Books!

#13. Read a select list of classic literature.


13.1: The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, finished on 12/26/15 (214 pages)

I never read this in high school, and it seemed like a book I always heard references from. I read my dad's edition that HE read in high school, and it took me less than a week to finish it. I love having free time to read for pleasure!!
But, I digress. Salinger's style of writing is not what I'm used to reading, so it actually took a fair amount of concentration to make sure I knew what was happening. I can't say I relate too much to Holden Caulfield's character, but I didn't find him as whiny as much as I was told I might. The reference in the last chapter of Holden now receiving some sort of talk therapy from a psychoanalyst was a bit of a curve ball at the end. I can only imagine that as a young man kicked out of his third-ish school, his parents sought help for him once he went home.
Mostly, I found this a very easy and also interesting read! However, I am a more of a plot-oriented kind of girl when I read books, and the narrative wasn't so much my style. My favorite quote from the book was the following, as Holden was visiting a former teacher in NYC near the end of the book:
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." (pg. 188)

13.2: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, finished on 5/18/16 (492 pages)

I'm typing this at almost 1 in the morning on the day that I leave for a 5 day trip to Canada. "Why, Sophie," (you might ask) "why are you up so late? Could you really just not wait until you got back to write this blog post?"
"Well," (I would answer) "there are three reasons for this:"
1. Earlier tonight a cockroach disrupted my impending bed time and I am now wide awake from that encounter (and the sore throat from screaming, smell of Raid in my room and the Febreeze that's trying to cover it up, and possibility that there is another bug lurking somewhere...).
2. It is raining REALLY hard outside--absolutely pouring--and that's also sort of keeping me awake.
3. My melatonin hasn't kicked in yet.
4. You're right, I didn't want to wait to write this blog post.
So, here we are. Crime and Punishment was a book that almost everyone I met recommended I read. Keeping with the idea of reading old editions, I swiped the copy from our family library that my mom read in high school. She even wrote notes in the margins! It was pretty cool to see what she was thinking while reading this in an English class many years ago.
The type of writing was really different than what I'm used to. One of the many reasons for that is every character seemed to have multiple names (formal vs. informal vs. nickname maybe?). This was confusing at first, but after about 100 pages I got the hang of it. For example, the main character was Raskolnikov, but he also went by Rodya and (maybe in more formal settings?) Rodion Romanovitch. Why do you need so many names?? (Seriously, if anyone can shed light on this, I would appreciate it very much!)
Another thing that struck me was the treatment of his close acquaintances by Raskolnikov. He didn't seem to treat them very well, but they still hung around! Interesting, considering how much he had on the line.
Here are a couple of favorite quotes:
~ "Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was forty-three, her face still retained traces of her former beauty; she looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age. We may add in parenthesis that to preserve all this is the only means of retaining beauty to old age."(pg. 185)
~ "...ghosts are as it were shreds and fragments of other worlds, the beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see them, because he is above all a man of this earth and is bound for the sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But as soon as one is ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the organism is broken, one begins to realise the possibility of another world; and the more seriously ill one is, the closer becomes one's contact with that other world, so that as soon as the man dies he steps straight into that world." (pg. 260-1)
~ "But if you are convinced that...one may murder old women at one's pleasure, you'd better be off to America and make haste." (pg. 435)

13.3: Animal Farm by George Orwell, finished on 6/26/16 (128 pages)

This is another book that I heard a lot about but never read. I borrowed our family's copy and it was a really quick read. I really enjoyed it not only for the content but the style of writing and also for the easy-to-understand explanation of totalitarianism. It's such an easy read that if you haven't read it yet, you should! Some favorite lines follow:
~"All that year the animals worked like slaves. But they were happy in their work; they grudged no effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything that they did was for the benefit of themselves and those of their kind who would come after them, and not for a pack of idle, thieving human beings." (pg. 63)
~"...Squealer told them that the pigs had to expand enormous labours every day upon mysterious things called "files," "reports," "minutes," and "memoranda." These were large sheets of paper which had to be closely covered with writing, and as soon as they were so covered, they were burnt in the furnace." (pg. 119)

13.4: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, finished on 9/4/16 (471 pages)

This was the first Hemingway I read and while it wasn't written in a difficult style to read, it was a bit quirky. Overall an enticing read and it kept my attention, maybe bordering on one of my more favorite books thus far. And, it gave me an opportunity to practice a little bit of my Spanish. Some favorite lines...
~"To worry was as bad as to be afraid. It simply made things more difficult." (pg. 9)
~"Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond." (pg. 313)
~"In their steel helmets, riding in the trucks in the dark toward something that they only knew was an attack, their faces were drawn with each man's own problem in the dark and the light revealed them as they would not have looked in day, from shame to show it to each other, until the bombardment and the attack would commence, and no man would think about his face.
Andres now passing them truck after truck, Gomez still keeping successfully ahead of the following staff car, did not think any of this about their faces. He only thought, "What an army. What equipment. What a mechanization. Vaya gente! Look at such people. Here we have the army of the Republic. Look at them. Camion after camion. All uniformed alike. All with casques of steel on their heads. Look at the maquinas rising from the trucks against the coming of planes. Look at the army that has been builded!""

13.5: 1984 by George Orwell, finished on 12/18/16 (245 pages)

Another Orwell book, and this one was also on a list of books to read now that Donald Trump is our president-elect (http://www.newsweek.com/nine-must-read-books-age-donald-trump-520589). While that was just a coincidence--I started 1984 in September--I now understand why it's on the list. Though it's short, my attention was kept throughout, minus a bit of a bog-down in the middle. But keep going! It's definitely worth it at the end. 
~"The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect." (pg. 46)
~"Any kind of organized revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. He wondered vaguely how many others like her there might be in the younger generation--people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog." (pg. 109)
~"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent." (pg. 157)
~(On power:) "...Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself." (pg. 220)

13.6: Kindred by Octavia Butler, finished on 12/22/16 (264 pages)

I haven't read a book this quickly since I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007. This book was recommended to me by my former high school English teacher to break the trend of reading books only by old white men, and wow was it amazing. I finished it in 3 days, and I highly recommend everyone read it. Though it was the hardest book to find (I couldn't find it in any bookstore, though I realized after reading it that maybe I was looking in the wrong sections in the bookstore), Amazon and Tim came to the rescue and gave me the book for Christmas. I didn't keep track of any quotes, but go read it. NOW.

13.7: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, finished on 1/14/17 (165 pages)

Even though this book was shorter than most of the others, it took me a while to finish. Not because it was boring or didn't grab my attention, but because it sort of throws you into the middle of this society where things are REALLY different, and you don't know why until you start reading. But, a good book to read especially at a time when freedom of press could be in danger.
~The front door opened slowly. Faber peered out, looking very old in the light and very fragile and very much afraid. The old man looked as if he had not been out of the house in years. He and the white plaster walls inside were much the same. There was white in the flesh of his mouth and his cheeks and his hair was white and his eyes had faded, with white in the vague blueness there. Then his eyes touched on the book under Montag's arm and he did not look so old any more and not quite as fragile. Slowly, his fear went. (pg. 80)
~The beetle was rushing. The beetle was roaring. The beetle raised its speed. The beetle was whining. The beetle was in high thunder. The beetle came skimming. The beetle came in a single whistling trajectory, fired from an invisible rifle. It was up to 120 mph. It was up to 130 at least. Montag clamped his jaws. The heat of the racing headlights burnt his cheeks, it seemed, and jittered his eyelids and flushed the sour sweat out all over his body. (pg. 127)

13.8: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, finished on 10/22/17 (853 pages)

Anna Karenina was the book I brought with me to Europe to read, so it took me about 4 months to finish this one. I loved it. Tolstoy writes in a way that captures your attention, and even though there are many characters to keep track of, I was enthralled the entire time.
~Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him detracted from the beauty of what he saw. (pg. 261)
~Gazing at this pitiful little bit of humanity, Levin searched his soul in vain for some trace of paternal feeling. He could feel nothing but aversion. But when it was undressed and he caught a glimpse of wee, wee little tomato-coloured hands and feet with fingers and toes--the big one distinguishable from the others even--and saw Lizaveta Petrovna bending the sticking-up little arms as if they were soft springs and encasing them in linen garments, such pity for the little creature overwhelmed him, and such fear lest she should hurt it, that he put out a hand to restrain her. (pg. 751) 

13.9: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, finished on 12/21/17 (272 pages)
I am fairly certain that I had already seen this movie before I read the book, but I hardly remembered anything so it didn't ruin the book for me. This was one of the faster moving, easier-to-read books that I've read in a while. 
~"Oh, you're not paying attention, my friend. She doesn't accuse. She merely needs to insinuate, insinuate anything, don't you see? Didn't you notice today? She'll call a man to the door of the Nurses' Station and stand there and ask him about a Kleenex found under his bed. No more, just ask. And he'll feel like he's lying to her, whatever answer he gives...and leave him standing there wondering just what did he use that Kleenex for." (pg.60)

13.10: The Kite Runner, finished on 1/3/18 (371 pages)
I sped through this book, and it was incredible. Khaled Housseini's writing is so easy to read and the imagery is beautiful. I liked his writing so much that I bought his second book before I had even finished the first. 
~"For you, a thousand times over."

13.11: Brave New World, finished on 3/6/18 (268 pages)
It didn't actually take me two months to read this book. I had started Catch-22 after I finished The Kite Runner, but it was so confusing and un-likeable that I finally abandoned it about halfway through. I wasn't so nuts about Brave New World at first--I think I was kind of comparing it to 1984, but the last page of Brave New World absolutely made it worth reading.

13.12: Tale of Two Cities, finished on 7/4/18 (380 pages)
This was my first experience reading Dickens. I can't say that I fell in love with his writing or that I'm rushing off to buy another book by him, and it did take me about 4 months to read it, but I can see now how it was a staple of the high school English curriculum. 
~'The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea.' (pg. 19)
~'The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Stryver's blood vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry; Mr. Lorry's veins, methodical as their courses could usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn.' (pg. 146)

10 down. 20 to go!