Books I RED

What is Wide Sargasso Sea about? - It's about many things but the one topic that arises is this: A traumatized woman (Antoinette) is brought together with a vain hard hearted man (Mr. Rochester) and the woman will be brought low and the man will triumph through it, by force and power, breaking her down. In M. Atwood's novel Bodily Harm, Atwood begins with this quote:  "A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast a woman's presence...defines what can and cannot be done to her." - John Berger, Ways of seeing. In this sense the anti-hero of this book, Antoinette is a woman who has her guards down.  I'm reminded of Chimanda Ngozi Adichie's little speech  Why we should all be feminists and she brilliantly points out that women are always in all places (since the Empire at least) been ushered to be pleasing onto men, flexible and quiet. A quiet woman is considered acceptable and ladylike. Her voice is expected to be ...

I know that I'm probably writing for no one but I will persist in my seemingly futile pursuit because I'm writing for me, for fun and for the purpose of personal development as a reader.  My reviews are more of the analytic kind, they're not predominantly viewing the plot but the meaning of the book, the tale and it's impact on me. I'm also interested in themes and topic which arise both from the text and from me.  Concerning reading habits, I've noticed that Goodreads does spur on my reading but also puts some pressure on reading books, reading Les Mis was a sacrifice of time in relation to the online reading challenge for this year which counts only numbers of books read and not the length of the novel.  

Frankenstein, the story of creator versus created. Mary Shelley as a young almost teenage female writer explores the agony of being with the deep voice of experience. The narrator is male and for most part Victor Frankenstein, a mentally fragile scientist who succeeds in creating life out of death. A monster becomes alive by his doing and creation, a begin that escapes and is shunned by the world. The creature is endowed with all the emotional and feeling capacities of a human being but is ugly since he is clothed in decayed human flesh as he is fashioned out of materials from the morgue.    What is Mary Shelley trying to say? - Often the story has a tale of it's own and I can't really say that I come to grips of what it is. I didn't really enjoy this novel partly because the language wasn't consistent, at times it was very modern and at times very old and hard to decipher. Also, Mary didn't stay consistent with the plot and narration but those were minor flaws. I d...

Annoyed at the fact that every paperback has the same picture handsome Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence from the motion picture. Even the audiobook I eventually found at the local library has the same cover. I've seen the movie a few times and I really like it but it doesn't do justice to the anti-hero Pat. The real hero in the novel is God and Pat's faith in Him keeps him afloat through mental illness, amnesia and difficulty to control his aggravations and emotions and on his rehabilitation back to reality. In the movie Pat's faith is replaced by a constant repetition of the Latin expression "Excelsior" but as the witty novelist well knew there is no success without God. In the movie we don't make our way into Pat's head as in the book. The novel dives deep in the relationship between father and son, Pat's dad is much more troubled than Robert DeNiro in the movie. The real problems stem from him. The gloomy family patters and interactions don...

A strange coming of age story about Kitty who is married off with a bacteriologist named Walter Fane. In his forward to the book Somerset Maugham retells how he had to change the fictional name Lane to Fane and how later on he encountered difficulties because the story seemed too familiar to some Englishmen abroad in the Chinese colonies. The author says that he was inspired to write this story because of a medieval story that was retold to him on a writing trip to Italy. I wondered if I might find that story in the Decameron and throughout the read i frequently thought about Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait and Lucrecia much like Marguerite in Karolina Ramqvist, Björnkvinnan (both of witch I've read). These post-modern female writers wrote their mediaeval ladies as conquerors of death unlike their time portrays them, as did Maugham in his time with the story of the painted veil. That's ultimately what intrigued me to read this book; the survival of her, despite pla...

My local librarian was so kind to suggest ordering a copy of The Yellow Wallpaper since the previous copy had been misplaced by another library enthusiast presumably, for it would take some kind of foreknowledge of classical literature of the West to become intrigued by a story of a woman locked into an attic room. The library ordered the book and then I received notice of the Macmillan Collector's Library book which i gladly picked up. Macmillan Collectors Library books are petite clothbound books printed in China, small enough to slip into a pocket or to bring along to a day spent in the woods. I currently own more than 20 of these gorgeous books and I ordered the last 4 ones needed to fill my bookshelf, hence completing my series (in case you wondered the once I ordered was: Our man in Havana Graham Greene, For Whom the Bells Toll Heminway, Aeneid by Virgil and The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey).  But back to the book, well in this edition there are two stories:  Th...

At 1200 pages this is the longest book I have ever read and I congratulated myself right at the 1000 page mark, this was a marathon, a first for me. It took me 3 years to read the Bible completely (roughly from 2017 to 2019) and so to finish a grand novel in the March of Mammoths (big books) seemed a challenge and as I previously mentioned I failed because I finished precisely one week into April 2024 and no sooner so it took me one month and one week to read. This is because I was not being consistent in doing the reading everyday since March 1st and so I started to lag behind, even despite days when I read double the amount of pages. I thought about giving up but I pressed on. I had divided the book initially into 31 parts, approximately 42 pages each, my thought was to portion it in such a way that would read 42 pages daily. Les Mis is divided in endless books and chapters but unlike the Bible there is just one author and the context is not to be compared with the Word of life at al...

The agony of updating Goodreads progress from page 700 something to 832 alas still the progress remains at 62 % slightly disturbing. It was supposed to be my March of the mammoths and this indeed at 1200 pages is a mammoth.  "How grievous not to know the address of one's soul" Les Mis is about the wretchedness of man, about poverty, captivity, freedom, morality, and social evil - human evil, say "sin" of mankind regardless of social status. Les Mis is a big novel about life it emanates from within the French revolution. I believed that I was capable of reading many books simultaneously but I long for February when I read many shorter ones. The great novel requires some time of reading into at each read, and once landing into the setting one finds it's time for bed or time for work and seldom does one find the dynamics required to juggle any other novel as a simultaneous read. Hugo often deviates from the path of the story into describing other things and pe...