[uhn-ree-duh-buh l]
1.
2.
not interesting to read; dull; tedious; an unreadable treatise.
3.
extraordinarily difficult to read or comprehend; obscure;incomprehensible:
an unreadable dream; an unreadable expression.
Showing posts with label spy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spy. Show all posts
Monday, June 22, 2015
#80 - "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon
From dictionary.com:
adjective
Thursday, December 4, 2014
A Big Ol' Pile of Books
This past Friday marked the 5th anniversary of my first book review on this blog about The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. It's hard to believe it's already been five years, as it really doesn't seem that long ago that I decided to embark on this mission.
For the longest time, I had expected to be finished after five years. In fact there was a time I thought I'd be done in four! Now that I'm older and wiser, I figure I might be done in a year and half, and that two more years is probably more realistic. I've read 76 books from the list in those five years, which is more than one a month. I've also read about 170 non-list books in that time. I guess if I had stuck to only list books, I would have been done quite some time ago, but I also might have succumb to madness. Really, I don't think my pace has been that bad when put into perspective, and 76 books really is a lot of books.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Dear Blog, Happy 4th Birthday!
Today is a milestone of sorts for my reading through this list of 100 novels. It was four years ago today,that I began reading my first book, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. This wasn't exactly the day I started this project, as I hit a few stumbling blocks at the beginning. I remember thinking I was going to start with Nineteen Eighty-Four, but when I went to start reading my copy, I discovered the first few pages were missing. Not wanting to start the project off skipping the first eight pages, I began with a different book.
After that and a couple of other delays, it was November 21, 2009 that I actually began reading. Fast forward to today, and I've completed 68 novels, and am nearly finished my 69th; Possession.
Friday, June 24, 2011
#37 - "The Sportswriter" by Richard Ford
I finished The Sportswriter last night, Richard Ford's first novel in his Bascombe Trilogy, and my 37th read from Time magazine's 100 greatest English language novels. It was an engaging read, one that kept pushing me forward, but one I'm still trying to figure out.
The story follows Frank Bascombe, recently divorced, resident of middle New Jersey, and, of course, a sportswriter. The book takes place over Easter weekend, starting with Bascombe and his ex-wife meeting at the grave site of their deceased son Ralph. While he seems mostly content, Bascombe still struggles with many things.
He still aches for his son Ralph, he's unsure if he should have given up his career as a novelist to be a sportswriter, and he seems to have a degree of regret about his divorce. He is having an affair with a nurse from Texas, who he tells himself he's ready to marry, but who the reader has a hard time seeing as a match. The Easter weekend then hits a couple of roadblocks, causing Bascombe to take a closer look at some parts of his life, take a closer look at himself.
Without a doubt, my favorite part of any good book is the characters within it. Whether I love them or hate them, well-developed characters can always engage me. They cause me to pull for or against them, and they allow me to have a vested interest in the outcome of the novel. It is the characters that will always be my litmus test for a book, while the plot or the style will always be secondary. So when I reflect on The Sportswriter, I'm sort of at a loss. Basically I'm unsure of what to think about Frank Bascombe.
There isn't really anything spectacular about Frank Bascombe. He doesn't have a terribly interesting job like, say Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
, and he isn't really going through any extraordinary experiences like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind
. He's just an average guy, with a house in the suburbs, an alright job, a couple of kids, an ex-wife and an uncertain future. Really, he sounds like half the people out there. Of course ordinary isn't what people read books for, and it's much more diffcult to make interesting. I think it speaks to the quality of the writing when such an ordinary character in such an ordinary situation, can be interesting.
But I think in a way, it was his common existence that made him interesting. Finally, there wasn't a character with some crazy job you only see in the movies, nor was he going through some kinds of traumatic event we only read about in history books. He's just plodding through life at age 38 wondering what to do next, questioning himself, his motives, and his goals. Bascombe reflects on years gone by, and wonders if he made the right decision. He looks at some of his present situations and wonders if he's headed in the right direction. Who amongst us doesn't do the same?
You can read TIME's original review from May 24, 1986 right here.
For my next book, I'll be reading Rabbit, Run
by John Updike. Like The Sportswriter, its' sequel won the Pulitzer Prize. In fact, two sequels to Rabbit, Run did; both Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest.
The story follows Frank Bascombe, recently divorced, resident of middle New Jersey, and, of course, a sportswriter. The book takes place over Easter weekend, starting with Bascombe and his ex-wife meeting at the grave site of their deceased son Ralph. While he seems mostly content, Bascombe still struggles with many things.
He still aches for his son Ralph, he's unsure if he should have given up his career as a novelist to be a sportswriter, and he seems to have a degree of regret about his divorce. He is having an affair with a nurse from Texas, who he tells himself he's ready to marry, but who the reader has a hard time seeing as a match. The Easter weekend then hits a couple of roadblocks, causing Bascombe to take a closer look at some parts of his life, take a closer look at himself.
Without a doubt, my favorite part of any good book is the characters within it. Whether I love them or hate them, well-developed characters can always engage me. They cause me to pull for or against them, and they allow me to have a vested interest in the outcome of the novel. It is the characters that will always be my litmus test for a book, while the plot or the style will always be secondary. So when I reflect on The Sportswriter, I'm sort of at a loss. Basically I'm unsure of what to think about Frank Bascombe.
There isn't really anything spectacular about Frank Bascombe. He doesn't have a terribly interesting job like, say Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
, and he isn't really going through any extraordinary experiences like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. He's just an average guy, with a house in the suburbs, an alright job, a couple of kids, an ex-wife and an uncertain future. Really, he sounds like half the people out there. Of course ordinary isn't what people read books for, and it's much more diffcult to make interesting. I think it speaks to the quality of the writing when such an ordinary character in such an ordinary situation, can be interesting.But I think in a way, it was his common existence that made him interesting. Finally, there wasn't a character with some crazy job you only see in the movies, nor was he going through some kinds of traumatic event we only read about in history books. He's just plodding through life at age 38 wondering what to do next, questioning himself, his motives, and his goals. Bascombe reflects on years gone by, and wonders if he made the right decision. He looks at some of his present situations and wonders if he's headed in the right direction. Who amongst us doesn't do the same?
You can read TIME's original review from May 24, 1986 right here.
For my next book, I'll be reading Rabbit, Run
by John Updike. Like The Sportswriter, its' sequel won the Pulitzer Prize. In fact, two sequels to Rabbit, Run did; both Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Come, and take choice of all my library,
I headed to the library today with a couple of things in mind. First off, I need to read a couple of books that I know nothing about. While I haven’t read the vast majority of the books on the list, I might have seen the movie (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) or I might be very familiar with the story (Lolita) despite not having read it or seen the movie. However, most of the books on the list don’t fit into either category. Let's face it, I haven’t even heard of most of these books. So instead of finding myself with thirty books to go, none of which I know anything about, I’ve decided to make a point of tackling some of these novels.
I came out with two selections from today’s trip; Beloved by Toni Morrison and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. I don’t know anything about Beloved or its author, and the only thing I know about Tropic of Cancer is that it’s supposed to be quite racy. And I only know this from that episode of ‘Seinfeld’ where Jerry has a 25-year overdue library book.
I think I’ll start with Beloved as it would come first alphabetically. Written in 1987, this will be by far the newest book I’ve read so far, the next one being The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, written in 1964.
I came out with two selections from today’s trip; Beloved by Toni Morrison and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. I don’t know anything about Beloved or its author, and the only thing I know about Tropic of Cancer is that it’s supposed to be quite racy. And I only know this from that episode of ‘Seinfeld’ where Jerry has a 25-year overdue library book.
I think I’ll start with Beloved as it would come first alphabetically. Written in 1987, this will be by far the newest book I’ve read so far, the next one being The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, written in 1964.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
#1 - "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" by John Le Carre
The first book on the list is done! It is of course only a drop in the bucket so to speak, but it's a start. The list has officially begun.
Alec Lemas is a British spy during the cold war. He enjoys drinking and women. While it may sound like James Bond, the similarities end there. In John Le Carre’s 1961 novel, Lemas is a spy looking to get out of the intelligence game, and looks forward to retirement. He takes on one final assignment, the riskiest of his career, which he believes is to kill an East German agent and will allow him to finally retire.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is nothing like one of Ian Fleming’s novels, painting a far more realistic and much less romantic picture. Lemas enjoys drinking, but not sipping martinis while uttering witty one-liners, rather getting drunk as quickly as possible. He enjoys womanizing, but rather than chasing a series of sexy foreign agents, he chases lonely women whose lives are more pathetic than his own. He lives in a small, shabby apartment in London, is divorced, doesn’t have any friends, and doesn’t have any money. He wears old suits and eats canned food and isn’t very likeable. He lives within the bleak back drop of the cold war, in dreary working class areas of London and divided Berlin. Sympathy for the protagonist is often achieved as a result of his depressing existence.
Writing from his own experiences working for M5, Le Carre describes a behind-the-scenes look at espionage and the cold war, describing a world of men who are completely absorbed in their profession. They’re willing to kill if asked to do so, and must spend every waking moment being suspicious of not only their enemies but also their allies. We follow Lemas from his public self-destruction, which results in a prison term, to his journey into East Germany, working with the other side. But the suspicions that he’s always had of everybody around him prove to be true as he becomes a pawn in a much larger plot.
While it wasn't at all what I would expect from a novel with 'spy' in the title, I was not disappointed. Le Carre's paints a perfect picture of dreary, almost depressing settings; ideal for a tale about the self destruction of the title character. The plot in the meantime, while again so different from any Bond story, was as intriguing as any other story I'd ever read. Add to that, I couldn't help but sympathize with Alec Lemas, which I find always makes for a better read. If you don't care about the main character I doubt you'll care how the book turns out. At the risk of gushing, I will say it was a great start to the list of 100 novels, and I can only hope I enjoy reading the other 99 as much as I did this one.
Time magazine’s original review from January 17th, 1964 can be found here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,875631,00.html?internalid=atb100
Next up is Evelyn Waugh’s 1946 novel, Brideshead Revisited.
Alec Lemas is a British spy during the cold war. He enjoys drinking and women. While it may sound like James Bond, the similarities end there. In John Le Carre’s 1961 novel, Lemas is a spy looking to get out of the intelligence game, and looks forward to retirement. He takes on one final assignment, the riskiest of his career, which he believes is to kill an East German agent and will allow him to finally retire.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is nothing like one of Ian Fleming’s novels, painting a far more realistic and much less romantic picture. Lemas enjoys drinking, but not sipping martinis while uttering witty one-liners, rather getting drunk as quickly as possible. He enjoys womanizing, but rather than chasing a series of sexy foreign agents, he chases lonely women whose lives are more pathetic than his own. He lives in a small, shabby apartment in London, is divorced, doesn’t have any friends, and doesn’t have any money. He wears old suits and eats canned food and isn’t very likeable. He lives within the bleak back drop of the cold war, in dreary working class areas of London and divided Berlin. Sympathy for the protagonist is often achieved as a result of his depressing existence.
Writing from his own experiences working for M5, Le Carre describes a behind-the-scenes look at espionage and the cold war, describing a world of men who are completely absorbed in their profession. They’re willing to kill if asked to do so, and must spend every waking moment being suspicious of not only their enemies but also their allies. We follow Lemas from his public self-destruction, which results in a prison term, to his journey into East Germany, working with the other side. But the suspicions that he’s always had of everybody around him prove to be true as he becomes a pawn in a much larger plot.
While it wasn't at all what I would expect from a novel with 'spy' in the title, I was not disappointed. Le Carre's paints a perfect picture of dreary, almost depressing settings; ideal for a tale about the self destruction of the title character. The plot in the meantime, while again so different from any Bond story, was as intriguing as any other story I'd ever read. Add to that, I couldn't help but sympathize with Alec Lemas, which I find always makes for a better read. If you don't care about the main character I doubt you'll care how the book turns out. At the risk of gushing, I will say it was a great start to the list of 100 novels, and I can only hope I enjoy reading the other 99 as much as I did this one.
Time magazine’s original review from January 17th, 1964 can be found here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,875631,00.html?internalid=atb100
Next up is Evelyn Waugh’s 1946 novel, Brideshead Revisited.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Though first in question, is they secondary
I’ve just returned from a quick trip to California to see a couple of hockey games, and I was able to do a bit of reading on the plane. The problem I’m going to have with this list is I’m not a very fast reader. I absorb everything I read, but it takes me a lot longer to get through a book. If I try to read something too fast, I end up missing things, and have to go back and re-read half the book.
The second problem I have with reading a book and The Spy who Came in from the Cold is proving to be no exception, is that I become curious about certain important elements in a book, be it the character or the setting or the era. While a book might be good at describing everything, it might not complete the back story. As a result, I end up doing a lot of secondary reading or research. For this novel, being set during the cold war, I've ended up doing a lot of reading about early 1960's Europe, espionage, the Berlin Wall, and so on. It really slows down my progress on a book, but I have so much trouble leaving these questions, swirling around in my head, unanswered.
I’ve almost finished this first novel however, and I have to say I’m totally surprised. This book isn’t at all what I thought it was going to be.
While I didn't really know anything about the story of this book before I started out, one scene has reminded me that I've seen a small bit of the movie. I remember flipping channels one lazy Sunday a few years ago and coming across a black and white film with Richard Burton. In the scene I saw, Burton was arguing with a grocer over some canned goods at the store. At the time, after seeing the title, I wondered what kind of spy movie had a scene in a grocery store, where the protagonist seemed to be arguing over the price of a can of corn. I love watching James Bond movies, but I don’t think I’d like them as much if they focused on the day to day things Bond did while he wasn’t spying. Imagine the disappointment one would have if “Dr. No” was about Bond’s latest visit to the chiropodist. Seeing the lead character discussing canned goods seemed just as dull. However, now having read most of this book, it not makes sense, but also wasn't dull at all. In fact, it’s quite a clever scene.
The second problem I have with reading a book and The Spy who Came in from the Cold is proving to be no exception, is that I become curious about certain important elements in a book, be it the character or the setting or the era. While a book might be good at describing everything, it might not complete the back story. As a result, I end up doing a lot of secondary reading or research. For this novel, being set during the cold war, I've ended up doing a lot of reading about early 1960's Europe, espionage, the Berlin Wall, and so on. It really slows down my progress on a book, but I have so much trouble leaving these questions, swirling around in my head, unanswered.
I’ve almost finished this first novel however, and I have to say I’m totally surprised. This book isn’t at all what I thought it was going to be.
While I didn't really know anything about the story of this book before I started out, one scene has reminded me that I've seen a small bit of the movie. I remember flipping channels one lazy Sunday a few years ago and coming across a black and white film with Richard Burton. In the scene I saw, Burton was arguing with a grocer over some canned goods at the store. At the time, after seeing the title, I wondered what kind of spy movie had a scene in a grocery store, where the protagonist seemed to be arguing over the price of a can of corn. I love watching James Bond movies, but I don’t think I’d like them as much if they focused on the day to day things Bond did while he wasn’t spying. Imagine the disappointment one would have if “Dr. No” was about Bond’s latest visit to the chiropodist. Seeing the lead character discussing canned goods seemed just as dull. However, now having read most of this book, it not makes sense, but also wasn't dull at all. In fact, it’s quite a clever scene.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Here once again we sit...
After hittimg my first stumbling block a few days ago, I was forced to visit the library in search of a book to start this list. I'm going to assume that Nineteen Eighty-Four missing the opening pages was a sign I wasn't supposed to begin the list with a book I'd already read. So, I decided to pick something else that will hopefully be interesting and not too daunting. I don't necessarily want to start with Gone with the Wind, but rather something a little more modest.
The first book I am going to read from the list is now going to be John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I don't know much about it, other than it is a spy novel. I read a couple of James Bond novels several years ago, and I'm going to assume I'll enjoy this one as well.
In addition to Spy, I also checked out Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. I hadn't planned on checking anything else out, but I passed these two in the stacks and remembered them being on the list. I don't know anything about them either, but do remember Evelyn Waugh's name from an essay about World War II I read not long ago. As for Naked Lunch, I remember the movie coming out in the early 90’s. I haven't seen the movie, but I remember the poster, which featured either a typewriter wearing a suit. I don’t know why that’s stuck with me so well after all this time, but it has. The book cover of the edition I picked up is much less exciting with simply the title in large, bold letters. Part of me would have maybe preferred the suit-wearing typewriter. Could it be some kind of detective novel in the genre of Sam Spade? Sadly, I don't think so.
But I digress. I'm now at home, with a complete book in my hands, ready to start the list for real. With out further adieu I begin The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
The first book I am going to read from the list is now going to be John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I don't know much about it, other than it is a spy novel. I read a couple of James Bond novels several years ago, and I'm going to assume I'll enjoy this one as well.
In addition to Spy, I also checked out Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. I hadn't planned on checking anything else out, but I passed these two in the stacks and remembered them being on the list. I don't know anything about them either, but do remember Evelyn Waugh's name from an essay about World War II I read not long ago. As for Naked Lunch, I remember the movie coming out in the early 90’s. I haven't seen the movie, but I remember the poster, which featured either a typewriter wearing a suit. I don’t know why that’s stuck with me so well after all this time, but it has. The book cover of the edition I picked up is much less exciting with simply the title in large, bold letters. Part of me would have maybe preferred the suit-wearing typewriter. Could it be some kind of detective novel in the genre of Sam Spade? Sadly, I don't think so.
But I digress. I'm now at home, with a complete book in my hands, ready to start the list for real. With out further adieu I begin The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
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