Review: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser

I had a tough time getting through this one. It is long (more than 850 pages), plodding, repetitive and dated as to language and subject matter. About one-third of the way through, I loaded an audio version onto my iPod and made it to the finish line listening as I drove and ran. Afterward, I read some criticism of the book. It is admired as a "masterful portrayal of the society whose values both shape the [protagonist's] ambitions and seal his fate"...and as "an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American lifer and of the dark side of the American dream." Be that as it may, I would not recommend it

Review: HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad

This one has been on my To Be Read list since I saw the movie Apocalypse Now back in the 1970s. I had not realized that the book is actually a collection of three short stories, the second of which was the subject of the movie. The first, "Youth,"  is the story of a ship on fire at sea, narrated in the first person by the seaman Marlow. He reappears as narrator of  "Heart of Darkness," a wild story set in the Belgian Congo concerning a journalist (Marlon Brando in the movie version) who becomes manager of a station in the interior and makes himself worshiped by a tribe of savages. The third story, "The End of the Tether," is the rather sentimental tale of an old captain. All are adventure stories inflected by very careful judgments: social, political and, above all, psychological. They are notable for their descriptive power and artful structuring: intimate with character and loyal to detail while still comfortable with great ideas. Well worth reading!

Reading Resolutions - 2012

I have enjoyed participating this past year in the 2011 To Be Read (TBR) Pile Challenge, which required reading 12 books taken from my To Be Read stack, each selection to have been there for at least a year. I posted my list last January and then shared my reviews of those books with the other participants as I completed them.

I'm reenlisting in the same challenge for 2012. Here's my (fixed)  list together with the two (2) alternates that are allowed, just in case one or two of the books end up in the "can't get through" pile.

 
My Twelve Chosen are as follows:

1. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Complete 1/16/12)
   
2. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (Complete 5/21/12)
   
3. Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy (Complete 4/6/12)
   
4. William Golding, Lord of the Flies (Complete 6/12/12)
   
5. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (Complete 6/23/12)
   
6. Henry James, The Ambassadors (Complete 9/20/12)
   
7. Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
8. D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
9. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
10. Cormac McCarthy, The Road (complete 9/27/12)
    
11. Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause
12. James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations  (Complete 9/4/12)

My Two Alternates:

1. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
2. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina