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. 

The 305 Greatest Books - #195: Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac. The book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

When I first started to look for my next book to read, I had several of the Everyman bindings ready at my disposal. So I researched a bunch of them and Old Goriot was one of the shorter ones, so I picked it for this month. Mainly the comments I had seen online were that Balzac had a way with scene descriptions. He would often go for pages describing one particular aspect of a scene. And I had found that, for the most part, that was true. The beginning of this book is an ad nauseam set up for the building in which Goriot lived. And while it took me a little bit to get into this style of writing, eventually it won me over. I still needed to take it slow through the book though. I only ended up being able to handle about 10 pages a day, because it took some concentration to absorb the story; a story that is a little bit all over the place. At one point a major character turns out to be criminal living under an assumed name. Why was this in the story? I don't know. Did it have major implications for the story. Kind of, but not really. The ending also left me pretty sour on the whole thing. It made it feel that several of the threads in the story were not only loose, but just left dangling because they were unimportant. Generally though, the story focuses on Goriot and his two adult daughters, whom he basically purchased into well placed marriages at the expense of his own well being, putting himself into poverty. Were the daughters thankful? Maybe? I'm still not certain their true feelings, however the book does paint them generally into a bad light. By the end of the book, everything is depressing and I don't really like any of the characters. Our main character, Eugène being the exception. His character went from one who I could have accepted if he got run over by a train to being the only redeemable character by the end. And even his last act throws all that out the window. So, overall, I'm lukewarm to meh on it as a whole. It is likely on the list for the use of descriptions and not likely for the riveting plot. 

The 305 Greatest Books - #191: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. The book can be found on the Norwegian, BBC, and My Book Lists.

Salman Rushdie has become a rather infamous author over the last several decades, mostly because of another work of his, the 1988 work The Satanic Verses and the proceeding fatwa that was placed on him by the Ayatollah of Iran in 1989. Midnight's Children (1981) did not receive that sort of reception, however it is one of the few books I have left on my list that is on multiple 100 Greatest lists. Midnight's Children is about the life of Saleem Sinai who was born at the stroke of midnight on August 15th, 1947. Coincidently, the same day as India's Independence day from British rule. And because of this, Saleem had been gifted with "powers" (?), or maybe it is better termed "gifts". But not only him, but everyone born within that first hour of independence also had a wide range of gifts. And while that story sounds like it could be a fantastic fantasy novel, that is not this novel. While the book is named "Midnight's Children", the other children of midnight barely play a role within the novel, except here and there, and even then, they are sparingly used. So, if this book isn't about the powered people, then what is it about? And that is a good question because I'm still not entirely sure. We follow the course of Indian history, and Saleem's life, from a couple of generations before he is born, until he is in his thirties. And while Indian history plays a backdrop to the novel, at times it is directing the novel. Everything that is happening to him is due to India's primary players, people who actually do exist and events that had actually happened. And while the novel left me unfulfilled at the end, with an ending that wasn't really an ending, and characters plot lines that many of which were just left off or ended abruptly, I think that was the point of the story. And it made me think, while I didn't get the ending I wanted, the book ended in a way that it deserved. The writing style though I absolutely loved. So much so, that I immediately bought Rushdie's other book on my list, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, to begin reading immediately (a book that was referenced in Midnight's Children despite being written afterwards). So, yea, I would recommend this book because it was highly enjoyable, but prepare to have your expectations subverted. If you familiar with Indian history though, I feel you would get much more out of this book than those who are not (such as myself).   

The 305 Greatest Books - #188: Beloved by Toni Morrison

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Beloved by Toni Morrison. The book can be found on the Norwegian and My Book Lists.

Beloved definitely gave me the vibes that I was not tall enough to ride this emotional roller coaster. It is hard to discuss this book without getting into major plot spoilers, but in general the story is about a former slave family set during the the times right before and after the Civil War. While the story is a decade or so after the Civil War, flashbacks and remembrances occur before and during the war. This book definitely doesn't pull it's punches in regards to slavery and how people were treated during those times. The impetus for the novel was an event shortly after the main character, Sethe, ran away, where an infant is found bloody and dead. However, the text is confusing at the beginning and I wasn't sure if it was at first written cryptically or I was just not understanding it. But as the story continued, I realized that the narrative was purposely obscure and that the reason for that was eventually laid out for the reader. The novel is rough, and rightfully so. The harsh truths are the reasons that Beloved won the Pulitzer Price for Fiction and was likely the reason Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature. It is a good book, with an interesting story thread. It is a fascinating read, both with how bluntly she depicts slave life, but also how that story is interwoven with this poltergeist-esque story as they are living in a haunted house. I cannot recommend this book enough. It is beautifully written and is definitely a story that pulls you in, while also educating you about the horrors that had engulfed our society at the time.

The 305 Greatest Books - #186: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Dead Souls by Nicolai Gogol. The book can be found on the Norwegian 100 Greatest Book List. 

I had been interested in Gogol ever since reading The Namesake, where the primary character in that story is named after the author of this story. Dead Souls is the only story by Gogol on my list, and it has been waiting patiently for me to read it ever since I read The Namesake probably about 20 years previously. Dead Souls starts out with a translators note, which made all the difference in understanding this book. In Russia, during the 1800's, a peasant was bound to the land and subject to the landowner. Each peasant pays the landowner a tax and the landowner then pays the collected taxes to the government for every person, or "soul", that is on the property. The number of souls that each landowner owes money on is determined during the census, which has large gaps in time (the story takes place in a gap of 18 years between censuses). If a peasant was to die during that time between censuses, the landowner would still owe taxes on that peasant until the next census identified them as dead. These are the "dead souls". The premise of the novel is that a businessman named Chichikov has come up with a scheme where he goes around buying up the dead souls of the landowners. The first volume of the book basically follows him around as he attempts to buy these dead souls off of various people until the last chapter of the volume where we find out his background and why he is doing what he is doing. And let me tell you, I read that section three times and I still couldn't figure it out the reasoning. This is the whole premise of the novel so you would think it should be well laid out, but no, not a clue. The second volume of the story helped to make some sense of it but it still doesn't make total sense. It may be an issue where things are done differently now, so his scheme wouldn't work, or that there are key parts that are not explained since they would be known at the time, or it could be that his scheme doesn't actually make sense and there was no fixing it so the author just glossed over that fact, either way, it made for a disappointing read since that was the whole premise of the book. (I could explain but I don't want to give too many spoilers). I have always been a fan of Russian literature, and while the author was born in present day Ukraine, he lived in the Russia of the time and wrote in Russian. Generally from what I have read, translations from Russian to English are usually very well done, this one included, and it made reading and understanding the text to be a breeze. I greatly enjoyed that part. But there are issues with the story, besides just the enigmatic justification for the story. Apparently, Gogol had based his publishing volume 2 of the story contingent on volume 1 doing well. However it apparently didn't, so he ended up destroying parts of the manuscript. So there are parts of sentences, pages, and even whole chapters just missing from the story (and noted as such by the translator). So whatever happens in Volume 2 is sometimes summarized by the translator because an unknown number of chapters is just ... gone. I had hoped it would be something akin to The Mystery of Edwin Drood, but no such luck. It just feels incomplete and lacking in the end. Not enough answers for the questions raised and a lackluster finish to a story that started out interesting.  

The 305 Greatest Books - #185: Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. The book can be found on the Norwegian 100 Greatest Book List and My Personal Book List. 

I believe that Season of Migration to the North may be the first book I have read that was originally written in Arabic. And this book almost makes me want to understand Arabic because the prose was so beautifully written that I can imagine it would be tenfold better in the original language. The story is about a man, the narrator, who encounters a stranger in his community, Mustafa. From that point forward, Mustafa's history becomes of paramount importance to the narrator, so much so that Mustafa has some degree of influence over the narrator, as well as many other people. I really enjoyed this book. The prose is wonderful and the story is engaging. There were a few parts that had me squeamish and I'm not how how much of them were related to the Arabic culture of the time (set in the 1920's, published in 1969) or how much of it was just inclusions by the author. I imagine a bit of both. The treatment of women in the story was also heavily dated, but also surprisingly progressive in many ways. However, with all that aside, this book has left me with many questions about the story and Mustafa's influence, which, while the story appears to address, I don't believe the author fully answers. Leaving a bit of a mystery especially once the ending comes about. Overall, I'd say this is a must read.

The 305 Greatest Books - #183: The Gypsy Ballads by Federico García Lorca

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is The Gypsy Ballads by Federico Garcia Lorca. The book can be found on the Norwegian Book List. 

Comprising 18 poems, each about 2 pages in length, The Gypsy Ballads, is by far one of the shortest works on this list. And since it is so short it is hard for me to properly do it justice. That, and I am no expert in poetry. Also, while I feel the translator did his utmost best to translate these poems into English to put across the same feeling as they did in their original Spanish, there is something inherently lost when you move from one language to another in any form of literature, most of all poetry, which relies not only on the words choices of the authors but also the cadence of the lines, and even how the words look on the page. All that being said I rather enjoyed this short work. Since it was so short I wanted to take my time and absorb each of the works in their own right and slowly analyze of the metaphors that were being used. While a poetry expert would be able to extract far more than I ever could, I did enjoy the poems as they were presented to me. The introduction in my edition helped me to get into the mindset required to understand most of the work and even rather gather information about a lot of the metaphors presented. While some of the poems were rather gruesome, especially towards the end, they were written in order to shock the reader purposefully to the atrocities being committed against the gypsy people. Other of the poems were sweet and soothing to read. His poetry formats also bounced around with some being more free verse while other rhyming. Overall, even though it was short, I also rather enjoyed it. 

The 305 Greatest Books - #180: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is In Search of Lost Time (AKA Remembrance of Things Past) by Marcel Proust. The book can be found on the Norwegian, Observer, and Zane Top 10 Book Lists.

    In Search of Lost Time holds a couple of places in my heart. First and foremost, it is by far the longest book I have ever read. It is ranked as one of the longest books ever written and clocks in over 4,000 pages depending on the print and page size. However a better estimate is the word count which is 1.175 million words. For comparison War and Peace has only 0.56 million words. So this book is essentially two War and Peace length books. It also took me over a year to read because it is a brain strain. He writes in VERY long sentences. Counting out the words of one notable sentence had me at 203 words for that sentence alone. 

     The book itself is broken down into seven volumes (these seven were then places into the four physical volumes that I had read and pictured above). The first volume of the story is probably the most famous and is often read as a standalone story, Swann's Way, however it was never meant as its own story. The text is also formatted without many paragraphs, about one per every two pages, and conversations flowed within the paragraphs instead of being seperated out into unique line breaks, as is the standard format. This means it generally took me about an hour to read 20 dense pages and I was often mentally exhausted after that from trying to follow the story. Another note of accomplishment is that this book was the last of the Zane's Top 10 books for me to finish, marking the first list I have successfully completed. 

    The story itself was ... interesting. It follows the remembrance of Proust's own life through his memories. And while the story generally flows in chronological order, he had a tendency to have tangential thoughts for pages at a time, where he will jump forward in time or ponder some theoretical question he had been grappling with. While I enjoyed the linear part of the story, the theoretical parts got to be a bit old after a while, especially when he would re-harp on the same essential questions over and over again. This story was also surprisingly "modern", with the author extensively tackling the subject of homosexuality. For a novel written in the early 1900's I was not expecting this pervasive look at homosexuality of the time. Here is though, one of the primary problems I had with the central part of the story. This is when the main character, presumably Proust himself, essentially kept his girlfriend "kidnapped" (for lack of a better word) in his house because he had assumed she was sleeping around with other women and he was jealous (maybe?). He would ponder many times over if she liked women, for 100's of pages at a time, with him never satisfactorily answering his own question (however as the reader I felt it was satisfactorily proven a yes). Many of the men also in the book led secretive homosexual lives, with one engaging in full on sadomasochistic acts during the latter parts of the novel. When he first delves into this aspect of the book he seemed to be weighing the morality of it, however eventually it seemed to me that he had accepted that side of society and proceeded right along (except when related to his girlfriend). Like I said, while this was completely unexpected, it was definitely not unappreciated on my part. 

     While there were parts of the story that were repeated ad nauseum, there were many parts I found fascinating. As time went by, we had the evolution of technology and how it changed. From the first telephones through the widespread use of the automobile, and how they impacted the characters lives.  But time in this book was tricky, where it wasn't until the end of the book that I understood that this was all written as his memories. Time fluctuated through the book sporadically, to the point that you never really knew how much time had passed at any given point. Parties he attended took 100's of pages to depict but then years would fly by in the blink of a page. The book was also very "real", where deaths just happened as in real life, with most happening without a satisfactory reason that one would often find in stories. And for a book that seemingly went on forever there were many aspects that never got explained. There was a contemporary court case, often known as the Dreyfus Affair, that was constantly brought up and influenced the characters majorly, but was never actually explained within the story itself. Proust mentioned many times about his infirmity, but barely delved into what exactly he had. And there were other things that Proust felt he didn't need to explain, I assume because he felt a contemporary audience would understand. The book also didn't really have the flow of a "normal" novel. There was no literary action. There was no definitive conclusion. It just sort of winds down at the end, which presumably was when he started writing the book (since this was his memoirs of a sort). 

     Overall this is a difficult book to sum up and recommend to people. It is a monumental task to undertake and finish. It is also a difficult book to engage with and consistently stay engaged with. However finishing it I feel like I summited a literary mountain that I will proudly wave my flag upon. So while I am proud to have finished it and I found it worthwhile for the most part, I don't think I could recommend it to others to tackle unless they wanted the same goals as I. 

The 306 Greatest Books #176 - Medea by Euripides

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Medea by Euripides. The book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

Medea is an ancient Greek play from 431 BCE and a very quick read. I read it in about 2 hours, and I took my time. The story is about a woman, Medea, who's husband leaves her and gets married to another woman, the princess of Corinth. And because of her "attitude" she is forced into exile from Corinth by the King of Corinth, the princess' father. And that's about it. The play mainly involves how she handles this rejection by not only her husband, but by nearly everyone around her. I would say it is a morality tale but there is no justice served by the end of the story. Nearly everyone is dead and no punishments are dished out. It is an interesting look at an ancient take on the "lover spurned" story and the vengeance that results. 

The 306 Greatest Books #171 - Gilgamesh

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Gilgamesh by an unknown author. The book can be found on the Norwegian and My Book Lists.

Gilgamesh is one of, if not the, oldest story known today. Written at least 4,000 years ago, it was originally found on a series of clay tablets in the cuneiform language. When originally discovered, we had not yet cracked the cuneiform code and therefore the story sat without us knowing what we had. Roughly 150 years ago linguists cracked the cuneiform code and the story of Gilgamesh was slowly realized and spread out among the world. So despite it being likely the oldest story we have today, it is still fairly young to modern literature, as opposed to The Iliad and The Odyssey. Written as an epic poem, Gilgamesh has not faired completely unharmed through the ages. The story itself is littered with missing words and whole sections of the story just missing. These gaps represent where tablets were illegible or even completely broken apart. The gaps cause a lot of the story to remain unknown, however, luckily, the story has a tendency to repeat itself. A lot. This allows us, as the reader, to potentially piece together many of the missing sections. The repeated sections also adds to the theory that this was originally meant to be presented in front of a live audience. Unfortunately though, the many, many repeated sections in written form have a tendency to get glossed over by the reader. The story itself tells of the ancient Mesopotamian king Gilgamesh who stands over 18 feet tall. Across the 12 known tablets, Gilgamesh battles the guardian Humbaba, he makes some friends along the way, and eventually becomes part of the tale of a great flood sent by the gods to inundate the world. There is even a boat that needs to be built in order to survive the flood (with specific building measurements given). This story, although near identical to the biblical account of the flood, was written over a thousand years earlier resulting in a very interesting history lesson. Overall I found the story of Gilgamesh to be alright on its own, however I found the most fascinating part was the history behind the story and all the contexts interlaid within the story itself. I highly recommend the Sophus Helle translated version, which includes essays about the epic and provides much needed context about various parts of the story. Being the foundational work of essentially the civilization that followed makes me want to recommend this work to everyone.   

The 306 Greatest Books #168 - The Complete Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Complete Tales by Edgar Allan Poe. The book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

Taking me almost exactly two years to finish, The Complete Stories by Edgar Allan Poe was the version of the book I chose to read for this list. It is listed as The Complete Tales and therefore I assumed The Complete Stories would work. I collect the Everyman's Library of books and the version they had only included the short stories and none of the poems. Still, at over 950 quite dense pages and 68 stories, it took a while to work through. That, and Poe's writing style was a bit more, verbose, than I was expecting. Of the 68 stories, I had actually only heard of, and read, three or four of them, with most remaining a complete mystery to me. The book is arranged chronologically and this is both a help, because you can see how his writing style evolved over time, but also a hindrance because in the beginning he wrote very sesquipedalian (ha! now there's a word). This means his vocabulary was so large that trying to read any of his early stories was an exercise in frustration, because not many people could understand his writings without extensive dictionary work. He was plainly brilliant, but his writing had a high barrier to it and I quickly grew tired of trying to wade through the text. I kept trying again and again over the two years and I noticed he eventually was able to hit a rhythm where his prose, while still having some larger words, was "dumbed down" enough to allow the regular reader to be able to enjoy the text. This turning point actually happened right around the time he published his longest work, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym". It was from here that I really started to enjoy his work. 

Personally, I am not the biggest fan of short stories because the quality is often all over the place. Some are great and some not so much, and I feel Poe is much the same. He wrote many of his stories with these random asides at the beginning that felt less a part of the story and more like he was philosophizing about anything. But once you get past these random asides, usually about a page or two in length, the story kicks in and is often enjoyable. His well known stories, like "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Pit and the Pendulum" are truly masterpieces and noticeably enjoyable amongst his other works. There is a reason they are picked out among his ample catalogue. But there are others I would recommend as well including the afore mentioned "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym", "The Premature Burial", "The Gold-Bug", and one that is especially important in literary history, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". As I was reading "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" I was convinced Poe just ripped of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes character. But as I thought about it, the timing didn't seem right and I looked it up and sure enough, one of Doyle's influences was Poe. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is essentially the original detective fiction. Poe then followed it up with two sequel short stories, "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" and "The Purloined Letter". And although these aren't the sitting on the edge of your seat thrillers that we know of today in many detective stories, they are still enjoyable for what they are and a fun mystery to work through. Overall, I would say that the majority of Poe's work is excessively difficult to wade through and I wouldn't recommend most people to attempt it, however many of his works do stand out as simply outstanding and those are the ones everyone should cherry pick to read.

The 306 Greatest Books #167 - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. The book can be found on the Norwegian and Observer Book Lists.

Published over the course of eight years from 1759 to 1767, Tristram Shandy represented a departure from the typical books of its day. This book may be more seen as the proto-stream of consciousness novel with the author frequently bouncing around topics like they were in a pinball game. Sterne would go from his primary story, those about himself and his family, to some obscure, barely related tangent in the blink of an eye. He would then realize his tangent and eventually work his way back to the story in question. Although this was clearly the purpose of the book, it got to be extremely irritating. The book is written as an autobiography and stream of consciousness from the perspective of Tristram himself. However, it became abundantly clear that the story wasn't even about Tristram when it takes the author a third of the book to get to his own birth. The book winds up focusing mostly on the life of his uncle, Toby, as well as Toby's servant Trim. But despite the frequent tangents, the book actually turns out to be quite funny. There are times when one of the characters are trying to tell a story of their own and they keep getting interrupted by the other characters, so that each time the one telling the story starts to tell it, a new chapter starts. The title of that chapter then says something like "trying this one again", where eventually it takes the story teller five chapters to get the story finished. Another funny thing is how the book is constructed. Looking at the book itself, I assume most versions are published specifically how the author intended because of the way it is written. In my version of the book there were instances where entire pages were blank or page numbers skipped over on purpose. One such section threw me through a loop because 10 pages were skipped along with an entire chapter. The author then goes on to explain why those pages were skipped over, stating that he purposely ripped out the chapter. It's definitely a clever way of approaching the book and one I had never thought of. Even besides the constant bouncing around of topics, I think the thing that makes this book really difficult for me to read, is the way that it is written. Sentences will seem to go on forever with em-dashes breaking up thoughts within the sentence itself, so it's difficult to tell where a sentence truly begins and ends. This is very reminiscent of the later James Joyce in his Ulysses, a novel I also did not enjoy. Overall, this book felt like a chore to read with the constant thought diversions preventing me from being able to focus on the story myself. Along with the author, I felt my own attention wandering throughout the book. But this is clearly a work before its time. It stands out as a masterpiece of fiction for doing something that nobody else at the time was doing and in a way that made it at least somewhat enjoyable. Would I recommend this for people to read, definitely not, but as a lesson about the history of writing fiction I can definitely see this novel as a significant contributor. 

The 306 Greatest Books #166 - Fairy Tales and Stories

 The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Anderson. The book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

This book took me a long time to read. I started reading it with my daughter about 5 years ago during our bedtime reading. However, she did not like it at all, despite being a huge The Little Mermaid fan, and we eventually stopped reading it together. I then started to read it on my own, however I couldn't continue reading the stories for a long time, so I would put the book down for months at a time. This style of reading works for a short story compilation because there are no threads tying the stories together, but there is also nothing drawing me back into the book. Anderson wrote stories for over 40 years and in that time his writing style didn't change much at all. He would often start and finish stories in the same manner, with his story wrap up much like Forest Gump's "and that's all I have to say about that", which leaves a sour taste in my mouth. There really was no need to add the last sentence just saying the story was completed. Many of his earlier stories were basically just Christian folktales, with that theme cropping up throughout his writing career. He was also horribly misogynistic and anti-Semitic. There is an entire story about a Jewish girl who basically hates herself because she is Jewish and eventually dies happy finding out that she had finally been converted to being a Christian. He is also big on anthropomorphism, where many, if not most, of his stories revolve around viewing life around an inanimate object as if that object had thoughts and feelings. I think these were the most painful to read. His better stories focused on humans, and there are some rather enjoyable stories in the mix.  I liked "The Thorny Road of Honor" and "Lucky Peer", as well as reading up on the original stories for all of the Disney Movies and other stories that had gotten passed down through time such as "The Little Mermaid", "The Ugly Duckling", and "The Little Match Girl". These were overall the high points of his writings and really would be the only ones I recommend people search out to read. 

The 306 Greatest Books #165 - Pippi Longstocking

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. The book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

Pippi Longstocking is the first in a series of books about the eponymous red-headed girl with the braids that stick straight out of her head. At the start of the story, Pippi is an 11 year-old girl who had been left on her own after he mother died and her father went missing at sea (and is presumed dead). Having been raised on a ship with her father, she isn't the smartest child, but she had been left with a fortune and a house and somehow manages to take care of herself, as well as her pet monkey and her horse. She is a peculiar child, to say the least, with incredible strength, wearing mismatched and oversized clothes, and pretty much does whatever she wants, whenever she wants to. The book itself is set up as a series of adventures, with each chapter laying out a new adventure for Pippi, along with her neighbors Tommy and Annika to go on. And while the adventures of previous chapters may be briefly remarked upon in the following chapters, they generally are forgotten about in favor of the new adventure. This is very much like the way that Winnie-the-Pooh is set up, however there seems to be more of a connecting thread here, however slight it might be. The book was originally written in Swedish, of which I read a translated version. I read this book out loud to my daughter as part of our nightly book reading and the translation was rough at times for me (the version I read was translated by Florence Lamborn). Word combinations that were hard to dictate, sentences that often didn't make sense as translated, and word choices that were not likely the best ones. That isn't a slight against the book, but it did make enjoying the book that much harder. The book itself was alright. I don't see how this book would stand out against the other bazillion young reader chapter books with precocious kids doing what they want, when they want. The big difference here is that the author made Pippi such a powerhouse that nobody can tell her what to do, so she does whatever she wants. Overall, it's an ok book but not one that I recommend anyone go out of their way to read. 

The 306 Greatest Books #163 - The Tin Drum

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Tin Drum by Günter Grass. The book can be found on the Observer and Norwegian Book Lists.

Upon initially starting The Tin Drum, I had a couple of friends tell me that they really enjoyed the book, so I was looking forward to it. However, the first third of the book was very difficult for me to get into. It could have been the translation, having initially been written in German, but the text didn't really give me much problems. Especially towards the latter 2/3rds of the book. It was the context of the book that I had issues with. The book is essentially a slight supernatural/fantasy book following along a man named Oscar and his family as they grow up through World War 2 in Poland and Germany, although, the war barely plays a backdrop to the book. The story is really about Oscar and his unique abilities, of which there are a few notable ones. The main ability of his that is the namesake of the book was his relentless drumming from the age of 3 onward. The presence or absence of the drum played a pivotal role throughout the story and was essentially how Oscar was able to communicate with other people at times. Although, the most notable is that Oscar decided to stop growing (for the majority of the book) when he was three years old. He wasn't really a "little person" per se, because he never looked any older than a three year old. And although he was a self described genius, he often would act like a three year old at random times throughout the book. After a while this made Oscar not become the "hero" of the story, but a rather self-centered jackass, with less than noble morals. This all made him a not terribly likable character, performing various murders and rapes throughout the book. The prose of the novel was beautifully written but it did not allow for a smooth reading experience, forcing me as the reader, to take my time and read through it carefully. This resulted in being able to only read the book for short snippets of time, because otherwise I would get tired of trying to keep up with it. I actually think this book would be much better as an audiobook, reducing the mental concentration required. Overall, I would say that the story became entertaining, but was frequently frustrating, and I don't think I can recommend this but some people would probably enjoy it.

The 306 Greatest Books #161 - To The Lighthouse

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. The book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

I was initially excited to read To The Lighthouse, mainly because the name of Virginia Woolf has become more popular than her own writing with the popularity of the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? To The Lighthouse though, turned my expectations very quickly from excited to blasé. At first the book had a very straightforward narrative, but then Woolf would just kind of wander off. It was like trying to keep track of an ADHD kid. One minute she would be on track, following her plot line, but then her thought pattern would be off in a different direction. Eventually she would circle back around and follow up on her initial thread but it made it very difficult for me to follow because when she wandered off, so did my mind. The book is broken up into three sections, with this wandering most noticeable, for me, in the first section. The second part took a dramatic change in tone and style, acting like a fast-forward montage of sorts. The third part then ended up with a similar tone as the first. Eventually, I was able to follow along with the book fairly well and I got pretty invested with the characters. The second section hooked me in. The book, to me, seemed like a push back from the rampant misogynistic attitudes of the day, with the characters having to deal with an overly aggressive (at times) father/husband. The wife, Mrs. Ramsay, is the focal point of the book, despite her not being in the book that much. At times she seems completely aloof, and others, she seems very self-centered, but it is around her which the other characters are drawn to and must learn how to live when she is not around. The most impacted character is Lily Briscoe, a neighbor and burgeoning painter. She ends up being our focal character, through which we see the majority of Mrs. Ramsay's impact. It is an interesting read, and one that would definitely benefit from multiple readings, but in general it feels like the writing style in this this one was not for me.

The 306 Greatest Books #156 - Leaves of Grass

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. This book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

I jumped into Leaves of Grass expecting Thoreau, because I love Thoreau. But alas, I have discovered Whitman seems to be more akin to Emerson, at least in my opinion. Since there are so many versions of Leaves of Grass, I chose to read a reprinting of the original 1855 edition, not the numerous updated and expanded editions that Whitman came out with afterwards. I had high hopes for the book because I do enjoy reading poetry but Leaves of Grass started off on a sour note for me. The preface to the story was practically nonsensical. I made the mistake of attempting to start the book while being very tired, however nothing made any sense and I put it down. I waited to start the book another day and I was able to understand more of it, but the story didn't follow what I was expecting from a book entitled "Leaves of Grass". The preface was about America, and poets, and how great poets are, and it was weird. Turns out Whitman had a bit of an ego. Finally, we delve into the actual poetry and I found snippets of lines that I loved, like this stanza:

"Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself."

But overall the poem seemed like a massive list of things Whitman has seen. He lists various occupations, and various types of faces, and different types of people he has seen, and it's all a bit much without any real story to go along with it. I appreciate his views on the world, about how he felt men and women were equal (as far as I could tell) even in the 1800's. I liked when he had story threads sprinkled here and there in the poem but it wasn't enough to maintain my attention. When I read stories that become a bit hard to follow, I tend to mentally wander and I had to go back multiple times throughout this to gather what was being said. I would say that this was a poem that one needs to read multiple times to fully comprehend, however I don't think I could go back and do that again.

The 306 Greatest Books #153 - One Hundred Years of Solitude

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This book can be found on the Norwegian, Observer, BBC, and My Book Lists.

I found myself constantly comparing One Hundred Years of Solitude to Marquez's other work on the list that I read almost 12 years ago, Love in the Time of Cholera. You can definitely get a feeling for Marquez's style between the two books. I have to say though, that between the two, Love in the Time of Cholera was a much easier book to get in to, but One Hundred Years of Solitude was the more impactful. To sum it up One Hundred Years of Solitude was fascinating, horrifying, hilarious, depressing, intriguing, and by the end, I couldn't put it down. The story is about a fictional South American town named Macondo that was founded by the couple José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Buendía. Within the story we follow the development of the Buendía family, and despite how large or small the town gets, eventually turning into a thriving metropolis, we never really feel that because of the focus on this family. However, the family mirrors the effects of the town; as the town grows, so does the family, as the town shrinks, so does the family. One of the first things we learn about the family though is that there are issues with the family, specifically incest, which comes up again and again, which is one of those things that is rather horrifying in the story. The story, though, is about cycles, and how everything changes, yet everything stays the same. 

One of the hardest parts of the story to get through was the names of the characters. The story was written where time kind of bounced all over. Even the first sentence of the book begins with an illusion to what would happen halfway through the narrative. But the names of the characters were all either identical or very, very similar, making keeping track of who was who extremely difficult at times. By the end I still couldn't remember who was who's daughter/grandmother/aunt. But it works in the context of the story. The Buendía family is constantly making the same mistakes, constantly rehashing the same issues, through several generations, and by renaming their kids after either the patriarch José Arcadio or Aureliano (I believe there was at least 22 Aurelianos mentioned by the end of the story), it got to be rather confusing. This was not an easy book to read because of that. I could only read about 20 pages a night because I kept having to go back and rereading to figure out who was who as time slowly marched on through the story, bouncing back and forth as it went. The chapter breaks generally covered a different person within the generations as they progressed through life as well. So by the time I got to the end of the story, I immediately wanted to jump back to the beginning to see how it all tied together. This is a definite reread story, to catch all the hints about later parts of the story in the earlier sections. It is a story about time, where time doesn't seem to be happening. It is a fascinating tale and a definite one on my must read list, but it is work to get through, if you want to get everything out of it.

The 306 Greatest Books #147 - Things Fall Apart

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. This book can be found on the Norwegian, Observer, and My Book Lists. 

Before ever reading this book, I was enamored by the title. Things Fall Apart is a truly fantastic title because it encompasses a whole lot of information with only three words. The story is also incredibly short, taking me less than a week to read with my version (the Everyman's Library hardcover) only having 180 pages. For the book itself I am terribly conflicted on how I feel. The first half of the book deals with the main character, Okonkwo, who lives within a tribal village in Africa. This story is his story, and we get to see life primarily from his point of view. My first problem though, is that he is a horribly unlikable character, however this could easily be a cultural thing. Within the story we witness Okonkwo's life from his perspective, where he routinely beats his wife and children and usually it is no big deal. There are times where he does get in trouble for it, but mostly because he does it during a sacred time, not that he actually did it. He also murders a kid early in the story, where it is implied he will see retribution in some form, but it never happens. Looking at Okonkwo's culture in general, it is presented as horribly machismo. If you're not a "man" then essentially you are weak and not worth the ground you will be buried in. I would visualize it as toxic masculinity at its worst, at least from Okonkwo's perspective. However, as you read more and more into the story the reader really gets into their society. It makes sense. And a lot of the things that happen, you as the reader, can go along with and understand. The first half sets up Okonkwo's life and culture and then something happens, which I'm still not terribly sure how it happened, but Okonkwo is exiled for seven years for manslaughter (essentially). And it is at this time that things start to "fall apart". And here is where it really starts to get interesting. I was under the impression while reading the first half, that this story would focus entirely on this African tribe but shortly into the second half of the story we are introduced to the 'white man', whom not many, if any, of the tribe have ever seen before. The white man ends up bringing his church with him and slowly lures people away from their culture, to the point that local tribesmen are doing things that are horrific to their former beliefs.

And this is where I am conflicted. On the one hand, I don't like the main character as a person. But on the other hand the church here is much worse. They basically condemn these people to death in many instances because the church obviously knows better. Not all of the church people are bad, but the good one in the story goes away and much worse people take his place. The reader can easily see that it is the church that basically dismantles this tribe's culture and society. You feel for these people and when 'everything falls apart', it's heartbreaking. The writing style of this book is actually fantastic. It is incredibly easy to read, which is remarkable since it was written in English, the author's second language. It does take a little while to get used to the names of the people, since many of them are written in similar styles, so piecing them apart to discern who is who takes some time. But I caught on fairly quickly. It's similar to Russian writing in this way. Overall, should you read this? A definite yes (I think). It's not a feel good story by any means, but it is an important one. It is a story about the death of a rich African culture, where the reader truly feels that culture, and watches it slip away from them. Where some of the people stand up to fight this change, and they are the ones who are quickly put down, leaving only this new system behind. Heartbreaking to say the least, but important to understand.

The 306 Greatest Books #144 - The Red and the Black

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Red and the Black by Stendhal. This book can be found on the Sybervision and the Norwegian Book Lists.

Before I started reading The Red and the Black I was warned by a friend who kept saying that it really wasn't a good book. This did not get my hopes very high and I kept pushing the book off. However, since I am at the very end of the Sybervision Book List it was time to sit down and read it. The translation I read was that used in the Everyman's Library and was remarkable easy to read. That made the book rather enjoyable, at least at first, because I could jump right into the book without having to get used to the writing style. In regards to the story, I was under the impression (for some reason, I do not know) that this was a war story, similar to War and Peace or Les Miserables. Oh, how wrong I was. Apparently, this turned out to be a "romance" novel, and not one that was very well constructed. The main character, Julien Sorel, goes through two main loves in the book, which the book is divided into two main parts accordingly. Through most novels, the reader is made to feel for the protagonist, and to hope they succeed. Julien, though, was just a pain in the ass. At times he was overly arrogant, at others he was wishy-washy. He wanted one thing on one page, then would flip to the exact opposite the next. And the women he was lusting over had the same problems. The back and forths got to be so bad that I couldn't really care less what happened at any one moment, I just wished the story would progress somewhere, anywhere. I did find the hints of a fascinating story mixed in there though. There was at one point that Julien seemed to get mixed up in the politics of the time (just after the fall of Napoleon), which was the aristocracy versus the church, and he was to travel to England to deliver a message. However, that story-line was dropped so quickly that I had to go back and reread a few pages to find out what happened. That excitement is what gives me hope that the other Stendhal novel on my list, The Charterhouse of Parma, could be a great read, but I'm not holding out too much hope. Overall, the style of writing was very easy to follow and I just flew through this rather long novel, but the story itself kept having me banging my head against the wall. There is no way can I endorse this garbled mess.