School Book: Chatterton

This is the first book all week that I've actually enjoyed. Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton is not something that I would normally decide to read on my own. But after both By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept and Mrs. Dalloway, I was just really happy that it actually had a plot.

Chatterton is an odd tale. It starts off when Charles Wychwood finds an old painting of a middle aged man whose face looks familiar. Charles and his friend Philip recognize the face as Thomas Chatterton, but much older than he should have been. Suddenly, Charles finds himself confronted with the intriguing possibility: what if Chatterton didn't die when he was supposed to, at age 17, but faked his death and kept forging the work of other famous people?

I really liked the many interesting and unique characters, from Charles, the poet who knows he is good but hasn't been discovered yet, to Harriet Scrope, the eccentric author who is failing to write her memoirs. All of them helped to make Chatterton a relatively quick, enjoyable read.

School Book: Mrs. Dalloway

Before I begin, I just want to say that this is not a picture of me, or one that I took. It was the only picture I could find with the cover of the book I read.

Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway is the last book I have to read for the class I TA before the first set of marking. And unfortunately, I really did not enjoy it. Mrs Dalloway kind of reminded me of Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. But where Smart's book was all about the narrator's emotions, Woolf's book was all about the character's streams of consciousness. The book would follow what one character was thinking, then latch onto another one for awhile. And it seemed to ramble on; there would be elaborate descriptions which I could not connect to characters or whomever they were referring to.

The basic "plot" of the book is that Mrs. Dalloway is having a party at the end of the day. So most of the book follows people who are around her. Most of the characters that you meet do go to her party, but there are a few who do not. As the book progresses, you learn a lot about everyone, but I guess mostly Mrs. Dalloway and those who are closest to her.

I found Mrs Dalloway to be very boring. I had a hard time following anything because there wasn't really much of a story. Now, as you may know, I like a good story, so I was not at all happy reading this book. Now that it's over, I'm going to read something good.

School Book: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

I had to read Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept for the class I TA for this term. I knew before I started it that it wouldn't be my kind of book, and I was right. If anything, it reminded me of Shelia Watson's The Double Hook; like it, this book really wasn't about the story. But unlike Watson's book, By Grand Central Station used quotation marks.

By Grand Central Station is about the author's love affair with a man. Unfortunately, that man is married. And the book does not tell the story so much as chronicle the author's emotions throughout the love affair. It was really tough to figure out just what exactly was going on as the book progressed. And me being me, I like a good story; that this lacked a real story meant that I really didn't enjoy reading it. Luckily, like The Double Hook, By Grand Central Station was also really short, so I was able to finish it quickly. I'll be able to move onto better, story-focussed things tomorrow.

School Book: The White Hotel

A friend of mine assured me that D. M. Thomas' The White Hotel was a good read. So after my struggle with The Golden Notebook last week, I was looking forward to something better. Unfortunately, I wasn't really impressed with The White Hotel. It was short, which was a major plus. But it definitely wasn't my kind of book.

The White Hotel is the story about an extremely strange dream that one of Freud's patients has. The book starts out with the lyric form in which the dream was originally written (after a few letters from and to Freud). Then it gives a more elaborate narrative account of the dream. The third part is from Freud's perspective, in which he psychoanalyzes the dream and cures the patient's hysteria. Then the final parts of the book deal with her life after being cured by Freud.

Unfortunately, I found the book to be rather dull for the most part. There were a few pages when the dream turned wacky which were interesting. And the end definitely got my sympathy. But overall I did not enjoy reading this. I'm not going to lie though, I wasn't looking forward to it when I realized it dealt with psychoanalysis. While it was interesting in novel form, I am not a fan of Freud and his theories, which may have given me a biased outlook right from the beginning.

I did, however, like it more than The Golden Notebook; the plots and characters weren't nearly as confusing in The White Hotel!

School Book: The Golden Notebook

I am ridiculous happy to be finished Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. It's about 550 pages long, very choppy and tough reading, and I managed to read it in four days (yes, I'm very proud of myself. If I can pull that off, especially with two of the days being virtual write-offs because I was busy, I can get any book read for school!) :D

The Golden Notebook is the story of Anna, told mostly through her five notebooks. There's the black notebook, which contains her writing life (mostly made up of her adventures in Africa), the red notebook, which contains her political life (she's a member of the British Communist Party), the yellow notebook, which contains her emotional life (told through fictitious characters she invented), the blue notebook, which contains the events of her daily life, and the golden notebook, which she buys near the end of the book to tie the other notebooks all together. The notebooks are split up, so you do not get their full stories at once, by each other and by the narrative of her life after the notebooks.

When I originally read the back of the book, I was intrigued. I planned on reading it over Christmas. It sounded pretty interesting. But after talking to some people in my class who said it was terrible, I had a hard time starting it (hence starting it four days before we would discuss it in class). And unfortunately, they were right; I didn't really enjoy reading it. The Golden Notebook is just too choppy - I started liking a section (say the yellow notebook) but then it ends and I'd have to read several pages of boring blue notebook. A friend of mine said that it is dated, which is also true, making it harder to relate to. And I didn't really like the characters. Anna and Molly kept jumping into the same sorts of relationships with the same sorts of guys over and over again. And the men in the book were terrible people. Everyone was miserable, parts of the book didn't seem well-written, and I found about 4/5th (I'm being generous. It was probably more) boring. Definitely not a recommended read.

But I will say, if you do read it, remember what the first line of the book is. It comes up again later, and I didn't realize it until after we discussed it in class.

The Tempest

For my Identity in Contemporary British Fiction class, my seminar is going to be on John Fowles' The Collector. A lot of the criticism on the book mentions how it is similar to Shakespeare's The Tempest, so I decided to read the play so I knew exactly how The Collector is like it. Right off the bat, with the dramatis persona, I found that some of the characters from The Collector are named after characters from The Tempest. The overall plot was rather different, but I enjoyed reading it.
The Tempest opens with a storm shipwrecking the King of Naples’ ship. Everyone is scattered across an island, believing that everyone else has died in the storm. The storm was summoned by Prospero, the ex-duke of Milan; he has brought them here to teach them all a lesson and win back his dukedom.
While I wasn’t too fond of the scenes dealing with the King and his lords, I did enjoy the play as a whole. It was a magical, fun story that reminded me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in some ways. I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys Shakespeare and wants a quick, easy read.

Library Book: Northlanders Book 1: Sven the Returned

I grabbed this while I was at work because it looked and sounded cool. I mean, how can you not be intrigued by Entertainment Weekly saying it is "Vikings finally done right!"? So being sick of the crappy books I've read for school, I decided to give Northlanders, Book 1: Sven the Returned a shot.

Right off the bat, I have to agree: this is vikings done right. The story is brutal, with an art style to match. It suited the very idea of vikings. And Sven was sufficiently hard-core. But unfortunately, as with most of the things I've read lately, the story sort of died at the end. Maybe it was because Sven didn't have a particularly good reason to keep fighting here, or maybe it was because of some events which obviously happened behind the scenes, but there was no spectacular climax and nothing to keep me wanting to read more (or know what happens next).

Anyway, it was cool, but in my opinion not cool enough to recommend to everyone. If you really like vikings, you'll like this. Otherwise, you might be better off passing it by.