#95 - "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I read Faust in college, which is Goethe’s most well-known work.  I don’t remember much about it other than I didn’t like it, which may not have really been Goethe’s fault.  I was anti-Goethe right off the bat because my professor insisted on pronouncing his name with a pretentious German accent.  I know it’s wrong, but it would be better for me if his name rhymed with “both.”  Sorry Germany.  Because of this, I wasn't looking forward to reading Werther, but it was better than I expected.

Werther is an epistolary novel, which means it’s written as a series of letters (another epistolary novel recently read and enjoyed:  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society... so good.  I should write about it).  Most translations use the title The Sorrows of Young Werther, but the version I read was called The Sufferings of Young Werther.  I like the word “suffering” better because I think it’s more indicative of Werther’s pain.

The basic premise is that Werther is a young artist who falls instantly and madly in love with Lotte, who is already engaged to be married to Albert.  The story unfolds as Werther writes very detailed, intimate letters to a friend, and we learn that he’s an incredibly emotionally unstable guy.  He just can’t stay away from Lotte, and his obsession is all-encompassing.  Eventually, when he can no longer stand the pain he’s causing both himself and Lotte, he briefly considers murdering either her or Albert, but instead commits suicide.  Heavy stuff. 

The whole time I was reading this and thinking about Werther as a character, I was imaging it as an episode of some cop show on TV.  I picture Werther as this sort of creepy, stalker guy who’s totally obsessed with some girl.  Her husband ends up murdered, and Werther is the prime suspect.  Remember the weird brother kid in Wedding Crashers?  Werther would totally be played by that guy.  

A lot could be said about Werther’s character and all his faults.  Yeah, he’s a little ridiculous, and he’s way over-dramatic, but when you really start to look at Lotte’s character, you realize that she is just as much at fault.  She has to know that Werther is unstable, but she encourages him and likes the attention.  It says that she wants him to marry one of her friends so he’ll always be around. It kinda makes me not like her, even though of course she’s written about very sympathetically by Werther in his letters.  He thinks she’s practically an angel. I feel like she’s the girl we all know who is in a relationship but still wants to keep other guys around just to make herself feel better.  It’s not fair to anyone.  At times I felt sorry for Werther and even embarrassed for him.

I make fun of it, but this book is really actually pretty good, and its cultural impact was definitely reflective of it being a good story.  Werther was written in 1774 and was one of the early impetuses of the entire Romanticism movement.  It’s a story out of a completely different time, when over-the-top romantic sensitivity and passionate expression were more normal than we’re used to now.  Werther is generally considered Goethe’s semi-autobiograhpy, with a lot of similarities to his own life, as well as the life of one of his close friends who committed suicide after a failed relationship.  Because of this, I think it allowed Goethe to put even more feeling and real, raw emotion into the story, especially since it’s almost entirely written in Werther’s first person view.

This isn’t the most fun you’ll ever have reading.  That’s for sure.  And I wouldn’t recommend it to most people for that reason, but it’s definitely well-written and gives you something to think about.

Up next: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie ... but first, maybe something a little more beachy :)

#96 - One Thousand and One Nights

I actually skipped reading this one because I just didn't have the patience for short stories, and I think the history of this book and its artwork is much more fascinating than the stories themselves.

You've probably heard the general idea of Arabian Nights: a Persian king is going to execute his new bride, Scheherazade, the morning after the wedding (yeah, he's a jerk), but she delays him by telling a story.  Then every night for 1,001 nights, she starts a new story to further postpone her execution. The 1,001 stories run the gamut of genres, and are collected in what we in North America usually now call Arabian Nights.  The most famous story is undoubtedly Aladdin, thanks to Disney.  
The stories themselves are really ancient, which is what I think is most interesting about them.  They're believed to be from around the 9th century, but they were collected over centuries all around the Middle East and North Africa.  The oldest surviving text is from the 14th century:

There's an interesting site, http://www.mythfolklore.net/1001nights/index.htm, that has cataloged a lot of images from various versions of Arabian Nights, from different eras and parts of the world.  I think the pictures are pretty amazing.  

#97 - "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams

Aliens. Outerspace. Mice who rule the world. You have got to be kidding me. I don’t really like to say I hate a book ... but I hate this book.

The basic story is that Earth is destroyed, and one nerd from England manages to accidentally survive and meet up with this ragtag group of aliens that get into various predicaments. Other than that, I don’t really know what the point is.

The best part of this book is it’s only 152 pages long. The worst part is you have to read 152 pages like this:

Ford Prefect’s original name is only pronounceable in an obscure Betelgeusian dialect, now virtually extinct since the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out all the old Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven.

OMG

It’s just dumb.

The Amazon review says, "You'll never read funnier science fiction." Um, there wasn't one funny thing about this book. Not one. That gives me no hope for the entire sci-fi genre.

One very small, slightly interesting little tidbit: the word “Babel fish” came from this book. It's this slimy little fish you put in your ear that then translates all languages for you. Convenient for inter-galaxy travel, but ew, gross, a fish in your ear.

So, in case I wasn’t clear, I don’t recommend this book at all, unless you love lame dialogue, stupid outerspace jokes, and pointless wastes of time.

Next up, One Thousand and One Nights.

slow going ...

I'm having a really hard time reading the next book on my list -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I mean, come on, it has the word galaxy in the title. It's soooo sci fi it's ridiculous. And I actually even liked Star Trek. I've been reading for a few days and have managed to get to page 28. Ugh. I'll update as soon as I can.

Sidetracked! -"People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks

About six months ago I saw this book at Borders and literally stood in the store and put a hold on it at the library , from my phone. It finally arrived a couple of weeks ago, so I had to take a break to read it. I'm so glad I did.

I couldn't really remember what I had read on the book jacket way back when. I was kinda thinking it would be another Da Vinci Code... Brilliant academic at the top of his/her field finds lost treasure and is chased around the world by evildoers out to erase history... Suspense and terror enfold ... Or something. That's not really it at all.

The premise of People of the Book is that a brilliant academic at the top of her field (umm, ok) -- an archivist specializing in ancient books -- is assigned with restoring the Sarajevo Haggadah, a very rare Jewish religious text that has survived many centuries and crossed many paths. She discovers a series of artifacts in the binding of the book and through these is able to trace the book's history. It's impossible not to make some Da Vinci Code comparisons, but generally I think this book stands out on its own as a really enjoyable and interesting read.

What really got me was that the Sarajevo Haggadah is REAL. Some of the things that happen in the book are REAL. Brooks created a fictionalized tale about the history of this amazing book based on actual historical proof. That’s pretty awesome. Read more about the real Sarajevo Haggadah here.

While I was reading this book, I actually had an opportunity to visit the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. To see real life history first hand, to see the way Christians, Muslims and Jews have been interacting and even depending on each other for centuries, to see the importance of the preservation and exploration of history -- in the context of reading this book -- was really great. I definitely recommend both the book and the exhibit (the dinosaurs at the ROM are pretty sweet, too).

A page from the actual Sarajevo Haggadah. It's so pretty...