The Book Thief, Part 1

I consider myself to be a good speller, and I know the i before e rule, but for some reason whenever I type the word thief, I want to spell it theif.  Why is that?  But other than that minor issue, I am loving this book.  I like the random bits of German that are thrown in because they make me feel good about how much German I actually retained from those 4 years in high school and 2 semesters in college.  But most of all, I like Rudy.  He is such a lovable guy - mischievous and reckless but also incredibly loyal and caring.   I like the main character Liesel also, but for some reason she doesn't seem as special as Rudy.  Liesel is tough and resilient enough that you want to cheer for her to keep going, but Rudy's character I think has more of a spark and seems more alive.  He's the sidekick character in the action movie who you know is not going to make it to the end because he's just a little too larger than life.  A kid who paints himself black with charcoal and runs around the park pretending to be Jesse Owens is probably going to have some problems in Nazi Germany, and the narrator tells us about 1/2 way through the book that Rudy is going to meet with a tragic end.  Obviously this made me sad and upset and a little angry, but as I continue reading, I think it's kind of interesting to know that a character is going to die before it actually happens.  Now I feel like I'm getting a chance to say goodbye whenever Rudy appears, or like he was given 3 months to live 6 months ago and keeps hanging on.  I'm sure I'll still cry though when it actually happens :(

Our Mutual Friend, the 4th and final part

Done-zo!  I'm sure you're all tired of hearing about this book, but I am actually pretty sad that it's over.  I would really love to watch a reality show about these characters.  In typical Dickens fashion, the good guys win and get married and rich, the bad guys lose and move away or die, and all the loose ends are neatly tied up in the last 30 pages.  The afterword by J. Hillis Miller says that this book is about "money, money, money, and what money can make of life," and it's definitely true that the central conflict for almost all of the characters involves money - how to get it, how to keep it, how to marry it, how to show it off.  The obvious, and in my opinion a little overly pedantic, moral of the story is that the happiest characters are those who realize the value in things other than money, which characters of course end up being rewarded for their virtue with lots of money...But I think that's pretty true in life; it's the Goldilocks principle.  Too much or too little is not good, we're always the most comfortable with what is "just right."  The poor characters are generally uneducated and are unwelcome in most parts of society; but almost all of the rich characters are vapid and ridiculous.  So I say be grateful if you're in that happy medium that doesn't live in fear of the poorhouse, but it is also not forced to endure dinner parties with the Podsnaps and Lady Tippins.

The people who don't care about money in this book do have some beautiful relationships, which I think is a nice change from always thinking about Victorian-age British people being so oppressed.  The two young couples who end up married at the end are actually outwardly affectionate and make each other laugh and they have real conversations about their feelings and their lives, not just small talk about the weather or other appropriate topics.  Bella and her father have a very close relationship as well, and he shows her unconditional love and acceptance like a good parent, but I wonder what Freud would say about them because she pets him and kisses him and calls him her child a lot, which is weird.

And on a final note, whenever I read Dickens, I think about the people who had to read these stories in pieces as they were published as serials.  I need more instant gratification that that.  According to Wikipedia, it was originally published in 19 monthly installments.  Can you imagine starting a book and not being able to finish it for over a year and a half!  And it was being published as Dickens wrote it - he apparently was short or late or something on one of the installments because he was in some horrible train accident, but that's another story - so imagine how difficult that was as an author.  Apparently he tried to say about five months ahead of the publication schedule, but what if he had changed his mind about something?  This was his last completed novel, so I guess by that time he was just that good.

So that's it for our mutual friend.   If you read this blog, odds are good that you are nerdy enough to appreciate Dickens, so seriously, people, go read some Chuck D and get ready to laugh your head off.

Up next: The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.

Our Mutual Friend, Part 3

Yep, still trucking along with Chuck D.  Currently on page 631 of 895.  The theme of the past 100 pages or so has been Anti-Semitism.  There is a Jewish man who is employed as a debt collector by one of the really bad characters.  This bad guy figures out which of his friends are in debt, and then secretly buys the debt and sends Mr. Riah, the Jewish man, out to collect it, so that the friends don't know who is actually behind it.  Awful, right?  And to make it worse, the whole time, the bad guy just harangues Mr. Riah about how is he convinced that he has secret hoards of money hidden away somewhere and is sure that Mr. Riah steals from him, because of course that's what Jewish people do, and just mercilessly makes fun of Mr. Riah in front of people.  And another character calls him Mr. Aaron because he thinks that's what all Jewish people are named.  I'm really hoping that this is just a devise by Dickens to show how bad the bad guy really is.  The actual portrayal of Mr. Riah is otherwise positive - he tutors two poor girls and helps one of them escape a dangerous situation - so I don't think that Dickens actually hated Jewish people.  Maybe Wikipedia will tell me.

The other interesting theme that I've noticed since my last post is that Dickens sets up these great similarities and contrasts between the young female characters.  In a lot of ways, they are foils for each other, but I think they have too much in common to really call them foils.  Bella is spoiled and is desperate to marry money so that she can get away from her tiny house and horrible mother, but she is totally devoted to her father, who is basically a long-suffering, sweet, cherubic lump.  Lizzie is industrious and self-sacrificing; she helps her brother run away so that he can go to school and takes care of their father even though he is mean and does not approve of education and is possibly a murderer; after her father dies, she moves in with and cares for this weird midget crippled child/woman, but then her world is basically turned upside down because two men are in love with her, and she has to run away (with the help of Mr. Riah) because she worries that the one man who she doesn't love will kill the other one who she actually does love.  Oh Chuck, I am counting on you to have Bella and Mr. Rokesmith and Lizzie and Mr. Wrayburn together in the end...

In other news - Barnes & Noble is having a 3-for-2 sale on their Classics series, so I picked out three:
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (more Dickens!)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot also by Dostoevsky
After Our Mutual Friend, I'm definitely going back to shorter books for a while, but I am looking forward to getting my Russian lit on eventually, maybe if we have a big snow this winter or something, and of course, I can't ever get enough Dickens.  (That's what she said?)

Name Game Answers

Sorry I forgot to post this sooner!  For all (4, maybe?) of you who are dying to know how you did on the Dickens name game, here are the answers:

1-C
2-B
3-D
4-A
5-F
6-E

Our Mutual Friend, Part 2

This ish is getting good yall!  I'm currently on page 421 of 895, and Chuck has really kicked it up a notch in the last 100 pages.  This guy who supposedly was murdered at the beginning of the book is actually alive, but now he can't reveal his true identity because he will lose the woman he loves.  There's a couple that just got married because they both thought the other was rich, but actually they are both poor -- kind of twisted gift of the magi -- so now they're plotting revenge against the guy who set them up.  Another couple got rich because they inherited a fortune from the supposedly murdered guy's father, and they have just adopted a hilarious teenage orphan named Sloppy.  I mean, who besides Dickens or maybe a writer for Days of Our Lives could come up with that stuff?  I think that some people find Dickens to be kind of formulaic -- all of his books are just protagonist with some problem/obstacle, protagonist meets a bunch of funny, crazy people, some more stuff happens to highlight the plight of the working class, someone falls in love, protagonist inherits a bunch of money and everything turns out pretty much ok in the end -- but I love it, and even if there are certain similarities, who cares, it's still wonderful.  Sorry this is a short post and posting in general has been kind of sporadic lately... Too much Corporate Tax homework and other fun things going on and not enough time to read.  Bear with me!

Our Mutual Friend, Part 1

Whew, this is a long book.  Current progress: page 222/889.  And I have not been able to read as much as I had been recently b/c too much other crap to do, including a Federal Income Tax exam coming up soon...not as funny as Dickens.  I think Charles Dickens is hilarious, and I probably don't get half of his jokes.  To show you how fun he can be, we're going to play the Charles Dickens name game!!  Match the character name with their description: 

1. "With an immense obtuse drab face, like a face in a tablespoon, and a dyed Long Walk up to the top of her head, as a convenient public approach to the bunch of false hair behind, pleased to patronize Mrs. Veneering opposite, who is pleased to be patronized."

2. "So poor a clerk, through having a limited salary and an unlimited family, that he had never yet attained the modest object of his ambition: which was to wear a complete new suit of clothes, hat and boots included, at one time.  His black hat was brown before he could afford a coat, his pantaloons were white at the seams and knees before he could buy a pair of boots, his boots had worn out before he could treat himself to new pantaloons, and by the time he worked round to the hat again, that shining modern article roofed-in an ancient ruin of various periods."

3. "A dark gentleman.  Thirty at the utmost.  An expressive, one might say handsome face.  A very bad manner.  In the last degree contrained, reserved, diffident, troubled."

4. "a broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in mourning, coming comically ambling towards the corner, dressed in a pea overcoat and carrying a large stick.  He wore thick shoes, and thick leather gaiters, and thick gloves like a hedger's.  Both as to his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, and his ears; but with bright, eager, childishly inquiring grey eyes, under his ragged eyebrows and broad-brimmed hat.  A very odd-looking old fellow altogether."

5. "an ill-looking visitor with a squinting leer who, as he spoke, fumbled at an old sodden fur cap, formless and mangy, that looked like a furry animal, dog or cat, puppy or kitten, drowned and decaying."

6. "this young rocking-horse was being trained in her mother's act of prancing in a stately manner without ever getting on.  But the high parental action was not yet imparted to her, and in truth she was but an under-sized damsel, with high shoulders, low spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped surface of nose, who seemed to take occasional frosty peeps out of childhood into womanhood, and to shrink back again, overcome by her mother's head-dress and her father from head to foot."

A. Nicodemus Boffin

B. R. Wilfer

C. Lady Tippins

D. John Rokesmith

E. Georgiana Podsnap

F. Roger Riderhood

The point of this fun little exercise is to marvel at Dickens's powers of characterization.  The names always match the personalities so perfectly, and even every physical detail that he tells us about the characters reveals their true natures.  You read the person's name and physical description and you already know if they are good, bad, tragic, ridiculous, rich, poor.  I mean, could anyone named Uriah Heep have any redeeming qualities?  I just love that.  If Charles Dickens had written Twilight, none of us would be wondering why Edward and Jacob are so in love with Bella.  Much more Dickens to come, including trying to figure out why this book is titled Our Mutual Friend...

Mockingjay!

Real or not real -- this book is awesome.  Real!  I thought it was the perfect ending to the trilogy, even though I want to cry that it is over.  It is not a completely happy ending, but there is no way that it could have been (or should have been) after everything that Katniss has been through.  Even aside from the psychological damage, in this book alone, Katniss is strangled, shot, burned, has a ruptured spleen, broken ribs, shrapnel in her leg...she literally lives in the hospital.  But she overcomes it all and finds love and eventually realizes that she can escape from the horrors by focusing on the good deeds and acts of kindness that she has witnessed.  This series gives you examples of every possible reaction to violence and war -- anger and lust for revenge, depression, tears, compassion, immobility, calm purposefulness in caring for the injured, self-sacrifice, courage, humor, addiction -- and raises so many questions.  Could you kill another to save your life or the life of someone you love?  When does saving many justify the killing of a few?  Should you always accept an eye for an eye?  Can you love two people at the same time?  What is not fair during war?  Is it ever acceptable to use others?  Are there fates worse than death?  It's like a philosophy course disguised as YA lit.  And while all these questions are being raised, you get a completely gripping story and unforgettable characters.  I can't think of many villains creepier than President Snow...he smells like blood and roses, which gives me the willies just thinking about it.  This series will be definitely be on my list of books to be reread like once a year - READ THEM NOW!

Up next - Because I have been so absorbed with THG, I feel like I need something very different that I know will be good.  So get ready for Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens.