.  9 of 10.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Book 17: A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

This is the fourth book of the Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin.  It's also the last book for this mini-marathon as I don't yet own the fifth in the series.  As soon as I pick that one up I'll continue.  This one is a little smaller than the last, only 976 pages (!) so it should be slightly easier to finish, haha.

140 pages per day to finish this one in a week, but I've been going through the series at about 200 pages a day so I'll probably stick with that, it's a good rhythm.

REVIEW:  This book was my least favorite so far.  Apparently, Mr. Martin had too much material for one book so he split it into two volumes.  Instead of giving half the story for all the characters he decided to give the full story for half the characters.  The only problem with this is that few of the characters that I'm interested in are in this book.  Instead of Jon Snow, we get Samwell, instead of Tyrion we get Cersei, instead of Bran we get Sansa.  In addition, he decided to expand on the happenings in some of the more remote areas of his world.  Personally, I think that much of that action could have happened "off-screen" and been handled by references and allusions to the results.  Martin gives entirely too much information and it bogs down his narrative.  It's less like reading The Lord of the Rings and more like reading The Silmarillion.  Those that have read the two will know the difference.

In addition to slowing down the plot, his over detailed prose is starting to become a bit repetitive.  The terms "mummer's farce" and "useless as nipples on a breastplate" were used many times and his description of food and eating is still very repetitive.  Hot juices running down chins and into beards is a common occurrence as is tearing the wing from a plump, crisp capon.

Don't get me wrong, I still think that the story is great and the weaving together of the separate plot-lines is genius, but the writing is still pretty average.  I'm not sure what it is about most fantasy and sci-fi authors that makes them such mediocre writers... something about people with great ideas but little talent as a wordsmith.  I could name a dozen or more writers like that.

The same complaints from this book as the previous coupled with the absence of most of my favorite characters and locations makes this my least favorite so far.  By contrast, the next book, being focused on the characters that were left out of this one, should be one of the best.   5 out of 10 for this one.