marquess

I’ve managed not to actually complete any book since I finished Versailles (which was good, by the way). I intended to go straight from that to one off the list, but someone actually went to the trouble to buy me a copy of John Adams, the pulitzer prize winning book by David McCullough and it felt rude not to begin that immediately. It’s good – interesting, but a bit dry. I think if I had the time necessary to really get into it, I’d love it, but as it is, I’ve been reading it in ten or twenty minute increments and the going is slow. To counter the history, I started Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters, hoping that it would be the bawdy, vaudeville lesbian melodrama it sounds like it should be. Unfortunately, it’s mostly just depressing and every time I pick it up for a little while, I put it down feeling like I should probably just go hang myself in the back yard.

To counter both of those books, I went out and bought The Host, a new sci-fi story by Twilight author Stephenie Meyer. Too early to tell about that one, but it’s enjoyable so far. I was afraid it was going to be “sci-fi lite”, since this is being touted as Meyer’s first “adult novel”, but actually it seems pretty rich in scope. We’ll see.

After The Grapes of Wrath let me down, I picked up Withnails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant to cleanse my palate before jumping to the next book on the ever more intimidating list.
“Withnails” was a good in-between book. I believe it would be funny and interesting to anyone with any knowledge of the movies Grant describes working on, but especially fun for his own particular brand of fan. ‘Withnail & I’ is one of my favorite movies and I have a hard time separating Grant from his character, though he proves himself in the book to be a kind, honest and really clever person.

Next was The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. This one took me a few days to get into – there’s a sort of dense, detail laden description of the architecture in Paris for what feels like the first eight million pages or so, but once you crack into the human elements of the story a little, it’s hard to stop reading. Such an incredibly heartbreaking story, on just about every level. I came out of this one with a new favorite book, and that’s exactly the kind of experience I wanted to have when I made this list. Hunchback almost made up for the disappointing Grapes of Wrath and Look Homeward, Angel.

I moved from that tour de force to something fluffy with Jancee Dunn’s “But Enough About Me”, in which the former Rolling Stones reporter intersperses her quick and funny memoir with tongue in cheek lessons in talking to celebrities. There was a little more to this one that just the good celebrity dirt I was expecting from it and that works in it’s favor. That said, it’s a short read – I finished it in a matter of hours and moved on to…

Versailles by Kathryn Davis, which is a prosey, fictional look a the life of Marie Antoinette. So far, so good – sometimes these kind of flowery things really irk me, but Davis is a good writer and pulls no punches with subject matter. It’s certainly an interesting book so far. Also very short, and will probably be finished with tonight, at which point I’ll be moving on to the John Adams book that David McCullough wrote, which someone just bought me a copy of, they wanted me to read it so much, and simultaneously, one of the books on THE LIST. Not sure which one yet though. There are books I’m saving for certain times of the year (Woman In White for October, for example), so I’m just going to feel it out from how I feel after Versailles.

Wow, consider this strike two on the list so far. I didn’t enjoy this book at all. So depressing that I felt awful the whole time I was reading it and full of characters who seem to make only marginally informed and terrible decisions. I love the way Steinbeck writes, but this story was mediocre at best. Very disappointing.

I find it interesting that out of this list of supposed classic works, books I’ve heard so much praise for, that out of three I’ve read, only one I’ve enjoyed. I feel as though I must be missing something, but….what? Has time solidified these books as something more important than they are? It seems that people are willing to believe that a book they’ve never read is good, just because that’s what they’ve always heard. Nobody wants to say “I don’t like The Grapes of Wrath” because it makes you sound as though you either obviously didn’t understand some vital piece or you’re purposefully going against the flow.

What a frustrating experience this has been so far. I am taking a break from the list to read something that doesn’t make me want to put my head in the oven.