Alright....

I'm having some sort of mid(ish) life crisis here. I don't intend to get all whiny here but the upshot is that I'm just not doing lists and goals for the school year. I'm done. I am beginning to think that these reading goals are more like a security blanket. They are as much a distraction as anything else and I think there are probably other things I should be doing.

Now obviously, I'm going to keep reading. I like reading. I'm going to do it. But I'm going to read what I want, when I want, and as I think I ought to be for other things I'm working on. I think I'm just going to be having a year of getting my head in order. I'd like to keep the blogs up, if for no other reason than they help me think through what I think. I really love my list of books that everyone assumes I've read, and I'll probably keep picking at it, but I'm not going to be pushing it.

The goal is to stop worrying so much and figure out what I actually want. Then do that. It's scary....so I'm probably on the right track.

Failed Attempt

Ended up with a null day. Tried getting into Kidnapped, but I just wasn't feeling it. I guess I'm still processing the Larsson. I'll try shifting to a different book tomorrow. I guess everyone has an off day from time to time.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Day 3 and finished!

Through all 590 pages

I love it when I hit the flow! There's nothing quite like it and it beats watching a screen any day. The flow is that magical reading where the words fade into the background and it's like experiencing the story directly in my imagination. It sounds daft whenever I try to explain it, but it really is the best thing ever. I finished my 200 page goal by 11 this morning and just kept going. Before I knew it the book was done.

I remember trying and failing to read this some years ago. I'm really glad I tried again. I can see why it was such a sensation some years ago. Usually a mystery novel has a single mystery to unravel. Once that mystery is solved the book tends to be virtually over. This book had at least three. While they weren't all interconnected, they did fit together in the narrative in a satisfying way.

The relationship between Blomkvist and Salander is. . . unusual. While there is very little explicit material, there is a lot of sex and a lot of sex happening in non-conventional relationships. It didn't really bother me, but it didn't seem necessary. I guess Blomkvist gets portrayed as a extraordinary non-possessive and attractive guy, but I think there were other ways of establishing that. If there was one thing I didn't like about the story, it was how things were left with them at the end of the novel. From a writer's point of view, it's obvious that Larsson was clearly preserving the tension between the two characters for the next book in the series. As a reader, it made me unhappy.

Ok, that all sounded very negative, but I really enjoyed the mystery elements and, while I had a couple of early inklings, I never figured anything out more than a step ahead. It was great.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Day 2

Up through page 273

I made my goal today! Since I got a little behind on page counts I'm trying to read 200 pages a day to get in some catch up. It's not undoable if I'm into the text, but it isn't something that I will be able to keep up indefinitely. Lucky enough for me, I'm thoroughly enjoying The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo so reading goals shouldn't be a problem for a couple days.

I'm surprised that the two protagonists haven't met yet. Blomkvist has been working on the financial intrigue/murder mystery angle of the plot. It should be boring, but it's not. He's essentially reading through information on a 40 year old disappearance while simultaneously writing a history on the victim's family. Salander, who is the girl with the dragon tattoo by the way, just went through a hair raisingly awful conflict with her legal guardian. Apparently she was deemed legally incompetent some time ago and her previous guardian just died. The new one is a bastard. I can't really tell what Larsson is trying for with her. She's obviously brilliant, but at the same time she didn't finish their version of high school and allowed herself to be deemed mentally incompetent. It's possible she is supposed to be autistic but that doesn't feel quite right to me. I suppose she could just be horribly damaged on an emotional level.

Salander seems to think she's dealt with her guardian problem. I think she is wrong.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Day 1

Up through page 68

There is something about reading literature in translation. No matter how good the translator is, it just feels different. I'm not sure if it's turn of phrase, sentence structure, or vocabulary, but there's always this initial slog in getting used to the oddity of it. The eye has to grow accustomed to the flow of words; it's like the difference between swimming in an ocean versas swimming in a river. Once the adjustment happens, it's often smooth sailing - or smoother anyway.

The prologue and first chapter were rough going due to the adjustment in language. Larsson drops straight into the heads of his characters and I found myself rereading whole pages to try to hold onto the thread. It was worth the effort. By chapter two, I had the narrative voice down and it became immersive. A true omniscient narrator is pretty rare, but I think that is what I have here. The narrative is told mostly within the close perspective of certain characters but every so often the voice pulls back to editorialize on events or on the characters.  It is an interesting effect.

So far I have two main characters: a disgraced reporter named Mikael Blomkvist and a social outcast turned P.I. named Lisbeth Salander. They have very different personalities and I have to wonder how they will interact. So far they are following different narrative lines but it is obvious that they will have to meet soon.

Whoops

I remember that summers used to be lazy. I used to laze around and read all the time... or play video games. Somehow summers have become almost as busy as the school year. It's crazy. I have been reading but not nearly at the rate that I need to be to keep up with goals. This isn't surprising, but that I'm having a hard time with the daily journals is a little mind boggling to me.

Ryan and I finally pulled all of our books out of boxes and organized them on shelves (we had to buy four extra bookcases to do it). It took about a week of unpack, sorting, building, and shelving but it's mostly done now.  It's incredible the number of books we've accumulated and distressing that over half of them are unread. It's a crazy project for some day to get through all of them; there are at least 1,000 books down there.

In terms of reading...

I finally finished Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I actually found the ending much more satisfying than how the mini series turned out. It all wrapped up fairly neatly.

I read Washington Black by Esi Edugyan which was not on the list but fulfilled a category for summer reading. It wasn't what I expected it to be. From reading the back of the book, it looked like an adventure story in the vein of Robert Louis Stevenson. There were elements of that in there, but it was more of a historical character drama examining the various attitudes and motivations around slavery in the early 1800's. It seemed particularly critical of the motivations of some segments of the abolitionist movements. Sometimes people do good things for selfish reasons. It's an interesting point. I'm not sure at this point whether I like the book or not, but it has made me thoughtful and that is a good thing.

Finally, I just finished The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John LeCarré. This was a pretty dense and dreary read. Cold War lit just tends to be that way and I guess it makes sense that a spy novel set during the Cold War would be doubly so. It did present a nifty little puzzle to the reader. Information and confirmation was doled out in intervals which keep me reading but it was slow. It was a continual pattern of "what the heck is going on," to "maybe this is happening," and finally "yup, that's what happened." One cycle led to the next all the way to the end where the characters reap the dismal rewards of their labors. So much fun! At least it was short.

On to Steig Larsson....because scandinavians are known for their cheery dispositions...right?

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Day 8

Up to page 658

I have to admit, sometimes I wonder what the point of all this reading is. Objectively, I know why it's all important. Really I do, but when slogging through a book and feeling like no progress is being made... well what else could I be doing with this time? This feeling passes, eventually.

The farther I get with this book, the more I wish Childermas was more of a main character. There's something enigmatic about the man. The longer I read, the more I dislike Norrell. The more I read... well the more antsy I get for the end. Clarke is using language deliberately to make the writing reminiscent of the gothic romances. She does a good job but it slows down the reading significantly.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel - Day 7

Up to page 607

The biggest thing I've noticed about reading these monster books is in how my attention span works. If I can't get through a book in five days or less, my attention starts to wander and I have to deliberately focus on continuing the text. This has nothing to do with whether I'm enjoying it or not. I mention this because it is one of the big problems my students cite when they are having difficulty finishing texts. It's not that I discounted this as a problem, it's just one I don't frequently encounter myself and therefore have trouble finding solutions. Reading things like this and Anna Karenina reminds me what it is like to slog. In short...it's good for me. (shudder)

I've also noticed that I've trained myself into this idea of only blogging when I've finished something....however if I'm reading a 1,000 page tome, that's not going to happen with any frequency and this explains why my writing habits seem to have deserted me. They apparently didn't work the way I thought they did.

For all that this is an absolutely huge text, it is very good. I was reminded of it when the BBC miniseries based on it showed up on Netflix. I committed the cardinal sin of watching the miniseries before reading the text, so now I'm spending a ridiculous amount of time comparing the two. Certainly, the miniseries has captured the feel of things and many of the events but they've been liberal with how the events connect together which changes how the characters come across in some instances.

I'm not done with the novel, obviously, but at this point I would say that they are both quite good. However, I would not recommend watching the miniseries first.

Watership Down

Ok, so here's a book worthy of its hype. This is a very good story which is surprising given that it is about a bunch of rabbits. I mean they are just rabbits who behave like rabbits. Obviously Adams gave them coherent thoughts and motivations, but they don't come across as humans in rabbit form which is often a danger of these sorts of things.

Can I just say that I love road trips, it's one of the few places in my life where I get to really sit and dig into a book. Life is full of disruptions and distractions - which is great, but it disrupts good reading time. I've been doing well keeping the reading going but I've been straying from the journalling, which I will work on.

I've been thinking more about Anna Karenina. Originally a tragedy was defined by the fall of a person of high status in the narrative. By that definition Anna Karenina is a tragedy, and even a good one. Anna's fall, while predictable, affects everyone around her in many ways, some of which are pretty subtle. It's like a stone falling though a web and that's what is interesting about it. Anna is less interesting for her sake to me; it is more interesting to me how her fall from grace has a rippling effect outward.

Anna Karenina - Finished at Last

Finally! I finished it. I woke up at 2 AM and couldn't get back to sleep so I started reading. Part 7 wraps up Anna's story and Part 8 is this weird meandering philosophical narrative from Levin's point of view.

Anna ended as it seemed obvious that she would. Honestly, she started to get so tedious with all of her doubts and histrionics. Tolstoy does an excellent job in presenting Anna's point of view as unreliable. At the same time Vronsky comes across as hopelessly childish and lost. I know that they are supposed to be the central tragedy of the book, but I can't help feeling like they are both incredibly naive. If Anna and Vronsky's story was the only thing going on in the novel, I wouldn't have been able to finish it. Many of the side characters I found much more interesting. I really liked Levin and Kitty and I even warmed to Dolly and Oblonsky.

While I feel very satisfied by managing to finish it, I'm a little mystified by the people who proclaim it the best novel ever written. It is quite good but I'm not pulled in by the love story between Anna and Vronsky in any way. Maybe that's not the point of it. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe it is the consequence of being a high school teacher and watching similar love affairs play out over and over. Tolstoy is very good at portraying people with verisimilitude, but perhaps too much so. It made them somewhat predictable. I don't necessarily mind that, but it is what made Anna so irritating. Just once, I really wanted her to make a good decision and stick with it.

Just once.