Posts Tagged ‘fiction’

I am a big fan of Steinbeck. While Of Mice and Men was enjoyable, it was The Grapes of Wrath that truly sold me on his writing. I do not consider myself that well read, but if you said you had you were and had concluded Grapes of Wrath was the best novel ever, I would find that totally believable. His graphic deception and insisting of emotion and hopelessness has been surpassed by no other book I had read.

It was for this reason that I picked up East of Eden.

Given the success of his earlier work, it seemed odd to discover that Steinbeck believed that everyone has one great novel in them – and that East of Eden was his.

I am glad nobody really asked me what it was about in my first few weeks reading it. The truth is I had no clue. It wasn’t about something notable like the Great Depression. It was just about life. Life in Salinas Valley, particularly the life of two families, the Hamiltons and the Trasks.

Is it Steinbeck’s finest work? That I am not sure. However, I did enjoy reading it just as much as any of his other work.

Watership Down is the tale of a group of rabbits who leave their borrow and set off, eventually making a new one on the so-named down.

Obviously it is a metaphor for the struggle between the left and right wing in modern politics. However, this is sometimes quite cleverly hidden. For example the author Richard Adams attempts to disguise this by saying in his introduction “this is just a story I made up for my daughters and has no more meaning than that.”

Good novel. I really enjoyed the sections on Levin’s farm management. There was also some stuff with someone called Anna, shagging around, which was less interesting, but she did provide an important message that you should always follow your heart. You know, until the train scene.

I finished it inside a week. This replaces finishing War and Peace as the greatest achievement of my life.

This is the first Oscar Wilde piece I have read. It is slightly shorter than the average novel, making it a very manageable read, as well as being a good story.

It is an interesting concept, the idea that the sin of your life is written across your face. Luckily of course, it is not the case. Elina’s face remains youthful and attractive despite spending almost the past two years “living in sin” as her Christian colleague regularly reminds her.

Monstrous Regiment is the 31st Discworld novel and is set in Borogravia. It was brilliant. I normally find the Discworld books funny, but it is rare that I actually laugh out loud while reading. Monstrous Regiment achieved that several times.

Plus it has added Sam Vimes and William de Worde.

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch is a 1990 novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It was pretty Discworld-y, by which I mean it was a fantasy novel with lots of Pratchett in it, but that is only to be expected and certainly not a bad thing.

It is probably Gaiman-y too, but I have not read any of his other stuff.

It is starting to date a bit. I got the references to “cassettes” but I am not sure how much longer that will be the case lol. The Anti-Christ is never really going to get old though…

I have not posted about many books recently. Not because I haven’t been reading, but because I have been tackling the Leo Tolstoy epic, War and Peace. I have not finished it, but I have reached the end of the first volume.

That term is a little misleading as the copy I have divides the book into two halves, which it calls volumes. However, Wikipedia divides it into four books/volumes, which according to the text itself, I am now on the 8th book.

The story is that of the Russian high-society during the Napoleonic years. So far there has been some peace, then some war, then some more peace. Throughout this the story had managed to maintain my attention with it’s beautiful language even if parts of it threatened to stray into a Jane Austen-style monolog on the problems of finding a husband.

So good so far. I will report back after volume 2.

I’ve been reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights. As Elina predicted most of this time was spent with Kate Bush running through my head. There are definitely worse things in life.

What a horrible book it is though. I spent most of it hoping that one of the characters would snap and run a knife through Heathcliff. Sadly, nobody did. However, it did at least have an almost happy ending. I also had to draw a little diagram to track the family tree – though it turns out Wikipedia already has one prepared.

The 29th book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is “Night Watch”. Sam Vimes, the History Monks, time travel – what is there not to love about this novel? Nothing, that’s the answer. I love Lu-Tze and the City Watch is awesome too. It also reminded me of one of the half a dozen Star Trek episode plots that almost all of the 300 episodes are based around.

The Amazing Maurice is the first Discworld novel that is aimed at children. When that actually translates into texts, there is very little difference. The balance of jokes is perhaps more targeted at children than adults, but there was still plenty in there that I found entertaining and funny.

What did change was that even though it is set in the Discworld universe, you do not need to know anything about Discworld or have read the previous novels to be able to fully enjoy this one.