2014 books: 13-16

[the_siobhan]

Axel bought me a Kindle! Then he went through our shelves and turned a sizable stack of books into pixels. A good percentage of these came from The Gutenberg Project so my next stack of reading is going to be books that are more than a century old. This is going to slow me down some, not only because the cadence is a little unfamiliar but because a lot of these people got paid by the word.

I thought about doing them in order of date, but that seemed like effort to organize. I actually did try to start with the Canterbury Tales but I just could not get into it. I might try that one again later with a different version.


    

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne Apparently I nicked this book from the Toronto Public Library in 1976 and never finished it. It still has the due date card in it. Oops. Think it's too late to give it back? This particular book was written in 1874. It's the story of a group of manly manly men who find themselves stranded on an island in the South Pacific with only their clothes and a dog that belongs to one of them. They labour to make their new home habitable and comfortable, defend themselves against pirates and hope for eventual rescue. The "Mysterious" of the title refers to a series of strange events that convinces them they are not alone on the supposedly deserted island.

Jules Verne is wordy as shit. The appointed "leader" of the group is an manly engineer who knows how to make everything from pottery to gunpowder, and explains the process every step of the way in a way that would be more believable if they had been stranded with a stack of textbooks. I initially wondered if this hadn't been intended to be educational, and when I checked the Wikipedia article, it does state that it was used in a boy's instructional magazine but that's not how it was first published. That also would have explained how they managed to find every single thing they needed on such a small island. It ends up being a somewhat entertaining adventure story, but I can see why it's not the most famous of his books.

Also, holy shit the racism.

    

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollet This was written in 1771. I took a course many years ago about the origins of the novel, and this book was on the syllabus, so it's a re-read for me. It's a comedy, which as far as I can ascertain means it follows the plotline of, "Girl meets boy, boy is of a different class and so they cannot be together, adventures ensue, everybody gets married at the end." No kidding, every comedy I read that year had that exact plot. So this is a re-read. This particular version is epistolary, with each chapter being a letter from a different family member or servant as they travel through England and Scotland. The idea is that it provides a different perspective on their surroundings and experiences. The book is intended to be a satire of English society, so it's probably more entertaining if you have some sense of the history and politics of the time. He is especially catty when talking about the writers in London, and I would not be surprised to find out that some of the nastier depictions were of real-life individuals.

It was also pretty obvious throughout the book that Smollet didn't have a very high opinion of women.


    

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas This is not the actual cover of the book. Our book has a plain blue cover so not very interesting to look at. Inside is stamped "Nowton Court Library Shelf 4a" so I suspect this one belongs to Axel. This was written in 1844. For some reason I had this book mixed up in my head with The Man In The Iron Mask, which is actually a character in one of Dumas' Musketeer plotlines. It turns out that I had not read it before and I ended up really loving it. It's an incredibly detailed and opulent piece of revenge porn, with all the high drama and over-wrought emotions of the teenager out to get the guy who nicked his girl. I loved it. I loved the scandal-addicted Parisian society, the bed-hopping socialites, the money & status-obsessed power brokers and the teenage lesbians running away from home to be in a band. High entertainment.

It's been many years since I've read his Musketeers books, and I'm definitely going to have to correct that.


    

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe Written in 1719. We have two copies of this. I can tell which one is mine because it has my name in it next to the date 1993. Axel's is the one with the $3.99 sticker on the cover. I just started on this one today,and it's another re-read. I'm pretty sure most people read this in High School, and of course it has been made into movies and television shows. It's the canonical story of a man trapped on a deserted island, so well known that Verne referenced it in The Mysterious Island with every confidence that the reader knew the book he was referring to.

Given my current pace it doesn't look like I'm going to hit 50 books this year. On the other hand, I do have a couple of long plane trips ahead of me so I just might.

Comments

[greylock]

A good percentage of these came from The Gutenberg Project so my next stack of reading is going to be books that are more than a century old

IIRC Gutenberg Australia has books that are newer than the North American one (at least until we sign some sort of "free trade" TPP treaty), so if you are looking for newer books there may be some there (the first Sherlock Holmes is, I think).

I don't own (or like) eReaders, or reading on screens so I buy my out of copyright books like a chump (and sometimes pay too much if I am not careful).

Which, oddly, I stoked up on some Verne over Christmas, including The Mysterious Island. I really should read it. Verne was one of my favourite storytellers has a kid, but I only know the story from the movies (though I can't swear that the versions I read weren't dumbed down for kids - 2000 Leagues aside). Turns out Mysterious Island has footnotes (only 30), usually explaining who various people in the US Civil War were.

It also seems to be the longest of his books (that I own) by far.

Also, holy shit the racism.

World was a different place in the 1900s and stuff like that does stick out, doesn't it?

If I remember my history, he was brought up in a world where Australia had been declared Terra Nullius not long before, massacres of the natives here and in Africa were probably still common, and the Maori Wars were ongoing in NZ.

I find it a fascinating window on the world.

Robinson Crusoe is one I now know from other versions of the story, mostly picture books from when I was a tot. I sometimes forget it was a novel. I probably should chase it down, but so many books, so little time....

[the_siobhan]

IIRC Gutenberg Australia has books that are newer than the North American one (at least until we sign some sort of "free trade" TPP treaty), so if you are looking for newer books there may be some there (the first Sherlock Holmes is, I think).

Cool. Thanks for the heads-up.

I don't own (or like) eReaders, or reading on screens so I buy my out of copyright books like a chump (and sometimes pay too much if I am not careful).

Hey, whatever works for you. I was resistant to them for years because I can't read lengthy documents on a computer screen comfortably, but it turns out the interface is very different. I'm quite sold on it now.

On the plus side, books like the ones in Gutenberg tend to be easily available second-hand.

>Also, holy shit the racism.

World was a different place in the 1900s and stuff like that does stick out, doesn't it?

It's unbelievable how much. I'm sure at the time it was considered a positive depiction. Crusoe is even worse. (And I honestly didn't remember how much God-bothering is in the writing.)

[greylock]

I don't like to call it racism (since it wasn't) but it even takes me out of the story.

I have a story from one of the Lensmen books, which features rape. It was :hilarious: how it treated the subject, and that was less long ago.

[the_siobhan]

Eh? How do you figure it wasn't racism?

I will make a point of never reading the Lensmen books.

[greylock]

It is only racism in a modern context.

I don't lose many braincells over it (unless people start gnashing their teeth and demanding it get banned/changed), and don't consider it "problematic", it's just there as the world view of the time.

I will make a point of never reading the Lensmen books.

I only made it through the first two. They're so dry. People do love them, but the guy who wrote them didn't seem to have any understanding of character, much less an understanding of the fact that women could be anything other than homemakers, which you kind of expect from someone writing 1945-1950, but if you look at a contemporary like Cordwainer Smith, while that attitude shows up in Scanners Live in Vain, it's basically gone from all his other short stories.

Weird.

[the_siobhan]

So if I'm understanding you correctly you're saying they're not racist because they didn't know any better? (My way of thinking is that they are racist because they don't know any better.)

And every word you type about the Lensmen books makes me want to read them even less.

[greylock]

At the time they weren't racist because (I'm assuming TMI is talking about South Pacific Islanders), the darker-skinned races were chattel, not people.

From a modern perspective, they are probably somewhere on the racism scale between "you can't say that!" and "ZOMG this guy would probably on Stormfront.org right now if he weren't 200 years in the ground!", because racism isn't something people have worried overly much until the past 170 years or so (maybe?), and it probably hasn't been a major issue for society for more than 70 years, compared to the thousands of years of entrenched racism from antiquity on down.

So, in conclusion, I expect we agree on the destination, just not on the path.

And every word you type about the Lensmen books makes me want to read them even less.

It's important in the Golden Age of SF context, and I assume the series has its fans. Actually the first book is on Gutenburg.

A sample:
Captain Bradley had stood by in silent astonishment during this conversation. His eyes had bulged slightly at Costigan's "we're both wearing 'em," but he had held his peace and as the girl disappeared a look of dawning comprehension came over his face.

"Oh, I see, sir," he said, respectfully—far more respectfully than he had ever before addressed a mere first officer. "Meaning that we both will be wearing them shortly, I assume. 'Service Specials'—but you didn't specify exactly what Service, did you?"

"Now that you mention it, I don't believe that I did," Costigan grinned.

"That explains several things about you—particularly your recognition of Vee-Two and your uncanny control and speed of reaction. But aren't you...."

"No," Costigan interrupted. "This situation is apt to get altogether too serious to overlook any bets. If we get away, I'll take them away from her and she'll never know that they aren't routine equipment. As for you, I know that you can and do keep your mouth shut. That's why I'm hanging this junk on you—I had a lot of stuff in my kit, but I flashed it all with the Standish except what I brought in here for us three. Whether you think so or not, we're in a real jam—our chance of getting away is mighty close to zero...."

He broke off as the girl came back, now to all appearances a small Triplanetary officer, and the three settled down to a long and eventless wait.

It reminds me of a Very Britsh way of writing, ala Biggles,

I've read worse.

And here's something I forgot, which (I imagine) illustrates how tone deaf Doc EE Smith was: there are selective breeding programs over hundreds of years to develop the Lensmen.
Which he wrote just post WW2.

But he is the man who wrote "Most baffling—decidedly, this research on sex must go on".

So, it's bad. But not Gor bad.