Appreciating simplicity.

It is hard to describe The Afternoon of a Writer by Peter Handke. If I tell you the gist of what goes on (guy goes for a walk after writing all day) then you’ll say, “What a snooze that book must be.” But I really didn’t find it a snooze at all. Yes, it is a really simple story but the descriptions are so beautiful and the ideas in the book are so thoughtful.

This book is super short (something like 85 pages) and I felt like it was over before I even really got started. It’s an amazing portrait of an individual and the whole craft of writing in a very short novel. I’m impressed when writers can accomplish so much in so few pages. This was a really simple but very cool book.

Adventures of a misanthrope.

Not much going on in Against the Grain by Joris-Karl Huysmans. This guy doesn’t like anyone. Not anyone at all. So he sells the family chateau, buys a house and shuts himself up in it reading, looking at paintings, and generally being a grouch. The guy also does some really random things searching for new experiences.

The novel is a tool for the author to explain his views on various pieces of art and literature and religion. So obviously there isn’t a lot of action, each chapter provides the opportunity for the author to explain what he thinks of say, Baudelaire, or whatever.

Since I haven’t read any of the underlying literature and I don’t know much about the paintings, I didn’t get a whole lot out of this one. I think I understand why it’s on the list (and it’s interesting to read a novel that is more than a story and is used as a tool for commentary), but it just dragged for me.

DO something, lady! (Or, why I would not have been a good Victorian woman.)

By some weird stroke of weirdness, I read Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte at the same time I’m in the middle of Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn (which is a non-1001 book!). It was a striking contrast to see how children are treated in Agnes Grey (mostly like property that must be bent to the parents’ will) when compared to the ideas Kohn has about raising children!

I think this might be the first book I’ve read by a Bronte sister. While it was a good story, I was underwhelmed. I didn’t think the book fit together well. The stories from the first position she takes as a governess seem kind of unrelated, there is very little discussion of how she ends her governess position at the Murrays (I’d think it would be hard to give notice and I was interested to see what Mrs. Murray would have said about Agnes’ plans with her mother), and it all wraps up just a little bit too neatly at the end for my taste.

Also, I don’t know whether it is simply a function of how women were treated/expected to behave at the time Bronte was writing, or what, but I really didn’t like Agnes very much. I found her to be way too navel gazing and not self-determining. She just kind of sat around and waited for things to happen to her. I kept wanting to yell at her, “DO something!” Unfortunately she never really did.

You know what I like about this project? Seeing the portrayal of the lower to middle classes in European society. So much of the history I learned in school focused on whatever the lords and upper classes were doing – and I didn’t have a great idea of what everyday life for everyday people was like. This book was cool for that reason, and that’s another reason why I liked Adam Bede, too.

Who is this Don Juan guy, anyway?

I don’t think I got enough out of After the Death of Don Juan by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Perhaps it’s that I don’t really appreciate Spanish culture fully – I’ve never been to Spain and don’t speak a word of the language. (Well, I think hamburger is something like hambergesa – but that’s really about all I know.) The descriptions of the country in the book were beautiful, though.

I know from reading the introduction that the book is supposed to be a parable relating to the Spanish Civil War, which was going on at the time that Warner was writing. I also don’t know anything about the Spanish Civil War.

So, obviously the nuances of the book were lost on me (even more than usual). And maybe if I did understand the Spanish Civil War or more fully grasped the culture, it would make more sense. I was following everything that went on, but then toward the end it got really confusing. Don Ottavio went back to kill Don Juan, but wound up banding together with him to fight the peasants? And why did they tie up Don Saturno? I just felt like the whole thing got very muddled at the end. Also, the back of the book and the introduction both hint at the fact that Dona Ana might be pregnant as a reason why she is so relentlessly pursuing Don Juan. I didn’t pick up on that in the text at all.

In fact, some of this stuff was SO lost on me that I needed Mike to explain to me the idea behind Don Juan. I couldn’t really figure out whether the legend of Don Juan came from this book or whether Warner used the legend as a jumping off point for the story. It probably would have helped if I knew the Don Juan legend before starting to read this book.

So, interesting book, definitely see why it’s good literature, but not my favorite.

Embarrassing confession: Mike had to explain to me when I was about halfway through that all the characters were not actually named Don.

An elegant series of short stories, plus a giant frog.

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami can best be described as elegant. It is a series of short stories involving characters whose lives were somehow impacted by the earthquake in Kobe, Japan. It is not a book about survivors in the traditional sense – the characters were not pulled-from-the-rubble survivors, but individuals whose lives were touched in a more roundabout way. So the earthquake is kind of the common theme among the stories and the stories portray the characters’ different way of dealing with it.

Some of the short stories were depressing (as you can probably imagine) and one is really bizarre and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. (A giant frog comes to visit a guy to ask him to help fight a giant worm.) But I really liked the last story and it seemed like Murakami wanted to end the series on a hopeful, inspiring note. The last story is all about love.

This was a pretty cool book. I had not realized that the 1001 Books included some sets of short stories.

Rich people are interesting to read about!

I just finished The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Here’s an admission about how superficial I am about books. Before I started this project, I lumped all the 1800s books into the “boring” category and figured I’d just get through them for the sake of having read them.

Well, I’m really, really glad I read this one. It was SO GOOD!!! (I envision Marissa nodding her head and saying, duh.) I’m sure I’m missing some really important themes and everything, but this was a fantastic story and fun to read. It takes place among the very very wealthy in New York City. Which, (here comes the superficial part) was kind of a breath of fresh air. No one in the book is hungry. There are no dead babies. No one is pooping outside anyone’s window. The characters don’t even really work. Their time is spent going to dinner parties and the opera and Newport. They wear beautiful clothes, ride in nice carriages and basically lead a fantastic, fun life.

Now that all sounds wonderful but I think part of the idea behind the book is that even in that environment there is still conflict and things are not as great as they seem. But I was still left with the impression that the characters were lucky to have the luxury to feel the ambivalence that they do. One’s troubles are just different when you have unlimited funds.

I really enjoyed reading this – it was one of those books that I wish were longer because I just wanted to keep reading!

Books 21-30

That photo is a TRUE PHOTO of Emily's entry hall full of boxes of books that have yet to be unpacked from their move prior to Christmas.


Ok, not really. But Emily's copy of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is still packed in a box somewhere, so she requested that I post a list of books twenty-one through thirty. So here we go!

21. Albert Angelo by B.S. Johnson (1964)
22. The Albigenses by Charles Robert Maturin (1824)
23. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (1996) Emily, I own this one and will send it down if you want. It's so good!
24. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)
25. All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani (1948, revised 1972)
26. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1929)
27. All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom (1998)
28. Amateurs by Donald Barthelme (1976)
29. The Ambassadors by Henry James (1903)
30. Amelia by Henry Fielding (1751)

There you are, ma soeur. :)

Marissa