It's been a while since I've posted an update on my efforts on The List. I'm not making a concerted effort anymore to read books that other people think I "should have" read, but I do try to throw one in to the mix every now and then. On the original list, I've improved my score from 9 to 32 of the "best" novels ever. My best score (69 out of 100) is currently on the list with admittedly less caché than the Modern Library.
My recent favorites from The List have been surprising. Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead was much better than I'd been led to expect by fellow college students who were forced to read it for literature classes. The starkly beautiful descriptions of the modernist buildings that Howard Roark poured his soul into, his strict code of unconventional ethics, and his antagonistic but passionate love affair...they all captivated me, and I was sorry to see the novel end after 800+ pages.
The other book that fascinated me was Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Although I've read several novels set in Africa, they've been written by American or European authors as an outsider looking in. This novel is written by a Nigerian, which leads to wonderful perspective shift as the author touches on gender and familial relationships, Nigerian folk tales, power dynamics, and religion. Everything seems completely natural and foreign at the same time.
The Washington Post recently carried a review of a book that will probably not go on my "must read" list. I followed the link from an acquaintance, who thought it sounded fascinating. And the plot was - it's the true story of an 18th century heiress who was tricked into marrying someone who then beat and abused her. She did the unthinkable (for the times) and divorced him.
Initially I was gripped by the drama described in the review, but I soon became distracted by the number of quotes used in the review to describe the plot and the characters. Maybe the reviewer was poking subtle fun at the author by including these trite-sounding phrases. Here's a sample paragraph from the review:
The fabulously wealthy 27-year-old widow was so moved by this act of gallantry that she rushed to the wounded soldier's bedside. Full of emotion, she acquiesced in "her dying hero's request: to marry him before he expired." After all, "what harm could possibly ensue from marrying a poor dying soldier who would shortly make her a widow again?" So married they were two days later, in St. James's Church, Piccadilly, with Stoney being carried in on his "makeshift bed." Mary, who had spent the night before "naked and alone" with her lover George Gray, was startled to note that once the vows were spoken, Stoney made a "rapid recovery" and appeared at the "jubilant levee in his lodgings the following morning" in "a new scarlet uniform."
As I continued to read, however, I began to suspect that the reviewer (I'm deliberately not using his name - look it up if you want) was relying on the quotes to avoid doing his own writing. The clincher was when I read this (by the reviewer, not the author): "His real name, though, was Satan. He was a monster." I don't expect to buy books by either writer.
Knowing that I intended to write about books today, I pulled out the macro filters, my tripod, and both my OED and Webster's for the first photo. I used them again on my way out the door, on one of the white crocuses that popped up the other day. With the macro filters, there's really not much in the picture that ends up on focus. Using "focus stacking," I could increase the depth of field to show more parts in focus, but I don't have the right software for that. Maybe someday.
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