April Wrap Up

 

Guys, it's the end of April already. How is it possible that this year is going by both quickly and slowly? The fact that I took up half the month reading one of the most boring (and long) classics I have ever come across probably had something to do with it. *shakes fist at Daniel Deronda*. 

Even with the-book-that-wouldn't-end in the mix, I finished almost everything I had set out to read this month. The only book I didn't get completely through was Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton, and I only need a few more days to get it finished up. All in all, I did okay.

Here's what my April looked like:

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

Ship It by Britta Lundin

The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

100 pages of Les Misérables

My favorite read of the month was probably The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller. This young adult contemporary about a teen boy with anorexia was extremely dark, but it did provide a pretty good exploration of the psychological impact of an eating disorder. Add to that Miller's black humor and his sympathetic, likable protagonist, Matt, and you've got a moving and thought provoking reading experience. It felt gritty and real, and I appreciated that.

My least favorite read of the month was (do I even have to say it?) Daniel Deronda. My goodness this is one classic that has not aged well! It was packed full of stereotypes about the Jewish people that were painful to read in 2021, and the plot wasn't exactly action-packed either. Who would have thought that a 700 page story about a man's slow journey towards embracing his heritage would have been boring? I kid. But seriously, it was one of the most trying reading experiences I've had this year.

Next month, I'm going to take a break from gigantic classics and try to knock some of the shorter books off my lists. Here's the plan:

Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner 

At least two books chosen from my owned-not-read list based on my mood

At least 100 pages of Les Misérables

To be honest, I'm not super-looking forward to these picks. Over the past four years that I've been working on Classics Club, I've basically already read most of the books that I was really excited about. What I'm left with now are the stragglers - the books that I put on the list out of a feeling of "I really should read this" instead of books I genuinely wanted to read. It's true that part of this challenge for me is broadening my literary horizons, but I think there's a fine line between trying something new and forcing yourself to read something you have no interest in. 

I've been working on Classics Club for four years. That's a long time. The way I approach reading has evolved since 2017. I'm starting to see less value in trying to read all the big names and more value on spending my precious reading time on novels I think I will love. I've gotten so far with this challenge that there is no way I'm giving up on it now, but if I were to do a second round, I would select books differently for sure. 

In any case, I do not think I'm going to enjoy On the Road or Absalom, Absalom! Neither are my preferred genre of classic. It would be absolutely delightful if I end up being wrong though. It would be funny if I disproved my own point about book selection the very month after writing this post. I guess I'll find out the truth soon enough.

What about everyone else out there? What are you planning on reading this month? Do you ever make yourself pick up books that you aren't personally interested in out of a sense of duty? I'd love to know! 

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

One of the categories in Back to the Classics this year is to read a classic play. Since I still had three Shakespeare works on my Classics Club list, I decided to work on both challenges by reading Hamlet next. This was probably the most famous Shakespeare play that I hadn't read yet, so I went into it curious to see what all the fuss was about and to see if I would like it any better than my current favorites, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet. 

The plot of Hamlet follows young prince Hamlet of Denmark as he is struggling to make sense of the death of his father, the King. As the story begins, he is upset that his father has suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. He is also angry at his mother, who has remarried his uncle Claudius, the new King of Denmark, only two months later. He sees this as an incestuous betrayal and has become angry and depressed at the turn his life has taken. Even the woman he loves, Ophelia, isn't responding to his romantic advances. Everything seems to have gone terribly wrong. 

Hamlet is thrown into further turmoil when the ghost of his father appears to him one night and tells him that he didn't die in a random accident - he was murdered by Claudius. The ghost asks him to get revenge for his death by exposing his uncle's crime and killing him. Hamlet readily agrees, but upon reflection, he has some second thoughts. Fearing that the ghost could be a mere trick of the devil, he decides to confirm the information about his father's death through other means. He arranges for a play to be performed at the castle which mimics the supposed murder so that he can see his uncle's reaction to the events. When his uncle storms off during the show, he knows that the ghost was real and he sets out to make Claudius pay for his crimes. 

I think that I would enjoy seeing Hamlet performed on stage more than I enjoyed reading it. I didn't dislike the play, it is iconic, after all, but I had a hard time warming up to the characters and getting invested in the story. I couldn't really get a sense of who Hamlet was. For most of the play, he is pretending to be crazy in order to distract his uncle away from his investigation (which really doesn't do anything except cause himself more trouble), but I found myself consistently wondering how much of the crazy was really an act. He was awfully cruel and inappropriate at various points throughout the play when he didn't have to be. He was also indecisive and strangely drawn to rash violence. It was consistently said of him that the people of Denmark love him, which is why Claudius doesn't murder him once he starts making waves, but nothing he actually does in the story shows him to be a likable person. I wasn't able to find the "hero" part of the tragic hero in him, unlike I could with Romeo, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. I just found him to be odd. 

Women don't fare particularly well in this play either. There are only two, Queen Gertrude and Ophelia. Gertrude is regarded with complete contempt by Hamlet, who is totally preoccupied with thoughts of her having sex with his uncle. Essentially, every time Hamlet thinks of his mother, he refers to her as a whore and makes comments about her sex life. She is not characterized at all beyond this and doesn't have many lines. I found myself wondering if Hamlet ever felt any feelings of affection for her, or if he felt split in his feelings between love and anger. This wasn't really part of the story though. Ophelia gets more lines, but quickly fades into madness when her father dies and meets with a tragic end. It's that female kind of hysteria that women from older works are often afflicted with. She eventually just wanders around the palace singing snippets of songs that show men to be faithless and cruel. These songs were tough to understand. They used a lot of wording and references from the time period. I didn't find her very compelling. 

The pacing felt strange in this play as well. Things happened incredibly quickly between scenes. There aren't many stage directions to indicate how much time is passing, so everything was jumbled together in my mind. I feel like this wouldn't be a problem if I were watching the play though, so I'm not being critical of it. It's just one of those things that happens when you are reading something that is meant to be seen.

So, this obviously wasn't my favorite Shakespeare play. There was a lot to like in it though. It felt like there was a famous line on nearly every page. This is where we get the phrases "hair standing on end," "murder most foul," and "method to his madness," among many, many others. As a Star Trek fan, I chuckled when I saw "the undiscovered country" come up. Of course, the famous "to be or not to be" speech is here too. It was fun to see so many well known words pop up and see what context they were first used in. The end was also absolutely wild. You know going into a tragedy that there will be many deaths by the end, but this was really something special. 

I'm sure that I'm missing something here. Hamlet is regarded as Shakespeare's best work by many. It just didn't reach me on a deeper level. I struggled to see Hamlet as a real person and didn't really connect with the story. It was still definitely worth reading though. The wordplay alone made it a fun experience. I still have two plays left on the Classics Club list, Julius Cesar and The Tempest. I'm looking forward to seeing what I think of those in the near future. 

Challenge Tally

Back to the Classics 2021 (A Classic Play): 8/12

Classics Club (#3 on my list): 90/100 books completed

Total Books Read in 2021: 21

The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller

 

As I was still recovering from Daniel Deronda after my last read, I decided to go for another young adult contemporary novel next. I picked up The Art of Starving based on the striking cover art a few years ago. The summary on the inside flap seemed interesting enough, so I bought it and added it to my shelf, where it has sat ever since. I was in the mood for something emotional and hard hitting, so I gave it a shot this week. 

The plot of the novel follows a high school junior named Matt. He's going through a difficult time as the story begins. He's gay and is relentlessly bullied for it in school, he doesn't have any close friends, his mom is about to be downsized from her job at the local hog rendering factory, and his older sister Maya recently ran away from home. Even though Maya has called home a few times and explained that she is fine and just taking some time for herself, Matt is convinced she left because something terrible happened to her. He suspects a group of boys at school of hurting her in some way, and he is determined to exact revenge on them. 

As everything in his life currently feels out of his control, Matt attempts to take charge by restricting how much he eats. The hunger constantly rumbling in his stomach is painful, but it gives him a sense of power. As he begins consuming less and less food, he starts to feel like he develops super powers. When he isn't eating, he can hear conversations happening miles away, sniff out people like a bloodhound, and even create wind and fire on demand. If he takes a bite of food though, his powers go away. Before long, he starts to feel like the only way to help himself and his family is to stop eating and use his abilities to solve all their problems. The only trouble is that doing this is slowly killing him.  

The Art of Starving is a pretty brutal look at the way eating disorders psychologically affect a person. Matt, who is an extremely unreliable narrator, truly believes that not eating makes him literally powerful, and watching him try to rationalize what he is doing throughout the text is a harrowing experience. The novel is structured as if Matt is writing a rule book to help other people uncover their own powers through restricting their food intake, with each chapter starting out with a quote or observation about how to push through the pain of starving yourself to unlock your enhanced abilities. Matt's narration is written in a way that makes you almost second-guess yourself as to whether he is being factual, because he is so entrenched in his delusion. I've never struggled with an eating disorder before, and I know that this experience is not reflective of how most people feel while going through one, but I thought that Sam J. Miller did an excellent job conveying the warped sense of power and control that lead people to harm themselves.

I appreciated also that Miller used a male protagonist here, since most of the discussion you hear about eating disorders centers around women. While it is true that more females are diagnosed with these kinds of disorders, there are plenty of men that struggle too. Men are also constantly bombarded with images of impossible physiques and negative comments about bigger bodies. I thought it was good to draw attention to the fact that anorexia or bulimia can affect anyone. I also learned through my reading that LGBTQ youth are more likely to develop eating disorders than other teens, and also to consider suicide, as Matt also does in this book. This is a tough subject to think about, but I think that Miller did a good job of telling an emotional story about this issue and raising awareness for it. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was a dark read, but the way the Miller used the feeling of super powers to describe how people feel a sense of control with an eating disorder worked well. His writing style is also full of black humor, which makes the story actually funny in parts and breaks up some of the heavy mood. Matt is a protagonist that you want to root for, and watching him go down such a dark path with starving himself is emotional. It makes you invested in the story. This was a very engaging read for me as an adult, and I think the older teens it was written for will like it as well. I don't see myself wanted to read it again (so many books, so little time), so I'm going to donate it. Hopefully it will make its way to someone who will enjoy it as much as I did.

 

Challenge Tally

Clear the Shelves 2021: 11/50 (donate)

Total Books Read in 2021: 20

Ship It by Britta Lundin

After struggling through a really dense classic for my last read, I was in the mood to pick up something on the lighter side next. I ended up settling on Ship It by Britta Lundin, a young adult contemporary book I've had sitting on my shelf for a few years. I didn't know much about it before I started reading, I bought it on a whim after reading the summary on the inside flap. I thought the story idea was intriguing though, and it always stuck in my mind as one of the books from my massive TBR pile that I wanted to get to soon, so I decided to finally give it a try.

The plot of the novel follows a sixteen year old girl named Claire. She lives in a small farm town in Idaho and doesn't fit in well with the rest of her peers. Her interests are on the nerdy side and the rest of her school is more into sports and 4-H. She is a huge fan of a Supernatural-esque TV show called Demon Heart, which follows the adventures of demon hunter named Smokey and a demon named Heart. She spends most of her time writing fanfiction about the show, in which she pairs up Smokey and Heart together romantically. The characters aren't gay on the show, but she believes that their relationship is headed in that direction and is hoping that they become a couple for real on the series one day. She's not alone in this desire either; thousands of other viewers in the Demon Heart community feel the same way and her fanfiction is incredibly popular online. 

As the story begins, Claire attends a local Comic-Con panel for Demon-Heart and she gets the chance to ask a question during the audience Q&A portion of the event. She asks about the possibility of Smokey and Heart having a romantic connection and Forest, the actor who plays Smokey in the show, reacts poorly. He brushes the question off and treats the concept as ridiculous, which outrages several audience members and causes Claire to leave in a fit of tears. Footage of this incident is quickly posted online and the PR team behind Demon Heart shifts into damage control mode. They manipulate a promotional giveaway to award Claire the grand prize of a ¨superfan experience." They invite her to travel around the convention circuit with them on the Demon Heart tour bus. She will get an all-inclusive trip to three different cities and get to spend time with the cast of the show. Claire is still upset from her experience at the panel, but as Demon Heart's biggest fan, she excitedly accepts the prize anyway. 

She still hasn't given up on her idea of Smokey and Heart getting together though, and she uses her time on the tour to start applying pressure to both Forest and the showrunner, a man named Jaime. She is determined to make them realize that the relationship she wants so badly for her favorite characters makes sense and should make it to the screen. She brings important topics like queer representation and sexism into the conversation, but her aggressive tactics end up causing more harm than good a lot of the time. In addition to her Demon Heart mission, Claire also begins to grapple with her own sexuality when she meets another teen named Tess at the convention. Suddenly, her deep attachment to a gay relationship between fictional characters has taken on a new tone. Is she looking at Smokey and Heart from a purely fan perspective, or is she actually yearning to see her own story reflected in these characters? As the tour draws to a close, Claire must figure out how to proceed without hurting herself, Tess, the Demon Heart fandom, or the show she loves.

I really enjoyed this book as I was reading it. I was probably primed to like anything a little too much after struggling so much with my last read, so I don't think my first impression was entirely accurate. Indeed, the more I sat and thought about Ship It, the more I realized that it had a lot of issues. There are some things that it does really well, but there are also some parts that don't work.

Among the things I really enjoyed in the novel was its depiction of fanfiction and fandom in general. It's clear the Lundin is a part of this community and understands it. As someone who read a whole lot of X-Files and Harry Potter fanfiction back in the day, I understand the yearning for certain characters to get together and the guilty pleasure escapism that writers in the fan community provide. The right terminology and vibes were all there. I also really liked the discussion of representation and sexism that took place throughout the story. It's true that TV and films have a long way to go when it comes to including main characters of different backgrounds and sexualities. It's also true that teen girls are often depicted as unreasonable, childish, or crazy when they like something in large numbers or speak up for what they want. I liked that the novel drew attention to those points. I think it will resonate with a lot of young readers. I really liked the ending too, cheesy as it was.

What was not so great about the story was that a lot of it was very unrealistic. The entire idea of a production team of a television show rigging a contest to take an upset teenager on a convention tour, and giving her unfettered access to the actors and showrunner is pretty laughable. The way relationships developed between the characters often didn't make sense either, with many characters becoming friends too easily or forgiving too conveniently. Claire's behavior was pretty awful at times too. She was pushy and demanding, and not in a way that felt like empowerment. She was often very inappropriate, doing things that were hurtful or even illegal at times in order to try and force her will on others. She never faces meaningful consequences for her behavior either, which I think muddled the message of the story. It's a shame, because I think the story idea (which was based on true events from a Supernatural convention panel years ago) had a lot of potential and the topics Lundin touches on are important. I wish the story had gone in a more realistic direction. I wish Claire was a more introspective and less mean character.

So ultimately, I have mixed feelings about Ship It. If you browse the user reviews on Goodreads for this novel, you'll see a whole lot of 1-star reviews that meticulously outline all the problems in the story. I don't think that the book is all bad though. It made some good points and I enjoyed reading most of it. It's definitely got its share of issues though. I think that the high school audience this was written for will probably like it. Adult readers and savvy teens will probably have difficulties seeing past its shortcomings. At least this book served its purpose of giving me something light to get lost in after my last really tough read!

Challenge Tally

Clear the Shelves 2021: 10/50 (donate)

Total Books Read in 2021: 19

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

I first came across Daniel Deronda when I was researching novels for my Classics Club list. I wanted a selection of Victorian books on there, and this one popped up while I was Googling. I had read three other novels by George Eliot up to that point - Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, and Middlemarch. I enjoyed each of those quite a bit, so I figured that Daniel Deronda would be a pretty safe inclusion. I was excited to give it a shot, but its length (700 pages of tiny print in my edition) made me put off actually reading it for years. Now here we are, in the final year of my challenge, and I'm running out of time. Happily, this novel matched up perfectly with the Back to the Classics prompt to "read a classic by a female author," so I could kill two birds with one stone by reading it now. Hoping that this book wouldn't feel 700 pages long, I started in on it at the end of last month.

The novel is set in England in the 1860s and shifts between two characters whose stories only touch a small handful of times. The first, Gwendolen Harleth, is an beautiful, spirited young woman who is determined to have fun, exciting life. The idea of marriage doesn't interest her, as she believes it would curtail her freedom, but she isn't opposed the marrying the right sort of man one day (i.e. one with money that she can control). Her hopes for freedom come to an abrupt end, however, when her family loses their fortune. She decides to marry Henleigh Grandcourt, a wealthy suitor, in order to save herself from having to work as a governess or teacher. Henleigh is a cruel man with a dubious grasp on morality; Gwendolen knows some of these details, but decides to marry him anyway for the financial benefits. Predictably, their marriage is a bad one and Gwendolen must come to terms with both the new realities of her life as a wife and her guilt over knowing that her own selfish decisions put her in this situation.

The other character is, of course, Daniel Deronda. Daniel is a kind, upstanding young man with a penchant for taking the side of the underdog in any given situation. He enjoys a good reputation; everyone who meets him loves him. He has been raised since he was a small child by Sir Hugo Mallinger, a wealthy noble. Daniel's exact parentage has never been explained to him, but he has always assumed that he is Sir Hugo's illegitimate son and avoided asking any questions that might cast a shadow over the morals of his beloved father figure. In either case, he has no property or fortune to inherit, so he is studying to be a lawyer in order to provide for himself. One evening, however, an event occurs that sets him down a very different path. While rowing down a river, he witnesses a young woman about to drown herself. He rescues her and is immediately struck by her beauty and her sadness. He learns that her name is Mirah Lapidoth and that she has recently traveled to England to try and reconnect with her mother and brother, whom she was separated from when she was a child. She has no money or friends to help support her and decided to end her life when she was unable to find her family. Daniel introduces her to a friend who agrees to take her in, and takes on the responsibility of helping her restart her life. He also learns from Mirah's story that she is Jewish, and his tendency to help support the persecuted makes him very interested both in her backstory and her religion in general. He sets out to learn more about the Jewish people, and his explorations lead him to make several discoveries about himself.

Gwendolen and Daniel meet each other a few times throughout the story. They live in the same general area and Sir Hugo is Henleigh Grandcourt's uncle, so there is a family connection as well. Gwendolen is immediately drawn to Daniel's innate goodness, and looks to him as a guide and mentor as she struggles against some of her own selfish tendencies. She wants to reform herself and become a better person; she sees him as a kind of teacher. They also feel a bit of a romantic inclination towards each other, although both know that such a relationship is not meant to be. Each time they see each other, Daniel is empathetic and helpful to Gwendolen. She tries to improve herself through his example. 

I wish I could say that I drawn into this story and that the 700 pages just flew by. Unfortunately, I cannot. I had a terrible time with this novel, for several reasons, and this was very surprising to me. I know that I like George Eliot and I know that I like Victorian classics. I've read my share of long classics and have had no problems making my way through ones that I found to be engaging. On paper, I should have had a decent time with this read. In reality, however, there was a lot about Daniel Deronda that I didn't enjoy. 

I don't want this to turn into a long, ranting review. I am fully aware that it is not impressive to bash George Eliot for being boring, so I'm going to try and be concise about what I didn't like. Essentially, I thought that this story was an overlong, disjointed slog. Eliot spends an exhausting amount of time detailing her characters' every inner thought, and this slowed the action down tremendously. Throughout the entire novel, you would read two or three pages of normal dialogue and action, and then have to make your way through three or four pages of the characters' thought processes and feelings, often presented in extremely long blocks of text with few paragraph breaks. It was excessive and it took over the story. 

Speaking of the story, it was not strong either. Very little actually happens in this book. About half is told from Gwendolen's point of view and the other half focuses on Daniel. The chapters flip back and forth between the pair. Unfortunately, I did not think both parts were equally interesting. I was much more engaged in Gwendolen's story and found my attention majorly drifting when I was in a Daniel section. I would not say that any of the characters in this story are particularly fun to read about, but Gwendolen at least felt multi-dimensional. She had different sides to her personality and her tendency to behave poorly at times made for a more compelling story. The saint-like Daniel, whom all the characters treat with a reverence bordering on mania, was very boring. Most of his story revolved around him learning about Judaism and finding out information about his heritage, and as he's already a perfect person, his journey of self discovery fell flat for me.

As I mentioned before, the two halves of the story do not fit together well. Daniel and Gwendolen had very little to do with each other throughout the plot, and their relationship to each other in the times where they did meet felt strange and forced. It didn't make much sense for Gwendolen to develop the obsession with Daniel's opinions that she did. They barely knew each other and only spoke a few times in person before she decided that the entirety of her future behavior rested on what he would tell her to do. By the end of the story she is completely consumed by thoughts of Daniel, a person to whom she is not really connected in any concrete way. I found the whole relationship between them bizarre and unnatural. This is really two separate books combined into one. Daniel's story has nothing to do with Gwendolen's and vice versa. I suppose you could make an argument that Daniel goes on an exterior journey to learn about himself while Gwendolen goes on an interior journey, but this connection between the halves is tenuous at best and does not really come across in the reading.

Perhaps the worst element of all, however, was Eliot's depiction of the Jewish people. It's clear that Eliot meant well, did her research, and was very accepting, especially considering the time period she lived in. The heroes of the story are Jewish and are portrayed in a very favorable light. These points don't change the fact that this novel does not feel remotely authentic when it comes to Judaism. It is overflowing with stereotypes, and is very specific in delineating "good Jews" from "bad Jews." It is filled with paragraphs that regurgitate information about Judaism like an encyclopedia. It is not a natural depiction of the religion or the people. 

Again, I'm not going to blame Eliot for not having modern views on race, but it's not so easy to brush off this stuff as "a product of its time" when you are faced with it over and over across hundreds of pages. It is a dominant feature of the book and it has aged very poorly. It reminded me of what Harriet Beecher Stowe was doing in Uncle Tom's Cabin. She was another author writing about a people she didn't really know, trying to get others to take pity on them. Both of their hearts were in the right place, but their work is tough to get through now. 

    

To be fair, some aspects of Daniel Deronda are thought provoking. Gwendolen's character in particular raised interesting questions about a woman's role and options in Victorian society. She consistently broke social norms and envisioned a future for herself free from the encumbrance of a husband. Ultimately, she is forced to succumb to what the world expects of her, but her struggle was an interesting exploration of what some more independent-minded women probably felt during this time. As I mentioned before, I was disappointed that her character becomes so deferential to Daniel, but the beginning part of her story was still engaging. There are a few other female characters that defy expectations, with varying levels of success. I don't think Eliot's treatment of them was very even, but at least their stories kept my attention. The writing, of course, was well crafted throughout. Some parts of the ending were surprising. Overall though, I didn't have a very good time with this one.

Usually when I reflect on a classic I didn't like that much, I can find some redeeming value in it. Either I will appreciate its historical importance or acknowledge that it expanded my literary knowledge. In this case, however, I can't truly say that reading Daniel Deronda improved my life in any appreciable way. It was okay, but disjointed and entirely too long. It hasn't aged in a way that is pleasurable to read. I would not recommend this to anyone except those who are die-hard George Eliot fans and are on a mission to read all of her works. Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner are better choices by far for anyone interested in trying her out. I suppose at the very least I can say that in reading this, I was able to complete part of my reading challenges. Hopefully my next classic will be a better match for me!

Challenge Tally

Back to the Classics 2021 (A Classic by a woman author): 7/12

Classics Club (#58 on my list): 89/100 books completed

Total Books Read in 2021: 18