Crime and Punishment; Fyodor Dostoevsky

I finished it.  Finally.  I have no excuse for myself.  I can only finally report success.

I don't know if it was just the translators, or if they did a really good job of capturing his writing style, but I find Dostoevsky really jerky.  I guess this is appropriate when you're following the mind of a criminal, but it made it really hard for me to read.

I didn't like the main character, so that made it doubly hard for me to finish this book.  But the action picked up maybe a third of the way through, and characters I liked more were introduced, so I kind of flew through the rest of the book after struggling through the first part.

This book is not for amateurs.  Amateur what?  Readers.  You need to be serious if you want to do this one.  Honestly, I found War and Peace easier to read.

But maybe that's just me.

What You Mean

What a motivator fear can be.  What a weird place I've found myself.  When similarities push at you from two unrelated sides and themes surface, and with them uncertainties.  And you start to wonder about parts of your own character that you used to be proud of -- now I have to wonder if all that is just a barrier to logic and correct action.  Loyalty.  Optimism.  Hope.  Now they just all seem naive, and I've never really liked that word.  Or that concept.  It always seemed like the mean way to say innocent.

I'm scared to try to reach into the well, with words, and pull someone out.  I'm afraid of having to take that picture frame down, and cry.  Directly related.  I'm scared of loss.  Opportunities.  Past.  Souls.  Selves.

I just want to get lost in the night-time.  I don't want to think.  I don't want to be present.  I want loud music I can screech out to the night.  Music loud enough to fill every particle of my skin and all the concentration in my head.  I'm not sure I'd even mind the headache.  Not eventual, but inescapable?  Oh, that's not the word I want.  Huh, I'll probably dream about that tonight.

Coward.

What a horrible thing to say.  To be.  Run away.  The words behind the pictures and feelings in your head.  Just a blur of color and hormones.  Soundless.  Made meaningful by language.  Needed.  Damn it all.  Just spill every thought that comes into my grey matter onto a screen.  Not a page.  This is the digital age after all.  Although, I suppose this is technically a page still, even if it is on the web.  Dang it all, technology, why don't you get your own words instead of thieving from antiquity.

I'm getting more and more tired.  I'm forcing myself to be here.  Not for too much longer.  Why when things are looking up do they lie so far down?

Don't lie to me.  Don't do it.  I'll listen to anything that you have to say, anything.  ANYTHING.  But, please, please, don't lie to me.  I don't deserve that.  I've never done one single thing to make you lie to me.  Either of you.  Nothing could possibly hurt me more.  Is hurting me now?   Stories, not adding up.  Missing the link between the two sides of the river, forest, whatever thing that needs a path, bridge, ship between them.  I don't want to try to decide for myself who is telling me the complete story and who is leaving just enough bits out to make the remainder lies.

I want to be there for you.  But I want to say to you what you need to hear.  I want to hang out with you.  I want everything to be okay between us.

"Say anything, but say what you mean."

On the Road; Jack Kerouac

I think this book was well-written.  There are some beautiful descriptions and interesting characters.  That's not to say that I liked it.  Because I didn't.  The type of lifestyle portrayed her kind of horrifies me.  The main character's life choices, and his obsessions were kind of hard to read about.

But, another one down.

Rebecca; Daphne du Maurier

This book is brilliantly written.  It tells a real tale of all the characters in it in a masterful and surprising way.  It is incredibly easy to sympathize with the main character; even when not always agreeing with her, being able to see the situations and places in the book described through her eyes is really what makes this book good.

This is one of the times that I think I can pretty honestly say that the movie is an accurate representation of the author's "vision".  But this book is rather well-told, and I enjoyed it immensely.  I cried too.  I feel like most of the books I've read this year have made me cry.

Oh well.  Anyways, good book.  Recommended.

Les Miserables; Victor Hugo

Les Miserables is a series of tales of human misery and redemption.  The theme is life-changing love and it is powerful.

I started this novel sometime during middle school.  I'm glad now that I wasn't able to finish it at that time.  Reading it now was an incredible experience.

Les Miserables is a beautiful book.  Growing up, I loved the musical so much, and I still do love it now.  The book, however, as Hugo meant it to be, is a wonderful and thorough masterpiece.  Hugo really explains his characters and their backstories.  He doesn't just tell you what is happening in the direct plot of the story, but what went on before that - you leave every situation with a very broad understanding of the events surrounding what you've just read about.

Hugo is genius.  If anyone ever asks me which person from history I would want to have dinner with, I could answer.  He has a beautiful way of expressing emotions and is a phenomenal storyteller, as long as you can go with him down his historical interludes.

All I can say is, persevere!  It's worth it!

Some quotes I loved:

"She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been a succession of pious works, had finally cloaked her in a kind of transparent whiteness, and in growing old she had acquired the beauty of goodness."

"She was a pretty blonde with fine teeth.  For dowry, she had gold and pearls; but the gold was on her head and the pearls were in her mouth."

"Love has no middle term; either it destroys or it saves."

"Only the epic has the right to fill twelve thousand lines with one battle."

"The audacity to die well always moves men."

"Because things are unpleasant ... that is no reason for being unjust toward God."

the five people you meet in heaven; Mitch Albom

Shortest book I've read so far this year.  I took this one down in less than two hours.  I almost wish it hadn't been that easy.

It's interesting how many of the books I've read this year have some sort of perception of God or heaven as a huge part of them.  This did.  I don't think heaven is going to be like this, because I think heaven is going to be blessedly free of self-concern.  I think we just get to worship and we don't have to particularly be worried about learning lessons anymore.

However.  That being said, the lessons in this book are fantastic.  I think the plot is interesting and interestingly conveyed.  I think the story is well-written.  I liked it a lot.  I cried.  Not that that's a huge thing.  Especially when I'm crying over cat food commercials where the kitty gets a home out of the rain storm.  Yeah.

So here's where you should stop reading if you want to read the book.  And not know anything else about it.

The main character dies pretty quickly.  That's not a real spoiler because you know this from the very first page.

He goes to "heaven" and has to meet a series of five people who each have to illuminate a piece of his life for him and teach him a lesson about what that really meant.

I really think the lessons were good.
#1 "It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect.  That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."
Wow.  That is a fascinating idea.  It gives the idea, "it could have been me", a whole new sense of depth.  I'm not sure how biblical or divine this perspective is - I think it gives too much credence to the idea of chance, but I think it's important to think from another person's perspective.  To cherish life and to realize that we don't know God's plan.  We might have years or minutes, no one knows the hour of their death.  And it is important to mourn with those who mourn.  We are a community and we should support each other.

#2 "You don't get it.  Sacrifice is a part of life.  It's supposed to be.  It's not something to regret.  It's something to aspire to.  Little sacrifices.  Big sacrifices.  A mother works so her son can go to school.  A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father... That's the thing.  Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it.  You're just passing it on to someone else."

Beautifully said, Mitch.  This lesson is particularly dear to my heart because, for one, it is one of the cardinal traits of my husband's personality.  He believes in duty and sacrifice and doing what is right because it is right and no other reason.  People are shocked when they hear I agreed to move so far away from home when I married, but it seems like such a small sacrifice when compared with the joy I get from living and loving and supporting my husband.
We sacrifice around us all of the time.  It is so easy to think of sacrifice personified in the presence of an American soldier, and somehow to downplay it because it's talked about so much.  But sacrifice is important in all of us, true heroes and people who think they are just living the day to day.  And this book does a good job of putting that concept on display.

#3 "Holding anger is a poison.  It eats you from inside.  We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us.  But hatred is a curved blade.  And the harm we do, we do to ourselves."

I can hold a grudge with the best of them.  I really can.  It was actually one of the things my dad really thought Patrick should know before he married me.  I'll hold them longer if the word or deed was done against someone I loved than against myself, but that's not the point.  This quote is fantastic though.  So many of us won't let go of hurts, and they change the entire course of our lives.

#4 "Life has to end.  Love doesn't."

I don't really know what to say about this one.  It has to do with loving someone even after they've gone, but I've never really lost someone I loved.  Not really.  It makes me cry even to think about it, really.  But I believe love should be stronger than death, even if it changes form.

#5 I can't quote this one.  It's complicated.  But the thrust of it is that our lives have purpose.  Who we are and what we do is purposeful.

It's a beautiful thought that even through experiences that we think or horrible, or that bring us to a place where we don't necessarily want to be, a purpose is being worked out.  I think that's important too.

I was leery about this book, but I really did end up liking it a lot.  It is more than worth the short amount of time it takes to read.

Emma; Jane Austen

This has been on my shelf for so long.  SO LONG.  And I didn't read it, because as much as I enjoyed the Gwyneth Paltrow rendition (?) of the story, it also sort of bores me and I was afraid.  Afraid of trying to get into it and being bored by trifles.

Please don't think too poorly of me for that fear.

The back of the book explains it quite well, and helps me understand why I did end up enjoying it so much.

"Jane Austen's intimate study of a complex young lady of twenty, whose egotism, snobbishness, malice, and zeal for arranging the affairs of others leads her into errors of judgement which she must eventually face."  (There's another sentence to that part, but again, it gives away the ending and it still horrifies me that the back-of-book summarizers don't have some sort of taboo against it.  And by "gives away" I mean tells you the ending.)

There's only one word in that summary that I disagree with, and am puzzled by.  "Malice."  I thought I had a pretty good understanding of that word so I looked to Webster to make sure: "desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another".  Yes.  That's what I thought.  I do not find it permissible for that word to be included in a description of Emma Woodhouse's character.  I wonder why it was allowed and I wish to strike it from the record.

This book is a wonderful character study.  As far as I'm concerned it is on par with a work of Dickens - but like a mini Dickens, because I haven't read one of his this short yet.

This is what the rest of the back of the book has to say:

"Although Jane Austen is reported to have described Emma as "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like", many readers have thought the novel her greatest.  Mark Schorer, in his introduction, also places it at the head of her achievements."

Okay.  I'm not sure I'd go that far.  I have to read the rest of her works, I suppose.  But ... I mean, it is a Jane Austen.  You have to expect certain things, and most certainly not expect others.  Like... don't expect a plethora of action sequences, but do expect witty conversation, and inevitable embarrassments for the main character.  You get that.  But I liked this book.  I think it is a great "setting-down" of a person's thoughts, situations and growth-- and has a lot of interesting insight.

"The first error, and the worst, lay at her door.  It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together.  It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious -- a trick of what ought to be simple.  She was quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more."