The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike (Review)

Title: The Witches of Eastwick
Author: John Updike
First published: 1984
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Rating: ★★★★★

This is one of those books you don't know how to start writing about. Not only has it layers upon layers of meaning, it is also so enchanting that you are afraid that the charm will be broken from your amateur jabber. But in spite of being intimidated and feeling totally unequal to the task, I'll try, because to pass over this book in silence would be very unfair.

The story takes place in a small rural town of Eastwick, where everybody know each other (and some of them has even slept with almost everybody they know) and where in the sleepy atmosphere of quiet contempt a coven of three witches is formed. They are all middle-aged women, divorced and not caring much for their children. What they care about is their womanliness, their self-actualization and their powers. Now this is tricky, because their powers are very subtle, like when they wish somebody to break their leg, sometime later they do. A "reasonable" person can find millions of plausible explanations why it's just an accident, but when these incidents repeat, nobody doubts that this is witchcraft. Sometimes they become very nasty, but they try to think they are only tools of some Nature's purpose.

All goes relatively well in the town and in their coven before a new menacing resident Darryl Van Horne appears in an old mansion on the shore. He lures all three of them to his house, joins in their Sabbaths and tries to challenge them to do something new and bigger with their lives. He manipulates them to think that each of them is special to him, and this diabolic influence destroys their fragile idyll. Horrible things start to happen in the town, and the witches' powers change.

Now I'm not sure I can judge the plausibility of the described feelings and thoughts of middle-aged women, because I'm too young for that, but I find them very believable, and I was wondering how a man could have written such a book. The other wonderful thing is the structure of the narrative, where everything has its meaning and fits in its place: the seasons, the holidays, the coming and leaving of characters - all is perfectly adjusted. And the writing is just mesmerizing.

In my book:
Not an easy book to read, but totally worth it. It is disturbing and scary at times, but not in the supernatural way. It's the horror of a woman's nature, so nothing to be done with this :)

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (Review)

Title: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
First published: 1893
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Rating: ★★★★★

This is the second collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories, and the one where he dies (which is hardly a spoiler, as well as that he will be revived again :) )  Needless to say, the last story, the one with prof. Moriarty, Reichenbach falls and the last confrontation between the "Napoleon of crime" and the most famous "consulting detective" of all times, is the most awesome of all. It's actually a thriller, not a mystery, as there is no case in the story, but the mood is perfect for waving goodbye to Sherlock. It's very sad. What is also surprising is that it's also the first story in which Moriarty appears ever, and what a powerful character this obscure maths professor immediately becomes! It's like Irene Adler: she is also mentioned only in one short story and yet, as Moriarty, she is present in every S.H. adaptation since then.

As for other stories, I especially liked "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual", "The Adventure of the Reigate Squire" and "Silver Blaze". The first one is about treasure hunt, the latter two are sometimes really funny, and all involve some nice deductions. I was however a bit disappointed with "The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk", because it reminded me so much of "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League". They are really twin stories and I was wondering if Doyle had run out of plots or he was simply experimenting how the same device would work in a slightly different story.

In my book:
Although this collection doesn't contain as many all-time favourites as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, it is very nice overall, and the ending is just wonderful!

Let's Read Plays Wrap Up

A year long Let's Read Plays challenge is at an end, and although I can't say I've read everything I had planned to, it was a success for me anyway :)

Here is what my year-long plan looked like:

• Nov '12 - Shakespeare's Tragedy: Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Dec '12 - Shakespeare's Comedy: Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
• Jan '13 - freebie: A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
• Feb '13 - Shakespeare's History: Henry V by William Shakespeare
• Mar '13 - Greek: Oedipus the King by Sophocles
• Apr '13 - Shakespeare's Comedy: A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
• May '13 - Shakespeare's Tragedy: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• Jun '13 - Oscar Wilde: An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
• Jul '13 - Other author: The Seagull by Anton Chekhov
• Aug '13 - Shakespeare's Comedy: As You Like It by William Shakespeare
• Sep '13 - freebie: The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
• Oct '13 - Shakespeare's Tragedy: Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

So, as you see, I've managed to read 10 out of 12 plays. I've missed May and June because of ridiculously huge work and study load, and I knew that if I make myself catch up, the pressure will make me drop it altogether. Besides, those two plays were re-reads anyway.

My favourite was Macbeth. Witches, prophesies, ghosts, menacing atmosphere and AMAZING strong characters (Lady Macbeth, I'm looking at you!) - what else do you need in a play? :) The close second place is shared by A Streetcar Named Desire, The Seagull and Julius Caesar. I didn't really enjoy Shakespeare's comedies a lot, and the only one I can recommend is A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is rather nice in comparison with the others. Sophocles also didn't impress me at all. Chekhov is an all-time favourite of mine, and I will definitely be rereading all his plays someday.

It was a very well-organized event, which worked very well for me, as I read some amazing books, which otherwise I might have put off for a looooong time. Thanks a lot for organizing it, Fanda! I'll be looking forward to any of your future events, as you are a great host! :)

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (Review)

Title: Julius Caesar
Author: William Shakespeare
First published: 1599
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Rating: ★★★★★

For me Shakespeare's tragedies work much better than comedies. He has this sixth sense as to how to make them pathetic and believable, dramatic and realistic at the same time. And no 16-century weird humour, thank you!

Julius Caesar tells about - guess, what? Correct, about the assassination of Julius Caesar. But it's a mistake to think the guy is the main character in the play - the centre of everything is rather Brutus, who is struggling between his love to Caesar and his duty as a citizen. The most interesting part of the plot is all the polemics about the necessity and reasons to kill Caesar. On the one hand, he is a great and very estimated man, but on the other hand he is on the verge of being asked to become an emperor, and this no free citizen can abide. I also really loved how Brutus and Antony in turns bring the mob to their side, people changing their opinions cardinally in a matter of 5 minutes just because of some words they hear. The power of rhetoric!

Brutus is a very well-developed character: principled, valiant and thoughtful. His is a really tragic figure, as he knows all the consequences of his deed, but he still does it because of his beliefs and in spite of personal feelings. Another favourite of mine is Portia, Brutus's wife, who will not be treated as merely a wife and a woman, but rather as an advisor and friend. Her idea of a marriage is sharing not only a bed and a table, but also thoughts, anxieties and plans. Rather modern!

Let's finish, as usual, with some wonderful quotes:

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;"

Portia's greatest phrase:

"I have a man's mind, but a woman's might."

"The ides of March are come.
<...>
Ay, Caesar; but not gone."

A great judicial principle for all times:

"What touches us ourself shall be last served."

Very meta:

"<...> How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!"

Brutus's reasoning:

"Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. <...> As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I slew him."

About historical judgement:

"The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;"

"When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony."

"Words before blows"

And my personal favourite:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries."

In my book:
A beautiful tragedy with a lot of controversial moral loading. Great characters, great dialogues! One of the Shakespeare's best plays!

R.I.P. VIII Wrap-Up

This year's R.I.P. event is at an end, and although I was not as successful in it as I hoped back in August, I've done the minimum program. I was planning to read the following books:

1. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
2. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
3. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe
4. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
5. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

As you see, I have read four of them, and really enjoyed three (you guess yourself which one is left out :) ). As for The Mysteries of Udolpho, it has turned out to be a very long and tedious book, so I'm not even half-way through yet... If the right mood strikes me, I may finish it by the end of the year, but that's already two months past the event finish line :)

There was also one book I didn't really expect to turn out creepy, as I didn't know what to expect of it at all, but as it's Gaiman, surely enough it turned out to be the creepiest of all :)

    6.  The Ocean At The End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

So I've done Peril the First level, as it requires only 4 books, and I've read five. It was my first time participating, and I really enjoyed it, as it made me pick up books I've put aside for too long, and some of them I really loved!

Looking forward to the next year! :)

The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius (Review)

Title: The Golden Ass
Author: Lucius Apuleius
First published: 158
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Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

If you are not a literature major, don't read this book! It's a repulsive mix of Decameron, myths, witch stories and religious preaching. The only beautiful part in The Golden Ass is the story of Cupid and Psyche, which is so unlike everything else, that I suspect Apuleius has stolen it from some earlier source. So if you can, try to find this story separately and enjoy it without its miserable surroundings.

The plot is quite well-known: a curious protagonist Lucius, who is very interested in witchcraft, tries some magic ointment and turns into an ass. He has to live in this form for around a year, and the novel is composed of his misfortunes while serving different masters and various stories he has heard during this year. Goddess Isid finally saves him, and the last part of the book is the glorification of her and her cult. Doesn't sound too bad, eh? But it is! This canvas is filled with violence, repulsive sex (yes, incest and intercourse with animals (I don't remember the correct English name for this and am afraid to google) included), lavatorial humour, and so on... I soooo did not expect this from such a renowned classic. And you don't get any warnings about this anywhere. So now I warn you, and if you are bothered by the above mentioned topics, as I am, avoid this book.

This is a short review, but that's just all I have to say about it :)

In my book:
Disgusting

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 :)

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (Review)

Title: Cat's Cradle
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
First published: 1963
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Rating: ★★☆☆☆

I don't seem to be very lucky in this autumn's book choices. But it's mainly my own fault. Take Cat's Cradle: Slaughterhouse Five might have given me the idea of how little I would enjoy another Vonnegut's book, but I resisted my own intuition and succumbed to public opinion, which praises this book as the most wonderful piece of writing ever. Result - frustration.

I don't want to say that there's nothing appealing in this book. I gave it 2 stars for some really interesting ideas. Like religion which admits that it is lies or "ice-nine" (although there are some technical problems with this). These ideas are very powerful, but I totally hate the way they were integrated into the narrative, if it can be called narrative in the first place. The plot line, the characters, the dialogues - all is ridiculous and hard to comprehend, let alone get connected to. The style also adds to the picture, making the book even more irritating for me. Vonnegut apparently wants to be funny, but although I see the places where he takes pains to joke, they totally fail to get me. There's also quite a few "philosophical thoughts" packed in the novel, which are rather obtrusive and sometimes weird.

In my book:
Maybe that's I that is a problem in our relationship, not Vonnegut, but we clearly don't get on very well. Sorry, Kurt!

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (Review)

Title: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Author: Washington Irving
First published: 1820
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Rating: ★★★★★

All of you native English speakers probably don't need any plot summary of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, because, as I've heard, it's included in nearly every school program. Even for me the story felt very familiar, although I don't remember actually reading it. I guess it's already in the domain of collective unconscious. What I consciously knew about it, however, is just that it had a headless specter in it. So, naturally, I expected it to be this normal creepy ghost story. What I didn't expect at all is that it would be so funny!

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is not in the least about something paranormal, it instead deals with people's beliefs and superstitions and how they influence their everyday lives. Nothing assuredly unnatural actually happens, but in a small village like Sleepy Hollow, superstitions flower in uneducated minds of people to such extent that they explain many things with ghosts, and it's not surprising that they tend to start seeing them :)

The main character, Ichabod, is a school teacher, but he can't be called particularly enlightened. He enjoys sitting in front of a hearth with older ladies and share ghost stories, and when he is alone he imagines supernatural things all around him. But that doesn't prevent him from having a practical mind, and so he enters an open competition for the hand of a rich farmer's daughter with the village's most reckless youth Brom Bones. It would be stupid of Bones not to use Ichabod's inclination to superstitions to his own benefit, and Bones is not stupid :)

I find characters in the story to be very lively and Irving's kind mockery of them really endearing. I was smiling a lot and sometimes even laughed at the descriptions of Ichabod's courting and then of his misfortunes. There is only one problem with this story: I intended it to count for RIPVIII event, but now that I know it's not scary, I'm not so sure :) But I'm very glad I read it anyway :) 

In my book:
A very well written, funny and entertaining story. Definitely recommended to anybody who hasn't yet had the pleasure of discovering it for himself :)

The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (Review)

Title: The Three Sisters
Author: Anton Chekhov
First published: 1900
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Rating: ★★★★☆

I really like Chekhov. He somehow manages to speak about very complicated things without complicating his writing and making it pretentious and pathetic. All his characters are very easily imaginable by the way they speak, and there's no need in descriptions or commentaries whatsoever. And what's most important, you can really believe that that's exactly how people of their position and disposition would speak. Nothing is feigned.

The Three Sisters shows a family of a brother and three sisters living in Russian countryside. They are too educated and refined for their surroundings, and this discrepancy is torturing them. They dream of going back to Moscow, but this is not going to happen, and their accomplishments will be wasted on people who can't appreciate them. I can totally relate to their feelings. Fortunately, I'm now always among my equals in education and intellect, but there were periods in my life when I felt myself as a "f***ing genius", and it was horrible, mainly because I still had to behave civilly towards everybody who annoyed me so much. The sisters' situation becomes even worse when their brilliant brother marries a simple country girl, has two children, forgets his scientific career and becomes a clerk. But they still hope to escape this horrible place, to go to Moscow and to start leading a meaningful life.

There is of course a wonderfully vivid set of supporting characters, most of them representing some aspect of intellectual degradation, and they would have been really funny if the whole situation was not so sad. The Three Sisters is characteristic of Chekhov's style, but I must say I liked The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard more, although we were deconstructing the latter at school, and it usually spoils everything.

In my book:
As all Chekhov's plays, a wonderful piece of drama. Very close to five stars, but not quite there, at least for me.