Book 42: Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

Book 42 brings me back to world literature which, in this case, is book two of the d'Artagnan Romances.  This one takes place, as the title indicates, twenty years after the events in the Three Musketeers.  The first book was simplistic but good so I'm expecting something similar from this one.  I've decided that, if possible, I should read my books in their original language so, after a quick trip to a nearby library, I found this one in French.

This edition is 885 pages which means 127 pages per day.  That's a lot!


REVIEW:

Surprisingly, I enjoyed this book more than The Three Musketeers.  The first novel is far more popular and well-known, but this one had a lot more complexity.  It begins 20 years after the events in The Three Musketeers:  D'Artagnan is still a lieutenant in the musketeers, Porthos has become very wealthy with three large estates, Athos is a count and has his own land and Aramis has become a priest.  The first part of the book involves D'Artagnan seeking out his old friends to aid him on a mission.  It turns out, however, that he is only able to recruit Porthos as the other two hold opposing politics and refuse to help him.  It's this split between the four old friends that adds a lot of the complexity.

While D'Artagnan and Porthos pursue their own goals, Athos and Aramis pursue parallel but opposite goals.  They have decided that they will never directly oppose each other even though they are on opposite sides.  Watching the four friends come together to accomplish the same goal and helping each other while still, technically, enemies was quite enjoyable.  It required a complex crafting of the plot on the part of Dumas.

Overall, I enjoyed the complex plot, the reunion of the four friends and the constant action, both political and military.  I'm actually looking forward to the next installation of the d'Artagnan romances which, I believe is supposed to follow the next generation of characters, Athos' son Raoul.

8 out of 10

Book 41: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Here it is.  The final chapter in the Harry Potter saga.  I'm a little bittersweet about this one.  On the one hand, I'm very eager to finally see the final result of this series.  But on the other, I'm a little sad that it will be over once I finish this book.  I haven't seen any of the movies beyond the 5th one, Order of the Phoenix, so this book, like the last are virgin territory for me.  I'm finding that that makes them more interesting.  I have no idea what's going to happen and it's exciting!

Well, this is a big book, but they go quickly.  759 pages makes 109 pages per day.


REVIEW:

This is it, the culmination of the series.  I was unbelievably excited to get to this book.  I finished the previous one early and started on this one as soon as possible.  The previous book was a cliffhanger of sorts and getting answers to all the questions brought up from the beginning the series was enticing, to say the least.  The book starts out with a some great action and continues to deliver some epic scenes throughout.  In fact, Rowling has progressed amazingly as a writer and gives some of the most memorable scenes that I've read in any fantasy book.

The book was not perfect, however, there were a couple of things that detracted from it.  At one point the plot seemed to slow to a standstill for several chapters.  Eventually the plot picked up again but it relied on a bit of a deus ex machina to get it started.  In fact, several plot points seemed to rely on handy coincidences to be successful.  It was not fatal to the book, however.  Even with some of these plot conveniences and slow bits the novel was a tremendous success and the only other problem I had was with the epilogue.  After all the action had resolved and the story reached its climax, the very end seemed a bit awkward and poorly written.  I've been told that it was written a long time ago, but it could have been done better.

I think the biggest disappointment with the book is that now there's no more Potter.  Overall, I'm really glad that I decided to read the series and didn't dismiss them as kiddy books.  It's definitely a series that I will always remember fondly.

9 out of 10

Book 40: Damned by Chuck Palahniuk

So, this one is cheating a little bit.  I listened to this book about a month ago as an audiobook.  Because of the start-and-stop nature and the length of time it took to finish the book in this format (I listened to it each night while doing dishes for about three weeks), I feel like I might not have gotten the full experience that I would have reading the paper version.  Therefore, I'm now reading the "real" book in order to debunk this idea or confirm it.  If, at the end of the week, I find that there are things that I missed while listening to the audiobook then I will probably stick with text.  Otherwise, hell, I might just pick up a few more audiobooks because it sure made dishes a bit more fun.

The physical version of this book is 246 pages or 36 pages per day.

REVIEW:  This was a fun read.  I didn't find that there was any difference between the audio and text versions of the book, and I didn't find that I missed anything by listening to the book rather than reading it.  It was definitely faster to read the book and I got a little surprise at the end when I saw that it said "To be continued...", but I'm not sure if that's just a joke on the author's part of if this really the first part of a series.  I really can't see where the book would go from where it left off, but hey, maybe Palahniuk knows what he's doing.

The book in general is very funny.  Palahniuk's version of hell is simultaneously disturbing, disgusting and hilarious.  I love the idea that the arch demons are really just ex-gods that nobody believes in anymore, hence making them angry and cruel.  The main character, Madison, was also very funny.  She constantly berates the reader for underestimating her intelligence and her vocabulary and ridicules the hypocrisy of her ultra-liberal yet highly materialistic jet-set celebrity parents.  I also found the parallel Palahniuk draws between the main group of characters and an analogous group of characters from a movie (I don't want to spoil it) to be very entertaining, though he ultimately didn't really do anything with this concept.

The main draw for the plot was that each character seemed to be in hell for a relatively minor offense (marijuana overdose, wearing white after Labor Day, etc.).  You know that there must be more to their stories, but the author strings you along with hints for most of the novel.  Unfortunately, after the "big reveal", there is a lot less to drive the story forward.  It feels like the narrative just starts to continue on the momentum of the first two-thirds of the book without a lot of direction.  Eventually, you get an ending without any real resolution and are stuck with a "To be continued..." to really drive the ambiguity home.

Weak, ambiguous ending aside, the book was quite fun to read and very funny in many places.  Another good Palahniuk novel though not among his top works.

7 out of 10.

Book 39: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

I've always liked this movie, but I've never read the source material.  Since I found a copy of the book recently I thought I'd give it a try.  I've also tried to read some other works by Ken Kesey without much luck.  I've always found him to be a little too off-kilter for me without much of a focused story. When telling people that this is the next book I'm intending to read I've been told a few times that it's really good.  So here goes...  It's about 330 pages, so that makes about 48 pages per day.

REVIEW:  I've been trying to get this book review going for a while now and I keep getting stuck.  It's just such a difficult novel to do justice to.  Let's just jump right in.

Kesey writes some extremely interesting characters.  The focus of the book is Randle McMurphy, a minor criminal, con-man and hooligan who has been given a short prison sentence and decides to feign insanity in order to serve out his term at a mental asylum, which he assumes will be comparatively easy and comfortable.  The inmates of the asylum are expertly written and very believable.  Rather than writing over-the-top, ranting and raving lunatics, Kesey has created complex characters with subtle problems that keep them from living normal lives.  The character that really shines for me, however, is that of the narrator, "Chief" Bromden.  Because everyone believes him to be deaf and mute and, therefore, harmless, he (and, therefore, the reader) is allowed access to areas normally off-limits giving a behind-the-scenes view of the hospital and the staff as well as the patients.  In addition, the Chief's inner dialogue gives realistic and sometimes disturbing views into the mind of a schizophrenic and a view of the ward from someone who probably actually belongs there.

Overall, the story is one of the individual versus the system.  Nurse Ratched has established an strict regimen in the ward and McMurphy is set up to resist and attempt to overthrow it.  It's a theme that is repeated many times in books from this era, especially the dystopic novels, in which I would nominally include this book.  The struggle of McMurphy to assert his independent nature against the authoritarian regime of Nurse Ratched is a war with battles won by both sides, though the ultimate outcome is never really in question.

The only bad things that I can think of about this book are really in comparing it to the film.  I don't really want to get into a film review here, but any review of the book would be incomplete without addressing it.  First, the novel is much better than the film.  I love the film, it is one of my all-time favorites, but there is so much in the novel that just can't be expressed visually, including the mental illnesses of the inmates.  This could be why the focus of the film shifts away from Bromden toward McMurphy.  It would be difficult, if not impossible, to effectively show the inner dialogue and conflict of the Chief.  Randle is extroverted; Bromden is introverted.  One makes for decidedly better viewing on film.  Finally, a minor gripe.  Because I'd seen the film (several times) before reading the book, I had mental images of the film characters in my head while reading.  For the most part, this didn't really bother me, but the descriptions of the characters don't necessarily match the film depictions.  Especially, in the case of McMurphy.  Great as Jack Nicholson is, he doesn't really look like Randle Patrick McMurphy.

Overall, it was an amazing book.  One of the best I've ever read.  Though it's a short book, it packs in so much that it took me a while after finishing it to process it all.  I just set down the book and sat where I was, thinking.

10 out of 10.

Book 38: The Epic of Gilgamesh by Anonymous

This will be the oldest book that I've read so far.  It was first written in ancient Mesopotamia sometime between 2000 and 1800 BC.  That makes it around 4,000 years old.  It was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets, some of which have been badly damaged in the intervening years.  Through painstaking efforts the tablets have been pieced together, cross-referenced with other tablets telling the same story, transliterated, translated and made mostly whole.  I've seen references to this epic in several other pieces of literature and I'm quite interested to read it first hand.

REVIEW:  I find that I still love reading classic literature.  Anything that transcends the ages comes across as deeply human.  I also find them very entertaining.  People get the idea that the Classics are all very prim and proper, but anything older than the Victorian era is really very far from proper.  There is a lot of sex, drinking and violence in any of the ancient works and this one is no exception.

The story follows the adventures of Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu as the cause trouble throughout ancient Mesopotamia.  Enkidu was originally a wild-man who lived with the animals until he was seduced by a prostitute.  They had sex for 7 days and then she told him that he should enter the world of men.  Enticed by his new friend and the other luxuries of the ancient world, beer, bread, etc. Enkidu begins living as a human being.  He meets Gilgamesh for the first time as his future friend is intending on enforcing his right of prima nocta at a village wedding.  Enkidu prevents him and fights him.  After the fight they become fast friends and set off together on many adventures.

One of the bigger surprises to me was the story of the Deluge late in the narrative.  This story is a direct ancestor of Noah's flood from the Judeo-Christian mythologies.  In the Gilgamesh Deluge a man named Utnapishtim is ordered by the gods to built a boat.  On that boat he is told to load his family and the "seeds of all the animals".  After this is done great rains build up and flood the world.  He is afloat for 6 days and then lands at the peak of Mt. Nisir.  Utnapishtim then sends out birds to see if the flood is receding.  The first few fails to find land and return to the ark but, eventually, he sends out a raven who does not return, implying that it has found land elsewhere.  The similarities, I assume, are obvious.  Considering that ancient Mesopotamia contained the same lands as the middle-east today, I suppose it's not surprising that there would be similar myths from both traditions.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was a very entertaining read and I would highly recommend it to anyone.  The version that I read was translated from the original tablets by the author and included a lot of information about how it was put together and where missing information was found and added.  I really can't think of any negative aspect of the book except, maybe, that some of the passages were somewhat repetitive.  Though, honestly, I felt that the repetitions added a mystical quality to the narrative, so I didn't mind it.

10 out of 10.