The Sign of the Four - Arthur Conan Doyle

I'd read The Speckled Band before, but never any other Holmes story. This one was right up my alley with a whole bunch of imperialism stuff.

But even without, it was a fun Holmes story. What made it neat for my reading, and which is why it ended up on my reading list, is because it has an aboriginal in it. He's the one who commits murder and attempted murder, not the Englishman that he's affiliated with, which keeps the white man's hands clean in this one.

So, in this story, Watson goes ga-ga over the woman whose case they're working on, but since she stands to inherit a whole bunch of money, he's depressed because she's way out of his league. Consequently, Watson is delighted when the thief throws the entire treasure overboard during a river chase down the Thames because now he can marry her. Ugh! I realize it fits perfectly with Victorian sentiments about class, marriage, women etc., but I still get disgusted reading that kind of drivel.

Holmes is his typical logical, dramatic, and ennuistic (is that a word?) self though, which of course is meant to counter Watson's realism and is waht the stories are all about. Holmes is why Conan Doyle had to resurrect him, even though he detested the character and didn't wish to write any more Sherlock Holmes stories after the first.

Ulysses James Joyce

Believe it or not, this is my first encounter with Joyce.

It probably won't be my last however, since one of the people who I want on my dissertation committee is teaching a Joyce class this fall which I've asked to sit in on.

If you ask me my overall impression of the book, I would only be able to give you a sense of how it felt to read it rather than a plot since of course there's little plot. In fact, after the first three chapters, I gave up trying to follow the characters' movements through the city and simply enjoyed the language and the way ideas and feelings were conveyed in the text. It certainly was a text where I read large spans of it without caring what was actually happening, just enjoying the prose. Having said that, there were also places where the prose was very difficult, and I prepared myself to some difficulty when I approached the last chapter, thinking that the stream of consciousness-five-pages-per-sentence format might be hard to follow, though it was actually fairly easy, even with the unclear antecedents throughout. I remember reading a short while ago about a writer who was always asking his wife whether his female characters would do certain things, or how they would think, and the article's author stating that no male writer has adequately captured the female mind. I would disagree. Mollie's thoughts as she lies in bed seemed spot on to me.

Glad that I can say I've read this one.

Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

I like Dickens; I've got to admit that at the outset. And Oliver's a pretty likeable kid, even if he lays the big eyes on a bit heavy at times. But there were times during this novel that I found myself wondering what the point of it was.

I like Dickens humor, that sneaks up on you in the midst of such thick description of the place and psychology of his characters, that you're often not expecting it. I also love the way the narrator intervenes to poke fun at characters and those around them. And he does turn a nice phrase.

But I found myself about three quarters of the way through the book wondering what the point of it was. Most Dickens ends up as social commentary, and although there are the portraits of poverty and squalor that are characteristic of Dickens portrayal of the city (one of the things I like about him), this one felt shallow. The story began to strike me as melodramatic, the sort you find in those bad movies where there's not enough dialogue or action between plot points to give you an idea of why a character did a certain thing. You get that the character is mad, but you don't know why. Here too, there seemed to be gaps like that - not big ones, but places where I wondered why some of the characters did the things they did, like why Nancy gave herself away by being so anxious to make her first meeting with Mr. Brownlow, or why Monks was such an ass to Oliver, who he didn't know and could have stayed far away from without worry of interference (I mean, after all, in the end he goes to the new world to spend what's left of his fortune - why didn't he do that earlier and avoid any possibility of Oliver's true parentage being discovered and coming back to haunt him?) Small things, but they really made me feel let down. Perhaps I'll just stick with later Dickens from now on.

The Jungle Book and Just So Stories - Rudyard Kipling

I'd never read Just So Stories before, though I think I'd heard of one or two of them, and The Jungle Book is far more interesting a broader than Disney's version of it.

The Jungle Book has the adventures of Mowgli, but the Disney version only spans the first chapter and an episode in a subsequent one, but Mowgli's adventures in the book also relate how he killed Shere Khan (of course in Disney we just get the episode where he scares him off) and also how he tried to integrate into the village. In the book, Mowgli doesn't fit in with the wolves, or with the people.

But there's also this great story about Rikki Tikki Tavi, a mongoose that kills an entire cobra family, saving a little boy and his family from certain death. Don't you love the words "Rikki Tikki Tavi"? Great name for a lovable mongoose. So imagine my surprise when I watch a movie trailer while I'm still finishing the book in which Billy Bob Thornton tells a kid that it's okay to lie to his dad because he's from rikki tikki tavi or someplace like that! (Bad News Bears remake obviously). Spoiled the deliciousness of the name just a little. But not too much 'cause Kipling's got a real flair for storytelling and I loved Rikki Tikki Tavi (the name and the character).

Just So Stories is a series of "How the Leopard got his Spots" kind of stories, but the interesting part about these is the extent to which the narrator of the stories is engaged with the audience (a child, from the sounds of it). He repeatedly interrupts the narration to explain things, humorously, and in great detail to the child who the story is directed at. He also very humorously, and in great detail again, describes the drawings that accompany the stories, making comments about the limitations of working in B&W and the difficulties of representing things accurately. Very interesting from a narratological perspective.