I was sent these three books free of charge for review for our 100 books challenge by Penguin Books, and I have to say I was particularly grateful for their small size 😉
I’m not actually a big one for literature or classics. Bit of an inverted snob, probably, and the blame for that can be laid at least partially at the feet of the university boyfriend who thought he was so much worthier than me because he’d read all this sort of stuff while I’d grown up on a diet of library books and Reader’s Digest Condensed novels. But I was determined that I would do my best to try everything that was sent for this challenge, and so I’ve read all three.
Hm. Sadly hasn’t done much to change my opinion of literature. The definition appears to be something that is beautifully written, but mainly without a point. So in the title story of the Shirley Jackson book we travel along with a youngish woman on a bus ride into New York to deal with a toothache. The descriptions are detailed and we can be swept along for the ride, even into the confusion caused mainly we assume by lack of sleep and over use of codeine to deal with the pain. Caught up in the story, I was desperate to find out what was going to happen to our heroine, and instead I got to the end and it just sort of stops. Kind of like getting to the end of a novel and finding someone has ripped the last page out – I felt rather cheated. Having said that, I think the majority of parents would understand and empathise with the parents in Charles.
The Franz Kafka collection is rather different. After reading that, I rather felt that I wanted to clean my mind out of the images left behind – and I definitely wished I hadn’t read it just before bed. Again it’s incredibly well written, but the question has got to be why.
The Borges was slightly different. I studied philosophy at university, so the short story littered with references to philosophers made me feel much more at home, and I may even read that one again to try to appreciate it in more detail.
The good thing about these books is their small size makes it much less intimidating to take on literary greats – they are books you could slip in a pocket or a handbag and take to an appointment and feel terribly learned in the waiting room. Definitely worth a look if that sort of thing appeals to you.
The boring small print…If you don’t want to miss out on any of the news on the challenge, please sign up to my rss feed – there’s an email link over in the side, or you can sub with a reader. I’m also on twitter using the hashtag #100books and facebook.
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