Wednesday, September 28, 2011

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells


I think we all knew it was just a matter of time before I would be able to make a Kevin Bacon reference on this blog.  It took a little more the 6 entries, but that's not Kevin Bacon's fault.  My 3rd and 4th posts are by the same author, though, and this is the 4th post on a book by that author, so I think that qualifies.

Unlike that Kevin Bacon movie, however, this book is actually pretty good.

Since I have read so many books by H.G. Wells, I've noticed that most of them are a bit heavy on the geography, this one is no different.  It isn't nearly as heavy as War of the Worlds, luckily. I don't think you're really missing out if you don't know the streets of London very well, either.  It is sort of nice to have an idea of where some things are happening, though.

The book begins with the Invisible Man arriving in the small village of Iping.  He's wearing a "disguise" which hides all of his invisible parts.  This leads people to think that he's disfigured, which is basically the effect he wants.  From the very beginning, you can tell that the Invisible Man is a rude, selfish, and impatient man with a short temper.  He seems to struggle to give the basic levels of decency he is giving to his hosts at the inn.  As time goes on, it becomes apparent that this is a losing struggle.

Eventually, his gig is up and the village finds out that he is invisible (and dangerous).  Everyone freaks out and he is forced to flee the town.  Outside of town, he meets with a drifter and tries to recruit him to his cause.  Since the drifter can't see the Man, and only hears his voice, he is very understandably terrified.  In fact, everyone's reaction to the invisibility is very much the same, and I found to be very believable.

Later in the book, the Man tells his story to a former colleague of his.  During this story, it becomes apparent just how selfish he is.  He feels a sense of entitlement to things.  His invisibility just amplifies this feeling.  He feels like he can, and should, be able to do anything that he wants without any consequences.  He doesn't see a problem with this outlook at all, even when his former colleague is taken aback by his story.

I really found the character of the Invisible man to be really well developed.  The story was quite interesting as well.  This is a book I recommend.

Click here to view this book on Amazon.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

I must confess, when I started reading this book, I thought it was 20,000 leagues down, not total distance traveled.  I blame having no concept of a league.  So, just to let everyone know, 1 league is about 3.4 miles, and 20,000 leagues is about 69,046.8 miles.  For comparison, the circumference of the Earth is about 24,901.6 miles.  That makes this journey the equivalent of nearly 3 times around the Earth.

With that out of the way, on to discussing the book.

The book starts off with the hunt of a massive sea monster.  The narrator, Professor Aronnax, is on the ship charged with hunting the creature. It's decided that the monster must be incredibly fast, since it had been seen in very different parts of the world in a very short amount of time.  There first few chapters are dedicated to this monster, and it's pursuit.  During that whole time, I kept wondering why no one every had the thought that there might be more than one sea monster.  I guess that doesn't matter, though, since (sorry for the minor spoiler) there was no sea monster.

I'm just going to skip to the undersea journey, now.  M. Aronnax is taken aboard Captain Nemo's Nautilus, an extraordinary submarine completely powered by the wonders of electricity. Amazing stuff, that electricity.

The journey consists of a lot of marine animal sightseeing.  So much, in fact, that I felt like I needed an encyclopedia of marine life.  In a way, this book can serve as an encyclopedia.  There are several sections that are just a list of the plants and animals seen at the time.  Very long lists.  Lists that will make absolutely no sense unless you are an expert on marine life.

In order to get the most out of this book, you also need to be an expert in geography, or at least have a world map handy.  The narrator frequently states the position of the submarine in latitude and longitude.  I was often totally lost as to where the Nautilus was while reading.  For that reason, I've linked to some maps of the journey at the bottom of the post.

Aside from all the expertise needed, there is a bit of a fun adventure in this book.  The Nautilus visits Atlantis, the South Pole (almost....I think Jules Verne assumed Antarctica was much smaller than it really is), a volcano, and several other locations.  There are fights with giant animals, as well as the mystery behind Captain Nemo and the construction of the Nautilus.  Unfortunately, the heavy bits far outweighed the good bits for me.  So, I can't really recommend this book.


Image from Wikipedia
Image from Wikipedia


Click here to view this book on Amazon.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

This is two books for the price of one!  Actually, it's two books for the price of none.  That's great value!

Both of these books are about some bad-ass kids.  Kids who seem to have an unhealthy obsession with dead animals.  Tom Sawyer is a shorter and lighter read.  Huckleberry Finn is harder to read, but much more illustrative of life in pre-Civil War America.  One of the things I found most amusing in these books was reading about the superstitions of all the characters.  It's funny what some people believed back then.  I'm sure the same thing could be said for modern superstitions, but I found nearly all of them to be way out there.

Tom Sawyer is written in the third person and is, as one would expect, all about the adventures of its title character.  I found Tom to be quite a likable child.  Sure, he's a bad-ass kid, but he still has a certain innocence about him.  He's also got a very quick wit and a very active imagination, which makes him more endearing.  His adventures range from trivial and strictly imaginative, to quite heavy with large implications for other people.  The book made me question several times how he would handle the mess he got himself into and stayed enjoyable to the end.

Huckleberry Finn is written in the first person, from Huck's perspective.  Huck's language isn't as easy to read as the narrator in Tom Sawyer (identified in this book as Mark Twain, himself).  I feel like Twain also paid more attention to the regional dialects of the characters.  As a result, some of the characters' speech is somewhat hard to follow.  That doesn't prevent the book from being enjoyable, however.

I should point out that I was forced to read Huck Finn during my sophomore year of high school.  As with all assigned reading back then, I resented it, and didn't care for anything that I read.  Huck Finn was far from the worst assigned reading, but I don't remember enjoying it either.  As a matter of fact, I didn't remember much of anything about it at all.  That probably helped me enjoy it this time around (as if I were reading it for the first time).

Huck Finn starts off where Tom Sawyer left off.  It's more than just Huck's adventures, though.  It is also about his thoughts.  He was born into a society where slaves were owned and blacks were thought of as inferior people.  These are views shared by Huck.  This causes an internal conflict when he begins his adventure down the Mississippi with a runaway slave.  He feels bad for helping the man escape, yet doesn't have the heart to turn him in.  I found it interesting how Huck handled all the situations he found himself in during his journey.

I do want to point out that I think some sections of Huckleberry Finn were missing.  There were a couple of places that had very strange transitions.  After each one, I became very confused and had to read and re-read the sections following the transition, as well as the transitions themselves to try and make sense of them (and I still couldn't).  This is most likely a result of when the books were transcribed for the (free) Kindle edition of the book.

These books are recommended.

Click here to view this book on Amazon.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Sir James Knowles

What do you think of when you think of King Arthur?

  • Merlin?
  • Camelot?
  • Round Tables?
  • A sword in a stone?
  • Killer rabbits?
  • Excalibur and a lady in a lake?
  • Love affairs?
  • The Holy Grail?
  • So many Knights and Kings that it's basically impossible to keep them all straight?
  • So much smiting (on the left, and the right)?
  • The Knights who say Ni?
  • Legendary adventures, such as King Arthur becoming the emperor of Rome?
All of those things, except a few, are in this book.  It sounds pretty good, in theory, but it's actually a very hard read.  These legends are old.  Really old.  And this book is basically a compilation of all the different legends placed more or less in chronological order.  They are different stories, though, and there is no continuous plot between them.  Because of its age, it's written in a very different English than that of today, making it hard to read.  It also name drops so many kings and knights that I stopped caring who was who.  Doing so just makes it even more confusing, I'm sure.  For instance, some characters show up in some of the later stories that I could have sworn were killed in earlier stories. Maybe they weren't really the same character.  There's just too many names to keep track of.

If you're really interested in these stories, I would encourage you to read them.  However, since it's a pretty hard read, and not horribly entertaining, I can't really recommend it in general.


Click here to view this book on Amazon.