The 305 Greatest Books - #194: Perfume by Patrick Süskind

 The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Perfume by Patrick Süskind. The book can be found on the BBC Book List.

I have been working my way through the BBC 100 Greatest Reads book list and this one piqued my interest. For one, it is pretty short, which always is a win for me but Two, the subtitle is "The Story of a Murderer". Ok, that sounds rather interesting and there aren't many murder mysteries in these book lists, so I will give it a shot. The story essentially follows the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a sociopath who is born without any scent of his own (i.e., no body odor), but has an inhuman ability to detect smells from miles away and is able to pick apart individual scent sources. While his goals shift depending on where we are in his life, he essentially wants to become a perfumer. Eventually his goals shift to wanting to create the perfect scent. This perfect scent, it turns out, comes in the form of newly pubescent girls of which he takes their scent from. And while not really sexual in nature, the book does take on an awkward Lolita vibe at times. My general feeling on the book is that is was "ok". I don't think it was a "great" read by any stretch of the imagination, however it was interesting. It does make you think about smells in ways that you never have though of before and the translation of the novel (originally in German) is super easy to follow. The ending of the book, though, felt rushed. For such a short novel, Süskind could have easily fleshed out the book a bit to make it not feel so rushed. He spends a rather long time describing smells of everything, then seems to skip over pivotal plot points at the end in order to surprise the reader with the denouement. Of which these skips don't feel overly earned because I question the timeline of things. But overall, it is an interesting story, kind of a let down at the end, but an easy and quick read. Not a "100 Greatest Book" level of good, but you'll not go wrong reading it. 

The 305 Greatest Books - #193: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. The book can be found on the BBC Book List.

Set during WWII, the story is mostly told as a flashback to the main character, Charles Ryder's, remembrances of his times at a house known as Brideshead as well as the family that owned and occupied the house, the Flytes during the 20's. And while the book is initially set up like a mystery during the prologue, it is really anything but. I went into the book (following said prologue) excited for a mystery and expecting some twist to take place, but nothing every really does. The story can be broken into two parts (even though the book is divided into three main parts), Charles life with Sebastian and his life with Julia. This first part with Charles was by far the more interesting section and the one that led credence to the "mystery" aspect of the story. It had potential to go where I could not see but overall it felt like that storyline was just dropped and the story of Julia taken up in it's place. Sebastian was mysterious and was a fantastic companion character. He traveled around with a teddy bear and communicated with it as if it was a real person. I mean this was someone who could lead us down some awesome roads. However, it seemed he was just abandoned in the story when he could have been played with more. Julia then took over the plot and while she was in the first part, she didn't seem to play a prominent role. And her story, again, wasn't bad per say, it just wasn't as interesting as Sebastian's and I didn't really care what happened with her at the end of it. I would say at the end, the story turned out to be just fine. It's not a bad story. It is well written and enjoyable to read, and you can breeze through it fairly quickly. However, I feel like I was sold a bill of goods with the prologue, and I never got over it. Overall, I feel like this book had so much potential and it just didn't go in an interesting direction.