50 Books to Read Before You Die

words to inspire before you expire

Page 25 of 33

March 15, 2017 /

Welcome back, class.

With the exception of the final few Harry Potter book installments, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is the youngest book on the 50-books list, published in 2003. For me, it carried a stigma before I even began reading it—contemporary works are supposed to have a freshness about them, like they’re a new take on what’s been written before. When a novel like this is compared with The Lord of the Rings, Ulysses, and even the Bible, it has expectations to meet.

Meet them it did.

The Children’s Edition of the novel

Let’s not talk about plot yet. Let’s talk about how the first chapter is chapter two—every chapter afterwards is a prime number: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc. Our main character, Christopher Boone, likes prime numbers, and how they explain the nature of life: like someone has taken all the patterns away, so that you could never figure out the rules.

Like I wrote last week, it is heavily suggested that Christopher has autism, which explains the interesting way he sees the world. It means that his brain limits his ability for social interaction, and that metaphors and abstract concepts usually mean nothing to him. Christopher is also incredibly smart, and the way he tells his story never ceases to prove that.

Author Mark Haddon writes Christopher’s voice matter-of-factly, so that all scenes sound the same. One scene may be Christopher enjoying a math problem, and the next may be Christopher trapped in public, surrounded by strangers that terrify him, with his pocket knife ready in his hand in case anyone touches him. It all sounds the same—Christopher struggles so much with empathy that Haddon forces us do the emotional heavy lifting.

The Original/Adult Edition of the novel

And then there’s the plot. The neighbor’s dog has been murdered—stabbed with a garden fork. Christopher loves dogs because he doesn’t have to figure them out (not like people). So when the dog is killed, Christopher decides—just like his favorite detective, Sherlock Holmes, would do—that he’s going to solve the mystery of who killed it.

His single father doesn’t care for this plan at all, so Christopher has to do his detective work in secret. Of course, he causes far too much mayhem, but the plot thickens with every passing discovery. And like any good mystery (and any good story, for that matter), it’s full of surprising twists, powerful character drama, and a sense of humor.

Haddon has said that this is a story more about difference than disability. Christopher’s view of the world helps with that . . . he sees people in ways others wouldn’t. We get to see his judgement of others on his journey, as well as others’ judgement of him. Similar to novels like The Catcher in the Rye and Ulysses, the characters start looking like cells in a body, each with their own roles and reactions, colliding every now and then for some good and honest tension. And because each character is fleshed out so well, The Curious Incident made it’s way on to the 50-books list.

Up next, I’m diving back into the past with Robinson Crusoe. The promising adventure story has a lot to live up to . . . I’ll let you know how it goes.

Prof. Jeffrey

March 13, 2017 /

“And Father said, ‘I love you very much, Christopher. Don’t ever forget that. And I know I lose my rag occasionally. I know I shout. And I know I shouldn’t. But I only do it because I worry about you, because I don’t want to see you getting into trouble and I don’t want you to get hurt. Do you understand?’

I didn’t know whether I understood. So I said, ‘I don’t know.’

And Father said, ‘Christopher, do you understand that I love you?’

And I said, ‘Yes,’ because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.”

—from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

March 10, 2017 /

“All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I’m not meant to call them stupid, even though they are. I’m meant to say that they have learning difficulties or that they have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult, and also everyone has special needs, like Father who has to carry a little packet of artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him from getting fat, or Siobhan who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs.”

—from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Missing From the List: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

March 8, 2017 /

Hello again, class.

James Joyce’s Ulysses features prominently on the 50-books bookmark, for good reason (more on that another time). But what bothers me is that Ulysses is a sequel—one of the main characters, Stephen Dedalus, is the main character of Joyce’s original groundbreaking work A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I won’t have any of this reading-out-of-order nonsense, so Portrait of the Artist needs to be spoken for.

Granted, I’m not the first to admit that Ulysses is the better of the two. It has stronger characters and fewer sermons. But Ulysses wouldn’t have been possible without Portrait of the Artist. And since millions of books wouldn’t have been possible without Ulysses, I think Joyce’s first novel has earned a little spotlight.

Portrait of the Artist tells the coming-of-age story of Stephen Dedalus, a boy in late 19th century Ireland with a creative streak and a complicated life. We get to see him transform from a mystified little boy to a questioning teenager, and then to an adult making the terrifying decision to be himself, regardless of the consequences. He loses respect for his father, puts his family in financial struggle, rejects religion and Irish nationality . . . and doesn’t compromise.

The mastery of this novel is not the story—this is a story anyone could tell. What makes it masterful is it’s original style, which any reader encounters with the opening lines: “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo . . .”

It’s confusing, that’s for sure. It causes quite the double-take.

Some of you know that this is called stream-of-consciousness, where the author takes the characters inner thoughts and dumps them on the page as they are. Most authors do this within the rules of grammar, but Joyce didn’t have time for rules. Just like Stephen’s struggle to be himself, despite the expectations around him, Joyce denied the expectations a novelist should follow.

These opening lines are the inner thoughts of Stephen as a child, with a glorified version of his father telling him a story. The “moocow” is the combination of the sound with the animal (imagine asking a child what noise a cow makes, and they answer “MOOOO;” in their mind, they don’t distinguish the noise from the animal . . . they are the same thing until they’re old enough to tell the difference). And without commas or periods, the run-on feels like a knowledge dump, which is how Joyce portrays the mind of a child—unbound by rules.

As Stephen grows up, his mind develops, and his thoughts become more structured. He uses a stronger vocabulary and a more refined grammar. Not that it makes his style much easier to follow—we are still inside the mind of a temperamental artist.

Which is why the title has that specific word artist. Stephen isn’t just anyone—his creative tendencies are a part of his core. He finds himself obsessed with the beauty of words, and his imagination is incredible as it unfolds (my favorite moment is when he is a boy: he thinks of different colors of roses and imagines a rose that’s green).

Stephen is a bit too angst-y to be likable, but he is still a strong character. And when we see him again in Ulysses . . . well, we’ll get there when we get there.

I’m still reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, and it’s worth mentioning the similarities it has with Portrait of the Artist. The main character is hinted to have autism, so he sees everything differently—many people claim that James Joyce had some form of autism, which may have led to his particular stylistic approach. While the novels are very different, the stylistic connections make The Curious Incident a kind of spiritual sequel to Joyce’s writing.

That being said, Haddon’s book is a lot easier. If Joyce isn’t your thing, The Curious Incident is a touch easier on the brain cells. But more on that next week.

Until then,

Prof. Jeffrey

March 6, 2017 /

“When people die, they are sometimes put into coffins, which means that they don’t mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.

But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash, and I couldn’t ask at the crematorium, because I didn’t go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air, and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain forests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.”

—from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

March 3, 2017 /

“Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classified as Military Material, and if you find one over 100 digits long, you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical, but you can never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”

—from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Pride and Prejudice

March 1, 2017 /

Welcome back, class.

I was once gushing about my newfound favorite novel, Ulysses by James Joyce (blog post pending), to a professor who could gush just as easily over Jane Austen’s novels. I explained that Ulysses broke all the rules and changed literature like nothing ever had, and my professor didn’t hesitate; she said “Jane Austen did that already, about 100 years before Ulysses was published.”

She had a point. Since then, I may have only read one Austen novel, but it really did call every rule into question. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the novels that break the rules are my favorite ones.

Elizabeth and Mr Darcy (played by Kiera Knightly and Matthew Macfadyen, respectively)

Chances are good that you know the story: an unlikely love develops between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Elizabeth is a lower class girl who speaks her mind, often against others’ wishes, and is more concerned with her own happiness than anyone else’s. Mr. Darcy is a very proud, very rich man, who is so bad at conversation and social obligations that he comes off as a terrible person. Mr. Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice against her first impression of him are the road blocks they must overcome (hint, hint).

Beyond these personal road blocks, there are the general expectations of 19th century society that stand in their way, and Austen is ruthless in criticizing them. The famous opening lines do this best: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” For most of the men in the novel, this is accurate; for Mr. Darcy, pinning down a wife is the furthest thing from his mind. Falling in love with Elizabeth is the only thing that changes his position.

Depiction of Jane Austen

Most of Austen’s criticisms come through Elizabeth’s mother—an incredibly foolish woman whose only desire is to see her daughters married. For instance, when her middle daughter runs away with a man, she is driven to constant bed rest and hysterics from the shame . . . until she finds out her daughter and this man will be married, and it becomes the happiest day of her life. Elizabeth narrowly dodges the bullet of becoming like her mother, but some of her sisters—uncontrollably silly, uneducated, and trapped by skewed perspectives—aren’t so lucky.

These flaws are not one character’s fault—Austen’s criticism is of a society that perpetuates those flaws. This is why Elizabeth is such an amazing character: she not only sees most of these flaws, but also acts against them. She denies the rules that mean nothing to her, and adheres to the ones that she chooses to adhere to. She isn’t perfect—her first impressions of Mr. Darcy can prove that—but she is herself, more than most literary characters and more than most people in the real world.

As some supportive evidence, Pride and Prejudice is based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which I wrote about last week. Elizabeth strives to be herself in a world of disguises, which happens to be a major motif of Twelfth Night. And, of course, Elizabeth’s mother is the Fool from the play—except the Fool is much wiser. Plus about a thousand other connections.

I’d also like to add that for me, it took me several chapters of Pride and Prejudice before I became impressed. If you pick it up, know that it’s the kind of novel where you need to invest yourself—the drama is only DRAMATIC if you let it be. Otherwise, it’ll feel like hundreds of pages of “Good heavens!” which, personally, I can only take so much of.

Up next, I’m picking up what I think is the exact opposite kind of novel—The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, another that I’d never heard of before the 50-books list. All I know is that a dog is murdered and we’re going to solve the mystery. That’s a good enough place to start.

Until then,

Prof. Jeffrey

February 27, 2017 /

[Elizabeth speaking to Lady Catherine]:

“‘I am resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.'”

—from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

February 24, 2017 /

“‘I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,’ said Darcy, ‘of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.’

‘My fingers,’ said Elizabeth, ‘do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I will not take the trouble of practicing. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman’s of superior execution.’

Darcy smiled and said, ‘You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers.’

—from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Missing From the List: Twelfth Night

February 22, 2017 /

Good morning, class.

I wrote about Hamlet a while back, which is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. But even though most of his other plays are just as good, the 50-books list limits itself to just this one Shakespeare play. Let’s balance out the scales here.

I prefer Shakespeare’s tragedies—I’m also partial to Macbeth—but that’s no excuse for dismissing his comedies. Some worth mentioning are A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing. . .but if I’m picking the one you need to read before you die, it’s Twelfth Night.

Viola and Olivia

The main character, Viola, survives a shipwreck thinking her twin brother has died at sea. She is a woman alone in the strange land of Illyria, without many options. . .so she disguises herself as a man, to serve in the house of Orsino, duke of Illyria. Viola quickly falls in love with Orsino, who is pining after Olivia, who falls in love with the man Viola is pretending to be. Then Viola’s brother turns up, and it’s all a hilarious catastrophe.

Some of the dialogue stands out as Shakespeare’s best: “If music be the food of love, play on,” (Act 1, Scene 1) and “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them” (Act 2, Scene 5) are well-known. One of Viola’s monologues, while not as well-known, sums up the chaos and ache of her situation—her disguise has caused more trouble than she’d intended, and she can only wait for Time to sort it out for her.

The plot is certainly dated—love triangle with a sitcom angle, it’s been done to death. And it’s not as “ghastly” and “unnatural” to play with the rules of sexual identity anymore (if it is, you need a different circle of friends). But the real drama here is about disguises and first impressions.

Depiction of Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene IV

Everyone in the play is wearing a kind of disguise. People are pulling pranks, falling in love with the wrong people, and pretending to be what they aren’t. . .but then everyone gets to reveal their true selves as well. Even the play wears a disguise—the excessively cheesy drama is a disguise for the play’s message, which is that first impressions are usually wrong.

As Viola holds her disguise together, she starts to see past the disguises of others, like the hidden wisdom of the fool or the hidden love of a friend. Wearing a disguise is something everyone does—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. We only ever see outer layers, not the soul underneath. In some ways, Viola’s journey is about coming to terms with that.

But as much as I want to sell Twelfth Night, this isn’t the only Shakespeare play to try this. Most of his plays, including Hamlet, deal with the struggle of dual lives, disguises, pretending to be something else, lying. . .it makes for great drama and speaks at real human truths. Twelfth Night just does this in my favorite way, and it’s why I think it should make the list (I know my bias is affecting my decision, but I’m in charge here, so it’s obviously okay).

If you feel that I’m wrong, and some other work of Shakespeare’s belongs in the winner’s circle, post your comment below now or forever hold your peace! It’s been a while since I’ve had a literary debate, anyway.

Look forward to my post next week! I plan to have finished Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by then.

Enjoy your week,

Prof. Jeffrey

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