(Already Traditional) Mini-Reviews, Part 1

As promised, here's the first batch of long-due mini-reviews :)

Title: The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Rating: ★★★☆☆

Is it me or has Sir Arthur lost some of his flair for awesomeness after the first three short story collections? I guess he’s not to blame, as *spoiler alert* he honestly tried to kill Sherlock and not write about him anymore, and had only caved to extreme public pressure to resurrect him. Anyway, I don’t even remember any of the stories that stand out in this particular book… And some are repetitive of the ones in the earlier collections. Still, Sherlock is adorable, and anything about him is a great comfort read.

Title: Zoo City
Author: Lauren Beukes
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

This was January choice for Coursera Fantasy and Sci-Fi Book Club, and it was the first book we read together that I didn’t like. Maybe Southern African English and excessive use of slang words are to blame, but I never understood what was really happening in the book and WHY it was happening. You see, when you commit a crime there, they give you an animal mascot(?) that you can’t be separated from. “Animalled” people are considered lower class and live in some kind of slums. They are despised and also feared, as animals sometimes give them supernatural powers. Now I could have told you more, but as I’ve said, I’m clueless as to what the plot is and why this imaginary world functions like it does.

Title: The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Rating: ★★★★★ 

Oh, this book! If you think of it, the society structure is rather ridiculous and it’s hard to imagine how people can end up living like this, but the writing is so brilliant that the story totally makes sense and you don’t want to see any plot holes. Not much HAPPENS in the book per se, because things are not supposed to happen to a handmaid, but the descriptions and musings of the protagonist are so engrossing that you literally can’t put the book down. And the ending… Oh, I just love the ending!

Title: Changing Places
Author: David Lodge
Rating: ★★★★★

This is a very funny novel that just GETS academia life! Two professors, one from US and one from UK are on an international exchange program and have to spend half a year in each other’s shoes. Hilarity ensues as they battle cultural differences and discover their new selves. Ah, there’s nothing like a funny book about professors :)

Title: Station Eleven
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Rating: ★★★★☆ 

An award winning hit, and yet I don’t wait a couple of years before reading it? Weird! But everybody in my feed was praising this novel, and besides the premise is awesome! There has been an epidemic, and 10 years after it the few people that are left alive are reduced to scavenging, hunting and primitive lifestyle in general. However, for some “survival is insufficient”, so a theater on wheels is travelling across Canada, performing what do you think? Shakespeare! Who apparently never goes out of fashion. The writing is beautiful, magical even, but the plot, although converging satisfactory in the end, is not without lapses. Like what about that menacing and pointless Prophet? I just don’t buy it.

Title: The Rosie Project
Author: Graeme Simsion
Rating: ★★★★★

Ah, what a sweet book! Apart from being hilarious, it’s also very optimistic and good-humored. It just makes you feel good, especially if you are partial to weird scientists and happen to know a lot of them, even though such grave cases of social awkwardness are unlikely to exist in real life.

Title: The Lives of Tao
Author: Wesley Chu
Rating: ★★★★☆

This is a very enjoyable and fun read. A tad bit too much pathos in the end to my taste, but the dialogues! They are awesome. Also, I can’t help wishing for an all-knowing and wise alien sitting in my head and pushing me to greatness. Maybe then I’d actually run in the mornings!!

Title: Москва - Петушки (Moscow to the End of the Line)
Author: Venedict Erofeev
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

I just wish it was possible to format the part of my brain that remembers this book. It’s really postmodernist and unusual… for the first 5 pages. Then it gets repetitive, boring and straight mad.











So that's it! A really mixed bag of books, some being awesome 5-star ones and some ending up on my hate list... Part 2, covering my reading adventures from the end of April to current time is coming soon :)

One Day by David Nicholls

Title: One Day
Author: David Nicholls
First published: 2009
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Rating: ★★★★☆

I don't usually read romance novels, and I was a bit sceptical about this one, especially as I knew how it all will end from the movie (which is great, BTW). But surprisingly enough I really enjoyed the novel. And even cried a bit, because I tend to get all tearful in all the intended places... I'm very easy to manipulate that way. Maybe that's why I don't read romance often. Anyways...

The plot spans nearly twenty years of the very complicated will-they-won't-they relationship of a "librarian type" girl and a "golden boy". Somehow they can't let go of each other while building their so very different lives separately and with all the wrong people.

The characters are a bit cliche, but their dialogues are great and funny. You can feel how well they work together and you just want to punch them in the face and tell them to stop being stupid and be together already. They are cute, really, although irritating too. That's why they feel so real. It is also palpable how they grow up through the novel, from irresponsible 20-years-olds to 40-something with the household problems and children.

In my book:
Want romance? Here's the quintessential romantic book, and a pretty good one at that.

Lancelot by Chrétien de Troyes (Review)

Title: Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart
Author: Chrétien de Troyes
First published written: 1170
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Rating: ★★★☆☆

I was more excited about reading Lancelot than about any other of Chrétien's romances. I mean, Lancelot's story is so popular and here it appears for the first time, at least according to Wikipedia. But unfortunately the romance was not very exciting. Well, there is love between Lancelot and the queen, all right, and some horrifying details about their night together, like Lancelot bleeding all the time because he's lost his finger while trying to get to the queen's rooms... Imagine that. But overall it's just another story about some guy painfully trying to prove to everyone around that he's the best by challenging everybody else he sees without much consideration. This whole cart business was also not very clear from the text, and I was wondering why he needed taking it except for symbolic reasons.

There are some things I liked though. One is the depiction of father/son relationships. There are two such pairs in the story, and a son is usually a hothead, while his dad tries to stop him, reason with him and protect him. Needless to say, this makes the son ashamed of his parent, although in the end the dad is always right. This is so true to life I had to smile :)

Another scene I liked is when a lady offers Lancelot lounging in exchange for spending a night with her. Smart move, right? And it is so funnily described how very unpleasant it was to Lancelot and how he suffered from it, but he was still going to do this out of honour because he gave his word. I laughed out loud at this! :)

In my book:
Yet another typical Chrétien romance... I'm getting a bit tired of them.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon - A Rant

Note: I know many people totally love this book, so if you think me ranting about it would spoil your day, don't read the review :) That's precisely why I've put "A Rant" subtitle to the post header.

Title: Outlander
Author: Diana Gabaldon
First published: 1991
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Rating: ★★☆☆☆

With an impressive 4.13 rating on Goodreads and so many recommendations, I expected this book to become my new favourite. There's time travel, Scotland, a strong female character, hot scots... I like all these things, but somehow them being put together by Gabaldon resulted in total crap. Well, maybe not TOTAL, but we'll get to it. Let's begin with the bad stuff, OK?

First, the book is sooo long! Generally, I love long books, but there'd better be something actually happening on all those pages. OK, there are a lot of adventures, battles and other things, all right, but they are all so monotonous! By the middle of the book I had an urge to yawn every time Jaime was hurt or Claire was abused. Again. Besides, this brings me to the next point: the abundance of unsettling and disgusting descriptions. I do realize that the time was not pretty, but some scenes in the prison and afterwards were totally unnecessary. Not that I cared by that time. In the second half of the book there were several action sequences in which I had no idea what was happening... And I didn't want to re-read to make sense of them. It's still a mystery to me how the prison escape was managed and how getting high on opium and fighting cured blood poisoning in the end.

My next problem with the book was sex scenes. I like me some good steamy sex in a book, and I do admit that some of them actually WERE good, but not for 200 pages non-stop! I'm not kidding, there's a part in the book in which they hardly do anything else. Again, I got bored. Besides, some stuff really disturbed me. Remember the scene when they have sex near the body of a soldier killed by Claire just before? Or that sex after a month on the verge of death. Seriously???

Even with all the aforementioned problems the book would be OK if I liked the characters. But Jaime is just some sickly-sweet ideal of a man, who everybody older than 12 years old should understand doesn't exist, and Claire... I didn't really care for her. I can't figure out why, but probably because her reactions to things happening around her are so unbelievable that I can't think of her as a real person.

Now to the positive moments, as promised :) The book is obviously well-researched and gives a nice overview of life in Scotland at that time. Although I'm not a specialist and I may be wrong here. Also, the dialogues are usually good and witty, and some even made me smile. Hmm.. That's probably all. Not much :)

In my book:
If you are not into hard-core "women's fiction", skip it! Spend some time NOT wanting to punch the characters in the face instead :)

Cligès by Chrétien de Troyes (Review)

Title: Cligès
Author: Chrétien de Troyes
First published: 1176
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Rating: ★★★★★

Cligès is the second poem by Chrétien de Troyes and it is a wild and amusing mix of Tristan and Iseult, Romeo and Juliet and your classic Arthurian romance. The story can be roughly divided into two parts: the first one tells about the Greek emperor Alexander, who came to King Arthur's court in search of glory and also found his love, and the second focuses on his son Cligès and his love to Fenice, which is very unlike the simple and idyllic story of his parents.

The most striking thing about this poem is that it's very, very funny. Chrétien's ironic and cute portrayal of the lovers' feelings made me smile all the time. They seem stupid but also really adorable in their agony. And aren't we all stupid when we are in love? :) Another thing that I like about Chrétien de Troyes is that he is always very self-conscious about his writing, and he talks to the reader, explaining his writer's choices and underlining the structure of the poem. It's as if he is telling you the story reposing in front of the fire after a plentiful dinner washed down with mulled wine.

The plot is more real and much less conventional than the plot of Erec and Enide, the only other Chrétien's poem I've read so far. Instead of battling imaginary giants at imaginary locations, Cligès is about real European politics and real battles and sieges. There is also abduction, treason, forbidden love, poisons, you name it! I really loved the "marriage solution" from the story. Fenice, in love with Cligès, doesn't want to sleep with her lawful husband, so every evening she gives him a potion which makes him sleep and dream certain dreams that make him sure she does her marital duty by him. Awesome, right??

In my book:
Cligès is much more readable than Erec and Enide and is very entertaining without any reservations!

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (Review)

Title: The Mysteries of Udolpho
Author: Ann Radcliffe
First published: 1794
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Rating: ★★☆☆☆

20 pages into this book I already regretted putting it on my Classics Club list. OK, it's an iconic Gothic novel, which has inspired a lot of followers since it was written, but it's very, very tiresome to read. Seriously, I was wondering how come Catherine Morland found it so exciting and how could Henry Tilney have read it in three days? It took me three months, on and off.

Let's be a little more organised than usual today and make a bullet list of things that I didn't particularly enjoy in the novel.

• The first problem of the book is, of course, the abundance of cumbersome poetry. The reader is lucky if there are only epigraphs from Milton or Shakespeare, as they are quite bearable, but sometimes it's real crap, which I can't even make sense of. Moreover, some of the heroes write "their own" poetry from time to time, which is even more horrible. Sorry, Mrs. Radcliffe, you are no Shakespeare.
• Second thing that bothered me was the descriptions of nature. They are everywhere and occupy nearly one third of the book, or so it seems. Imagine a heroine being led through the dark forest by a couple of ruffians at night and then just stopping to admire the stars. Yep, that's what happens here.
• It's slow! It's so slow that the castle of Udolpho is first mentioned only on page 188 out of 650. Argh!
• All the FEELINGS! The main heroine is particularly sensitive and is always fainting, blushing, crying, trying to find words, shocked, etc. I know, I know those were the times when it was considered desirable, but really?
• All the characters are either unreasonably evil or are saints. The only well-developed character in the book is Annette, Emily's maid, who is generally good, but talkative, shallow and superstitious. Her voice is the only one that is different from others.

Maybe for its time it was a super exciting novel, and there are some twists of the plot that liven it up a bit, but for a modern reader, even the one familiar with some old classics, it's a bit too much

In my book:
The only reason to read it is to get acquainted with the source of the genre. If you are not famous for your patience, skip it!

Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman (Review)

Title: Here Be Dragons
Author: Sharon Kay Penman
First published: 1985
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Rating: ★★★★☆

I treated myself to this beautiful book while in Vancouver, which has HUGE bookshops, all in English, where I spent hours. I call it a treat because it was ridiculously expensive. Sometimes I think that people who buy "real" paper books must be millionaires. But I just felt like buying a nice book, you know, and I was not disappointed! Recently I have noticed that I feel more invested in the "real" books, either because I choose so well or because I've already paid so much money for this - psychology in action! But I think I would have loved this book in any format.

The list of things I love about Here Be Dragons begins with the title.You know, this is the phrase that was written over unknown territories on old maps. I ADORE old maps, and the cool thing here is that the book is about Wales, and not only was it completely misunderstood by England, they also have a dragon on their flag. Clever, eh? The next cool thing is the setting: the story unfolds between 1183 and 1234 which means it covers the end of Henry Plantagenet's rule, his children's rivalries, the rules of Richard Lionheart and John Lackland and ends with the beginning of Henry III's rule. Rather epic, right? But the story is focused on Wales, where at this time Llywelyn the Great rose to power and more or less united his country against the unceasing England's conquest. While I knew quite a lot about English kings and the situation between England and France at this time, I was completely ignorant about what was happening in Wales. All we got in the textbooks was that the castles were built there at this time as part of the conquest and some beautiful pictures. So the story is really interesting from the historical point of view, especially because it's very well researched and is true to the remaining historical sources.

I wouldn't have liked the story so much if it was purely historical, but it is also a very good romance. The main heroine is Joanna, an illegitimate daughter of John Lackland, who was married to Llewelyn as part of the treaty with Wales. It was horrible for her to go to another country with different language, where everybody saw her as a foe. And she was only 14 then! She loved her father and she came to love her husband, but needless to say the treaty between them didn't live long. Torn between the two men she loved, she played an important role as an ambassador of peace between England and Wales and her entreaties to her father not once saved quite some Welsh lives, including her husband's. She, John and Llevelyn are all very interesting and well-developed characters, and I was really involved in their relationships. There are some rather graphic scenes of Joanna and Llewelyn's private life that I found rather indecent and out of place, but that really didn't bother me that much. I guess this was done for certain public that needs to know EXACTLY how well they got on sometimes :) Well, that doesn't include me! However, this is just a fly in the ointment.

The description of everyday life (mostly Norman everyday life, of course) was not romanticized at all, which I also liked very much. The realities were very harsh back then, with horrible medicine, childbirth and life conditions. All this is shown very well in the book. What never fails to shock me most, although it's a well-known fact, is the disposal of women as part of treaties and alliances, no matter what age they are. It was a usual thing to marry off a daughter at twelve and expect a husband to consummate the marriage immediately. Of course, some men were kind enough to wait, but they were in minority. Moreover, married life in itself was very harsh for women. When in Wales, Joanna was surprised at finding out that, unlike in England and France, a wife could divorce or request compensation if she found her husband unfair to her (shock!!) and that husbands were not accustomed to beating their wives (unheard of!). So, well, welsh women were rather lucky, but that was certainly an exception.

In my book:
It is a very engaging historical fiction and romance, so I would definitely recommend it to anybody who is interested in either of the genres. It will keep you up late at night, I promise :)

As You Like It by William Shakespeare (Review)

Title: As You Like It
Author: William Shakespeare
First published: 1623
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Rating: ★★★★☆

I'm not a very big fan of Shakespeare's comedies, because, let's be honest, the jokes may have been funny at his times, but they are not funny anymore. So the "funny" scenes usually leave me abashed and perplexed. But luckily there's much more to As You Like It than just humour, so the book was not disappointing overall.

The style of the play may be characterized as pastoral: all the good guys leave the court in favour of a simpler life in the forest with the shepherds. As usual, there is also love, cross-dressing, a fool and some court intrigues, spiced up with a few nice philosophical sayings. By the way, As You Like It is the play where the famous "All the world's a stage" speech comes from. I didn't know it!

Some of the other favourite quotes include:

"Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak."

"...honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar."

"O, that woman that cannot make her fault her husband's occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, for she will breed it like a fool!"

"...take a good heart and counterfeit to be a man."

- I'll remember it to use as an encouragement to somebody :)

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

In my book:
It's everything you expect from a Shakespeare's comedy.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Review)

Title: Mansfield Park
Author: Jane Austen
First published: 1814
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Rating: ★★★☆☆

I must admit that Mansfield Park, the second book I read for this year's Austen in August event, was a bit of a disappointment comparing with the other Jane Austen's novels I've read. The novel can't boast either equally brilliant characters or such a satisfactory closure as Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion. It also feels like it's a bit overstretched, which is totally NOT common for Austen works. Usually you just can't get enough :) There may be spoilers below, so be warned!

My first problem was that I couldn't find anybody to like in Mansfield Park. Fanny Price is considered to be Austen's favourite character, but I don't quite see why. She is not bright, she is meek, she hardly ever speaks and she doesn't have an education to speak of. She is bossed around by everybody and thinks it's normal. Of course, one must consider her Cinderella-like situation and the ideas of proper behaviour at that time, but I can't imagine Elizabeth Bennet, for example, letting anybody go away with treating her like this :) Edmund, the second character who is supposed to be "good" is just dull and indecisive. Sometimes I thought the only topics that interest him are propriety, seriousness and emmm... let's say internal morality, although it sounds pathetic. He is pathetic, after all. But Edmund turns out to be a hypocrite in all his beliefs, because he falls in love with the most coquettish, immoral and spoiled girl ever. To make things worse, he just can't speak out his feelings, although there is an understanding between them for a long time. And after his disappointment in Mary, he finds consolation into quiet and domestic Fanny. How dull and predictable.

Which brings me to my next point, and that's the plot. First, the final match is SOOO unconvincing and dull, as I've already mentioned. How much better would it be for Fanny to actually bring Crawford to better life and marry him! And for Edmund to convince Mary to accept him... Or, you know, some reasonable ending. But it seems Austen was a bit tired by the end of the novel, so all the scandalous action is described through few letters, and then all the most important matches and consolations are just described briefly in the final chapter. Comparing with the novel's beginning, the level of detailing is unbearably low, so we'll never know their reasons and feelings. Which means I'll stay unconvinced.

And here we come to the style, and the most suitable word here is heavy. It is mainly a mixture of elaborated constructions, indirect speech and piles of words. And nearly NO dialogues. That's the thing I can't possibly condone. When reading a 19 century novel, I want some heated dialogues, full of hints, cleverness and good breeding! I want some true love speeches! At least from the guys who are main characters and for some reason end up together. Nothing of the sort...

Now that was a lot of rambling, but it is just probably because I am not in a very good mood right now. If you do not listen to me, you'll find everything you want from such kind of novels here. It's still well-written, has a lot of atmosphere, social satire and quite some scandal. It was just not enough for me, and I don't like to be disappointed when I expect a lot from a book...

In my book:
Mansfield Park is a solid Jane Austen classic, but nowhere near Pride and Prejudice! It made me sad and induced me to go look at some Colin Firth in a wet shirt photos on the Internet.

BTW, did you know they made a stature of him in London? It looks like this:

Awesome, right?

Persuasion by Jane Austen (Review)

Title: Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
First published: 1817
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Rating: ★★★★☆

The Elliots is a proud but now quite broken family of English land owners. Walter Elliot is an appearance-obsessed widower with three daughters, only one of whom has managed to marry, and no sons to inherit his estate. The eldest daughter, Elizabeth, has become the mistress of the house at the age of 13, after her mother's death, and it has not improved her character. Besides, being 28 she now has little or no chance to marry. Anne Elliot, the main heroine, is now 26. 8 years ago she was engaged to an officer, but was persuaded to break the engagement because of his lack of money and position. She hasn't married since, and now she is to be trialed with meeting her fiancee, now rich and successful, again while staying with her younger married sister Mary, an owner of a whining and hypochondriac character.

Persuasion is a bit different from the other Austen novels I've read, mainly because the heroine is older, is supposed to have lost all her charms (at 26!!! Now this is shocking!), and have quite some history. This makes her a good observer and a skeptic rather than an easily-excited girl. Living in such a shallow family, it is surprising how she could get such a good understanding and tolerance, but she has, and it makes her a great narrator.

The usual Austen humour is of course present too: the book is full of mockery towards the notions and ways of rural aristocracy, and some of the situations made me laugh out loud, especially the ones including Mary's scheming. But there are also some beautiful moments in the book, one of which is the relations between Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who consciously choose to spend time together, seem to care about each other and are generally an example of a happy family.

In my book:
Persuasion is a bit inferior to Pride and Prejudice for me, but then what can equal it at all? :) However, it is a very nice and decent book, a comfort read of sorts, written with Jane Austen's brilliant wit and inimitable skill.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Title: Jane Eyre
Author: Charlotte Brontë
First published: 1847
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This was a wonderful re-read for the third week of The Fiction of Relationship course. My love for this book can be traced back to my childhood. I guess I was about 10 when I first read it in translation, and then in my teens it was the first big and non-adapted book in English that I bought and read. Of course, I understood no more than 50% of it, and it took me two months to finish it, but the fact that I knew what it was about helped a lot.

This re-read was different, because I considered the book from the prism of a much broader literature and historical background and I saw much more in it as a result. I remember that during previous reads I was really pissed off with Jane for refusing to become Rochester's mistress (I know, I know, I didn't have really high moral standards, I admit :) ), because it seemed to me that love was the most important thing in the book, but now I looked deeper and saw all the feminist ideas about women's self-respect and right to accomplish something in their lives. This time it seemed impossible for Jane and Edward to be together unless they are equal not only in status but also in their attitude towards each other.

The pattern of Bildungsroman was also pretty obvious for me this time and I understood the importance of all the characters that Jane interacted with to the forming of her character. That's what differs this novel from other love stories - that it is not a love story at all. It is a story of coming in terms with one's self, of choices and of understanding what is one's way.

I also liked to notice traces of a Gothic novel in the story now that I know what it is. Jane's dreams and drawings, spirits, haunted manor, voices - this is all pretty classical, but it is not out of the place as it sometimes is. These things add to the atmosphere and beauty of the novel. If you try hard, you can also find fairy tale tropes in the story, especially in the childhood part of it. Come on, there is even an evil stepmother :)

Sometimes re-reading a book is even better than reading it for the first time, because you not only enjoy the plot and the writing, but you also observe how much you have changed in the time elapsed between the readings. And I'm happy to notice that I can read and understand books much better now than then. I feel kind of proud and accomplished because of this, but also a bit sad, as I don't have so much excitement in me now as I used to have. But this is life :)

Manon Lescaut by Antoine François Prévost

Title: Manon Lescaut
Author: Antoine François Prévost
First published: 1731
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Last week I started The Fiction of Relationship course (Check it out! It's great, and it's not late to join yet!) on Coursera, which requires reading a selected book each week and then watching wonderful lectures that analyse the current week material. The books are chosen to cover relationship not only in a narrow sense - love relationship in a pair, but also relationship in a wider perspective - relationship with the society, with oneself, etc.

Manon Lescaut is the first book on the course schedule, and it is also considered one of the first books of the romantic era in literature. It tells about passionate love of chevalier Des Grieux and Manon Lescaut, a lady of doubtful descent and behavior. Des Grieux is a bright student deemed to become an abbot, but when he meets Manon, she becomes the only important thing in his life, and he sinks lower and lower, becoming an idler and a gambler, always taking money from his friends, frequenting prisons and alienated from his family. He is ready to do anything to keep Manon, whatever the cost.

Manon, on the other hand, however strong she claims her love to Des Grieux to be, is more practical. She likes money and Paris nightlife, and the only way to get it all for her is to become a mistress of some rich gentleman. So not once does she leave Des Grieux for a new lover, and she doesn't see anything wrong with it. Her body is her currency, and what is important for her in her relationship with Des Grieux is "fidelity of the heart", not of the body. It's difficult for me not to think of her as a slut, but I try to look deeper. Anyway, she seems really devoted to Des Grieux in the end, and they even decide to marry.

The novel doesn't end happily, and it leaves more questions than answers. Like, was it really love? is it society that spoils pure feeling? how comes money is what sustains their love? This novel is very modern, as the "love triangle" between feelings, money and society still exists nowadays. After I watched the lectures and discussions I see that there is even more meat in this story, but a small review is definitely not enough for a big discussion. All in all, a very thought-provoking and interesting read, and a great beginning of the course!

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

Title: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Author: William Shakespeare
First published: 1596
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It's been a while since I participated in Let's Read Plays event because of exams, conference and other stuff. So A Midsummer Night's Dream was actually supposed to be an April read, but it seems even more timely now, in June, when summer solstice is approaching. I've also decided that I don't want the pressure of catching-up, so I'll skip Romeo and Juliet and An Ideal Husband which were re-reads anyway and start next month with a clean slate to fully enjoy The Seagull.

Now to the play itself. Remember me writing that I'm not actually enjoying Shakespeare's comedies because of rude and primitive jokes which are moreover nearly impossible to understand because of the language? Well, this is completely not true about this play, and I enjoyed every line of it. I guess that's thanks to the main topic of the jokes, which is theatrical business, the thing that Shakespeare knew very well and so could ridicule best.

As for the plot, there are three distinct story lines in the play. One is a love triangle, or rather quadrangle with twisted sides: two men in love with one woman; she loves one of them, but her father is supporting another, and the second girl is in love with the unwonted suitor. She wants to fight for her love, but, as she says:

We cannot fight for love, as men may do;
We should be woo'd and were not made to woo.

and it takes a love potion to set all this straight. The love potion comes from another cast of characters, fairy folk, who has their own story: Oberon and Titania, the king and the queen of the faerie, are having an argument about a servant and are eager to spite each other, for which Oberon sets up a plan of enamoring his wife with something repulsive. And someone suitable turns up, as one of the troop of common men rehearsing a play for the royal wedding in the same forest is half-turned into an ass by another fairy character Puck. So there is a lot of fun in the play, but everything ends well, and the poorly rehearsed play is performed at the celebration, accompanied by the most hilarious jests and commentaries as to the setting, the plot and the performing ever!

Some more lines that I liked in the play:

...reason and love keep little company together now-a-days;

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; 

And I'll finish with my favorite:

Lord, what fools this mortals be!

Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

Thanks to Délaissé's French February event, I've finally read a book I've been interested in for a long time. It looked like a chunkster in the beginning (653 pages of 18th century writing, and this is even without extensive commentary!), but you wouldn't believe what an easy and fast read it is! The trick is that the book is a collection of letters, so although the style is not really very different from letter to letter, the writing is very dynamic, and the POV changing allows the reader to see the events from different aspects.

The book is about two cunning intrigants, Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont who play the game of seduction for fun of sometimes for revenge. Their correspondence is very witty and full of sarcasm, and their plots are quite complicated and full of the most sober view of human nature in its worst aspects. Everything goes well for them while they are allies, but as soon as they have a serious argument, and their forces turn against each other, they both step on the road of complete ruin.

As you can guess, the book is full of spicy episodes, but there's nothing really offensive there. What may be shocking is the attitude of the two main characters towards their prey - they never give a damn about what happen to people after their plot is at an end. All they care about is themselves, and as this book is positioned as a moralistic one, they get punished for this in the end.

I really enjoyed the book, as I've always liked intrigues. And here not only the plot is entertaining, but also the setting (Paris's high society of the 18th century - who doesn't like it?) and the characters, who are very diverse and real. Needless to say, my favourite was Valmont's aunt, who is a really nice old lady, very kind and tolerant. Cute little Cecile is also so charmingly naive, that you can't stop admiring how nicely she was brought to life by Laclos. But sometimes she is just unbelievably stupid: how can a girl NOT understand that she is pregnant even when she already loses a baby? Unbelieveble.

So it was a really nice choice for a February readalong, as it's a very dynamic and entertaining book. Now I'm waiting to read what others think about it in the end of February!

Twelfth Night, or What You Will by William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night was the first of Shakespeare's comedies I've actually read, though of course I've seen a lot of adaptations of them. The experience was very different than that of reading a tragedy. There are a lot if puns and practical jokes in it and the focus is really not on the love story. Actually, I felt a bit deprived of the romantic details. I also found it a bit difficult to follow the half-drunken jokes in some of the dialogues. Maybe it's my English, maybe they are really old, or maybe I should have tried better? But it's a light book, and you don't want to linger on passages at all, so I must confess I might have missed something.

A plot is very classical and potent - a girl, Viola, is dressed as a boy for safety in an unknown country and has to help her master, Orsino, with his unfortunate love to another woman, Olivia. Needless to say, Olivia falls in love with Viola, thinking she's a man, and thus there are some funny situations. Should I mention that Viola has a twin brother, who she thinks has drowned in a ship wreck that she herself survived, but who hasn't? =) Or that everything ends well?

Besides the main plot line there is a lot of action for the servants. They are responsible for the most comical situations in the play, which involve fake love letter, dressing the clown as a monk and a lot of drinking on the part of Toby Belch. Among the servants Maria is my favourite. She is a very prototypical "cunning maid", but she is not spiteful, she rather tries to amuse her fellow servants with her pranks.

Overall, it's a very fast-moving and pleasant read, but I must say I'd rather watch it on stage - I think it would be more lively with the addition of proper acting. I have a suspicion that a play was written for specific actors, which is quite probable, if we remember a bit of Shakespeare's history. I'll leave you with the picture from my favourite adaptation of the play - Russian 1955 film "Twelfth Night":

And that's happy end, of course! =)