Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë

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

Emily Brontë's mise-en-scene and character writing are absolutely brilliant. Reading this book feels like late Winter. It feels like chilled, frosted glass and quiet wind. Like looking at bare tree branches against an overcast sky. And I don't just think that's because I read the book in late winter. The settings of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange are cold and bleak. Snow regularly falls and otherwise healthy people get sick and die seemingly at random. There's a blight—perhaps a spiritual one—hanging over this patch of land, it seems, which remains as starkly beautiful year-round as it does cold and bereft of much joy.

Goodreads user Alex put this stunningly well in his own stellar review:

Wuthering Heights takes place in a dark, tiny, parallel place, like one of those rolled-up dimensions string theorists like to talk about. Whether the supernatural exists there is uncertain. The law doesn't, except abstractly. It's a more violent world than ours, more intense.

The characters of the story seem affected by the miasma of this place, both physically and spiritually. They get sick very easily. Most of the time, they recover. Sometimes they don't. Many of the characters die young of illness; something the Brontë family must have experienced even before the entire brood of siblings died themselves before ever reaching age 40.

The dreadful character of the place seems personified by Heathcliff. Having perused the reviews here prior to reading the book, I didn't expect a Romantic story, but I was fully aware of Heathcliff's popular reputation as a dark heartthrob. The frontpage of reviews contains multiple instances of the reviewer swooning over the love of Catherine and Heathcliff, and there are a bevy of Tumblr-esque stylized images featuring Heathcliff's strapping silhouette looking dreamily into the distance on a hill somewhere among the moors of Yorkshire, perhaps dreaming of his lost love Catherine. Behold his manly figure, furrowed brow and all! How pensive and still dedicated to his one true love! It's so totally romantic, especially that time he dug up her partially decomposed corpse and definitely did not have sex with it!

And I simply cannot understand this reputation or this celebration of him as a dark, tortured hunk. Heathcliff is not just an unlikable character. He is most definitely not an anti-hero and I would probably even disagree that he's a Byronic one. He quite noticeably has no redemptive arc because he's so obviously the villain of this story, and the most detestable character I've read since the first time I rekindled my interest in reading by picking up A Song of Ice and Fire after completing university ten years ago. I cannot fathom how anybody reading this book can see him as anything other than an evil, malevolent sociopath, hellbent on making life miserable for everyone around him solely because the goal of which seems to be all that's keeping him going. Heathcliff's so-called romantic feelings for Catherine are not a sign of his humanity or a small window to his inner tenderness; they are a malformed, grotesque malignancy spewed forth from within an abused little boy who so allowed his hatred and rage to fester they've polluted whatever empathetic humanity must have once been left of his soul. Heathcliff's love for Catherine consistently resembles more an unhinged obsession than well-wishing affection. Catherine chooses to reciprocate his affection (though never to the extent of Heathcliff's), famously quipping:

"I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same".

And I fail to find the romance within this quote, seeing instead the glaring narcissism of a woman who can only find it in herself to love this man because he so resembles her own qualities. Consider the course of action Heathcliff might have taken had Catherine not happened to reciprocate this attachment. My expectation would be something along the lines of Persephone and Hades, or perhaps Jeffrey Dahmer. "Stalker" would not even begin to describe a Heathcliff scorned.

The many revolting actions taken by Heathcliff can't really be cataloged simply because there are so many of them that regularly occur. There are the minor things, such as hanging a dog from a fencepost, and there are the major things, such as leaving his own son isolated in the cold garret until he literally dies. But nothing so repulsed me as his treatment of Hareton. His clear (and I believe this is stated outright by the character, though I failed to make a note of it during my read and cannot locate it now) goal is to create in Hareton another version of himself; a young man so abused his wrath consumes him and rends his potential to nothing but more wrath and violence. Heathcliff does this in order to feed his grudge and spite Hareton's father Hindley, who, being physically and mentally abusive, was the cause of so much of Heathcliff's own misery as a child; what essentially has made Heathcliff into the monster he has become. Heathcliff clearly states that he is able to see Hareton's vast potential as a kind, (initially) intelligent, and physically strong young boy and resolves to snuff it out, refusing to allow the boy to grow intellectually. He doesn't permit him to learn to read, become educated, or even learn a trade, instead reducing him to an illiterate farmhand who can barely speak and can do only unskilled manual labor. Cathy the Younger later comments that Hareton is not much more than a dog, as when he is not at work he merely stares into the fire seemingly without a thought in his head.

Heathcliff's treatment of Hareton was viscerally repulsive to me before I even consciously considered why it should be. After all, Heathcliff is no stranger to mistreating the other characters of this book. He constantly abuses them verbally, he physically assaults them and nearly murders both Hindley (by stabbing him and kicking his unconscious body) and Isabella (by throwing the knife at her and nearly cutting her throat as she flees Wuthering Heights). He abuses and kills animals. He is the indirect cause of the death of two characters (Hindley, by studiously exacerbating his drinking and gambling problems, and the aforementioned Linton, by isolating him to his room and refusing to send for a doctor when he becomes ill). So we've already been well acquainted and even somewhat desensitized to Heathcliff's heinous acts by the time his abuse of Hareton occurs. But this deliberate neglect of Hareton snuck into the backdoor and punished my spirit and made it quantifiably more difficult for me to read this book: I don't usually take 2 full weeks to read a ~300 page novel, but I needed regular breaks from it's bleakness.

I think what bothers me so much about Heathcliff's treatment of Hareton isn't just a spiteful act against his deceased father, it's the complete and deliberate snuffing out of a human being's potential. Hareton is a living abortion, a stunted, grotesque, shambling thing nobody wants and everybody hates. Heathcliff aborts his potential to affect the world as a human being, preferring to render the endless potential of our race into a living death. He destroys the best of us for nearly no practical reason; only to dishonor the memory of a long dead man who Heathcliff has already taken everything from. Heathcliff gains no real significant satisfaction from this that I can see. He executes such a heinous crime because—hey, why not? Another way to put a black mark on Hindley. It's not even the icing on the cake, it's a sprinkle. And that makes such a crime even worse.

Hareton knows he is being intellectually and spiritually stunted; made into a brute who lacks even basic humanity. But perhaps he lacks the intellectual wherewithall to fully grasp the crime being committed against him. It's the complete removal of all that he could possibly be, the crushing of his spirit and the denial of the means with which he could attain a fruitful life. He exists from day-to-day as a specter, an empty husk with no purpose, a sad bastardization of what life represents. His life is meaningless and the tools with which he could find a meaning for it are ripped away from him by force. It would be better just to kill him outright, for in this way he is a trophy in Heathcliff's house, a rotting signpost of Heathcliff's victory over his father and a living, breathing insult to him.

The wrath and revenge of wronged individuals spread throughout the characters of this story like a plague. Heathcliff, the blast radius of the bomb set off by Hindley's abuse, destroys the lives of everyone around him in the most despicable ways possible. And his victims, in their misery, project their vitriol outwardly to others in a cycle of pain, misery, and violence. It's particularly poetic, then, that the character of Hareton turns out to be everything that Heathcliff is not. He is perhaps the most undeservedly abused character in the entire novel (his abuse begins as an infant, when, neglected by his drunken father, he is dropped from a staircase and barely saved from death or crippling injury by Nelly), and he is also the one who shows the most restraint. He proves to the reader and to Heathcliff himself that it is not, in fact, inevitable that any human being as mistreated as Heathcliff would turn out so malevolent. And after 300 pages of misery, of directed violence, hatred, and wrath, Emily Brontë gives us our ray of hope in Pandora's box of horrors. In Hareton she tells us that we have it in us to be more than the sum of our experiences, that we can choose to be good, or at least to strive to be better.

Cathy the Younger is the catalyst to Hareton's salvation. She creates in him the motivation to be better. He picks up books for the first time and painstakingly attempts to teach himself to read, a single letter at a time. Cathy, in her bitterness at Heathcliff's victory and during her miserable isolation at Wuthering Heights, scoffs at Hareton's attempts to read, thereby grievously insulting him where he is most sensitive, and still he refuses to strike out at her verbally or physically when such a reaction has for decades been the norm for every character in this story. Each time this occurs, Nelly comments on Hareton's posture, implying that he's coiled like a viper prepared to strike. His clenched fist, tensed posture, grimace, or raised hand. His initial reaction is the same as Heathcliff's or Hindley's would have been: to physically or emotionally harm his attacker. And yet he restrains himself with great effort and never once does so in the entire story. These are the times in the story when he stands at the threshold to violence and savagery Heathcliff has long since crossed, where the opportunity is there for Hareton to give in to hatred and anger and take his vengeance. As a physically imposing individual he has the power to do so. And he refuses them each time. He is tested, but instead of abusing others, his emotions vent themselves harmlessly in a verbal curse, or an aggressive act against an inanimate object (such as throwing the books into the fire in an expression of his frustration). He's not necessarily kind, but in refusing to take part in the violence, he inadvertently halts the cycle of abuse and revenge at the core of this book.

In doing so, he saves Cathy as well as himself from this cycle: She is already descending into spitefulness and bitterness herself, and she is moved by Hareton's efforts and together they begin to weather the stream of hatred and abuse heaped on them by Heathcliff. It's telling, then, that once this cycle is broken, its progenitor, Heathcliff, is confronted with their lack of malice, and is sapped of his energy seemingly by an apparition, hurries to his demise as he quits eating, wanders the wilderness in the wet and cold, and basically lays down and dies after several days of lacking further will to live. The vengeance propelling him forward for all these years has disappeared, its flame snuffed out by Catherine and Hareton's actions, leaving him without the fuel to continue on his path of destruction. Replacing this is newly budded love between Hareton and Cathy—a love that feels warm, genuine, and organic—which one can assume will now procreate and begin to permeate this setting in the same way Heathcliff's hatred has.

So after nearly an entire story filled to the brim with abuse, hatred, anger, and an unfiltered bleakness streaming off the page and into your brain, Emily Brontë sets us up for this cathartic, hopeful ending that makes the entire journey worthwhile. It's superbly effective, brilliantly executed, and extremely satisfying.

When taking the time to consider the story and write this review what really stands out to me is that despite my hatred of Heathcliff, I never once felt like I couldn't understand why he felt the way he did. While I couldn't relate with his unrepentant cruelty in seeking unending, unsatisfied vengeance, I never felt that I couldn't see why he was pushed that far to begin with. He's warped from very early on in his childhood, experiencing terrible abuse at the hands of Hindley. Such an upbringing couldn't leave someone undamaged, and we're unaware of what horrors could have befallen him before his adoption, when he was wandering the streets as an orphaned child. And therein lies the talent of Emily Brontë in writing these characters. The core arc of Heathcliff's abusive upbringing giving way to his continuation of the cycle in abusing others, and culminating in the breaking of that cycle by the refusal of perhaps the most abused individual in the entire story to damage others in turn is an example of an unbreakable display of empathy and an infallible kindness in the face of focused malevolence. It's brilliant and perfectly executed, and it's accomplished without any of these characters feeling contrived to push the plot.

Ironically given the reputation of the "romance" between Catherine and Heathcliff, one thing that isn't given proper motivation—or even basic detail—is the justification for Heathcliff's love for Catherine. We get Catherine's description of her love for Heathcliff as basically being love for herself ("how can I live without my own soul?" she says, in reference to Heathcliff), which, although narcissistic, is at least a proper motivation that allows us to better know her character. Heathcliff's desire for Catherine gets nothing of the sort, rendering it more a base obsession to us than anything else. What, in all their time spent together as youths, drew him to her? We're never told by him, and considering his negative aura I'm as apt to believe it originated not from pure, altruistic love, but from more nefarious origins. Perhaps Catherine's specter has grown in his head and morphed into something different than what it was when she was alive. Perhaps he once saw her as his means of entering properly into the family that adopted him, and, robbed of that course of action, sought to destroy the family instead.

It's possible the absence of a concrete root for Heathcliff's love for Catherine is intentional, and Brontë wants us to question whether he's simply obsessed with her and using his loss of her as a justification for all his horrid acts rather than honestly in love with her. Either way, the ambiguity worked greatly for me and added depth to the story rather than detracted from its genuineness, though such a lack of substance leaves me unable to understand the great admiration for Heathcliff by fans of this work. Is it really so attractive to be mindlessly, harmfully obsessed with a person? Is it even admirable? Because that's all Heathcliff is: bare obsession without any logical guidance or reason. Anything else is a projection made by the reader. It's like asking your significant other why they love you, and them not being able to come up with a valid a reason for it, yet you're sure they'd run through a fire for you. Something is missing there, and I'm not willing to give such a malicious character as Healthcliff the benefit of the doubt. I wonder why others do.

This is such a phenomenal book that I can't really criticize it beyond nitpicking Joseph's nearly unreadable dialect (it reads as if it were an American trying to imitate a Yorkshire accent aloud) or the book's framing devices and character naming conventions making the story difficult to follow. Otherwise I loved the bleak, cold atmosphere that oozes from Wuthering Heights. Its characters are so well-written they seem like real human beings interacting with one another. Whenever I couldn't immediately empathize with a character, I found that I could soon learn to by recalling their personal history.

It's amusing that Emily Brontë, a delicate woman with a contemporary reputation for being extremely soft-spoken and gentle, and a lover of animals and nature, was able to find it in herself to write about such a relentlessly dark, life-destroying place populated by such horrible people. I suppose we all have our dark side, it's just unfortunate that all of us aren't capable of channeling it into a masterpiece of character-driven literary drama that takes place in one of the most memorable settings I've ever read.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

NOTABLE HIGHLIGHTS

“I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same;”

“Your cold blood cannot be worked into a fever: your veins are full of ice-water; but mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.”

Next morning—bright and cheerful out of doors—stole softened in through the blinds of the silent room, and suffused the couch and its occupant with a mellow, tender glow. Edgar Linton had his head laid on the pillow, and his eyes shut. His young and fair features were almost as deathlike as those of the form beside him, and almost as fixed: but his was the hush of exhausted anguish, and hers of perfect peace.

The little wretch had done her utmost to hurt her cousin’s sensitive though uncultivated feelings, and a physical argument was the only mode he had of balancing the account, and repaying its effects on the inflictor. He afterwards gathered the books and hurled them on the fire. I read in his countenance what anguish it was to offer that sacrifice to spleen. I fancied that as they consumed, he recalled the pleasure they had already imparted, and the triumph and ever-increasing pleasure he had anticipated from them; and I fancied I guessed the incitement to his secret studies also. He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments, till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompters to higher pursuits; and instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavours to raise himself had produced just the contrary result.

The two new friends established themselves in the house during his absence; where I heard Hareton sternly check his cousin, on her offering a revelation of her father-in-law’s conduct to his father. He said he wouldn’t suffer a word to be uttered in his disparagement: if he were the devil, it didn’t signify; he would stand by him; and he’d rather she would abuse himself, as she used to, than begin on Mr. Heathcliff.

“I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

Hear the Wind Sing (1979) (The Rat, #1) by Haruki Murakami

I really like Murakami. There's something about the way he writes and tells stories that really clicks with me. I've read two of his novels already (Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; loved the former and liked the latter) and both flew by very quickly. I enjoyed them enough that I made it a point to read more Murakami, so I decided to start with Hear the Wind Sing—his very first novel—and make my way forward chronologically from there.

I've read quite a bit of internet discussion on Murakami and the general consensus is that he tends to burn you out after you've read just a few of his books since he reuses so many of the same themes and tropes. I started to worry that maybe I was making a mistake picking this up, like I was 'wasting' my 2-3 Murakami books I'd get to enjoy before I got tired of him and wouldn't be able to enjoy later favorites of his such as Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Sputnik Sweetheart, or Kafka on the Shore—all of which I've heard much praise for and am looking forward to laying into.

I'm happy to say that wasn't the case. I expected a really rough book with Wind, as reception isn't nearly as positive as his later work, and Murakami himself has stated that he's not happy with the book and considers it relatively poor when compared to his post-Sheep work. I ended up liking it more than I expected. I was surprised how developed Murakami's prose already was. I had expected much rougher, but it reads similarly to the later novels that clicked so well with me.

His narrative and characters are very bare, though. It starts strongly when the narrator has an awkward first encounter with a nine fingered girl in which we are placed in media res which immediately grabbed me, but fails to evolve from there and becomes more and more scattered as the novel continues. The characters lack depth, the themes present are weakly explored, and Murakami is prone to stylistic tangents such as odd radio host monologues that don't seem to have much to do with anything, or the portions in which the narrator describes a zany fictional science fiction writer he enjoys (someone had been reading Slaughterhouse-Five around 1979). You can tell Murakami had trouble finding something at the core of this story to write about; something to pull all of these disparate portions of the narrative together. But I suppose that comes with the territory of a first novel by an untrained writer.

I don't regret reading this, but I am looking forward to making my way onward to later novels. It's worth a pick-up for Murakami fans looking to do a full read of his entire body of work like I am, but it's a decidedly poor place to start for the uninitiated.

⭐⭐

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994) by Haruki Murakami

WARNING: Lots of spoilers in this review! Turn back now if you haven't read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle yet!

Boy, Murakami is a hell of a storyteller. There were portions of this book that I just could not put down. An event with the veterinarian and the men in baseball uniforms towards the end of the book, in particular, had me slicing through lines with my eyes like an inkjet printer. At the conclusion of that chapter I found my mouth gaping wide open and my lips all dried out. Murakami is that good.

I want to put a warning up-front here: I really liked this book. It's one of the best I've read this year. But this review is going to skew negative. This is precisely because I enjoy the book so much—The good parts are so good that the parts that feel uneven stand out all the more. So, despite reading my coming criticism, please keep in mind that I did still really enjoy this read.

So although the storytelling packs a wallop on the smaller scale, the overarching narrative of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ended up feeling so disjointed it hampered my enjoyment a bit. I know that sounds contradictory, and that really encompasses a lot of how I feel about this book. I love it, a lot. But I also really dislike portions of it. I can't shake the feeling that many of these episodes would have been better as a mix of short stories and novellas considering the effort it must have taken to tie them together in one 600+ page cohesive narrative. Because so much of it does not feel cohesive. The thread tying all of these branches to the trunk was so thin at times that I didn't really grasp where it was at all. At a certain point I was burning to read through a plot synopsis, absolutely aching to spoil the book for myself. This desire came not from how good the narrative was and how badly I wanted to know the conclusion, nor how hooked I was on Murakami's characters, but because I wanted some assurance that all of this was going to pay off somehow, that Murakami wasn't just making things weird to have them be weird. A lot of it does, and I wasn't disappointed by the story, but neither can I say I felt completely satisfied at its conclusion. Of course, I think that was the goal; this was never meant to be concluded in a neat and satisfying manner.

And that's fine, usually. A good story doesn't have to tie everything together into a nice, pretty bow at the end to be a good story. And this is a weird book. It's pretty out there. I know that's Murakami's thing and that's why people like them, but writing a really weird piece of surrealist fiction is a tightrope act. It's difficult because you can't throw so much odd shit into the narrative that it feels like the odd shit is starting to exist because the writer is thinking to himself "I want this to be a weird book, and here is a weird idea I have. Now where can I shove this in?". And that's the problem I have with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. There's a lot of crap in this book that seems to have no logical reason for existing beyond "Murakami thought up this weird thing and jammed it awkwardly, without reason, into his book".

The weak plotting and characters compound the problem. Welcome to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: or, Every Goddamn Character Is A Psychic. Name every character in this book that doesn't have some kind of supernatural power or affinity. Mamiya perhaps fits the bill, aside from when you consider the psychic experience he had in the well, or the fact that he cannot die when he's on the continent. And maybe Kumiko, but we're led to believe there's something special about her, hence her brother's interest in her. So the only one that really comes to mind is the protagonist's uncle, who appears for a grand total of like 5 pages. Everyone else in this book is a psychic, has some small modicum of clairvoyance, or is magical in some way. Even the goddamn cat has a magic tail. The issue this creates if that for the vast majority of this story is one of these psychics/magic folks--Honda, or Malta, or Creta, or Nutmeg--is telling our protagonist via their magically begotten knowledge to go somewhere or do something, and the protagonist following their words like an obedient dog to move the plot along. It all felt contrived. "Find the cat", "Go down the deepest well", "go people watching", "take all this money and let people lick your face for psychic healing". For the vast majority of this story the protagonist has zero agency whatsoever. He is just following what everyone else in the story tells him. His wife is even missing, and supposedly he's desperate to find her, but he spends three straight days meditating in a well, or he spends more than a week sitting on a bench in Shinjuku doing nothing but people watching simply because, each time, he was told to do so by Honda and by his uncle. It makes no sense. I was yelling my head at him to get off his ass and do something, and was frustrated even further when these seemingly nonsensical choices worked at perfectly for him.

This nonsense continues until the final fifth of the book, in which he begins making bold, dangerous decisions (buying the haunted/cursed/whatever vacant property, hacking in to Cinnamon's computer to send messages, remaining in the "other" world when told to leave because it's dangerous, following the waiter instead of entering room 208, etc) that don't seem to have any logical foundation. It was such a frustrating experience partway through, thinking "this guy doesn't do anything by himself. He's an empty vessel", only to have him prove me wrong by doing a bunch of weird shit for no apparent reason and have it work out. At best, I couldn't take him seriously as a character. I had zero reason to root for him and instead viewed him as a pair of glasses with which I was experiencing the main narrative. At worst, he pissed me off by doing seemingly dumb stuff which worked out in the end, because--Of course! He had some psychic reasoning for doing so to which we, the reader, are not privy for some reason. Murakami is better than this, of course: He shows it in this very book with the strength of the Mamiya and the Nutmeg & Cinnamon chapters, which, though extremely compelling and well written, feel more like optional, disjointed backstory that is unnecessary to the main narrative of Okada's search for his missing wife. It's the best stuff in the entire book and it's only tangentially related to what is supposed to be the main narrative.

I can hear the criticism already, so I feel like I have to make this clear up-front: I don't believe you have to spoonfeed the reader everything, or that 100% of your story has to make sense. A little mystery and ambiguity gives the story legs and lets the reader chew it over in their brain for a while after completing it. It sticks with the reader and provides some lasting impact. But too often I felt Murakami pushed a little too far with the nonsensical weirdness. There were certain scenes that begged for an explanation, that I felt were even rendered cheesy or contrived when left without explanation. As I grew more familiar with this story there were scenes I read that I could immediately tell were never going to be touched again, and it completely removed any intended impact from me: "Alright, so this is just weird to be weird, then". For example: Why the hell does the protagonist ejaculate when "healing" these people, or whatever? There's zero purpose for it, it just happens because it's weird and will make people feel weird when they read it. Why do the people that are "healed" have to tongue kiss the facial mark? What the hell ever happened to Malta and Creta, who just abruptly dropped out of the narrative partway through, and what the hell happened to the dude who climbed the tree and disappear? Who is the faceless man? Why was Nutmeg's husband dismembered? These questions are just a few of the questions I have off the top of my head that I felt required more fleshing out for a proper climactic pay-off. Instead, they're just instances of annoyance that I try not to think about because they ruin my enjoyment of an otherwise intriguing story. That's not to say all the weirdness in this detracts from the story, there are quite a few examples of proper weirdness that I felt was either justified, or logical enough that they added to the story: the episode surrounding the reason for Cinnamon's muteness and how it was relayed was masterful and eerie, Creta's psychic prostitution posed some really interesting questions, the way in which Noboru Wataya is described early in the book is so strange and compelling and I love the idea of he and the protagonist existing as polar opposites of one another, Lieutenant Mamiya's experience in the well in Mongolia was perfectly written and just as weird as you'd expect for an injured, dehydrated man on the verge of death, both brief episodes in which the singer appears strike a perfect balance of utter oddness while also providing some badly needed character development for the protagonist (holy crap, look at this! He does have emotions after all! He gets sad! He gets angry!).

So it's not all weird just to be weird. A lot of the weirdness is justified and added to my enjoyment of the story. This unevenness made me think that perhaps I missed a lot and there were reasons for this ham-fisted weirdness that made them fit better into the story that I just didn't catch. I took to Google after finishing the book and it turns out: Nope, people are just as puzzled as I am. Entire forum threads and Reddit discussions exist based on speculation for the reasons for this weirdness, and the answers inevitably begin to proceed down the "it's allegory/symbolism" avenue. To me, that's stretching the value of having this weirdness to begin with. To you, it may be different. That's for you to judge.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Odyssey (700 BC) by Homer

It’s hard to write a review of The Odyssey without comparing it to The Iliad, which I liked. The battle scenes were viscerally affecting and it surprised me with its modernity. However, I found it a little too repetitive—I believe its English translation probably lacks the lyrical quality it must retain in its original Homeric Greek. Too many of the battle scenes are too similar; grand verse is dedicated to the poetic ways the Greeks and Trojans dismember each other, and the involvement of the gods is no minor thing, but this goes on for a bit too long and is rehashed a bit too often for my tastes, which leads to my hypothesis that The Iliad, in its original form, must have felt farm more song-like. The Fagles translation I read did a fantastic job of beautifying the language of his adaptation, but I still grew tired of it all by the end and ended up feeling like The Iliad was a bit too long in the 700+ page count of my Penguin edition. I was also surprised that it didn’t contain so many of the legendary events I’d grown familiar with via popular reputation: The sack of Troy, Achilles’ death, the Trojan horse, etc.

In general I’d say that I liked the book, but found it an uneven reading experience that’s probably far less enjoyable than it would have been in its native tongue.

I was surprised then, that The Odyssey turned out to be so different from its predecessor. Clocking in with 200 fewer pages than The Iliad, it manages to pack in a rollicking adventure tale brimming with wonderful locales and compelling, fantastical scenarios. Fantasy in general has never much been my thing, and the presence of gods, deities, and other immortal beings carelessly tossing about magic to suit the plot still turned me off, but I was nonetheless entranced by The Odyssey’s airy pace and appealing adventure. I suppose I should have expected it all along given its reputation, but I found it a fresh experience compared to its predecessor.

The Odyssey is a victim to some of the same repetitive pitfalls of The Iliad (I’d be curious to see just how many times the line “When young Dawn shone with his rose red fingers once more” and its minor variants appear in the text), but I’m not sure there’s any avoiding it if you want an accurate translation of the original. We’ll never get an English version of these stories that adequately recreates the poetry of the original Homeric Greek, but Fagles’ excellent version of The Odyssey is still a markedly more enjoyable read than its predecessor. Another criticism I'd make is the blatant deus ex machina resolutions which constantly occur throughout the book. Particularly egregious is that which occurs at the very end of the novel, in which Athena simply makes a bunch of people forget about how angry they are so everyone can live happily ever after. While this should have bothered me much more, the annoyance was dampened somewhat by the presence of so many similar resolutions throughout both The Iliad and The Odyssey already. If you can live with it up to this point then I suppose it won't wreck the story for you.

Despite these flaws The Odyssey proves itself worthy of its stature within the realm of classic literature and is recommendable to pretty much everybody considering its quick pace and satisfying conclusion. Especially recommendable to fans of modern fantasy, Homer’s tale seldom feels its age and is capable of standing toe-to-toe with the blockbuster Marvel films that are (perhaps unconsciously) inspired by it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka

During my "I need to try and pretend I'm smart enough to read and enjoy this" pre-read research, I stumbled upon lengthy gushings by Vladimir Nabokov on Franz Kafka. Nabokov couldn't shut up about the quality of Kafka's prose, the genius of his storytelling, or the influential nature of his work. In reading The Metamorphosis, I could recognize all of these things. Kafka undeniably influenced the kitsch-loving postmodernist horde of hipsters reading his work now (not that there's anything wrong with those people, of course), and the absurd humor of The Metamorphosis in particular (I have yet to read anything else by him) is undeniable. I found myself amused immediately within reading the opening few paragraphs.

But as I continued into the second chapter, I began to realize I wasn't enjoying myself. So my question grew from "am I enjoying this?" into "why aren't I enjoying this?"

Kafka had a sad, depressing life. He lacked adequate feelings of self-worth, had few fruitful social relationships, was physically and mentally abused by his brute of a father, and was sexually frustrated. All of this shows in his work, and Metamorphosis perfectly captures these feelings via the medium of his storytelling. Therein lies the brilliance of Kafka. Though suppositions of allegory and symbolism persist even to today, I prefer Nabokov's view that this was a work which Kafka originally meant to be taken literally (or as literally as you can take it given what Kafka has written, at least). The story absent any intentions of subjectivity adequately imparts Kafka's feelings of hopelessness, shame, dissatisfaction with life. Of not belonging, and not being understood. Of being hated, even, or hating oneself.

And these themes are fine. Plenty of literature explores these types of things. But so much of Metamorphosis—perhaps due to Kafka's outlook on life—is relentlessly cynical, cruel, and depressing, that I couldn't enjoy it. Though very different in style, it felt like reading Cormac McCarthy—another extremely popular literary writer that I don't care for, despite my easy recognition of the wordporn qualities of his prose. To me, the core message of both is "life sucks, people are mean, and then you die". They both try and temper the hopeless bleakness of their work, of course; McCarthy tends to slip a sliver of hope into his stories, and Kafka tends towards snippets of absurd, black humor, but I could never find that the bits of levity created by either did enough to balance the level of cynicism in either.

In addition to this, much of the mode of Kafka's storytelling is simply not to my taste. I've never been a fan of absurdity and many of the tenets of the postmodernism that Kafka inspired fall flat on me. Perhaps I'm too old-fashioned; indeed I tend to prefer 19th century literature to its 20th century counterparts. Or perhaps I lack the imagination to deal with the subjectivity provided by postmodern literature. Whatever the case, I am at least able to grasp the quality of Kafka's storytelling. But it's something that simply falls well outside my taste.

So I've got to go with the laziest, safest, and lamest of all critiques: I didn't really enjoy this, but I can see the value of it. I can easily see why other people like it, and I don't fault them for it.

As I read this and thought about how I'd write my review (because I guess that's what I do now; think about my blog reviews as I'm reading like the massive internet nerd that I am), I tried to work through various different ways to apologize to the legendary late Mr. Nabokov for disliking Metamorphosis. I couldn't really come up with anything better than to admit to being a tawdry mouthbreather. And unlike Kafka, who seemed to hate himself, I'm okay with being who I am. Bad opinions and all.

⭐⭐

Norwegian Wood (1987) by Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood was a book I devoured.

I typically read multiple books concurrently. One in physical form, one on ereader. An audiobook for driving or menial tasks like washing the dishes. A short story collection in the bathroom.

Everything slipped into the background as I continued reading my first Murakami. Dumas' Monte Cristo and Kafka's Metamorphosis faded into a pleasant bokeh as Murakami's mood and characters sapped my whole focus.

I'd pick it up and disappear down his well for a few hours. It felt like drifting off into a nap. So much of this book is built on imparting a feeling; his prose flows even through translation and carries the mood without resorting colorful words. It reminded me of my favorite film, Lost In Translation, not so much in that they're both set in Japan, but that the real experience comes not so much from the plot, but the feel and the discourse between the characters. It's hard to get much more into discussing the plot without ruining its impact, so I'll just make a couple of lists instead.

Things Norwegian Wood is about: Estrangement, loneliness, sex, relationships, isolation, depression. The value of finding somebody who gets you, whether platonic or romantic. Having a flask of whisky or brandy handy when the going gets tough.

Things reading Norwegian Wood feels like: Firing up an electric blanket on a chilly day. A cup of tea steaming in front of a sunny, morning window. Rain and wet leaves and threadbare sweaters. My girlfriend's dorm room in the winter in sophomore year of college. The song Optimistic by Radiohead.

Since finishing it I've read many reviews calling this book sad, depressing, or melancholy. I was surprised to see this, as the book struck me very differently. It's certainly not a happy book, and plenty of sad things happen within its pages, but I didn't find it overly bleak either, and it's almost totally absent of the cynicism at the root of similar efforts. To me, it's hopeful; a rumination on death, its impact, and how it's a necessary part of life. It's about perseverance and dealing with tragedy rather than being about tragedy itself. I found the ending few paragraphs masterful in this respect; they left me with my head buzzing. I finished the book, closed it, and stared off into space for a few minutes while I thought about what I had just read. I decided that, more than anything else, it left me hopeful.

I loved this book. I found its characters human and real and I enjoyed the way it made me feel. Maybe you will, too.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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.

⭐⭐⭐

Anne of Green Gables (1908) by L.M. Montgomery

As a mid-30-something year-old American man living in a New York City suburb in 2019, I chalk a lot of this Christian-inspired children's book set in rural Canada up to being very much not my thing, yet Anne's character still ended up appealing much to my hidden inner optimist. Lessons abound of accepting the good with the bad, always trying to look at the brighter side of things, and holding onto your childhood imagination. Anne is the spirit of perseverance and this book a reminder that there is always good present, no matter the situation, and that sometimes you just have to look a bit harder to find it.

Montgomery uses pithy, quotable prose, and balances her charming protagonist with the equally likable characters of Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. The dialogue is excellent as well. Anne of Green Gables is one of the better examples of childrens' literature I've come across, and despite falling far outside my typical sphere of interest, has earned a permanent spot on my bookshelf.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

A Scandal in Bohemia (1891) (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, #1) by Arthur Conan Doyle

I'm very much a fan of Holmes in the short story format and I can see why it's classically been the most popular format for the stories.

Doyle does masterly work in minimal pages in introducing the character of Irene Adler, whom I find to be equal to Holmes and Watson and hope to see much more of in future stories. Further, I enjoyed the King quite a bit despite his small screen time. Doyle has a knack for writing entertaining characters.

Doyle captures the details of Victorian London as well as ever, adding just enough detail to intrigue readers nearly 150 years after it was produced. The loafers scuffling about one another to try and earn a copper for opening a rich woman's cab door, the description of the more quiet streets of London after the sun has set, etc. Surely his goal was not to transport us backwards to his time so skillfully, since he was writing for a contemporary London audience, so it's strange how well A Scandal in Bohemia accomplishes this.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Sign of Four (1890) (Sherlock Holmes, #2) by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Holmes stories are surprisingly timeless; one might be shocked at how modern many of the characters and stories are. Holmes, as a character, will never go out of style. He's the quintessential mad scientist type; drug-addicted, uneven in social circumstances, and deeply brilliant on the topics which affect his chosen vocation while remaining ignorant on those that do not. Watson is not the "sidekick" he's so often depicted as, but more an interested bystander with his own goals and desires who becomes friends with his roommate, Holmes, and tags along. He's a protege only in that he's interested in Holmes' activities, not in that he has any real wish to train under Holmes or follow in his footsteps. You get the sense that, despite his age, he's already had his story and is settling into a sort of retirement, or second life. And that allows him to be a fully formed character in his own right, with the charming flaws that make characters so likable: On the surface he's a typical soldier; he's known women across the world, he loves gambling, etc. But we get to see him below the surface, as the observant, intelligent man he is. And having that surface coat of soldierly paint makes us like him all the more, privileged as we are to know his inner thoughts.

Probably most surprising to me when reading The Sign of Four is how much the characters and tone match Guy Ritchie's 2009 film. I've got a far different picture of Holmes in my head than Robert Downey, Jr., but the overall tone of that film—it's light-hearted strangeness, and the camaraderie of its two leads—very closely matches Doyle's original work.

The more time Holmes and Watson spend together, the more fun they are for us to spend time with. Like real-life best friends, they begin to speak more familiarly with one another, leading to fun dialogue between the two, with which we chuckle along like somebody at a party laughing at a joke from outside the discussion circle.

The mystery narratives are spiritual successors to Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Poe may have blazed the trail, but Doyle's stories are far more polished in terms of characterization, pace, and setting. From Poe Doyle also picks up the strangeness that makes the Holmes tales more colorful: Perhaps inspired by Poe's inclusion of the murderous ape run amok, Doyle throws at us peg-legged criminals and malformed midgets from across the globe in The Sign of The Four, or the spontaneous, mid-narrative break into the story of Joseph Smith and the founding of the Mormonism in the Americas in Doyle's previous episode, A Study In Scarlet. These stories are apt mysteries without these quirks, but they serve to break up the pacing and seriousness of a crime story that might have become too dry or bleak without them.

The only criticism I feel comfortable leveling at the story is the way the conclusion is presented via an expository dump. Perhaps there might have been a way of more organically fitting it into greater story. I suppose this is going to become a norm among Holmes stories moving forward.

Doyle's Holmes stories are peak entertainment; well-written and eminently readable for all generations. The Sign of Four, like its predecessor, provides us with a fun windowpane via which to gaze on late-Victorian London.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Quiet American (1955) by Graham Greene

A lot is said about the prescience of this novel regarding its analysis of 20th century Vietnam, Western colonialism, and the spread of Communism, but I found it most enticing just as a piece of character-driven fiction. This is my first exposure to Greene (at least, in the written form—I have seen the film The Third Man, which was penned by him), and it left me quite moved. He's a talented writer and shows his chops constantly through The Quiet American, able to make even the most mundane details shine brilliantly and the more noteworthy ones singularly affecting.

The story was at its best, in my opinion, when allowing the two main characters play off one another. Pyle and Fowler are magnificent foils for each other and I enjoyed watching them spar, though I didn't particularly like either one. Fowler is at least honest with his cynical moral laziness, while Pyle—the stereotypical American, even today—revels in his misguided, naive heroism, as if he were the star of his own Hollywood film. Frequently I detested both of them.

No matter how prettily Greene was able to present Fowler's (and perhaps his own) inner thoughts to us with his prose, I couldn't shake the discomfort one feels when at a small gathering with a group of people you dislike, but are forced together with by social responsibility; like a family party with distant relatives you'd rather not (and normally would never) associate with. Greene's lovely writing and interesting characters kept me reading, but I can't say I was enjoying myself all too often as it's far from a happy story.

Though Pyle and Fowler are interesting, fully-formed characters, I was dismayed that Phuong wasn't given more screen time. Almost all we know of her comes from Fowler's thoughts, since she is overly reserved for the vast majority of the story. I found her way of life fascinating on the surface, and her quiet strength intriguing, and would have liked to have seen more of her.

With American, Greene has managed to produce something that is simultaneously a quick and easy read, while also dense with solid characterization and the exploration of contemporary sociopolitical ideas. It's made me a fan of Greene, and I look forward to exploring more of his work soon, but first I've got to shower off with Siddhartha, Anne of Green Gables, or something similarly toned to heighten my mood.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Morella (1835) by Edgar Allan Poe

I seldom listen to novels and short stories in audiobook format these days, but was fortunate enough to come across Morella, read by Wayne June.

For me, Poe succeeds where H.P. Lovecraft so often fails, both in terms of his more concrete subject matter that I greatly prefer over the unknowable cosmic horror of Lovecraft, and in terms of craft, where he manages the same atmospheric punch as Lovecraft without so frequently resorting to purple prose.

Wayne June's narration, though unsubtle to the point of wrenching the spotlight away from Poe at times, is otherwise spot-on and added to my enjoyment of the story.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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 Complete Short Stories (1925) by Ernest Hemingway (In-Progress)

The best short stories always seem capable of crafting a meaningful episode populated by interesting characters in such few pages, and this suits Hemingway's trademark style perfectly.

I was awestruck immediately on cracking this one open with a pair of absolute spellbinding examples of short fiction, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and The Snows of Kilimanjaro—both of which I found of high enough quality that they deserved their own reviews, which I've linked.

A young Ernest Hemingway

The Nick Adams stories which follow are often subtle and worthwhile. One particular example of great characterization from Hemingway was in The Battler, which sees the titular Nick Adams character absorb a beating before coming face-to-face with a former prizefighter who's absorbed far too many. The episode is notable for what isn't discussed, as perhaps Adams sees what he could become in the future should he continue on his current path as a vagabond and tramp. Ad Francis is an unstable force—friendly and talkative one moment, brooding and violent the next—and his scarred visage puts Adams off immediately, despite the initially welcoming nature of the man. Perhaps what frightens Adams most is the similarity between this man and himself, rather than the potentially aggressive and violent nature of Francis.

Also notable is the character of Bugs, who's referred to pejoratively with racist epithets through the narrative, but shows himself to be the warm, welcoming, intelligent character that Francis initially appears. Hemingway, a famous fan of Mark Twain's, plays off his contemporary readers' expectations with the character and subverts their expectations as Twain did with his stories.

Note: This review is in-progress. I'll add more thoughts as I continue to read.

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens

I've read most classic writers, whether in school or since, despite my lack of reviews on this website. However I'm ashamed to admit that this is my first exposure—ever—to Charles Dickens. I'm not sure how I managed to avoid all of his novels, novellas, short stories, and the like up to this point, but here we are. And after experiencing his work for the first time I can confidently consider it a failing not only of my own reading choices, but of our education system.

Perhaps most affecting in the story is how much of myself I saw in Scrooge. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that that might have been Dickens' intent. We're all curmudgeonly, miserly, and stingy with our affections at times, and Scrooge's initial character represents that quite well. While this novel did a lot to reform the Christmas holiday and popularize it, it's also a general reminder for us to be more kind, generous, and empathetic towards one-another, which, from what I understand, is a common theme in Dickens' work.

The changes Scrooge goes through in subsequent pages, though unsubtle, is touching and doesn't seem cloying, though it very well could have in the hands of a lesser writer. The dialogue and Dickens' imagination in designing the spirits are particular highlights for me.

Though it's equal parts comical and beautifully written, what's most striking is that Dickens prose remains so readable now, nearly 200 years after he began writing. I breezed through A Christmas Carol pretty easily, and I sometimes have troubled getting into Victorian literature.

I went in somewhat cynical, but Dickens changed my mind. This is every bit the influential modern fable it's reputed to be, and I'm looking forward to making up for lost time and reading more Dickens next year. Perhaps The Pickwick Papers next, followed by Oliver Twist?

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936) by Ernest Hemingway

It's easy to miss a lot of the more introspective qualities of Hemingway's work. Granted, they are often hidden behind (or perhaps overshadowed by) the bombastic, hyper-masculine chest-thumping he's famous for. But the more self-conscious passages in which he struggles with self-doubt, failures in character, and deeds left undone are present in most of his enduring works for those willing to look beyond the lion-hunting, war-fighting, cocktail-drinking, and womanizing.

Snows differs from some of his other work in that these qualities are much more readily apparent. And though less delicate in their presentation, the honesty with which they're laid bare creates an intriguing, layered main character in just a few dozen pages; one that reveals Hemingway is not lacking the self-awareness that his naysayers seem to conveniently ignore.

Beautifully written in the terse prose that influenced American literature for the remainder of the 20th century, The Snows of Kilimanjaro is quintessential Hemingway and thus not to be missed by anybody with any interest in classic American literature.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1936) by Ernest Hemingway

This was originally a short story I wasn't going to review. It was another solid effort from Hemingway, pretty typical of his quality and similar in theme to his other stories I'd read in the past. Worth reading but somewhat unremarkable in the presence of his canon.

I ended up doubling back to write this a month or so after I read it because the story resonated with me more over time. I read many short stories and since this I've dipped into Shirley Jackson, Pynchon, some of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Poe (who's one of my very favorite writers), Lovecraft (who's very much not one of my favorite writers), etc. And still this one seems to occupy a growing amount of brain real estate.

The characters are what most stuck with me. Each of the three main characters has their own voice and their own motivations and the titular Francis Macomber makes a drastic change in a story that involves a lot of introspection on his part. There is great difficulty in being confronted with our own faults. We're either crushed by them or evolve to overcome them, and that's what the story is about for Francis.

The more Hemingway I read, the more easily I'm able to turn aside criticisms of his focus on masculinity as dampening the quality of his work. In stories like this I find Hemingway to be intensely aware of his own weakness rather than thumping his chest and celebrating himself as a pillar of masculine vigor. In turning the spotlight on Francis's cowardice, Hemingway seems to be examining his own. I found it a deeply insecure and personal story for the writer.
The other two characters are equally intriguing. I didn't hate Margot and was surprised to see that other readers did. On the contrary, when considering her situation I actually grew somewhat sympathetic to her. She is certainly not a sympathetic character, but neither did I find her to be shallowly evil. Her marriage with Francis is not a happy one and the two are left in a martial power struggle because of their inability to end their involvement. Margot uses the weapons at her disposal to wound Francis in this martial cold war, and Francis does the same to Margot. I didn't find her to be a shoddily written women-are-evil type character that reviewers seem keen to toss Hemingway under the bus for, and, frankly, I find that critique to be as shallow and dishonest as it paints Margot. There's more here than that.

The only character I couldn't find much sympathy for was Wilson, who himself can't seem to find much sympathy for anyone in the story aside from the lion. Wilson shows little humanity and rationalizes his disinterest and near-sociopathy in childlike ways. He also provides an interesting foil to Macomber and Margot: two people who seem to care too much.

Wilson is the archetypal man's man in this story—the brave and capable hunter—and he's also the least likable fellow of the bunch. I believe Hemingway was aware of this and intended it. I don't think this is a story which says to us that Wilson is the ideal, and that Francis's weakness and cowardice is what dooms him. I believe it's a story that says to us that all men are weak and cowardly, and that examining this weakness, knowing it, coming to terms with, and overcoming it, is what true masculinity—or even humanity—is all about. Wilson is "strong" because he doesn't care. He's a man alone with no family or friends. Francis becomes strong because he does.

But perhaps I'm just projecting all of this onto the story because I enjoyed reading it. Perhaps it was intended to say the exact opposite of the message I took from it and I'm a total nincompoop. Either way, I quite enjoyed The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. I enjoyed the characters, their power dynamic, and I greatly enjoyed the ending, which I found profound. Hemingway definitely has some stinkers, but this short story isn't one of them. It serves as a great companion for the introspective, cerebral, and more well-known The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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.

⭐⭐⭐