Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev

I bought a few second hand books on eBay last week and along with a couple of Ursula K. LeGuin Earthsea volumes and The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, this was amongst them. I hadn’t heard of Turgenev before, but I gather he was one of the three greatest Russian novelists, along with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
Fathers and Sons concerns two young men, the angry nihilist Bazarov and his softer, gentler disciple, Arkady. The two men travel between their parents’ homes and the home of Anna Sergeyevna, and argue about politics and philosophy all the way along, and also both experience love, one happily, one unhappily. Turgenev displays a clear ability with this work but I can’t help wondering if this is not one of his lesser works. I expect Anna Karenina spoiled me!
However I would certainly like to read more of Turgenev’s work, for I did enjoy Fathers and Sons.

Anna Karenina: At Last It’s Finished!

What with distractions and lack of time to spare, it took me about 6 weeks to read Anna Karenina. All 804 pages of it! Enjoyed it almost all the way through; it is such a rich and all-encompassing experience with scenes at Levin’s country estate that reminded me of Thomas Hardy, and the machinations of Moscow and Petersburg Society reminding me of Edith Wharton; more private romantic intrigues reminding me of Jane Austen; three of my favourite novelists. I really did enjoy and savour this novel. I must confess that the birth of Levin’s son Dmitry really made me long to have a child of my own one day, which is a first, I must say! The descriptions of how tender and joyful a relationship Levin’s wife has with the child touched me very deeply indeed, and made me look forward to the time where my own child is laid in my arms for the first time. Even I’m slightly amused at my own response to this – I’ve never really wanted children like this before!

And all was well until Anna’s demise on page 755 and then it fell off drastically with a long exploration of Levin’s religious woes, which bored me silly. It was a shame because I lost interest after that, speed reading the last 50 pages. I don’t think I’ll be reading War and Peace for a while yet, I need a rest!

John Steinbeck x 2

Read Of Mice and Men and it was in one sitting on Saturday night – yes I don’t go out much when my fella’s not around! Really quite moved by it in an odd way, I don’t recall being quite that gripped in a long time. I knew what happened at the end but was still quite surprised by it, George was almost tender before the fatal moment. I guess it was just how it had to be, without giving anything away to those who haven’t read it, but there are some brutal images in this work and I’ve lately come to realise that it’s brutal moments that make the most moving works, and this is something else I need to get into my head and my writing!

Next picked up Cannery Row and read that greedily. Can’t help but admire it, as I’ve got a writing project that would be best described as Cannery Row meets The Shuttleworths. It certainly touches all the right chords in me, I guess I’m just a sucker for tales of a backwater community. I love the simplicity of the scenes, how the characters reacted to each other and I could almost hear an empty tin can rolling around on a slab of concrete. It could have happened her, you know. And maybe it will.

My Invented Country – Isabel Allende

I’ve always had a bit of an interest in South America. Maybe it’s the passions, maybe it’s the colour, maybe it’s the fact that they’re the complete opposite of the English and are at the other end of the Earth, but I’ve read piles and piles of books documenting journeys through South American countries and fiction and poetry… I’m just infatuated.
Lately I came upon a mention of this book, My Invented Country, on Bookcrossing.com and was immediately intrigued. Basically put: Isabel Allende discusses her relationship with Chile, the country of her birth. She crafts a wandering, wondering work of mystical proportions; discussing the influence of her colourful family (in particular, her grandfather) and the times in which she lived as a child. There is no narrative imperative in this work, but all the same, I was enthralled as I learnt about the spirit of the Chilean people and how they’ve come through a veritable patchwork of governments in the last few centuries. And what falls into place as you read, is a rich and vibrant land which the author admits may never have even existed and may simply exist in her mind, due to her lengthy exile from Chile during the Pinochet years. But in bringing her vision of Chile to the reader, she also brings something of herself. Her writing, her imagination, her influences, her spirit and in turn, she makes me want to read more of her works. Undoubtedly an intriguing woman and an intriguing land. Read it today.

Day of the Triffids

x-posted to Intelligent Fiction
In keeping with my idea to have two reads going at once, Anna Karenina and a shorter read so I can keep my reading varied and stop this whole thing of me longing for SF when I’m reading a classic and vice versa – I have just this minute finished John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids.
I must confess to expecting something a bit more “screechy”, more terrorising by the Triffids – they were more a background malevolence that hung around waiting to attack, than in your face and overrunning the farm that ordinary-man hero-narrator Bill and his company of seven (some blind) built up and ran to the best of their abilities. I enjoyed it – it was largely remeniscent of Earth Abides, with the fall of civilisation when almost everyone went blind but I was surprised that the Triffids weren’t more central to the plot, given that they are mentioned in the title.

Unwritten Books

Here’s an intriguing literary project – The Library of Unwritten Books. I was just browsing the BBC News site when I came upon This article. Basically, these two people are going around and asking people on the streets of Britain if there’s a book that they’d like to write and then they conduct a short interview with anyone who says yes. I’m happy to say that my DF novel is still well on the way to not being unwritten, I wrote 600 words this morning for it and it has now passed 20,000 words. Yay!

Anna Karenina – A Little Further

So this morning I noticed that the spine has split on my copy of Anna Karenina. Leaf 251/252 is loose. Or should that be folio? Maybe it’s folio. Anyway, I am so into this novel that it’s amazing! I’m coming up for page 300 and for once, instead of plaintively hoping that the end will come soon, instead I’m just into it and enjoying it and not worrying about how much longer I’ll be reading this book. It’s such a rich and wonderful vastness that I’m enjoying, from politics to affairs of the heart, from the city to the country… really really wonderful, luscious stuff. A true panorama of life in 19th Century Russia. Everyone should read it.

The Yellow Wallpaper

Last night I read The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It was very eerie, and fascinating to watch the rapid decline of the mind of a intelligent woman after the birth of her child. What mischief idleness brings, how we can follow fanciful wonderings when we’re not otherwise occupied. I once read somewhere that it is sometimes good to be idle, but not to be lazy. After reading this story, I find myself wondering if it might be better to be lazy instead!

Latest Acquisitions

At the Village Street Fair, I bought:

• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Liar by Stephen Fry
• Cancer Ward by Alexander Solhenitzyn

Plus an Enid Blyton to sell on eBay, to fund further books! I spent a grand total of £1.90 on these 4. Looking forward to all three, meanwhile Anna Karenina continues apace, I’m completely in it’s thrall now!

Bookcrossing Adventures Day 7

I really need to start releasing books into the wild. I did think about releasing one in my Doctor’s waiting room tomorrow, but I doubt it would get found, seeing as I’m in such a backwater. I’d be better to wait until I get to somewhere bigger, heck even Town is probably a better bet than the village. I think the village church would quite likely be an excellent place to start, though. I could leave something not too blasphemeous on a pew near the back of the church or something. Perhaps the Garrison Keillor, that would probably be OK. I’m not aware that our village church sells secondhand books, but I know the church in the next village does.
I’m hoping to get there again sometime and have lunch in the pub opposite the church, it’s one of my favourite pubs in the local area.