The 305 Greatest Books - #201: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. The book can be found on the BBC Book List.

Although I have never heard of this book, or the author before, I found out the author, Dodie Smith, had also written The Hundred and One Dalmatians, from which the Disney movie was based on. So I thought, ok, this could be good. The premise is that a family had moved into a long abandoned castle and were severely down on their luck. The book is written from the first person perspective of Cassandra Mortmain in the guise of diary entries. Her family all live within this castle, James, her father who is a world famous author having written one breakthrough novel but hasn't been able to write anything since. Her step-mother, Topaz, is a model who hasn't had much luck since the castle is far away from London and there isn't much work without travel. Her sister Rose, who really is useless. She apparently has a brother who is hardly mentioned, and a foster ward, Stephen, who is in love with Cassandra. And while I had assumed the book would be about this castle and perhaps their refurbishment of it, that is not in the least what the book was about. It is about their relationship with their new American landlords, who recently inherited the property, upon which the castle sits. While this book would be considered a character study, it is a rather boring one. I truly didn't care about most of the characters. And I felt no desire to go back to the book upon putting it down. I didn't hate the book, I just felt no desire to read it. It was meh. Even as the story ends on a "cliffhanger", you can see where the story is likely to go and be fine with the resolution. The writing is nice and the narrator does do a good job of keeping the listener informed but there is nothing compelling about the book. Overall it's ok. Nothing to write home about though.  

The 305 Greatest Books - #200: Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Ficciones (AKA Fictions, AKA Collected Fictions) by Jorge Luis Borges. The book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

Initially, I had a rather difficult time trying to find the proper collection for my reading list. The book is listed as "Collected Fictions" on the Norwegian Book List. However, I can not find any book by Jorge Luis Borges with that specific title. After some internet sleuthing, I have come to the conclusion that it refers to Fictions, or Ficciones, as per the title of the book I read. This book is a compilation of two short story compilations by Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths and Artifices, totaling 17 short stories. I have a hard time reviewing short stories because some could be fantastic and others terrible, and really, they often have no correlation between each other. I also don't usually like short story collections because I don't have enough time to get into the story. It does take my brain some time to get accustomed to the writing style of the author and where the story is going before I am comfortable enough with the story to give it the attention it deserves, neither of which I usually get with a short story. With that being my caveat, on to the total review. Borges was an Argentinean short story writer who primarily wrote in Spanish, however I am led to believe that the English language itself and writings in English greatly influenced his work. I am surprised that his writings were not originally in English because typically translations tend to smooth over the language differences, choosing simpler, more common words, when translating into English. However, these translations are so rich in the language used that I can't even comprehend the translation abilities of the translator. I am certain Borges did have a hand in the translations, though, since he was proficient in both. Most of the stories in the first collection, The Garden of Forking Paths, had a very similar theme. Most were based on some made up book. Some of the stories were reviews of these made up books, others were entire mythological quests to discover these made up books about made up civilizations. And while I greatly enjoyed these stories, I definitely felt some of them were better than others. "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" stands apart as a marvelous story about a mythical, perhaps alien, culture that only has a few books scattered across the globe describing this place that I would love to hear more about. "The Babylon Lottery" also had me entranced because it definitely seemed like a precursor to Squid Game. In the second volume, Artifices, Borges branched out a bit more. In this one though he seemed to get more religious, or at least he became more fascinated with the Name of God, which came up in at least three separate stories. And while I did not get into these stories as much as the ones from the first collection, I did rather like "Death and the Compass" and was rather surprised at the twist ending. Overall, while I did enjoy them, and I thought the language, while it could be heavy at times, was beautiful, I did not enjoy all of them enough to recommend them to my list.