Reading, Reading, and More Reading
By The Misfit | October 21, 2008
In the emails I’ve received recently, everyone always asks the same question: What have you been doing?
And as much as I’d like to be able to say that I’ve been traveling ’round Scotland, it so hasn’t been the case.
What I’ve been doing (mostly) is reading. I’ve probably made a mention of this on the blog from time-to-time, so I thought it would be a good idea to let you know exactly what I’ve been reading since 17 September.
Here’s the low-down for my core module:
Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story
- This is considered the very first gothic story, though it’s much different (as are most of what I’ve been reading so far) from what we now consider to be gothic (which is usually used synonymously with horror).
Ann Radcliffe The Mysteries of Udolpho
- This book took me 4 days – 4 days!! – to get through. It’s only 672 pages, which should have been a breeze. But I enjoyed it so much I’m writing my first research paper on the heroine, Emily.
- The original “joke” was that The Mysteries of Udolpho was wordier than 19th Century Literature (which I love to say I hate, but two of my favorite books are 19th Century: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre) and it was just as wordy, but in a completely different manner. 18th Century Literature is wordy about scenery and descriptions of places. 19th Century Literature will take 5 pages to tell you that someone made a cup of coffee.
Ann Radcliffe The Italian
- Not nearly as long as The Mysteries of Udolpho (415 pages as opposed to 672) and I didn’t enjoy it as much. I think because it seems to be a rip-off of TMoU, just with different characters.
M.G. Lewis The Monk
- This raised a lot of furor when it was discovered to have been written by a member of the British Parliament. Very scandalous, indeed, because of the book’s subject matter. A change from internal torture to physical torture. Very fun, generally quick, read. If reading about torture can be fun.
Charlotte Dacre Zofloya, or The Moor
- This was like reading a copy of a Jerry Springer show – so train-wreck-like you can’t help but get caught up in the drama. Dysfunctional family – father is good, but mom is vain and selfish as are son and daughter. Mom has affair and leaves to become mistress, son runs away, dad dies of broken heart, daughter is pissed, but follows in mom’s footsteps to become a mistress, then wife. Daughter becomes own worst nightmare thanks to selfish and vain disposition. Won’t give away the ending, but I enjoyed this so much, I think I’m going to use it for my 2nd paper.
Mary Shelley Frankenstein
- Would you believe I don’t ever remember reading this? I probably read it in high school somewhere, but it never made that much of an impression on me, I guess. Am currently about halfway through and must be finished by tomorrow. Am enjoying it, but finding it hard to swallow that someone would create a living being only to leave it on its own with no direction or without destroying it and then wonder why it wreaks havoc.
For my optional module (which is technically called Monstrosity, but I just call it the Stephen King class) I’ve read:
- I love this book. There’s so much in it, despite it being relatively short. At the moment I’m contemplating on focusing on blood and fire in the book for my paper for this class.
- Like it, but didn’t love it. I’m a huge fan of the romanticized vampire because I like characters to be three-dimensional, and the vampires in this book are one-dimensional at best.
- I’ve always loved this book, but on this reading I’m trying to understand why in the world parents would give a 5-year-old boy essentially unsupervised access to a very large hotel. There is a lot of good “stuff” in this book, though, and this is vying with Carrie to be the subject of my paper
So that’s where I am, now; 9 books in less than a month. And this doesn’t include any additional reading (journal articles, and other sourcebooks) that I’ve done along the way.
Topics: books for the misfit, the misfit life | No Comments »