Emma's comments (member since Oct 28, 2008)

Emma's comments from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die group.

Anna Karenina

I had tried to read this one before and don't remember why I put it down but this time I was reading it for some time on Kindle for iPhone. I enjoyed its psychological realism but the etext wasn't edited too well and that was distracting.

And in general, I think I need to pay more attention to the translations I choose.

Emma wrote: "I finished Lanark A Life in Four Books today. Not very satisfying."

I know I'm replying to my own comment here but I felt that it was unfair of me not to take into consideration why the book's on the list. The passage in the group's eponymous book states that Gray "continued a twofold legacy, inheriting the impulse for typographic innovation from Jonathan Swift and Joyce, while sustaining a Blakean vision of radical social possibilities latent within the texture of everyday Glaswegian life." It also points out that interaction with Gray's typographical designs "testifies to the indispensability of the printed page."

I wonder if I could have had a better edition...seems that in addition to my taking the whole history of /the novel/--not just this novel--for granted, I may not have had access to all of Gray's wonderful drawings.... I had a really dog-eared Picador edition from the library.

I include this excerpt from the 2006 edition of this group's eponymous list book--have I said that right?

"It is, though, the tone of Trainspotting that really catches the reader's attention. The lack of any authorial, moralizing voice naturalizes the internal universe of the text so that the protagonists' immediate needs, for heroin, sex, or money, become the sole logic driving events."

This passage in the Boxall et al book also points out that the HIV/AIDS death toll in Trainspotting is high.

I can't remember now whether I read the book or saw Danny Boyle's film first, I think I saw the movie first, but I loved the scene where the girls say that they were talking about "shoppin" and the guys say "fitbol."

I use the list for suggestions of what to read next. I'd love to read all 1001 but I also don't think that's realistic for me.

I love geeking out to the spreadsheet available here:

http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?page_i...

It's way better than one I could create myself, and it seems to be new and improved.

I've read 77 of the 2008 list books for 7.69%.

I finished Lanark A Life in Four Books today. Not very satisfying.

Jamie wrote: "I hated the book. Based on the reviews, I was expecting a big finish to justify the read. I thought it was horrible and that the connection between the narrative plots was easily manufactured. I..."

Part of me wonders if this is why I'm looking so hard for deeper meanings and connections...

FrankH wrote: "Question for Amanda: I'm assuming that the monthly discussion books are on the 1001 list, but would like to know the approach to sequencing of the titles, i.e. how do we go from Middlemarch to Tra..."

Check out this thread:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1317...

Taylor wrote: "I just finished A Prayer for Owen Meany. Loved it! Was my book club choice for this past month. 1/2 the group HATED it, the other half LOVED it. Made for an interesting fight, err, I mean, disc..."

Back when I tried to read this book, I remember being so upset by an (early) event in the book that I put it down and wouldn't finish it. I wonder if I'd react the same way today...

Right, there would have been no Ladislaw without Casaubon. And there would have been no opportunity for Will and Dorothea to prove their love by ignoring the terms of Casaubon's will either (if I'm remembering the ending correctly). And if Dorothea had not married, it would have been difficult for her sister to, in Middlemarch times.

Silver wrote: "I just started The Woman in White by Willkie Collins. I haven't got that far yet, but I really like how the story is strcutured, told from the point of view of several different people. "

I've had this book on hold at the library since June. I really want to read it as I really enjoyed The Moonstone.

I think I was least engaged by the Timothy Cavendish story at first. And I never warm initially to sci-fi, so when I got to the Sonmi section and the central post-apocalyptic section, I thought, oh no, will it just keep going into the future now. But in the end I enjoyed every section. I didn't know it was going to fold back in on itself because I didn't let myself read any of the blurbs and didn't look ahead even though I was dying to, until I was nearing the end of the central piece. I was relieved when I saw that each piece was to be revisited. And I liked that the clouds on the tops of the pages moved in toward the center of the book and back out again.

I found the Frobisher section very sad and depressing. I feel cold just thinking about it now. The idea of this man, who's not very likable, having been disinherited. He is a funny character though. He knows that Dr. Goose is a vampire of sorts, and I didn't believe him, and then, when I got back to that section at the end, I was like, well, I'll be damned, Frobisher was right. Which of course he was.

There were a couple of other echoes I can remember now, Cindy, but I've had to return my copy to the library. In the second half of the Luisa Rey story, when she and Napier are at the marina, the boat from the Ewing piece, the Prophetess, is in the marina there and its restoration is commented on. Luisa gets a sense of deja vu there.

But I think I did want it to be more of a game with puzzle pieces that would fit together and amount to something more, not that the simple echoing isn't nice.

I also noticed that Timothy Cavendish spins a globe in his office at some point and then I noticed another character or two in other sections doing this. Maybe someone in Sonmi's story. And there was Meronym's cartography. So there's the atlas being "the fixed human nature" as Mitchell says, Cindy, but there's that map sense of the word too.

Another reaction that I had, and I'll close with this, is that when I started reading the detective story section, which I enjoyed very much because I like detective fiction, I was so disappointed to realize that it was "fiction." Sixsmith showing up in a detective story made it unreal to me and made me question, so is this all fiction? I wanted it all to be true. I can't even describe it, but I think this is one of the things Mitchell is playing with. It's of course all fiction of his invention but I was enjoying the idea that Ewing's was a real journal and that Frobisher's letters were real, but then it makes no sense for this real person, Sixsmith, to show up in a detective story and I was let down about the direction I thought the book was taking. But maybe the detective story is based on actual events...

I'm not making any sense, but it messed with my mind is all I'm trying to say! :D

I like the portrayal of painful self-delusion in this novel. That's part of what sticks with me from it, even though it's been a little while since I read it and I no longer have a copy of it. I think it was one of the first ones I chose from the list. Eliot is fantastic.

And I remember really wanting Dorothea and Will Ladislaw to be able to get together.

And the reality of the debt issues in the book...Fred's and Rosamund and Lydgate's.

Thanks for your comments, Gini!

Silver wrote: "I am curious on your thoughts about the poems, and quotes which follow the start of each new chapter. Do you think they do offer an additional insight of understanding of the story? Or that they ar..."

My understanding is that readers used to be a lot more learned than we are now. They had studied Latin, etc. They were "classically educated." Eliot's contemporaries would have gotten these allusions and references, and including them was a common practice then, not that I know why. But whenever a writer includes things like this, there's always a reason. I too gloss this stuff though because I simply don't have the education to get it most of the time. We would have to dig a little deeper to get it. Sometimes I go back and read it again after reading the section it precedes to see if it has gained in significance.

Yes, Karey, I'm following you.

And, Silver, I don't think anyone is trying to say that every bestseller is a classic. And, by definition, cult classics are not mainstream bestsellers. Only time will tell what lasting meaning and, ahem, timelessness mega-bestselling books like Twilight, Harry Potter, and the Da Vinci Code have. They may have had a target audience but they reached a far larger audience. That's the part that's the weird new phenomenon, and part of why we keep talking about these types of books, while they are not all well-written.

But, I also think, as evidenced by our membership in this group, we are interested in better-written books, critically beloved or controversial, and books that had a great impact during their time and beyond. I know I am. And while I read Twilight, all the Harry Potters, and the Da Vinci Code, I am now, because of this list, approaching Ulysses for the first time. I finally read The Count of Monte Cristo and loved it. I'm also reading "weird" contemporary books like Lanark, Dead Babies, and Cloud Atlas.

Other than that, I personally haven't been too worried about differentiating between classic and contemporary. But I do recall from school that the term "modern," when one is talking about art and literature, has meanings that are not necessarily synonymous with contemporary.

I started Lanark A Life in Four Books last night. I'm trying Anna Karenina on my iPhone. And I think I'm going to be working on Ulysses with Gifford's Ulysses Annotated. My boyfriend and I may read the Ulysses together.

I've gotten pretty compulsive about reading things off this list, hence the mania to try and read more than one at once.

Oh, this is a fun thread!

One of the reasons I was coveting a Kindle was that I understand you can look words up while you read, by clicking on them or something.

Now I have Kindle for iPhone and I don't think I can do that but I did download a Dictionary.com "app" that I'm finding myself using while I read non-e-books. (I haven't used my iPhone to read anything yet; it just seems too small.) The first section of Cloud Atlas had a lot of fun words that I found myself looking up. Tatterdemalion (ragamuffin); hugger-mugger (confused; disorderly); condign ([of punishment:] fitting and deserved).

I checked the book out from the library and one of the previous patrons had circled words in the book, which is a great idea...unless it's a library book!

I was going to start a discussion on this book if there hadn't been one already. I really want to talk about the comet-shaped birthmarks and some of the things that repeat from story to story and connect the pieces. Does anyone else? So who had the birthmark? First mention is Frobisher, right? Then Luisa? Then Sonmi, was it? Did Timothy Cavendish? And Meronym? What's the significance? What do these characters have in common?

Looking back for what I think is the first reference to the birthmark on page 85, I reread the passage on Ayrs's dream on page 79 and realized it's about Papa Song's and the fabricants.

Oh, and how did Zachry end up surrounded by young, were they, Valleysmen? Did he and Meronym have kids, or did he meet back up with the Kolekole girl somehow?

All-in-all, I did think the book was genius, but don't think Mitchell needed to moralize and wish he had refrained.

I finished Cloud Atlas tonight. Not that I loved every single thing about the book, but I am totally blown away. I so enjoyed it and want more like it, although cookie-cutter Cloud Atlases would be v., v. bad.

I submit this from the George Eliot entry on Wikipedia:

She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Elio...