She did it!

Clarissa hemmed and hawed her way through volume 2, but decides to go off with Mr. Lovelace at the very end.  We learn that her friend Anna Howe's mother doesn't approve of Clarissa's general attitude toward her duty to her parents.  We also find out that some of the nonsense that Clarissa's parents are subjecting her to is due to Mr. Lovelace himself.  Apparently that's how you got a girl in 1750.  You went behind her back and caused her parents to pretty much force her to marry someone else.

I'm definitely looking forward to reading volume 3 to see the uproar amongst Clarissa's family members when they realize she has headed out!

Has been a while...

Life happened, and I had not had much of a chance to read any of the 1001 Books.  I started Volume 1 of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa twice and my goodness, it was long, slow, tedious, and I just couldn't get into it.  My reading time was taken up by sleeping (pregnancy), reading various magazines, reading to my 2 older kids, pre-reading some elementary literature for the soon to be first grader, playing some Candy Crush (ahem) and just basically doing pretty much everything in the world I could think of that was not reading Clarissa.

That changed this week.  I was inspired to open the Kindle app again and restart Clarissa from the beginning.  This time I made it through Volume 1.  Hurrah!  If you can muddle through the old fashioned language and the fact that Richardson takes 8 pages to do what could be summed up in 2-3 paragraphs, the story is not terrible.  Basically, Clarissa is a much loved, much doted on, spoiled daughter.  Her grandfather leaves her this huge bequest in his will.  This frustrates the hopes of her older brother in obtaining a title.  Clarissa's chosen suitor, Lovelace, is a decent guy who has kind of a bad reputation.  Clarissa's brother prevails upon the family to marry Clarissa off to this gross little guy Solmes in order to get her away from Lovelace and also to get her inheritance away from her to further her brother's prospects of someday getting a title.  Clarissa refuses.  Will she have to marry Solmes?  I guess we have to wait 9 volumes to find out!

The entire narrative is done in letter form between Clarissa and her friend Anna Howe, and there are a couple of letters from Lovelace in there as well.  There are definitely some themes in this book, at least so far, that carry through very well to today.  What is the extent of a daughter's obligation to her family at the expense of her own happiness?

In any case, volume 1 of 9 down - just 8 more to go.  I'm hoping to build momentum here and not have such a long absence from reading and writing this time around!

Too short.

Life, that is.  Too short for me to slog through City Sister Silver.  I'm sure it is a very nice book.  It is a stream of consciousness about the Czech people during and after the downfall of the Soviet Union.  I found it violent and too stream of consciousness/post modern for me.  I just couldn't do it.

I am aware that this is a very well regarded book.  Just not all that well regarded by me.

Cops and Robbers.

It has been a while since I updated this blog.  At the end of December/beginning of January, I got sucked into The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.  Which is a fantastic book, but is about 700 pages long.

Then I started City Primeval by Elmore Leonard.  I really enjoyed this one.  It is a book about a police officer in Detroit who is tasked with bringing a murderer to justice.   What I liked about the book was that it was obvious the whole time who did it.  The officer knew who committed the crime, but the issue was whether he would be able to get the guy.  The book was written about the 1970s, I think, so there were little mentions of various things from that era that I liked, too.

City of God, or, why I need things spelled out for me.

Sometimes you just don't get it.

There were parts of City of God that I really enjoyed.  The narrative of the young Jewish boy in the Lithuanian ghetto was interesting and compelling.  And I liked the story of how the cross wound up on the roof of the synagogue, and the relationship between Pem and Sarah.  I could not, however, figure out how all of the different stories fit together.  About three-fourths of the way through the book, I had the idea to look at the book jacket and the lightbulb finally went on.  The novel is actually in the form of a writer's "workbook" where he records different story ideas and things, and the parts that I liked and got interested in were story ideas.

So.  A little convoluted, to say the least.  But, it didn't diminish the interesting parts.  It just made everything a little more confusing for me.  I think I just need a more traditional novel where I can basically follow what is going on from beginning to end!

Sick people.

I took a long time to read Cigarettes.  It was really slow going.  I was able to follow the story (sort of) but I just didn't enjoy it very much.  The book follows relationships between a group of people in the 1960s and basically, everything is very screwed up.  No one is faithful to anyone else, they are all scheming behind each other's backs, and some people are into some very sick things.

I didn't enjoy this one.  I am not really sure what point the author was trying to make.  It was just lost on me.

Books 161-170

161. City of God by E.L. Doctorow (2000)
162. City Primeval by Elmore Leonard (1980)
163. City Sister Silver by Jachym Topol (1994)
164. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1749)
165. The Clay Machine-Gun by Victor Pelevin (1996)
166. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
167. Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks (1998)
168. Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard (1996)
169. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)
170. The Collector by John Fowles (1963)

Some modern stuff on here!