My quest to read 100 books in a year continues. Why am I doing it? Well, it's easier than running or losing weight, that's for sure. Will that do? And I suppose it's part of trying to work out how to become a better writer myself.
Here's what I thought of books 36 to 40. Please enjoy responsibly.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
I borrowed this book from a beautiful German girl in 1994 and it appears I have yet to give it back. We lost touch shortly afterwards, which is a shame as she was great at chess. I wonder if she sits and wonders where her book went, and whatever happened to that idiot from across the road who never knew how to position his bishops.
So, the book. It's one of those where the - brilliant - premise has reached far beyond those who have actually read the book. You're familiar with the concept, yes? Beautiful man stays forever young, while his portrait, hidden away in the attic, grows hideous and old? A tale as old as time. And for thirty years now I've let this book hide away in my own attic while I pranced around the place, quipping about pictures in attics without ever bothering to read the thing.
Until now. I finally read it and, for the most part, I liked it. The story is irresistable, as Dorian slips further and further down the road to depravity, making increasingly dark moral choices like a more foppish version of Walter White in Breaking Bad. The book gets darker and darker, as Gray's choices twist his ghostly portrait further and further from humanity.
And Oscar Wilde can write, of course. Famous for it, isn't he? The trouble is, Wilde's words are a bit too well known. It's not his fault, of course, but reading this was a bit like reading a bunch of people attending an Oscar Wilde convention, swapping their favourite sayings. Famous aphorisms leap from the pages in steady stream, making it hard to appreciate that this was the place they first found expression.
I say it's not his fault, but at the same time, Wilde does seem to deliberately construct scenes just so that all his characters can express Oscar Wilde opinions at each other. No-one speaks normally. It's all, "A dirty hankerchief is like a wife in need of a haircut" and "To seduce an Englishman is to squeeze toothpaste through a seive" and that kind of nonsense. It's clever stuff, but Wilde clearly forgets the plot sometimes so he can shout witticisms at us.
Black Archive: Earthshock by Brian J Robb
This is one of a series of books which apply critical thinking to stories from the television series Doctor Who. So, basically, my favourite kind of thing. I love things being analysed, especially television and film. And, as you may have noticed, I'm super into Doctor Who.
The story we're analysing here - Earthshock, broadcast in 1982 - is the tale of some mad cybernetic monsters who try to blow up the Earth with a bomb and, when that fails, take over a spaceship and try to crash that into Earth instead. Luckily for us, Doctor Who turns up and... well, he doesn't do a great deal really, and almost everyone dies, but it all works out for the best so let's give him a pass.
All of which might not seem like the sort of thing people write critical studies about. It's relatively cheap TV, written to entertain more than to endure, and it is, in a word, silly. However. The joy of these books is in the way they take a long term view of these stories as cultural products. How was TV made in the 80s? What was the status of science fiction back then, in a space still moved by the rebounding ripples of Star Wars? And how do you navigate a show with such a long history (19 years at this point), while still trying to stay relevant?
You see? I might look like a child-man who can't get past the excitement that guns and spaceships first gave him when he was 11, but in fact I am a super sophisticated intellectual whose tastes are just too compex to comprehend.
Yep. Prove otherwise.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
One of the big "I can't believe you haven't read..."s of the current project. This is a super famous book, with its own song and everything. Everyone at college had read it. It is insane that it's taken me this long. But here we are.
First impressions are thus:
I now have a much better understanding of why some women - those who studied on my literature course for example - had a certain very specific idea of 'romance'. And, consequently, why very few of them were that interested in me. Romance here is presented as a mad, tempestuous elemental force, which throws you about the room for a bit and refuses to pay for dinner. I was much more inclined to smile sadly and hope they would notice me and come over to talk about Doctor Who. I now realise my mistake.
However, why is everyone so into Heathcliffe? He's a total dickhead. I went in expecting to find some wonderful paragon of male qualities, like thingy from Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy? Him. Everyone's always going nuts about Heathcliffe, and so I assumed he was some tragic hero. He's not. He's awful. He kicks in doors and steals your wife and calls everyone jerks, and you're lucky if you're alive afterwards. Why does he get his name shrieked out by Kate Bush?
Mostly I liked this. It was weird reading it so soon after reading some Austen. A lazy part of my mind had lumped all these books together in one genre: 'oldern times people falling in love wearing fabulous clothes'. But good grief! In Pride and Prejudice, everyone panics if you touch the wrong fork, or look at an unmarried man when you're not wearing the right colour hat. Here, everyone spends their time shrieking at each other or fighting with dogs or suddenly dying because they were a bit sad.
Bonkers. Five stars!
Rose Madder by Stephen King
Part of this project has been about visiting the bookshelves at the top of the house and rippling my fingers across the wide range of books that have sat there for years, completely ignored. "Why don't you love us?" they whisper. "We're so lonely up here."
Rose Madder is one of those books. I have no idea why I own it. Was it cheap? Had someone finished it and sent it my way? Did a librarian hurl it at me in a final effort to drive me from the premises? I cannot say. I do know why I've not previously read it though. It's very, very thick. Every time my fingers have drifted near it, I've thought, "Well this one is going to take ages to read." And so I've skipped over it, and read Hitchhikers again.
Also, and don't judge me for this, even though I know you're going to... Also, it's got a girl's name.
I like girls, obviously. Women. Whatever. But come on, book. Sell yourself. Look at the other Stephen King books. Firestarter! That was my first. Did what it said on the front. The Shining! Pet Semetary! It! Christine! Carrie! Ah... well, OK. Fine. I'll read it.
So, it was long, but also it was very absorbing and, like all King, a tale well told. I was very quickly on board with Rose, despite her boring name, and instantly hated the villains of the piece and looked forward to them being murdered in typically well described King fashion. Characters came to life on the page quickly and with great impact (and often found themselves coming to not-life in similar fashion).
The only bit I didn't like was an overlong diversion into dream space in the middle of the book. Rose disappears into an extended altered-reality sequence, with mazes and minotaurs and stuff, and I stopped caring for quite a long time. I'd say King's greatest strength is the way he brings the uncanny into the real world. When he abandons that contrast, all that power ebbs away.
On the whole, though, great stuff. And maybe it will go back and tell the other books to calm down. I'll get round to them. One day.
Monsters by Claire Dederer
This book has an excellent premise, that it doesn't quite make the most of.
The premise is this: to what extent can we appreciate good art made by questionable individuals? Great question, huh? Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Michael Jackson... that kind of thing. A tough, fascinating question.
I've got to say that about 50% of my excitment was down to the hope that the writer would agree with me and I'd finally be able to claim victory in the many, many arguments I had about this exact subject with my wife. It's a common topic of discussion and we have yet to find a middle ground between her position - where she struggles to enjoy the work of artists who have done morally repugnant things - and mine - where I mostly don't give a toss because I just want to enjoy things and who's got the time and leave me alone.
Well, I was to be disappointed. There was no validation for my 'anything goes' approach to the subject and instead there was quite a bit of nuance. I enjoyed this for a while. The book uses lots of specific cases, which makes it feel relevant and interesting. Too often books like this drift off into abstract reasoning, which totally fails to engage me. I also liked the way the writer bounced the question back at the individual: it's not so much a question of what's right, as what's right for each person.
Things lost focus towards the end, though. The approach seemed to get more personal and we got a lot about what made writers in general 'monsters' which I was not as interested in. That's on me, I suppose. And it's entirely possible that there was a very strong connection between the two ideas which I, lazy minded as I am, managed to miss. But it felt like the book didn't quite live up to its potential.
So there you go. These are some books I've read, and those are some thoughts about those books. I hope you enjoyed them. I hope you may be moved to pursue your own reading. But most of all, I hope you're not the author, seething with rage that I clearly missed the point of what you wrote. Sorry.
Should you wish it, you can find m y account of the previous five books I read - here.
