Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Coming Soon: H. Rider Haggard Months!

A tribute to the father of modern treasure hunting adventure stories!

H. Rider Haggard started an entire genre of books when he wrote King Solomon's Mines.  Late July and August, 2013, will be dedicated to reading as many of his books as I can squeeze in.  Here are some I will read.

  • Allan Quatermain (1887)
  • She (1887)
  • Cleopatra (1889)
  • Nada the Lily (1892)

I will also try to read these others, if I have the chance.

  • The World's Desire (1890)
  • Eric Brighteyes (1891)
  • Montezuma's Daughter (1893)
  • The People of the Mist (1894)

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Book Review: Master and Man, by Leo Tolstoy (1895)

Master and Man is the story of Vasili Andreevich and his servant Nikita.  Both men set out on a journey to a nearby town and are caught up in a snow storm.  This is a character study that focuses mainly on the master, Vasili Andreevich.  His character evolves during the course of the story and Tolstoy charts those changes for us.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Book Review: How Much Land Does a Man Need, by Leo Tolstoy (1886)

How Much Land Does a Man Need?

This was a parable.  Based on the title, I assumed it would be a social commentary, perhaps an essay on socialism or communism, the sharing of wealth and land.  I assumed it would be a way to demonstrate that people only need enough land to feed their families, and the rest of the land should be shared out to others.

But it turned out to be nothing like that at all.  It was a parable about a man who wanted more and more land, who was tricked by Satan at every turn because Satan kept telling him (in the form of other people) about cheaper land someplace else.  He moved from place to place, buying land, selling it, then buying more.  He ended up in a bad way, and died trying to gain more land.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Book Review: The Christmas Tree and the Wedding, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1848)

I won't lie to you, this story sort of disgusted me.  I'm sure that was the purpose.  Imagine seeing a cute little 11 year old girl.  Then imagine planning to marry her.  I shouldn't use the word "plan".  Scheme would be better.  Connive.

Having a narrator was just a way of telling the story, he plays no part in the story except as an observer.  He went to a Christmas party, got bored with no one to talk to, and watched some children play.  One of them was a pretty little 11 year old girl.  It came out that the father had already set aside a large amount of money for her dowry.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Book Review: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1877)

The Dream of the Ridiculous Man is what modern readers of Dostoyevsky crave.  Forget mysteries or thrillers.  They want something they can speak of while using the word “metaphysical”.  If they can say that to their friends while describing the inner meanings of this story, it’s a winner.

So here we have a short story that is a thin allegory of Dostoyevsky’s thoughts on the meaning of life.  I warn you now, if you want a fun story, an entertaining plot with whacky characters, you’re looking in the wrong place.  Dostoyevsky uses a very brief tale of a suicidal man to do nothing more than describe a journey for meaning.  This was his last short story, written just a few years before his death.  There are obvious Christian elements in the symbolism.

Friday, June 7, 2013

June is Russian Month

As you know, all of 2012 and 2013 were dedicated to reviewing 19th century literature here at The Literary Rambler.  This month I will specialize in 19th century Russian literature.  Sorry, I won't have time for such monsters as War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov, but I'll at least get my feet wet with some of Leo Tolstoy's and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's shorter works.

I will also read these guys:

  • Anton Chekhov
  • Alexander Pushkin
  • Nikolai Gogal
  • Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
  • Ivan Turgenev

As always, I'll review them with a modern eye, not the flowery, fawning simplicity of a 3rd year lit student.  I won't give you the typical awestruck review because these are giants in literature.  I'll be honest, as my readers have come to expect from me.  But Russian literature has something to offer that Dickens, Austen, and Twain do not.  Their culture was unique, and their world evolved from something far different than ours.  We want a taste of their history, their concerns, and their thoughts.  And isn't that why we read literature?

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Manly Months - One Final Thought

I know we're done with Manly Months but I had a few more examples to share.

Here is everyone's favorite Victorian Historian, Professor Patrick Allitt, discussing the tough schooling that boys received in Britain in the 1800s.

The two most famous [schools] and two of the most ancient were Eton and Harrow...The Duke of Wellington had claimed that the battle of Waterloo, back in 1815, had been won on the playing fields of Eaton.  What he meant by that was that the tough schooling which the young gentlemen had been given there had prepared them for their roles as army officers and enabled them to prevail in the situation of the battle itself.  Eaton, especially in the early 19th century, was a very hard school indeed.  A merciless discipline was enforced by the master on the boys, but also by the older boys on the younger ones.  They had a system called fagging which really amounted to a kind of slavery in which the younger boys were completely at the mercy of the older ones and could be bullied and beaten by them without any redress at all.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Manly Months Conclusion

When Men Were Men

Manly Months is done.  We spent April and May reading manly 19th century literature, and you might be surprised at just how rough and tough our ancestors were.  Believe it or not they didn't all sit around sipping tea and eating cobbled oats.  I know, they wore those lacy looking shirts and all, but don't define them by their frilly fashion sense.

Here are the books I managed to read and review:

  • King Solomon's Mines, by Sir H. Rider Haggard (1885)
  • Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling (1897)
  • Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad (1899)
  • The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane (1895)
  • The Black Arrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1888)
  • The Frozen Pirate, by W. Clark Russell (1887)

Only six books, I wish I could have finished more.  Here's a list of others I could have added to this list, and still plan to read:

Monday, June 3, 2013

Book Review: The Frozen Pirate, by W. Clark Russell (1887)

This is one of the better books I read during Manly Months here at The Literary Rambler.  It's the story of adventure on the seas, of treasure and survival.  It starts out with some of the boldest action language I've ever seen.
The storm made a loud thunder in the sky, and this tremendous utterance dominated without subduing the many screaming, hissing, shrieking, and hooting noises raised in the rigging and about the decks, and the wild, seething, weltering sound of the sea, maddened by the gale and struggling in its enormous passion under the first choking and iron grip of the hurricane's hand.
That's what W. Clark Russell was known for, and that's why people read him.  I first heard about him from the Sherlock Holmes story, The Five Orange Pips, which had Watson reading a Russell book.

Book Review: The Black Arrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1888)

The Black Arrow was a harrowing tale of a young adventurer, trying to find his true love.  It's set against the backdrop of the War of the Roses.  You don't have to know anything about the history of the period, the author feeds you any details necessary.  For the most part it's not a bad tale, just a bit long winded.  That may not make a lot of sense because it's a small book - only about 80,000 words, 220ish pages.  But it felt like it just went on and on.