Book # 24 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Progress book 10 of 100

 

This was the most challenging book to read so far on the list. The story is about the Compson Family, a formerly wealthy family from the south who seem to be doomed to sadness by the choices they make. It’s definitely not a happy story. There are 4 parts and an appendix, so in total about 5 sections of the book. Each of the 4 parts is told from a different character’s point of view. The writing style was very confusing and I was mostly lost during the first two parts. This book took 2-3 weeks to read. I just got distracted by other things and didn’t pick it up for a week. Since each part is told from a different point of view and starts with a different date you already have to be ready for changes, but in addition to that, Mr. Faulkner frequently goes back to the past tense and changes the story timeline without the reader knowing. He also likes to write in that stream of consciousness style that just goes on and on and on.

Part 1 was told from Benjy’s point of view. He is the youngest Compson sibling that has autism and as the author states he is 33 years old, but has the mind of a 3 year old. His point of view jumps from present to past in and out constantly. Through him we are introduced to the family- His father, mother- Mrs. Compson, sister Caddy and brothers Quentin and Jason, the family maid Dilsey and Benjy’s keeper Luster. Once I finished the complete novel, parts of this section became clearer. In it you see that Caddy really loves her brothers Quentin and Benjy. We also get to see how Mrs. Compson is constantly complaining of being sick and how the children are really brought up by their maid Dilsey. In one of the scenes, there were so many it’s hard to remember which part it took place in, Dilsey makes Benjy a birthday cake from her own earnings. As they are celebrating Mrs. Compson catches them and tells Dilsey to throw it out and stop feeding Benjy trash. It’s pretty sad and emphasizes the opposite feelings of both characters. On one side you have Dilsey, who uses her own money to buy cake mix and make Benjy a birthday cake to celebrate his birthday. On the other side of the spectrum you have the mother who is bothered by Benjy’s uncontrollable noises and emotions, yelling at Dilsey while complaining about her own helpless sick situation. The mother does nothing to gain any sympathy- more on that later.

Part 2 is told from Quentin’s point of view following him a day in his life at Harvard. This part is also really confusing- the writing style follows his mental breakdown and is not straightforward or clear. From this section I just remember that he goes on a long walk and ends up in a small town. At the bakery he befriends a little Italian girl and buys her some sweet treats. She then shadows him all day long, and he tries to get rid of her, but she won’t leave him. Subsequently her brother charges Quentin with kidnapping and he is forced to pay bail all because she wouldn’t leave him alone. I did feel sympathy towards Quentin. He was heartbroken over his sister Caddy’s situation and lost.

Part 3 is the first section that is mostly straight forward and way easier to understand. It’s told from the point of view of Jason. Jason has become the head of the family after his father passed away. He works to support his mother who is always sick, Caddy’s daughter Quentin, and his brother Benjy. Jason is not a nice person. As a reader we should feel sympathy for him since he was the odd one out in the family, never really close to his sister and brother Caddy and Quentin and not given the opportunity to go to Harvard like Quentin, but we do not. He steals the money Caddy sends for her daughter. He is always complaining of all the sacrifices he has made for his family. In a way he is really like the mother always saying poor me, the only difference is he goes to work. In one memorable scene Jason received a free pair of tickets to a show in town. All day long Luster has been looking for a quarter to go to that show (since part one of the novel.) Jason tells Luster that he will sell him a ticket for 5¢ knowing Luster doesn’t have the money. Jason then burns both tickets in the stove, one by one, right in front of Luster. This type of torment and torture are great examples of Jason’s evil character.

Part 4 is the final section and told to show Disley’s life with the Compson’s. From it you see that she basically helps the family survive. She cooks, takes care of everyone and seems to be pretty content with life. On this final day of the book she takes Benjy to church for Easter services while Jason is running after Quentin and Mrs. Compson stays sick in bed. One of the most memorable scenes that sticks out from this section involves Mrs. Compson and Dilsey. When Dilsey gets home to find Mrs. Compson still in bed and Mrs. Compson has Dilsey bring her the Bible which fell to the floor from the edge of the bed. Mrs. Compson yells at Dilsey to place the book in a different spot because it would just fall again and then she might have to get out of bed to pick it up. When Dilsey offers to open some windows to give her light she doesn’t want it. Mrs. Compson wants to have the Bible around, but doesn’t want to read it. I could not relate or understand her character except to say that she was not likable and seemed to do nothing to help her family in anyway.

The appendix summarized each character and I was happy to see how a few of them turned up, and see that Jason did get a little of what he deserved.

I read somewhere that this story was suppose to show the decline and fall of a wealthy southern family- in my opinion it does. I couldn’t relate or feel sympathy for anyone. I usually like novels with clear protagonists and people you root for. This story did not have one. I’m interested to see if anyone else has read this- what do you think?

I’ll give the book a 84% B (it is a classic)

Book # 79 Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery - A Second Opinion

Anne of Green Gables is one of those books where I know I'm not now, ever have been, or ever will be part of the target audience. So really my opinion doesn't matter too much here. I know my wife loved it, probably because she first read it when she was a little girl. I can say I enjoyed it somewhat and I was interested in finding out what would happen in the end, but really it is a book intended for little girls... and I guess on that level it is pretty good.

Anne is an interesting character though after a couple hundred pages of her jabbering on and on about what happended to her I just wanted it to end. I also found the style slightly distracting. The book is written in third person, but most of Anne's adventures aren't really presented that way. Each chapter starts out with a bit of set up and then instead of finding out what happens in the third person narrative the action skips to Anne getting home and then Anne telling her adopted mother what happened. Usually this results in a paragraph that is at least an entire page in which Anne just talks and talks and talks.

It won't crack my top 50, but I'll give it an A, because if I don't Lucinda will bug me about it.

Book # 86 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Progress book 9 of 100

If you want a quick read, pick this novel.  At only 127 pages I was able to read it in a few hours.  The story is of an old man, a fisherman in Cuba.  He has gone 84 days without catching any fish and feels like his luck is going to change.  I don’t want to give too much away, but would definitely recommend this book to anyone.  Unlike The Age of Innocence, this is a novel that you really cheer for the protagonist.  You want him to catch a fish and succeed. 

The writing style really made me feel like I was out on his little boat with him, thirsty with the hot sun beating down.   I was reading this pretty late at night and was so engaged that a noise from the kitchen made me up out of the sofa- I thought a shark was attacking me!  This is the first book by I’ve ready by Ernest Hemingway and it didn’t make me want to go back in time and punch him, like Daniel mentions below after he read A Farewell to Arms. I rate this a 94% solid A.

Book #54 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Progress Book 8 of 100

This book is about the strict rules and standards of New York Society in the late 1800’s.  The novel follows the life of Newland Archer as he becomes engaged to May Welland.  The moment they are engaged, May’s cousin Countess Ellen Olenska arrives in New York after leaving her husband in Europe.  Society in those days did not tolerate divorce or scandal, so Ellen quickly becomes the black sheep of the family.  Newland is a strict believer of following the strict rules of society and quickly judges May as someone bad.  Everything changes when they meet, he starts to fall in love with her and appreciates her thoughts and knowledge, quickly comparing her with his fiancé May and often puts May’s character down.  He sees nothing that grand in May and still marries her, all the while pining for Ellen.  This is the whole story.

The style of Edith Wharton didn’t make this book a quick read, despite the fact that it’s only 235 pages.  Often times Ms. Wharton would set up a scene and then the next chapter would be a whole new scene/setting.  I guess this was done to give readers a chance to image what they want to.  The book spans a few years time, and then jumps 26 years to the conclusion.  Newland’s torment and agony of not being with Ellen and then being with Ellen (almos) was not that interesting to me.  I didn’t like his character and didn’t enjoy the book very much.  I guess you are suppose to sympathize with May, and I did, but even though she was shown to be cleverer than Newland thought, it was just too much that she had to hide it and be the perfect wife and perfect front.  If Ms. Wharton was trying to explain how rigid society was, she did a good job- since I didn’t feel that close to any of the characters and didn’t mind to see how they ended up.    

I give this an 82%, B-

Book # 82 A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

I finished reading A Farewell to Arms a couple of hours ago.The ending of the book is still stuck in my head. I had been enjoying the book over the past week and I was enjoying it a fair amount. The final chapter provoked emotion in me as a reader. I wanted to punch Ernest Hemingway in the face for ending the book the way he did. It also made me consider the book a classic.

I was fascinated by Hemingway's writing style. The language was plain. Many sentences were short. Others excessively long and the sentence would fill an entire paragraph and there would be many things described in the sentence and the sentence would meander and the sentence would contain no commas and instead of using commas the author would just use the word "and" and I would imagine the voice of the actor that played Hemingway in Midnight in Paris and that voice would be reading these words to me in my head.  The style was the opposite of D.H. Lawrence. Emotions were not described. Things would just occur and the reader would have to figure out the feelings of the characters on their own and this would be based on their actions and their dialogue. The style was unique.

The story is about an American in Italy. He drives an ambulance for the Italian army and the time is during the first World War and he meets a British nurse and he falls in love with the nurse and then the nurse becomes pregnant and then the man gets injured in the war and he recovers and goes back to the war and he is forced to flee after the army turns on him and he tries to find the nurse and then they try to escape to Switzerland and the ending is tragic.

I had not expected it, but A Farewell to Arms makes my top 50. A+


My updated rankings.


1.Invisible Man
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
3. A Farewell to Arms
4.The Stand
5. The Name of the Rose
6. Wind in the Willows
7. Rebecca
8. Sons and Lovers
9. Winnie-the-Pooh
10. Mrs. Dalloway

Book #14 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Progress book 7 of 100

After The Color Purple, I decided to read one of the longer novels on our list.  Gone with the Wind seemed like the best choice.  I already had the book on my ‘to read’ shelf for the last few years so it was just waiting to be read.  Scarlett O’Hara is a strong character that uses her charms and learns how to survive through war, poverty, and three marriages.  I was already familiar with the plot, since I’ve seen the movie a few times.  While reading the novel, Vivian Leigh was Scarlett, Clark Gable was Rhett Butler and Olivia de Havilland was Melanie.  I don’t know if this helped or influenced the novel in any direction, good or bad but at least I didn’t have to visualize faces with these very memorable characters.  They definitely did a good job with the cast.  Overall the novel was very enjoyable and I was able to read 1,000 pages in 8 days.  The writing would go from the main plot to long, windy explanations of society and what was happening at that time.  While the explanations were important, they were sometimes really long and would just drag on and on. 

This was my first novel set in the South during the Civil War.  It was interesting to see the expectation of war, to the long drawn out civil war- filled with loss and death, and then the atmosphere of Atlanta during the Reconstruction period.  For Scarlett this period is from when she is 16 and the Belle of the South with multiple suitors, to 28 and a survivor that has saved her home and carried her family though the war and aftermath.  Everything she does is for a selfish reason, but you still cheer for her and want her to come out of everything as a success.  Melanie is her anchor and together they make it through. 

I give this an 92%, A

Book #73 The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Progress Book 6 of 100

Daniel had this idea to read a book without knowing anything about it.  I thought it sounded fun and looked at what was on the shelf and decided on The Color Purple.  I hadn’t seen the movie and didn’t really know what to expect.  At first I thought this was written as a diary, but later realized it is actually letters.  The letters are mostly written by Celie to God, but there is a portion of the book that is written/told from her sister Nettie’s point of view, and later Celie starts to write to Nettie instead of God.  The book covers most of Celie’s lifetime, from her as a young girl, to an older woman who has experienced a lot.  The book was very sad at the beginning, Celie is abused by her father who gives and takes away her two children. Her mother dies and her father offers her to Mr. Johnson- her sister Nettie’s suitor, who takes Celie as a wife even though he wanted Nettie and has a public love affair with Shug Avery without caring how it hurt Celie.  The only person Celie has is her sister, but after their father starts to go for Nettie, Celie urges Nettie to runaway to a missionary couple who have adopted her own children.  This will end up taking her to Africa for many years.  Once Nettie leaves, Celie has almost nothing.  Her husband doesn’t care for her more than how she can take care of his children and satisfy his needs.  Over time, her life starts to improve, she becomes great friends with Shug Avery, to the point she loves her.  When Celie discovers that her husband has been hiding Nettie’s letters for years, she has a breaking point and decides she doesn’t have to take it anymore.  Shug rescues her and brings her to Tennessee where Celie starts a pants (tailoring) business.  Pants for women, a modern idea. 

Besides those main characters- Harpo is Celie’s stepson and his wife is Sophia.  Sophia is not a pushover as Celie, she will hit Harpo back when he tries to beat her.  She stands up for herself and won’t take anything.  When she is insulted by the Mayor and fights them she is put into prison and then later has to work as their maid, taking care of their children.  It’s really sad how her independent spirit is broken and she becomes a mild quiet person at the end.  Celie and her almost switch roles.

In all, the book really was an awakening about life in the south in the 1930s.  It was interesting how the characters were not monogamous.  Harpo and Sophia break up and he begins seeing Squeak, and Sophia is okay with it.  Later Squeak goes off to sing and Sophia is back with Harpo, they just seem to accept each other.  The writing style flowed fast and I was able to read this novel in one day.  As soon as the sisters started writing to each other I couldn’t put the book down, I had to see if Nettie would make it back from Africa to see her sister again.  A good novel, now it’s time to see the movie and compare.

 

I’ll give this a 95%- solid A

Book #79 Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Progress Book 5 of 100

I just love this book.  This was probably the 3rd  or 4th time I’ve read Anne of Green Gables.  The last time was around 2006 when my roommate Trista (thank you) let me borrow a copy.  I’ve been so preoccupied with all of the Pride and Prejudice variations the last few years that I forgot how much I enjoyed reading all about Anne Shirley.  I was very happy that it made this list, but a little sad it was only book 1 of the Anne series and not the whole series like a few other titles (Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings).  This is one series that I have never completed and it would have been nice to finally accomplish that.  I’ve only completed  up to book 5- Anne’s House of Dreams .  Once book series start adding more characters and/or the focus of the story gets to different generations I tend to lose interest.  For now, I’m moving on to another novel from the 100 list and will keep the rest of the Anne books for a later date.

Anne of Green Gables is the story of an orphan Anne Shirley who is adopted by a sister and brother named Marilla and Mathew Cuthbert.  The story takes place in the early 20th century at Prince Edward Island- in Canada.  Anne spelled with an E, is a young girl with a big imagination.  She goes from not being wanted, the Cuthbert’s wanted to adopt a boy, to winning the hearts of everyone around her.  Her wild imagination usually gets her into trouble but as she tells Marilla, I make a lot of mistakes, but I learn from them and hardly every make the same mistake twice.  In one instance she serves her best friend Diana Barry wine instead of some punch and gets her drunk.  In another she buys hair dye from a peddler and ends up with green hair and sobs to Marilla how she never thought anything could be worse than red hair- but that she was wrong, green is ten times worse.  How could you not love Anne?  This story is the start of her romance with Gilbert Blythe, but since she is so young and spends most of her time hating him in this book, their relationship doesn’t progress too far.  That’s more for Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island.  I give this book an A+, and think most people would agree with me.  I'm interested to see what Daniel with think since this is the POV of a young girl, and I wonder if he will not be able to relate to it as much-- we'll have to wait and see what he thinkk.

100%- A+ for sure.

Book # 69 Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

A couple of weeks ago, I went down to the used book shop at the Santa Monica Public Library and literally bought a huge stack of books for ten dollars! With that purchase, Lucinda and I now have copies of about half of the books on this list. Some of the books in that stack I've always wanted to read while others I had never heard of.  I thought I knew what I was going to read next, but then I got the idea that I should pick a book that I knew absolutely nothing about. So that's how I ended up with Sons and Lovers. Before I picked it up all I knew was that D.H. Lawrence had written Lady Chatterley's Lover which faced some censorship issues in the past and may or may not be smutty.  I made sure not to read the back cover of the book and luckily the front cover gave no indication of what the book is about.

The book is broken into two parts. The first third of the book is about a family, the Morels, living in England in the late 1800's. The father is a coal miner and a drunk and the mother is pretty much dissatisfied with her life. They have four children and a bunch of stuff happens (accidents, kids growing up, illness, etc). I found this part really enjoyable because there were a lot of interesting characters and the conflicts within the family dynamics were fascinating. Plus I found Lawrence's writing style pretty unique. It seems really straightforward but he really writes everything so that it isn't the action of the scene that is important, but the emotions of the characters that are most relevant. Here's a sample passage

"He sat silent in bitterness. At last the whole affair appeared in a cynical aspect to him. She had really played with him, not he with her. She had hidden all her condemnation from him, had flattered him, and despised him. She despised him now. He grew intellectual and cruel."

The second part of the book primarily focuses on the second son of the family, Paul, and his relationships with two women and his mother. It is during this part that I started to lose some interest. Basically for a good 300 pages Paul keeps switching back and forth between two women, neither of whom he seems to particularly love while his mother just criticizes his choices and tries to be the focus of his life. Paul's internal debate on whether or not he should marry one of the girls just seems endless... while the mother who is such a sympathetic character in the first part becomes totally obsessive of her son and really unlikable.

Overall I did like the book for its style and the setting was unique, though by the end I didn't really care for the main character. He just kept becoming more and more unlikable as the novel progressed. So it won't go into my top 50, but it'll get an A-.