The Golden Notebook

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing is not a traditional novel.  The author makes this clear upfront by informing the reader that the "frame" of the book is a 60,000 word short story which could stand on its own.  This story is broken into several parts with selections from the protagonist's notebooks in between.  These notebook entries make up the majority of the book.  The run the gamut from newspaper clippings to stories about her life and her friends.  As with most mechanisms employed by authors to be different, as opposed to just telling their story in a traditional but compelling way, I was skeptical.  While I definitely found certain parts of the notebooks tedious, I enjoyed the book overall.

3 Years of Reading

Today marks my completion of three years of doing at least one half hour of reading per day. In the past year, I have read 36 more books comprising 18,358 pages. This brings my total for the three years to 96 books totaling 50,401 pages. I have also finally managed to catch up on my backlog of reviews.

My year three books were:

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson (544 pages)
Darkwalker on Moonshae - Douglas Niles (380 pages)
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter - Carson Mccullers (356 pages)
Black Wizards - Douglas Niles (347 pages)
John Adams - David McCullough (752 pages)
Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon (760 pages)
Darkwell - Douglas Niles (345 pages)
What If - Randall Munroe (314 pages)
The Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller (318 pages)
The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson (1,008 pages)
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin - Erik Larson (448 pages)
Middlemarch - George Eliot (736 pages)
Words of Radiance - Brandon Sanderson (1,088 pages)
Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow (832 pages)
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston (219 pages)
Oathbringer (and Edgedancer) - Brandon Sanderson (1,484 pages)
The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple - Jeff Guinn (544 pages)
The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer (731 pages)
Canticle - R. A. Salvitore (384 pages)
Wright Brothers - David McCullough (336 pages)
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf (248 pages)
In Sylvan Shadows - R. A. Salvitore (320 pages)
The Queen - Sally Bedell Smith (721 pages)
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand (720 pages)
Night Masks - R. A. Salvitore (368 pages)
The Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawande (240 pages)
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (192 pages)
The Fallen Fortress - R. A. Salvitore (368 pages)
Night Trilogy - Elie Wiesel (350 pages)
Finnegans Wake - James Joyce (656 pages)
The Chaos Curse - R. A. Salvitore (384 pages)
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris (257 pages)
A Passage to India - E. M. Forster (368 pages)
Foundation - Isaac Asimov (296 pages)
The Great Escape - Paul Brickhill (304 pages)
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing (640 pages)

The Great Escape

In The Great Escape, Paul Brickhill  details the time spent by him and other Allied air force officers being held by German forces during World War II.  Given the subject matter, it is surprisingly light hearted and comedic.  Having read Unbroken, which tells the story of an American POW in Japan, I was bracing myself for some grim reading.  It does get dark, but it's a fairly small portion of the book.

A Passage to India

A  Passage to India is a novel by E. M. Forster that largely focuses on the tensions that existed between English and Indians living during the British Raj in the 1920s.  I mainly found the book depressing.  That shouldn't be surprising in a book that is mainly portraying an oppressed people having to deal politely with the representatives of their oppressors while often being treated as less than human.  When you add in allegations of sexual assault that certainly doesn't help.  It surprised me, although it probably shouldn't have, that many of the reviews when it came out were critical of how close the relationships were between the English and Indian characters.

Finnegans Wake

While it may have seemed difficult reading at the time, A Clockwork Orange was a model of clarity next to my second (and sadly not my last) James Joyce novel, Finnegans Wake.  Its often described as one of the most difficult works in the English language.  I believe that is intended as an accolade, though it's difficult for me to see it as such.  I might also contest the describing it as a work in the English language.  Before I go further, I'd like to be clear: I get that this book isn't designed to be enjoyed by simply reading through it as one would any other novel, if it's meant to be enjoyed at all.  It's supposed to be difficult and confusing.  I believe the intention is that there is a reward for having spent a hundred or more hours dutifully studying the text and available commentaries to pierce its veil.  This book is included on three of the eleven lists I combined to create my list of classic books, so clearly some people have found that reward.  Personally, I can't imagine it justifying that effort when I could easily spend the same amount of time reading War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, The Count of Monte Cristo, and, just in case I need something that's a challenge to read, A Clockwork Orange and Infinite Jest, including commentaries for both.