Category: books

This is one of those books where you know what’s going on, but you have to wait a long time for the characters in the story to catch up. Sigh.

The title is the nickname given to a lawyer who settles in a small town but fails to achieve success because the locals think he’s weird. Partly, he is; as a hobby, he takes people’s fingerprints and compares them. The townspeople aren’t as clever as they think they are, so it’s ironic that they give the young lawyer a nickname that disparages his intelligence (see below). But the book isn’t about the lawyer.

The book is about two boys, one “white” and one “black”, who change places, kind of like the boys in The Prince and the Pauper. This time, however, the change is deliberate on the part of the mother of the “black” boy, who swaps him for her employer’s son to give her own son a better life. That doesn’t really turn out well for anyone, except maybe the lawyer; everyone has to admit that his fingerprinting hobby is actually quite useful for identification purposes.

The “I see where this is going” plot made me impatient, and the dishonest mother and her spoiled son are somewhat and very irritating, respectively. However, the setting is interesting; the themes are interesting; the lawyer is interesting; and the dialect dialog is interesting. Moreover, the wry observations in the narration are interesting (see below).

Continue reading Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

When and Why I Read Pudd’nhead Wilson

Time to read some Mark Twain.

Genre: American Literature
Date started / date finished: 29-Mar-25 to 30-Mar-25
Length: 119 pages
Originally published in: 1894/2004/2023
Source link: Pudd’nhead Wilson

I’m gradually learning that Mark Twain is not exactly my cup of tea, but I have to say, this was a fun book.

Most time-travelers try to pretend they fit in and generally avoid introducing anachronisms. Either they’re just there as spectators to soak it all in on the reader’s behalf, or they’re caught up helplessly in large-scale historical events and are simply trying survive while attempting to return to the time and place where they belong—or, likely, both. But not the guy in this book! He remakes the whole world in his own image. And you know what? More power to him. The past is a terrible place.

Soon, I’ll read Ivanhoe and see how Walter Scott depicts Medieval England. Some Googling indicates that it’s not wholly accurate (though it has many accurate details), and that it romanticizes the past, but that not everything is shown in a positive light.

See below for some quotes I pulled out of Connecticut Yankee that I found amusing or insightful (or both).

Continue reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

When and Why I Read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Time to read some Mark Twain.

Genre: American literature
Date started / date finished: 23-Mar-25 to 29-Mar-25
Length: 462 pages
ISBN: B0756Z7ZNY
Originally published in: 1889/2017
Amazon link: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

While I admire the intent of the novel, and enjoyed the story as historical fiction to some extent, the theme of injustice came across as overly didactic—and of course the whole plot relies on the absurd coincidence that there exists a literate pauper who looks like the twin brother of the heir to the throne of Henry VIII.

Still, the story is a powerful reminder that, as they say, The clothes make the man. See below for more thoughts on this theme, and a bit more information on the premise, including a sample of the Shakespearean-esque dialog of the novel.

Continue reading The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

When and Why I Read The Prince and the Pauper

Time to read some Mark Twain.

Genre: American literature
Date started / date finished: 21-Mar-25 to 22-Mar-25
Length: 226 pages
ISBN: B075CMK533
Originally published in: 1881/2017
Amazon link: The Prince and the Pauper

The book is about the titular character, and is set in a town in 1840s Missouri. While I have been a Southerner, I have never have been a mischievous little boy. Therefore, I find Tom Sawyer’s daily life a little difficult to relate to. But that’s what books are for: they let you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Or bare feet, as the case may be.

Even if you’ve never read a word of the book, or watched a movie adaptation, you probably already know about Tom’s cleverness in getting his pals to paint a fence on his behalf. But did you know that Tom witnesses a murder? And goes on a holiday from civilization on an island in a river? And finds stolen treasure in a cave with miles of tunnels? There’s plenty of entertainment in the plot.

The themes relate to honor and honesty, about doing the right thing when it matters, and not worrying too much about phony social rules as long as you take care of the people you care about.

Meanwhile, throughout the novel, Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens, if you prefer), offers, in deadpan style, a number of sharp observations of human nature. See below for some examples.

Continue reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

When and Why I Read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Time to read some Mark Twain.

Genre: American literature
Date started / date finished: 18-Mar-25 to 20-Mar-25
Length: 248 pages
ISBN: B072F1WKW1
Originally published in: 1876/2017
Amazon link: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Gulliver’s Travels, originally published in 1727, is in the public domain. Using the Android Kindle app on my phone, I read the AmazonClassics ebook shown above, which I downloaded during the Covid lockdowns when Amazon made a bunch of classic ebooks available to download for free. However, this Amazon ebook does not include the illustration in Part 3, Chapter 5 of the automatic writing machine, which features in another blog post of mine. I therefore recommend the Standard Ebooks version of Gulliver’s Travels, which does include this illustration, and which, moreover, is free. (Standard Ebooks offers a growing selection of Gutenberg ebooks that have been noticeably improved in terms of proofreading, typesetting, cover design, etc. All free.)

Where does Gulliver go? Are his travels funny? What’s Jonathan Swift trying to say, anyway? (Do I even like satire at all?) Does the book resemble the 1939 animated film adaptation? Find the answers to these questions below.

Continue reading Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

When and Why I Read Gulliver's Travels

I know a little about Gulliver's Travels by cultural osmosis, but that's not the same as having actually read it! I know that Lilliputian means 'diminutive' because Lilliput is a place full of small people who famously tie Gulliver down (and that brobdingnagian means 'huge' because Brobdingnag is a place full of huge people). I've heard of houyhnhnms, and about some kind of mechanical word machine that people use for writing. It's time to fill in the gaps.

Genre: English literature / satire
Date started / date finished: 10-Mar-25 to 17-Mar-25
Length: 306 pages
ISBN: B073WW8W3R
Originally published in: 1726/2017
Amazon link: Gulliver's Travels

How did I come to read this book?

I read Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne because it’s on a lot of lists of classic books, and I’ve read other top Verne books, but not this one.

Then, because I somehow thought Journey to the Center of the Earth had more dinosaurs in it, I read The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, which is possibly the one I was thinking of.

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle made me think of Michael Crichton’s novels The Lost World and also Congo, which I read in 2010.

Congo was (according to Wikipedia) inspired by King Solomon’s Mines, a novel by H. Rider Haggard, which I’ve also repeatedly seen on lists of classic books, so I read King Solomon’s Mines.

Then, because the novel She is by the same author as King Solomon’s Mines, and I’ve seen it on lists of classics (some indicating that it was an early science-fiction or early feminist novel), I read it too.

Phew!

Overall impression? What a creepy story. Really not my style.

There were some interesting psychological/philosophical observations, and some poetic, if melancholy, descriptive passages, but mainly the atmosphere was, in general, unpleasantly macabre. The physical surroundings of the characters consisted almost entirely of caves and tombs, except when the characters were traveling on stormy seas or across mosquito-infested swamps. There is no joy in this book whatsoever; the survival of the narrator is a matter of narrow escape—of relief rather than victory. But maybe that’s the point? Reading the book is like passing through a haunted house: you frighten yourself thoroughly with impossibilities, and then return to the real world with a new appreciation for normalcy.

So yeah. Well done, H. Rider Haggard. Thanks, I hate it.

See below for some more specific observations on this unsettling book from 1886.

Continue reading She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard

When and Why I Read She: A History of Adventure

This is the other famous book by the author of King Solomon's Mines.

Genre: classic adventure
Date started / date finished: 28-Feb-25 to 08-Mar-25
Length: 245 pages
Originally published in: 1886/2006/2020
Source link: She: A History of Adventure

Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne (1864), and The Lost World, by Arthur Conan Doyle (1912), initially seemed to be two versions of the same book. Verne apparently inspired Doyle (and others, including Edgar Rice Burroughs).

Lost World has a lot more overt action and adventure than Journey, which makes it quite different in the middle and end, but there are definitely some similarities between the two books in the beginning.

The setup for both is that a young man who wishes to gain the favor of a young woman goes with an irritable scientist on a quest to remote part of the world on the basis of a report that nobody believes except the irritable scientist.

Continue reading The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

When and Why I Read The Lost World

Similar to Journey to the Center of the Earth?

Genre: adventure
Date started / date finished: 16-Feb-25 to 22-Feb-25
Length: 137 pages
ISBN: B075M831DT
Originally published in: 1912/2017
Amazon link: The Lost World