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This is an entry of the Modern Library Top 100 Novels. It is number 19.

Invisible Man is a powerful novel about race, humanity and life. The unnamed narrator is a black man struggling to find his way in the confusing racial world around him. It is wonderfully written and draws the reader in with descriptive passages that reveals much to the reader.

It is impossible for me to even try to sum up the novel so I will briefly touch on a few parts that stuck out in my mind. The narrator tries to bring himself up in the world while fighting the racism of his past. Despite his schooling and intellect, he is forced to take fight blindfolded in a Battle Royal, a vicious fight put on for the entertainment of men.

But the blindfold was tight as a thick skin-puckering scab and when I raised my gloved hands to push the layers of white aside a voice yelled, “Oh, no you don’t, black bastard! Leave that alone!”
“Ring the bell before Jackson kills him a coon!” someone boomed in the sudden silence. And I heard the bell clang and the sound of the feet scuffing forward. . .
Blindfolded, I could no longer control my motions. I had no dignity. I stumbled about like a baby or a drunken man. The smoke had become thicker and with each new blow it seemed to sear and further restrict my lungs. My saliva became like hot bitter glue. A glove connected with my head, filling my mouth with warm blood. It was everywhere. I could not tell if the moisture I felt upon my body was sweat or blood. A blow landed hard against the nape of my neck. I felt myself going over, my head hitting the floor. Streaks of blue light filled the black world behind the blindfold. I lay prone, pretending that I was knocked out, but felt myself seized by hands and yanked to my feet. “Get going, black boy! Mix it up!” My arms were like lead, my head smarting from blows. I managed to feel my way to the ropes and held on, trying to catch my breath. A glove landed in my mid-section and I went over again, feeling as though the smoke had become a knife jabbed into my guts. Pushed this way and that by the legs milling around me, I finally pulled erect and discovered that I could see the black, sweat-washed forms weaving in the smoky-blue atmosphere like drunken dancers weaving to the rapid drum-like thuds of blows.
Everyone fought hysterically. It was complete anarchy. Everybody fought everybody else.

It is a powerful scene that propels him forward and shapes his life. He goes to college for a while and due to a mistake ends up in New York. He tries to get a job and then tries to stand up for his community. He believes he is trying to do something right and for the people but finds out he is only being used by others. Despite being in the front and fighting for his community, he is really an invisible man, only there for those using him.

I close now at the beginning. One of the most riveting passages is the opening paragraph of the novel. It begins defining the narrator and sets the stage for how he thinks and his place in life.

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!

My introduction to Sherlock Holmes was quite enjoyable. I thought it relevant to read Hound of the Baskervilles since Guy Ritchie’s new Sherlock Holmes movie is coming out this month. However, it appears he has taken great liberties with the portrayal of Holmes by Robert Downey Jr. The Holmes of novel is a analytical and sharp gentleman not the rough and boisterous Holmes that Downey appears to be portraying. Enough about comparisons, how was the novel?

The novel was smart and intelligent but could be rather dry in some places. It tells the story of a seemingly supernatural case of a giant hound that haunts and kills members of the Baskerville family. Holmes is hired to prove the truth or untruth of the supernatural being.

The highlights of the novel are Holmes and Watson deriving information about characters from seemingly meaningless objects. In fact the novel opens with such an object, a walking stick left int Holmes’ office.

It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a “Penang lawyer.” Just under the head was a broad silver band, nearly an inch across. “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,” was engraved upon it, with the date “1884.” It was such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry – dignified, solid and reassuring.

Holmes then asks Watson to reconstruct the man who would carry such a stick.

. . .”that Dr. Mortimer is a successful elderly man, well-esteemed, since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation.”

“I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot.” . . . “Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one, has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it.”

Much more is observed about the stick – the meaning of the initials, where the man works, and even what kind of dog he has. It is a fascinating study of logic and observation that continues all throughout the novel.

The Hound of the Baskervilles did its job and sucked me in and I will be reading more of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories in the future.

A fascinating morality tale of a Dorian Gray, a young man who loses his soul in a painting. He meets a man who gives him some advice that changes his life.

“The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame—-”

Taking this to heart, Gray lives his life to his pleasure and does what his mind wants. Always lurking behind him, is a painting of himself that changes with each evil act he commits. As he grows older and more evil, Gray stays young and beautiful while the painting grows old and evil is etched onto its face.

This was more enjoyable to read than I had assumed and I’m glad to have read it. While some passages are slow, it is a generally quick read that is also an interesting character study. One of the better books I’ve read on this list.

I absolutely loved this movie so I was looking forward to reading this. However, I couldn’t get through it. For some reason, it was just not appealing to me. It was hard for me to be enthused by all the nautical descriptions and it felt like it took forever just for them to sail. By that time, I gave up.

Now I will attempt this book at a later date or maybe even another novel in the series. The movie, which was based off several of the novels, was a phenomenal movie that excites me on every viewing, but I don’t feel the same energy and excitement while reading the book.

I couldn’t even find a passage I felt was interesting enough to note on this entry.

I figured I would go to the top of the list and read Pride and Prejudice even though I was not really looking forward to it. I have to say, it wasn’t as bad as I assumed it would be, but I still didn’t enjoy it very much. It felt very drawn out in places and the italics drove me crazy. It seemed that Jane Austen felt that all the characters should emphasize most of their words and I felt like characters were always yelling or talking loudly to each other. It was a good story, although the ending felt very rushed and fit together too conveniently.
I know I’m not really doing the novel justice in this short write up, but I just was not enthused by it. While I may not be its biggest fan, I do recommend reading Pride and Prejudice simply for the experience of meeting the Bennet family and Mr. Darcy.

‘That is very true,’ replied Elizabeth, ‘and I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.’
‘Pride,” observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, ‘is a very common failing I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the works are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.’

This was an outstanding book by Sebastian Faulks. It tells the story of a young Englishman who falls madly and passionately in love with a married woman. They leave together and life takes a different turn than he expects. She leaves him and he then joins the army to command a group of miners. Also woven into the narrative is the story of a future relative and her search to uncover her past.
The writing is amazing. He captures the lust and passion of the young lovers with intensity. The plotting advances the way life often does. Unexpected turns happen in their lives. Life does not follow the fairy tale plot and Birdsong emphasizes this. The sections pertaining to the war seem real. The reader is taken into the dangerous tunnels that extend under German lines and experience the violence and carnage alongside the soldiers.

Stephen folded his arms around her and squeezed her. He lay back on the bed with her head resting on his chest. He felt her body go limp as the muscles decontracted into sleep. there was the sound of doves in the garden. He felt his heart beat against her shoulder. The smell of roses came faintly from her scented neck. He settled his hand in the curve of her ribs. His nerves were stilled in the sensuous repletion of the moment that precluded thought. He closed his eyes. He slept, at peace.

They tracked out toward a shellhole, the sun bright, a lark above them. Blue sky, unseen by eyes trained on turned mud. They moved low toward a mine crater where bodies had lain for weeks uncollected. “Try to life him.” No sound of machine guns or snipers, though their ears were braced for noise. “Take his arms.” The incomprehensible order through the gas mouthpiece. The arms came away softly. “Not like that, not take his arms away.” On Weir’s collar a large rat, trailing something red down his back. A crow disturbed, lifting its black body up suddenly, battering the air with its big wings. Coker, Barlow shaking their heads under the assault of risen flies coming up, transforming black skin of corpses into green by their absence. The roaring of Goddard’s vomit made them laugh, snorting private mirth inside their masks. Goddard, releasing his mask, breathed in worse than he had expelled. Weir’s hands in double sandbags stretched out tentatively to a sapper’s uniform, undressing the chest in search of a disc which he removed, bringing skin with it into his tunic pocket. Jack’s recoil, even through course material, to the sponge of flesh. Bright and sleek on liver, a rat emerged from the abdomen; it levered and flopped flatly over the ribs, glutted with pleasure. Bit by bit on to stretchers, what flesh fell left in mud. Not men, but flies and flesh, thought Stephen. Brennan anxiously stripping a torso with no head. He clasped it with both hands, dragged legless up from the crater, his fingers vanishing into buttered green flesh. It was his brother.

An interesting read, but one I struggled through. I have a love/hate relationship with this book. I became fed up with the non-linear storyline, the repeating of phrases between characters and was even bored by a lot of it. However, the characters, namely Yossarian, Milo and the Chaplain, kept me reading. They were goofy and sad and tragic all at once. Trapped by the war, they did what they could to survive.

One passage that stuck out takes place in the Chaplain’s mind as he struggles with himself and his beliefs.

Doubts of such kind gnawed at the chaplain’s lean, suffering frame insatiably. Was there a single true faith, or a life after death? How many angels could dance on the head of a pin, and with what matters did God occupy himself in all the infinite aeons before Creation? Why was it necessary to put a protective seal on the brow of Cain if there were no other people to protect him from? Did Adam and Eve produce daughters? These were the great, complex questions of ontology that tormented him. Yet they never seemed nearly as crucial to him as the question of kindness and good manners. He was pinched perspiringly in the epistemological dilemma of the skeptic, unable to accept solutions to problems he was unwilling to dismiss as unsolvable. He was never without misery, and never without hope.

I have somehow lived my life without reading Winnie-the-Pooh, or at least I don’t remember ever reading it. What a delightful surprise. I knew who Winnie-the-Pooh was, of course, but I didn’t realize just how fun and imaginative it would be. I love A. A. Milne’s writing and the illustrations in the book. I love the way the text was printed in imaginative ways around the illustrations.

“Is anybody at home?”
There was a sudden scuffling noise from inside the hole, and then silence.
“What I said was, ‘Is anybody at home?’” called out Pooh very loudly.
“No!” said a voice; and then added, “you needn’t shout so loud. I heard you quite well the first time.”
“Bother!” said Pooh. “Isn’t there anybody here at all?”
“Nobody.”

The Piglet lived in a very grand house in the middle of a beech-tree, and the beech-tree was in the middle of the forest, and the Piglet lived in the middle of the house. Next to his house was a piece of broken board which had: “TRESPASSERS W” on it. When Christopher Robin asked the Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather’s name, and had been in the family for a long time. Christopher Robin said you couldn’t be called Trespassers W, and Piglet said yes, you could, because his grandfather was, and it was short for Trespassers Will, which was short for Trespassers William. And his grandfather had had two names in case he lost one – Trespassers after an uncle, and William after Trespassers.

Pooh rubbed his nose with his paw, and said that the Heffalump might be walking along, humming a little song, and looking up at the sky, wondering if it would rain, and so he wouldn’t see the Very Deep Pit until he was half-way down, when it would be too late.
Piglet said that this was a very good Trap, but supposing it were raining already?
Pooh rubbed his nose again, and said that he hadn’t thought of that. And then he brightened up, and said that, if it were raining already, the Heffalump would be looking at the sky wondering if it would clear up, and so he wouldn’t see the Very Deep Pit until he was half-way down. . . . When it would be too late.
Piglet said that, now that this point had been explained, he thought it was a Cunning Trap.

What a book. I had no idea what to expect going in but once I started, I couldn’t put the book down. The book takes place in the Middle Ages and follows a man and his dream to build a cathedral. Sounds boring in itself, but Ken Follet weaves in many storylines that give the novel a massive scope. Kings go to war, monks are caught up in political undertakings, lovers are split apart, villages burned, children are born, people are cursed by a witch, towns and castles are built, journeys to foreign lands are undertaken and that is just a few of the things that happen. At almost 1000 pages, the book seems like a massive read, but the pages go by quickly. Very glad I read this one.

This is another book off the Modern Library Top 100 list. I finished it several weeks ago but forgot to write an entry. This is a fascinating book about philosophy and motorcycle repair and riding. I do not like motorcycles and philosophy is hard for me so it was a challenging read. However, I gained a greater appreciation for the motorcycle but my philosophic understanding is still rather low. There were many passages in the book that I really liked, so I will just share those.

You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other.In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing y five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.

On this trip I think we should notice it, explore it a little, to see if in that strange separation of what man is from what man does we may have some clues as to what the hell has gone wrong in this twentieth century. I don’t want to hurry it. That itself is a poisonous twentieth-century attitude. When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. I just want to get at it slowly, but carefully and thoroughly, with the same attitude I remember was present just before I found that sheared pin. It was that attitude that found it, nothing else.

When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts. Mark Twain’s experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts – something is always created too. And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it’s important also to see what’s created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is.