BOOK REPORT: Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Title:                           Picture of Dorian Gray

Author:                       Oscar Wilde

Original Copyright Date:          1891

My Rating:          4 out of 5 stars  ( well done )

Back-cover Description
Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged—petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral—while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying, enchanting, obsessing, even corrupting readers for more than a hundred years.

Taking the reader in and out of London drawing rooms, to the heights of aestheticism, and to the depths of decadence, The Picture of Dorian Gray is not only a melodrama about moral corruption. Laced with bon mots and vivid depictions of upper-class refinement, it is also a fascinating look at the milieu of Wilde’s fin-de-siècle world and a manifesto of the creed “Art for Art’s Sake.”

My Thoughts

Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray is a gothic horror story which boils the entirety of the aesthetic movement, of which he was a proponent, into a nice and neat two-hundred pages.  

"It is silly of you , for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

This was an enjoyable read;  Wilde's poignant witticisms and  social critique made me laugh out loud and thankful that I don't live during a time where I could possibly be on the wrong side of his pen.  

While the aesthetic movement rhetoric was, pun intended, shallow, it seemed a proper fit for those who, as Wilde states, practice the fine and noble aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing.  

As a quick aside, I'm thinking of going back to school to get my Masters in Aristocratic Arts... Advanced Matchbook Arrangement looks intriguing, but I don't have the prerequisites yet ( Muted Gossip, and Theories of Understated Social Disapproval)

"But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment on sits down to think, one becomes all nose , or all forehead, or something horrid" 

 It was very interesting to me to see how the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde theme of the duality of man was presented by Wilde.  In Robert Louis Stevenson's famous work, the duality was brought out by a drug,  and his "alter-ego" was responsible for all of the evil doings.  Dr. Jekyll had a sense of plausible deniability in his actions as he was physically transformed by the drug; Mr Hyde was a different persona.  Dorian's duality is more subtle; it arises out of the sole desire to stay beautiful.  Dorian has no Mr. Hyde, no alter-ego. The painting becomes Dorian's "Tell Tale Heart"; however, because he can keep it in the attic, as his little secret, watching the painting show his every evil while he stays the same beautiful Dorian becomes a thrill in itself.   In both stories, the main characters start to lose control over the evil outlet and their actions become more horrific and lead to a self-destructive and tragic end. 

I really liked this book and would recommend it for anyone wanting a short dark tale that is extremely well written.

BOOK REPORT: The Dicken's Christmas Novels

This book report will have a slightly different format as it actually is a review of 5 short novels by Charles Dickens.  I think I bit off more than I thought as 75 pages of Dickens seems to somehow equate to 150 of other authors.  Anyway, I got through it and I'm glad I did.  Next Christmas however, I might read just one of them, or move on to his Christmas short stories... time will tell.

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Title:                                           A Christmas Carol

Author:                                        Charles Dickens

Original Copyright Date:          1843

My Rating:                                  5 out of 5 stars  ( excellent )

Backcover Description
One of the best-loved and most quoted stories of "the man who invented Christmas"-English writer Charles Dickens-A Christmas Carol debuted in 1843 and has touched millions of hearts since. Cruel miser Ebeneezer Scrooge has never met a shilling he doesn't like. . .and hardly a man he does. And he hates Christmas most of all. When Scrooge is visited by his old partner, Jacob Marley, and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come, he learns eternal lessons of charity, kindness, and goodwill. Experience a true Victorian Christmas!

My Thoughts
We all know and love this classic, so I won't go into too much detail on it or give the story as it should be well known.  This was the second time I've read this one, but it has been a VERY long time since the first   reading.   I didn't remember many of the smaller details about the ghost of Christmas past but there were not a lot of surprises otherwise.

This is a classic and deserves to be.  I wish I could say the same thing about the other stories. 

Speaking of...

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Title:                                           The Chimes

Author:                                        Charles Dickens

Original Copyright Date:          1844

My Rating:                                  2 out of 5 stars  ( confusing )


Backcover Description
The Chimes tells the story of Toby Veck, or Trotty, a humble porter whose loses his faith in human nature at the hands of his presumed social superiors, but regains it thanks to the spirits of the bells.


My Thoughts
This story was very confusing to me.  As the description above states, the main character, Trotty is a porter who is required to stand in the cold, waiting for a job to come his way; the chimes of the church near by  keep him company with their song and in general he is very optimistic and happy with life.  He has some interaction with some stuffy rich folk who refer to poor people as "those people who will do well to know their place and should find happiness in the daily chores they do for us; leave living a full to us" (paraphrasing) .


Maybe I was just sleepy, but as I was reading this, I was expecting the rich people to learn lesson ala scrooge through Trotty, but for some reason Trotty was the forsaken one who gets visited by the Spirits of Time via the Chimes.   I liked Trotty and to see him tormented like this was A) unexpected and B) kind of off putting... the rich people who look down their noses at Trotty don't learn a thing....


It didn't help that the middle section of book was obfuscated english at its best.  I had to read 3-4 pages 3-4 times trying to understand what had occured in the story.  Trotty gets called to the church tower by the chimes, goes to the top, sees the gremlins of the bells (very cool image btw....) and lectured on Times role in the life of man and what man should and should not do with the time it has... ok... fine, but then you see an image of trotty at the base of the tower, dead, 9 years in the future and now Trotty is off on a Scrooge like voyeur tour of his life...   


I just didn't get the theme and felt like I was constantly re-reading entire sections trying to figure out what was going on.


I am going to re-read this entire story next year, but until then, this gets a two star rating for the incoherent story.

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Title:                                           The Cricket on the Hearth

Author:                                        Charles Dickens

Original Copyright Date:          1845

My Rating:                                  4.5 out of 5 stars  ( charming )


Backcover Description:
As this tale begins it paints a beautiful picture of a happy household and of 19th century English country life. The arival of a mysterious stranger threatens to shatter this harmony. A masterful story of love and loyalty.


My Thoughts
This is a charming, feel good story for Christmas.  It could be called almost too sentimental at times but it works for this story.  Dickens does a great job painting a portrait of blissful , playful domesticity including a lucky cricket who lives on the hearth, warming the hearts of the occupants. 


The conflict comes a bit out of left field, but it is a relatively smooth transition and  settles down quickly.  


I really liked this story and it will be one which I plan to read again; I recommend it to anyone wanting a heartwarming Christmas story instead of being scared into a moral and righteous life as the previous two books. 


As an interesting side note, after I read The Cricket on the Hearth I was reading various articles on it and found out that this story was actually a more popular on stage than A Christmas Carol was for a long time.  I am actually surprised that I haven't heard or seen of a production of this before

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Title:                                           The Battle of Life

Author:                                        Charles Dickens

Original Copyright Date:          1846

My Rating:                                  4 out of 5 stars  ( nice )


Back-cover Description
The Battle of Life: A Love Story is the fourth of Dickens’ five Christmas books. It is worth mentioning that it is the only book out of five that does not deal with any supernatural elements. It is not a social novel and resolved with a romantic twist. The book is written in three parts, an uplifting tale of winning one of the many wars fought in the battle of life. The tale’s ending is a happy one, typical to all of Dickens books


My Thoughts
This was another light hearted story which differs slightly from the other stories by not including  any supernatural elements.  No ghosts, not spirit crickets showing all that life has to offer.  I thought this story was well done, the characters were very likable and the scene well established.   All the element were there for a great story, but it just fell a bit flat of being a timeless Christmas story.   


It was however very funny.  The two lawyers in the story have to be my favorite characters in all of the Dickens Christmas books and may enter into consideration for my obscure-historical-literary-reference halloween costume, (I would need a partner however).  Others in consideration so far are Prince Florizel from the Suicide Club stories by Robert Louis Stevenson and Prince Calaf from Turandot

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Title:                                            The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain

Author:                                        Charles Dickens

Original Copyright Date:          1848

My Rating:                                  3.5 out of 5 stars  ( nice )

Back-Cover Description
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1848, that concludes his series of five Christmas books. The story is more about the spirit of the holidays than about the holidays themselves. The tale centers on Professor Redlaw, a chemistry teacher who is constantly brooding over the grief caused by past wrongs done to him. Redlaw is haunted by a spirit who takes from him these painful memories, which leaves him unexpectedly bitter. Ultimately the conflict of the novella is resolved in an uplifting way which asserts the moral of the story. “That it is important to remember past sorrows and wrongs so that you can then forgive those responsible and, in doing so, unburden your soul and mature as a human being.”


My Thoughts
By the time I started to read this Christmas story, I was getting tired of Dicken's verbose language and heavy pronoun use.  But once I made it past the usual 10 page intro to the story, this one seemed ok.  


If I were to rank the five Christmas books from best to least favorite, this one would go in the 4 slot on the shelf, but it is a nice story.  Dickens brings back the supernatural element in this story via the Chemist's self-portrait phantom.  It also brings in a small primitive child like character which is the characters guide on his self-evaluation journey. 


The odd thing about this story is not that the main character goes through a transformational experience with a supernatural tour-guide, but that doesn't  occur during a dream like state independent the lives around them. (Ah, I woke up, what day is it?!)  In this story, the Chemist affects his surroundings and people while being haunted and rubs his negative mojo off on them.  There is a darker element to the story because of this and it makes the happy ending a bit more dramatic. 

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All in all, the stories were good.  I am glad I read all five, and I hope that maybe someone else might make room for these stories into their busy lives around Christmas.  

BOOK REPORT: The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

Title:         The Professor and the Madman

Author:      Simon Winchester

Original Copyright Date:          2005

My Rating:          3 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Backcover Description:
Part homage to the greatest reference work of all time, the Oxford English Dictionary, part mystery, part intellectual history of Victorian England, The Professor and the Madman tells the parallel stories of the dictionary's genius editor and one of his most prolific contributors, an insane American doctor committed to an asylum for murder.

My Thoughts:
The Professor and the Madman was an interesting look into a subject with which I was completely ignorant.  I always took dictionaries for granted and never really thought about how they were created.  I also thought that the Oxford English Dictionary was just another version of a dictionary similar to Webster's.  The OED as they call it across the pond is much more than a dictionary, it is an homage to every single word in the English language, its roots, it nuances of usage illustrated with sentences pulled from literature.  

Being non-fiction, there isn't much to say about symbolism or literary merit; although the author does a good job of developing the two main characters, James Murray the lexical geek editor of the OED and W.C. Minor, an Union army doctor in the Civil war; the madman who thought he was constantly being tormented in the night by little demons who would take him off to far off lands and make him do horrible things.

I did find sections of the book a bit dry as I don't seem to have a knack for philology or English lexicography.  While I did find the history of how the use of certain words outlined in the book interesting, the detailed discussions on roots and origin, etc  was lost on me. 

As a side note, fairly late in the book, another major contributer to the OED was mentioned who, by his own right was a kook.  Dr. Fitzedwald Hall, another American who ended up in India, falls in love with Sanskrit, moves to England, becomes a renowned professor of Sanskrit, and after a heated linguist argument with another Sanskrit scholar,  left in a huff to become a hermit.  It seems that, to be a major volunteer contributer to the OED, it seemed that you needed to be a little off and it would have been interesting to for this book to explore that further.

Overall, it was a fun read, full of sesquipedalian words (including sesquipedalian) that I had to look up in the dictionary... I guess James Murray would be proud!

BOOK REPORT: Feed by M.T. Anderson

Title:                                            Feed

Author:                                        M.T. Anderson 

Original Copyright Date:          2002

My Rating:                       4 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Backcover Description:
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon — a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson creates a not-so-brave new world — and a smart, savage satire ushering us into an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.


My Thoughts:
Wow. That was a literary transition from Robert Louis Stevenson.  I started Feed about 6 minutes after finishing the short story "Markheim" by the aforementioned Stevenson.  The first page of Feed seemed to have, like, every other word, as like, ",like" or something.  Of course that was on purpose.  Feed is a cautionary tale about a society where the computers are linked directly to the brain at a very young age.  Instead of being used for "good and betterment" it functions just like any computer does today.  It is a vehicle for advertisements and social interaction.   It is just like, you know, having Facebook(tm) in your head ALL THE TIME, you know...  

The book is in the "young adult" section of the book store and I initially took the dumbed down language of the eighteen year old main character to be just that, the inner monologue of an eighteen year old.  But, I quickly learned that everyone spoke, like you know, like that and tthat M.T. Anderson knew what he was doing..  Everyone spoke the same, you know language, from the president down to the janitor.  

As I progressed through the book, I realized that there is a very deep subject here, and that is the dumbing down of the individual in the face of all the social media out there.  It really struck close to home.  In the world M. T. Anderson creates, every time a School or Cloud is mentioned it has a trademark symbol around it.  In this world, schools are corporate subsidiaries and clouds are a product.  Considering that this book was written in 2002, well before most of the social media addictions started, it hit very close to home.   

The back cover description nailed it fairly well saying this follows in the footsteps of Orwell, Burgess and Vonnegut, but I would say the biggest shoe it is trying to fill is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. 

This was a really good book and I would recommend it to most anyone.

BOOK REPORT: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson

Title:       The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories

Author:                      Robert Louis Stevenson 

Original Copyright Date:             various

Original Publishing Date:  2009 (for this collection)

My Rating:             3.5 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Back Cover Description:
Idealistic young scientist Henry Jekyll struggles to unlock the secrets of the soul. Testing chemicals in his lab, he drinks a mixture he hopes will isolate—and eliminate—human evil. Instead it unleashes the dark forces within him, transforming him into the hideous and murderous Mr. Hyde.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dramatically brings to life a science-fiction case study of the nature of good and evil and the duality that can exist within one person. Resonant with psychological perception and ethical insight, the book has literary roots in Dostoevsky’s “The Double” and Crime and Punishment. Today Stevenson’s novella is recognized as an incisive study of Victorian morality and sexual repression, as well as a great thriller.

This collection also includes some of the author’s grimmest short fiction: “Lodging for the Night,” “The Suicide Club,” “Thrawn Janet,” “The Body Snatcher,” and “Markheim.”

My Thoughts

This was an interesting collection of stories by Robert Louis Stevenson.  I should have read this before Halloween as all of them are macabre tales. 

"Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is a novella which I've heard about all my life, but had never read.  I guess a topic so well known  can easily lead to hyped expectations.  It was a good story, although, not as good as Stevenson's other works.  I can see the parallels to Crime and Punishment alluded to in the back cover descriptions, and Stevenson even makes reference to Dostoevsky's works in the work. 

"Lodging for the Night"  tells the story of a cold night turned bad in a small hut where a game of cards leads to a stabbing and the main character venturing out into the night to get away from the scene and tries to find shelter.

"The Suicide Club" is actually three related short stories which follows Prince Florizel of Bohemia and his adventures infiltrating a suicide club.  a place, where for 40 pounds, you play russian roulette. but instead of a bullet, you pull cards.  Whomever pulls the ace of spades is the target, if you pull the ace of clubs, you must be one who kills.  I thought these stories were great.  According to the preface, Robert Louis Stevenson wanted to recreate the "Thousand and One Arabian Nights" and created a collection of short stories in that vein. The Suicide Club is part of that collection.

"Thrawn Janet" was a difficult story to read.  It is essentially a campfire horror story told by a drunk scotsman in the 1700's in his native dialect.  I never had to look so many words up, including "Thrawn" which means crooked or twisted. 

"The Body Snatcher" is a story of a young doctor's apprentice who's main task is to collect bodies for the anatomist.  Most of the bodies brought to him are in the middle of the night in suspicious circumstances.  This story did lead to a new personal goal.  Not only do I need "Gentleman Adventurer and Philanthropist" on my future business cards, but "Bon Vivant" needs to be added.  It means, "A person with refined taste, especially one who enjoys superb food and drink."

"Markheim" is a short story about a man who kills a pawn shop owner on Christmas morning to rob him and his personal crisis which comes thereafter.  This story is very similar to Crime and Punishment, on 400 pages shorter. 

All in all, it was a good set of stories, but it took me longer to read than expected.  

Now, in the style of Robert Louis Stevenson, " Let me profit my idleness, and make haste on my next verse"

BOOK REPORT: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Title:       The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Author:                           Stieg Larsson

Original Copyright Date:     2008

Translated to English by:   Reg Keeland

My Rating:         2 out of 5 stars  ( meh )

Would Recommend to a friend?: not really

Back Cover Description:

A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.

It is about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. 

It s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet s disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism, and an unexpected connection between themselves.

My Thoughts:

This book report is brought to you by Apple Computers, in association with Canon.

This was a crime drama that fell a bit flat.  It was a quick read, and had the potential to be a gripping thriller, but it  never materialized as well as I thought it could. It was fairly predictable, with a couple of decent twists.  Was I entertained?  Mostly. But I can't say I would recommend it without reservations. The crimes committed were gruesome, although most happened well before the two intrepid heroes are on the case.  The suspense doesn't really start until well over 100 pages in the book and the climax occurs with about 80 pages remaining and the denouement was cliche.  The whole thing came across as a episode of scooby-doo directed by Quentin Tarantino.  

On a side note, I was very annoyed with the product placement in the book.  It was like watching a movie where you can obviously see that Coke is the primary sponsor with the product placed conspicuously throughout scenes and the label always facing the camera. My ebook copy had to be returned to the library, so I can't dig up quotes to demonstrate it, but to paraphrase, "She stole his Dell pc laptop and copied the hard drive to her Macbook pro.  Salander then turned on her iPod, an mp3 player the size of a matchbook, and went to work on the images from the night in Photoshop, played with the contrast settings until she could make out the "Visit some place in Sweden" bumper sticker on the blue Volvo S90 Hatchback"

A few character questions remain, to be answered in the remaining books of the series.  I don't know if I will read them.  Maybe I will once I separate my self a bit from this one.  Like I said, it is a quick read and I was mostly entertained.  If I am getting close to the deadline, with my book count a bit low, I might consider it.

BOOK REPORT: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Title:                    Huckleberry Finn

Author:                Mark Twain (Samual Clemens)

Original Copyright Date:         1885

Would Recommend to a friend?: Yes

Back Cover Description: 

Floating down the Mississippi on their raft, Huckleberry Finn and Jim, a runaway slave, find life filled with excitement and the spirit of adventure. Join Huck and Jim and their old friend Tom Sawyer as they come up against low-down thieves and murderers, whilst being chased by Huck's evil, drunken father who is after Huck's treasure. It is a trip that you will never tire of.

My Thoughts:

I was amazed at the complexity of Huckleberry Finn; it went well beyond my expectations. I was expecting an adventure story following a boy riding down the Mississippi River, getting into all sorts of scrapes and near-misses caused by Huck's "boys will be boys" attitude;  I was expecting Treasure Island or King Soloman's Mines. What I got was literature in every sense of the word.  Slavery, Race, Religion, are just some of the themes that even a non-english major can pick out.

I was shell-shocked by the bluntness of language used by Mark Twain when I read some of the passages. For example, the following occurs when Jim (the runaway slave) and Huck have been on the river for a few days is as simple of an explanation of how Huck saw slavery that is, to me, completely unfathomable today:

"Jim Talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an Ab'litionist to go and steal them.

    It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, 'give a nigger an inch and he'll take and ell.' Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children -- children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm."

The passage also demonstrates one of the themes that struck me the most. that despite being an orphan most of his life, an outsider who doesn't want to fit into Miss Watson's normal life with schoolin' and churchin', with a drunk abusive father showing up to take advantage of  Huck's fortune outlined in Tom Sayer, he still thinks about slavery as just the way things were, and asks himself why he is helping Jim. Huck wrestles with what is deemed to be normal and right throughout the book. It doesn't take Huck long to realize that the right thing to do is to help Jim, even though his reasoning isn't quite as strong as, "Slavery is bad and I should do what I can to stop it."

"... and I see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's little, ain't got no show -- when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on, --s'pose you'd a done right and give Jim up; would you feel better than what you do now? No, says I, I'd feel bad --I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't  no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?"

and further, as Huck and Jim travel on down the river a ways, we see his internal conflict grow from a selfish motivation to keep moving down the river with Jim to a religious one as things get a bit more difficult.
The following quote has Huck praying to "quit being the kind of boy he was, and be better".  Better in terms of what was again, deemed to be normal and right...

"So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie-- and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie-- I found that out."

He thinks that by not turning in Jim, people would consider it a sin; that to not live "right", he was committing a sin. But the bigger sin to Huck is not being honest and true to himself.

A few years from now, I would like to read Huckleberry Finn again to try and get more from it.  I have no doubt that this book will offer me something more.