Back After a Long Weekend...

Sorry for my very extended blogging absence of two days (gasp!) but it could not be helped I assure you. I had a very long weekend of birthday celebrations and I simply had no time (or the proper brain capacity) to compose a thoughtful post.

But I’m back now!

I did finally get a chance to finish the book that has been taunting me for over a week however: All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren.

I’ve written a bit about this one already and I plan on writing a full review later this week but I just have to get a bit off my chest now. I’m irritated. It had a lot of potential and in the first 200 pages I really thought it could be a 5 star book. I was excited. But then in the middle it really started to drag and as a result I started reading slower and slower and the book ended up taking much longer than usual to finish. It wasn’t a bad book at all, I just think it could’ve been much better than it was.

It reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. I don’t know if you all remember my review or not but it was going along great when Wilde decided to insert a chapter that, in my opinion, was completely irrelevant to the story and slowed the reading pace to almost a complete halt.

Why do author’s do this? Someone told me that in Wilde’s case his publishers requested that he lengthen the book, but I don’t actually know if that was the case. But really to me it seems like the author is writing about one subject but wanted to get in something of a totally different subject in the SAME book. But it is as if they didn’t want to take the time to write a whole other book on that other subject so they just wanted to find somewhere in the book they were already writing and kind of insert it. The end result is annoyance (or at least it is for me!) and a much lower star rating come review time.

Has this happened to any of you? What book(s)?

Oh, and the most important question of all, did you miss me?

Challenge Me Will Ya!

I seriously really truly was planning on NOT signing up for any reading challenges this year. But alas! The challenges have won! I have found two that have somehow (bribery?) convinced me to participate, and (bonus!) they kind of even overlap with one another.

The first is via blogger Bethany over at Subtle Melodrama. It’s called the Victorian Literature Challenge and basically it involves reading books that were published any time during Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901).

They don’t necessarily have to be “Victorian” according to the challenge rules so that gives you even more book options to choose from. There are four different levels to join for the challenge and I’ve chosen to aim for Hard Times (meaning I’ll read between 10-14 books). It’s actually an underestimate for me, but I like to aim as low as possible so as to never be disappointed! I’ve already read three so far this year (yay me!):

(click on the titles to see my full reviews)

• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
 

The second challenge is by way of blogger Marisa over at Armchair Archives called the Oscar Wilde Reading Challenge (can you already see how they’re going to overlap? sneaky of me isn’t it?). And I’m sure all my smart followers can guess what’s involved in this challenge: reading Oscar Wilde’s works.

I’ve opted to be Willfully Wilde, which means to read any 4 of his works. And as pointed out above, I’ve already read his one and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

I’ll keep you all updated on my progress as time goes on. And, of course, I’ll post reviews here of each book I read.

Reviews in Twos!

Alright, after this installment I’ll be up to date with all my reviews (yay me!). That doesn’t mean that Reviews in Twos is gone for good though because who’s to say I won’t get lazy posting my reviews in the future and will have to mush them together again to catch up?

This time around I read what I’m almost positive will be seen as a modern classic in a few decades: The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Can’t believe it took me so long to get around to that one. It had been on my shelf since it was published! Next was the ACTUAL classic (which I’ve already talked a bit about in my January 31, 2011 post): The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

And here they are for your reading pleasure…

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

5 stars

This is the lovely story of three women living in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s. Two are African-American maids, Minny and Aibileen, working for white families and the third is a young white woman, Skeeter, that has just returned home from college. Skeeter has aspirations of becoming a writer and while Minny aspires to get through the day without getting fired or beaten by her husband and Aibileen tries not to overstep her bounds while raising a white woman's daughter to not see color. They aren't civil rights activists but in their own ways they push the limits and each try to earn their own type of freedom along the way.


This was a wonderfully moving story that gripped me from almost the very beginning. It was really hard to believe that this was Kathryn Stockett's first novel because she wrote so beautifully. Each woman in the story has her own unique voice which I thought was very interesting and unique and pulled me in more. Even if Stockett had not entitled each chapter with which woman was narrating it would’ve easily been clear. And though these were fictional characters, I really ended up caring immensely for them and it felt like I was reading true parts of history. And it was tied in to the history of the South and Jackson. It could definitely be described as a historical-fiction. There is a whole part on Medger Evers’ murder. It’s an interesting tie-in. But it was not all depressing and sad, as one would actually expect to find in a novel that deals with topics as heavy-handed as this. Stockett mixed just the right amount of humor in so that it wasn't too horrible. There were parts where I definitely remembering smiling and laughing. There was just the right balance in my opinion. I would recommend this book to anyone.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

3 1/2 stars

Oscar Wilde's only published novel is the tale of a beautiful young man, Dorian Gray, who, in posing for an artist, Basil, becoming his muse and meeting his good friend Lord Henry has his life changed forever. Lord Henry is a very witty yet completely self-absorbed character who Dorian finds himself immediately drawn to. Lord Henry points out to Dorian how sad it is to have beauty fade and how youth is really the most important thing in life. Agreeing with this, and having just seen the beautiful portrait Basil just painted of him, Dorian becomes horribly upset and wishes that the picture would be the one to age and become ugly while he could live out his life always young and beautiful. Little does Dorian know that when his wish comes true, his life changes in ways he had never imagined and it starts an inner struggle within himself for years to come.

I thought this story was very intriguing but unfortunately took a while to get going for me. In the beginning I appreciated many of Wilde's witticisms, most of which were uttered by Lord Henry, but that was about it. However, after the twist came where Dorian realized the portrait was aging instead of himself it definitely got much better and the meaning much deeper. I felt Wilde really got into the psychology of the double life and he was able to elicit quite a response out of me (I was literally screaming at Dorian sometimes he made me so furious). I wondered if Wilde was not at all influenced by the book I had read a bit earlier this month, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

However, I felt that just when the novel was picking up steam Wilde decided to throw in Chapter 11. It was a very tedious and, in my opinion, almost completely pointless chapter. It took me completely out of the pace of the story. Had it not been for that chapter I would've been able to give this 4 stars instead of 3.5. Otherwise, very good indeed.

Sexist or Not Sexist? That is the Question.

So how does one come to define a book as sexist? Or the author writing it? It can sometimes be hard to decide. At first you get that little tickle in your spine, maybe your cheeks start to flush. You think to yourself, “I don’t like where this is going.” But then you have to stop and ask yourself: is this just the character being a sexist jerkface? Or is the character actually relating to us the author’s true feelings? Am I supposed to relate to this character? Think they’re a stand-up person? Are they the hero? Someone to be idolized? Sometimes the lines can be tricky.

Like in The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I just recently read, Lord Henry espouses many sexist ideas and presents them in a humorous light. Haha, funny funny, let’s all laugh along, right? Well sure, Oscar Wilde was presenting a delightful bit of humor into the story but was I supposed to be agreeing or wringing my hands at how full of himself Lord Henry was? I think the latter. Sure, Dorian Gray, the main character, seemed to idolize Lord Henry at first but then also seemed to despise him at times. And I wouldn’t call Dorian a character to look up to at all as well. My review of this book is to come but it’s fair to say that Oscar Wilde was not in fact showing his true colors through the voice of Lord Henry and that the whole book was a commentary on class and image and beauty. Touche Wilde!

Then there’s a book like The Human Stain by Philip Roth. Arg, where do I begin. It almost pains me to talk about this book to be honest. I finished this one several months ago and it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I remember the tingling feeling in my spine when the sexist talk began (and racist too, what fun!). And then I kept waiting for some part of the book to seem to refute the main character in a way. To make it known that he was NOT a good guy. Sure, it was known right from the beginning, maybe the opening sentence even, that Coleman Silk is going to die, but then the rest of the book it’s like Roth is trying to prove to you that he’s really not an awful person (literally screaming out loud now). Is he perfect? No. Is he a jerk? Sure. But he had his reasons for being such a horrid *insert profanity here* (also insert eye roll). I’m not buying it Mr. Roth. Coleman Silk was a sexist, racist self-absorbed *that profanity we talked about before* and I couldn’t wait until I got to the point in the book where he was dead. The main problem I had though while reading was that I could tell I wasn’t really reading about a character’s sexist thoughts, I was reading about the author’s own thoughts, and that made my skin crawl. It’s hard to describe but it was there.

I’ve since talked to many others about Philip Roth’s novels and many have understood and agreed with what I’m talking about. Needless to say, I won’t be reading another Roth novel anytime again in the near future. But so what about the rest of you? Have there been books where it’s hard for you to tell if it’s the author’s personal POV or the character? What are some books/authors that you think do a good job in distinguishing between the two?