Reading While Being Ill - 2009-01-28 15:04:45
<<< Previous - Random Linkage! Because I am Themeless! | Next - Demon Cat! And Photo Outing Day >>>One of the only good things about being sick is getting caught up on reading. Except of course I never do that - when I'm sick I grab something I've already read and enjoyed and reread it. That way if I nod off it's not such a big deal, I know how things end. Or if I really need to be lulled to sleep I usually go with nonfiction. This time, to try and apologize for the deadness around here, I figured I'd post what reads I took in over the past viral outing. What's really been suffering is my Warcraft time, but that's what happens - it's more comfortable to curl up with a book than a laptop.
Sherlock Holmes: Greenwich Unabridged Library Classics, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
(The Complete Adventures, Return of, Hound of the Baskervilles, Study in Scarlet, Sign of the Four)
This is an old book I've had since high school, and definitely not the best collection out there - it's just the one I've ended up with. Most important to me is that it has the great
Sidney Paget illustrations. If you have no idea what those are but have read some Holmes or seen a few of the films (I'm particularly fond of
Rathbone), or the great
Brett series on A&E - then you'll recognize the Paget artwork. I find rereading these stories very soothing for some reason, even when the plot is particularly grim. Possibly because Holme's world seems very logical (though of course it's fantasy and it really isn't), and there is always hope that deduction will over-rule chaos/injustice. This is nicely comforting when one is sick. Except that this collection still annoys me because on its cover it announces that it contains Study in Scarlet - and it does
not. I'm just as irked by that decades later as I was when I first figured that out.
Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels: Pulp Stories / The Big Sleep / Farewell, My Lovely / The High Window (Library of America) (Hardcover)
I have the
second book of this set, but I can only read so much Chandler at one sitting. He's actually an author that I can't read too much of when sick, simply because I keep coming up on scenes that make me feel worse. His detectives have a habit of getting knocked about and hurt quite a bit, or just drink too much - and the descriptions of these tend to make me a bit more queasy than comfortable. Still, I love his prose. Even though there are portions of his books that I often think don't work well there are sections where the writing just delights me. Which of course means I need to lay a couple of quotes on you.
"Okey, Marlowe," I said between my teeth. "You're a tough guy. Six feet of iron man. One hundred and ninety pounds stripped and with your face washed. Hard muscles and no glass jaw. You can take it. You've been sapped down twice, had your throat choked and been beaten half silly on the jaw with a gun barrel. You've been shot full of hop and kept under it until you're as crazy as two waltzing mice. And what does all that amount to? Routine. Now let's see you do something really tough, like putting your pants on."
I lay down on the bed again.
Time passed again. I don't know how long. I had no watch. They don't make that kind of time in watches anyway.
---Farewell My Lovely, Chapter 25
That gives you an idea of the character and Chandler's love of snappy dialog - even if the character's talking to himself. Here's the same character in another novel, giving us a description of a mansion:
The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying.
---The Big Sleep, Chapter 1
These two collections are great if you want to dip in here and there - I'd not advise reading them all the way through unless you were into serious shamus scholarship. Chandler went back to his older stories and snagged bits and pieces to rework into new fodder for the pulps - so you'll find yourself feeling like you're rereading things a lot if you try a cover to cover read.
Peculiar People: The Story of My Life, by Augustus Hare
(Originally published between 1896 and 1900, this edition 2006)
If you're an
Edward Gorey fan then this is a book you might find interesting. Because all those strange Victorian people Gorey drew somehow exist in
Augustus Hare's world. Only of course Hare was a real person. I'm happy to own this particular book in hardcover, which for some reason always makes me feel like I can reread it even more throughly and not worry about it disintigrating any time soon. Because it seems like Hare's writings are now obscure - I imagine many of them covered with dust and tucked away in ancient libraries or hidden in corners of intersting old bookstores. The original Story of My Life was in six volumes, but in this text the nice editors have boiled it down for us. Everything about child raising in here should be happily ignored and serve as a reminder that many of the Victorians were
insane sadists by our standards of parenthood. Augustus was given to a relative in England to raise while the rest of his family stayed in Italy or traveled about. Neither of his parents seemed to care much about what happened to him after that - they passed him along as if he was an extra pair of shoes they happened to find in the closet and wanted out of the way as the place was already too cluttered. The aunt who adopted him took the attitude that anything the child really wanted must be bad for him and thus all his wishes must be denied in order to make him a less selfish creature. For instance if he wanted to play with other children this was somehow wrong, and he was kept away from them. Very twisted thinking. Some of the things his relatives subject him to as a child wouldn't be believable in any drama - the "evil relative takes child's pet and then kills it" isn't something most people would buy. Though apparently this happened to poor Hare. Happily once he grew up his aunt had sanity whack her on the head and she became a more loving person towards him. And then the relatives that had the power to order him about were either dead or - well, women in Victorian times didn't get to have the same power over grown men as they did over helpless children. Thankfully. Hare became an author of biographies and travel books, and the rest of the The Story of My Life is all about people and places he visits and the stories people tell him. It really allows you to glimpse a style of writing and a type of book that's not exactly in existance anymore. Not a bad thing - some of the travel books from those days are rambling and not very interesting. But Hare did have a way of finding a good anecdote.
Ok rather than go on and on about each book - here's the rest of the pile...
Based on a True Story: Fact and Fantasy in 100 Favorite Movies
by Jonathan Vankin (Author), John Whalen (2005)
Real to Reel
by Harold Schechte
If you see either of those two at a store go for Based on a True Story - Real to Reel (also published as For Reel) is a pretty fluffy, "read on the plane and toss" kind of thing.
The Secret Parts of Fortune: Three Decades of Intense Investigations and Edgy Enthusiasms
by Ron Rosenbaum (2001)
I'm a fan of Rosembaum's writing and the things he chooses to write about. What I'm not really sure I understand is the fact that if I read too much of his work in one sitting I become annoyed with him - as if he's sitting next to me making obnoxious commentary or something. If you read nothing else
Secrets of the Little Blue Box from the 70s is a great historical piece on the early phone hackers. That's a link to a text file of the article, so you can absorb it now if you wish.
I should do lil book dumps like this more often.
3
Comments
Comments:
To add your comment, click here.
