Since we last met, I continued working through my stack of short stories for the month of March. Next up were:
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Body Snatchers and Markheim by R.L. Stevenson
I liked all of these.
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
Not short stories, not even fiction, but languishing on my beside table. This one was interesting and will be reread in the future.
Shipley's Dictionary of Word Origins
Don't ask. I probably spend a couple hours a month in this book. I have a strong desire to find out where words and phrases come from. This book has some interesting answers.
The Smith of Wooton Major by J.R.R. Tolkien
I read this one aloud to some family members while on a road trip. Kids and adults both liked it. You don't have to be familiar with Tolkien's longer works to enjoy this.
Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
YES! I met my past, made it my present, and allowed it to affect me and thus my future. Heart of Darkness was perfect in its structure and provocation of thought. I really should give it a separate blog entry so I won't go into it much now. It seems a shame that high schoolers are forced to endure it though; the issues that Conrad explores would have been vastly under-appreciated by my 17 yr old self (and I was no flighty teen).
In celebration of this mental milestone, I went to the library and hauled home a bag of graphic novels. I think I read them all in 3 days. Unfortunately it was sort of like eating a case of Doritos in 3 days. I couldn't stop myself, but I felt a little woozy afterwards. Here's the list:
Ultimate Iron Man by Orson Scott Card
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Formic Wars: Burning Earth by Orson Scott Card
The Night Bookmobile by Audrey Niffenegger
The Tales of Alvin Maker: The Red Prophet volume 1 by Orson Scott CardFeynman by Ottaviani & Myrick
The last one in that list was a biography of physicist Richard Feynman. It was so fascinating that I got distracted from my short stories plan and spent all my free time for the next 3 days or so watching quantum physics talks online. Physics is a recurring amateur obsession that I return to every couple of years, spending a couple weeks compulsively watching college lectures and pop science vids online before moving on to something else.
After the physics mental download I moved on to my volume of Edgar Allan Poe and read:
The Fall of the House of Usher (my favorite)
The Tell-Tale Heart (I had read this one and the next one previously. Still good though)
The Masque of the Red Death
The Balloon-Hoax (Sort of Jules Verne-esque. May have inspired Verne's 80 Days)
The Spectacles (really funny)
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (a little sinister, a little Holmes-ish. The first detective story!)
Poe was a great way to end the month, and he is the author who wins a spot on my bookshelf. The other volumes were released into the wild (aka Goodwill) to be discovered anew by other readers. And if we're going to continue with the Hunger Games/gladiator metaphor, it seems fitting that Poe's book killed off the others. Though I didn't know it when I began reading Poe this month, I was about to have the opportunity to visit his home in Philadelphia. I was there a few days ago and had the privilege of gently rapping, rapping at his chamber door. It was a perfect ending to a perfectly dark and disjointed month.
After all this Stevenson, Conrad, Poe and sci fi, I am feeling a little morbid. I'm not sure if April's selection will lift the doldrums or compound them. April will be spent reading Homer's Odyssey and, if I have time, a few other works inspired by The Odyssey: The Wizard of Oz, Watership Down, "Ulysses" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot. I'm also going to watch two Odyssey inspired films, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
The Ones That Got Away
*cue melancholy violin solo*
On those dark, winter evenings, when I sit alone in the twilight, memories come flooding back of books I once held fondly in my hand: books I intended to read, but which slipped from my grasp before I had the chance to waltz my fingers through their pages. Fate was against me and these books, the ones that got away.
What, that never happened to you? Well what if it were even worse, and these books were literal baggage, being carted with you from attic to basement, state to state, country to country, every time you moved? These words on the screen cannot express the the nightmare of my experience when I tell you that I have been haunted by Joseph Conrad. For thirteen years.
Yes, it's true. Like a carefree lass in a cautionary tale, I thoughtlessly picked up a paperback of Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer at a book sale, planning to read it "sometime soon", little knowing how this devil's deal would alter my future... You think I'm being melodramatic? I've been staring at a bad 1960's cover illustration of Charles Marlow FOR THIRTEEN YEARS. It's bad, people. Very bad. And it ends now.
March's theme is modern short stories and novellas. This is a mixed bag of books that need to leave my home (did I mention that I'm downsizing my books? Fully 25% of them are on their way to new homes. Except for Heart of Darkness, that one can rot in book hell. Which would be what, an accordion store? A hot tub showroom? Spring break in Miami Beach?)
Anyway. I've been at this for 8 days now, with a 3 day digression to read The Hunger Games series, because I wasn't disturbed enough already. Of course, I didn't start with Heart of Darkness. I'm working up to it with a bunch of other short stories/novellas that I don't have room for either. I'm going to read them all, and the best volume wins a spot on my shelf. The others are off to the accordion store, just in time for Polka Demo Tuesday. So I guess this is a Hunger Games for books, except they don't even have the decency to kill each other off. I always have to do everything myself around here.
So far I've read the following:
-Jonathan Livingston Seagull: It was alright. Not mindblowing for me, like the cover quotes would have you believe, but if you haven't thought about human potential before, then it could be revelatory.
-"The Kreutzer Sonata" and "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Tolstoy. I preferred "The Kreutzer Sonata", but I probably would have appreciated them both more if a) I had waited until I was in the mood to read Russian lit, but alas, time waits for no book and b) if my copy didn't smell so strongly like the basement of a thrift store. Next time I'll remember to pick up a linen copy hand-lettered by Milla Jovovich. (I know, she's Ukrainian.)
-"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Devil and Tom Walker" by Washington Irving. I actually liked these a lot more than I thought I would, especially the last two. They had a dreamlike quality to them, and they were definitely early American, which stood out strongly in contrast to all the Brothers Grimm material I read last month.
-"The Bottle Imp" by Robert Louis Stevenson. I liked it. A little bit suspenseful, definite folk-tale feel, surprise ending!
Still on tap for this month are:
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", by Robert Louis Stevenson
Tortilla Flats, a novella by John Steinbeck
a volume of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe
and of course, my nemesis, 3 ounces of yellowed paperback:
Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer
by Joseph Conrad
Okay, maybe a little melodramatic.
On those dark, winter evenings, when I sit alone in the twilight, memories come flooding back of books I once held fondly in my hand: books I intended to read, but which slipped from my grasp before I had the chance to waltz my fingers through their pages. Fate was against me and these books, the ones that got away.
What, that never happened to you? Well what if it were even worse, and these books were literal baggage, being carted with you from attic to basement, state to state, country to country, every time you moved? These words on the screen cannot express the the nightmare of my experience when I tell you that I have been haunted by Joseph Conrad. For thirteen years.
Yes, it's true. Like a carefree lass in a cautionary tale, I thoughtlessly picked up a paperback of Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer at a book sale, planning to read it "sometime soon", little knowing how this devil's deal would alter my future... You think I'm being melodramatic? I've been staring at a bad 1960's cover illustration of Charles Marlow FOR THIRTEEN YEARS. It's bad, people. Very bad. And it ends now.
March's theme is modern short stories and novellas. This is a mixed bag of books that need to leave my home (did I mention that I'm downsizing my books? Fully 25% of them are on their way to new homes. Except for Heart of Darkness, that one can rot in book hell. Which would be what, an accordion store? A hot tub showroom? Spring break in Miami Beach?)
Anyway. I've been at this for 8 days now, with a 3 day digression to read The Hunger Games series, because I wasn't disturbed enough already. Of course, I didn't start with Heart of Darkness. I'm working up to it with a bunch of other short stories/novellas that I don't have room for either. I'm going to read them all, and the best volume wins a spot on my shelf. The others are off to the accordion store, just in time for Polka Demo Tuesday. So I guess this is a Hunger Games for books, except they don't even have the decency to kill each other off. I always have to do everything myself around here.
So far I've read the following:
-Jonathan Livingston Seagull: It was alright. Not mindblowing for me, like the cover quotes would have you believe, but if you haven't thought about human potential before, then it could be revelatory.
-"The Kreutzer Sonata" and "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Tolstoy. I preferred "The Kreutzer Sonata", but I probably would have appreciated them both more if a) I had waited until I was in the mood to read Russian lit, but alas, time waits for no book and b) if my copy didn't smell so strongly like the basement of a thrift store. Next time I'll remember to pick up a linen copy hand-lettered by Milla Jovovich. (I know, she's Ukrainian.)
-"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Devil and Tom Walker" by Washington Irving. I actually liked these a lot more than I thought I would, especially the last two. They had a dreamlike quality to them, and they were definitely early American, which stood out strongly in contrast to all the Brothers Grimm material I read last month.
-"The Bottle Imp" by Robert Louis Stevenson. I liked it. A little bit suspenseful, definite folk-tale feel, surprise ending!
Still on tap for this month are:
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", by Robert Louis Stevenson
Tortilla Flats, a novella by John Steinbeck
a volume of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe
and of course, my nemesis, 3 ounces of yellowed paperback:
Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer
by Joseph Conrad
Okay, maybe a little melodramatic.
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