The Canterbury Tales by Geoffery Chaucer

I had to go with a thoroughly modernized translation because the original language was Middle English, and I didn't particularly feel like torturing myself. I mean, the untouched version would be worse than Shakespeare by, like, hundreds of years. So, I got the gist of the stories, even if I didn't get the flavor and feel of Chaucer's language.

This means, of course, that I can really only evaluate the stories on their narrative merit. Many could only be described as bawdy, the dirty jokes of the Middle Ages, and not stuff one would neccessarily summarize out loud. Others were cute and romantic, and some were satires. I enjoyed this glimpse into medieval life. It is not often I read a book actually written in the time it speaks of, especially this far back in history. It is almost like learning history firsthand, from someone who was actually there. A writer's material is so personal that it becomes a sort of conversation with the reader. It was quite pleasant to hear voice from such a distant time, even if the sound might have been distorted through the translation.

One point that struck me when reading the tales was that nothing has truly changed. People, no matter their location in time, are still people. They still have the same sense of humor (imagine- a joke almost one thousand years old, is still funny), there is still infidelity and idolatry, girls are still embarrassing flirts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Fascinating stuff.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is rather dependable. Whenever I pick up a book of his, I know I'll get a beautiful, thoughtful, sci-fi commentary on society. I selected Something Wicked This Way Comes for its allusory title towards Macbeth, the play I had just finished in AP Lit and Comp. I was curious as to how it would all fit together.

I'll admit I probably do not grasp the full import of the allusion, but I think I have part of it. Within Macbeth, this line precedes the entrance of the hero-turned-villain. Bradbury's book also featured a sort of good-turned-bad element in the carnival that comes to town. Two young boys are excited by the impending carnival, but are soon mystified by the creepy, occultist characters it brings with it. The boys discover the sadistic aims of the man in charge of it all, and eventually they triumph over him. People in this novel die or disappear mysteriously, just like in Macbeth.

The book features a Tuck Everlasting-like convention, and so philosophizes nicely over the ramifications of living forever.

I particularly enjoyed a line by one of the boys' fathers. "God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other." I thought it was beautiful imagery. That father was an excellent character. He was a library janitor who had read most of the books he swept around. What an incredible picture.

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

The Power and the Glory was essentially Death Comes for the Archbishop without the cool title. A priest in Mexico wanders around the various parishes before dying. He feels guilty because he fathered a child, and because he is a drunkard. He is shot to death in the end because the Mexicans are purging the country of Catholicism, an effort that was obviously not successful.

A minor character, a precocious preteen girl, had some real potential, but she was merely mentioned in passing. The rest of the book was sordid and tepid. Sinful priests are a dime a dozen- read the newspaper. Strangely, the author supports Catholicism in the conclusion. The whole book deprecated the religion, exposing all the corruption and hypocrisy inherent in the church. And yet, the sight of the priest at the end invokes piety and deference in a previously jaded, indifferent boy. No comprendo.

Perhaps it was all to say that Catholicism is mysterious and nonsensical, but still the true religion. I don't know. The case was not made for me.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary was actually a fairly timely read. I was perusing an article online that presented the concept of "female pornography," pornography literally being that which fosters unrealistic expectations in the opposite sex. For men, that manifests itself physically, while for women the fantasy comes in the realm of the emotional. Trashy romance novels and second-rate chick flicks cultivate the concept of the flawless tall-dark-and-handsome knight-in-shining-armor, sonnet-spouting and continually pledging his undying love. Obviously, this can have damaging effects on women's relationships with, and expectations of, men.

Madame Bovary is a case in point. She grows up in a convent, filling her mind with these very fantasies derived from novels and such. When she eventually marries, she is disappointed. Why doesn't her husband love her with that intangible passion of her books? Why doesn't he constantly romance her? How could she have so unluckily united herself with such a dull, unfeeling man?

In search of sexual fulfillment, therefore, Madame Bovary commences upon an affair. Her husband is completely unaware. The affair lasts for some time, but eventually her paramour jilts her. So, she arranges another affair, one she is sure will be more satisfying than the last. But with this second man she soon falls into a comfortable and not particularly romantic routine, and so Madame begins dreaming of yet another man, a real romantic. But she amasses some serious debt and commits suicide before she can alight upon another tryst.

Madame Bovary's unrealistic expectations ruined many, many lives. Her eternally forbearing husband adored her despite her innumerable caprices, and he succumbed to grief after her death. Her daughter, whom she never showed affection towards, was sent to a workhouse upon the successive deaths of her parents. And Madame's own life, of course, was destroyed by her passions. The novel was a graphic illustration of the damaging effects of irrational fantasizing.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

A kid I worked with at summer camp had a copy in his cabin of just about everything Kerouac ever wrote, and my art teacher rambled on and on about how revolutionary On the Road was, so I figured to be considered educated, I had to read it.

I am not entirely sure what my final verdict on this book should be. From what I can tell, it was just the typical quasi-philosophical, drinking-smoking-sleeping-around searching for the meaning of life but never doing anything productive, let alone finding answers for the questions everyone asks, sort of novel. Pointless, in other words.

I think I can see what appealed so much to that kid at camp, though. Hitchiking repeatedly across the country, meeting scads of eccentric people, exploring the world, doing whatever whenever, would all be quite attractive to a teenaged boy, I think. But not to me. I would react similarly to the women in the book. They were more apt to settle down and stay in one place after a while. On the Road was an interesting social experiment, but ultimately a faulty one. The nomadic Buddhist lifestyle doesn't really answer anything.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God was a typical woman-released-from-the-chains-of-man, chronicle of burgeoning sexuality sort of thing. How sad that there actually is that kind of literary category. Janie is a black woman in the South who marries three times before finding a husband she likes. Unfortunately, he gets bit by a rabid dog and tries to kill her, so she has to kill him self-defense. Nice.

I do not find infidelity and social defiance laudable. I guess I have no soul, but I did not like this book.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

I would never willingly pick up Hemingway after reading The Old Man and the Sea, but The Sun Also Rises was assigned literature in school. Jake Barnes and his expatriate friends wander across Europe, disconnected and disenchanted, dissatisfied with their lives and their relationships. They end up in Pamplona to witness the running of the bulls. Jake does not hook up with the girl he likes. The end.

Hemingway just seems frustrated and apathetic. He was so troubled, and his literature reflects that. I can't read him and enjoy it. It is just not going to happen. Everyone drinks, smokes, and sleeps around. Nobody is ever satisfied. The prose rambles meaninglessly for pages and pages. He never gets anywhere. It leaves me frustrated! I do not see how he had any special insight into the human condition. He was so lost.

Daisy Miller by Henry James

Let me tell you a quick story. I was working at a summer camp, and just as I was sitting down to lunch, my cell phone rang. It was my mom, calling to inform me that I would not be able to return to my charter school because apparently I had amassed too many credits and should have graduated the previous June. School started in two weeks. Unwilling to graduate fully two years early, I assured my mom I would go to the local high school and finish my senior year there.

Well, I signed up a week before the first day of school for two AP English classes, which I could do because I'd never taken them before. I had five books to read, a college to visit, a play to see and seven essays to write. Desirous to see out my camp job to the end, I dutifully set to work during my breaks. A few days later, I broke my ankle.

When school started, I was on crutches, but I had completed every single summer assignment. Besides Daisy Miller, I had read Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Sun Also Rises, The Crucible, and Brave New World for the second time.

All this is to say I hated Daisy Miller. Its only redeeming feature was its brevity- short and sweet. Well, not particularly sweet, but certainly short. Daisy is a flirt, society does not approve of her, her imprudence gets the better of her, and she dies. How sad. My tears are palpable. Really.

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Oh, McCarthyism. Because it has no bearing on me, I absolutely do not care about any of it. Horrible as it may sound, this is true. So blacklist me.

The Crucible was not as bad as Death of a Salesman, but it was still Arthur Miller. Obviously a product of his partially impoverished upbringing, Miller's politics were ridiculously leftist, and therefore irrational. People should not have to rely on the government to take care of them. Freedom means being able to do that for oneself. Why don't people see that?

In the play, Puritan girl Abigail sleeps with otherwise law-abiding John Proctor. In an effort to throw attention from herself, Abigail accuses Proctor of dealings with the devil, and soon the entire countryside is in hysterics over supposedly satanic happenings. Lots of Puritans are hanged under suspicion of occult loyalties. Abigail gets off scot-free. The end.

McCarthy was a terribly misguided man and he wreaked havoc on quite a few individuals' reputations with his alarmist legislative tactics in a manner similar to that of the rabidly self-righteous Puritan authorities. Thank you, Miller, for attempting to exculpate yourself with this play that makes that connection. Your politics were bad, but that does not justify McCarthy's campaign against you. The political sphere is so interwoven with ambition and emotion, that we may never have a national platform for rational discourse, and so literature may be one of the few arenas in which such a conversation can occur.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Ah, Jane Austen. A breath of fresh air in a stifling, polluted literary world. I have to hand it to her this time. She really made me think that maybe, just maybe, the female protagonist would not marry the male protagonist she was obviously destined for. Of course, she does end up with him in the end, but there was real drama in between there.

Mansfield Park was a very nice book altogether. Fanny is the main girl, quiet and meek, mistreated and pitiable. She holds fast to her convictions, though, and by the conclusion she is loved and admired. Austen is fairly diverse, for all the similarities her books have. Each of her novels seem to involve a slightly different facet of early 19th-century British middle-to-upper-class daily life. I applaud her for that.

Truly, the comforts in reading a Jane Austen novel are innumerable. There is always just enough predictability, coupled with some unexpected turns, to delight and reassure the reader. I love Austen. Once you get to know her, you find she is unparalleled.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

I am not an ardent enthusiast of science fiction, but I can usually appreciate the older stuff. Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Ray Bradbury can all be fun little excursions. The Martian Chronicles are an excellent example of such. Bradbury has an incredible imagination. His work is not merely answering, "What if there were little green men?" Rather, he is much more conceptual. He has things to say about human nature, and "life, the universe, and everything."

The Chronicles feature various Earthlings' experiences with the Red Planet. Some stories are connected, some are years apart from each other. Each is profound in its own way. Particularly memorable was a passage detailing the perfection of the Martian religion. Bradbury explains they found the perfect blend of nature and the supernatural, something lacking in the Earth religions. Incidentally, I was just reading an essay of C.S. Lewis' asserting that Christianity does just that.

I was also captivated with the image of a character named Spender. An astronaut on one of the first expeditions to Mars, he is filled with reverence for the planet upon landing and disgusted by the irreverent revelries of his fellow travelers. He runs away and spends time studying the ruins of the Martian culture. He is struck by the profundity of their philosophy. He hatches a plan to create an intellectual utopia on Mars, eliminating any who would spoil his vision, but he himself is killed before he can execute his scheme.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Good old Dashiell Hammett- beautifully laconic, concise, and predictably unpredictable. There is something to be said for short, well-written books.

The Thin Man is just a detective-mystery deal, but it was quite enjoyable. The characters were fun, the protagonist witty and crazy. The husband-wife relationship was fascinating. She would go out with other men, he would be found physically comforting other women, and yet there was no question of their fidelity and trust in one another.

Hammett's people are so real. It is almost as if he created them and then just let them run around, doing what they do, weaving this intricate story. I love that he was actually a detective himself. It is a genuine case of writing what one knows.

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

I am so glad I finished Tom Jones. The novel was Vanity Fair-long. It was basically the story of an illegitimately-born Tom Jones, a chronicle of all the adventures and hardships he encounters before he discovers he is actually the son of a rich man and therefore heir to a considerable fortune. Quite convenient.

Of course, there are romantic elements, but they are surprisingly explicit for 18th-century England. Jones sleeps with three different women, but, tellingly, never the heroine. At least, not until they get married at the end. Though the narrative was still relatively prudish, the soap opera-like plot conventions were different from the other early British literature I've read.

Fielding was a funny guy in his own way. He actually made me laugh out loud a few times. For instance: "At length we are once more come to our hero; and, to say truth, we have been obliged to part with him so long, that, considering the condition in which we left him, I apprehend many of our readers have concluded we intended to abandon him for ever; he being at present in that situation in which prudent people usually desist from inquiring any further after their friends, lest they should be shocked by hearing such friends had hanged themselves." (Book XII, chapter III)

Or this one: "Had we been of the tragic complexion, the reader must now allow we were very nearly arrived at this period, since it would be difficult for the devil, or any of his representatives on earth, to have contrived much greater torments for poor Jones...What then remains to complete the tragedy but a murder or two and a few moral sentences!" (Book XVII, chapter I)

This book, I suppose, fully deserves the category of satire ascribed to it. Still, it was very long. It lagged especially in the middle, though it did pick up in the end. It was altogether all right, but very, very long.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

I came across The Eyre Affair online, where it was touted as a potential crossover for Jane Eyre fans. Imagine my excitement, my delight, my impatience to read this book. Then imagine my utter despondency, my disillusion, my disenchantment, when I read it and found it to be a poorly contrived fantasy with minmal Eyre-time, if you will.

The book is supposed to to be set in 1985, but it is a parallel-universe 1985 with over-the-counter cloned dodos, regular rents in the fabric of time and space on the side of the road, and a constantly shifting sense of reality with the line between fact and fiction quite blurry. Literature has an abnormal presence in this world, and some guy, apparently half-demon, has discovered a way to place fictional characters in the real world and kill them. Our main character must find a way to stop him before he murders the entire canon of classics. Blah, blah, blah.

The characters were flat, the dialogue was static and forced. The plot was choppy, the details were poorly thought out. For instance, the premise is that in this world's version of Jane Eyre, Jane never goes back to Rochester in the end. Later on, Fforde's protagonist causes the real ending to come about. I do not think Jane Eyre would have become a beloved classic without its original ending. The book is nothing without that ending. And it is a bit narcissistic to make one's character the cause of the best part of one of the best books ever.

Oh, and the typos. One "bails out;" one does not "bale out." Very, very bad. Throughout the entire book, I felt as if I could do a better job. It was an amusing concept, but the writing was so bad. I was hoping for a masterful writer who could take me back to the way I felt when I first read Charlotte Bronte's classic. But all I got was a second-rate, sub-par, disappointment.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

I first encountered Freakonomics in a Wall Street Journal book review. It sounded quite enticing, and I was overjoyed when I discovered my roommate at camp had a copy of it. The book completely held up to my expectations, and I learned so much. If only every book were like that.

Basically, Freakonomics is a slightly random compilation of socioeconomic studies conducted by the two authors. They run the gamut from real estate to abortions, from cheating teachers to trends in baby names. I'm a bit nomenclatural, in that I love to name things, and so given names have always fascinated me. The study detailed in the book explained how names for new babies start at the top of the socioeconomic ladder and work their way down, until even the poorest parents discard them as too low-sounding. The authors presented a list of the names mothers with the most years of schooling gave their children recently- Linden, Finnegan, Emma, Maeve, Marie-Claire, Sophie, Aidan, Bennett, and Harper, to name a few. They postulated that these will be rampant amongst all income brackets and educational levels by 2015.

It is encouraging to see skills taught in school actually put to practical use. The authors have been described as being what every kid majoring in economics aspires to be. I hope a few more pop up. I can't get enough of this sort of information. All math should be like this- practical, and entertaining.

War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

Aliens crash-land in England and wreak havoc on the countryside, leaving the citizens scurrying for their lives, until a common virus sabotages the aliens' immune system and obliterates them.

War of the Worlds was not incredible. The narrative was rather detached, and lacking in scope. I did not get the impression the aliens attacked anything outside of England, so it was not really a "world" war. Even though the story was told in the first person, it felt entirely impersonal. I was frustrated. The Time Machine was enjoyable, original, and thought-provoking, but War of the Worlds just seemed like a prolonged drama with a convenient little plot twist at the end.

Overall, I was quite bored with the whole thing. It took some stamina for me to get through it. Wells should have embellished the story, fleshed it out into something more substantial. As it is, it was a great concept, but a disappointing execution.

Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

Scaramouche sat on my floor for a long time before I picked it up. I contemplated taking the book back to the library a few times, but something told me to give it a try. I am actually glad I did, and that I stuck with it until the end.

The novel involves a lot of political history, and French political history at that, but I learned a lot despite the dryness. The main character, Andre-Louis, or Scaramouche as he is later called, incites some mobs to action and help to tip off the French Revolution. Then he has to flee for his life, so he takes refuge in a band of traveling actors. Unfortunately, he causes another riot, so he has to flee again, this time resurfacing as a fencing instructor. There are threads of romance, revenge, chivalry, and politics woven throughout, with enough plot twists to keep things interesting.

The characters are engaging, despite being French. I take issue with the French. I think they're success-challenged. History backs me up on this. But it was a good story nonetheless.

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

I want to write like C.S. Lewis. The Great Divorce as a whole is masterful, but Lewis' profundity continues down to the elemental aspects of his prose, the individual paragraphs and sentences. He makes an overarching point, but within the narrative he weaves independent statements and concepts that carry their own weight. Most of all, he makes me think.

The book was short, but engaging all the same. The narrator takes a trip through hell and heaven, and learns all about life after death. Lewis includes a disclaimer at the beginning stating that the story is a metaphorical fable, for no one could actually presume to know any concrete details regarding the real attributes of these places.

It is a book that needs to be read to be appreciated. Lewis has a knack for making the nonsensical make sense. And he is just so quotable: "This moment contains all moments." Beautiful.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Small title, small town, small book. That is about it. Our Town is a play about a New Hampshire town, and it follows a couple from childhood, to marriage, to an untimely death, while making a commentary on life in general. It was tepid, minimally insightful, and ultimately boring.

The play's main detractor was its theology. In the final act, the characters who have died are presented as existing in a sort of no-man's-land. It is said perhaps they are waiting for something eternal. But that is it. No God, no heaven or hell. The dead just sit in the cemetery, reminiscing about their lives and sadly observing the living, who are apparently walking about in a cloud of ignorance.

I really should avoid reading plays. They are so dead on the printed page.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I was expecting a lot more than I got. Adams' humor, extolled throughout the Internet, just did not do it for me.

The problem is probably that I was too late to be in on the joke. Pop references to this book gave away all the funny parts to me. The evolutionary worldview was too much for me to laugh at. The blase treatment of God was not my cup of tea.

It was creative; I'll cede that. Adams insists the Earth was built in hopes that someone there would discover the question that prompts the answer to the meaning of life. That, of course, is 42, as a supercomputer revealed to the aliens ruling the universe. But just when a girl actually comes up with the answer, the Earth is bulldozed by the galactic highway construction crew, who builds a space road where the planet used to be.

That the answer to the meaning of life question could be a quantified amount, and that it requires a question to uncloak its ramifications, is inhererntly absurd, and therefore funny. But altogether, I could not get into the story and accept its premises. It just was not for me.