And Fly, Not a Man of You Shall or The Odyssey by Homer

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May 012010
 

I got done reading The Odyssey yesterday and I’m much more impressed with this than I was with the Iliad. The flow of the story was a lot smoother. There weren’t whole pages that were just lists of people who died and their entire life’s story, so it wins almost on that fact alone, but the story is actually interesting. Around the middle of the book Ulysses tells his tale of woe on the high sea, and then quickly makes it back to Ithaca, where the story grinds a little, but had a satisfying ending.

Overall I give The Odyssey my seal of recommendation.

Everyone Gets a Backstory or The Iliad by Homer

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Mar 292010
 

I just finished reading The Iliad by Homer and I want to get this down while it’s fresh in my mind. More than anything this book was a major let down. From the epic story of the seige of Troy I was expecting something, well, more epic.

The story is a long, detailed, account of the beginning of the war. How detailed, you may ask, and what’s this about the beginning of the war? Well, a lot of people die in this story (as befitting a story about a war) but most of these people are not important to the story as a whole. They’re what we who play RPGs call NPCs. Most of the time these characters wouldn’t even get a name if they didn’t have an impact on a story. Homer, however, gives everyone a backstory, usually giving it after the poor fellow has already suffered a gilling blow, making it almost completely unnecessary. Also, the book doesn’t cover the actual fall of troy.

That’s right, no horse, no heel, nothing!

In the end I’m going to have to recommend that people skip this entry in the “best books ever written.”

Zombies Not Included or Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

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Feb 182010
 

This is the second in a series of small reviews for the “classics of literature” that I’m going to be reading on my new nook. Remember, I am not an English major, nor am I a trained critic, so these might not be the best reviews that you’ll ever read but I will at least endeavor to make them entertaining.
Again I read one of the books that came preloaded on my nook, Pride and Prejudice, and was expecting it to be another drudge to wade through. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to actually be enjoyable.

The book is about a young woman dealing with the stuffiness of nineteenth century England. Normally, after reading a sentence like on the back of a novel, I would put it back down and wander over to Sci-Fi section of the book store to find something with a dragon or a spaceship on the cover. It was only my desire to read some of the books that are held up as “classic works” that got me to even open the file on my nook. I have to say that I’m glad I did. I enjoyed the book mostly for the dry humor of the main character, but I will admit that about halfway through I started to enjoy the story itself.

Jane Austen’s writing style seemed to capture all the formality of the era, and if I only had one complaint it would be that the conversations were a little hard to follow at times. (Would it have really killed her if she had used the occasional “he said” or “Elizabeth replied” in some of the longer dialoges?) I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of dry humor.

In Meticulous Detail or Dracula by Bram Stoker

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Feb 182010
 

This is the first in what will most likely be a series of small reviews for the “classics of literature” that I’m going to be reading on my new nook. Remember, I am not an English major, nor am I a trained critic, so these might not be the best reviews that you’ll ever read but I will at least endeavor to make them entertaining.
I decided to start with one of the three books that came preloaded with it. I was happy to see that Dracula was one of those titles. Alas, that happiness was to be short lived.

I must admit that I was expecting a little more from one of the cornerstones of modern horror. This book, which has never been out of print and has inspired countless other vampire stories was, in my opinion, awful. This thing read like the campaign notes of someone with OCD-like need to record every detail of the game. The only thing missing are the dice rolls and the references to Mountain Dew and Cheetos. The protagonists take every opportunity to draw out the scenes for as long as possible and to repeat themselves and each other as often as they possibly can.

One thing that I found amazing, having seen several movies starring the Count, is that the title character is almost completely absent from most of the book. Other than the opening chapters (where Jonathan Harker lets you know over and over and over again how trapped he has become in the castle) Dracula himself shows up something like three or four times, out of the nearly 300 pages of the version that I read, but don’t worry, the other characters are more than happy to fill the pages between the beginning and the end.
I’m not trying to harp on this in some sad attempt to earn “cool points,” I honestly started reading this expecting to enjoy it, but this turned out to be, in my opinion, one of the most boring things I’ve ever read. I have to assume it’s because I don’t have a Victorian mindset and have been desensitized to the bits of the book that surely shocked 19th century readers. In the end, I can only recommend this book to people who wish to compare it the various movie adaptations that have been made.

The other two books that came preloaded on the nook were Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I’ll be skipping straight to Pride and Prejudice for the next review as it’s the one I have more interest in.