Summer Reading List Project, update!
Update
Things are going smoooothly! I've managed to read at least a couple of chapters almost everyday since i've started, and i think i'm beginning to reaquitre the taste for reading quickly, which is brilliant. Today i finished The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexanre Dumas and am set to get cracking on Rebecca by Daphne Du maurier. I'm literally raring to go; but i thought i'd leave myself at leasta couple of hours to get over Monte Cristo, in which time i watched Notre Dame De Paris with subtitles and was at once overhwelmed and underwhelmed by certain aspects of it. I guess i won't go into that here, i might save it for my Tumblr feed (Spyramy.tumblr.com in case anybody didn't know and wanted to follow)
Thoughts on The Count Of Monte Cristo (I guess i should say 'spoiler alert'...?)
A really fabulous read! I'm so glad i started with it, because the narrative is simple and the story is fast-paced and it's full of endless secrets and intrigue and dark business; i enjoyed it tremendously. Having said which, it left me morally in quite a state of unease. The Count's mission is righteous, and throughout he allows his enemies to be destroyed by thier own treachery. Instead of playing the executioner, he's more like the detective. However, his cold impassivity for the vast majority of the novel, compared against the very intimate view the reader gets of the lives of the men he destroys, paints nobody as a monster but The Count himself. Particularly Villefort's fate... it's pretty grisly, and even the Count acknowledges this, supposedly this makes him decide not to kill Danglars, but danit considerig what he DID do to Danglars in the end... would he really have let him starve to death at the hands of those bandits? And then he merely forgives himself, and has Haydee's love as a form of redemption... i don't know. I completly fell head over heels for Edmond Dantes, the young and naive Sailor; and i do love the cold unswaying Count of Monte Cristo... Doubtless the story was exciting and entertaining. I guess it just makes me sad, especially considering all the collateral damage caused, not only to innocent people like Edouard Villefort who got poisoned by his own mother, but also to actually likeable characters like Albert de Morcerf who ended up disgraced, penniless and joining the army. Though Eugenie and Louise running off together was a stroke of genius! I adored Eugenie.
... In short, because that was a bit TL;DR and incomprehensable, the book was slightly more fucked up than i'd expected it to be, which is probably a good thing.
The List
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Rebecca - Daphne Du maurier
The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
I am a Camera - Joe Masteroff
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
The New books by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennet (I forget their names)