Rachel's comment on my post about my reading list made me feel very narrow-minded to focus so exclusively on 20th century novels written in English. Jane Austen wrote some nice stories, after all (or so Rachel tells me). I have thus attempted a new method of coming up with a good reading list that will keep me busy in my new bridge-free (and Katie-ful) life. I am still working on the list (I'll share it eventually), but I have already started reading books from it.
I've also decided to blog book reports about the books I'm reading. I delight in lots of things as I read, and I think some of them might be interesting to a general readership. I'm going to try to avoid being very didactic. (I might have gone a bit overboard in talking about my recent art viewing expidition, for example.)
Robinson Crusoe was written by Daniel Defoe in 1719. The book is heralded by some scholars as the very first novel ever written, but that seems subject to much debate and does not greatly interest me. I just like reading good stories.
I found the book quite enjoyable with the one caveat of needing to get over Defoe's prose style. He is fond of incredibly long and agonizingly convoluted sentences replete with dependent clauses. Here's a very typical sentence (at the start of chapter two):
The prose style was very distracting to me at first, but I became quickly inured. And I still think it's much more readable than your typical Shakespeare play.
The bulk of this adventure story is how poor Robin Crusoe is shipwrecked on a desert island and how he survives by his wits and cleverness for eight-and-twenty [sic] years. His struggles include not only being able to provide enough food and shelter for himself, but also to prevent himself from going mad (which plays out in internal struggles regarding fate and the nature of Providence). These two themes provide quite engrossing tension that drives the narrative.
I have moved from Robinson Crusoe to E. M. Forster's A Room with a View (1909). I'm only on chapter two, but it appears to be about two women from England vacationing in Italy. One of the two women is walking through Florence with another female companion when they take a wrong turn. "What are we to do?" decries one. "Two lone females in an unknown town. Now, this is what I call an adventure." The stark contrast (from Crusoe's 28-year-long adventure trying to survive on his island) caused me great mirth.
I've also decided to blog book reports about the books I'm reading. I delight in lots of things as I read, and I think some of them might be interesting to a general readership. I'm going to try to avoid being very didactic. (I might have gone a bit overboard in talking about my recent art viewing expidition, for example.)
Robinson Crusoe was written by Daniel Defoe in 1719. The book is heralded by some scholars as the very first novel ever written, but that seems subject to much debate and does not greatly interest me. I just like reading good stories.
I found the book quite enjoyable with the one caveat of needing to get over Defoe's prose style. He is fond of incredibly long and agonizingly convoluted sentences replete with dependent clauses. Here's a very typical sentence (at the start of chapter two):
That evil influence which carried me first away from my father's house - which hurried me into the wild and indigested notion of raising my fortune, and that impressed those conceits so forcibly upon me as to make me deaf to all good advice, and to the entreaties and even the commands of my father - I say, the same influence, whatever it was, presented the most unfortunate of all enterprises to my view; and I went on board a vessel bound to the coast of Africa; or, as our sailors vulgarly called it, a voyage to Guinea.
The prose style was very distracting to me at first, but I became quickly inured. And I still think it's much more readable than your typical Shakespeare play.
The bulk of this adventure story is how poor Robin Crusoe is shipwrecked on a desert island and how he survives by his wits and cleverness for eight-and-twenty [sic] years. His struggles include not only being able to provide enough food and shelter for himself, but also to prevent himself from going mad (which plays out in internal struggles regarding fate and the nature of Providence). These two themes provide quite engrossing tension that drives the narrative.
I have moved from Robinson Crusoe to E. M. Forster's A Room with a View (1909). I'm only on chapter two, but it appears to be about two women from England vacationing in Italy. One of the two women is walking through Florence with another female companion when they take a wrong turn. "What are we to do?" decries one. "Two lone females in an unknown town. Now, this is what I call an adventure." The stark contrast (from Crusoe's 28-year-long adventure trying to survive on his island) caused me great mirth.
Woo! I influenced someone! Thank goodness it was about books, and not about conquering the world :). I'll be interested in your methodology and your new list ...
ReplyDeleteI've never read Crusoe ... but now I think I might. Sounds like a good read!