No, I have not swallowed a beach ball, any pictorial evidence to the contrary. I'm eight months pregnant today, woo hoo! Nearly there...
In the meantime here are some quick Monday book reviews. I'm also nearing the finish line of my self-inflicted "Off the Shelf" book challenge, which I began about three months ago. I chose one of the lowest levels-- 30 books-- because I started so late in the year. Today I'm on book 26 with nine days to go! Incredibly, given all the other matters on my mind, I think I'll make it.
Here's #s 23, 24 and 25. (You can check past Mondays for past reviews.)
23. Platonov by Anton Chekhov
Platonov was Chekhov's first play, and oh boy, does it show. He was very young when he wrote it, and in many ways it's a young man's play-- intrigues and melodrama abound. The first act is so confused it's downright painful. There are about 25 different Russian characters with names two feet long, and few of them are developed enough to help you keep track of which Ilyich is which. But after the first act the play really picks up...for a Chekhov play anyway. I'm glad I read it for the challenge, or I might not have stuck with it past that first, painful act, and it was really worth it.
If you're a big fan of his, you'll want to read this seminal work for that reason alone, just to see his development and the seeds of so many ideas which came to obsess him. There are many throwaway beautiful lines, a lot of his signature (hilarious I think) irony, the pathos of life in the provinces (of course), a true Don Juan and a deep understanding of human nature, so much so the melodrama (almost) works whether as comedy or tragedy-- there are arguments as to Chekhov's intentions with this play. It was never staged in his lifetime, so no one really knows. My copy was a library book, which I had to return already, or I'd copy out some of the most beautiful lines here as I have in past reviews. I normally would have copied them into my journal, but between recording podcasts, attending birthing classes, finishing my first YA novel (please God, before the baby comes) and trying to blog once a week, I haven't been journaling as much.
My husband, like many people, HATES Chekhov with a passion because of one bad production of "The Three Sisters." I have to admit it was REALLY bad, execrable, putrid. At one point a (19th century, mind you) character whips out an iPad-- just before the duel takes place. Can you say "stupid, pointless anachronism"? Even without that sort of pretentious meddling with the plot, Chekhov can be really hard to put on just right. Because of the reverential way people feel about his work, they approach producing and directing his plays from such a high, lofty place Chekhov himself probably would have despised watching what their final, flat product. Do yourself a favor and just read his collected plays. That's how I fell in love with him. From there I discovered his short stories, which are magnificent... But I digress. On to 24.
24. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Speaking of firsts, TMAAS was Christie's first detective novel, and again as such offers a fascinating glimpse into the origins not only of the modern detective novel but of Christie's popular hero the fastidious Belgian detective M. Hercule Poirot, who in the book was one of the only fully-formed characters. Like Harry Potter, I suppose he must have just walked into her head one day. Unfortunately, the other characters were less... unique. Unlike in Christie's later murder mysteries, cheesy as some of them are, the other characters don't come across anywhere near as fully realized. Again, just as I had experienced with Platonov, I started off the story with a bit of trouble keeping the characters (this time uniformly bland and British) straight, because they were all, male and female alike, unutterably indistinguishable. It's said a friend challenged Christie to write a murder mystery whose outcome the reader couldn't guess. I didn't. As such it was a satisfying enough read, although I like her later stuff a lot better. I was mostly inspired to pick up the book after characters in the novel The Map and The Territory (last week's challenge read) kept swearing the only books they read were Agatha Christie's. I'm also gearing up for Downton Abbey's third season, soon to air in the states, and this book was almost like reading a screenplay from the show. It was written in 1916 and just as in Downton Abbey, there's a similar sense of the long Edwardian summer drawing to a close. But what's really fascinating in the former's case is finding out the Edwardians were self-aware enough to sense as much even before the times had really changed.
25. The New York Stories by Elizabeth Hardwick
This book collects in one volume stories Hardwick published from the 1940s all the way into the '90s-- not a bad career for a writer seeing as how most writers seem to produce stories and novels over much shorter spans of time. The stories are not thematically linked either. They aren't even all set in New York. What unites them, in my opinion, is their dry, intellectual tone, undercut now and then by one or two exquisitely wise and beautiful sentences. But one (or two) beautiful sentences per story does not a fun reading experience make. The stories felt cold, intellectualized, the characters mostly the kind of boring, brainy and not very kind Newyorkers who probably, one and all, would read and love these kind of stories their characters are more contained by than created in. Some of the stories were horrors. Just lists of an intelligent, cultured mind showing off its intelligence and culture. Anyway who's actually lived in New York will attest to the veracity of such a character's reproduction on the page and the authenticity of its representation of a certain kind of Newyorker, but for the reader this kind of plotless, pointless, posturing meant I had to check off the stories in the table of contents as I went along. But it really was (almost) worth the read for those throwaway lines of poetry and wit like these examples:
Extremes of any sort embarrass small-town people. They are deadset against overexertion and for that reason even opera singers and violinists make them uncomfortable because it seems a pity the notes won't come forth without all that fuss and foolishness.
And now a phonograph was playing overhead and the bass rhythm was like the light hammering of many nails in sequence, as if putting down a carpet.
Madison Avenue-- a feline thoroughfare with goods and mirrors meant to intimidate bone and flesh. A scourging idealism, a snarling transcendence watched over by clerks as insolent as the pet eunuchs of a sultan.
And so forth :). Back to book 26! Have a great week!
In the meantime here are some quick Monday book reviews. I'm also nearing the finish line of my self-inflicted "Off the Shelf" book challenge, which I began about three months ago. I chose one of the lowest levels-- 30 books-- because I started so late in the year. Today I'm on book 26 with nine days to go! Incredibly, given all the other matters on my mind, I think I'll make it.
Here's #s 23, 24 and 25. (You can check past Mondays for past reviews.)
23. Platonov by Anton Chekhov
Platonov was Chekhov's first play, and oh boy, does it show. He was very young when he wrote it, and in many ways it's a young man's play-- intrigues and melodrama abound. The first act is so confused it's downright painful. There are about 25 different Russian characters with names two feet long, and few of them are developed enough to help you keep track of which Ilyich is which. But after the first act the play really picks up...for a Chekhov play anyway. I'm glad I read it for the challenge, or I might not have stuck with it past that first, painful act, and it was really worth it.
If you're a big fan of his, you'll want to read this seminal work for that reason alone, just to see his development and the seeds of so many ideas which came to obsess him. There are many throwaway beautiful lines, a lot of his signature (hilarious I think) irony, the pathos of life in the provinces (of course), a true Don Juan and a deep understanding of human nature, so much so the melodrama (almost) works whether as comedy or tragedy-- there are arguments as to Chekhov's intentions with this play. It was never staged in his lifetime, so no one really knows. My copy was a library book, which I had to return already, or I'd copy out some of the most beautiful lines here as I have in past reviews. I normally would have copied them into my journal, but between recording podcasts, attending birthing classes, finishing my first YA novel (please God, before the baby comes) and trying to blog once a week, I haven't been journaling as much.
My husband, like many people, HATES Chekhov with a passion because of one bad production of "The Three Sisters." I have to admit it was REALLY bad, execrable, putrid. At one point a (19th century, mind you) character whips out an iPad-- just before the duel takes place. Can you say "stupid, pointless anachronism"? Even without that sort of pretentious meddling with the plot, Chekhov can be really hard to put on just right. Because of the reverential way people feel about his work, they approach producing and directing his plays from such a high, lofty place Chekhov himself probably would have despised watching what their final, flat product. Do yourself a favor and just read his collected plays. That's how I fell in love with him. From there I discovered his short stories, which are magnificent... But I digress. On to 24.
24. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Speaking of firsts, TMAAS was Christie's first detective novel, and again as such offers a fascinating glimpse into the origins not only of the modern detective novel but of Christie's popular hero the fastidious Belgian detective M. Hercule Poirot, who in the book was one of the only fully-formed characters. Like Harry Potter, I suppose he must have just walked into her head one day. Unfortunately, the other characters were less... unique. Unlike in Christie's later murder mysteries, cheesy as some of them are, the other characters don't come across anywhere near as fully realized. Again, just as I had experienced with Platonov, I started off the story with a bit of trouble keeping the characters (this time uniformly bland and British) straight, because they were all, male and female alike, unutterably indistinguishable. It's said a friend challenged Christie to write a murder mystery whose outcome the reader couldn't guess. I didn't. As such it was a satisfying enough read, although I like her later stuff a lot better. I was mostly inspired to pick up the book after characters in the novel The Map and The Territory (last week's challenge read) kept swearing the only books they read were Agatha Christie's. I'm also gearing up for Downton Abbey's third season, soon to air in the states, and this book was almost like reading a screenplay from the show. It was written in 1916 and just as in Downton Abbey, there's a similar sense of the long Edwardian summer drawing to a close. But what's really fascinating in the former's case is finding out the Edwardians were self-aware enough to sense as much even before the times had really changed.
25. The New York Stories by Elizabeth Hardwick
This book collects in one volume stories Hardwick published from the 1940s all the way into the '90s-- not a bad career for a writer seeing as how most writers seem to produce stories and novels over much shorter spans of time. The stories are not thematically linked either. They aren't even all set in New York. What unites them, in my opinion, is their dry, intellectual tone, undercut now and then by one or two exquisitely wise and beautiful sentences. But one (or two) beautiful sentences per story does not a fun reading experience make. The stories felt cold, intellectualized, the characters mostly the kind of boring, brainy and not very kind Newyorkers who probably, one and all, would read and love these kind of stories their characters are more contained by than created in. Some of the stories were horrors. Just lists of an intelligent, cultured mind showing off its intelligence and culture. Anyway who's actually lived in New York will attest to the veracity of such a character's reproduction on the page and the authenticity of its representation of a certain kind of Newyorker, but for the reader this kind of plotless, pointless, posturing meant I had to check off the stories in the table of contents as I went along. But it really was (almost) worth the read for those throwaway lines of poetry and wit like these examples:
Extremes of any sort embarrass small-town people. They are deadset against overexertion and for that reason even opera singers and violinists make them uncomfortable because it seems a pity the notes won't come forth without all that fuss and foolishness.
And now a phonograph was playing overhead and the bass rhythm was like the light hammering of many nails in sequence, as if putting down a carpet.
Madison Avenue-- a feline thoroughfare with goods and mirrors meant to intimidate bone and flesh. A scourging idealism, a snarling transcendence watched over by clerks as insolent as the pet eunuchs of a sultan.
And so forth :). Back to book 26! Have a great week!
