Mort by Terry Prachett

I'm giving Discworld another shot with Mort. I liked Guards, Guards, but didn't quite love it. In this Discworld story, Death (skeleton, hooded black robe, scythe) takes an awkward teenager, Mort, as an apprentice and comic misadventures ensue. The main problem being that when Death asks Mort to take over for a day he mistakenly kills an assassin instead of a young princess that was his intended target. This of course creates a paradox for reality and Mort has to fix it. Funny all the way though. I'll give this one an A-.

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

I don't really have too much to say about Children of Dune. It is the third book in the series and it picks up a few years after the previous book. The Atreides twins are starting to grow up but even though they are children they have the full knowledge of their ancestors. Leto II has a vision on how best to lead the empire created by his father and he has to navigate the usual things that occur in Dune novels (assassination attempts, political maneuvering by different houses and the Bene Gesserit, acceptance by the Fremen). It isn't a classic like the first book but it is more exciting than Dune Messiah. I guess I'll got with a B+.

Book # 85 - The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The copy of The Scarlet Letter that I read was the same one that I read way back in 10th grade... which was 23 years ago. Maybe because the text was so marked up and I had underlined everything that 16 year old me thought was important the whole book seemed kind of heavy handed. It didn't seem like a book anyone would read for amusement but rather something that would get assigned to a teenager to try and get them to critically examine a text. Still I enjoyed the book on some level but it wasn't as great as I remembered it.

My main problem with it is that the "plot" doesn't really have any forward movement and the main protagonist doesn't really do anything the entire book. As most people know, the book is about Hester Prynne, a woman found guilty of adultery in a Puritanical society, and forced to live with a large scarlet "A" on her clothes. The father of her child is the local minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, and instead of confessing that he is the father he decides to keep it hidden and to psychologically torture himself. It isn't until about eighty percent of the way through the book that the characters actually decide to do something about this situation... so for most of the book not much really happens. It also doesn't help that Dimmesdale is such a wuss that he is not the most likable character.  I'll have to give it a B+.


So for anyone keeping track... this blog is now exactly three years old and The Scarlet Letter was the 50th book from the list I've read.

My progress on each of the lists:
Best Novels 1-100: 50 read
Best Novels 101-200: 4 read
Best Mysteries 1-101: 18 read
Best Science Fiction 1-50: 16 read
Best Horror 1-50: 14 read


As for how I got copies of all the books:
52 were purchased as used books at either libraries or used book stores
39 were books either me or Lucinda previously owned
14 were purchased new
14 were given to me as gifts
11 were library books

7 were checked out from the LAPL as ebooks (my new favorite way to get books!)

2 were borrowed from someone
2 were free ebooks in the public domain
1 was a purchased book for the Kindle

And my updated rankings:

1. The Lord of the Rings 2. Dune 3. Les Misérables

4. Invisible Man

5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

6. Don Quixote

7. The Hobbit

8. A Farewell to Arms

9. The Trial

10. David Copperfield

11. Great Expectations

12. Harry Potter

13. The Stand

14. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

15. Pale Fire

16. The Handmaid's Tale

17. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

18. The Chronicles of Narnia

19. The Name of the Rose

20. The Great Gatsby

21. The Sound and the Fury

22. Frankenstein

23. Lord of the Flies

24. The Color Purple

25. Things Fall Apart

26. Wind in the Willows

27. Anne of Green Gables

28. Rebecca

29. Atonement

30. One Hundred Years of Solitude

31. Native Son

32. Anna Karenina

33. Sons and Lovers

34. War and Peace

35. A Passage to India

36. The Count of Monte Cristo

37. The Scarlet Letter

38. Winnie-the-Pooh

39. Emma

40. Charlotte's Web

41. Wuthering Heights

42. Remembrance of Things Past

43. Possession

44. His Dark Materials

45. Absalom, Absalom

46. The Ambassadors

47. To the Lighthouse

48. Mrs. Dalloway

49. Gone with the Wind

50. Atlas Shrugged

Book # 99 Atonement by Ian McEwan

I gotta say, Atonement was an interesting book and I liked it more than I thought I would. The ending twist was still powerful even though I knew it was coming since I had already seen the movie. The main character is Briony - a young teenage girl a few years before WWII. One day she unwittingly witnesses a couple of events between her older sister and a young man named Robbie, and her active imagination misinterprets what actually happened. This later leads her to mistakenly and somewhat knowingly accuse Robbie falsely of a crime. The story then picks up during WWII and we see that after serving his time in prison Robbie is fighting in the war and Briony has become a nurse helping the wounded. The book then ends with Briony as an old woman writing a book about her experience.

Overall I enjoyed the book and thought McEwan's style was reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's but with actual narrative drive that made me want to find out what would happen next. The only sequence that took me out of the story was when Briony receives a letter from a publisher that critiques a story of hers that was apparently "the first draft" of the first part of the book that ends before Briony commits her crime. It seemed kind of weird to suddenly have bit of a 'meta' moment in the middle of this story. Anyway, I'll give this one an A.

Also it mentions Emma.

Book # 48 Remembrance of Things Past (Part 7 of 7)- The Past Recaptured by Marcel Proust

I'm finally finished with Remembrance of Things Past! Hooray - no more Proust for me! I'm so glad to be done with this book I feel like celebrating!

So in this final book not much happens at all. In the first half the Narrator talks about different peoples' opinions on World War One and just briefly mentions that he was in a sanatorium for some time. The second half of the book just kind of meanders about and he touches on several topics and talks about getting reacquainted with the people from the book later on in his life. There is quite a bit of musing about getting older. There is also a very interesting sequence about how chance plays such a large part in life and how the offhand remark of a friend or acquaintance can alter the direction your life goes. This is something I often think about so I could relate to what he was saying. At one point he also mentions Madame Bovary.

I'm so glad to finish that I'll give this one a B-.

Should you read the book or see the movie? Part 6

Part six of whether or not I preferred the movie or the book of things I've recently read...

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan vs. The 39 Steps (1935 film)-  I've gotta say that I was disappointed with the book and while it isn't his best movie, Hitchcock's film version is still pretty good. Verdict: See the movie.

Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald vs. Fletch (1985 film) - The book was really fun so I was disappointed when I finally saw the film version and realized how unfunny Chevy Chase can be at times. The book was both funny and serious and the film was neither. Verdict: Read the book.

Dune by Frank Herbert vs. Dune (1984 film) vs. Dune (2000 mini-series) - Dune is a pretty dense book with a lot of stuff going on. Trying to condense it into a single film is probably impossible. At least the movie has some good performances and David Lynch makes it memorably weird at times. The mini-series is a bit more faithful to the book but the production just looks too cheesy at times to take seriously. Verdict: Read the book.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling vs. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009 film) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2 (2010 films) - Verdict: Read the book and see the movies.

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler vs. The Big Sleep (1946 film) - Both the book and film are rightly considered classics but I have to give an edge to the book. Verdict: Read the book and see the movie.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre vs Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011 film) - A few years after seeing the movie I realized I couldn't really remember too much of it even though I remember thinking that it was okay. The book is okay if a bit dull. Verdict: Umm... either or neither

Book # 15 Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Going into Lord of the Flies I remembered that I had to read it in high school and that I really enjoyed it. Then I got to thinking about the different book covers I had seen for it.... and then it hit me... I had actually read this book a second time sometime after college. I had totally forgotten that I still owned a copy of this book from before we started this project. The only thing that reminded me was the memory of the cover of a really old paperback copy I found at a used book store. That got me thinking about how boring most of the book covers are that I see at book stores now. Anyway about Lord of the Flies...

A bunch of English children get stuck on an island and they slowly turn into savages.  The end.

Reading it again it reminded me a bit of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I'll have to keep this in mind when I eventually reread that book for this project. The whole books seems filled with possible essay topics... that's probably why everyone has to read it in high school. Still I enjoyed it for what it is and if somehow you haven't read it already I'd recommend it. I'll give it an A.

This is the cover I remember from high school... memorable and hints at the overall story.

The cover of the version I read... ok I guess.

The cover of the old used copy I had... it hints at the themes and emotions without any trace of the plot of the book... probably my favorite cover for this book.