"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck (1937)

 

Patricia Highsmith, Oscar Wilde and Henrik Ibsen - Audiobooks

In order to boost my Goodreads 2024 reading challenge, I decided to listen some audio books - its not really a task, since I regularly listen some podcasts on my way to work and back, in fact it was actually a pleasure. These three turned out to be completely different and I enjoyed all of them. In fact, one somehow lead to another.

I knew who was Patricia Highsmith but so far never read anything by her concretely - she was forever on my "to read" list. So now I decided to listen her famous debut "Strangers on a Train". Even though I remember the Hitchcock movie and it vaguely reminded me on recently read "The Postman Always Rings Twice", it was still a gripping story and I have resisted to peek at the end, I honestly had no idea where is the story going. This was so good that I decided to go on and listen another audio book.

"The Importance of Being Earnest" was just a delight. I forgot most about it so it was like approaching it for the first time - the recording I listened was done with John Gielgud and Edith Evans - I must admit that it made me laugh out loud on my way to work and I was just super excited with it, it was one of the funniest and wittiest things I have ever heard. Some quotes I still remember:

" I don’t play accurately—any one can play accurately—but I play with wonderful expression."

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

“Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.”

"If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life."

This was so good that I continued with Henrik Ibsen and his classic play "A Doll's House" might be the best of them all - the story about middle-class family where superficiality and social status were more important than personal opinions and lives of Nora and her husband was actually genuinely interesting and I listened with greatest pleasure. the patronising husband was annoying as hell, but to some extent so was a Nora herself until she woke up from this lobotomised dream and realised it was all but a nightmare. I found it excellent and might continue with Ibsen and audio books.

"Strangers on a Train" by Patricia Highsmith (1950)

 

"The Invisible Man" by Herbert George Wells (1897)

 

I am actually reading more now than during the whole year - it helps that I have a new, handy E-reader + instead of countless podcasts, I started listening to audiobooks. Since my Goodreads 2023 reading challenge is over, I might even double up the challenge for the next year - by combining one audio + one paper book per month, I don't think that would be difficult? With Jules Verne still buzzing in my head, I kind of promised myself to finally read "The Invisible Man" by my old friend Herbert George Wells - it is one of his most famous novels and thanks to countless adaptations, until now I never got around to actually read it myself. 

"The Invisible Man" starts with the arrival of a mysterious stranger in a quaint, sleepy little village of Iping (that deserves to be visited simply because of this literary connection) where his solitude and insistent reclusiveness provokes extreme curiosity of quirky locals who eventually become completely hysterical and even violent towards him. The first half of the novel we don't know much about the main character and its mostly fascinating as a study of mob against an individual - the more our unnamed antihero demands to be left alone, the more locals knock at his door. His night walks are ridiculed and everybody noticed he is not going to a church. Basically he is an outsider, therefore dangerous. Up to this point I even had certain fondness for him - but in the second part of the book we find out more about him and author makes sure that he describes him as a sociopathic monster (nowadays he would probably be a mass shooter) so reader can't sympathise with him anymore. It is quite gripping and I must admit that Wells is much, much better storyteller than Verne who might be charmingly nerdy but is often lost in technical details. 

Even though the author did all he could to make the main character an antagonist and sociopath, I could not shake off the feeling that allegedly dangerous antihero is somehow less dangerous than ordinary people around him - under the surface, they are all extremely selfish, greedy and violent. There is even a scene where one character (Dr. Kemp) is running and knocking at his neighbour's door, just to get them slammed in his face. Wells is very insistent about antihero being dangerous lunatic who lost his mind and became a menace to society, but this is not a nice, warm society - the mob itself is far more menacing than The Invisible Man. 

"Around the Moon" by Jules Verne (1869)

 

Jules Verne exist in his own universe - even though he is often pigeonholed together with Herbert George Wells as one of celebrated literary ancestors of science fiction, where Wells was story driven, Verne is like a giant geek who thrives on encyclopedic knowledge and likes nothing better than to show off the breadth of his scientific knowledge. That also means that the reader has to have a lot of patience to plow trough what might not be exactly called a page turner - there IS a story but its process is secondary to author's delight in scientific explorations (combined with geography, etc). It didn't bother me so much when I was a teenager, because I would just skip the boring parts, but now as an adult I could not help but notice that it does slow down the story quite noticeably. One has to go trough a tons of calculations and informations before the story continues. Once you get used to it, though, it becomes quite charming. As with the previous part ("From the Earth to the Moon") I listened this as an audiobook during my daily walks to work and back - listening to someone else's voice somehow made it easier and more enjoyable than I expected. My congratulations to Mark Smith from Simpsonville, South Carolina who read this so lovingly and patiently, using many different voices. I have a feeling we might meet again.

Where the previous novel dealt with creation of enormous cannon who will catapult our three main characters into a space (and the whole novel was basically just a build-up), now we have them actually traveling to cosmos. As this was many years before actual Moon landing, Verne had to simply use his imagination (and lots of scientific calculations) to describe imaginary journey - the story moved very slowly but it was lovingly described and one noticeable difference from the first part is how Michel Ardan suddenly became sort of comic relief (where in the first part he was a hero). Our guys travel all the way to the moon but unanticipated meeting with a comet changes their course and they end up not reaching the moon but circling around it. Just lovely. I might even go back to Verne again sometime soon. 

"From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne (1865)

 

Because I recently read "The First Men in the Moon" by Herbert George Wells, I thought it would be just fair to check out his famous literary predecessor. Now, Jules Verne is of course an author usually connected to childhood and teenage years, when one reads adventure novels - however, it turned out that I am more familiar with his work trough the movies and cartoons ("Classics Illustrated") than actual books. It has been several decades since, but with a complete conviction I could name only a few of his novels that I have actually read:

- In Search of the Castaways (1868) correctly translated as "Children of Captain'Grant"

- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1869)

- Around the World in Eighty Days (1873)

- Michael Strogoff (1876) translated as "The Tzar's Courier" 

It turned out my theoretical knowledge of Jules Verne is by far bigger that my actual acquaintance with his work. So to correct this, I decided to turn my attention to "The First Men in the Moon" written some 30 years earlier than Wells. Since Goodreads is constantly reminding me that I am lagging behind my 2023 reading challenge, I did the same like with "The Wind in the Willows" and started listening to an audio book. 

This was a very good decision, because I completely forgot how obsessed with scientific experiments, details and measurements Verne was. I actually don't remember him being so scientific or technical - as a kid, I have probably just skipped everything and focused on adventures - if I was reading this as a physical book, I might have skipped it all over again - but since I was walking lulled with a pleasant voice of certain Mark F. Smith, this didn't really bother me. In the beginning it took me a while to get accustomed to so much encyclopedic knowledge (do we really need to know name of every singe bank who contributed to finance of the project?) but I grew to like it a lot and eventually started really enjoying myself. I do must confess this is a very old fashioned, flowery writing style with a tons of encyclopedic digressions into all sorts of informations, calculations and technical knowledge - in fact, author often appears far more delighted with these scientific explorations than with the plot itself, hence the huge amount of research and only occasional return to the story. I would say, Verne's novel is 70% science and 30% story. As a society, we have changed a lot since - I don't think that kids today have patience or enough focus for such long-winded literature, it tested even my patience as a grown up man. 

So is it "From the Earth to the Moon" any good?

Yes, its delightful but the reader must accept that Jules Verne exist in his own universe, where scientific details and constant technical digressions matter more than the story itself. There is a cute satire with idle members of Baltimore Gun Club joining together to finance construction of cannon that could be projected to the moon. There is a president Barbicane, his enemy Captain Nicholl and heroic French adventurer Michel Ardan (whose identity I still didn't understand, he seems to come out of nowhere), all sorts of complications around them and building of huge cannon in Florida (Texas was another possibility). There is so much of science and engineering, that the whole story almost collapses under the sheer weight of it, but Verne adds surprising touches of humour and satire that keeps the reader engaged. I was surprised how much a novel from 1865 deals with stereotypes that are perfectly recognisable even today - Americans are gun crazy and of course, a French is a hero. This was so charming that I immediately continued with a sequel. Because, dear reader, the whole book is about construction about the cannon - the journey is described in the sequel. 

"The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame (1908)

 

Not sure are you familiar with the website Goodreads but it is a very nice little web corner for the book lovers and it often gives you recommendations, reviews and opinions about books + creates virtual friendships + gives you statistics how much you read. They even have something called Reading challenge where you decide how much you want to read per year and according to my statistics, I was far behind my decision - once, long time ago, I used to read 4 books per month so 48 titles per year was pretty standard for me - with beginning of a new life, moving to another country and everything around Covid epidemics, I slowed down my reading quite a lot and now I am struggling to even finish 1 title per month. I thought that 12 books in a year should be realistic and here I am in November with only 8 books - to fix this, I had to quickly force myself to leave internet browsing and focus on reading. So I gulped "The First Men in the Moon" and cheated a bit with what is called novella but its actually a short story, "The Turn of the Screw" in order to pump it up a bit + I started listening audiobook "The Wind in the Willows" while walking to my work and back. 

Now, why did I decided to listen "The Wind in the Willows" I have no idea - it is a beloved British children book and a classic but as I mentioned previously, I was born and raised elsewhere and in my country the focus was on different children's authors. Kenneth Grahame wasn't even translated into Croatian until 1989. when I turned twenty and was not reading children's books anymore. I think I wanted to actually read "Watership Down" and somehow accidentally started this one instead. Listening audio book was actually surprisingly rewarding experience, because I love my walks and listening to a gentle, soothing voice was just brilliant, I must admit that these moments were the highlight of my day. If I was reading, I might skip some pages but since I was listening, I simply followed the reader's voice and my heart almost burst when at some points he started gently singing as it was part of the story. 

"The Wind in the Willows" is adorable fable with four friends (Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad) as the main characters - they all live as friendly neighbours and its kind of Hobbit animal world where animals and humans somehow live together and nobody finds it unusual. In fact, some of the best moments come when situation is clearly impossible, as when Toad is driving the horse-drawn caravan or when he is camouflaged as a washerwoman and nobody notices. Because all four of them are so different, the story about their friendship is a pure delight and this might be my biggest literary discovery of the year - there was something soothing about listening to somebody else reading the book to me, not to mention the whole magic of the story itself. There are many hilarious, happy chapters mixed with superb poetic moments as when the Rat and Mole encounter "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" who is clearly God Pan protecting the animals. I think this was the prettiest thing I read in 2023 and might just continue with children's books.