AHHHHHH

Okay, I am reading UNDER THE VOLCANO, by Malcolm Lowry and I am so confused. I am going to have to get a piece of paper and figure out these characters. I thought I knew what was happening and maybe the opening is just throwing me off. I finally got to a place where it is starting to make some sense but who is M. Laruelle? He is talking in the first chapter as if he is the one who lost Yvonne, but he also talks of the Consul. If I read the back cover on the book, I get a sense of who is who, but the first pages get me confused on the characters and their importance. More later, I guess I should read this when I am fully awake and not before I am going to bed. All will be sorted in the end, I hope.

Foreign Language

It seems that every book I have read, has incorporated a foreign language component. In LOLITA and BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, it was French. That has been the case for most books written by British and some American writers. In UNDER THE VOLCANO, I will be brushing up on my Spanish. But here is the funny part, my humor, we are also speaking broken English and I mean really broken English. So broken that I had to reread the dialogue twice in the first few pages. I have heard dialogue with broken English at the movies, but this is worse. I will have to see when it was written, if the author traveled to Mexico, and see if I can figure out who he is imitating in this dialogue. More later, just thought it was interesting. I wonder in order to be a great novel do you have to incorporate a foreign language and not interpreted it for the reader. I am glad I had three years of French it has helped immensely to decipher the passages.

Back to reading.

OOPS

I forgot I had one other book to read. I have read these last couple of books so fast that  I will attempt to do another one for the month of June. I have in paperback form, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. Both look they could be read in two weeks. Flight Behavior has been requested from the library and Ulysses is on my kindle. I plan to read Ulysses while I am exercising on an elliptical machine so, I think my brain is going to possibly explode with words. I do know that I will have to be careful while reading Tropic of Cancer, as I would not like a picture of a naked lady to fall out of my purse in church. Deciding on which to start first Under or Tropic, I will probably read the first few pages to see where my mind wants to go. Have a fantastic June.

Review: Brideshead Revisited

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, by Evelyn Waugh, copyright 1944/1945 and then Laura Waugh made a renewed copyright in 1972/1973. My book was published by Back Bay books which looks to be a division of Little Brown and Company. The cover page says that is a companion to the PBS television series, so I might have to watch it.  This is a book that starts in the 1940's because WWII is happening and Evelyn Waugh was recuperating in the Chagford and writing this book.

The book starts off with the narrator of the story Charles Ryder coming with his unit to Brideshead, where they are to set up camp. This gets him to remember the past and the people who lived at Brideshead. The Flyte family is a well-to-do family of four children, an estranged father who does not live at either of the properties and his wife who is very pious. Charles is introduced to this family through college, Sebastian Flyte becomes one of his college friends. It is interesting because there is very much more than a casual relationship between the two men.

We see multiple relationships and alliances, dissolution of the same and the feeling that all is not right with any of the characters. It is a nice historical piece written at the time of conflict. I am amused by the feeling you get as we got closer to the actual time line of Charles Ryder, the belief that the war would not come to much, followed by Germany not having enough money to wage war, followed by the bombings and still the feeling that it was happening to others. An interesting perspective.

It was a pretty fast read and the characters are intricately woven, I may have to look up some of his other books. History and relationships fascinate me.

What is on my book plate?

I have started BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh and should be done by the end of the month, I love smaller books. I also have in my possession, TROPIC of CANCER and ULYSSES so they will probably be my July books. I think is appropriate since Cancer is the astrological sign for July. I know it is a stretch. For book club I will be reading FLIGHT BEHAVIOR by Kingsolver, so I will have to see how far I get with the other two books. Have fun reading this summer.

Review: Lolita

LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov, published in France in 1955 and not until 1958 by the Putnam Publishing group. My book was published June 1997, Vintage Books a division of Random House. I must say I have a love hate relationship with this book. I hate the book because of the subject matter, I love the book because of how it was written.

You can tell that Vladimir was a poet because of the prose in the book, his use words and not graphic detail to talk about how Humbert Humbert and Lolita interacted. You knew what was happening without being hit over the head with the act. The story goes into the mind of a man obsessed with what he calls nymphets. He is blinded by his own desires that he does not see that it is a one-sided affair.

In the book towards the end of the story our narrator Humbert Humbert says that he did not want his story released until Lolita and he had passed, because he did not want her harmed by the book. Humbert suggests that the time of release would be around 2000. This is interesting to me because I feel that we have been inoculated with all sorts of criminal behavior. However, having said that I recently read that this book was made into a play with the girl character being older and still it was not well received. This subject is touched on by many of the shows we see and it always makes me cringe. So why was I able to read this book.

I almost stopped at part one in the book, just like many of the publishers who rejected the book. But I decided to carry on, simply because I wanted resolution in the book. What happens to the characters are they stuck in this relationship forever, does she ever get rescued, does anyone ever find out? All these questions plagued me as I read, and he talked of murder in the beginning without saying who, so I needed to find that out. It is so well written that there were times I felt some sympathy for Humbert Humbert, before coming back to the fact that he put himself in this position because of his predilection for nymphets.

In the back of the book Vladimir talks about what drove him to write this book. He said he wrote a short story in France after reading a story about an ape who was kept behind bars, who scientist trained to produce a sketch. The sketch the ape produced was the bars of his cage. That is how Lolita must have felt, if she did what Humbert wanted she got a treat, movie, tennis, party, but if she did not follow the rules she was not allowed to do anything outside of the house.

A good book that I would recommend for adults. The subject matter is off putting and trying to understand the psychology is just too complicated for younger readers, in my opinion.

Review: The Diary of Mattie Spenser

THE DIARY OF MATTIE SPENSER, by Sandra Dallas was published in 1997 through St. Martin's Press in New York. As the name suggests this is diary entries by a woman who is traveling as a newlywed to the Colorado Territories. The book is found in a small chest in the home of her granddaughter who is getting ready to move into a nursing home. Her friend decides to read the book and make a computer generated copy for Hazel. We go through the hardships, friendships and daily living on an unsustainable land.

Mattie is married at the last minute to a man who had been courting another woman. His proposal is matter of fact and is about as romantic as a watching cement dry. There are Indian attacks, death of friends and children, betrayal, unexpected romance and the hardening of the heart.  This is all wrapped up in a 229 page book. It was a book that I did not want to put down, because I was rooting for Mattie as I became caught up in her life. The journal is written from 1865 to 1869, when Mattie decides not to write anymore about her life.

It took two days to read and if you want some history and some feeling of the wild west, then I suggest you might want to read this book. At last a book that did not take a month to finish.