To Kill a Mockingbird

Book: To Kill a Mockingbird
Author: Harper Lee
Page count: 323
Format: Print, borrowed
Start date: July 13, 2011
End date: July 20, 2011



Thoughts/impressions:

So, the secondary theme of this blog/project seems to be "Books Ashley can't believe she hasn't read already because they're amazing." I think I had a complete and utter misconception of what this book was and it scared me away for years. I really regret not just reading it because then maybe I'd be rereading this amazing book rather than reading it for the first time.

As I've previously stated, I love a book with good characters, and the character of Scout drew me in right away. However, this is really the skill of Harper Lee, because Scout is the type of character I usually wouldn't identify with at all, and actually don't really identify with, but she was so fleshed out and interesting and wonderful that I couldn't stop reading about her and growing with her and I am so amazed with how this character developed in my mind.

Another instance of Harper Lee being amazing is the character of Atticus Fitch. I'm sure if you statistically analyzed the book, Atticus as a person and not an idea in the mind of his children is very rarely found in the pages. However, I love him. I empathize with him. I want to know more and more and more about him and yet I'm not left wanting in regards to his development with what we have.

Finally, I loved how many issues were addressed in this novel without being beaten over the head with them. Obviously, race is a huge part, as well as class, law, growing up, and even love, between family, friends, and maybe more. These ideas are just seamlessly blended into the narrative so that rather than reading like a manifesto or lecture or something similarly dry that needs to be studied, it reads like life and truth.

Quotes:

"Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies." (9)

"Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines about Atticus's moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow - anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." (20)

"Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win." (87)

"I wanted you to see something about her - I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." (128)

"Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we're paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple." (269)

"Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him...if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn't meet his eye, and the day I can't do that I'll know I've lost him. I don't want to lose him and Scout, because they're all I've got." (314)

Progress:
9/100

Ender's Game

Book: Ender's Game
Author: Orson Scott Card
Page count: 323
Format: E-book, Kindle
Start date: June 12, 2011
Finish date: June 13, 2011



Thoughts/impressions:

This may be a bit difficult, because I'm dumb and left this blog post for way too long after reading the book. However, that being said, I loved this book. I remember first hearing about it when I was in 8th grade. We had certain books to chose between and present upon, and Ender's Game was one of those. I obviously didn't read it, but I was very intrigued by my classmate's presentations and I honestly don't know why I didn't read it before now. Still, when I saw it was on the list I was very excited to have the chance to finally read it.

Needless to say, I was not disappointed. This story had so many elements that appealed to me. This edition had a foreword from Orson Scott Card, which was really interesting to read and really shaped the book as one that is about the characters and the effect they have on the readers. Throughout the story, I was engrossed with the character of Ender and finding bits of myself in him, and therefore being driven to consider what I would have done in similar positions. I think that's part of why I read this book so quickly...the character of Ender seemed to real to me and I didn't want to leave him hanging in the balance of the book. I wanted the resolution for him.

There was so much to love about this story: the plot, the characters, the setting, the style of writing. Ah. This is making me want to read the book all over again, and in my mind, that's the mark of a good story.

Quotes:

"It isn't what he did, Mrs. Wiggin. It's why." (19)

"Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against, the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid." (21)

"Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me - to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools." (35)

"Believed, but the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. IT made him wise." (111)

"Well, I'm your man. I'm the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I'm your tool, and what difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need? What difference does it make that when the little serpents killed me in the game, I agreed with them, and was glad." (118)

"With Alai, to a degree impossible even with Shen, Ender had come to feel a unity so strong that the word we came to his lips much more easily than I." (171)

"Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. survival first, then happiness as we can manage it." (277)

"We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he could win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine, as perfect as the buggers. But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn't do it." (297)

"Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you. (313)

Summary in one sentence:
A boy is raised and manipulated into becoming the weapon the human race needs, through his coming of age.

Progress:
8/100

The Sound and the Fury

Book: The Sound and the Fury
Author: William Faulkner
Page count: 427
Format: Print, used
Start date: mid-April, 2011
Finish date: May 31, 2011



Thoughts/impressions:

Well, I suppose that this novel opened my eyes to what a challenge this project will be at times. Originally, The Sound and the Fury was my book for April. Now, I could make (legitimate) excuses about how busy my senior year became and how I had to finish my thesis and didn't have time to read. And, for the most part, that'd be true...except I could have made time to read. I read other books. I just really didn't want to read this book. It's been a long time since a book challenged me like this, and I suppose that's a good thing, but I really had to force myself to get through this to meet the May deadline, let alone the April one.

It almost seems like Faulkner was weeding out the "faint of heart" readers in the juxtaposition of style and format in The Sound and the Fury. The first of four segments is from the viewpoint of Benjy Compson, the mentally-challenged brother of the Compson family. In keeping with his view, grammar comes and goes, dialogue is often indistinguishable from memory and narrative, and the time line jumps all over the place. It was a fight to get through. The next section is only marginally better, from the viewpoint of the second Compson brother, Quentin. Quentin is similarly confusing, because so much of the narrative of his section takes place in his head, with his own conceptions coloring the events. By the time you get to the third section, with the next brother, Jason, it is a huge relief to have a relatively linear narrative, and the story finally begins to make sense after a combination of the three points-of-view.

Once I understood the plot of the narrative, the novel became more enjoyable. I'm glad to have made it through, though I don't think I'll be picking it up to re-read any time soon. It was a good learning experience for this project; for my next book, I think I'll keep notes as I go and try to read a little bit at a time, without getting distracted by other books. Hopefully the next book will capture my imagination at bit more.

Quotes:

"When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said, Quentin, I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools." (93)

"Because Father said clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life." (105)

"They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words." (146)

"It's a curious thing how no matter what's wrong with you, a man'll tell you to have your teeth examined and a woman'll tell you to get married." (311)

"Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets." (359)

"He tramped steadily back and forth beneath the twisted paper and the Christmas bell, hunched, his hands clasped behind him. He was like a worn small rock whelmed by the successive waves of his voice. With his body he seemed to feed the voice that, succubus like, had fleshed its teeth in him. And the congregation seemed to watch with its own eyes while the voice consumed him, until he was nothing and they were nothing and there was not even a voice by instead their hearts were speaking to one another in chanting measures beyond the need for words, so that when he came to rest against the reading desk, his monkey face lifted and his whole attitude that of a serene, tortured crucifix that transcended its shabbiness and insignificance and made it of no moment..." (365)

"Some looked at him as they passed, at the man sitting quietly behind the wheel of a small car, with his invisible life raveled out about him like a wornout sock." (391)

Summary in one sentence:
A story in four parts about how three brothers in a Southern family relate to their sister and how her actions exemplify the decline of their family.

Progress:
__/100

The List

For the record, this is the list I will be following, in no particular order.

1. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
2. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand (read previously)
3. Battlefield Earth, L. Ron Hubbard
4. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (read previously)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
6. 1984, George Orwell (read previously)
7. Anthem, Ayn Rand
8. We the Living, Ayn Rand
9. Mission Earth, L. Ron Hubbard
10. Fear, L. Ron Hubbard
11. Ulysses, James Joyce
12. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
13. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. Dune, Frank Herbert
15. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein
16. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
17. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
18. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
19. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
20. Animal Farm, George Orwell
21. Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
22. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
23. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
24. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell (read previously)
25. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
26. Shane, Jack Schaefer
27. Trustee from the Toolroom, Nevil Shute
28. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Stand, Stephen King
30. The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
31. Beloved, Toni Morrison
32. The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison
33. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (finished 5/11)
34. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
35. Moonheart, Charles de Lint
36. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
37. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
38. Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor
39. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
40. Fifth Business, Robertson Davies
41. Someplace to be Flying, Charles de Lint
42. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
43. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (read previously)
44. Yarrow, Charles de Lint
45. At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
46. One Lonely Night, Mickey Spillane
47. Memory and Dream, Charles de Lint
48. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
49. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
50. Trader, Charles de Lint
51. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
52. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
53. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
54. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
55. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
56. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
57. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
58. Greenmantle, Charles de Lint
59. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
60. The Little Country, Charles de Lint
61. The Recognitions, William Gaddis
62. Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
63. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
64. The World According to Garp, John Irving
65. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
66. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
67. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
68. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
69. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (read previously)
70. The Wood Wife, Terri Windling
71. The Magus, John Fowles
72. The Door into Summer, Robert Heinlein
73. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
74. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
75. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
76. At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien
77. Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
78. Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis
79. Watership Down, Richard Adams
80. Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
81. The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy
82. Guilty Pleasures, Laurell K. Hamilton
83. The Puppet Masters, Robert Heinlein
84. It, Stephen King
85. V, Thomas Pynchon
86. Double Star, Robert Heinlein
87. Citizen of the Galaxy, Robert Heinlein
88. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
89. Light in August, William Faulkner
90. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
91. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
92. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
93. Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
94. My Antonia, Willa Cather
95. Mulengro, Charles de Lint
96. Suttree, Cormac McCarthy
97. Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock
98. Illusions, Richard Bach
99. The Cunning Man, Robertson Davies
100. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie

The Project

The Date: Mid March, 2011
The Setting: My apartment bedroom
The Mood: Contemplative

It was just your average day in March when I decided to start a project that could last as long as eight years. Obviously, this journey would need to be chronicled. Hence, this blog.

I suppose it might be helpful to provide a little background on myself for those of you who haven't read one of my other blogs. I am currently a senior at Texas Christian University, though I will graduate in May and move on to bigger and better things that are as of yet undetermined. I double majored in Art History and English, which basically means that I read and write more than any sane person would ever want to. Still, I love it. I've loved reading since I was young and first read "Danny and the Dinosaur" by myself. Since then, my love of reading has been encouraged by my parents, who gave me books as rewards and took them away as punishment; by teachers, who challenged me to read new and challenging things; and by the books themselves, which were constantly revealing new lessons and characters to learn from.

Anyways, back to the project. I had recently come into the possession of a reading journal, which is in and of itself quite the aesthetically pleasing object. I was entering my first book into the journal (C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, if you wanted to know), and I decided to look at the back of the journal. The back holds numerous lists of books that have one various awards, are bestsellers, that everyone should read, etc. Just for curiosity's sake, I started marking off which books I had read.

Now, I am a very very very prolific reader. I'm sure the librarians of my childhood thought I was the oddest child ever, since on my basically bi-weekly visits I would inevitably leave with a stack of books about ten high ranging from historical fiction to mythology to biology to children's literature to languages and just about everything in between. I have a lot of books. I've read a lot of books. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that, on the list of The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, I had only read three of these books. That's right. Three.

Obviously, this would not do. I needed a plan. I needed to read this books. But how? With school, I haven't had a lot of time for 'fun' reading in the past few months. So, expecting more than one book a month when I'll likely be in grad school for a few years is a bit much. So, at least one book a month. There are 97 books I need to read, and one book a month, twelve months in a year....oh dear. Eight years. I don't know if I've done anything for eight years, except band, and I was always switching instruments so that doesn't seem to apply. It will certainly be a triumph if I succeed, and I intend to. I also plan on reading more than a book a month, so hopefully this won't actually take me eight years.

So, in summary:
The Project: Read every book on The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list
The goal: At least one book a month
The timeline: Up to eight years (yikes)

Please, follow me to keep track of my journey! I'll be reviewing each book when I finish and keeping track on here...there will probably also be quotes and trivia and miscellaneous fun, because that's how I roll. You could even read along with me!

Happy reading,
Ashley