Posts Tagged ‘fiction’

Great Expectations is one of Charles Dickens’ longest novels and tells the story of Pip as he grows up and becomes a man. It is narrated in the first person and has a good balance of happy endings, and death.

It’s only the second Dickens novel I have read. However, I have seen a lot of the films, especially ones with Muppets in, and as any literary buff knows, that is just as good as reading the book. Thus my only comparison is A Tale of Two Cities. I found this one more engaging as a novel overall; it held my interest better. However, some of the most memorable section of Two Cities outshines Great Expectations for its gritty realism and vivid descriptions.

Written by Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre makes up and important part of the Bronte sisters work. With Emily Bronte having written Wuthering Heights, these two novels represent the best work of the two sisters. It is only a shame there wasn’t a third Bronte sister to write another great novel. But there wasn’t.

I decided to go for the abridged version. I just couldn’t face the 500-or-so pages of the unabridged version. Of course you lose a lot of the detail that way, but I found it made for a more pleasurable experience for a book that I was not sure how much I would enjoy.

It started off very promising. An attractive young lady being restrained in “the red room”. Though it is luckily it did not end up going this way given how young the character was at the time.

Charlotte’s style conforms more to that of a Jane Austin novel than it does to that of her sisters and I think I am grateful for that. Wuthering Heights was an unpleasant story. It had depth, realism and emotion, and I’m not looking for that in a novel. I’m looking for a Jane Eyre style happy-ish ending.

After reading a book about Holocaust deniers I needed something a little more upbeat. A fairy tale about animals on a farm seemed to be the exact remedy I needed.

It’s very Nineteen Eighty-Four. Of course, it is no surprise it is similar given there are both Orwellian novels, but many of the ideas and concepts are taken almost word for word from each other. The constant threat of the enemy, the re-writing of history, the propaganda.

I’ve been reading George R. R. Martin’s second book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series ever since I finished the first over a year ago. Clearly with not much focus. Actually, I have been putting it off because I was a bit worried about not remembering what was going on.

Having restarted, however, I found it fairly easy to piece together. This involved fitting some of it in with the TV series though, and there are differences.

It is what you would expect from Martin. The good guys having a really hard time, the bad guys having a slightly less hard time, and all your favourite characters constantly being killed. The ending is also rather abrupt. It is almost like he just writes the entire thing and picks arbitrary points to slice into books (maybe he does).

Between the Bridge and the River is a novel by Craig Ferguson. Ferguson is an American, but was born in Scotland, and hosts “The Late Late Show” which as you might guess, comes on after “The Late Show”.

The plot is complicated. It follows lots of different characters winding in and out of each other lives. Religious themes are explored extensively throughout the story, generally in quite a satirical light.

Ferguson does that thing that Douglas Adams someones did in taking a meaningless extra from the back of a scene and going into extraordinary detail about their life. If anything, he takes it to a new extreme.

His writing blends a number of different styles. The sex scenes for example are very blunt and matter-of-fact to the point where they could be at home in an Irvine Welsh novel. Whereas at other times we move in and out of the surreal that James Joyce would be proud.

It is a book that I think you really have to commit to to avoid getting half way through and thinking “what is this nonsense?” It all comes together at the end though and forms some kind of coherent story.

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.