Top Ten Books I Wish I Could Read Again For the First Time - Top Ten Tuesday #5

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Books I Wish I Could Read Again For the First Time

A couple of weeks ago the topic of Top Ten Tuesday was Top Ten Books I Want To Reread. That topic and today’s one might only sounds the same, but for me actually mean two very different things. Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time not necessary mean that I will ever reread these books. I might've even tried rereading them at some point, got disappointed and never finished rereading. Books I Want to Reread, for me, means that I want to reread these books, even though I know I would not feel the same, have the same impression as I did when I was reading them for the first time. So without any further ado, I’m presenting Top Ten Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time, in no particular order. 

• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Even though this book is known to almost everyone in US it was very hard to find in Russia some years ago. It was first published in Russia in 1960 in a national literary magazine. I’m not sure if it was ever published in a book form in Russia until recently, however it was impossible for me to find Russian translation ten years ago. I went high and low, searching for Russian translation – no libraries had it, none of my relatives had it, no friends of my relatives, not friends of friends of my relatives, not even neighbors of friends of friends of my relatives. Finally, my, at that time boyfriend, now husband, was able to find a Russian translation for me – a pirate document in the internet. That was my first experience with The Catcher in the Rye and even though the quality of the document left much to be desired (translation itself was good, thanks god), I read it in one sitting and loved it enormously.  A few years ago, I found and bought the first US edition. I reread it and even though I still love The Catcher in the Rye, the experience was very different from the first one. 

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Another book that widely popular in US and for some reason is known to a few in Russia. I first heard about this book when I already was in US and I read it for only one reason – everyone here seems to know this book and I had no idea what they were talking about. After I finished it, I remember that I was unable to read anything else for a month, nothing seems to be good enough, and everything else seems pale and boring. 

• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I read it only once when I was fifteen or sixteen, but I still remember what an impression this book made. Only Nabokov could have written such a beautiful book on such ugly and controversial theme. 

• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. This book made me “Whoa!” (an exclamation of surprise) not once. Now I know the plot, so sadly I wouldn’t go “Whoa!” even once. I wish I could read this book again for the first time. 

• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. This one has one of the best twists in the entire book history, in my opinion.  

• The Eight by Katherine Neville. I heard about this book for the first time just about the time when the second book The Fire was about to be published – twenty years after The Eight was first published. I was walking around my favorite bookstore and noticed it. I was a bit hesitant to read it for the first time (book is twenty years old and I never heard about it – it must be not very good, was my thoughts). However, after starting to read synopsis: “A dabbler in mathematics and chess, Catherine Velis…” I knew that I’m going to like this book. My love to mathematics is only a bit lower then my love to books, so it is pretty high and even though I myself never played chess seriously, I was always fascinated by people who does. With this book, it is not as much as I want to read it again for the first time, I want to discover it for the first time, discover something so unexpectedly that I would love so dearly. 

• Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling. Should I even bother to say something about it? 

• Looking for Alaska by John Green. I’ve been hearing and seeing the title of this book for years, until only this year when I finally read it. I didn’t know anything about this book with an exception of its title and an army of fans who was considering this book one of the best ever. I’ll tell you the truth, the title was the thing that was stopping me from reading this book for years. I was thinking that Alaska in the title was referring to the state Alaska (silly me). So when I was thinking “Looking for Alaska (the state)”, I was imagining something of Jack London’s style and I really never liked it. So it only took me about four-five years to overcome my prejudice and read what now became one of my favorite books. 

• Some Girl Are by Courtney Summers. I discovered Courtney Summers almost two years ago and immediately fall in love with her first book Cracked Up to Be. Some Girl Are made my favorites list. Her books are the most brutal, honest and nail-biting out of all YA I’ve ever read. 

• Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer. Yes, I loved Twilight Series (second and third book the most) first time I read it, with exception of fourth book – it made me sick. It is only later, when I tried to reread this series all the flaws started to stare at me from the pages. It happened before the whole internet joined into Hate Twilight frenzy. This is precisely why I want to reread it for the first time again – I don’t want to see these flaws. I want to swallow it whole again without actually tasting it and be left with pleasant, however vague, aftertaste. I want to read it without analyzing, scrutinizing or thinking.

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Book Review #133

 Tender Is the Night

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s,Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise.
From goodreads.com

Scott Fitzgerald began writing Tender Is the Night in 1925 – the time of roaring 20^th, Scott Fitzgerald’s time. It was finished and first published in 1934 – the time of Great Depression, John Steinbeck’s time. So I guess it is somewhat natural that the book met a lot of negative reviews, most based on: “We have nothing to eat here, we are dying from hunger and you are writing about rich bored people, who are shopping, laying on the beach and going to parties on the French Riviera, while still desperately unhappy.” And I guess we all can see the critics’ point of view, however, I cannot deny seeing Fitzgerald characters’ as well.

From the first sight, it is hard to like Tender Is the Night’s characters – they are rich, they have no high purpose in life, they are wasting their time and complain a lot. On the other hand, if we stop judging them (from our purposeful, no time wasting and every second dedicated to help others less fortunate then ourselves point of view) and really try to put ourselves in their shoes, we will realize that we are really not that different from these characters: we are too trying to make right choices and we are too living with burden of consequences from wrong ones. We are, same as Tender Is the Night’s characters, very rarely looking at our lives from the perspective of how much more fortunate we are comparing to other people. We all are too busy with our own pain to notice someone else’s. Then why would we blame Dick, Nicole or Rosemary to be an unworthy characters, to be unlikable? They are very realistic and drawn with brutal honesty.

For me, the major role in understanding and sympathizing with these characters played Scott Fitzgerald writing style. If Tender Is the Night wouldn’t be in Fitzgerald’s prose, it would be just a whiny story about some rich brats. These characters broke my heart. They are so desperately unhappy, trying to understand why. How could we not be compassionate to them? I just couldn’t dismiss the book on the grounds of it being about shallow, rich people with dumb problems. I had to take these characters into my heart; I had to try stopping my tears from falling on the book’s pages for their shattered lives.

There is a polemic going on, from the time Tender Is the Night was first published, between critics on which Scott Fitzgerald’s book is superior - The Great Gatsby or Tender Is the Night. I can’t say which camp I belong to. I had a big space in my heart for The Great Gatsby and now Tender Is the Night has joined it. (Should I make it even more clear how much I loved it?)

Top Ten Book Endings That Left Me with My Mouth Hanging Open - Top Ten Tuesday #4

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Book Endings That Left Me with My Mouth Hanging Open

The Broke and Bookish comments on today’s topic: “because of the cliffhanger or because it the ending was MINDBLOWING, etc.” I choose to mention only books with mind blowing endings and not to talk about cliffhanger endings for number of reasons. First of all, I’m sick and tired of series (each and every book nowadays is a part of some series and a number attached to it – 2, 6, 50, 1000 – yeah sometimes it feels that some series consists of thousand installments). Second of all, most of contemporary series’ writes are completely misunderstanding the definition of cliffhanger. To end an installment on a cliffhanger doesn’t mean to end it in the middle without any closure whatsoever, to end it as if you were writing and then got tired or got enough words and decided to stop. It also doesn’t mean that this current installment shouldn’t have a climax and should end just before one, in this case the book is not complete, and you just have first so many chapters. To end an installment on a cliffhanger means to end it in suspense. It still means that a book should have the beginning, the middle and the end, only in case of a cliffhanger, the end shouldn’t only wrap up the story, but also reveal something new, something suspenseful. But enough about this, let’s talk about ending that blew my mind away.

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. The whole book was mind-blowing for me. However the ending made me shiver, not because of a fear, but because of the excitement. The circle is now complete – this is the only thing I will say about this ending, to do not spoil the book for these that haven’t read it yet, but planning to do so.
2. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This story has one of the most forceful endings. You didn’t see that coming, however it all makes sense and because of that you want to live in the different, better world where such things would not only be senseless, but would also be impossible.
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. I watched the movie before I read the book, completely unintentionally; I didn’t know what I was doing. The movie’s ending blew me away and I couldn’t believe that this is the end. I didn’t want to believe that this is the end, even though it made sense.  It turned out that the movie is closely based on the book, so the end was the same. And even though I already knew how it will end, it still left me speechless, because in case of the book it was final, it was set in stone, it was how Ken Kesey wrote it and no space for interpretations or assumptions was available.
4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – one of the most controversial and powerful endings that I’ve ever come across off.
5. Atonement by Ian McEwan. As most of the readers, I swallowed the bait Ian McEwan so masterfully planted and didn’t see that coming at all.
6. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. The power of this ending lies for me in the Edith Wharton’s flawless writing style. There were no surprises, only pure beauty of words.
7. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Only after completing this list I realized that I have two books by John Steinbeck here. However I couldn’t remove either of them. This guy definitely knew how to end his stories.
8. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. The story is pretty much the same as with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I kept thinking that maybe I misunderstood something in the movie, however book proved that it is exactly as I saw and understood in the movie. I guess I’m just too big of a sucker for happy endings.
9. The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. The story begins same as for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Shutter Island. I watched the movie first. However, in this case I didn’t start reading the book to confirm or rather to disprove my apprehensions. I started to read The Stepford Wives, because the end in the movie didn’t make much sense to me. The book’s mind-blowing ending lay in complete opposition of the movie’s and instantaneously made sense.
10. Almost any book by Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie is one of very few authors whose mysteries I could never guess correctly. I can have multiple guesses on who did what to whom; however these guesses are usually wrong. I read almost every book Agatha Christie ever written, because she always surprises me and nothing ever is as it seems in her stories.

So which book endings blew you away and why?

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - Book Review #132

The Book Thief

by Markus Zusak

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Narrated by Death, Markus Zusak's groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young foster girl living outside of Munich in Nazi Germany. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she discovers something she can't resist- books. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever they are to be found.

With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, Liesel learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids, as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
From goodreads.com

Experimental fiction is what The Book Thief is called by many reviewers. Experimental fiction, which deliberately seeks to break established writing conventions, is not for everyone. Experimental fiction writers more interested in reinventing writing craft than in being understood. However, some of these literally experiments later on becoming established writing conventions for specific genre or style and some gets forgotten as an unsuccessful attempt. This is not for me to decide to which category The Book Thief will belong, this is time’s business. I can only share my opinion and hope to be either prophetic or afraid to be called improvident.

I read my fair share of experimental fiction. My reactions are always unpredictable: I might love the book from the first sentence and be surprised that it considered an experimental fiction, because it reads so natural to me; I might hate the book from its very beginning till its end, without even a vague clue why “that” was published and how anyone can call “it” a book; I might also start reading a book with a neutral attitude and by the end the book, the story might grow on me and I would call it an ok book. The Book Thief fell into the third category for me. Yes, I finished it and even did it without any disgust. However the only feeling left afterwards was * shrug *.

Disclaimer:

I am a soulless, heartless bitch that didn’t care about poor orphan girl’s story set during holocaust in Nazi Germany.

End of Disclaimer

and continuation of rant (what? You expected an actual book review?).

I guess the reason why I didn’t care about the story or cry, as many people claim to do after finishing The Book Thief, is my quite wide knowledge of the WWII events and stories –real people’s stories read from multiple non-fiction books, the story of my great-grandmother who lived through the war and real stories of veterans who went through this war. And the stories of these people were so much more horrifying, the situations of these people were so much more desperate than Liesel Meminger.

I wish I could at least say that Markus Zusak picked an original narrator for the story – Death, but I can’t, because Terry Pratchett (and he is not the only one, I just cannot remember anyone else at the moment) did this a decade earlier. I wish that I could call the voice of the narrator an original, but I can’t, because it reeked of cynicism and humanity, which a cliché portrait of Death in literature, movies and TV. I wish I could find some originality in the theme – the girl is saved from mortal danger by the words and books; and irony – the girl was put into this mortal danger because of the words and books, but I can’t once again, because this theme is as old as written word and probably even older.

I’m scrutinizing this book, because of countless rewards it got and because of innumerable fans that read and reread and cry over this book, so naturally my expectations were very high. I’m not trying to piss off this army of fans by saying that their beloved book was only ok to me and not very original, it just didn’t live up to my expectations. So the bottom line is – nothing to see, moving alone…

Top Ten Books I Want To Reread - Top Ten Tuesday #3

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

 

Top Ten Books I Want To Reread.



I’m very rarely rereading books because of multiple reasons: first, I just simply do not have enough time to read all the books I want to read, not to mention to reread these that I already read; second, I have too good of a memory and it is usually boring for me to reread entire book, because I remember it down to each insignificant detail; and third, if and when I’m rereading a book that I really loved from the first time, I almost never have the same range of emotions that I had on my first read. Nevertheless, I still have a desire to reread some books. Here are ten of them in no particular order that have been on my mind lately.

• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I have read it only once and loved it dearly. However, I read it before I knew English good enough to attempt reading it in its original language, so I always wanted to reread it in English (I have a thing to read books, watch movies, etc without translation if possible). And as of late, I just simply wanted to reread it because it has been almost ten years since I read it first.
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. This is one of my favorite books that I read in High School and I never reread it, because of the reasons I stated above. I have been thinking about it a lot in a pasted two-three months, maybe it is time to rerad it?
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. It’s only and at the same time already been a year, since I first read it. I didn’t seem to stop thinking about it. I’m not sure if I’m yet ready to read the whole book, but I would love to go through some moments that I especially liked.
• The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. I read it when I was fourteen at summer camp. One girl brought this book with her, but wasn’t reading it. I never heard about this book before. However when I finished the only book that I brought (my mother couldn't believe that I will be spending time reading in the summer camp), I borrowed it from the girl, started reading and couldn’t stop until I finished. I returned the book to the girl, left camp and never saw neither girl, nor The Thorn Birds. I should get myself my own copy and reread it one day.
• Angelique Series by Sergeanne Golon. I stopped reading romances when I was about fourteen. Somehow I outgrew and got bored with them. Once in a while I’m getting an urge to read a romance, but now I don’t know any authors. I don’t know who is bad and who is incredible. And I simply cannot pick anything, because everything sounds the same to me (no offence to romance readers). However for the cases when I need to read a romance, I have Angelique Series that I have been rereading since I was eleven. I never read further than seventh book (there is thirteen books in the series). In my opinion, the quality is seriously decreasing after sixth book.
• Shopaholic Series by Sophie Kinsella. Sophie Kinsella is one of only two known to me authors (the second one is Oscar Wilde) that make me laugh until my stomach hurts. I’m thinking about rereading Shopaholic Series when I need a dose of silliness in my life.
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. This is one of my all time favorite books. I reread it countless times when I was a child, but I didn’t reread it once in past ten years. I need to revisit the Wonderland.
• The Door into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein. This is my favorite Heinlein’s book and one of my favorite sci-fi books. It contains all things that I enjoy: love, betrayal, time travel, happy ending and the most adorable fictional cat.
• Stainless Steel Rat Series, Deathworld Trilogy and pretty much anything by Harry Harrison. I love Harry Harrison and haven’t been reading any of his books for a long time.
• Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind. It is written at the level of your regular six-grader – terrible. Nonetheless, I like the story and recently I’ve wanted to read some epic fantasy.

Drawing the line, it looks like I’m tired of classics and literally fiction and I need some genre fiction on my reading list.

Great books that just isn’t all that great

Great books that just aren't all that great

Over at Slate, deputy books editor Juliet Lapidos is asking writers, books critics and editors to tell her their least favorite books from the great, canonical books. I found it quite interesting read and it made me think how probably we all, same as Juliet Lapidos with Thomas Hardy novels, sometimes find ourselves lost and frustrated after reading or attempting to read one of the universally acknowledged great novels.

For me one of such books is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. After finishing the book, I read countless critical essays, reviews and analysis and I still feel that either I’m missing something or this novel just wasn’t all that great. While reading Wuthering Heights, I really wished that its characters would be real, so I would be able personally physically hurt all of them.

For instance, my grandfather, almost the whole his life was trying to love Leo Tolstoy’s books. Sometime, when he was around sixty, he was attempting to reread War and Peace again to finally get a grip of its greatness. Instead, he ended up shutting up the book with laud bang and pronouncing that he always thought that Tolstoy’s works were dull and he will never loved it. Mind, my grandfather was a compulsive reader, not just your casual, five books a year, case. And even though I disagree with him about Tolstoy in particular (I happen to be one of these people who find his works truly great), I completely understand him, how sometimes, even if you will spend half of your life trying, you just cannot love or at least acknowledge the greatness of one of the canonical books.

On the other hand, I always believed, same as Elif Batuman (one of the writes that is answering Juliet Lapidos question in the article) that the right book has to reach you at the right time. My mother, as it seems was always obsessed with this idea, handing out books to me with a phrase: “You will enjoy this book, considering your current age and state of mind.” And I must say that she posses a particular talent in this area, because almost all books she gave me became my favorites. Unfortunately, we don’t always have such a great advisers who know us and literature good enough to make a right suggestion. We grow up and starting to choose books ourselves. Some turning out to be a great misses, sometimes so great, it leaves a scar that might not heal until the rest of our lives.

Some books are imposed on us, imposed at the wrong time and for all the wrong reasons. I’m talking about required reading in school. I have a number of books that were forced upon me at school that I still hate with all my might. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a good example. It was a required reading when I was in 10th grade. I was barely able to finish it, sick and tired of whiney Raskolnikov. After that experience, not only I loathed Crime and Punishment, I hated Dostoyevsky, even though I haven’t read any other his works. It took me sometime and only this year I found enough bravery in myself to try something else by Dostoyevsky. To my greatest astonishment I loved Idiot and Notes from Underground. However, I still feel not ready to give Crime and Punishment another try, so it still stays on my list of the great books that just isn’t that great.

Also, we have to keep in mind that we are all different. We have different interests, different life experience, we come from different cultural, social, financial and educational backgrounds, so it is a silly idea that every so-called great book should speak to every individual that reads it. We have our preferences in stories, writing styles and characters. For instance, Edgar Allen Poe’s writing is superb, in my opinion; however, his stories never really made much sense to me (The Fall of the House of Usher – honestly, why didn’t he let his beloved sister out the moment he realized that she was buried alive). Sometimes I might like the story (The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne), but not able to stand the writing style (how she talks to her daughter, frankly, I don’t think that anyone, in any century ever talked to children in such a pompous, overly dramatic, histrionic manner). Sometimes it is very hard for a reader to overcome prejudice and get out of the comfort zone, but it doesn’t mean that we should never try.

So, what is your list of great books that just aren't all that great?

The best 100 opening lines from books

The best 100 opening lines from books by Stylist

• The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

• Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

• Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

• Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolfe “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

• Back When We Were Grownups, Anne Tyler “Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”

• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.”

• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”

• Moby-Dick, Herman Melville “Call me Ishmael.”

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

• The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling “Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon “It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed.”

• The Time Travellers Wife, Audrey Niffenegger “Clare: It’s hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he’s okay. It’s hard to be the one who stays.”

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkein “When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventyifirst birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”

• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

• The Color Purple, Alice Walker “You better not never tell nobody but God.''

• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”

• Bridget Jonses’ Diary, Helen Fielding "I will not drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week."

• A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolfe "But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction."
And the rest of it.