The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

I took a break from my current read, Traffic, in order to read this book: Dashiell Hammett's classic murder mystery, The Thin Man, which is the One Book, One Denver selection for 2008.

I was surprised not only by how much I loved this book, but by the fact that I've managed to never read it before. First of all, I love period novels like this, and The Thin Man is rich with 1930s culture. You can almost hear their voices in your head when you read the dialogue; and at least in my head, they sounded just like characters out of an old 1930s movie.

One thing you'll notice in The Thin Man is that they are constantly drinking. The story takes place in New York City during Prohibition, and since it was written by someone who lived in New York City during this time, I guess it's probably a pretty accurate picture of big-city American culture during this period.

Besides being a delightful piece of 1930s culture, The Thin Man is also a very well-written murder mystery. The book is short but compelling, and Hammett ties up all the loose ends quite nicely.

Of course, now I have to watch the movie, which came out the same year (1934). I'm really looking forward to it!

To Dance with the White Dog by Terry Kay

Last night I finished reading To Dance with the White Dog, by Terry Kay.

I came across this book in an interesting way. Around Christmas I was chatting with my sister's boyfriend's mother, telling her about our dog, Grace. One of Grace's claims to fame is that she is the biggest, prettiest, whitest American white shepherd we've ever seen on our walks. That reminded my sister's boyfriend's mother about a book she'd read, To Dance with the White Dog, and she recommended it to me.

I don't think Grace is a ghost dog (even if she does resemble the descriptions of White Dog in the book), and I wasn't really picturing her as the dog in the book, but I did really like the book. The old man is pretty spunky, and his escapades — faking out his daughters to make them worry, wearing a mismatched suit to the bank, etc. — made me laugh out loud. (His daughters are a little annoying, too, so they deserved it.)

It took me a while to realize it, but the story takes place in the mid-seventies, even though the book was published in 1990. I found it interesting to hear about the main character's past, to realize that many of the memories described in the book were from the early 1900s. The book doesn't come right out and state the year until towards the end, but it mentioned the old man's age at one point and drops a few more clues periodically to help you figure it out.

I think it's also interesting to know that To Dance with the White Dog is based on the story of Terry Kay's own mother and father. The death of his mother, and the appearance of White Dog, all happened in his family like they did in the book. Of course, the book is told as a fictional story separate from the author, of which I think he did an excellent job.

This is a wonderful book, and I shouldn't be surprised if it is "rediscovered" someday as a classic of American literature.

The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing

I recently finished Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing, and it was easily one of the darkest and most depressing — and yet most riveting — books I've read lately.

Before Lessing received the Nobel Prize for Literature earlier this year, I don't think I'd even heard of her — a shame, considering my English degree and my appreciation for feminist literature.

I put library holds on several of Doris Lessing's books, and The Grass is Singing was the first I got. It took me a few weeks to get to it, but once I started reading I couldn't stop: I finished the book in just a couple of nights, despite all the holiday activity.

The Grass is Singing is one of those books that sweeps you along, until you find that what was initially not all that compelling suddenly won't let you go until you've seen it through to the end.

Here are my two strongest impressions:

* The book isn't really a love story as the NPR article suggests, rather one of despair. You know from the first paragraph of the first page that the main character, Mary, is murdered. Most of the book is about Mary's slow collapse, a breakdown caused by poverty, solitude, and the downright neglect of her mind. (There's something of the feminist writer in there, too, since it's the shift to confinement from a life of total independence that causes Mary's unhappiness and eventual madness.) It isn't until near the end that the "love affair" comes into play, and even then it doesn't seem like love. In fact, what it seems like is both manipulation and co-dependence existing at the same time, which cannot end except in tragedy — most likely a metaphor for the racist divisions in Rhodesia at the time, actually.

* I've never disliked a main character so much, yet still been so compelled by her story. Being a writer, I know that compelling main characters are flawed. This goes beyond simple flaws, though. Mary is downright distasteful: She is cruel to her native servants, snappish with her husband, and ill-suited for dealing with poverty. Yet at the same time, you are made to understand why she is like this, and to empathize — to a certain extent — with her: She gives up comfort and independence for a poor housewife's life, and then is forced to watch her husband's repeated failures to generate a respectable income. And when you realize you still don't like her, no matter why she is like she is, you also realize that you want to find out how, exactly, she got from this life of despair to being murdered.

This is not a happy or uplifting book. It is dark and somewhat depressing, and if you tend to immerse yourself in a book when you read, you will most definitely be affected by its mood. After finishing The Grass is Singing, I knew I had to read something lighthearted — which I will blog about next.

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

I read H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds for a book review that is upcoming (I'll link to it when it's live). I'd read The Time Machine earlier this year, so I was eager to read another of his books.

Unfortunately, I found The War of the Worlds much less interesting in the beginning. The Time Machine hooks you early on, because the story is told to the narrator after the time traveler has already returned from his travels — in other words, you already know that he has an exciting story to tell, because of the condition he is in when he returns.

The War of the Worlds is told in a different manner: The narrator tells primarily of his own experiences, with a middle section of the book being about his brother's experiences (though not narrated by his brother). I personally thought the story started off rather slow, though it did pick up about halfway through. Still, there was something about it that always made me drowsy — and it isn't often that it takes me a full week to get through a book that short!

Interestingly, although many of the details of the book were changed in Hollywood's recent version of the movie &mash; for instance, the narrator's wife exchanged for two kids and a bad relationships with an ex — many other details were kept the same. An example that really stood out to me was the similarity of the endings and why the aliens failed in their invasion. The parts of Wells's book that formed the strongest basis for the movie were the meat of the story, which I think speaks highly of the author's ability to create believeable sci-fi.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is another book that I checked out of the library in honor of Banned Books Week about a month ago. Thankfully, I have enjoyed this one much more than the last one I read, Beloved.

Although In Cold Blood is a highly researched account of a real murder and trial, it is told in story form. Capote gets you into the killers' heads, which is quite a feat in and of itself. He also weaves real sources into his telling of the story: letters, statements, and other documents. Although he does not say specifically who he interviewed, he also makes a reference in the beginning of the book to certain interviewees, without whom the book could not have been written (or at least, not so completely).

I seem to remember classmates reading this book, possibly even in high school, but somehow I never read it until now. Being a literature major, I'm actually quite shocked that I never did. I have to say that I think this is one of the masterpieces of modern literature, and well worth the time it takes to read it.

The Member of the Wedding, by Carson McCullers

I heard about Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding thanks to NPR: Another author I have read, Augusten Burroughs, reviewed the book on NPR's website.

The book was short and written in a very different style than I am used to, but it was quite good. The narrative is rather sinuous, almost like the stream-of-consciousness narrative style of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (but not as annoying, and with more of a plot!). The main events in The Member of the Wedding take place only over a couple of days, but the narrative is constantly meandering into the past and then returning to the present again, pulling in the back story as it goes along, and weaving it all into one seamless piece.

There is also a fair amount of foreshadowing and suspense regarding the main character, a 12-year-old girl named Frankie, and a soldier that she meets. The hints of what was to come surprised me, as did the outcome of her relationship with the soldier, as I didn't expect a novel published in the 1940s to be so explicit -- I usually think of literature from that period as being rather conservative.

The ending was somewhat startling, too, as it demonstrates the degree of change possible in the attitudes and beliefs of a girl that age. The Member of the Wedding is a pretty accurate and poignant story of what it is like for a girl to be on the verge of adolescence, but still a child all the same.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte

For another book review, I am reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte. This is the second time I have read the book; the first time was for a Women's Literature class my senior year of college.

Having just recently read Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, I am struck by the difference in their writing styles, even more so than I was in college. Charlotte Bronte has a writing style that is much more "preacherly" than her younger sister's; whereas Charlotte takes a long time to get to the point, and often slips into a lecture in her own voice before returning to her character's narrative, Anne is straightforward and honest. Rather than taking "time out" from the story to express her views, Anne instead weaves them into her character's conversations, crafting dialogue that makes her point for her. She also addresses many issues more directly than Charlotte does: For instance, her main character, Helen Graham (the narrator, Gilbert, is primarily a vessel through which Helen's story is told), takes a strong stance against alcohol, and vehemently argues her reasons for teaching her son to dislike it.

In general, I also find that Anne's writing is more easily readable than Charlotte's is. Perhaps because it moves more quickly, or perhaps because of a subtle difference in the language, I find The Tenant of Wildfell Hall much more readable than Shirley, perhaps even than Jane Eyre.

Due to the easier readability of her writing, and the respect I have for the way she uses her fiction to argue a political view, I have to say that I like Anne Bronte's work better than that of her better-known sister, Charlotte.

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

I recently went on a road trip so my future in-laws and finalize our wedding plans, and so I'm a little behind on my book blog.

The first book I finished on the road wasH.G. Wells's The Time Machine. It's a fairly short book, only around 100 pages, so I was surprised by how closely the recent movie actually followed the book. Although I liked the movie better (primarily because there was more detail and therefore more of an elaborate storyline), the book is extremely good as well.

Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte

For another book review, I am currently reading Shirley. This is the second time I have read the book, so I thought I could just skim through it, but it turns out there is a lot I don't remember.

I didn't remember, for one thing, how slow the beginning of the book is. It isn't until a third of the way through the book that Shirley shows up, and until then, the story wavers between interesting and not-so-interesting. However, once Shirley arrives, the pace of the narrative seems to speed up, and the plot becomes more interesting in general.

One of the interesting things about Shirley is that it was published the same year Charlotte Bronte's brother Branwell and sister Emily (author of Wuthering Heights) died. I have heard before that Shirley's character was patterned on Emily. Perhaps Shirley's late appearance in the book was because Charlotte was moved by her sister's illness to immortalize Emily in fiction.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

Amazingly, with all of my literature background, and with all of my fascination with Anne Rice's vampire novels, I've never read Bram Stoker's Dracula. I'm now reading the book at last for a book review I'm writing for About.com's Classic Lit site.

I've been surprised by how interesting the book really is. Even though it was written during the height of the Victorian era, the book doesn't seem Victorian at all. The narrative style - the character's journal and letters used to piece together a story in the first person from multiple points of view - is pretty typical of the era, though. (Case in point - Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, etc.)

Of course, the narration is a little wordy at times, but it's still an amazingly dark (and sexual, in parts!) story for the time period.

The Little Book of Plagiarism, by Richard A. Posner

Who better to write a book about plagiarism than a judge?

Actually, I'm rather impressed. Richard A. Posner's The Little Book of Plagiarism is surprisingly short and to the point. Really. It's only about 100 pages long.

For being so short, though, it's chock-full of information. He starts out talking about the scandalous Kaavya Viswanathan case, where a young chick lit author from Harvard was found to have plagiarized substantial material in her book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. The book was quickly withdrawn.

I'm only 30 pages into the book (although that is, of course, nearly a third of the way through it). So far, the book has been a pleasant but information-packed ramble into the realm of plagiarism: what it is, how copyright infringement differs, and who has committed these literary crimes. Not even the phenomenon of "paper mills" - companies which hire writers and produce term papers for lazy students - escapes his analytical eye.

This should be an enjoyable - albeit brief - read.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

I am currently reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island for the first time since probably middle school. I'd forgotten much of the story - most of what I knew about it was from Disney's Treasure Planet (one of my favorite Disney animated movies), as sad as that may seem.

I knew that Treasure Planet, despite being adapted for a futuristic setting, drew a lot of its characters and elements from Stevenson's novel. I hadn't remembered how much of it had come directly from the novel, though. In fact, most of the book is translated into movie form in some shape or form: the sailing ship becomes a space ship, the island becomes a planet, and the marooned sailor Ben Gunn becomes a crazy robot. The names and places stay the same: the Jim Hawkins and his mother, the Benbow, Billy Bones, Long John Silver, the mutiny, etc.

In other words, anyone who loved the action and adventure of Treasure Planet is bound to enjoy Treasure Island. Robert Louis Stevenson knew what he was doing when he crafted boys' adventure novels, that's for sure!

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

The last time I read Walden was about almost five years ago, in an American Literature class in college. I'm reviewing it now for a lit site that I am contributing to, and I decided that I should probably reread it in order to write the best review.

I had forgotten how dry Thoreau's writing could be, and how little he thought of society. He spends a great deal of time criticizing people for placing so much importance on clothes, fancy houses, and many other living expenses that he deems unnecessary. In fact, Walden is entirely based on Thoreau's premise that one doesn't have to have lots of clothes, or a big house, or indeed even spend the majority of his life working. Walden is more than just a book about living closer than nature - it's about a return to a simpler style of living.