My books - Gulliver's Travels 100/56

Wikipedia notes:
"Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a novel by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift (also known as Dean Swift[1]) that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature.

 "The book became popular as soon as it was (fully) published (John Gay wrote in a 1726 letter to Swift that "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery"[2]); since then, it has never been out of print."




Yes, I knew who Gulliver was and knew of the Lilliputians, but I had not read the book and have never seen more than a clip of a movie.

As I was getting ready to start the book, I had a moment's pause if this was a book I should have read to my kids. (Like did I miss the boat?) So, I started the book with that viewpoint. I thought it was a family story and I wondered - should I have read it to the kids?

My kids LOVED The Borrowers Series. I am sure that is why I wondered about Gulliver. I read (out loud) the whole Borrowers set twice, once when the oldest was little and once when the youngest was little. I suspect middle probably listened both times, but only remembers the second time. 

I honestly was not totally impressed with the first part of Gulliver (Lilliputians).

As I was reading, I thought - this is going to be a l-o-n-g book.

So,  I was very (pleasantly) surprised to discover there was a next section. I stopped and consulted Wikipedia and learned Gulliver actually has four sections:

The parts of Gulliver's Travels are
Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput
4 May 1699 — 13 April 1702
Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag
20 June 1702 — 3 June 1706
Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan
5 August 1706 — 16 April 1710
Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
7 September 1710 – 2 July 1715

I did not know about all these parts before I started. I thought the whole book was Lilliputians. As soon as it flipped over to section two, I was happier. The story flowed better for me from that point forward.

So, I liked the second section of the book much better, but found parts a little odd.

Gulliver straddling the nipple of a very large naked woman when he was Lilliputian small for example.

In current day reading, I thought - eeew. And actually in the book, Gulliver thought eeew too.

So, at this point in my reading, I wondered -  would that have been haha funny in its day or what - ? Is this a kids' book or an adult book?

There are parts like that here and there. The whole book is definitely not constantly like that. Those tiny sections made me think it was actually an adult book and not meant to be read to children. And when the book was made into family movies in modern time, those bits were excluded (I assume, as I said, I never actually saw the movies).

And in addition to the naked lady/nipple kind of stuff, there were sections where it was sort of a lecture and not a story.

And those raised questions for me too - what am I actually reading?



Luckily, there was a SparkNotes file for Gulliver. I stopped and referenced it half way through the second section of Gulliver.

From what SparkNotes included in the Context Section, there were even more of these types of references (naked lady/nipple) in the original version of Gulliver's Travels which have been edited out of the book in newer editions through the years.

And as for the lecture type sections, I understood better after reading the file.

Here are the SparkNotes passages I found most interesting:

"Gulliver’s Travels was a controversial work when it was first published in 1726. In fact, it was not until almost ten years after its first printing that the book appeared with the entire text that Swift had originally intended it to have. Ever since, editors have excised many of the passages, particularly the more caustic ones dealing with bodily functions. Even without those passages, however, Gulliver’s Travels serves as a biting satire, and Swift ensures that it is both humorous and critical, constantly attacking British and European society through its descriptions of imaginary countries. . . Gulliver’s Travels is about a specific set of political conflicts, but if it were nothing more than that it would long ago have been forgotten. The staying power of the work comes from its depiction of the human condition and its often despairing, but occasionally hopeful, sketch of the possibilities for humanity to rein in its baser instincts."

Here is the whole SparkNotes Context Section.

So, with all that in mind, what did I think of this book?

Honestly, over all, not my favorite.

But there were many sections I genuinely liked a great deal.

I think a huge part of my problem is I was expecting another Borrowers.

And it is so not (for me).

I am glad I read it, because the book is so widely know and referenced.

I am very glad I read SparkNotes when I did, so I at least understood the context of what I was reading.

I wouldn't read it again (myself) and certainly would not read it to kids.

For kids, it is better to just see the movie. Youngest says she loved the movie and the horses were her favorite.


I think a college philosophy/history/literature class including Gulliver would be most interesting.

I am sure there is a huge amount of historical and social context that went (totally) over my head. But as I read, I did not have the sense I didn't understand. I understood the story. I understood the lecture type sections. I am just saying the context/history behind/nuance probably went over my head.

On CD this book was 10 discs/12 hours. So, a fairly quick read (that is a 2-4 day book for me depending on my schedule).


And if you have children in your life, read them the whole Borrowers Series (in order) because it is most wonderful and will help them develop more sophisticated reading palates.


PS -
Youngest (and middle I think) have seen the (Gulliver) movie. My husband thought he had read the book, but when I questioned him about the odd stuff, he did not remember any of that, so maybe he just saw the movie. So I did have a chance to sort of discuss the book as I listened.

What everyone is reading is common conversation at our house. We talk about everyone's books. On the books I am reading, where some of my family have already read them, they are all very good at asking - where are you now? Or what has happened so far? and then only talking about the previous part of the book without giving away upcoming sections.



PPS -
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. If you remember, I loved that book. When I was finished with Gulliver, one of the first things I did was look to see when Crusoe was published. Answer - They are within ten years of each other. While I loved all of Crusoe and merely liked parts of Gulliver, I could see a similarity in the words and style. I did not find either book difficult (1700's language) to understand. I also listened to the first half of Don Quixote (1600's).  I had to teach myself to sit with it, but once I learned how to listen, I enjoyed that book very much. (And yes I am still kicking myself over missing great discussion on Gilgamesh and Beowulf earlier in the month because I was such a weenie over it.).

My books - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. 95/56

Here is the link to The Big Read's Audio Comments on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.


Wikipedia wrote:

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut 1940 novel by American author Carson McCullers. Written in Charlotte, North Carolina, in houses on Central Avenue and East Boulevard,[1][2] it is about a deaf man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the US state of Georgia. It created a literary sensation on publication, enjoying a meteoric rise to the top of the bestseller lists in 1940 and was the first in a string of works by McCullers to give voice to the rejected, forgotten, mistreated and oppressed. The novel was chosen as a selection for Oprah's Book Club in 2004. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter seventeenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.[3]

If you are trying to remember, the other book, I read earlier in the year, by Carson McCullers, was Member of the Wedding.


First I would like to say that Carson loves female characters with male sounding names. Carson's own first name is Lula. Yes, if I had been name Lula, I would go by Carson also. I think Carson is a great name.

The main character in Member of the Wedding is known by different names.
SparkNotes wrote: "In each of the three parts of the novella, she goes by three different names: first Frankie, then F. Jasmine, and then Frances."

To be honest, when reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, I kept waiting to find out what Mick's real name was and the book never said. (if you are curious, Mick's siblings are named Hazel, Bill, Etta, George and Ralph. Ironically, I have an uncle named Ralph who goes by Mick.)

The family's last name is Kelly. Her father is Wilber Kelly. I am not sure we ever hear her mom's first name.

So, with the assumption they are English/Irish, this is a list of possible Irish "M" names:
Mekenzie, Mackenze, Macenzie, McKinzie, Mackensi, Mackensie, Makenzie, Makensie, Mackenna, Mackynze, Mackinsey, Mackenzy, M'Kenzie, McKenzie, Mackenzi Mackenzia, Mackenzey, Mykenzie, Mackenzee

I would have guessed a nick name of MACK instead of MICK, but there you are. And maybe Mack is not short for a "M" name at all. If anyone has a better guess or has read an interview by Carson, please share.

Member of the Wedding , that I read previously, is a simple story (I think it is actually a novella) focused on the main Character Frankie.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter has a wide number of characters, with the story focusing on five. There are not so many characters as to make one feel like they have to keep a list. And the story moves between all of them with a steady pace.

"This book is planned according to a definite and balanced design. The form is contrapuntal throughout. Like a voice in a fugue each one of the main characters is an entirety in himself--but his personality takes on a new richness when contrasted and woven in with the other characters in the book."--Carson McCullers



I had seen a note somewhere that this was not a fairy tale kind of book, so I read it with my feelings girded, and my expectations accurate for the characters.

I am not sure I would go so far as to call The Heart is a Lonely Hunter a tragedy. As I read it was just more like the way things were in the Deep South in 1938-1939 if you were the wrong color, lived on the wrong side of the tracks, or had a disability.

SparkNotes said "Southern realism; coming-of-age novel".  I would agree with that with an emphasis on REALISM (for the downtrodden).

The Irish side of my family were potato famine immigrants. The Swedish side of my family was sort of an indentured servant and a sailor. My parents both grew up poor. My mother's mother had a 6th grade education. It wasn't until my parents' generation that the kids consistently had a high school diploma and most went to college. 

So,  I didn't read this book as sad, even though sad things happen, I read it as just the way things were.

In audible format, this book was 11 cd's and 12.5 hours.

This was a very rich book.

I truly loved every word.

My books - Brave New World. 93/56

“Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor's of the mind.” 
Leonardo da Vinci




I mentioned I was reading Brave New World to oldest and middle a week or so ago. I referred to it as an utopian novel. Simultaneously they both chorused - it is a dystopian novel, not an utopian one.

I looked it up and according to Sparknotes: "either term, utopia or dystopia, could correctly be used to describe Brave New World"

u·to·pi·a (y-tp-) n. 1. a. often Utopia An ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects. b. A work of fiction describing a utopia. 2. An impractical, idealistic scheme for social and political reform.

dys·to·pi·a (ds-tp-) n. 1. An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror. 2. A work describing such a place or state: "dystopias such as Brave New World" (Times Literary Supplement).

We (oldest, middle and I) went on to talk about Lois Lowry's Giver Series: The Giver, Gathering Blue, The Messenger which also deal with dystopia societies; and we talked about 1984. (Youngest has read the Lowry books too, she just wasn't home when we were talking about them. Not sure if she has read 1984 yet.).



I then tried to think of other books of this type most of us (my house) have read.

I looked up Wikipedia's list of dystopian literature.

I saw several other familiar titles:
Ender's Game (youngest, oldest and I loved it, my long standing book group did not like it)

The Time Machine (oldest is now working his way through all Wells other books after he and I listened to this one)

Lord of the Flies (4 of the 5 of us have read and discussed it, youngest will read in high school one of these years)

Hunger Games (girls read them all, it cracks middle up that she read these as each was published and could not get any of her friends to read them THEN)

There are several other books on the dystopian link which are on my to read list  (Fahrenheit 451, Clockwork Orange) and I saw the movie Children of Men.

These types of novels are not always my favorite read (Ender's Game actually was) but they always make me think. I am always glad I read them, they expand me.


Brave New World would be a most excellent read for a college philosophy class. A zillion papers and endless discussion is available from all the many topics. This is one of those books where I wish I had been with the group when they read it a few years ago.

Middle took a 200 level philosophy class last year. And I think oldest actually has a philosophy/religion minor in his undergraduate work.

Neither kid has read Brave New World, but oldest owns a copy and now that I have been talking about it, he might move it further up his stack.


Wikipedia notes:

Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurology. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958) and with his final work, a novel titled Island (1962). In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.[1]

AF is After Ford (car maker) if you are wondering.

Here is the SparkNotes Context section discussing Huxley.


Once again the beginning spends a lot of time setting up the background/facts. And I  had to just stick with it as I have learned in other works. An actual plot does emerge. And I was interested in the story. (I had no idea where it was going, but others might.)

So an interesting, mind stretching, intellectual read.

My books - The Razor's Edge (86/56)

Wikipedia:
"The Razor’s Edge is a book by W. Somerset Maugham published in 1944. Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard," taken from a verse in the Katha-Upanishad."


I had to look up epigraph - Wikipedia explains:
"Not to be confused with epitaph."
"Not to be confused with epigram."
"Not to be confused with epithet."

"In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional context."



I also looked up Katha-Upanishad. Not sure what that all said exactly, I am just thinking: well, okay, it is a Buddhist/Hindu/Persian thing.



I have to admit I was nervous about reading this book. It was the title that threw me. I was a little cautious about what they might be doing with all those razors. The razor reference is purely the Buddhist/Hindu/Persian thing (above). There is no torture involved. I say that with a smile, because I was picturing POW camps and barbed wire from the title, and it is not at all that type of book.


Wikipedia continues: "Maugham begins by characterising his story as not really a novel but a thinly veiled true account. He includes himself as a minor character, a writer who drifts in and out of the lives of the major players."

That little paragraph sums up this book perfectly.

It is written from the viewpoint of a narrator who has intermittent contact with the rest of the loosely related characters over the span of many years. The narrator is himself an author.

I read The Razor's Edge shortly after reading The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Both of these books center around a group of interwoven characters. It was interesting to compare the styles.

I have had similar accidental reading themes when I happened on a few Black History month type books or I fell into several books about groups of boys in a short time span.



I enjoyed this book (The Razor's Edge) very much.

I had one thing I was expecting (the stock market crash and the great depression) but other than that, I was just sort of following along with the story of these people's lives with no idea where the story might go.

And the book does not dwell on the Great Depression, most of the story actually takes place in Europe. The Great Depression happens in the book too, but only as part of the plot line for the characters.

The audio version of this book was eleven hours. I was interested for the whole eleven hours. I was actually having "driveway moments" as I had to stop listening to go do other things. It held my attention well enough that I could have listened straight thru on a long drive. It was well written and entertaining.

From Maugham's observations of the main characters (assuming they were based on people he knew in real life), my guess is they would have been able to read his book and take his version of themselves in stride. I think they would have nodded graciously to his perceptions, whether or not they were flattering, and whether or not they agreed.



This is (about) the third book I have read where SparkNotes were not available. I hate that. I have come to really enjoy looking over the Context section in detail. Sometimes I use the Character Notes to see if I missed anything. Sometimes I look through the Themes, Motifs and Symbols section if I noticed reoccurrences, but did not fully understand them.

I almost always read SparkNotes after I am finished with the book. On books like this, with no SparkNotes available, I am not able to find a replacement, on line, for what SparkNotes adds to my process with each classic book. Especially for the titles that are from the list of books discussed in the past by my book groups, no discussion and no SparkNotes is a sad combination.

If you remember, I used SparkNotes for the first few chapters of Bleakhouse (to get me started). I really learned to just keep going with that book, which set me up for success with other books which start slowly or authors who feel they have to do a lot set up before they start the actual story.

The oldest and I were talking about all of this last week.

He was impressed I use SparkNotes.

I explained to him how if it is on my list, unless it is something like Sophie's Choice where it will sink me, I just push through to read the book. Except for Winesburg Ohio, I have been very glad I percervered with each book. Some of the harder books required a bit more thinking/work. But I have felt richer with each one. I really (appear to) need this intellectual outlet in my life.

And, funny as it sounds, this gives me a lot of conversation with my own kids and their friends. Titles come up and the kids will either have read the book or will have heard of the book or it will on their 'to read' list. Sometimes they will mention a related classic which is not on my list. The most recent example is One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Garcia Marquez.

 Wikipedia writes: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad, 1967), by Gabriel García Márquez, is a novel that tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia. The non-linear story is narrated via different time frames, a technique derived from the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (as in The Garden of Forking Paths). The widely acclaimed book, considered by many to be the author's masterpiece, was first published in Spanish in 1967, and subsequently has been translated into thirty-seven languages and has sold more than 20 million copies.[1][2] The magical realist style and thematic substance of One Hundred Years of Solitude established it as an important, representative novel of the literary Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s,[3] that was stylistically influenced by Modernism (European and North American), and the Cuban Vanguardia (Vanguard) literary movement.

I read this book in college and (actually) complained to the professor that of all the books out there, he had chosen this one. I was in the habit of reading fluff books (I think, looking back) and I am not sure I was mature enough in my reading for that book, even though I had read A LOT by the time I got to college.

One of middle's friends is reading 100 Years for high school this year. I think it was on her (lengthy) summer reading list. The conversation put it back in my mind and I have added to my list of books to suggest for my long standing group.

We will see how I do with it this time. I honestly don't remember anything other than complaining to my professor, who was too polite to suggest why I might not have thought it was worth our class time.

Part of my problem in reading One Hundred Years, long ago, is I probably was not experienced with translations. There is a difference between reading a book in its native language and reading one that has been translated (almost always by someone other than the author).

My books - A Separate Peace (79/56)

Wikipedia:
A Separate Peace (1959) is a novel by John Knowles. Based on his earlier short story "Phineas", it was Knowles' first published novel and became his best-known work.


Here is a bit of SparkNotes background on author Knowles
(does not give anything away about the plot):

"John Knowles was born in 1926 in Fairmont, West Virginia. He left home at fifteen to attend Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive boarding school located in New Hampshire. After graduating from Exeter in 1945, he spent eight months as an Air Force cadet before enrolling at Yale University, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1949.

"Over the next seven years, Knowles earned his living as a journalist and freelance writer, traveling in Europe and publishing a number of short stories. He befriended the noted playwright Thornton Wilder, a fellow Yale alumnus, who encouraged him in his vocation as a writer. In 1957, Knowles landed a job as an associate editor at Holiday magazine. Two years later, he published his first novel, A Separate Peace, to overwhelmingly favorable reviews; the commercial success of the book allowed him to devote himself to writing full-time. Since 1960, he has published eight other novels, including Peace Breaks Out, the companion volume to A Separate Peace, and a number of stories. None, however, has garnered the acclaim or audience that A Separate Peace has enjoyed and continues to enjoy today. Knowles has served as a writer-in-residence at Princeton University and at the University of North Carolina, and he continues to lecture widely."

Now irony of ironies, my husband spent a summer enrolled at Exeter. The book takes place during WWII and my husband was there in 1977, so there is no definite link there. If you are wondering, Exeter was coed by the time my husband was there. I think it admitted girls after 1971. My husband enjoyed Exeter very much. He lived and went to school in Iowa. I suspect that Exeter summer was his mother's way of impressing her friends and broadening my husband's horizons and emptying her house. His one year older brother went to Andover the same summer. The two older boys were off somewhere that summer too.  My husband remembers canoeing on the river. It was the first time he played tennis on clay courts (my husband was competitive tennis player at local level from age 6 or 7 until just a couple years ago). He remembers Zach B was his best friend. He remembers getting to see a tennis tournament (big names, Boston). He remembers the book store and the library, and having a great time and enjoying himself. In fact he almost went to high school there. He would have had to repeat his sophomore year in order to switch schools, so, he did not transfer.



I didn't know one thing about A Separate Peace, before I started. I just went where the book took me.

It was another book about boys (Lord of the Flies, The Chocolate War).

This book did not bother me as I have a good eye for catching foreshadowing. I was pretty sure I knew what was coming. It didn't come in the way I thought, but it did come. I did shed a couple tears over the characters, but not in a sinking way.

I thought this was a wonderful book.

My husband checked it out of the library and is listening to it now.

My books - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Wikipedia:

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and first published in Colliers Magazine on May 27, 1922. It was subsequently anthologized in his book, Tales of the Jazz Age, which is occasionally published as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories.

On CD, it was just under an hour long. Perfect length for getting me to and from exercise and through the grocery store on Tuesday.

I would like to note this might be one of the most unusual birth stories known to man and there is almost NO mention of Benjamin's mother in the story. The closest it gets is a 'we' or 'his parents' references early in the story.

It is a charming little story, in my opinion. I am not going to mention a thing about the plot on the off chance someone doesn't know and wants to read it.

If you are trying to remember - it was Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in the 2008 movie. It received thirteen Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Pitt, and Best Supporting Actress for Taraji P. Henson. It won three Oscars, for Best Art Direction, Best Makeup, and Best Visual Effects.

I am not sure I actually saw the movie, but had a vague memory there was a movie and Brad Pitt had played Benjamin. (Now that I think about it, I might be remembering Meet Joe Black).

My books - The Awakening (72/56 foot debacle)

Wikipedia writes:

"The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and the Southern Louisiana coast at the end of the nineteenth century, the plot centers around Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century South. It is one of the earliest American novels that focuses on women's issues without condescension. It is also widely seen as a landmark work of early feminism.

"The novel's blend of realistic narrative, incisive social commentary, and psychological complexity makes The Awakening a precursor of American modernism; it prefigures the works of American novelists such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway and echoes the works of contemporaries such as Edith Wharton and Henry James. It can also be considered among the first Southern works in a tradition that would culminate with the modern masterpieces of Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and Tennessee Williams."

This book was 5 audio hours, so a very quick read.

This is a book which might have bothered me a few years ago, but didn't bother the current me.

I realized where the story was going about 3/4 of the way through the book. So the ending did not come as a huge surprise, I was ready for it.