Dombey and Sons by Charles Dickens

Merely finishing this beast of novel gives me a sense of accomplishment. This edition is 833 pages of small type, without a single blank page or added space, not even for the beginnings of chapters. Let's estimate: 12 words per line, 39 lines per page, 833 pages equals 489,844 words, minus about 20 or 25 percent for white space gives us almost 400 thousand words. That's four times the size of a modern novel.

Update: Went to Project Gutenberg and downloaded a text copy, pasted it into Word, and after it thought about it for awhile it came back with a word count of - 358,952. So I should have deducted 27% from my back of the envelope calculations. That's still a sizable novel.

I spent about a month wading through this (while reading, and finishing, several other more modern novels, at the same time), and it was worth every bit of the effort. This may be my new favorite Dickens' novel. It's definitely more mature than "David Copperfield", more satisfying than "A Tale of Two Cities", more convincing than "Bleak House". All the elements we expect from Dickens are here: the settings, the unforgettable characters, the compassion, the sentimentalism. And the female character that is too good to be true, as well - she always seems to show up in a Dickens novel somewhere, and in this case, regardless of the title, she is at the center of all the activity.

And, as usual, Dickens cannot resist wrapping up every character, no matter how insignificant, and bringing everyone, no matter how wicked or debased, to an appropriate end as elevated as he can manage.

So put this novel on your nightstand and chip away at it gradually for a month or so - it will be well worth the effort.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

First, a disclaimer: I have hiked a considerable portion of the Appalachian trail in the South, I am a volunteer with the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club, and I live in north Georgia. I also belong to and support the Appalachian Trail Conference. If you are going to read my opinion of this book, I may as well be honest with you - I love hiking the Appalachian Trail, and I spend time and money supporting it.

Bill Bryson is a man who sees his glass half-empty. In this book he trashes the U. S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Appalachian Trail Conference. He denigrates every locale that he hikes: North Georgia, Gatlinburg, Hiawassee, the Great Smoky Mountains, Pennsylvania, and his own adopted hometown. He dwells on the dangers of bears, panthers, weather, and attacks on hikers. Does he ever say anything good about anybody or any institution?

In the character of Katz, Bryson describes some of the worst behavior you see on the trail: he routinely litters, with aluminum cans, cigarette butts, and discarded food and equipment, yet Bryson makes no effort to correct him or point out how he is wrong.

I am sure Bryson went into this project knowing that he wanted to write a book, with the intention of gathering material for the book, and yet he did not finish his hike. So he has the effrontery to present himself as some sort of authority, someone qualified to write a travel memoir about the AT, even though he gives up his hike every time the challenge is too much for him.

So if you are looking for a memoir about a successful hike of the AT, don't bother with this pseudo memoir by a great pretender. Instead, go to the ATC website, where you will find a large number of excellent hiking memoirs for sale.

Surfacing by Margaret Atwood

Picked this up to read while I was on a five day backpack. Needless to say, it spooked me out at first. Two couples stranded on a North woods island looking for the missing father of one of them. Is he dead or crazy? I thought I was in a slasher movie. But then things turned around and the novel changed its direction. The narrator is unreliable, and everything is told from her viewpoint, so at times it can be hard to sort out what is really happening, but it was a good read. A very early Atwood, and worth picking up.

Titan by Ben Bova

I haven't read a science fiction book in years. I was hiking the Pinhoti trail in Alabama, seventy-something miles in five days, and had finished the book I brought with me. At the shelter on Mt. Cheaha I found this book, which someone had left, probably leaving it after reading it as too heavy to carry. So I picked it up, happy to have something to read.

Bear in mind that I have been reading literary novels almost exclusively for the past few years. I try to write literary novels. So it took quite a few pages before I got over the shock of being immersed in such a different style of writing. I have to say that I enjoyed the book, not on the same level that I enjoy something by Geraldine Brooks or Margaret Atwood, but still, it was fun to read.

It's written in an omniscient viewpoint in very short scenes. Every character has some characteristic that sets him or her apart from the other characters - otherwise, how would the reader be able to tell them apart? It's fast paced and relies heavily on plot. There is nothing in the least bit subtle about the characters. Most of their actions do not ring true to me, and I think that is because there are so many of them and they are so categorized. As you read you think: this is the one that loves power, this is the one that craves adventure, this is the one that wants to be reunited with his wife, this is the one that is afraid of women, and so forth and so on.

The science? Who knows if it is feasible or not - I don't. It seems to be a sequel, or at least some of the characters are continued from a previous book, and there is plenty of space left at the end for another book to follow this one.

So yes, I enjoyed reading it, but I would not have picked it up except under those extraordinary circumstances, and I will not buy another one or make a habit of reading them. It seems incomplete and awkward compared to the novels I usually read.

New Look!

I upgraded my WordPress and changed to a different template today. I also made some new header images, six of them, and hacked the header code so that each time you visit the page or reload you get a random image.

You can tell that I am a little bored. Vacation starts tomorrow, and I'm going hiking. I can't focus on actual work, can't do any writing, don't want to answer the phone, and wish it were tomorrow already.

The Poet of Loch Ness by Brian Jay Corrigan

An interesting novel, a mix of literary style and elements of more popular fiction such as twists and turns, secrets (from the reader), and unexpected occurrences. I have been to a workshop on novel writing by the author, and I am sure he added those elements in order to increase suspense and keep the reader turning the pages.

I can't discuss the gimmicks without disclosing plot. I do think they border on gimmicks, though, and I know that is a derogatory term, but that's my opinion. I did feel manipulated and almost lied to at times, and part of that feeling is attributable to the fact that the author uses an omniscient viewpoint for about a third of the novel, and we are inside the head of some of the characters who are keeping secrets, without those secrets being revealed to the reader. Not as bad as lying to the reader, but I still felt manipulated by the time it was all over - not the pleasant reading experience the author intended, I think.

I still recommend it though, and I highly recommend Dr. Corrigan's workshop and his book on writing the novel. He has some excellent insight into the novel that I have not seen elsewhere, especially on focus, narrative drive, and subordination.