Posts in category 'books'
Review: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea
Review of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne (9780553212525)★★★ #books (https://b-ark.ca/2YK_eI)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: A World Tour Underwater is a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne; it was first published in 1870. The novel was originally serialized from March 1869 through June 1870 in Pierre-Jules Hetzel's periodical, the Magasin d'éducation et de récréation.
Well, last night I finally finished reading 20000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne (author of The Journey to the Center of the Earth and Around the World in 80 Days, among many others). This book, depicted in the 1954 Disney film of the same name, details the adventures of Professor Pierre Arronax, an oceanographer, and his companions Ned Land, a Canadian whaler and Conseil, the professor’s manservant, as they travel aboard the Nautilus, an advanced submarine designed and built by the infamous Captain Nemo.
In terms of historical context, Jules Verne is considered, along with a number of his contemporaries, as early examples of science fiction authors. Often compared with H.G. Wells (The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds), who used science fiction as a medium for making points about society, Verne focused on providing depictions of realistic technology that was logically extrapolated from that of the present day, and used that technology as a basis for more adventure-oriented works.
20000 Leagues most certainly fits this mold. The Nautilus and it’s attendant technology are carefully detailed by Verne, who attempts to very clearly describe the workings of the ship and it’s scientific underpinnings. This ship then becomes the vehicle (if you’ll pardon the pun) for an adventure story which carries the crew to nearly all points of the compass, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, Antartica to the North Sea, and into the deepest parts of the ocean. Along the way, the reader is introduced to countless species, running the gamut from coral to fish to whales, as well as various birds and semi-aquatic mammals.
Continue reading...Review: Frankenstein
Review of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (9780007382613)★★★★ #books (https://b-ark.ca/CWGEQk)
In the most famous gothic horror story ever told, Shelley confronts the limitations of science, the nature of human cruelty and the pathway to forgiveness. ‘The rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open...’ Victor Frankenstein’s monster is stitched together from the limbs of the dead, taken from ‘the dissecting room and the slaughter-house’. The result is a grotesque being who, rejected by his maker and starved of human companionship, sets out on a journey to seek his revenge. In the most famous gothic horror story ever told, Shelley confronts the limitations of science, the nature of human cruelty and the pathway to forgiveness. Begun when Mary Shelley was only eighteen years old and published two years later, this chilling tale of a young scientist’s desire to create life – and the consequences of that creation – still resonates today.
Okay, calling this a review is probably a silly idea, considering “Frankenstein”, by Mary Shelley, was written, according to Frankenstein, in 1818. Still, having finished the book (which I grabbed from Project Gutenberg and read on my Palm), I felt it worth the time to put together a little write up about my impressions about the work.
Now, to say this book is a classic is stating the obvious. Mary Shelley’s story about the bright young scientist Frankenstein and his creation has become a fixture in our culture, influencing countless subsequent works. Being the origin of the modern “mad scientist” archetype, it’s hard to underestimate how much this work has permeated our collective consciousness. And yet despite this, I was surprised to discover that the modern representations of the story are, to say the least, a departure from the original work.
Continue reading...Review: The Twelve Chairs
Review of The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf & Yevgeny Petrov (9780810114845)★★★★ #books (https://b-ark.ca/ogI46I)
Ostap Bender is an unemployed con artist living by his wits in postrevolutionary Soviet Russia. He joins forces with Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman who has returned to his hometown to find a cache of missing jewels which were hidden in some chairs that have been appropriated by the Soviet authorities. The search for the bejeweled chairs takes these unlikely heroes from the provinces to Moscow to the wilds of Soviet Georgia and the Trans-caucasus mountains; on their quest they encounter a wide variety of characters: from opportunistic Soviet bureaucrats to aging survivors of the prerevolutionary propertied classes, each one more selfish, venal, and ineffective than the one before.
Well, I finally finished reading The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov… in a word, surprising. The translation from Russian to English is, to say the least, rough at times; I’m sure there are many Russian cultural jokes and references that I simply have no hope of understanding. But overall it was fairly entertaining, as long as you’re happy reading the odd passage with the knowledge that you’ll never really understand it’s meaning.
The story revolves around the two main characters, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman, and Ostap Bender, who is essentially a crook. The setup is simple: just before Vorobyaninov’s mother-in-law dies she reveals that she has hidden a cache of jewels in one of her twelve dining room chairs, which has been taken by Soviet authorities. Vorobyaninov is then joined by Bender, and the two of them go on a cross-country search to find the chairs and recover the jewels. Along the way, in order to fund their journey, Bender comes up with some rather ridiculous schemes in order to con people out of their money.
Continue reading...A Little Family History
So we went to visit my Granda Kosinski on the Easter weekend… first time in, like, 5 months, much to my chagrin. Anyway, she lives down in Camrose, so we did the drive down there and visited for a couple hours and did the usual… talked talked talked. Well, during the course of discussions, we some how landed on the topic of books, and I discovered a rather interesting little factoid: apparently my great-grandma’s, and hence also my grandma’s, favourite book was/is “The Count of Monte Cristo”! Heck, my grandma owns two copies of the book, and while we were chatting about it, proceeded to describe some of the major plot points, something I can barely do with any book I’ve read. Now, this in and of itself is interesting, particularly since my great-grandma, when first introduced to the book, couldn’t actually read, and so only knew it because she heard other people reading it out loud. But the other thing that makes this all rather ironic, at least to me, is that TCMC is one of a small handful of books that I consciously chose not to finish (one of the others being “The Plague”, by Albert Camus, but I think I can hardly be blamed for that one).
Anyway, I think I can do nothing but make another attempt at the book, so back into the queue it goes. Which means I should get to it sometime… next year, maybe.