A Man Called Ove (2014) by Fredrik Backman

Ove, our narrator, is a grouchy old man, overly obsessed with following the rules. He's curmudgeonly and close-minded. However, he represents something all people should aspire to: He knows exactly who he is and what he wants.

He’s never understood young people who natter on about “finding themselves.” He used to hear that nonstop from all those thirty-year-olds at work. All they ever talked about was how they wanted more “leisure time,” as if that was the only point of working: to get to the point when one didn’t have to do it.

In this fashion he's somewhat of a mythical creature. Since a very early age Ove has consciously recognized his strengths: He's a handyman; good with machines and desiring of work that allows him to use his hands to fix a problem. So Ove needs very little to be happy; a job that allows him to diagnose problems, tinker, and arrive at solutions.

Ove is fallible in that he is a wholly concrete thinker. There is no room for the abstract in Ove's world. Everything he does makes sense on paper. The problem with this, of course, is that human beings often don't. So Ove finds himself struggling, particularly when dealing with people. I enjoyed this aspect of the book and, indeed, found its narrator to be compelling for this purpose. Backman continues to throw colorful characters at Ove, and it's enjoyable watching him respond. Ove could easily have fallen prey to cliché, but his touching moments when dealing with people who are worlds different from him made for some nice twists in Ove's story:

He’s silent. And then they both stand there, the fifty-nine-year-old and the teenager, a few yards apart, kicking at the snow. As if they were kicking a memory back and forth, a memory of a woman who insisted on seeing more potential in certain men than they saw in themselves. Neither of them knows what to do with their shared experience.

A Man Called Ove is cloying at times, and obviously shoots for for sentimentality, but the character of Ove's back is strong enough to bear the brunt of it, and Backman—earnest in what he's set out to do—is a skilled enough writer in his tuned-down, low-key way that it all somehow works without feeling like it's trying too hard:

“I feel so much loss, Ove. Loss, as if my heart was beating outside my body.” They stood in silence for a long time, with their arms around each other. And at long last she lifted her face towards his, and looked into his eyes with great seriousness. “You have to love me twice as much now,” she said. And then Ove lied to her for the second—and last—time: he said that he would. Even though he knew it wasn’t possible for him to love her any more than he already did.

A Man Called Ove is ultimately a very light read, but it's earnest and it's happy, and we could all use a bit of that these days. It doesn't quite reach the happy-go-lucky heights of something like Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, but it strives for it, and it doesn't strive poorly, and sometimes that's enough. Highly recommendable to pretty much everyone, easy to read, and competently crafted.

⭐⭐⭐

Don Quixote (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote is an odd book. Often considered the first modern novel, it reads more like a collection of short stories. While there are a series of strong overarching themes which permeate the book, there's not really any general overarching story. The titular Don and his companion Sancho Panza travel the land, writing wrongs, making silly mistakes, and getting into various amusing hijinks. And, really, that's enough to carry things.

Cervantes is, above all else, a superb writer of comedy. His dialogue, double entendres, and knack for writing physical comedy are the most consistently excellent aspect of Don Quixote. In many cases it reads like a far more modern comedy; the slapstick is constant and always humorous and the comedy, in general, never feels forced or routine. Above all else, this book is funny, and that's not something you can say about many 17th century classics.

None of the comedy would be possible, of course, without an adequate translation from the original Spanish. Edith Grossman's translation is more than up to the task; it reads flowingly and beautifully and includes excellent footnotes illuminating Cervantes' clever wordplay in the original Spanish that is lost in the English text. So natural is Grossman's work that I would regularly forget that I was reading a translation at all, until I came across a bit that needed to be rectified with these footnotes. This is such a superb feat of translation that I have grown to consider this to be the best translation of literature I have read thus far. It's utterly fantastic. I can't say enough positive things about Grossman's work here.

Don Quixote is popularly known as a celebration of romanticism, but often reads quite the opposite. Quixote is responsible for various damages to property and grievous injury among the poor people he comes into contact with, including the wanton killing of several sheep in a shepherd's flock, the disruption of funeral rites resulting in a peasant's leg being broken (which, during the time period, may in extreme cases be as good as a death sentence if it removes a peasant's ability to work the land), and other such instances. I found myself disliking Don Quixote early, and found these stories to be an example of why living a make-believe life with your head in the clouds is a terrible thing, rather than an admirable quality. Quite different than what I expected, and the reputation this book has.

Sancho Panza, representing the practical realist, quickly became my favorite character. Although he appears otherwise, he's more intelligent than Quixote and often goes along with the titular character's hijinks in full awareness of their ridiculousness, if only to garner a flask of wine as a result. He's a lovable scoundrel, whereas I view Don Quixote a moronic, mentally ill, misled figure. I understand that that's part of Quixote's charm, but it didn't work for me. Perhaps I'm too cynical to appreciate the whimsy in the moon-brained romantic, and thus instead gravitate towards the ill-bred rogue.

With this book, Cervantes reminds me of a 400-year old Quentin Tarantino; a man so hopelessly in love with his favorite medium that it bleeds through his work, constantly making itself known. There are an endless number of references to romantic renaissance fiction from years past within these pages, works on works that I've never heard of, all helpfully cited in the footnotes of this edition. I found it amusing that Don Quixote, in its contemporary period, was a strongly influenced spin-off and commentary of works already in existence, despite its existence to us as a ground-breaking work of originality. Also amusing is the fact that Cervantes always planned the book to be concluded at the end of its first part, and only found himself driven to write the second part when unofficial sequels to his initial great work were being produced. The second part is a bit of a departure in style, but stands up to the first, in my opinion. It makes me curious as to the quality of said unofficial sequels that were produced.

This isn't my favorite book, but it was a whole heap of a lot more enjoyable than I expected it to be, and I'm wholly unsurprised that it maintains its reputation, more than four centuries after its inception.

⭐⭐⭐

The Drop (2014) by Dennis Lehane

The Drop reads pacily and feels more like a novella than a full novel, despite its multiple viewpoints.

Not a huge fan of Lehane's voice in this novel. It reminded me a bit of King's, but felt at times it was trying a bit too hard to affect a gritty, street-wise tone and some of the clipped sentences and slang felt too how-do-you-do-fellow-Bostonians to me. The prose in general was workmanlike, though Lehane is more than capable of pulling off a great sentence when he wants to:

Happiness destroyed was worth wrapping your arms around because it always hugged you back.

What I found Lehane to be best at was his characters. Bob jumped off the page for me as a subtle, thoughtful man who was far more on the inside than he outwardly appeared. His dedication to his faith made sense and the nuance with which Lehane writes him prevents him from spiraling into Catholic cliché. Bob is plagued by guilt and self-flagellates in the form of limiting his interaction with other people, effectively enforcing a crippling loneliness on himself, denying himself the key relationships that human beings require in order to survive. This isn't made clear to the reader immediately until he's contrasted on the page by Torres, another seemingly devote Catholic. As we get to know Torres we realize that his devotion to his church seems little more than lip service. He sins, confesses, and takes communion, never really displaying any guilt or regret in the way Bob does. Bob prevents himself from confessing and taking communion out of a deep guilt, and constantly feels the pressure of his religion, feeling he does not deserve to be forgiven for what he's done. I liked the depth.

The Drop is an enjoyable novel, perhaps a bit scattered between its many viewpoint characters (for its size, at least), but its explosive climax and twist more than make up for its shortcomings. An entertaining read with some sufficient character depth to keep your mind satiated.

⭐⭐⭐

Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker

It's been a while since I last read a book that was so undone simply by its own popularity.

Stoker relies so strongly on the air of mystery to carry Dracula's experience, and the very fact that this book has become such a pop culture phenomenon completely undoes that aspect of its strength. Everyone reading this book already knows the answers to the most tantalizing questions Stoker poses: they know Dracula is a vampire, they know his castle is supernatural, they know Lucy's odd ailment is due to having her blood sucked. Surely Stoker knew that such mysteries would create fear and unsettlement in his contemporary audiences, but modern readers—long inundated with the Twilights and the Blades and the Interview with the Vampires and the Castlevanias—are already well-informed about (and enamored with) vampirism in action and horror films of various sorts and will be able to pick up on this stuff nearly immediately. This isn't the first time I've considered such a disarmament of a novel's strengths in plotting by pop culture, and such a thing continues to fascinate me.

The book's titular Count Dracula

Regardless of the fact that this novel has been innately spoiled, I was able to appreciate Stoker's careful crafting of the mystery from a more objective point-of-view, and I respect how he pushed his contemporary readers forward through the plot by asking them what, exactly, was going on here. It's skillfully rendered and impeccably paced; drip-feeding new reveals to the reader. But I couldn't help being robbed of this enjoyment by being easily able to guess what was happening, and so the book subjectively loses this core aspect of its quality and renders much of its investigation as much more dry and rote than it should be. These reveals are robbed of their impact and thus the new discoveries of Van Helsing and co. feel more like busywork than like the new and surprising bits of information they ought to be.

Many readers say that Dracula was their introduction to classic literature in general, and to Victorian literature more specifically, and I think it makes a superb bridge into both for the newer reader. Stoker's prose is surprisingly clean and easily readable, yet still aesthetically pleasing. This kind of novel perhaps represents the bridge from the earlier, stuffier, more labyrinthine prose of high Victorian literature into the more easily consumable, yet still pleasing modernist literature I tend to love so much. I like Dickens as much as the next guy, but he does get a bit long in the tongue at times, which often threatens to undo his propensity for sheer prosaic beauty.

Stoker's prose doesn't quite hit Dickensian highs, but it more than gets the job done for me:

There was a deliberate voluptuousness that was both thrilling and repulsive. And as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal till I could see in the moonlight the moisture. Then lapped the white, sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited. 

 

Never did tombs look so ghastly white. Never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funeral gloom. Never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously. Never did bough creak so mysteriously, and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night. 

 

The tomb in the daytime, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough; but now some days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to browns; when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance; when time-discoloured stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished brass and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid than could have been imagined. It conveyed irresistibly the idea that life - animal life - was not the only thing that could pass away. 

I've always been a fan of the epistolary structure, though I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps having everything strictly segregated by chapter appeals to the overly orderly, anal being inside of me. While I enjoy this 'found footage' style of novel, I do have to say that Stoker's use of voice between his viewpoint characters left a lot to be desired for me.

Bram Stoker

The novel begins very enjoyably as we're thrust into Jonathan Harker's view. His voice seems appropriately proper and Victorian, and the mystery we're confronted with is relatively fresh, atmospheric, and intriguing. Harker is somewhat relatable as being a stranger-in-a-strange place. Later in the novel, the reader moves on to the other male characters, such as Sewell, Arthur, and Quincy Morris who seem to share an identically proper, buttoned-up, curiously professional characterization to Harker, despite the new characters being from drastically different places in life; Sewell being a physician, Arthur being Lord Goldalming, and Quincey Morris being from Texas. Surely the last of them, at least, would feel remarkably different? The two female characters of Mina and Lucy suffer similar lack of differentiation—the lines and actions of one would suit the other perfectly. And so the characters felt, in general, unremarkable to me and I did not feel myself empathizing with them, since they did not feel unique to me.

The one character safe from this criticism is, of course, Dr. Van Helsing, our resident kooky mad scientist-type. I found myself picturing him as sort of a Christopher Lloyd type from Back to the Future. An eccentric, friendly quack doctor on whose breadth of knowledge regarding the supernatural you can count. His optimistic, hopeful manner was apparent to me and was a nice change of mouthfeel from the deliberately dark and Gothic touches residing throughout the rest of the story. 

I found his dialogue to be particularly brilliant; I enjoy that you can hear just a touch of Van Helsing's Dutch accent in his dialogue:

It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be.

This sort of dialogue crafting is brilliantly subtle—only slight errors here and there—but just deliberate enough to affect the voice of the character. I really enjoyed the dialogue throughout Dracula and found it to be one of Stoker's strengths. He handles others, such as the cockney London working class accent, with similar skill. This is not something common to writers of even the greatest horror literature, so I appreciated it here.

Outside of Van Helsing, of course, I found little to differentiate these characters and thus was forced instead to rely instead on the atmosphere and the norms of Victorian London to carry me along, which, most of the time, was more than enough. Stoker is adept at painting a scene, especially those drenched in Gothic horror tropes, and I enjoyed the novel mostly just for that.

So, while I found some of Dracula to be wanting, I did like a lot of it, and I believe its structure and the ease at which its prose can be read makes it a fantastic introduction both to Victorian literature and to classic literature in general. I'll likely recommend it to new readers of the classics quite regularly from here on out, but its flaws keep it from sitting the pantheon next to my very favorite novels.

It's just a shame that so much of Dracula happens to be undone by its own popularity. But it's hard to hold that against it.

⭐⭐⭐

The Little Mermaid (1836) by Hans Christian Andersen

During certain difficult periods of my youth I've fallen prey to cursing myself and wishing to be anyone other than who I am. I'd guess that these sorts of moments of self-doubt and alienation are rather common among young adults. It wasn't until my late twenties that I began to set aside this brand of deep, subtle, festering self-hatred and instead choose to focus first on learning who exactly it is that I'm hating, then working to accept the person I am, and finally striving to improve the qualities I've already unknowingly developed, and then to correct some of my most unfortunate deficiencies. I think it's an important part of adulthood to finally come to terms with who you are and begin, from there, to learn and work to become who you really want to be.

The Little Mermaid's tragic fable touches on the theme of identity and desire, centered around a young girl who's given the opportunity to become somebody she is not in order to please what she believes are the desires of another. She realizes the heartbreaking gravity of such a tragic error, along with the fickle nature of desire.

Andersen's evocative scene-setting is perhaps what he does best, and it remains strong throughout this short story. Colorful descriptions of seashell-speckled aquatic palaces, the wriggling dark tentacles littering the walls of the sea witch's abode. Even the settings on dry land are especially spellbinding: limestone castles and fantastical beaches. These kinds of establishing shots read through in casual exposition are what I loved so much about Thumbelina, and it remains strong throughout The Little Mermaid.

The book is permeated with some Christian subtext that feels a bit jarring and out of place in the story, and I think it would have worked better had the titular mermaid been focused not on being granted an immortal soul, but simply the prince's love. I found the conclusion to be wanting as well, as we see Andersen devolve into a rather... psychedelic experience in the closing pages. It might have been compelling had it not been so abruptly and carelessly introduced, but I felt that it shifted the somber tone of the conclusion too quickly. I'd have much preferred for Andersen to instead have ended things on a simpler, more tragic note.

⭐⭐⭐

The Pillars of the Earth (1989) by Ken Follett

Pillars succeeds mostly on its strong re-creation of the time period. British history is so populated by sheer event that it's almost impossible to pick a single time period in the past thousand years and have it not offer a compelling setting.

Follett is a strong writer of historical fiction. His setting rings true and offers an ample amount of historical education in addition to the page-turning quality of his narrative. Historical fiction has always been partly of an educational nature to me; something akin to a textbook repurposed into a more easily consumable morsel, and Pillars succeeds in this.

The story starts strongly and offers an ample bevy of narrative hooks; Tom Builder's struggle to provide for his family during a time of civil strife is something nearly every adult is able to identify with, and Prior Phillip representing the enlightened clergyman is a nice change from the somewhat more common cliche of the manipulative, greedy character (almost always a Bishop or Pope) we tend to see in depictions of dark age priests in contemporary historical fiction. And intelligent characters are always enjoyable to read, in which we have Jack Jackson to float our leaky, dirty twelfth-century boat.

However not all of the characters succeed. Despite Jack's admirable intelligence and his victimhood to bullying at the hands of his step-brother, I actually found him somewhat more empty than I had wished for. He's easy to root for, but I had trouble identifying with his character. Follett's knowledge of architecture is obvious, but the use of so much jargon was above my understanding at times, and I think Jack's character relies strongly on his infatuation for mathematics, art, and architecture, which was something I was unable to grasp at times.

Stronger offenders, though, were the villains of the story. William Hamleigh was such an obvious target for the reader's hatred, but I found most of his sadism utterly unrelatable, and found his narration rather flimsy and insincere as a result. There's nothing William really wants or is driven by; he seems to exist just to cause suffering for others. I believe there was room for more characterization in his mother, too, who seems the most compelling of the bunch of villains we have, but so little time is spent with her and she remains not much more than an interesting but thin force to the narrative. Ditto to Bishop Waleran, who, with just a bit of foundation in the form of past motivation peppered through the narrative, could have accomplished more than just being the nakedly ambitious clergyman.

Pillars is an enjoyable book, and it offered a nice break to some of the denser, more difficult literature I've been attempting to tackle lately. And it's a really solid example of historical fiction. But it's not one of my favorites as it feels rather thin in certain areas, despite its paciness and its strong narrative hooks.

⭐⭐⭐

Call for the Dead (1961) (George Smiley, #1) by John le Carré

My second le Carré novel—the author's first—had a notably lighter impact on me than my introduction to the man's work, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

Call for the Dead is noteworthy in that it's such a polished first novel. It reads quite quickly and le Carré's prose is surprisingly polished for a new novelist. I suspect the man had been nursing his talent for quite some time, perhaps with other methods. But what made The Spy Who Came In From The Cold so compelling to me—its gritty realism, the undertones of what motivates one to live such a difficult life as one lived by a spy, and its compelling characters—are present here, albeit in early form, somewhat like the tip of the iceberg that would be revealed in the coming, more polished novels in the Smiley series.

George Smiley is the main draw of this novel. Gone are the super-spies we know now—the Bournes and Bonds and various other hip, muscular, shirtless Bees—and we're left with a short, fat, poorly dressed, bespectacled, middle-aged man whose only worthwhile weapon is his mind. Smiley (who made only a peripheral appearance in the other novel I've read) is a joy to read. His analytical mind walks us tradecraft-neophytes through the potential motivations for the people he's examining in a studious, workmanlike manner, and we never feel left out of the know as to why he's performing the actions he is.

Perhaps most enjoyable for me were the asides in which Smiley dipped into his and his adversaries' political motivations for doing what they do. le Carré's characters feel like real people with real wants who end up desperate and trapped in the world in which they've come to reside. The antagonists are not flag-waving Marxists or steel-jawed monsters who kill at whim. The best of them are cold professionals. But more importantly, they're real, disillusioned people doing what they can to enact the drastic changes in the world they'd like to see. This humanity makes them relatable, and even pitiable. Although initially cast as villains; you end up feeling sorry for them rather than rooting against them. And it's a credit to le Carré's skill that this turn never feels cloying nor manipulative. My favorite characters are always those I don't necessarily agree with, but am still capable of empathizing with. And in this, more than nearly anything else in his work, le Carré succeeds.

A young John le Carré

Although I enjoyed it, I think Call for the Dead, overall, does feel a bit thin. There are elements of Smiley's frustration in dealing with the stifling bureaucracy and rampant idiocy within his own organization that immediately interested me but were never touched on again past the first few chapters. And some of the side characters—Guillam, most notably—were left distinctly underdeveloped despite playing a considerable role in the climax, which caused it to lack a bit of the impact it could have had.

When you consider its status as le Carré's first novel, Call for the Dead is still quite impressive regardless of these flaws. But rating on its own merit leads me to classify it more as a longish novella than a full novel of its own account. That said, it's a marvelous first effort, and I'll definitely be reading the rest of the George Smiley books. le Carré has me hooked.

⭐⭐⭐

QUOTES LIKED

“But gossip must see its characters
in black and white, equip them with
sins and motives easily conveyed in
the shorthand of conversation.”

“His secretive nature detested the purpose of all interviews, their oppressive intimacy, their inescapable reality.”

“Dieter had a theory that was pure Faust. Thought alone was valueless. You must act for thought to become effective. He used to say that the greatest mistake man ever made was to distinguish between the mind and the body: an order does not exist if it is not obeyed.”

“Thought alone was valueless. You must act for thought to become effective.”

“They never understand it, do they? They never know what it costs—the sordid tricks of lying and deceiving, the isolation from ordinary people. They think you can run on their kind of fuel—the flag waving and the music. But you need a different kind of fuel, don't you, when you're alone? You've got to hate, and it needs strength to hate all the time. And what you must love is so remote, so vague when you're not a part of it.”

Oliver Twist (1837) by Charles Dickens

It's difficult rating books like Oliver Twist where I seem to bounce rapidly from really loving it to grinding through, seemingly by the page.

Dickens' writing is gorgeous which makes the majority of the book an enjoyable read. His ability to set a scene is unmatched and his dialogue seems genuine, and the very setting of Victorian London is hard to beat. The credibility rising from Dickens depicting his contemporary setting only makes Oliver Twist stronger.

But the story itself, beyond these aspects, didn't engage me. Dickens' characters are pretty thin and he relies more on his wittiness and his sense of humor to carry them than their caricature-like construction. I felt little attachment to any of them and I didn't feel that any of them really grew as we continued, nor would I really have cared if they had. The only two in the whole thing I ended up rooting for were Nancy and Sikes' poor dog.

It seems like Dickens' own upbringing as a working child gave rise to much of this story. Some of the scene-by-scene events are extremely compelling — such as the Artful Dodger's courtroom shenanigans, which I later read was actually inspired by a real event witnessed by Dickens. But I never felt that the overarching story set enough framework for these moments to really shine. I suspect Dickens had a number of these scenes in mind when writing Oliver Twist, but was not as inspired when laying the foundation in which to place them.

It's worth reading, if only for the caliber of Dickens' prose:

The stars seemed, to the boy’s eyes, farther from the earth than he had ever seen them before; there was no wind; and the sombre shadows thrown by the trees upon the ground, looked sepulchral and death-like, from being so still.

There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such time, a mortal knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate.

The sun rose and sank, and rose and sank again, and many times after that; and still the boy lay stretched on his uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever. The worm does not work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon the living frame.

The child was pale and thin; his cheeks were sunken; and his eyes large and bright. The scanty parish dress, the livery of his misery, hung loosely on his feeble body; and his young limbs had wasted away, like those of an old man.

Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.

But I've already read better Dickens and I look forward to getting into some of his other, more critically celebrated work now that I've finished Oliver Twist.

⭐⭐⭐

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) (The Adventures of Tom and Huck, #1) by Mark Twain

There's a pretty common, easily identifiable process guiding decision-making in most human societies: We identify the ends at which we mean to arrive, we make certain decisions and engage in work to get there, and, hopefully, the process concludes after some time has passed, and we arrive at our desired destination.

As adults, we spend the vast majority of our lives operating within these processes. Some take place over decades of time, others months, or even weeks. "I want that promotion". "I'm saving up for a house". Even something as trivial as "I need to finish eating these bananas before they get overripe". Of course, these goal-oriented life processes don't always conclude in the manner in which we had hoped—Sometimes our boss is just an oblivious asshole who doesn't realize how valuable we are to our team. And nobody wants to eat more than one banana at a time, right? But typically with enough moxie and fastidiousness, and with reasonably conceived goals, we get where we're looking to go.

We often underestimate the intelligence of children. You can go downtown during summertime and see them all eating ice cream and getting it all over their face like some kind of fool. Or witness your son falling off a step while doing something stupid and hurting themselves. Any parent will tell you that they've thought (probably more than once) the words "Jesus Christ, my kid is a goddamn moron". But children are often just as intelligent as we are. They are definitely far more observant than we are. And they are, without a doubt, far, far more imaginative.

Twain's writing of children subtly grasps both their strengths and pitfalls. Tom Sawyer is an extremely clever, imaginative young man. He understands what makes people tick and often manipulates it to his advantage. He operates under the same aforementioned process we adults do—he identifies what he wants and operates in accordance with these goals. The difference is that oftentimes he doesn't arrive where he wants to go.

That's because, for children, there's a key element of this process that's missing: Experience. They're capable of crafting their own goals—"Skip school today", "get Becky to like me", "get out of whitewashing this fence", "make my Aunt miss me". But they often go about accomplishing these in a clumsy, sub-optimal manner—Sometimes to such an extent that they hurt those around them. They lack the experience of fully formed adults, so they're often unaware of how their actions could potentially affect others around them, and they fail to account for the inherent irrationality of human beings. For example, Tom manipulates Becky into liking him, but it all implodes when she realizes that he's not been completely genuine with her. Or, he runs away from home in order to garner an emotional response from his Aunt and Sid, but is surprised to find them honestly distraught when they assume he's dead—or worse. Tom is not stupid—quite the opposite; his cleverness is a joy to read throughout the story. But his lack of experience in dealing with people is often apparent in episodes like this. Twain has such a firm grasp on what it is to be a child: you're operating in this weird world of adults in which everyone seems to know the rules except you. So Tom longs to run away, to fish and play and shirk his responsibilities, because he knows the rules of those worlds—or, rather, he's free to make them up as he goes along.

Twain nails the writing of children in a way I haven't very often, if ever. The strength of his prose is remarkable, too. And his usage of local, contemporary slang brings a heightened sense of sincerity to the novel. But it does have its faults.

The vignettes that populate most of the book are expertly crafted, enjoyable, and affecting, but the lack of a strong overarching narrative until the final quarter of the book left me with an experience that felt like reading a group of short stories rather than one cohesive novel. It feels like Twain decided to write a novel, but had no strong 'glue' to hold it together. It still works pretty well as a novel, but don't expect a strong plot to keep you shuffling along.

Another criticism—perhaps more important—is the lack of any strong characters outside our lead. Most of the adults in the story are token or weak, from the cliched down-and-out drinker Muff Potter, to the awful evil-because-he's-part-Native-American Injun Joe. I realize that this is a pretty tight book and there's not too much space to flesh these people out, but it still left me feeling like they were a bore to read about. Even his steadfast companion Huckleberry Finn felt like more of a token orphan than a fully realized secondary character.

The strength of this book is in its character interactions and its dialogue. And that's enough. But with just a little bit more, I could have liked it a whole lot better.

⭐⭐⭐

The Mystery Knight (2010) (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #3) by George R.R. Martin

The Mystery Knight is pretty important to Martin's worldbuilding, but it feels a bit scattered compared the other novellas. We're introduced to a number of hedge knights, proper knights, and lords right away and it becomes difficult to keep the lot of them straight. There are a few with differentiating characteristics—Ser Glendon Ball sticks out right away—but in general, I found myself struggling to recall who was who.

Dunk's experience in the lists is as riveting as ever, though. These novellas include some of the best action sequences Martin has written—even including the mainline A Song of Ice and Fire series—and The Mystery Knight is another fine example of that quality. But I couldn't help feeling that, while this entry is important to Martin's worldbuilding, it doesn't work nearly as well as a novella as The Hedge Knight and The Sworn Sword do. It lacks the focus and the tight narrative of the prior episodes, instead choosing to depict a conspiracy that deserves far more sprawl and page count than it gets here. I chalk this up to Martin's desire to fully flesh out his world's history, and not having the format to do so prior to the conception of his world books, The World of Ice and Fire and Fire and Blood. I believe that both The Mystery Knight and A Dance With Dragons are markedly weaker entries due to the fact that they're jam-packed with worldbuilding that Martin feels is important, but does not always make the stories in those two works better themselves.

The Mystery Knight is generally well-regarded by ASOIAF fans, but I found it clearly the weakest novella of the three that have been released thus far. It's still worth a read for its likable protagonists and its viscerally affecting depiction of jousting, but both The Hedge Knight and The Sworn Sword are more cohesive and more consistently readable.

⭐⭐⭐

Red Country (2012) (The First Law, #6) by Joe Abercrombie

WARNING: Lots of spoilers in this review! Turn back now if you haven't read Red Country yet!

I have such an odd relationship with the fantasy genre. In general, I guess you could say that I hate it. I've read dozens of fantasy novels—most considered to be good-to-great—and I've disliked nearly all of them. However, there are two writers of fantasy genre that I consider to be among some of my very favorite writers, regardless of genre. One of whom is Joe Abercrombie. This is mostly because he does two things extremely well that most fantasy wholly lacks: Deep, interesting characters, and humor.

The latter is as strong as ever. Abercrombie's humor ranges from biting to dry and kept me reading. However, the characters fall somewhat short—especially compared to his most recent stand-alone, The Heroes. The protagonist, Shy South, and her adoptive father, Lamb, are both memorable and great to read, but the cast surrounding them tends to all fade into one homogenous amalgam of Western cliche. The climax sees a reveal regarding fellowship member Savian, which probably would have been quite the development had I been able to remember who the hell he even was. I was so enured with faceless, insignificant fellowship members that I couldn't even remember the character's gender, let alone who they were.

And that leads into another weakness of the book. The pacing bumps and drags quite a bit through the first half, as Abercrombie seems to struggle with what exactly to tell us as this roving band of nobodies traverses a large, barren landscape for several hundred pages. We're told a bit about some of the characters surrounding Shy and Lamb, but what we're told never seems all that interesting. This is in stark contrast to The Heroes, in which each minor character seems fleshed out enough that I'd gleefully read an entire novel based on them.

It's not an awful book, though. Abercrombie's humor is enough to carry it, and his voice is stronger than ever. Clearly a fan of the Western genre, he deftly blends it with his low fantasy setting to create something unique and worthwhile just by itself. There are also some neat instances of worldbuilding—something that isn't Abercrombie's strength, but is enjoyable to read nonetheless. The climactic scene in which "Legate Sarmis" finally shows up is particularly good as well, as Iosiv Lestek was one of the few minor characters that resonated with me, and was used expertly by Abercrombie. Additionally, his prose has taken a noticeable leap since his initial trilogy.

So, despite this book's great reputation among fans of fantasy, I found it a bit more uneven than the other two stand-alones set in the First Law world. It's Abercrombie's weakest novel since his very first, and I can see why he'd want to take a break from this world after completing it. But it's still worth reading, and it's still got me excited for the upcoming A Little Hatred—Abercrombie's first novel set in the First Law world in seven years.

⭐⭐⭐

The Gambler (1866) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There's nothing less interesting to read than a stupid character. It's difficult to care about any of their observations because their lack of ability robs any respect for them you may have had. The plot no longer hits like it should because things happen due to stupidity rather than providence.

I've read little Dostoyevsky thus far but the one thing you can always expect from him are hyper-intelligent, introspective characters. They're a joy to read even when they're not particularly happy or well-adjusted individuals because their own ruminations—done so dryly and uninterestingly by lesser writers—are so genuine they cause us to call into question our own actions and motivations. Dostoyevsky's character play is what I enjoyed most from this novel, along with the obvious passion stemming from his own personal experience with gambling addiction and his infatuation with one of his students, represented in this story by Polina.

The problem with this book is that it feels oddly top-heavy. The first three-quarters are spent introducing us to the locale and the characters and their dynamics. It's enjoyable enough as a lead-in, but before you know it, the book is wrapping things up. Surely this abrupt conclusion is due the real-life circumstances of Dostoyevsky being forced to produce this book in 26 days in order to pay off his own gambling debts, but it hurts because there's a really spectacular novel in here exploring the damages of addiction (perhaps not just limited to that of the gambling variety) that will never be written. Instead of a slow slide downwards into a life ruined by addiction, it all occurs in the final 20 pages or so of the book as nearly two years are compressed into one chapter, robbing us of its intended and deserved impact. The ending is perfect but lacks punch that would have occurred had its second half been drawn out a bit.

Despite this, I still liked it, and I'm fighting the urge to pick up Crime and Punishment before finishing some more of the open books on my nightstand. Nobody writes characters like Dostoyevsky—I can't get enough of them. As for The Gambler in particular, it's well worth reading, but I am going to assume it isn't one of his best.

⭐⭐⭐

NOTABLE HIGHLIGHTS

“Do you know that one day I'll kill you? I won't do it because I'm no longer in love with you, or because I'm jealous, but—I'll just kill you for no better reason that I sometimes long to devour you.”

The Tinderbox (1835) by Hans Christian Andersen

Andersen certainly doesn't lack for imagination, but I was hoping for a bit of a darker turn that I didn't get.

The moral of the story: If you want to gain wealth and station, all you need to do decapitate an old lady and adopt 3 dogs.

⭐⭐⭐

The Princess and the Pea (1835) by Hans Christian Andersen

Without artwork supporting it this is less a short story and more a satirical parable, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and found it similar in tone to some of the satirical, biting short fiction of Mark Twain.

⭐⭐⭐

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865) by Mark Twain

Twain's use of contemporary local twang has always made his dialogue such a treat to read, and it jumps off the page in this short story, but his humor has always been very hit-or-miss with me and I didn't find this as humorous as some of his other work. It still retains a folksy charm, though, and is well worth reading even in the presence of Twain's other, more easily recognizable work.

⭐⭐⭐

A Wild Sheep Chase (1982) (The Rat, #3) by Haruki Murakami

I read A Wild Sheep Chase just after completing Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 (the two notably rough entries with which Murakami began his writing career) and having previously read Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (my dual introductions to both melancholy, introspective, concrete Murakami and magical, weird, surrealist Murakami). I felt after completing these four works I was well-equipped to handle the rest of Murakami's work, and I'll be proceeding in order of publication from here on out.

With Sheep you can feel Murakami beginning to warm up to what would become his signature style. It's hard to compare it to his first two novels as the scope is so much vaster, but it's generally a more worthwhile work in my opinion, with bigger ideas that are more skillfully executed. Gone is the meandering, arbitrary cloud of a narrative that made up his first two novels, replaced by a more structured narrative focused on the oddball MacGuffin that is searching for a demonic, possessive Sheep. This plotline was so weird it was impossible for me to take seriously, which may have been the point. Luckily, this being my 5th Murakami novel, I've long since learned to stop trying to analyze where Murakami's taking me or how he's getting me there and begun to switch off my brain and allow him to do his thing.

This book felt like a rougher first pass of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. While it resolves much of its ambiguity in a far more satisfying way than that book (unsurprising considering Wind-Up Bird was subject to a damaging series of editing upon its translation that removed several key portions of the story), but its pace is not as tight as Bird's, and its diversions and its motifs are not nearly as compelling as those found in its descendant. Sheep starts very slowly and only get moving at a satisfying paced after about two-thirds of the way into it. Wind-Up Bird felt like it was cruising along the entire way and felt much lighter than its 600 pages, while Sheep feels every bit of its 350. I also felt his prose was rougher and that this book lacked some of the more quotable pieces of wisdom often present in Murakami's work, but perhaps that's just subjective. This is really all to be expected as Murakami was just beginning to find his style. That said, from all the praise I've heard for this novel (it's named in his Wikipedia page as one of his most noteworthy novels), I expected it to be a bit better. It certainly helped me to discover what The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle does so well, and it helped me learn just how much I actually enjoyed reading that book.

That's not to say that A Wild Sheep Chase is not worth reading. If you're a Murakami fan, you'll probably enjoy it. I liked it, even though it was uneven and lacked the polish that his later work features. Murakami has a tendency to run off on tangents, which, at face value, seem as if they'd disrupt the pace and devolve into boring exposition. For example, late in Sheep, Murakami spends a dozen pages describing, in detail, how a village in northern Hokkaido was settled. To summarize: Some dudes migrate as far north as possible to get away from paying debts they owe. They learn to farm with the help of a local Ainu (indigenous peoples of the island), they deal with adversity, start families, etc. It sounds like it'd be boring as all hell, but Murakami's talent as a masterful storyteller somehow allows him to spin such seemingly shoehorned tangent into a compelling piece of the whole. It's one of the things I love about him, and something stands out greatly as a strong feature of his work as a whole. A lot of folks will criticize Murakami's tendency to repeat the same calling cards in each novel (passive male protagonists, lost cats, ear fetishes, psychic women, cooking, jazz and classical music... Do I need to continue?), but these diversions into niche historical storytelling, along with his much more obscure, surreal metaphysical themes, are what make each Murakami novel a new enough experience for me to continue exploring his work. I may not always like how his protagonists lack agency, his characters lack depth, or how his plotting always seems too coincidental and convenient, but I can put up with that stuff to experience what I love about him--even in one of his rougher novels, like this one.

 I've got a trip to southeast Asia involving a couple of 17+ hour flights coming up next week, and I've loaded up on the audiobooks. I'll be listening to Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World over one of these flights, a novel I'm greatly looking forward to, as it is one of the few (including only Kafka on the Shore from his entire oeuvre) that seems to have garnered universal love from among the Murakami faithful.

I'm excited to be through Murakami's training-wheels phase and to start cracking into some of his most well-respected work.

⭐⭐⭐

The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) by Alexandre Dumas

It feels like I've been reading this one for years, though it's only been about 3 months.

I plodded through what is perhaps Dumas' most famous work in fits and starts; devouring it by the chapter here and there, before reverting to consuming only a few pages per week, and back again. The Count of Monte Cristo has some really damaging pacing issues, possibly a quirk of its publishing format. It was originally published as a serial, and after reading through about half of it I ceased focusing on it by itself and began reading some other stuff concurrently. I enjoyed it a bit more when regularly spelling it with other books, as it's heavy enough that it needs some air here and there.

In general, I found the first and final thirds of the book consistently entertaining. While Dumas can dip into melodrama here and there (I swear some portions of Robin Buss's English dialogue feel more like an episode of the Simpsons lampooning The Count of Monte Cristo than the actual book itself), and, at times, his stubborn Romanticism bleeds through into places that call for a more realistic tone, I couldn't help but to enjoy the ride. It veers from Arabian Nights-like hashish-inspired dreams, to political drama and court intrigue, to classic Romance, and back again. As I made my way through its final pages, I found myself impressed at how tidily Dumas was able to tie up all of the loose ends.

When plodding through the middle of the book, however, I found myself continuously bogged down in new characters, new settings, and even callbacks to other more minor characters' backstories. There are several hundred pages in which the Count doesn't really do anything except plot his next move while attending the opera every damn night, which really slowed my progress and made wonder if I was reading the same "rollercoaster ride" everyone else praises as being action-packed. Once it does get moving again, though, it does reach a more than suitable conclusion as Dumas tidily clips each plot thread. There are a lot, and he manages them well, it just takes him some time to do so.

The greatest strength of the book is its plotting, and how differently it tells its story from beginning to end. I was shocked to find Dumas building up his protagonist, Dantes, only to have him switch gears several hundred pages in and begin to tell the story from several different points of view. While initially a bit bewildering, I felt it ended up giving me a strong viewpoint on just how much Dantes had changed from the beginning of the story, which was something that might not have been made obvious had our viewpoint remained aligned with Dantes' limited third person narration. Afterwards he becomes something of an enigma, and often I felt that I had forgotten for a moment who the titular Count actually was, thinking of him as a wholly different character, until Dumas would remind with a line here or there (one of my favorites is one of the Count's servants mentioning in passing that he never sleeps with the windows shut, as he always requires a view of the sky when indoors--a clear reference to his prior 14 years of imprisonment). In this way Dantes' character splits noticeably from the likable, naive protagonist of the first few pages, and becomes the cynical, driven Count, and we only see the two personae merge once again at key moments later in the story. The impact on me as a reader was astounding.

While telling such a grand story isn't without its pitfalls of convenience to help bring things together when necessary (there are not one, but two instances in which characters conveniently hear some privileged information by hiding in bushes at precisely the correct moment), I still felt amazed that Dumas was able to weave such a story together in such a deft manner. Perhaps most impressive is the way in which Dantes is able to attain his various revenges. None involve anything so trivial as open violence, as Dantes' prefers instead to rend his opponents' very souls in the most mentally destructive, ingenious ways possible. Dantes takes everything away from them, in the most painful ways possible, using only their own misdeeds. This is a game in which they've provided the pieces, and Dantes, moving as an unknown, using his persona of the Count as a mask, merely aligns these pieces against those who initially added them to the board. They aren't even aware someone is plotting their downfall until it's too late, and in many places of the story, we aren't either, until something clicks. Dumas arranges everything with subtlety, though sooner or later each new revelation or piece of minor information leads the reader to the outcome that Dumas has set up. Dumas is subtle with Dantes' movements; he doesn't insult his readers' intelligence, and prefers to leave the clues in front of the reader rather than tell them outright. It's something I grew to love about the story.

I found that some of the other characters lacked a compelling depth, though. There were a number I had become interested in who existed to drive the plot in a relatively artificial manner, and I felt like Dumas already had ample wordcount to turn them into something more. Dantes is fantastic, and I quite liked Caderousse's casual cowardice and opportunism, which requires no deep motivation to explain. Other characters, however, could have used some. Valentine serves as nothing more than the object of Morrel's affection, and some backstory as to just why Villefort is so driven and ambitious could have made the punch of the courthouse climax hit even harder. At times I felt that these characters didn't really have any reason as to why they are the way they are, or why they're making the decisions that they do. They simply do it because it suits the plot.

The Count of Monte Cristo is oddly uneven considering its reputation on the internet. Every time I see it mentioned it's met with nearly universal praise, but I found it pretty clearly flawed, though still enjoyable. I still can't shake the feeling that I seem to have read a different book than everyone else. Is the passive peer pressure of popular opinion really that strong? Did everyone secretly read an abridged copy and pretend otherwise? Am I just a nincompoop?

Well, one thing that sets it apart from every other book for me is its length: it now occupies the mantle of being the longest book I've ever read. So there's that.

⭐⭐⭐

The Lottery (1948) by Shirley Jackson

WARNING: Lots of spoilers in this review! Turn back now if you haven't read The Lottery yet!

Mom: Hi Jon! How are things?
Me: Great! Just picked up Shirley Jackson's short stories collection. Looking forward to reading some of them pretty soon. I think I'm going to start with The Lottery.
Mom: Oh, is that the one where they stone the woman to death?

Thanks Mom.

It's hard for me to review this because it was so expertly spoiled for me, and I always have a hard time reading something and giving it an honest shot when I already know the reveal, especially when the reveal is the most impactful part of the story, as it is with The Lottery.

Jackson's strength has always been maintaining an air of normalcy and serving up the weirdness with a slow-drip, as if you're the frog who doesn't notice the water temperature is slowly rising until you're speeding headfirst into a tree to end the novel with your own suicide boiling. The Lottery is similar in this regard, as there are subtle hints that something's off ("wait, why are these boys collecting rocks?") while remaining otherwise focused on the dry minutiae of daily village life.

Jackson's pacing of the story is its strength. She maintains a perfect grasp of just how much normalcy to feed the reader before dropping the bomb, and the story ends at the perfect location as well, leaving the juicy violence to the reader's imagination rather than indulging us all and describing it in detail.

My only wish is that there was more depth, but what's absent becomes the real meat of the story. Why is this tradition in place? Why haven't the people seen fit to do away with it yet, as other villages have? Jackson's depiction of tradition as being a weight around the ankle of a drowning man is nothing new now, but was core to the feeling of the time in which she was writing and provides ample chewing material beyond this short story's runtime.

A neat little story that captures what Shirley Jackson does best.

⭐⭐⭐

The Iliad (750 BC) by Homer

The Iliad is surprisingly modern in its level, deep treatments of its characters on both sides. Achilles is a particularly interesting study in what a spoiled diva not unlike an '80s glam rock star would have been had they been granted godlike skill at arms and been transported to 13th century BC Anatolia. Its realistic depiction of violence and the horrors of war was surprising to me, the rang genuine when I expected a more romanticized version. I particularly enjoyed the character of Diomedes, someone I had never previously heard of but found quite memorable in action. His duel with Aphrodite stood out as a scene I'll never forget. The hulking figure of Ajax was equally inspirational.

Fagles' translation is often beautiful and I doubt a much better job will ever be done. The caliber of his English "prosetry" was something else that greatly surprised on reading this particular translation:

"Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away."

"Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again." 

"The sort of words a man says is the sort he hears in return." 

"The proud heart feels not terror nor turns to run and it is his own courage that kills him." 

"Even a fool may be wise after the event." 

"We are perpetually labouring to destroy our delights, our composure, our devotion to superior power. Of all the animals on earth we least know what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is best for us is our admiration of good." 

Homer

As with all translations, it's difficult to tell where Homer begins and Fagles ends, but regardless, the text is littered with great tidbits such as these that make it worth reading just by themselves. But despite Fagles' best efforts, I can't help feeling like there will forever be something lost in translation to readers not experiencing The Iliad in its native language. In English, Homer's great work unfortunately falls too frequently into a repetitiveness that lacks whatever poetic musicality it must have featured in Homeric Greek to instead become filler-esque bloat that drags down the entire work in its English form and hampers its flow.

Even despite that, this is a stunningly gorgeous read—even in the modern English language so far removed from its original Homeric Greek—and well worth a read for anyone interested in a fantastic, larger-than-life war story. It stands among the best ever penned, and I can't heap enough praise on Fagles' gorgeous English prose.

⭐⭐⭐

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) by Washington Irving

Irving's talent for description reminds me a bit of Stevenson's, however, the story lacks the depth of something like Jekyll and Hyde and Irving's prose tends to get away from him when compared to the tighter efforts of similar work. Sleepy Hollow began to wear thin near the halfway mark of the story.

The real value here is in the richly colored depiction of early American life in the Tappan Zee area and the Northern European folkloric influences Irving adapts for this story.

⭐⭐⭐