Kate's Queen City Notes

Blundering through Cincinnati, laughing all the way

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100 books by 40: ULYSSES

Book: Ulysses
Author: James Joyce
Published: 1920

I was warned about this book. The warnings were justified. Aside from the more obvious difficulty around a lack of quotations, the lack of prose tires my eyes in unanticipated ways.

And then there is my honed scholarly habit of rereading sentances that I failed to comprehend. I find myself doubling back numerous times on the same page. This habit served me well in my studies in organic chemistry and geology. In this context, my habit isn’t useful.

I have to enter a semi-meditative state and let the words flow over me. The book is less a dissection of form and plot and more about learning new reading habits. Allowing my mind to let go of what I don’t understand is liberating.

Will I understand critical plot points? Probably not. I struggled to identify when Leo Bloom was taking a crap, a bit of ammunition used to classify this work as obscene. There are references to Ireland’s relationship to Great Britain for which I am missing critical context. Let it all wash away or commit to reading this book for the better part of 2015.

I know this book is supposed to take place over the course of one day. I also know that there are two main characters who’s lives careen together through the course of that day. I know that the chapters seem to be written from different people’s perspectives, and in significantly different writing styles. I also know that primary themes are the meaning of life and the part that religion plays in our lives.

I enjoyed the experience of reading this book, but I find my feelings for it difficult to grasp as I do many of the details of my dreams. There’s subjective experiences that the book captures better than any writing I’ve seen. The cacophony of a full bar, and the happenstance of new friendships that crop up there are perfectly translated to letters. The flighty nature of consciousness is flawlessly captured. It’s this precise capture that puts this book in my repeat read list. I didn’t understand a lot of it, but the bits I did were beautiful.


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100 books by 40: BLEAK HOUSE

Book: Bleak House
Author: Charles Dickens
Published: 1853

Bleak is an accurate description of how I felt when I started this book. The gray Cincinnati winter seems the most suitable companion for slogging through this enormous book. I was cheered by the fact that this is the last Charles Dickens book in my list. All of my earlier struggles with The Bronte Sisters and Jane Austen have paid out in how quickly I jumped back into Dickens.

Of the many things to object to with this book, the obsession with 1800’s British legal system was most irritating. Long passages are devoted to the courts. I skimmed over those passages without guilt.

Fortune has put this book toward the end of my list. There are twenty books standing between me and my goal of finishing The BBC’s 100 Best Books list. The momentum of eighty books down and twenty to go carried me to the end of this book.

The sheer number of side characters in this book is overwhelming. I can’t say that the subplots add that much to the book. Actually, scratch that. I can’t say anything about the book added that much to my life. Great Expectations and David Copperfield deserved to be on this list. Bleak House, not so much. If you want to get into Dickens, steer clear of this one.


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100 Books by 40: THE RAGGED TROUSERED PHILANTHROPISTS

Book: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Author: Robert Tressell
Published: 1955

The past comments on our present.

It may be objected that, considering the number of books dealing with these subjects already existing, such a work as this was uncalled for. The answer is that not only are the majority of people opposed to Socialism, but a very brief conversation with an average anti-socialist is sufficient to show that he does not know what Socialism means. – Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

I worked at Starbucks in the late 90’s. Memorable patrons abounded; I served as caffeine bartender to many jittery addicts. I continue to count myself among them. Socialist Rick was among a colorful list that included Iced Venti Americano Rick and Double Tall Latte Patti.
Rick came in most afternoons and stayed for an hour or two. He was polite, and his drip coffee couldn’t have been easier to prepare. Unlike Grande 2 pump Sugar Free Vanilla Skim Extra Hot Latte Hair Plugs for Men, his drink never seemed to be right. It was always one of the following: too hot, not hot enough, not enough vanilla, too much vanilla, or was more generally bad. He would bark this at me after having flung the lid off his 220 degree latte and taken two impossibly huge gulps of it. It’s a wonder the interior of his mouth had sensations at all given that it must be dead scar tissue in there. After bad drink number 50, I started keeping his drink behind the bar and offered him a baristas choice on his first go. I was vaguely gratified when one morning my choice happened to be a cast off Americano. Those are blistering hot due to the fact that they are comprised of espresso shots and 280 degree filtered water. His eyes watered just a bit when he took his pulls. I wasn’t sorry. He returned his drink less often after that.

In comparison, Rick was an easy customer. Overbearing isn’t an accurate word to describe Rick. My coworkers, already familiar with him, warned me of his fringe beliefs. But a coherent picture of Rick’s views didn’t develop until I had poured him at least thirty cups of coffee across weeks. My coworkers’ warnings looked to be unwarranted, as Rick wasn’t over-eager to discuss his views, but he certainly wouldn’t hold back should discussion wander into economics or politics.

Hindsight demonstrates that I was responding to Rick with indoctrination from history class and our capitalist culture. Going to a conservative Christian school, we were told ghoulish stories of all the martyrs sacrificed to the steely god of socialism. Innocent Russian boys and girls were thrown into the gaping maw of atheism only to be rended limb from limb by satan in the afterlife. (I realize that The USSR was a communist country, but communism and socialist were both painted with the same sloppy brush, so I didn’t perceive a difference between the two.) You should think I use hyperbole, but I don’t. I was raised to be terrified of socialism.

Terrified, I was. When my coworkers told me that Rick was a socialist; they might as well said that we molested children. I coolly responded to Rick’s polite small talk. You can’t let your gaurd down when something so sinister approaches.

Across weeks of interaction, I started to relax. Rick was pleasant. He treated us like people. For those that haven’t worked in the service industry, it’s not uncommon for people to bark orders at you and wholly ignore you otherwise. The most common response to good morning or how are you was GRANDE LOW FAT LATTE with no eye contact or any other non-verbal acknowledgement. This was the case prior to smart phones. I can only imagine that this behavior grows more frequent with each passing day.

This is when the cognative dissonance started. Rick was pleasant and warm. Our interactions only occasionally touched on politics or economics, but when they did he said reasonable things. How can a socialist be kind and say sensible things while simultaneously being Satan’s child molester in chief? HOW?

I opted for the intellectually lazy path forward. I put Rick in the crazy box in my head, and responded to him as such regardless of his kind behavior and reasonable criticisms of the capitalist system. Occasionally, he would say something that would break out of the crazy box. But my discomfort at questioning my indoctrination, caused me to quickly push this away.

I have regrets. I regret that I closed myself off to Rick. Mostly because in the intervening decade I have become disillusioned with the glories of capitalism. I have come to believe that an egalitarian society needs labor to be valued more than capital. And it’s mystifying that of the seventy bucks that are spent on GAP jeans only pennies go to the Vietnamese laborers who made them. WHERE THE HELL DOES THE OTHER $69.96 GO? And more importantly, why does this arrangement make sense?

The Ragged Trousered Philantropists is a socialism text book masquerading as a novel. Typically I am annoyed with this dress-up game, but I appreciate that this book provided the most thorough argument for socialism I have ever read. I bet my indoctrination regarding socialism is representative of most Americans’ indoctrination, mostly lies sprinkled with threats of ruthless dictators. Which is to say that Americans don’t actually know what socialism is. The way the word was bandied about in the last presidential election cycle supports my point.

At other times the meeting resolved itself into a number of quarrelsome disputes between the Liberals and Tories that formed the crowd, which split itself up into a lot of little groups and whatever the original subject might have been they soon drifted to a hundred other things, for most of the supporters of the present system semed incapable of pursuing any one subject to its logical conclusion. A discussion would be started about something or other; presently an unimportant side issue would crop up, then the original subject would be left unfinished, and they would argue and shout about the side issue. In a little while another side issue would arise, and then the first side issue would be abandoned also unfinished, and an angry wrangle about the second issue would ensue, the original subject being altogether forgotten.

They did not seem to really desire to discover the truth or to find out the best way to bring about and improvement in their condition, their only object seemed to me to score off their opponents. – Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

I won’t be waving the socialist flag just yet. But this book was excellent. There are valid criticisms of how we choose to organize ourselves economically. And if the data is right, and we are headed into another guilded age, shit is only starting to hit the fan.

Here’s where I am in my list.
Reading Now
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens

Books that have been read
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
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
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
53. The Stand, Stephen King
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
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
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.
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding *I’ve read this twice. I will read it again if I have time.
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
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:
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
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 Books by 40: And Ode to The Hamilton County Library

Reading 100 books in 2 years, made me grow. Setting that goal with a deadline gave me the motivation that I needed to make reading a bigger part of my life. I have striving to honor my commitments, and this is ss good an exercise as any. I’ve enjoyed the process so much that I am signing up for another list, more on that topic in future posts.

There has been two critical keys to my success. First, my Kindle has enabled me to read while keeping my fitness regimen. I am not naturally a gym enthusiast, but I find regular physical activity keeps my anxiety and depression in check.

Second the Hamilton County Library has granted me access to books without draining my wallet. I have borrowed nearly half of the books on the list from the library. They’ve probably saved me a minimum of $250 bucks. And they couldn’t make it easier for me to get titles. I just browse their catalog with their app on my phone. I put in requests for what I need. When the books are ready, they send me an email letting me know I can come to my local library branch and pick it up.

Hamilton County Library, thanks for the critical part that you’ve played in helping me achieve my goal. Rest assured, I will remember your helping hand when it’s time to vote up your next tax levy. And when I am ready to participate in National Novel Writing Month, I will gladly go to you for encouragement and help.


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100 Books by 40: MATILDA

Book: Matilda
Author: Roald Dahl
Published: 1988

Adults have numerous opportunities to tyrannize children. Teachers, coaches, church elders, parents have ample opportunity to be cruel. Their reasons aside, it’s a wonder that so many of us grow into kind adults.

This book tells the story of some very cruel adults and a few kind adults, and how they influence the children in their lives. I was the kind of kid that took cruelty personally. When and adult humiliated or shamed me, my natural assumption was that they were right and I was wrong. This served me well in that I was open to correction, but it was damaging when emotionally stunted adults would cross my path. I could have used a little Roald Dahl in my life.


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100 Books by 40: Perfume

Book: Perfume
Author: Patrick Suskind
Published: 1985 (Originally published in German)

I was riding the elevator at the office when I was transported to my twelve year-old self feeling the Formica of the table under neither my finger tips. I can hear the lite hits of the 70’s coming across the AM radio station; I smell the cornmeal mush that my dad is frying and the dry metallic pervasive scent of hot forced air coming from the belly of the furnace. I can taste the salty, crispy mush slick with butter and sweetened with Karo syrup. This journey was due to the gentleman stepping on the elevator wearing the aftershave that my dad wore most of my adolescent years.

Smells unlock rooms of memories that I didn’t know existed in my mind. Perfume is two hundred and fifty pages of smell. It’s set in Medieval France. The decadent language used to bring scents to life is vibrant. I’m stunned to learn that this book was originally written in German. The language is so lush, I had no sense that the thoughts were originally conceived in a different language.

The plot is unremarkable aside from the surprise ending, but does not detract from the delicious descriptions of sensory information. I have focused on smells since starting the book. I have remembered my favorite smells and why I have fond associations with them. I loved this book, not because the plot was revealing but because it opened a part of my daily sensory experience that I had lost touch with.

Be warned, the ending of this book is surprising. It neatly closes up the plot, so it’s satisfying in that way. But it does leave you feeling uneasy with scent, and how it can effect our emotions.


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100 Books by 40: GUARDS! GUARDS!

The book: Guards! Guards!
Author: Terry Pratchett
Published: 1989

This is my second Terry Pratchett read. When someone asked me to describe the author’s books, I suggested science fiction with a British sense of humor. This resulted in a, “Oh like Douglas Adams” (author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), response. After consideration, I responded with, “No more like if Monty Python were to rewrite Star Wars and tackle broader questions around the nature of our existence.”

My first Terry Pratchett experience happened while on a train from San Francisco to Seattle. That ride was nearly 36 hours, and I don’t sleep well in new surroundings. I was nearly delirious when I read all of Mort. I suspected that the book was funny. I suspected that I was too tired to appreciate the dry wit. Suspicions confirmed!  Gaurds! Gaurds! was a delightful read. So, Terry Pratchett, I’m sorry for those exhaustion powered reflections on Mort. If Terry Pratchett has any good sense, he’s not reading this blog though.

The storyline centers around the medieval equivalent of the red shirt guy on Star Trek, the guy who doesn’t have a name and is the first to meet his doom in the episode, night guards. The city in which the guards keep watch has established an equilibrium between criminal and legitimate activities by normalizing crime. The thieves guild and the assassins guild ensure that only people without the proper money or connections are victimized. This is the first of many instances that Pratchett provides commentary on our current environment via satire.

While I do enjoy Pratchett’s humor, it’s the satire that will drive me to read more of his books. There’s wit and searing clarity in Pratchett’s satire that I didn’t find in Douglas Adams’ writing. Pratchett’s satire reminds me of the scene in The Holy Grail in which King Arthur is thwarted by a peasant refusing to recognize him as King due to the peasant’s rejection of feudal rule. The argument devolves to, “Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”

Pratchett dispenses with just as many moral lessons if not more than Suzanne Collins does in The Hunger Games trilogy. But Pratchett sneaks it in with less horror and violence. Darkness is much easier to swallow when it’s wrapped in British humor.


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100 Books by 40: THE MAGUS

That book was like a slap in the face, but only if by some perversion it’s enjoyable. I don’t think I know what happened. I certainly didn’t know what was happening while I was reading it. I thought things would become clear once I reached the end of the book. That’s just not the case.

Usually, I don’t Google books before I write my reviews, but this one left me so confused that I needed to be reassured prior to putting my thoughts out there. The book is about a young British man who teaches abroad on a little island in Greece. Everything gets confusing from that point on.

The young man meets an inhabitant of the island and then witnesses and ultimately participates in something that I will describe as live theater for economy of words. That’s not exactly accurate, but it gets close enough to the concept for you to understand what I am about to say. Reality gets difficult to identify. I think some of the confusion and disorientation that the main character experiences, is meant to rub off on the reader. The main character can’t make sense of what is happing to him in spite of his relentless search for coherence. As a reader, I was also on a relentless search for coherence. In that sense, I was in the book with the character.

I enjoyed this aspect of the book immensely. I liked the experience enough that I would like to read it again in a decade. I suspect that the experience of the book is colored by what the reader brings to it. I suspect I would feel differently about this book at other phases in my life. I’m excited to revisit this book in the future and test out my hunch.

 


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100 Books by 40: MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

Are we carried along by destiny, or are we actors that influence the course of our lives? I haven’t given this much thought before reading Memoirs of a Geisha. The recurring theme in the book is that the characters are floating on a river and exert little to no influence on the course of their own lives. The book presents this belief as a sensible outcome of Buddist teaching.

I didn’t notice until reading this book how this idea might strike at the fundamental difference between Western religions and Eastern religions. I know my bias as an actor in my life stems from my Christianity-soaked childhood. The core of Christian thought is that we must exert control over our impulses and with God’s help can bend away from our natural inclinations. Sure Christians often say that they follow God’s plan for their lives, but I’ve rarely seen someone who truly lives like that. This diverges greatly from Buddism’s pushing people to stop resisting their human experience and embrace what is and what comes.

This book was great. I enjoyed all the thoughts it provoked in me. I enjoyed peeking into a world that feels fully foreign to me. I enjoyed the character’s perspective as a receiver for what life brought to her.

It’s very anti-American to consider your life as something that happens to you as opposed to something you influence and create for yourself. This idea flies directly in the face of that capitalistic mantra of pulling yourself up by your own boot-straps. That saying was originally meant to describe an exercise in futility, given that it’s physically impossible to pick yourself up. Perhaps the current American meaning of this statement is illustrative of the conflict inherent in saying that God controls everything, and yet we must control our behavior.


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100 Books by 40: THE THORN BIRDS

Catholics. They love their guilt. I don’t know what to think of this book. I’m trying to procrastinate thinking of the book by considering the made-for-tv miniseries. It was the second-most watched miniseries coming in behind Roots. I am sure it was considerably less difficult to get such an audience back in 1983, when there were only three TV stations to choose from. TV producers had it easy.

SPOLIER ALERT

The book describes the lives of three generations of women. The book was published in 1977, but the books starts of in 1915. The book focuses on a forbidden romance between a priest and an Australian rancher’s daughter. Shenanigans ensue. Shenanigans like the woman gets pregnant but hides the pregnancy from the priest. The woman feels victorious in that she’s stolen a child from the priest. Years later victory is snatched from her with her son chooses to enter the priesthood. Victory is stolen from everyone when the young man dies in a swimming accident.

I think the author wants me to feel bad for the woman. I don’t feel bad for her. I do, however, feel bad for the way in which most of the characters failed to connect with each other. The woman gets angry at the priest for choosing his career/calling over her. She marries someone out of spite. Is it really a wonder that it didn’t turn out well? Characters withhold information from each other with alarming frequency. Should we be surprised that the relationships suffer from a lack of authenticity?

This plot comes straight out of a soap opera. The deception and ulterior motives all say Guiding Light. I can’t connect with characters like that. I did like reading about Australia though. So, yeah, I won’t be reading this again. I might be watching the miniseries, mostly because I don’t understand how Richard Chamberlain got cast as the incredibly attractive priest. Should you read this book? If you love soap operas, have at it.