Review: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Title: Robinson Crusoe

Author: Daniel Defoe

Pages: 273 (I have an abridged version)

Source: Personal library

Rating: 7/10

Summary (From back of book):

After surviving a terrible shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe discovers he is the only human on an island far from any shipping routes or rescue. At first he is devastated, but slowly, with patience and imagination, he transforms his island into a tropical paradise. For twenty-four years he lives with no human companionship -- until one fateful day, when he discovers he is not alone...


My Two Cents:

I can see why this book is considered a classic. It's got a story that, though fairly rooted in a particular time period, allows people in every generation to relate to it. Defoe's writing is also elegant enough and indicative of his time period that it serves as an example of the way books were written for future generations.

The one thing I'm not so sure of, though, is why this book is looked to as an example of the creation of a utopian society. Crusoe's island is utopian for him, sure, because he has ultimate rule and there is no discord unless introduced from the outside. However, with the introduction of Friday, the native who becomes Crusoe's slave (In a way), that utopia is only a utopia for Crusoe. True, Friday willingly puts himself into Crusoe's service for his saving Friday's life, and Crusoe is a fairly benevolent master, but the moment Friday enters the scene, there's disparity and inequality. Crusoe ceases to do a lot of work simply because Friday is there to do it. He becomes an island version of a man of leisure and allows Friday to take everything on his back. This, to me, is not a utopian society.

Short of the small issue with this book being classified as showing a utopian society and my general dislike of Crusoe for allowing Friday to become his servant (He easily could've said no!), I did enjoy this book. I thought it was a great example of how man can survive when he needs to, even if he doesn't seem to have a lot of skill from the outset.

Review: Mothers and Other Liars by Amy Bourret

Title: Mothers and Other Liars

Author: Amy Bourret

Pages: 288 (I have an ARC, so page numbers might be different in a finished copy)

Source: Publisher for review

Rating: 6/10

Summary (From back of book):

As a runaway teen, Ruby Leander could have never imagined the path that would lead her to an abandoned baby. Fast forward nine years: Ruby and Lark have made a home for themselves in New Mexico with their wonderful community of friends -- life is perfect. Until that one fateful day when Ruby learns the truth about her daughter's past. A truth that will change both of their lives, forever.

My Two Cents:

The thing that shines about this book is Bourret's writing and her ability to develop a character. This book was a very easy read, with some nice, lyrical passages. She also made me care about the characters and what happened to them, which is always the mark of a good writer in my book.

However, I just couldn't get over how coincidental so much of this book was. So many things just happened and were accepted as such. I'm not going to specifically say what, because that would ruin the book for anyone planning to read it, but I just couldn't get past a lot of things. Bourret's dealing with what's probably a big hot-button issue was also a little too Jodi Picoult for me. I guess I should have read the back of the book before diving in, or I would've known she's been compared to Picoult.

The other thing that bugged me, and it's such a little thing I feel kind of silly mentioning it, was that each chapter was only a few pages long. In a 288-page book, there are 117 "chapters." Sure, the short chapters made it easy to put the book down and pick it up again, but I just didn't feel it was necessary to separate every single episode or memory out into its own chapter.

Overall, though, I did enjoy this book, despite my complaints about it. If you are a fan of women's fiction (especially books by Jodi Picoult of Marisa de los Santos), then you'll like this novel.

Review: The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Title: The Hours

Author: Michael Cunningham

Pages: 226

Source: Personal library

Rating: 9/10

Summary (From back of book):

Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, The Hours is the story of three women: Clarissa Vaughan, who one New York morning goes about planning a party in honor of a beloved friend; Laura Brown, who in a 1950s Los Angeles suburb slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home; and Virginia Woolf, recuperating with her husband in a London suburb, and beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway. By the end of the novel, the stories have intertwined, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace, demonstrating Michael Cunningham's deep empathy for his characters as well as the extraordinary resonance of his prose.

My Two Cents:

I saw the movie based on this book during a college course several years ago, and immediately put the book on my "To-read" list. I adore Virginia Woolf, so this book appealed to me for a lot of reasons.

This is definitely a case in which I would recommend reading the book before seeing the movie (Although I always recommend that). The movie and the book are so similar, there were points where I caught myself skimming because I "knew what happened." Not exactly the way I want to read the book.

Cunningham's prose is just gorgeous. One word flows into the next and, before you know it, you've read 30 pages. I love when books completely sweep me away and make me lose track of time. It's easy to see why he won the Pulitzer Prize for this work.

He also does a fabulous job of accurately rendering three really complex female characters without stooping to stereotypes. And it's especially commendable when you consider he even included one major stereotype: A 1950s housewife unhappy with her place in life. I never felt as if I was reading flat characters. I wanted to get to know these women more deeply, especially Virginia Woolf.

Review: The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

Title: The Comedy of Errors

Author: William Shakespeare

Pages: 70

Source: Personal library

Rating: 4/10

Summary:

The Comedy of Errors tells the story of two sets of identical twins that were accidentally separated at birth. Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse, arrive in Ephesus, which turns out to be the home of their twin brothers, Antipholus of Ephesus and his servant, Dromio of Ephesus. When the Syracusans encounter the friends and families of their twins, a series of wild mishaps based on mistaken identities lead to wrongful beatings, a near-seduction, the arrest of Antipholus of Ephesus, and accusations of infidelity, theft, madness, and demonic possession.


My Two Cents:

Wow. It's obvious this was one of Shakespeare's earliest plays. However, even Shakespeare's worst plays are better than other playwrights' best plays.

Even though this piece is short for a theatrical play (Only about 70 pages), it took me a while to get through. I just couldn't get past all the trite dialogue and crazy coincidences. I remember finding the source for this play, Plautus' The Menaechmi, equally difficult to believe. That complete inability to suspend my disbelief, so crucial in theater, is a lot of the reason why I wasn't able to enjoy this play as much as I possibly could have.

Despite my issues with this play, it still is funny. I think it would be much more humorous seen onstage, which was Shakespeare's original intent.

Review: Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom

Title: Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

Author: Harold Bloom

Pages: 745

Source: Personal library

Rating: 9/10

Summary (From Barnes & Noble):

Remember the controversy attending the publication of The Western Canon? Well, hold on to your mortarboards -- critic, scholar, and Falstaffian gadfly Harold Bloom returns with his magnum opus, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Whether deriding the tenets of the so-called "School of Resentment" or trumpeting the 39 plays of William Shakespeare as "the fixed center of the Western canon," Bloom is here at his audacious best, offering a passionate analysis of the ways Shakespeare not only represented human nature as we know it today but actually created it. Infusing literary criticism with an unusual narrative force, Bloom helps us to understand ourselves through literature, revealing "not only of how meaning gets started...but also of how new modes of consciousness come into being."

My Two Cents:

As much as I love Shakespeare biography and criticism, I've shied away from reading any Bloom for years simply because I've heard nothing but how arrogant and pompous he is. And, while I do get that from this book (Honestly, what academic publishing a book isn't somewhat arrogant and pompous?), it didn't distract me from my reading at all.

Bloom certainly knows his stuff. He's read all the plays many times over and has looked for through-lines and connections that casual readers normally wouldn't see. He links Shakespeare's earlier characters with their counterparts from later, completely opposite plays. Some of the connections seemed, to me, a bit of a stretch, but most of his observations were incredibly insightful and had me looking at some of the plays in a completely new light.

His writing is, obviously, somewhat hard to decipher at times. He's an academic who is really fond of the million-dollar words. But, all that is just part of the aura that surrounds Bloom and makes the book just a little more fun to read, I thought. Sure, it was difficult to get through sometimes, and I had to put it down and read something much simpler from time to time, but this book wouldn't be what it was without the overblown language.

If you're a fan of Shakespeare, or just want to read a really long, really in-depth discussion of each of his plays, this is the book for you. But, it's not for the faint-of-heart! 

Review: Warped by Maurissa Guibord

Title: Warped

Author: Maurissa Guibord

Pages: 337

Source: Personal library

Challenges: Debut Author Challenge

Rating: 7/10

Summary (From book flap):

Tessa Brody doesn't believe in magic. Or fate.

But there's definitely something weird about the dusty unicorn tapestry that she discovers in a box of old books. The wild, handsome creature enchants Tessa, and frightens her too.

Soon after the tapestry comes into her possession, strange things begin to happen. Tessa experiences vivid dreams of the past filled with images from a brutal hunt -- one that she herself may have played a part in.

When Tessa pulls a loose thread from the tapestry, she releases a terrible secret. She also meets William de Chaucy, a young sixteenth-century nobleman with gorgeous eyes, an odd accent, and haughty attitude to spare. Will's fate is as inextricably tied to the tapestry as Tessa's is. And although Will might be hard to get along with, he's equally hard to resist.

Together, Tessa and Will must correct the wrongs of the past. But time is running out. The Norn sisters, also known as the Fates, have stepped in and begun to make a tangled mess of Tessa's life. Unless she does their bidding and defeats a cruel and crafty ancient enemy, everything, and everyone, she loves will be destroyed.

My Two Cents:

I struggled a bit with how to review this book. Overall, I liked it, but I had some pretty fundamental problems with the book and its characters, so I couldn't give it a really glowing review.

Guibord's writing flows nicely and the concept she chose for her book is very interesting. It weaves together a lot of legend with modern times, and she didn't choose just any legend. She chose a pretty obscure legend surrounding unicorns. The concept definitely intrigued me and kept me in this book.

Tessa was a character on whom my opinion wavered back and forth. At times, I liked her because she just seemed different from the usual teen protagonist. However, there were times when she was just so... typical ... that I wanted to strangle her. I guess I just didn't have a lot of patience for her throwing fits over her father's girlfriend when there were more important things going on.

My biggest problem with this book, and with a lot of young adult literature, is how quickly Tessa and William "fell in love." Guibord gives a background that they've known one another in a legendary way for centuries, so that's supposed to make their "getting-to-know-you" period a little shorter, but still. I guess I just get a little skeeved out by young adult literature modeling these lightning-fast courtships and head-over-heels loves to girls when that's not really the way a lot of the world works. I just feel as if it sets expectations too high and allows girls to get into the mindset that anything short of perfect, immediate love is not enough for them.

Review: Next by James Hynes

Title: Next

Author: James Hynes

Pages: 308

Source: Twitter win from Little Brown

Rating: 9/10

Summary (From book flap):

Descending on a plane into Austin, Texas, Kevin Quinn is worried about his stifling job, the younger girlfriend he's lucky to have by can't commit to, his rapidly encroaching late middle age, and the terrorist attacks in Europe that rocked the world just days ago. But as the tarmac looms closer, he's really thinking about only one thing: the beautiful young woman in the seat next to him.


Though he should be focused on the job interview that's brought him to Texas in the first place, Kevin can't quite let his luminous seatmate go. He impulsively takes off after her through the city streets in a quixotic and nostalgic journey that evokes scenes from his past: his dodgy love life, recollected in hilariously mortifying detail; the tragicomedy of his youthful idealism; the dysfunctional family he has only ever wanted to escape.

It's a day both common in its anxieties and singular for the fresh possibilities the girl and the interview represent. Then, on the fifty-second floor of an Austin office tower, as he takes the first steps toward what he hopes might be a late-in-life second chance, Kevin is suddenly confronted with a shocking reality about himself, and the age we live in. Perhaps, in the nick of time, he will understand just what happens next.

My Two Cents:

This is one of those books that I went into with interest, but also trepidation. I was worried Kevin would turn into another Rabbit Angstrom, and I didn't know if I could take that. I think it's the fact that the protagonist is so far from my own experience (Male, middle-aged, etc.). But, I was pleasantly surprised.

Hynes' writing had me laughing from the get-go. Kevin's internal monologue as he's sitting on the plane, ruminating about nearly everything under the sun, including the "other Kevin" who perpetrated a terrorist attack in Europe, is solid. It's focused but still has that stream-of-consciousness feel to it, but it's easy enough to follow that you don't feel as if you're reading Joyce or Woolf.

Kevin is just pathetic enough to be a sympathetic character -- He can't find it in himself to settle down with one woman, he hates his current job, he dwells on his past -- but he isn't pathetic enough to be a completely boring character. He's actually really interesting to watch as he moves through an unusual city, wondering why he's doing what he's doing but still continuing on his journey anyway. I liked him more and more as the book progressed, and especially identified with his sense of humor.

While this isn't a big action-packed book, or really a book about a person changing drastically (Until the very end, during a crucial moment), it's still a really interesting read that I'd recommend to anyone who's a fan of modern fiction. I finished it in just a couple days' time because I kept wanting to know what happened.