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 #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 #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 genra, 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 #159 - Magician

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Magician by Raymond E. Feist. The book can be found on the BBC Book List.

After having read a few of the more historical fiction novels, I was in the mood for a fantasy novel. Looking through my list I found Magician, which even though it was a rather long book (at over 800 pages), it seemed like it would be a fun read. The book itself is set on the world of Midkemia in an age that resembles our Medieval time period mixed with the world of Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings vibe actually struck a little too strongly. There is a land of elves, who are all very long lived, dwarfs, who live under mountains, goblins, wizards, and even a dragon on a pile of gold. It was so jarring at times that it seemed that Feist took the premise and characters of Lord of the Rings, placed them in a jar, shook them up, and spilled them onto the page for his set dressing. This was all disturbed when a race of aliens comes in through a rift in space. They begin to attack Midkemia, prompting a war that encompasses nearly the entire novel. I don't know if this rift in space was so different from the Lord of the Rings vibe that was set up but it felt off. I had a hard time reconciling this alien world with the medieval one already set up, and it took me a very long time through the story to feel like they belonged together. Looking at the characters in the book, there are many who appear throughout most of the story, however the primary character is Pug, a magician's apprentice. The story ends up taking place over more than a decade causing us to witness Pug go from apprentice to a full-fledged magician. It was Pug's interactions with both worlds on either side of the rift that made this novel enjoyable. While it took me a while to get into many of the other characters, I picked up on Pug the quickest. It was Pug's journey that made me care about the other characters and it was once he comes into his own that I really started to enjoy the book. Since the book was so long it felt like a slow crawl at times to get through, even though it is a fairly easy read and rather quick, but the Lord of the Rings aspects kept pulling me out of the story. It took until about 3/4's of the way through the book until I became fully enraptured and really started to plow through it. Even though I had a slow start to the book I am excited now to continue the series through the large number of sequels that have since been published.