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What am I supposed to say about this book and how to read it? First of all, the very arrogant request that you read the book twice. Of course this request is cancelled if you found it boring the first time you read it. Art shouldn’t be homework or an exhausting occupation no activity contre Coeur, it wants to entertain and make people happy and if something doesn’t do that you should leave it aside and do something else. But if you have finished “The Magic Mountain”, then I would recommend reading it again because the special way in which it is written, its character as a composition makes it more enjoyable and deeper in the second reading. It’s the same as with music – you have to know it before you can fully enjoy it.
I think this is spot on. The best feeling about reading a book is if you start “getting into the authors head”, if you start understanding the little twitches, the subtle things and how they work together with the main plot. Everytime I catch such a point my heart makes a little jump.
Now I want to list some books and just give an overview of why they are so great.
David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
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1100 sites, footnotes and you nearly need a dictionary to read it. Sounds lame? You’re wrong it is amazing. It’s not necessary so amazing because of the footnotes and the complex language but because it has in my opinion a different structure than 99% of the other books. As an illustration look at the picture below (I know I have great paint skills).
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Let me explain it. Most books have a central theme which goes through the whole novel. There is a clear start and a clear end to the story. And while the story is told there are small things build in to make it what it is (from Goethe to Dan Brown). In this novel however there are a lot of different story lines but they don’t really have this clear ending like one would think they should. But if you look at it closer these story lines are not the point of the novel, they are just there to point you towards the central theme of the book which is “The society it too focused on fun (and why that is the case)”. All the different story lines have something to do with this topic but they never say it explicitly. The author wants to reader to acknowledge the main theme himself. One great thing about the many different story lines and characters is that they are so different so that it is unlikely that there is no one you can identify with. This style of writing is much stronger at capturing the reader’s interest and increasing his involvement about the main motive.
Thomas Mann –Buddenbrooks
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This book was so well written that it was really hard to read. Now you may ask yourself: “How can he say the book was well written when he wasn’t really able to read it.” The reason is, it is so well written that you identify yourself with the family and care for them. They all have their little flaws but overall they are very likeable. Now you watch this family go down. Slowly, painfully, wonderfully and inescapably. You feel bad about the family yet you keep reading, watching the family go on with their everyday life. This creates a voyeuristic emotion which makes you feel even worse, still you can’t stop reading. Thomas Mann builds in signs of the downfall everywhere but still quite subtle so that it is not over-excessive and overloaded like in other novels but still very clear and easy to recognize.
Salman Rushdie – The satanic verses
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This novel greatly depends on the characters involved. The author shows the eternal struggle between good and bad through time but you can’t even say who is good and who is bad. The bizarre scenery creates a setting where dreams and reality merge and oftentimes you don’t know where you are. The two main characters Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha are amazingly well defined. They are the opposite of linear and change all the time as the novel goes on. They have very human attitudes where they to things from time to time which don’t even match their normal behavior at all. There are a lot of references to the Qur’an, I don’t even want to know how many I missed because I don’t have any knowledge about the Qur’an at all. I even thought about reading the important parts of the Qur'an just to understand it better.
Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness
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I haven’t read a whole lot of novels about the British Empire and colonization but this one was really great. It is written by an author who lived in that time and who visited a lot of colonies in Africa. It shows how people from that time thought about colonization and slavery which is very interesting. You can see that the black slaves were not treated as humans they weren’t even thought of as humans. The British thought there was something mystic about these savages, something they were afraid of. The novel is also quite critical of the situation at that time which is remarkable. The author writes about the exploitation of the people, the land and even the animals. He uses a lot of strong images to make the reader feel the situation feel the exploitation but also the mysticism around the natives.
George Orwell – 1984
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I think everyone has at least heard of this book. It is a great satire and I still have to wait for it to be outdated (I think I can wait a long time for that). The setting is absolutely great. There are not a lot of books which create a setting that dark and depressing. The protagonist is always stressed he is always questioning whether or not he can trust someone he thought he was good friends with. The first time I read the book I was like “Yeah you can trust that dude he seems like a legit guy” but I was disappointed more than once. You really feel with the protagonist you see him fight the system while he is getting weaker and weaker and exposes himself more and more.
So what is the point of me writing this wall of text about books which are old and oftentimes have a big lack of action? Well if you still think like this you haven’t understand my write-up. They have a lot of action you just have to look for it. Look for the characters, how they are defined, how they evolve, how their evolution is based on certain points in the novel. You have to look at the setting, try to create pictures about it in your mind, imagine the characters living in this world every day. Look for signs the author puts in, details and possible references. Also try to recognize how the author is trying to communicate his message. There are a lot of ways to communicate a point and it is great to see the difference between the authors, some will make you part of the story and make you feel the feeling yourself others will circle around the general theme using different characters and different story lines. Try to understand what the author is thinking but don’t exclude yourself from the interpretation, good books don’t have one right interpretation, they change depending on the person reading it. I read an interview where a literature critic said on the question what his favorite book is. “XXX is my favorite book because it changes in time. I read it the first time when I was 21 and since then I read it more than 20 times and every single time it was different.” So don’t be afraid to have your own interpretation, if it makes sense to you than that is awesome.
As a final word I would like to share my mindset when I start reading a new novel: THERE IS MORE IN IT THAN YOU THINK!
Thanks for reading!
