Abandoned Book: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley on the 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers list, and I know I’ve seen it on many other “must-read” lists. I never read it in high school when many people apparently did, so I thought I should give it a go now. But I just cannot.

I’ve listened to three chapters of the audiobook, and I have yet to meet a solid, identifiable character. The dialog is forced and the setting is an unrecognizable scene many hundred years in the future. Huxley has spent three chapters “telling” me about the setting and characters. Thus far, it reminds me very much of Foundation by Isaac Asimov, which I disliked when I read it a few months ago. Continue reading »

How to Read and Why: Short Stories Retrospective

Last June, I had just barely begun book blogging. My reading was beginning to expand beyond my comfort zone (i.e., go to the library and randomly take a book with a pretty cover off the shelf) and into the world of TBR lists. When I read the preface to Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why, I decided I needed to focus my reading. I asked myself the question:

How can I really “read” a book, even fiction, to get something out of it?

I decided to treat Bloom’s book as a textbook as I read through the works on his list, in search of the answer to that question. The How to Read and Why Reading List can be found here; all posts on Rebecca Reads relating to HTR&W can be found on the HTR&W tag.

Since I have now finished the short story portion of the HTR&W challenge, I thought I’d take the chance to revisit the project itself. Continue reading »

Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau

How many times have you reread the same story?

Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau is a collection of the same story, written 99 different ways.

Some of the stories are fascinating retellings in various styles. Some are stereotypes (feminine , cockney, Gallacism, exclamations), some are in different perspectives (past, present, blurb, ignorance), some are different styles (noble, comedy, cross-examination, notation, sonnet, ode), and some are rather odd (dog latin, permutations by groups of letters).

Exercises in Style is short and sweet. It sets out what it was trying to do: show how style can change a story, depending on either the narrator or the particular way of writing. Some of them were a perfect example of the impact of style, while others seemed odd to me. In the end, it was a quick read that gave me ideas for developing my own writing style – and it gave me ideas for fun practice in imitating others and changing voice. Continue reading »

Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

Ficcciones by Jorge Luis Borges is about  170 pages in Spanish; the English translation of the same book is about 120 pages (within Borges’ Collected Fictions). Why, then, has this me taken weeks to get through?

Borges’ writing style is powerful. In some sense, I’m glad I struggled through Borges just to get a feel for his different style. But unlike Nabokov’s powerfully written stories, Borges’ well-written stories are weird. I seriously can’t think of any other word to describe them. I overall did not like them, and I will never read more Borges. Continue reading »

Stories by Edgar Allan Poe

In my mind, Edgar Allan Poe is the most well-known Halloween-ish short story writer. To keep with the season, I reread some of Poe’s short stories. I enjoyed his stories when I was younger – I even rewrote “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a play for my high school’s Halloween “one-act plays.” But to my surprise, I didn’t love Poe’s writing or his stories’ subject matter this time around. Continue reading »

Stories by O. Henry (and Another BBAW Giveaway)

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After reading, in the past months, the short stories of Turgenev, Chekhov, Maupassant, James Joyce, and Hemingway, I found O. Henry‘s stories to be remarkably different. They were refreshingly delightful, poignant, and easy to read, and yet, I was struck by the inferiority of O. Henry’s actual writing in comparison to the others. In the end, though, I think everyone should read some of O. Henry’s stories: they are enjoyable. Continue reading »

Stories by Ernest Hemingway

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Hemingway’s stories are poetry: that is my first and lasting impression of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories. In his short stories, Hemingway treats words as sparsely as do poets.

I don’t usually understand or enjoy poetry because it feels so much must be inferred or interpreted. (After I finish reading the HTR&W short stories, I’m reading a number of poets for my HTR&W personal challenge. I’m a bit nervous.) While reading Ernest Hemingway’s stories, I likewise felt the need to infer and interpret beyond my comfort zone: I didn’t “get” them and I certainly didn’t enjoy reading the few stories I read. While I’ve only read a dozen of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories, I’m finished.

That, however, doesn’t mean you should avoid Hemingway’s stories: they may resonate with you, and you may love his writing style. He does a magnificent job of capturing a scene through dialog. Hemingway is worth reading. Continue reading »

Dubliners by James Joyce

In Dubliners, his collection of short stories, James Joyce captures Irish life, specifically the lives of Dubliners. Each story is a magnificent sketch of the people, setting, and situations; the entire collection presents a variety of such sketches. At the end of each sketch, I felt the despair that I believe Joyce intended to impart in each normal life situation. While each story captures different characters in a various stages of life, similar despair pervades each of their lives in related settings. Continue reading »

Stories by Guy de Maupassant (Introductory Thoughts)

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If Guy de Maupassant lived and wrote stories or novels today, his name would appear on The New York Times best-seller lists many weeks out of a year.

As it was, in the late 1800s, his stories were best-sellers from the time the first one, “Boule de Suif,” appeared in a collection with five other previously unknown authors, until he died, mentally ill, at the young age of 42 in 1893.

But don’t let the best-seller title sway you from reading Maupassant. I tend to avoid modern-day best-sellers because, in my mind, they are (stereotypically) not written very well. But that’s not the case with Guy de Maupassant’s stories: he writes incredibly well. Continue reading »

Literature in Translation

Chekhov’s stories (which I reviewed yesterday) are available free in the public domain via Project Gutenberg, although the translation is different from the one I read. I loved the translation I read! Compare these to passages from “The House with the Mezzanine: An Artist’s Story” to the Project Gutenberg translation. Is there a “better” translation? I think there is. Continue reading »