Kate's Queen City Notes

Blundering through Cincinnati, laughing all the way

Tag Archives: 100 best books


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100 Books by 40: BFG and Swallows and Amazons

It’s been a bit since I last posted about books. I actually finished BFG some weeks ago. It totally slipped my mind to write about it. I have also been spending quality time with Anna Karenina and Brideshead Revisited. I should wrap both of those up in the next week or two. So while I haven’t been writing about reading, I have been doing a considerable amount of reading.

BFG is and acronym for Big Ugly Giant. Said giant steals an orphan from her bed. To the girl’s horror, she learns that there is a land of human eating giants. Luckily, her BFG seems to be a vegetarian. Adventures ensue when they attempt to thwart the human-munching giants.

Roald Dahl seems to be deliberate in the morality he delivers in his books if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is representative of the rest of his work. It follows that he is making a point about the morality of eating animals. He doesn’t shy  away from dark topics, and the way he glibly describes the different flavor profiles of humans across the globe seems to mirror the way in which we talk about pork, beef, or chicken. Maybe I’m interpreting this too directly. Maybe he’s making a broader statement about consumption, and the willful ignorance that it requires to maintain peace of mind.

In casting the orphan girl and an unattractive giant as the protagonists, he is suggesting that people just outside the norm have inherent value. Toward the end of the book the girl and BFG get treated to a dinner with The Queen, which seems to suggest that the world will value you for what you can deliver to it rather than how you look. I love this as a message, but I don’t think the world is inherently fair. People who deliver valuable work are routinely judged by more superficial measures. Of the lies that I used to believe, my faith in fairness was the most difficult to shed.

Jeez. I didn’t know I had this much to say about this book. I didn’t love it when I was reading it. But I love the way it made me think. It’s a short, easy, thought-provoking read, so I suggest it.

Swallows and Amazons is a precious book. It’s the most romanticized tale of childhood that I have read yet. It’s a pleasant read in that it prompted me to daydream about racing dirt bikes and building tree forts. But it was too precious. A couple bites of cotton candy are nice; a whole bag of cotton candy rots the teeth. Swallows and Amazons is a great thoughtless beach read, but it’s utterly unmemorable.

Now then, back to Anna Karinina, Brideshead Revisited, A Suitable Boy, and Naughts and Crosses.


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100 Books by 40: THE SECRET GARDEN

Am I the only person who didn’t know that The Secret is based on ideas in The Secret Garden? An internet search is telling me that, no, this isn’t common knowledge. Let me back-up a moment.

I just finished reading The Secret Garden. It seemed like a charming children’s book until the end. The premise of the story is that a spoiled little girl losses her parents to cholera and is shipped to a mysterious mansion to live with a distant relative. The girl gains entry to a locked garden and discovers many other things regarding the mysterious mansion. While on this adventure, she becomes a nicer child and puts off some of her bratty ways. So far so good.

In the third to last chapter, one of the children has a very long “sermon”, the book’s word, not mine. This sermon basically extols the virtues of positive thinking.  While I was reading page after page of this, I thought when did this children’s book morph into a self-help title? Further more, I am wondering if Rhonda Byrne (author of The Secret) gave any credit to Frances Hodgson Burnett (author of The Secret Garden). My quick and sloppy googling didn’t show any acknowledgement, but I freely admit that I didn’t invest more than 5 minutes on searching.

So, I’m wondering why Burnett added this bit to her book. It would have been a charming story without it. I suppose the character transformation is partially explained by this, but she provides equally plausible explanations such as fresh air, physical activity, and good friendship. I can only think that conveying the power of positive thinking was important to Burnett, given that she shoe-horned it into the story line.

Regardless of this mystery, the book is a pleasant read. In terms of the other children’s books on the list, it doesn’t beat out Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But it’s quite short and could easily be read in a week. Oh, and this was my first title that I borrowed from the Hamilton County Library on my Kindle. It was pretty easy. I will gladly do that again.


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100 Books by 40: THE SHELL SEEKERS

There are books that go down like cough syrup. I gulp the words down knowing that I will emerge from the experience better. The characters and the words will develop and leave me a better person in indescribable ways. The books that I’ve read recently have been of this nature. I can’t say that the books are bad, nor can I say that I enjoyed reading them.

The Shell Seekers was a beautiful escape; I couldn’t find enough hours in the day to lose myself in its pages. The book is about generational differences and family relationships. The time stretches from early 1900’s until 1980’s in various locations, but primarily England.

As usual, I am going to hold off on discussing major plot points to avoid spoiling it for any other readers. However, one of the ideas conveyed in the book spurred further thought. There’s a tension between loving someone as they are, and maintaining healthy boundaries in relationships. And this tension exists between family, friends, and spouses especially so. What’s the difference between giving out of obligation and giving out of impulse? When is it appropriate to hold some truth back?

Truth-telling has it’s pitfalls. Yes, that dress makes your butt look big. Actually, with those rings under your eyes, you look terrible. Yeah, you totally botched that meeting. There are times were the unvarnished truth just isn’t kind. And in family relationships, the truth without considering the conclusion can be cruel. I’m not advocating for wholesale lying. If you are an adult human and have successful relationships, you occasionally lie, or omit the truth.

This book navigates these topics. It’s sensitive and beautiful. I highly suggest it.


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100 Books by 40: GOOD NIGHT, MR TOM

Picking up this book was a delightful break from the tedium that was reading The Count of Monte Cristo. The book is a young adult title about a boy that was evacuated from London during World War II. While the writing wasn’t challenging to read, the novel covered some heavy topics.

The boy, Willie, left an abusive mother and taken in by a man that had cut himself off from others after the death of his wife and young child. The story centers around the transformation of the boy and the man. They are wounded souls who find healing in each other’s company.

My facebook feed brings many things to my attention, but I would say the vast majority highlight the negative power that we have to belittle and harm both those around us and ourselves. It’s refreshing to contemplate the best that we can be versus the worst. On the rare occasion that someone shares something positive or beautiful, I feel relieved, but those things fail to over-power the negative emotions that I am often left with.

I know people have either left their facebook accounts or blocked certain posts from turning up in their feed, and I get that. There’s just some stuff that doesn’t add value to your life and only brings up negative emotions. There are moments were we can be constructively challenged, but social media is rarely the space for it.

I’ve already limited my consumption of certain types of news media for the reason stated above. Twenty-four hours news stations were among the first things to get winnowed out of my information diet. I’m considering that facebook might get a similar treatment. I am going to pare back my facebook browsing for a while, and see how that goes.

Mister Tom is a nice, easy read. The characters are charming. The setting reminds me how little Americans have been touched by war since the Civil War. The towns people in the book all pitch in to help with the war effort. Much like Americans accepted rationing and planted victory gardens to support WWII, people accepted a certain level of shared sacrifice for the greater good. We aren’t so far from that time to make it impossible for our culture to value self sacrifice again. In fact, I am sure that millions of people in their own small way are still doing this today. There’s a big world out there full of people who are doing their best, and social media isn’t a great lens to take a look at it.


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100 Books by 40: THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO

I read the unabridged version of this book. That was a poor choice.

What can I say to adequately express how much I didn’t enjoy reading this book? It’s nearly twelve hundred pages. It was originally written in French. I am convinced that Alexandre Dumas was paid by the word. I wish I would have considered all of these things before I checked out the unabridged version. Umberto Eco probably says it best in the introduction.

The Count of Monte Cristo is of course one of the most gripping novels ever written, and on the other hand on of the most badly written novels of all time and of all literatures.

Dumas’ writing is all over the place. A mass of fillers, shameless in its repetition of the same adjective only one line below, incontinent in its piling on of these same adjectives, quite capable of entering into some sententious digression that can never be got out of because the syntax won’t hold, and huffing and puffing on like that for twenty lines, it is mechanical and clumsy in its descriptions of feelings. Its characters either shudder or turn pale, dry great drops of sweat that run down their  brows or, stammering in a voice no longer human, rise frenziedly from ther chairs or fall back into them, with the author always, obsessively, bent on telling us that the chair they had fallen back into was the same one on which they had been sitting a second before. – Umberto Eco

A little repetition or poor writing can be overlooked in a short read. But this? Twelve hundred pages worth of nattering on? No. I liked the plot, but the mechanics of the writing were just too poor for me to ignore. Dumas lays the foreshadowing on too thickly. I understood at the very beginning of the book that the plot resolution would revolve around revenge. It took five months and hours and hours of reading to drive to that.

I did learn one lesson. The lesson is that poor editing and mechanics can ruin the best plot. The other lesson was to consider the abridged version of some of these classics. The fact that they exist might not be solely due to lazy teen readers.


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100 Books by 40: Persuasion

Before I get into Persuasion, I need to vent about the BBC’s 100 Best Books list. I’ve just discovered that number 59. Artemis Fowl is actually a series of eight books. EIGHT! Between this and the BBC slyly listing Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials as two books (actually six books), I want to start calling the list the BBC’s Best 111 Books. I realize that LOR was intended as one whole book, but conventionally it was released as three. I call shenanigans on the BBC. I will be reading Artemis Fowl for months. At least it is a young adult series; I shudder to think of a Kafka work spanning eight books.

I’m getting lulled into enjoying British Literature, but I would like to follow the BBC’s list with something a little less Brit Lit centered. I might have found that list a few days back. By the time I complete the BBC’s list I will have read about 30 of the books on this list. Blending of fiction with non-fiction feels haphazard. I find that appealing. Some intern just dreamed up this list, and I don’t care.

http://www.businessinsider.in/100-Books-Everyone-Should-Read-Before-They-Die/articleshow/29916032.cms

Now then, back to Brit Lit. I really enjoy Jane Austen. Going into Pride and Prejudice I was prepared to hate it. I don’t like romance. I hate romantic comedies. Reading Jane Austen and George Eliot has given me clarity on why. My romantic media consumption was limited to Hollywood’s interpretation. My partner just watched “Love Actually”, this Christmas season and was enraged by how absurd it was. There are movies that pull the curtain back on real relationships which are most often a balancing between good intentions, false assumptions, short tempers, and the grinding aspects of everyday life. “Blue Valentine” comes to my mind. Lets just say “Love Actually” was not one of them.

The point is I went into Jane Austen and George Eliot thinking “Pretty Woman”. I came away with appreciation for Austen’s wit. Both writers display artistry with language and acute abilities to tell the truth about relationships. There are beautiful moments along side frustration and disappointment. It’s a continuation of all that you struggle with plus the struggles of another. At its best relationships can drive us to  be our best. But growth hurts. It’s hard.

Persuasion is a great little read. It doesn’t feel as epic as Pride and Prejudice, but I think that’s due to its reduced length. If you want a bit of Austen without committing to Pride and Prejudice or Emma this is the read for you.


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100 Books by 40: David Copperfield

My copy of David Copperfield has an introduction by the author himself, and I found his words quite relevant to my own experience with the novel.

“Of all my books, I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is DAVID COPPERFIELD.”

If you’ve been following my blog you might know that I’ve already read Great Expectations, and I wasn’t terribly fond of it. Mrs. Havisham lords over that book and swallows any lightness that Pip provides. It’s a long, bleak read. In contrast, David Copperfield is alive with witty, endearing characters, despite the plot being flush with personal catastrophe. In particular, David’s aunt, Betsy Trotwood, was a peculiar, sassy old broad that I enjoyed in every way.

I often avoid talking about particular parts of the plot to refrain from spoiling the read for others who fail to heed my alerts. That just can’t be avoided here, because as I want to talk about how much I liked the resolution of one of the story arcs.

Here goes. *****************SPOILER ALERT*****************************

For readers whom have not read the book and don’t intend on it, let me set the scene for this story arc. David’s father dies before he is born. His mother is a less than sensible woman and remarries to a severe, cruel man. David’s mother is driven to an early grave by her new husband, and David is left with the wicked stepfather who at best neglects him and at worst abuses him.

Many other story arcs are introduced and resolved between the beginning and end of this arc, such that years pass with no update on the stepfather. After achieving success as an adult, David hears from a family friend that this man has found another kind woman to marry and mentally abuse. I was curious if Dickens would conjure up an emotionally satisfying final confrontation between David and his step father. He doesn’t. The story arc is left there with David knowing that his step father is bringing suffering to a new woman.

I loved this. I loved this lack of closure. It’s what real life is. I think each of us have experienced some deep pain at the hands of another. There’s rarely an epic moment were the perpetrator acknowledges the emotional carnage that they created. People are either too self-absorbed to consider how their actions effect others, or they are steeped in denial. Possibly both. David Copperfield has simply lived beyond his destructive stepfather. He didn’t wallow in that loss. Isn’t that what real healing usually looks like?

I loved this book. I loved these characters; they warrant the favorite child status. I am mildly relieved to find a Dickens book that I like. Does that make me less of a philistine? Maybe not. But it represents my slow-growing appreciation of British Literature, without question.

It’s been a while since I updated my progress through the 100 Best Books list, so here it is. I’m approaching my half way point. No joke, I am excited to read some of my old favorites once the list is through. Success is nearly certain. I should be able to finish before I’m 40. I don’t know what it means that I’ve committed hours to something that I wasn’t sure was attainable on the outset.

Reading now:
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

Finished reading:
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
53. The Stand, Stephen King
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens *I read this when I was too young to appreciate it; I would like to read it again as an adult. I will do so if I have time.
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding *I’ve read this twice. I will read it again if I have time.
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac *I’ve read this twice. I will read it again if I have time. I have the unabriged unedited version and will probably take on that if time allows.

Pending reading:
40. Emma, Jane Austen
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie


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100 Book by 40: Treasure Island and Anne of Green Gables

Who doesn’t like pirates? No one. Honestly, that could be the end of my thoughts on Treasure Island. The book was a fun little romp. The pirates were larger than life. The plot was fun. The book was tolerably short. You should read it.

I could draw a bunch of comparisons between The Pirates of the Caribbean and Treasury Island. But, really, is it any wonder that the plot of a book is better than the plot of a movie? The book was wonderful even lacking a hot Johnny Depp.

On to Anne of Green Gables, I was fully expecting to hate this book. I’ve not enjoyed most of the children’s books that I’ve read on this list, particularly those with female leads. But I got this as an audio book from the library. I loaded up my iPod, and listened as I drove all over Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio this holiday season. I suspect listening to the book made me enjoy this book more than I would have reading it. One of the things that I will pay a bit more attention to going forward is how my experience differs from listening vs reading.

Objectively, Anne was pretty obnoxious character. Because I could tune her out a bit while enjoying the scenery, I found her more tolerable. I am certain that I will never read this book. I am happy that I heard it, mostly for Morella’s character development. Margaret Atwood wrote the intro to my particular copy of the book and suggests that the book is primarily about Morella. I tend to agree with her position. The character that experiences the most transformation is Morella. While Anne transforms from a child to a woman, Morella embraces parts of her self that had lain dormant for years. Technically, I haven’t listened to the last few chapters of Anne of Green Gables, but, as I’ve seen the movie and the f0reshadowing is pretty clear, I will consider this one done in terms of blogging about it. I will listen to the last chapters on my run this week.


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100 Books by 40: A Town Like Alice

I’ve been on this 100 books by 40 mission for a little over a year. At the outset, I wanted this effort to drive me to read more. If that is the only measure of success, this has been very successful. There have been other unintended consequences.

I like writing. I am doubtful that my writing is of interest to most other people, but I am satisfied with the effect the process has on my mood and thoughts. I’ve noticed through the year that my thoughts are getting easier and easier to type. I’ve picked up editing habits that yield ever better results. My posts now go though multiple draft readings across days prior to posting. Plus, rereading my year of posts helps me spot grammatical issues across time. I noticed that I have a problem mixing my metaphors. Metaphors will get extra attention in my edits from now on.

In addition to establishing better writing patterns, this year has made me a different reader. I recall in the not terribly distant past, I struggled with reading Dickens. The variations on English proved challenging. With Austen, Hardy, Eliot, Dickens, and the Bronte sisters behind me, I don’t struggle anymore. Seventeenth century British Literature feels easily in my grasp. I’m still pretty certain that I’m missing some nuance in these novels, but I easily follow plots and conversations.

These changes are positive, but I’ve noticed one effect that I’m ambivalent about. Reading these novels is making me more sensitive to technically good prose. I was gazing longingly at my unedited copy of On the Road, and I thought how exciting it will be to pick that up. It’s number 90 in my list, and it’s my favorite book. What a great way to celebrate wrapping up this adventure. Then I thought about how pedestrian recent novels feel to me now, fresh off Hardy and Eliot. What if I get to my favorite book and only find disappointment? What if I don’t enjoy David Foster Wallace anymore?

I can’t explain how sad this makes me feel. My favorite authors reach into my deepest thoughts and emotions and come back giving voice to things that I cannot find words for. Their voices resonate deeply, and make me feel less alone. But still, I’m too curious to deviate from this adventure. Now that I’ve started I must know if my most cherished books can withstand the changes that have been wrought in me.

So, all of that has nothing to do with A Town Like Alice. As mentioned in past posts, the 30’s are the land of 1000 page books, but A Town Like Alice broke from that trend with a mere 300 pages. The book is basically a war romance. The character development is good, and the true events that inspired part of the plot were fascinating. The female lead gets marched around Malaya with a group of British women for miles and miles. The Japanese didn’t have an appropriate camp to house them, so military leaders just kept sending them to different outposts without purpose. More than half of the women and children died.

I found all of the historical information in this book really interesting. It gave me a great sense of what Australia was like after World War 2. Otherwise, I found this book unremarkable.

Welcome to the 30's of the BBC's 100 best books list, also known as the land of 1000-page books.

Welcome to the 30’s of the BBC’s 100 best books list, also known as the land of 1000-page books.


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100 Book by 40: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

My book quest has made it into my dreams. Typically my dreams are about anxiety or mundane activities with a little weird thrown in. I spent many years bartending and waiting tables; my anxiety dreams for nearly a decade involved some form of me being in the weeds. If you aren’t familiar with the phrase “in the weeds”, it’s a service industry phrase to describe getting overwhelmed by your tables/customers. There are many causes for a good server to be in the weeds, but they normally stem from a particularly needy table or poor seating timing. My mundane dreams typically involve something that I would do in my waking hours. A few weeks ago, I had a dream that I was required to converse with other people using only PHP (server-side web programming language) statements and methods. I woke up laughing.

So, my book dream, I was with Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder and not Johnny Depp).  He was giving me a tour of my high school cafeteria. My classmates were at various tables acting out assorted Disney movies. I’m not sure why or how the cafeteria transformed into the set for Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but it did. Willy Wonka seemed to take this morphing as an obvious transition and proceeded the tour in our new location. This is where I woke up.

I’ve seen the 1971 edition of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory several times, although the last sitting was years and years ago. I’ve not seen the 2005 version. Here’s the first thing that struck me about the book in contrast to the movies. Willy Wonka isn’t as weird in the book as he is portrayed to be in either of the movies, but particularly the 2005 release.

As a kid, I found Willy Wonka terrifying, and the oompa loompas doubly so. Full disclosure, I am completely freaked out by little people. I am ashamed that I feel that way, as I know they are people and should be treated with respect. They freak me out in the same way that an unleashed dog nearing me freaks me out. I was bitten by an Irish Setter when I was 5, and unfamiliar dogs still make that lizard part of my brain light up with the fight or flight response. I feel the same when confronted by a little person, although I was not bitten one. Still the same fight or flight physical response happens.

After the first few chapters of the book, I was put at ease by a number of things. First, Willy Wonka was peculiar, but not to the extent that I was expecting given both the movies. And the oompa loompas were described as being knee-height, bearing more in common with Tinkerbell than the orange-faced terrors in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Once the uncomfortably weird aspects of the movie were purged from my mind, I really enjoyed the book. The book was less dark than either of the movies. With one exception, the uncertain fates of the naughty children are pretty heavy. They imply that Augustus Gloop could be mashed into raspberry cream. Veruca Salt along with her parents could be incinerated. Although the book seems to pass this off as less scary than it seems as I write it now.

In short, I really liked this book. I liked it more than either of the movies, and I am a Gene Wilder fan. Because Willy Wonka is less frightening, the ending with Charlie and his family moving into the factory is far more sensible. Finally as a vehicle for teaching morality to children, I thought it wasn’t as heavy handed as some of my other reads on this list. Now, only to get over my irrational issues with little people…