Under The Net

So, I am on a three day staycation and I am hoping that I get lots of reading done! I have finished 2 other books that were on the 1001 Books List, so I am going to do my review of the first one that I finished a couple of weeks ago. It's nice when two of my book clubs take on some of the 1001 books, and not just my 1001 Book Club. I have no idea how many books I have read from the list, so I should probably figure that out then I can keep track in this blog.
The book that I read was Under The Net by Iris Murdoch. Apparently, Iris Murdoch was a philosopher so she makes some philosophical references so maybe I will take an intro class and then re-read this book. Since that will not be happening anytime soon, let us go upward and onward to my thoughts. Under The Net can best be described as a Seinfeld episode. Essentially, a book about nothing, except for a couple of weeks that we get to peek into the life of Jake Donaghue and a couple of his friends Dave and Finn. The character development was excellent and the prose was amazing. This is definitely a easy read book, not necessarially a beach read but it is one of the easier 1001 Books to read, but now I am not so sure because of the philosophical references I might have missed!

But, as I have mentioned, this book really is a book about nothing. It really is a string of novellas. One of my favorite is when Jake and Finn "dog nap" a famous movie star dog Mars and try to get ransom money out of him. There are some colorful characters like Hugo Belafonte that we meet later on in the novel. One of my favorite messages that the novel brings is that you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well you might find, you get what you need (I had to quote some Rolling Stones, it was too perfect, I mean British rock music to a British novelist, genius!).

Jake is always imagining scenarios and what will happen if he meets someone or if he says the right thing or shows up in Paris. However, when he does get into those situations, they do not turn out the way that he has imagined them to be. For instance, Jake and Hugo have been estranged for several years now. When Jake runs into him again, he just wants to talk to him. He doesn't necessarially know what he really wants from this conversation but he does want to be friends with Hugo again. He even goes to great lengths and breaks Hugo out of the hospital. When they finally do talk again, Jake is disappointed in the conversation. He wants to rid himself of Hugo. But after he does, he imagines meeting up with him again and dreams up what will happen next time they meet!

My only complaint with the novel is that Murdoch was long winded on certain passages that you could skip 10 sentences and then you would still be on the same description of the door.

All and all great book. My next review will be on Everything Is Illuminated.

Until next time, on to the next!

 

The Count of Monte Cristo

So, I just finished The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas last week and that was a 2 month epic that I went through. Now to be fair, I was reading other books in between reading The Count because I wanted to keep up with my book clubs other novels. For the month of June, one of my book clubs had 3 novels to read on top of the one I read for another group I am in. And of course, the first book I read was The Red Tent which I HATED with passion and scratched and clawed my way to finish reading that book and of course I picked up an abridge edition of The Count, and my thought was "Why I will finish this in no time" which of course I found out that the book was not 400pages  but 1400! Which is fine, I mean I did read Gone With The Wind and that was about 1000 pages, so what's an extra 400? Well, mix in books and papers for school, and it just took a while. I would like to say I am so happy that I finished the book. It was awesome! Honestly, one of the best books I have read. I mean no one can write an epic novel like Dumas can. Don't get me wrong, could he have condensed the 1400 pages into 1000, sure, but I don't think it would have been nearly as complete in the detail.

The book is about revenge, which of course everyone knows about that. However, the way that he goes about plotting and executing his revenge is what makes the book so great! I haven't seen any book adaptations, but if I have learned anything, especially with the Harry Potter franchise, is that they never get everything in and what they chop out is pretty damn important. So, since this blog could be about 50 pages, I will just highlight some of my favorite parts of the novel (which there are a lot but I got some time here and I won't go over all of them). I loved when Dantes was in prison, and he meets the Abbe Faria. There interaction and the love that Dantes had for him reminded me of the relationship that Dantes would be having if he wasn't falsely accused by his supposed "friends". When Faria passed, you could feel Dantes pain.
I also enjoyed some of the irony of this novel. For example, Caderousse supposedly feels great remorse for what he thinks has happened to his friend, but he really can't prove anything because he knew he was drunk when the conversation took place between Danglars and Fernand. He even confessed to the "Abbe" that he was remorseful for what took place. However, he ends up murdering a jeweler and black mails and burglarizes. He finally repents in the end when Dantes reveals himself to him, but he dies after he repents. On the other hand, Danglars who had a hand of actually getting Dantes in prison and let Old Dantes starve to death, repented and lived.
There is also another scene of the novel, we see some remorse from Dantes, thinking that his plot of revenge might have gone too far when Madame Villefort kills not only herself but her son as well when Villefort discovers that she is the poisoner.

There is so much more I want to say but I have run out of time! Maybe I will make a follow up post on this but I just finished another book, Under the Net, which I loved as well!

Until next time, on to the next book!