My apologies for totally forgetting about this, in the wake of bribing myself to finish Kim.
April's MLLD Award goes out to the Russian guy from Kim who smacked the lama in the face and tears up his Wheel of Life picture that the lama worked so hard on. That was just wrong. I was glad when Kim rolled him down the hill and kicked him in the groin. I would have kicked him more than once there. Although in hindsight, I should probably thank this guy for bringing some action to an otherwise action-free novel. :)
The only other character who came close last month was Cecil Vyse from A Room With a View. I didn't think boring characters qualified as dirtbags so I couldn't really nominate him. :)
Sunday, May 2, 2010
#78...Kim
"I tell you I am fearful man, but, somehow or other, the more fearful I am the more dam-tight places I get into."
I was actually introduced to Kim about twenty years ago without knowing it, when, as a Brownie Girl Scout, we played "Kim's Game". This game consisted of putting several different objects into a shallow box, that is initially covered over with a cloth. The cloth is removed for a minute or so, and your job is to look at everything in the box, try to remember as much as you can about what's in the box and what it looks like, and then write it all down when the minute is up and the box gets covered back up. The more you remember, the more likely you are to win.
Kim's Game is only a small part of Rudyard Kipling's novel. Kim is introduced to us as an Indian orphan who steps up to help a Tibetan Lama, who is on a quest to find a special river. The lama believes bathing in the river will remove all sin. Kim joins his quest, as he is also on a quest to find a red bull on a green background, which his father told him will come to help him. Kim and the lama set out on the Great Trunk Road, which is sort of the Indian version of a superhighway, and along the way, Kim unknowingly becomes involved in some espionage for the British through his horse-trader friend Mahbub Ali. They later stumble upon his father's Irish regiment, the Mavericks....whose flag has a red bull with a green background. Kim is 'adopted' by this regiment when it is discovered that the documents he has always worn around his neck show that he is part Irish. He is sent to a school for white children with the lama's money, where he learns English and is to be trained to be a surveyor. However, Kim is unable to let go of his Indian upbringing, and sneaks off on his vacations to spend time with Mahbub and his friend Mr Lurgan, learning about espionage and spying.
At the end of his schooling, he returns to the lama and their quest to find the river for 6 months before he will begin working for the government. He means to stay as the lama's student or 'chela', but along the way he discovers another spy, Hurree Babu, and saves him from danger. They track two Russian spies, and meet up with them, and when one of them attacks the lama, Babu takes the two men away so that Kim can take their notes, maps and letters. He and the lama continue to look for the river, but the lama becomes ill and so does Kim. At the end, the lama finds his river, Kim turns over the letters and maps to Babu and the government and everyone is happy.
In summary: I did not enjoy this book. There were days when I did not read it at all, and days where I read half a page and that was it. I found myself completely unconcerned with the fate of any of the characters, none of whom resonated with me. If they had all died at the end, I wouldn't have felt bad. Even the background 'spy' story wasn't that compelling, but those sections were marginally more interesting to me than the parts where they were wandering around looking for the river. All of the foreign names of the characters began to blend together; I had to look back in the book more than once to make sure I had them straight.
This was the first book on the list so far where I debated whether or not to finish it. I have to say that feeling was a bit surprising. Before I read Kim, I thought I had read some of the worst books of all time (i.e. The Magus, The Ginger Man, Loving, etc). But oddly, at no point even during the 600+ pages of The Magus did it ever occur to me to stop reading. It made me wonder if the books I had read before that I didn't like were actually all that bad. At least those books engendered feelings (even if it was irritation or hostility) whereas Kim was about as emotionally flatlined as you get. I would have a more emotional experience reading Webster's Unabridged Dictionary than I did reading Kim. :) I guess if there is any positive experience I got out of reading Kim, it would be that I learned something about myself and my reading preferences.
I was actually introduced to Kim about twenty years ago without knowing it, when, as a Brownie Girl Scout, we played "Kim's Game". This game consisted of putting several different objects into a shallow box, that is initially covered over with a cloth. The cloth is removed for a minute or so, and your job is to look at everything in the box, try to remember as much as you can about what's in the box and what it looks like, and then write it all down when the minute is up and the box gets covered back up. The more you remember, the more likely you are to win.
Kim's Game is only a small part of Rudyard Kipling's novel. Kim is introduced to us as an Indian orphan who steps up to help a Tibetan Lama, who is on a quest to find a special river. The lama believes bathing in the river will remove all sin. Kim joins his quest, as he is also on a quest to find a red bull on a green background, which his father told him will come to help him. Kim and the lama set out on the Great Trunk Road, which is sort of the Indian version of a superhighway, and along the way, Kim unknowingly becomes involved in some espionage for the British through his horse-trader friend Mahbub Ali. They later stumble upon his father's Irish regiment, the Mavericks....whose flag has a red bull with a green background. Kim is 'adopted' by this regiment when it is discovered that the documents he has always worn around his neck show that he is part Irish. He is sent to a school for white children with the lama's money, where he learns English and is to be trained to be a surveyor. However, Kim is unable to let go of his Indian upbringing, and sneaks off on his vacations to spend time with Mahbub and his friend Mr Lurgan, learning about espionage and spying.
At the end of his schooling, he returns to the lama and their quest to find the river for 6 months before he will begin working for the government. He means to stay as the lama's student or 'chela', but along the way he discovers another spy, Hurree Babu, and saves him from danger. They track two Russian spies, and meet up with them, and when one of them attacks the lama, Babu takes the two men away so that Kim can take their notes, maps and letters. He and the lama continue to look for the river, but the lama becomes ill and so does Kim. At the end, the lama finds his river, Kim turns over the letters and maps to Babu and the government and everyone is happy.
In summary: I did not enjoy this book. There were days when I did not read it at all, and days where I read half a page and that was it. I found myself completely unconcerned with the fate of any of the characters, none of whom resonated with me. If they had all died at the end, I wouldn't have felt bad. Even the background 'spy' story wasn't that compelling, but those sections were marginally more interesting to me than the parts where they were wandering around looking for the river. All of the foreign names of the characters began to blend together; I had to look back in the book more than once to make sure I had them straight.
This was the first book on the list so far where I debated whether or not to finish it. I have to say that feeling was a bit surprising. Before I read Kim, I thought I had read some of the worst books of all time (i.e. The Magus, The Ginger Man, Loving, etc). But oddly, at no point even during the 600+ pages of The Magus did it ever occur to me to stop reading. It made me wonder if the books I had read before that I didn't like were actually all that bad. At least those books engendered feelings (even if it was irritation or hostility) whereas Kim was about as emotionally flatlined as you get. I would have a more emotional experience reading Webster's Unabridged Dictionary than I did reading Kim. :) I guess if there is any positive experience I got out of reading Kim, it would be that I learned something about myself and my reading preferences.
Well, I'm sure Kim will look like a trip to Paradise after I get started with my next epic adventure, Finnegan's Wake. Look out for my new featurette, Surviving Finnegan, premiering this week.
Grade: D
Monday, April 19, 2010
Update
I hope all of you are having as nice of weather where you are as we're having here. It's heavenly.
Kim is going very slowly. I chalk that up to several things. 1)The nice weather....being outdoors gives me less time for reading, although I spent about an hour out on the deck reading yesterday, 2)We're totally taken in by back episodes of Entourage and The Tudors, and 3)the story for whatever reason is just not captivating to me. Maybe, as with so many of the books I've read, the story will mercifully pick up steam in the last 1/3-1/4 of the book, but right now, it's just another picaresque hero on the lam, with all sorts of strange friends, getting into countless scrapes and somehow worming his way out of them. It's like Under the Net in India. I really like the lama's character, but as with so many of the stories I've read lately, Kipling decided to pull his character out mid-story.
Am also wondering how Kim, Augie March, and Brideshead Revisited could be higher on the ML list than Angle of Repose.
I realize that with every page I read of Kim, I am one page closer to Finnegan's Wake. When I start that one up, I will be adding a new daily featurette to Journeys, called Surviving Finnegan, where I will be sharing literary frustrations, incomprehensible quotes, and possible hypotheses on what the hell Joyce is thinking (or smoking), just to keep myself sane. :) Feel free to check in and share your Finnegan experiences. It'll be a blast.
Pam
Kim is going very slowly. I chalk that up to several things. 1)The nice weather....being outdoors gives me less time for reading, although I spent about an hour out on the deck reading yesterday, 2)We're totally taken in by back episodes of Entourage and The Tudors, and 3)the story for whatever reason is just not captivating to me. Maybe, as with so many of the books I've read, the story will mercifully pick up steam in the last 1/3-1/4 of the book, but right now, it's just another picaresque hero on the lam, with all sorts of strange friends, getting into countless scrapes and somehow worming his way out of them. It's like Under the Net in India. I really like the lama's character, but as with so many of the stories I've read lately, Kipling decided to pull his character out mid-story.
Am also wondering how Kim, Augie March, and Brideshead Revisited could be higher on the ML list than Angle of Repose.
I realize that with every page I read of Kim, I am one page closer to Finnegan's Wake. When I start that one up, I will be adding a new daily featurette to Journeys, called Surviving Finnegan, where I will be sharing literary frustrations, incomprehensible quotes, and possible hypotheses on what the hell Joyce is thinking (or smoking), just to keep myself sane. :) Feel free to check in and share your Finnegan experiences. It'll be a blast.
Pam
Friday, April 9, 2010
#79....."A Room With A View"
“Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror—on the things I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now… ‘Life’, wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.’”One of my favorite movies is While You Were Sleeping, a hilarious romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock. It tells the story of a woman who falls in love with a stranger she sees everyday from afar, but has never officially met. Their lives collide when she comes to his rescue when he is attacked at a subway station, and while he is in a coma, is mistaken for his fiancée by his family. Bullock’s character, Lucy, is without any family in the world, and she is taken in as one of their own by Peter’s family. Because she is so happy to finally be loved and be part of a family, she doesn’t correct their assumption about her relationship with their son, figuring as long as he’s comatose no one will know the truth, but the weight of lying to his very loving family begins to weigh on her conscience….especially when she begins to fall for Peter’s brother Jack. Things get complicated when Peter regains consciousness and actually proposes to her. Lucy realizes that she must come clean with everyone before making the biggest mistake of her life. If you haven’t seen it, rent it now.
E.M. Forster’s novel, A Room With a View, reminded me so much of this movie, because the two main characters are both named Lucy and both struggle with the impact of telling lies to their friends and family. Forster’s novel begins in Florence, Italy (ironically where Lucy from While You Were Sleeping wants to go on her honeymoon), where we meet young, innocent Lucy Honeychurch and her maiden lady chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett. The ladies have just arrived at an Italian pension and are distressed because they were promised rooms that would have a view of the Arno River. They’re overheard by an older man, Mr Emerson, who agreeably offers to switch rooms with them, since a view doesn’t matter as much to him and his quiet son, George. This is agreed upon, and Lucy and Miss Bartlett become intimately involved from this act with the Emersons (who are thought unsuitable) and the other pension guests: the annoying parson Mr Beebe, the radical author Miss Lavish, and later, another self-obsessed parson, Mr Eager. Lucy is portrayed as a woman with her own thoughts and feelings, and is not as conventional as those around her would prefer. She gets into trouble when she goes sightseeing alone, and witnesses a murder in the Piazza, but luckily faints into the arms of the erstwhile George, who falls in love with her at that very moment. When he kisses her on an outing into the hills, which Charlotte witnesses, both women flee Florence for Rome, where Lucy meets the stuffy, insufferable Cecil Vyse. He proposes to Lucy three times, and she finally accepts on the third occasion, even though her family and most of her neighbors hate him because he is a snob and hates people.
Back in England, at the Honeychurch home at Windy Corner, Lucy discovers that Cecil has arranged to let a cottage in town to none other than the Emersons. George befriends Lucy’s brother Freddy, and as they spend more time together, Lucy begins to warm up to George, until the one day where George tells Lucy that she cannot marry Cecil because 1)Cecil’s a snob and hates people, 2)Cecil doesn’t allow Lucy to have her own thoughts and feelings and is trying to brainwash her, and 3)George loves Lucy and knows she loves him too. He kisses her again. Although Lucy lies to George about her feelings for him, later that night she breaks off her engagement with Cecil because she knows George is right about him. She then lies to her family, telling them there is no one else she is more interested in, and that she wants to go traveling in Greece, instead of admitting she is trying to escape George. Plans are set in motion for her to go to Greece when she discovers that the Emersons are moving away so that George can get away from her. He does not know the engagement is over. On her way out of town, Lucy meets up with Mr Emerson, whom she initially lies to about going to Greece with Cecil, but then breaks down and tells him about the end of her engagement. Mr Emerson encourages her to go find George so they can be together, and that telling lies and making big mistakes is the worst part of life. The book ends with her marrying George and having her whole family pissed off that Lucy lied to them instead of just being honest. Like Lucy in While You Were Sleeping, Lucy Honeychurch's honesty with herself in the end brings her love.
I have to admit that although I liked A Room With a View, it wasn’t the page-turner I think it could have been. I expected to blow through this book in three days, but it took almost two weeks. The last 1/3 of the book was really good, but for me, the middle 1/3 dragged horribly. Up until George moved to Windy Corner, it was seriously boring, partly because I hated Cecil, and partly because Cecil was making Lucy boring. I also have to wonder if all clergymen in 19th /early 20th century England were as stuffy and pompous as they seem to be portrayed so frequently in classic literature. Jane Austen, I believe, wrote the book on irritatingly proper and self-centered country parsons— I hate Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice more than anything. I just have a hard time believing that men of God, who are ostensibly supposed to love all God’s children, could be so obsessed with money and social status. But that seems to be how it was!
My heart also went out to Lucy’s character. Although it created a big mess, I understood why she wasn’t forthcoming with her feelings for George. She had Charlotte telling her that he was a socialist, and the negative feelings of the other pensioners in Italy towards the Emersons didn't help. I noticed that she seemed to warm up to George when her brother started to get along with him. Having Cecil’s thumbs-up when he arranged for them to be in Cissie Villa seemed to recommend them as well. She didn’t want to disappoint her mother, who initially seemed excited by her engagement to Cecil, but then at the end, is relieved when she calls it off. So in that sense Lucy was not the only one who was lying!
Not my favorite of the list so far, but definitely not the worst. Here's hopin' the other Forster books upcoming will have a bit more drive to the narrative.
Grade: B+
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Libris Interruptus...Phillippa Gregory and "The Tudors"
Waiting for the warmer weather to arrive, and finding that A Room with a View is somewhat on the boring side, I've turned to watching back episodes of Entourage on HBO (hilarious if you've never watched it) and I've also picked up the first season of The Tudors, a great series on Showtime about King Henry VIII and his wives. As a complete devotee of Phillippa Gregory and her wonderful books about Henry VIII, I was very excited to watch this series, and so far I have not been disappointed. The guy who plays Henry (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is HOT. The scenery and costumes are gorgeous. Sam Neill is beyond evil as Cardinal Wolsey. Plenty of sex, intrigue and action. Who could ask for more?? The new season starts up on Showtime this coming Sunday at 9pm ET. Check it out!
Thursday, April 1, 2010
March '10 ML Literary Dirtbag Award
Drumroll, please....after much thought I had to give it to Simon March, Augie's big brother in The Adventures of Augie March. I re-read the part the other night where he ripped off his mother-in-law's shirt right in front of everyone because he didn't like the way she dressed, and I just got PISSED OFF. No one has the right to do that, no matter how rich and/or successful they are. He would probably go to jail in this day and age, anyway, so I can be comforted with that. He was also so smarmy about his success and his money. I hate people like that.
Plus I hate guys that have affairs as a rule. It wouldn't have hurt Simon to class it up a little and not 'ho himself around but unfortunately he had to go Full-on Dirtbag. Also guys that don't own up to their responsibilities (even if Renee didn't have the kid, he still should have been ready to step up, at least financially) are scum. So he has well-earned this month's award. Congrats to Simon.
Plus I hate guys that have affairs as a rule. It wouldn't have hurt Simon to class it up a little and not 'ho himself around but unfortunately he had to go Full-on Dirtbag. Also guys that don't own up to their responsibilities (even if Renee didn't have the kid, he still should have been ready to step up, at least financially) are scum. So he has well-earned this month's award. Congrats to Simon.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Books to Movies..."Brideshead Revisited"
BR was the first movie I have watched that was based on one of the ML books I've read. Before watching the movie, I read several reviews of the movie online, and most people were lukewarm about it, saying that it didn't follow the book, etc. Most of the actors in the movie, excepting Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain and the guy from the Harry Potter movies who plays Professor Dumbledore as Lord Marchmain, I had never seen before. Plus I didn't really love the book. So my expectations weren't incredibly high...thus I was pleasantly surprised by the movie.I'll start with the positive. For the most part, the movie followed the book. The scenery was beautiful. The house they picked to act as Brideshead was gorgeous and almost exactly as I had pictured it myself. My daughter, who for some inexplicable reason watched the movie with me, pointed out that this same house was used in Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties. I'll have to check that out. :) The acting, I thought, was very good. The girl they picked to play Julia was gorgeous. Rex Mottram was just as smarmy as I had pictured him in the book, and they even had the tortoise, although Julia's initials weren't in the shell. Emma Thompson was perfect as the cold, calculating Lady Marchmain (but when isn't she wonderful?). Overall, it was nice to see what I'd read brought to life.
The negative. The movie, as movies often do, took some liberties with the book, but I'm not sure that the liberties really detracted from the overall story. The movie developed the love story between Charles and Julia much earlier than the book did, having them fall in love in Venice during the visit to see Lord Marchmain (Julia didn't even go with them to Venice in the book). Sebastian sees Charles kissing Julia and that moment is used as the reason for Sebastian's downward spiral and distancing from Charles. Sebastian's character was way more flamboyant and overtly homosexual than his character in the book...which I actually didn't enjoy. I guess I preferred the book's more 'under the table' treatment of Sebastian's persuasion than I did seeing it outright. I felt that Waugh left it up to the reader to decide whether or not that dimension to Charles' and Sebastian's friendship existed. A scene from Julia's debutante ball in the movie didn't exist in the book. Her engagement to Rex is announced there and Sebastian accuses Charles in front of everyone of 'wanting to sleep with his sister'. There is also a scene in the movie between Charles and Rex where Charles asks Rex to divorce Julia, and Rex agrees to, on the condition that Charles give Rex two of his "jungle pics" as payment. This didn't happen in the book either.
Overall, I'm not sorry I watched it. Sadly I think I had a better feeling about the movie than I did the book. My daughter has encouraged me to track down more of the movies from the books I've read, as every book I've read has become almost a household name for us. :)
Grade: B
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