Wuthering Heights

Book: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Synopsis: Wuthering Heights is one of the world's greatest tales of unrequited love, captivating readers with its intense passion and drama since its publication in 1847. In this special collector's edition, the powerful, complex bond between Heathcliff and Catherine that unfolds in the wild, romantic landscape of the Yorkshire moors is beautifully presented in illustrated form for the first time. [via Amazon]

Book Notes: OMG! Yes, I know I have been rather silent that past couple of weeks. I got busy with other stuff, and never really got around to sitting down and fully processing my emotions after reading this book. But in a nut shell: I hated it!

I remember finishing this book before i left the office. I wanted to fling my copy across the room out of sheer exasperation. Sometimes I even wonder how and why i even bothered to finished the book. 

I think it took a while for me to get around to writing down my thoughts because whatever i felt after reading it was extremely violent. I didn't like a single character in this entire novel, nor did I like the way the story was narrated. It was so frustrating page after page after page. None of the characters ever evolved!!!

But since it has been weeks since i've processed this horrid experience of having read Wuthering Heights, perhaps the novel actually achieved its ultimate purpose. As the poster novel for unrequited love, it has definitely not earned any love from me. It begets me how this made it as a popular English Classics.

Barnes and Noble I want my $10 back. I should have known better and just downloaded a free Kindle copy.

Book Quotes: 

"But be with me always - take any form- drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where i cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"

"And yet I cannot continue in this condition! I have to remind myself to breathe-almost remind my heart to beat! And it is like bending back a stiff spring... it is by compulsion, that I do the slightest act, not prompted by one thought, and by compulsion, that I notice anything alive, or dead, which is not associated with one universal idea... I have a single wish, and my whole being, and faculties are yearning to attain it. They have yearned towards it so long, and so unwaveringly, that I'm convinced it will be reacher and soon because it has devoured my existence- I a swallowed up in the anticipation of its fulfilment."


Rate: 0/5

First Love

Book: First Love by Ivan Turgenev (The Great Loves Book 7, Penguin Classics)

Synopsis: Love can be torture. At the end of a dinner part, the remaining guests smoke cigars and tell stories of their first love. For one of them, it will be a dark journey into his past, reawakening unbearable memories of his obsession with the beautiful Zinaida, and the cruelty and betrayal that followed... [from the book flap]

Book Notes: I randomly and impulsively picked this at the Strand Bookstore last July. Admittedly, that was the first time I've ever been to the Strand despite numerous visits to the Big Apple. It was definitely overwhelming and very interesting, I felt like I walked into Dash and Lily's Book of Dares, and was half expecting to find the journal hidden through the shelves. I cant even properly recall what attracted me to this book, but i purchased it and now have finally read it.

I finished it in one sitting while i was painfully waiting for the number one vet to become available to see my precious puppy. It was a long and tiresome wait, and i was thankful i snuck this is my purse as i headed out. For a book that was published in 1860 and written by a Russian, his words and narration were surprisingly modern.

He portrayed his protagonist so realistically. He was 16 years old, barely a man and already reckons himself in love. He was penned so beautifully naive. It is only that kind of youth and innocence that would make you miss things and see the world so differently. I love the way he was contrasted with the other older and more worldly bachelors. Their personalities so brash and jaded, only characteristics of time and maturity would allow to develop.

I also loved how the author provided subtle hints for the reader to pickup on the twist of the story. Thinking back to those hints, i felt it was rather obvious from my perspective, but thinking as the young Vladimir, I can imagine how those strange insinuations could go amiss. Again, i think we should credit the author for creating a wholly innocent and juvenile character.

His protagonist was written so believable. With such a short work of fiction, we watch a naive young man barely out of the school fall in love, experience his first heart break and mature into a man.


Rating: 4.5/5

The Great Gatsby

Book: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Synposis: The exemplary novel of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgeralds' third book, The Great Gatsby (1925), stands as the supreme achievement of his career. T. S. Eliot read it three times and saw it as the "first step" American fiction had taken since Henry James; H. L. Mencken praised "the charm and beauty of the writing," as well as Fitzgerald's sharp social sense; and Thomas Wolfe hailed it as Fitzgerald's "best work" thus far. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when, The New York Times remarked, "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s that resonates with the power of myth. A novel of lyrical beauty yet brutal realism, of magic, romance, and mysticism, The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature. [via Amazon]

Book Notes: I realized something about my "reviews" yesterday... its very impersonal and as if written for a crowd pleasing audience. As the blogger dash board reminds me, it seems im likely the only one that knows about this blog, and comfortably so. This was meant to help me keep tabs on the books I've read, an online version of a book journal. So why the hell was i writing it with fear that i would receive angst from others? i should be writing about my experience!

So here i am trying to remedy my folly as i try to fully grasp and thoroughly digest my first reading of the Great Gatsby. I don't really know if im hyper emotional today because im hungry (today, well Jan 7, was the first day of my hopeful new lifestyle and body goal. Truth be told, it has definitely been about time i made that my priority but it leads my point astray) 

i was actually getting dizzy reading the first three chapters. perhaps it was hunger, or lack of sleep but i felt like the words were just all twisting and turning. there were just so many words. cohesive, tight words that you had to read every little bit of it to fully comprehend the entire sentence. Precise concentration is thus required. the book is only 170 pages long, and the author did beautifully and got straight to the point.

So in a moment of distraction, i decided to make a playlist based on my current lss-- Feel Again by One Republic. Im completely enamored and smitten with this song, it seems to have provided me some hope, hope that i so scarcely allow myself to believe for theres a stronger, lingering feel of disappointment that looms. Theres some emptiness inside me, that I am even too ashamed to speak out loud.

Anyway, I ended up pulling a Cher and checked sparknotes for a quick glimpse into this enigmatic novel that, three chapters in, has left me silly crossed eyed. I didnt really get to read much except a quick glimpse down a the first comment that simply said - Gatsby dies, who else better to tell the story than Nick. Curiosity and intrigued got the better of me, and thus aided me to finish it so.

So now here i am, perched on my laptop, as my playlist repeats for the third time tonight still trying to fully wrap my mind and find some words.

Lonely. Gatsby was lonely. despite his lavish lifestyle, his gaudy home and his "friends"- he was lonely and obsessed blindly over the one woman he love. and in so many ways i feel like thats me. I'm alone in this lifetime and it scares me, that at the end of the day i have no allies, no one to take care of me, no one i can fully trust to see me through till the end. And yet i still feel so much like Daisy, that in realizing all of the above, i retreat in the comfort of luxury and wealth. It does make everything much easier to forget.

Its rather deathly of me to be swirling in such a deep pond of emotional and physical insecurity. Much like Gatsby, I've placed my world into a pedestal that I have simply become a detached observer. I never really fully participate in any of it, I simply host a well calculated series of events and stare and hope that some dream of mine would just happen. Perhaps I'm really disillusioned by it all. Perhaps i'm really just insecure and lonely. Perhaps the dream shouldnt be my dream- but even i cannot fully identify what it is i am so painfully pining for.

Perhaps Im most like Gatsby, so emotionally driven and passionate, so one track minded into a goal that i seem to be aloof about everything else. Perhaps i can be most like him and finally transform, and achieve that end goal that has long eluded me through all these years. Perhaps i am so forlorn because my life is as empty and shallow as his. 

Definitely a remarkable testament to his writing, Fitzegerald so beautiful portrayed the nothingness of his characters so well. That despite the bourgeoning decadence of the 20's, there was still so much emptiness, nothingness, skepticism. The lifestyle seemed like a lavish front for the growing void within.

On a poetic note, life changed so much after WWI, dreams were realized and shattered. Life will be different for me in 2013, because whatever it is, I think- no I know, that this year I will learn how to feel again. I will be like Gatsby that despite everything, still believed in the green light ahead.


Book Quotes:

"Gatsby? What Gatsby?"

"Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens."

"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

"And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy."

"Everyone suspects him of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that i have ever known."

"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired."

"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."

"After all, in the very casualness of Gatsby's party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from her world."

"Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can. He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand."

"He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was..."

"There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind."

"I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade."

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... and one fine morning-"



Rating: 4.5/5

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

Book: Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

"Off with her head"

Synopsis: Alice begins her adventures when she follows the frantically delayed White Rabbit down a hole into the magical world of Wonderland, where she meets a variety of wonderful creatures, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Cheshire Cat, the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts—who, with the help of her enchanted deck of playing cards, tricks Alice into playing a bizarre game of croquet. Alice continues her adventures in Through the Looking-Glass, which is loosely based on a game of chess and includes Carroll’s famous poem “Jabberwocky.”

Throughout her fantastic journeys, Alice retains her reason, humor, and sense of justice. She has become one of the great characters of imaginative literature, as immortal as Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, Captain Ahab, Sherlock Holmes, and Dorothy Gale of Kansas. [via Barnes & Noble]

Book Notes: I've always had a vague memory of Alice in Wonderland. It was definitely one of my childhood films growing up, but not particularly one of my favourites. I have to admit, i know of the characters fairly well, but Alice has become more of a pop culture icon that one forgets that she originally came from imaginative fiction. Most of what i really know about this character and her story are blurry memory recalls that were freshened up by a trip to Storybook land in a Disney theme park riding through the story in a caterpillar or taking a spin in one of the Mad Hatters tea cups. I know of but i dont really know. So i decided to take a trip down the rabbit hole and join the creatures of Wonderland for a tea party and a game of croquet or two.

Getting through the two books, one would be completely insane not to notice that this is simply absurd. There really isnt much of a story plot but more of a narration of all these strange, illogical creatures that inhabit Wonderland. Most of the conversation in the book are rhymes without reason and questions without any answers. But despite what seems like "nonsense" you strangely discover that its in the nonsensical that makes so much sense.

Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass created an inverted world that we are not familiar with. Perhaps because of routine, its easy to get jaded when you're stuck in the rat race. we dull our senses to the amazing world we have in front of us. these books are exactly what every adult (despite being a 'childrens book') must read. When we were younger, we were curious. we were in WONDER-land. The telling of this tale reminds us to go back. remain curious, stay curious. WONDER! its funny cause this was my first lesson in Epistemology—i am a student of Philosophy after all. (i say am, because wonder and curiosity should never stop.)

As children we rush to adulthood, but as adults we must constantly look back and relearn all these beautiful ideals we had when we were kids. Butterflies can be insects made out of bread and butter, the realm of the imagination is an abyss—continue to imagine. We all came from Wonderland once, now its time for all of us to step through the looking-glass and rediscover what Wonderland has in store for us now...Believe in six impossible things before breakfast.

Quotes:

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

"Oh dear, oh dear. I shall be too late."

"I was all very well to say 'Drink me' but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. 'No I'll look first,' she said, 'and see whether its marked poison or not'"

"Who are YOU?" said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then."

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; " but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever say in my life!"

`If everybody minded their own business,' the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, `the world would go round a deal faster than it does.'

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"

"Thats very curious!" she thought. "but everythings curious today. i think i may as well go in at once." and in she went.

"'Would you tell me, please,' Alice asked timidly, 'why you are painting those roses?' Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began, in a low voice, 'Why, the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen was to find out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know."

"Off with their heads!"
 
"'Why did you call him Tortoise if he wasnt one? Alice asked. 'We call him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily. 'Really you are very dull.'"

"Sentence first—verdict afterwards."

"So she sat on, with closed eyes and half believe herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality."

THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

"Who did you pass on the road? the King went on, holding out his hand to the Messenger for some new hay. "Nobody," said the Messenger. "Quite right," said the King: "this young lady saw him too. So of course nobody walks slower than you."

"Contrawise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so right, it might be: and if it were so, it would be; but as it isnt, it aint. That's logic."

"Thats the effect of living backwards," the Queen said kindly: "it makes one a little giddy at first—."

"I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly. "Too proud?" the other inquired. Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "i mean," she said, "that one can't help growing older." "One cant, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty, "but two can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."

"I mean, what is an un-birthday present?" "A present given when it isnt your birthday of course."

"You dont know how to manage Looking-glass cakes," the Unicorn remarked. "Hand it round first and cut it afterwards."