Measuring the World
I think rather than judging the book from my translation of two sample sentences, please walk down the road to Border's and have a peek in the book's translation. All dialogue is in reported speech and the style imitates the literary style of the 19th century, well beyond my capabilities. In the first chapter the mathematician Gauss is accompanied by his son Eugen in a coach.
"He had always found it typical for God's wicked humor that a mind like his were imprisoned in a sickly body, while an average brain like Eugen would virtually never become ill."
"He talked about differential geometry. It were hard to divine where the path into the curved spaces would lead. He himself would comprehend it just barely, Eugen should be glad about his mediocrity, sometimes he were in awe."
The Lost Continent
This book is excessively funny. The book starts with his origins in barren and well-fed Iowa. I have to violate the copyright laws by quoting two extensive sections, both on page 14 of my Black Swan paperback:
"I had to drive to Minneapolis once, and I went on a back road just to see the country. But there was nothing to see. It's just flat and hot, and full of corn and soya beans and hogs. Every once in a while you come across a farm or some dead little town where the liveliest thing is the flies. I remember on long, shimmering stretch where I could see a couple of miles down the highway and there was a brown dot beside the road. As I got closer I saw it was a man sitting on a box by his front yard, in some six-house town with a name like Spigot or Urinal, watching my approach with inordinate interest. He watched me zip past and in the rear-window I could see him still watching e going on down the road until at last I disappeared into a heat haze. The whole thing must have taken about five minutes. I wouldn't be surprised if even now he thinks of me from time to time."
"Iowa women are always sensationally overweight - you see them at Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines on Saturdays, clammy and meaty in their shorts and halter tops, looking like little elephants dressed in children's clothes, yelling at their kids, calling out names like Dwayne and Shauna. Jack Kerouac, of all people, thought that Iowa women were the prettiest in the country, but I don't think he ever went to Merle Hay Mall on a Saturday. I will say this, however - and it's a strange, strange thing - the teenaged daughters of these fat women are always utterly delectable, as soft and gloriously rounded and naturally fresh-smelling as a basket of fruit. I don't know what it is that happens to the, but it must be awful to marry one of those nubile cuties knowling that there is a time bomb ticking away in her that will at some unknown date make her bloat out into something huge and grotesque, presumably all of a sudden and without much notice, like a self-inflating raft from which the stopper has been yanked."
Already I have decided to reward myself by reading this book first of all. After all writing this log prevents me from reading fine books like this one.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
You would believe this is a play out of Shakespeare, but then you read a sentence like, "If we postulate, and we just have, that within un-, sub- or supernatural forces the probability is that the law of probability will not operate as a factor,..." blablabla (page 17 of the Grove Press paperback edition. The play starts excessively slow: the first 7 pages are about throwing coins 92 times, and each time head comes up. But Stoppard does not succeed in generating any suspense from it.
At last some suspense is generated by the revelation that R & G are on their way to meeting somebody, but they do not know whom.
I think I will read this play as one of the first of the 10. After all it has only 120 pages and I can reward myself by watching the DVD of the play, with Richard Dreyfuss, Gary Oldman (as R) and Tim Roth (as G).
Arthur & George
A beginning well done. Arthur are George, who are not connected in any way in the early part of the book, are introduced in several short alternating chapters.
Arthur, brought up by a dedicated mother and a failing father who does not make anything of his talent as a watercolor painter. Both parents are poor descendents of noblemen and artists, getting poorer and poorer. "At home he learned extra commandments on top of the ten he know from church. 'Fearless to the strong; humble to the weak.' 'Chivalry towards women of high and low degree.' A world of yet unknown opportunities is instilled into him.
George, brought up with the rigid principles of a vicarage family: "You do not shout, you do not run, you do not soil yourself. Mistrust of the outside world is infused into him.
The Plot against America
Smooth reporting style with no literary affectations. Makes one want to contine reading. Very elegant and economical introduction of Jewish life in Newark before Lindbergh is elected President, in 1940.
White Teeth
The book starts with a suicide attempt, always an interesting topic, and a lame joke: "No one gasses himself on my property. [...] We are not licensed for suicide around here. This place is halal. Kosher, understand? If oyu are going to die round here, my friend, I'm afraid you've got to be throughly bled first." But the jokes get better.
Wants one to read on, but not pressingly so. What will happen with the failed hero next?
Mrs. Dalloway
So this is interior dialogue?! While Clarissa Dalloway's mind rambles on, the reader can follow her progress through the streets of London on a map. Introduction to half a dozen main characters within the first ten pages. And - surprise - to Clarissa's well-hidden wrath, which flares up briefly. Michael Cunningham kept us away from this aspect of her personality in his The Hours.
I had my problems with Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (only 10 pages read), James Joyce's Ulysses (no more than 20 pages), Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (gave up after 600 of 700 pages), and will I equally fail with this pioneer of modern literature?
The Master
This novel's beginning reveals where Henry James got the stuff for his novels from. While meeting an old friend: "These thoughts preoccupied his, and he found that he watched the princess, carefully weighing up what she had been saying, while thinking how he could use this. He must write it down as soon as she left. He hoped to hear nothing more [...]" because he intends to suck a story out of the princess's miserable fate. "The bare bones of the princess's story" are enough for him, he will let his mind roam and put in the meat by himself.
The Master's style is as difficult as the novels of Henry James. That means the book will have to be patient until being read by me. How many readers have really finished this novel? Probably only students of English literature.
The Sot-Weed Factor
This can also be said about this novel: how many readers have really finished this novel? This book is even longer (750 pages) than The Master (less than half the size).
By the end of chapter 2 the hero - an adult by then and past education by home tutor and university - wets his pants because his exhaustive education prevents him from focussing on any one occupation including getting up to empty his "untutored" bladder.
What other dramatic surprises and turns of event can we expect?
The Emperor's Children
Claire Messud, are you going to disappoint my high expectations? What made the critics praise this book? The first chapter is very conventionally told, with a successful characterizations of the heroine, Danielle Minkoff - all surface ("Having spent half an hour putting on her face in front of the grainy mirror of Moira and John's bathroom, ogling her imperfections and applying vigorous remedial spackle - beneath which her weary, olive-shaped eyes were pouched by bluish bags, the curves of her nostrils oddly red, and her high forehead peeling - she had no intention of revealing to strangers the disintegration beneath her paint."). And with an unsuccessful description of the hero's features, Ludovic Seeley: "His ears, pinned close to his head, lent him a tidy aspect" etc.
This is the only hardcover of the 10 books. The rough cut - the first one in my library, the bulk of my books are disintegating and acidy paperbacks - lends a nice feel to the physicality of the book, though it is a bit heavy in my favorite reading position, lying on my reading sofa.
SUMMARY: The first book I will read is Bill Bryson's Lost Continent. Be warned: I am a slow reader.
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