The 305 Greatest Books - #192: Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. The book can be found on the Observer Book List.

Having just read Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, I really enjoyed his writing style and wanted to read his other book that was on my list, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Researching it, I discovered it was a children's book and was fairly short (~210 pages), which means I could likely finish it off fairly quickly. Turns out I could, I was able to read the book in four days, so that was the good part. The bad part is that, while it is a fine book, it does not deserve a place anywhere near this list. Within the story, Rushdie combines the feel of Alice in Wonderland and Dr. Seuss to present this whimsical fairy tale where a father and son are sent to save the Sea of Stories from those intent on destroying them. Rushdie litters the prose with jokes and word play, to the point it becomes practically insufferable. And while this is a children's book, the word play I could see giving children a difficult time to delve into the story. It took me a chapter or so before I was comfortable with it. I have run into this issue with the Observer list with numerous of the entries and I am starting to think that the list compiler purposefully chose this book over Rushdie's other works because he wanted something less popular. Overall, even though it is quick, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, despite Rushdie's sometimes clever wordplay. 

The 305 Greatest Books - #190: The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. The book can be found on the Observer Book List.

Ford's dedication letter at the beginning was interesting because he notes that the original title for the book was "The Saddest Story" and he changed the name to The Good Soldier in jest when his publisher requested a new title since the world was within the midst of WWI and they wanted something that would sell better. The book has actually nothing to do with war, or even the acts of a soldier. The principle character, Colonel Edward Ashburnham, just happens to have been a "good soldier" and therefore he became the namesake of the book. The book is written in a stream-of-conscience method which means that the plot line jumps around terribly. And while the story is fairly simple, my brain jumbled up characters, and I could never remember if we found out so-and-so died or if that was one yet to be revealed. I did have to Google some characters deaths because I just couldn't remember if they were mentioned (they were). The story is written in a first person POV by one of the main characters, John Dowell, who relays this story as it was relayed to him. He and the wife of another couple are the surviving members of this pair of rich couples who became the best of friends. However, as the story progresses and we discover how the spouses, as well as other people in their orbit, died, we learn that not everything was as straightforward as the author initially made it sound. And while the story was interesting I found it hard to empathize with these rich people who had nothing to do all day. Besides that, the passage of time has rendered a lot of this tragedy to become not as bad as other books, and in many instances real life, have portrayed. And so while it is an interesting story, and enjoyable if you can keep the plot threads straight, I wouldn't consider this one of the best stories every written but not a bad summer book read.

The 305 Greatest Books - #187: The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The book can be found on the Observer, BBC, and My Book Lists.

This is one of those books I would classify as your standard middle school novel, that I however was never tasked to read. Even though I had never read this before, this is one of those stories that has permeated society to the point that many (most?) people could give you a generalized overview of the story. The story follows a group of boys who are stranded on a deserted island and how their "society" degrades from there. What I was not expecting, but makes sense, is that this is a dystopian novel about essentially the aftereffects of a nuclear war. Comments had been made almost in passing throughout the novel, but it was interesting how the reader is bounced around between some hopeful characters interacting with those who "know" more about what has been going on in the world. On top of all that is just the general fall of society into barbarism with certain members of society fighting back against it with rules and those members losing over time to the more aggressive, violent members of society. I found the debates between the different members of society to be the most interesting, since these are life and death debates in their world and yet also brought down to a child's level. Absolutely wonderfully written. It is so easy to fly through the story (it being extraordinarily short helps), and it is gripping. I flew through the whole thing in less than a week and read half of it in about a day. It was also much darker and gruesome than I was anticipating for a story where children are the focus. There is some notable geological problems with the story, which also gets me giddy all over. However, overall, this book was a lot of fun and one that I would highly recommend. 

The 305 Greatest Books - #182: Wise Children by Angela Carter

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is Wise Children by Angela Carter. The book can be found on the Observer Book List. 

I went into this book expecting a nice short read and got something I definitely wasn't expecting. The story follows the interpersonal familial relationships of Dora Chance, twin sister to Nora and child of another set of twins, Melchior and Peregrine Hazard. The question of which twin they are the children of is up for discussion during the text and becomes one of the major plot points. But that is not all, the story generally follows the lives of Nora and Dora through Dora's recollections as she thinks back on her life. While we are traveling through her life we also get hoards of other family jumping in and out of the story. To the point that I was very lost as to who was who and how everyone was related. I did find a family tree online after the fact, and there was a dramatis persona at the end of the book (because everything in it is a huge spoiler for the book), and while the dramatis persona helped, the family tree would have helped me much much more. The story though bounces around quite a bit, making it difficult to follow who is who and what their relationship is in everything. Add into all of that that the author doesn't always spell out who is who, or waits to do it. So sometimes the reader is just left wondering if they missed something. For instance, a main character is just identified as "Wheelchair" for a good chunk of the book but takes forever to tell us who she actually is. I noticed online that this book is noted for it's open feminism and support of the women's liberation movement and that is a definite plus in my eye, however this book definitely has one major flaw that is insurmountable for me to get past. And that is the raging incest throughout the book. While some interfamilial relations were frowned upon in the book (rightfully so), others such as cousins and niece-uncle were not only not frowned upon but celebrated in the end. It became overly much. There was also comments about slaughtering a pet pig and eating it after the owner died that pushed me over the edge. And so while I feel it has some strengths to it, I can't recommend it for many reasons. 

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 - #179: Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor. The book can be found on the Observer and My Book Lists.

In general, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont took me by surprise. It is a fairly short book, with the version I read being just under 200 pages, which is what prompted me to read this book on my list; a quick break while I read through a much longer book. The premise of the story is about an older woman, Mrs. Palfrey, who was looking for a place to live while she was no longer able to, or no longer wanted to, live on her own but had not yet reached the stage of needing a nursing home. The Claremont then became her home, a hotel with a bunch of long time residence, mostly all older in age. One day, while she was walking home, she slips outside a young man's apartment, Ludo, who helped her up and eventually became the replacement for her negligent grandson. And this gets to the core of the story. Mrs. Palfrey is living a lonely existence. Her daughter and grandson have essentially abandoned her and she has no one. And while loneliness may seem at the heart of the story, it was also a rather funny story. Making this a seriously hard book to peg down. I had laughed out loud during several instances of the story. The core of the story is about how older people just kind of get ignored in our society (even back in the 1920's when this takes place) and left to their own devices, forgotten and ignored. But they aren't the only ones. Ludo was also dealing with his own loneliness. As well as all of the characters. They all had their own "things" they were dealing with, leaving everyone to feel all by themselves. As the story wrapped up, it ended with a profound sense of loss and sadness in a situation that I don't wish on anyone but I know countless people go through everyday. The book was excellently written and a joy to go through, with each heart breaking moment counterbalanced with a laugh. I have to recommend this book because it was so, so good. But in the end, it definitely was not an uplifting story at all, but an accurate one about life. Also note that Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is not written by the actor Elizabeth Taylor, but the author Elizabeth Taylor, who are two distinctly different people (as far as I can tell). 

The 306 Greatest Books #178 - The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. The book can be found on the Observer Book List.

The version of The Thirty-Nine Steps that I had purchased was marketed as one of the best mysteries of all time, so I was excited because I love a good mystery. The book was also incredibly short, barely passing 120 pages in the hardcover version I had, making all the more appealing to me. However, the story immediately set me off, being rather antisemitic in several of comments throughout the first chapter. The first chapter was also very difficult to follow with characters written as if they were talking with an accent making it difficult to read and understand. I have trouble enough listening to people's accents and understanding them, I don't need to read them and also not understand them. Although, after the first chapter, the story kicked into high gear and was fairly straightforward to follow along with. Accents were limited and the story was clear cut. I do feel like I missed a chunk of the purpose that was mixed into the first chapter and by the time I got to the end I felt like I missed some parts along the way. The book is set shortly before the outbreak to World War I with a person in an apartment building being murdered, while the guy who's room he escapes to is essentially framed for that murder. Police are involved trying to track him down as well as a shadowy organization. Overall, it was alright and at times very unbelievable. I wouldn't equate it as a "great" mystery by any stretch of the imagination, but it was short and fun and fairly easy to read although I still don't know if I missed parts or they were being purposely obtuse. 

The 306 Greatest Books #175 - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas. The book can be found on the Observer, BBC, and My Book List.

The Count of Monte Cristo actually ended up being one of the longer books that I have read at 1,200 pages, which doesn't seem that long compared to some books, but this was a densely typed up book for those 1,200 pages. And although it was very long, and took me three continuous months to read, I actually greatly enjoyed it. The story follows Edward Dantès, who gets accused of a crime and locked away for many years. While in solitary confinement he befriends an abbe who is also locked up and helps him to not only escape but how to unearth a vast treasure. Upon his escape he plans meticulously at retribution against those that have wronged him. And while the story could potentially get tedious, it never actually does. It remains fresh and enjoyable throughout. The beginning part of the story takes place during the exile and eventual return of Napoleon, a period of time in French history that I am not as well acquainted with, and I found this little insight from the French point of view fascinating and how these events helped shape what the story became. My favorite parts were towards the beginning, while he is in prison, but even the latter half that turns into a Jane Austin novel, are also remarkably fun and enjoyable. My biggest problem was just keeping everyone straight and who did what to who and how they all are related to Edward, or the Count of Monte Cristo, as he eventually became known. Overall, this was an excellently paced novel and very well written, and I am putting it on my personal greatest books list as a recommend. 

The 306 Greatest Books #174 - Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. The book can be found on the Observer Book List.

Jim Dixon is a first year college professor who seems to be on the verge of losing his job and keeps blundering at any attempts to make things better. On the surface this would seem like an ideal book for me as a former college professor who did also only teach for one year (through no fault of my own though, as I was only hired as a one year temporary fill-in). The book is surprisingly funny and often subtle about it's humor. The characters are all extremely well written and you very quickly get the sense of what each character is and how you should feel about them. And even though the book is slightly male-orientated and misogynistic, it's actually far better than many contemporary works that are hailed far more than this book is. So, overall, I enjoyed reading this. I do however have a problem with it being considered one of the "100 Greatest Books of all time". It's not. I mean it is a good book, and an enjoyable read, but I would classify it as "fine". There is nothing overly special about the book and nothing to write home about. I would recommend it as a quick, humorous, look at the life of a first-year college professor, but other than that it's really just a burner book, read it and move on.

The 306 Greatest Books #173 - Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. The book can be found on the Observer and BBC Book Lists.

The phrase "Catch-22" has become transcendent from the original novel from which it was sparked but I never fully understood what a "Catch-22" was or how exactly it originated. I knew that it was something that was impossible because of conflicting events. You couldn't do A unless you did B first, but you couldn't do B unless you did A first. So it ends up being something impossible. However, I have now learned what it means in respect to the novel. Catch-22 is a war novel set during the latter days of World War II. In here a "Catch-22" is something that happens in response to a soldier trying to get discharged from the army because they was felt they were mentally unfit, or in essence "crazy". All one had to do was go to the doctor and tell them you were crazy to get discharged. However, if you were able to tell the doctor that you were crazy, then you had to be sane enough to know that, and so you were not in fact crazy and therefore couldn't be discharged. The story of the novel itself plays out much like a M*A*S*H or an F Troop (if anyone still remembers those shows) which are all satirical military stories. Throughout the novel there constantly are incidents and conversations that are downright laugh out loud funny. But as the novel proceeds, you can tell that the tone shifts from humorous to more serious as many of the main characters start to die or be killed off. It is an interesting take on the genre and one that I was fully invested in. At least, at first. As I proceeded through the novel I noticed that the vast majority of the characters were all male, most of whom were white, which would make sense for the time period and setting it was set in. However, all of the women in the story were either prostitutes or treated as such. All of them barely had any dialogue, if any at all, and most of them were treated in the worst ways possible. Sexual assault was treated as a joke while rape and murder were blown off by the local police because the woman didn't matter. The blatant misogyny was a bit overwhelming, but not only that but the complete disregard for women at all in the novel. They were set pieces to be used or abused as needed and then discarded when their time was over. And so while I can understand why this could be considered a great novel of its time, it has not weathered the test of time very well and I can't recommend that people wade into it unless they really want to. 

 

The 306 Greatest Books #170 - The Plague by Albert Camus

 The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Plague by Albert Camus. The book can be found on the Observer and My Book Lists.

Despite this book being added to a 100 greatest books list that was compiled in 2003, it is more perfectly timed for right now than any other book I have read on any of the lists. It feels as if it were made for the "post Covid times" (whether we have reached that yet or not) and fits into the narrative that we all have been living for the last two years. Based on the cholera epidemic of the 1800's, the book takes place in the French Algerian city of Oran during the 1940's (I assume post WWII). The story starts off with first hand accounts of rats dropping dead all over the city and proceeds from there into full lockdowns and hospital clinics being overwhelmed. You can physically match the trajectory of the story to the Covid pandemic (without the rats) and as each phase was entered in the story I was able to place that in our own timeframe. With the narrative set up through the use of first hand accounts and journal articles it also feels phenomenally like World War Z, however the similarities do diverge as this story progresses and the reliance on journal articles and first hand accounts is not as pronounced. The entire story is also guided by an unknown narrator, whom we find out who is at the end of the story. It is an enjoyable story and one I would actually recommend, more so now than probably I would have 3 years ago.  

The 306 Greatest Books #169 - On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The book can be found on the Observer and BBC Book Lists.

As one of the seminal books of the Beat Generation, On the Road gets a sort of larger than life impression every time that I hear about it. Before I started the book I had thought it was a sort of autobiography/life lessons tale and that is sort of how it turned up after I read it. The book is essentially an autobiography, except with the names changed and, as far as I am aware, some of the circumstances adjusted for the narrative. The book essentially follows Sal Paradise in the first person role (standing in for Kerouac himself), along with the other prominent figure in the book, Dean Moriarty, standing in for his real life friend Neal Cassady. The narrative is broken up into 5 parts, each of which encompasses a unique cross country trip where Sal "just has to get away". Often times the trips are hitchhiking, bus travel, or driving a car into the dirt, and all of them are with Dean along with an assortment of other characters that come and go throughout the narrative. Taking place in the mid 1940's, post war, we are getting a different picture of America than we have today. Yes, things are cheaper, such as gas, but people are making much less and we see into the lives of those on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. We live with them through the book and talk to them and really get a sense about who they are and what matters to them. That along with the prose, which is absolutely riveting, really draws you into the story. The style of the book is written based on a rambling, run-on letter that Kerouac once received from Cassady with the sentences sometimes going on and on, and other times being cut rather short. Ideas, themes, and questions are often brought up in the story and then immediately dropped, never to be answered or even acknowledged again. Kerouac's descriptions though, and his often poetic prose, makes this a beauty to read with bits and pieces of contemplative fiction and philosophy creeping in that is often profound in its take. 

With all that being said, there is a major negative to the book. And that is that it's content is often homophobic, racist, misogynistic, pedophiliac, and probably lots of other negative adjectives that I can't think of at the moment. It's like these characters dive into these worlds of sex and drugs and are still able to pick out the negative stereotypes about everything. But it is weird, in that they "love" those stereotypes so it is a kind of "romanticized racism". With all of the gay characters in the book it is also super weird at how homophobic the book really is, however reading outside the book, I found out that Kerouac was rather a homophobe himself despite having almost all of his friends it seems in the LGTBQIA community. And although the book is often romanticized about it's "get out and see life" message, I see it as a tragedy, with the character of Dean slowly destroying his life through one method or another, and a character that could seriously have used medical and therapy intervention that could have perhaps helped with his constant downward spiral throughout the book. He gets to the point where he is often characterized as not being able to speak or make a sensical thought by the end of the book. If anything I see this book as a warning, and not necessarily a romantic adventure book. Overall, I would say that despite the beautiful prose, and the fantastic look at America in that time period, it is hard to recommend given all of the negatives throughout the plot and I would have to say unless you are really interested in reading it you could likely skip is and be fine.  

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 #164 - If on a winter's night a traveler

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino. The book can be found on the Observer and My Book Lists.

If on a winter's night a traveler has to be one of the most unique books I have ever read, especially on this list. When thinking about how to categorize the book, I found it very difficult to place it within any category, however if push came to shove I would say that this is a mystery. The mystery for the story is that the main character, often just called the Reader, is trying to find the conclusion of story that he started reading but was missing from the book. During the process he discovers another Reader, whom he teams up with and they end up trying to hunt down the missing text together, only to come across a whole host of uncompleted books. The weird part about the story, is that at times the book is written as if it were talking to us, the audience. But at other times the author treats the book as a book, with the characters acting as one would normally act within a book. It's weird. Chapter one of the book started off so unexpectedly that I had to check a few times to make sure I wasn't reading an introduction:

"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade...."

But after some flipping around the book I soon discovered that, yes, this is indeed how the book is going to go. I thought it was going to be a rather meta reading into the book, when it ends up shifting topics part of the way through, and eventually morphs into that mystery I mentioned. Although it does play with the meta part quite frequently, delving into what you are reading and treating the story as if that is what the Reader is discovering about the book he is hunting for. It feels almost as if this book were written for authors, and that authors would be the ones to get the greatest enjoyment out of it. But otherwise the text was extremely easy to read, at least in the translation I was using. I found I was able to read this book for longer periods of time and at a much faster pace than I am with many of the books on this list. The book was also fairly short, only about 250 pages. So, all in all, a definite recommend, especially for the unconventional nature of the story.  

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 #162 - Men Without Women

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway. The book can be found on the Observer Book List.

Before coming into this book, I had been a big fan of Hemingway's longer works. This is mainly because they were the first real "literature" I had ever attempted to read on my own, including A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. However, I haven't read one of his books in a long time. Men Without Women was the last book of his on any of my lists that I had still left to read and I was confused at first. Apparently, this is a short story collection, and a rather short one at that. I hadn't even realized he had short story collections. In total, the book barely is more than 100 pages long and is comprised of 14 short stories, with two being over 20 pages, making most of the remaining stories 5 to 10 pages long at most. The stories were all written before his longer, more well known works, but most of the stories still seemed to hold the Hemingway style that I had grown to love. His writing style is beyond compare. He is able to draw you into a story very quickly and keep you there with just the beauty of his prose. But since these are some of his earlier works they do feel a bit rougher than his later, more polished works. Within the book, the longer stories are some of the best ones, like "The Undefeated" and "Fifty Grand". His stories clearly are based around situations he knows, like boxing and bull fighting, but I had come to realize something about Hemingway while reading through these stories, as well as reading about the background behind the book. As you can see, the book is titled Men Without Women, and that "without women" part is plainly clear to me now. As I read elsewhere, Hemingway is a great writer, however his focal characters are generally men, and white men at that. Besides white men though, he doesn't do the characters any justice, and in this short story collection, he often just leaves out any, or all, other characters all together. He is also racist and dismissive, and even in one instance it appears homophobic, but the moral of that one story seemed hazy in the end. Overall, I like Hemingway's writing, but I feel these short stories did not age well with the times. I could do without the clearly racist language and undertones, even if they were minor parts of the books, they were still glaring by their inclusion.

The 306 Greatest Books #160 - The Big Sleep

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. The book can be found on the Observer Book List.

The Big Sleep returns me to the detective noir genre, taking place during the Great Depression with a detective named Philip Marlowe. The feel of the novel was very similar to The Maltese Falcon, however Hammett has something that Chandler lacks. In The Big Sleep I never felt this overwhelming urge to drive on through the novel like I did with The Maltese Falcon. I definitely had the voice-over effect in my head though. Marlowe was narrating the entire story, and that part was enjoyable, with his random quips being generally pretty funny. However, I had a problem with the general premise of the story. This is likely because of my time compared to civilization back then, but it still irked me and I would likely have put the book down never to be picked up again if it weren't for this list. The story begins with Marlowe being asked to find out information on an extortion racket. This later gets expanded upon with multiple murders, fights, and the sneaking around that you would expect from a good detective thriller. However, the overall misogynistic and anti-homosexual context of the story was too much for me to bear. The women in the story were either hyper-sexualized, dumb as rocks, or pointless. The attitude towards the gay characters made them out to be seen as less than dirt who didn't deserve any justice that they may need or want, and it made me angry and sick while reading. So overall, while I could have seen that this novel may have once had a place in history, that is where it now belongs, in the dustbins of history.

The 306 Greatest Books #158 - The Periodic Table

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. The book can be found on the Observer and My Book Lists.

Starting out this book was an enigma for me. I initially assumed it had something to do with the formation of the Periodic Table. Then upon reading a general book description I was immediately expecting an autobiographical account of a Holocaust survivor similar to Elie Wiesel's Night. This was nothing of the sort. I think Levi best sums up the book in his own words towards the end of the book:

"...I was in search of events, mine and those of others ... to see if I could convey to the layman the strong and bitter flavor of our trade (as chemists).... I was more interested in the stories of the solitary chemistry, unarmed and on foot ... who confronted matter without aids, with their brains and hands, reason and imagination." 

That is in essence what the book was about. It was a series of stories, some of them assumed to be autobiographical, and some of them clearly not, all within a framing story of a different element. Each chapter was laid out with the title of that element and the story that followed had something to do with it. Levi was a Holocaust survivor, however his trials during his time in the camps were largely left out of the book. He mentions them as being memoir-ed in other works of his so they were skipped over here. It was like a series of bedtime stories, with a thread that worked it's way through the whole book. More often than not, I hate short stories. But this book didn't work in that way. It worked as a narrative. His various other stories, outside of his autobiography, added heart and soul and a realness to the book by sometimes being a bit fantastical in themselves. The book was surprisingly funny and upbeat, despite the dire circumstances at times, but it was also moving and sentimental. You don't find out much about Levi's personal life, except in relation to the elemental story he is telling at the particular moment. The best part of the book had to be the Chromium chapter, which was surprising and hilarious, and a pretty much self contained story within the greater narrative. Overall, I would say this was a fantastic, engrossing read. The only weak part was the first chapter which felt like a drudge to get through with all of Levi's relatives ever listed out, who never reappeared in the story at all. But once you get past that part the rest was smooth sailing.

The 306 Greatest Books #157 - Brave New World

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  This book can be found on the BBC, Observer, and My Book Lists.

Brave New World can be pictured as the original dystopian-future novel. Written in 1931, Brave New World envisions a world 600 years in the future where the principles of Henry Ford, of the Model T fame, have been taken to the extreme with human beings being produced on assembly lines and natural birth almost all but eliminated. It is definitely a unique view on the future I had not anticipated. Having seen many dystopian movies and read other dystopian novels this was interesting to go back and look at what the future looked like from a 1930's perspective. The "advanced" technology is exactly as you would envision 1930's "advanced" technology to be, kind of steam-punkish, not the technology of today. And it is less technologically advanced as more biologically advanced. In this future they have perfected making a society were nobody wants more in their station of life, by making sure people manufactured for their particular station. This means that many people are dumbed-down to feel better in more menial tasks and some are allowed to excel beyond these menial tasks. The story shows us how a kid who grew up in the "savage lands", a reservation exempt from this "utopia", would feel in such a land and how this utopia. Although referred to by the derogatory term of "Savage", I believe Huxley's point was to portray him as one of us thrust into this "utopia" of sorts and how we would feel in such a world. I would say my only major gripes with the novel was his depiction of women, who were essentially relegated to being sex-hungry, mindless, pieces of meat added as something for the main character to "deal" with, not as characters in their own right. But other than that the story was intriguing, wholly engrossing, and flowed nicely. I breezed through the novel much quicker than I was ever anticipating. I would definitely place this on my recommend list.

The 306 Greatest Books #155 - Scoop

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. This book can be found on the Observer Book List.

Scoop was not what I was expecting, however I was pleasantly surprised. The story is set up like a 1930's/1940's comedy movie with several people having the same last name getting all shuffled together in different circumstances. The main part of the story dealt with a naturalist/country bumpkin being employed as a war correspondent in the fictional country of Ishmaelia. The country was embroiled in unrest, and had been plagued by an influx of reporters. The story, though was surprisingly funny. I laughed out loud at several points in the story and in general greatly enjoyed it. My only issue with the story was the racism that seemed to be spread throughout the story. It definitely felt like a period piece including the racism of the time, but I had hoped for more. The country of  Ishmaelia was located somewhere within northern Africa and felt like a caricature of an African country instead of a legitimate location. Even though I enjoyed the book, it didn't really feel like a "great work of literature". It felt like pulp fiction that one reads and then forgets about. Overall, I would say that the story was enjoyable but forgettable.