Book Review: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley, 1818

Here's another classic story I'm reading for the first time! Frankenstein the novel, as I suspected, is almost nothing like the various incarnations of Frankenstein I've run across over the years. I've seen so many versions of the monster in childrens' shows, comedy specials, skits, and other forms of media, but none of the pop-culture depictions of the monster seem to accurately represent the sadness and abundant emotion of the book.

I shouldn't be surprised at it anymore, but it seems like all British or American literature from the 19th century has to be set inside a frame story--the narrative has to be told to somebody who told somebody who is telling the reading audience about it, or something equally layered. Frankenstein is actually not told by Victor Frankenstein or by his created  monster, but by a third party whose main purpose seems to be praising Victor Frankenstein's character to the high heavens.

The story starts out with some guy, Captain Robert Walton, writing to his sister about the weather in St. Petersburg. He's a sea captain and he is preparing for a big voyage to the Arctic, where he hopes something amazing and purposeful awaits him. As his letters continue, it becomes clear that Walton is seriously poetic and he really wants a like-minded best friend because pouring out his heart in well-composed letters to his sister is just not doing justice to the depth of his feelings. But Walton's loneliness doesn't last for too long because his crew soon discovers a dying man floating on a big piece of ice. As the man, Victor, is nursed back to health, he admits to Walton that he has been in the Arctic chasing another person, or rather a "demon" as he calls him. Then Victor begins to share his long, tragic story with the captain.


Victor's thirst for knowledge led him to serious questions about the nature of life and souls. He was a brainiac who devoted himself to the intense study of various educational disciplines, including a few areas of spiritualism and quackery. Time passed and Victor learned how to give life to inanimate biological objects. He cobbled together an eight-fool-tall body, ran an electric current and some other stuff through it, and brought the ugly creature to liiiiiife. But no sooner does his pet project come to life, than Victor runs away from it in disgust. Strangely, it's at this point that I, as a reader, go from feeling a certain fondness for Victor and his obsessive studying to feeling outright revulsion for him because he refuses to take responsibility for something he made.

And I do feel very sorry for the monster, which I did not expect to happen. The monster does some cruel, vile things, but he had no real guidance. He didn't ask to be created and abandoned, and it isn't his fault that his own creator views him with absolute horror. Victor created a life that could have had some value if he had chosen to assign said value to it, but instead he leaves the creature alone in hopes that it will run away and just not be his problem anymore! But it becomes his problem once again when the creature kills his younger brother and frames a servant for the crime.

At one of the climaxes of the story, the creature confronts Victor and talks to him for the first time. The creature has been through a lot of painful encounters with human beings, most of which began with him trying to do something kind and ended with him doing something destructive. He wants Victor to make him a companion so he can live happily ever after with her in the wilderness, but his plans for a monster wedding don't ever come to fruition because Victor sabotages the effort. Victor and his monster proceed in a gruesome game of one-upsmanship where each tries to hurt the other horribly, and they both succeed. When this very short book is over, the body-count is about as high as your typical Shakespearean tragedy: everyone we care about (and some people we don't) has died.

What's the moral of the story, then, if you're looking for one? Perhaps that seeking after too much knowledge or pursuing science for science's sake is a bad idea. Jurassic Park has also taught us that. Another moral or lesson I see in Frankenstein is the importance of compassion and empathy--if Victor had cared for his creation as he ought to, the many, many deaths could have been averted. That's why the story is tragic; a little less obsession and selfishness from our protagonist would have changed everything. Grade: B

Favorite quotes:

-"Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin." (pg 16)

Victor-"But now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. " (pg 26)

Monster-"I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy" (pg 80)

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Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker

Dracula
Bram Stoker, 1897

Review contains spoilers.

After three failed attempts to read Dracula, I decided to try it again, this time for reals! I'll be focusing my attention more on the earliest chapters.

The reason for my previous inability to stick with Dracula is that it begins with entries from Jonathan Harker's journal, which may be one of the single driest sections of literature ever composed. I'm expecting Gothic-y scariness, or at least a deep sense of foreboding before we get to a little bloodshed, but instead we have Jonathan discussing his travels around Budapest ("Buda-Pesth"), and they're not terribly diverting. He discusses the scenery, the food he eats, local fashions, and other little details of travel that would usually only be interesting to a person's closest friends or family.

But one thing that this mundanity does is lull the reader into a sense of average-ness, even though we know things are going to get crazy up in here pretty soon. These journal pages also make Jonathan seem kind of sweet. It's hard to dislike this slightly boring guy who is making the most of a long and vexing journey to Transylvania, and it's sort of adorable how he keeps making notes to get recipes for especially tasty dinners he has. No, Jonathan, we don't want to know the precise ingredient list for your last dinner, but including the info anyway is what makes you you.

Jonathan is a solicitor's clerk sent to inform the Transylvanian Count Dracula about some property he has purchased in England. Before too long, Jonathan realizes that his well-mannered host actually has him imprisoned and it's just one small step from claustrophobic panic to Jonathan actually fearing for his life. Nice job there, Mr. Stoker. Building up that scary negative anticipation and then delivering scenes of creepiness bit by bit? Bravo. It's interesting that Dracula himself is an old man with a white moustache and a plain black suit, so he's basically a super-creepy old person, totally the opposite of any modern notion of a gorgeous, appealing vampire. Dracula wants to come to England and he's keeping Jonathan around as a conversation partner so he can master the language.

Chapter 5 switches from poor Jonathan's descent into the crazies and flips over to his fiancee Mina's correspondence with her friend Lucy. Mina's an assistant schoolmistress and she seems like a clever person with a sense of humor, while Lucy's letters show that she's the more girly of the two friends, fluttering and bragging over receiving three proposals in one day. Lucy pretends to despise vanity and gossip all while being vain and gossipy, yet she's still an attractive character in many ways. There are many more letters and telegrams and diary entries from other characters, but I found them distracting when I wanted to hear from Jonathan, Mina, Lucy, and Dracula.

One unique element of this book is the psychological study of a mental patient named Renfield who does not know how vampirism works, and ends up eating large quantities of flies and spiders in an attempt to gain unnatural life. He graduates to eating sparrows and even requests a kitten from his psychologist, but he fortunately doesn't get one.

Elsewhere in the world of the story, Lucy develops a sleepwalking habit and Mina has to worry about both Lucy's strange behavior and Jonathan's lack of communication. Jonathan does miraculous flee Transylvania and he marries Mina and begins to recover from his harrowing ordeal. Professor Van Helsing, an expert in unusual diseases arrives to help Lucy, but everyone's best efforts can't save her from dying. Twice. In a very unpleasant manner. Everything's going downhill for the good guys and even sweet Mina becomes a vampire victim, but evil can't win forever, and she and Jonathan get a nice epilogue with emotional closure and a baby son.

Conclusion: Dracula contains some lengthy dry sections mixed with some really well-written moments of anxiety, and it's another classic worth actually reading. Vampire fans, what are you waiting for? This is where it all started. Grade: B+

Best quotes:

Jonathan: "It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?" (pg 2)

Dracula: "Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!" (pg 13)

Jonathan:"No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be." (pg 38)

Dr. Seward: "As I came in, he threw himself on his knees before me and implored me to let him have a cat, that his salvation depended upon it." (pg 60)

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Book Review: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Young Jim Hawkins works with his father at the Admiral Benbow Inn, and his life is normal until "the old seadog" Billy Bones comes to stay at the inn. Jim is told to look out for a man with one leg, and soon the one-legged man begins to haunt his dreams, which is a good indication of the troubles to come. The next thing Jim knows, he's off on an adventure with a poorly-chosen crew of sailors, a few decent Englishmen, a map that is supposed to lead to a hidden treasure, and Long John Silver--a quirky and charming ship's cook who wins Jim's admiration, but who is hiding quite a few secrets.

I'm reading this book again as an adult, but what I remember most about reading Treasure Island in my childhood is how uninterested I was in it. I think by the time I read the book at age 11 or so, I had already seen so many adaptations, skits, and knockoffs of Treasure Island that reading the source material was a letdown. Plain old betrayals and treasure discoveries somehow felt anticlimactic. As a kid, I also resented the fact that there were no girls in the story (except for Jim's easily flustered mom). You can't really fault a story about sailors and pirates for not having any prominent female characters, but I still find that very few dudes-only stories manage to hold my attention. To really get into a fictional world, I almost always have to have somebody as my stand-in, some significant female presence affecting the story. But despite my initial apathy, I do think there are some nice points to Treasure Island.

Upsides:

-- Realism. Everyone's very dirty, with ratty hair, black fingernails, jagged scars, etc. This doesn't seem to be a romanticized rendering of pirates.

--Action. Though Treasure Island is descriptive enough, it's definitely not flowery and the author doesn't spend as much time as other writers of the same period on establishing the scenery, which I appreciated.

--Jim. He doesn't seem like an especially vivid character because he's mainly the lens through which we see the fictional world, but he is notably brave and he is very action-oriented for a boy who comes from a quiet country lifestyle.

--Little details. 1. I like how "Long John" is already a nickname, but the man gets a further nickname from his crew--Barbecue, because he's the cook. 2. Long John's parrot is named "Cap'n Flint" after his old ship's captain, which seems kind of irreverent and therefore perfect for a pirate's pet. 3. The fact that Jim thinks it's totally normal to jump into an apple barrel to find an apple to eat. Doesn't really sound like a clean practice, getting your clothes and shoes mixed up with your food. But hey, whatever it takes to get to the food that wards off the scurvy...

--Memorable side characters. Dr. Livesy is pretty tough--he doesn't suffer fools gladly and doesn't think much of loud ruffians. It's also great how obsessed Ben Gunn is with cheese. The abandoned man has been fantasizing about cheese-eating for three years.

To me, Treasure Island isn't really an entertaining read, nor is it high on the list of great literary works, but it's certainly worth looking at. Most of us have experienced a culture laden with references to the book and parodies of it, so it's a nice revelation to actually read the original and find out what parts have been exaggerated or altered in adaptation. Grade: B

Quotes:

--"Sometimes he would call for glasses round and force all the trembling company to listen to his stories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I have heard the house shaking with "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum," all the neighbours joining in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark." (pg 5)

The pirates use some great slang and onomatopoeia in this story...

-"I'm not afraid on 'em. I'll shake out another reef, matey, and daddle 'em again." (pg 15)

-"Budge, you skulk!" cried Pew.  (pg 24)

Watchable bonus: Yes, it's the least accurate adaptation of the classic, but Muppet Treasure Island remains my favorite, especially because of the songs. One more time now!

Book Review: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Link Free Download

Book Review: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911

Mary Lennox is a dreadful child. She's a sickly and frail orphan, but it's still not easy to feel sympathy for her because she has a strong streak of cruelty in her young personality. When a cholera plague strikes her part of India and kills both her parents, she is sent to England to live with her uncle Archibald (!) Craven (!??!) who I'm pretty sure spends his free time as a villain in the Marvel comic universe. She arrives at Misselthwaite Manor and meets the housekeeper Mrs. Medlock, but she is far from coming "home" because she's an unattended guest in a giant gloomy house full of dozens of locked rooms. 

But there are bright points. The housemaid Martha is a sunshiny older girl who speaks kindly to Mary. (Martha's lovely and nearly incomprehensible Yorkshire accent is wonderful.) She's a maidservant with the heart of a poet, and she'd make a great protagonist in another book. As it is, she's mainly a catalyst to get Mary to meet her younger brother Dickon, a 12-year-old who knows how to charm animals. Through spending time outdoors and spending time with Dickon, Mary's attitudes toward the world change and she finds herself able to help her uber-unpleasant cousin Colin by befriending him and showing him the secret garden she has discovered.

This is my fourth time reading this book, but my first time since childhood. Here are a few themes and subjects I noticed in this story this time around:


A Sense of Belonging: Mary wonders why she never "belonged" to anyone, because she sees children who seem to belong to their parents. However, she has never officially missed the sense of family camaraderie because she didn't know what she was missing. Martha and Dickon's family, the Sowerby's, are like the ultimate place of belonging--they reach out to others and make them equal to family. Martha's mom even uses money her family needs to buy Mary a jump rope because she feels sorry for the poor neglected girl.

Gothic trimmings: Somehow, moving to a 600-year-old gloomy mansion on the edge of a moor sounds awesome. Manor home full of locked rooms? Secretive uncle with a slight deformity and a broken heart? House with extensive gardens and a tragic history? Bring it on. Mary is rather excited about moving to such a mysterious and curious place, and I would be, too.

Unreasonable period of mourning: What is it with Englishmen and their unending grief in these old stories? In contemporary American stories (at least more romantic ones), a spouse dies and the remaining partner is conflicted about whether remarrying within the year is too soon. In 100-year-old British stories, a man loses his wife and spends the next twenty years ignoring his children, shunning his relatives, and generally making life miserable for everyone. Mr. Archibald Craven is a prime example of this phenomenon. His lovely wife passes away and he refuses to even see his ill son or his orphaned niece! Oy.

Growing up and growing healthy: Mary begins to physically grow at Misselthwaite, just as she is growing emotionally and psychologically. It's incredibly gratifying to see Mary becoming a stronger, faster and all-around healthier child even as she's becoming a more decent human being and developing her own personality. It's a wonder that she doesn't explode from all the positive changes she experiences on so many fronts.

Love of Nature: Mary's love for gardening is actually foreshadowed at the very beginning of the novel. When she is left alone to play in India, she sticks broken hibiscus flowers into the ground as if she's planting them. Mary has no idea of what to do with self-directed play and free time, but it's interesting that the first thing she tries is mock-gardening.

This book is just plain charming. You get a thoroughly unlikable protagonist who gradually transforms into a true young heroine. The garden scenes are breathtaking and every character, however minor, feels 100% real. This book is rightly regarded as a classic and it makes good reading for children and adults alike. None of us can ever get enough of fresh growth and personal discoveries.   Grade: A

Some quotes:

Ben: "Everybody knows him. Dickon's wanderin' about everywhere. Th' very blackberries an' heather-bells knows him. I warrant th' foxes shows him where their cubs lies an' th' skylarks doesn't hide their nests from him." (pg 41)

"Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for some one." (pg 49)

Mary: "Dickon," she said, "you are as nice as Martha said you were. I like you, and you make the fifth person. I never thought I should like five people." (pg)

Book Review: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett Link Free Download

Book Review: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Roald Dahl, 1972

Written a decade after the original book, this sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is very inventive and is a pretty big departure from the original. It's still wacky and fanciful, but more like a science fiction book than the sort of magical world shown in book one.

Charlie is flying in the Great Glass Elevator with Willy Wonka, his parents, Grandpa Joe, and three other grandparents who are sitting in a rickety bed they refuse to leave. But the grandfolks soon revolt against Wonka's weirdness, and a mishap causes the Glass Elevator to fly up into orbit. While in space, they see the flying Space Hotel luxury resort, have a battle with some Vermicious Knids, then finally come back for more adventures at the chocolate factory.

Hmm. I don't always enjoy seeing the rest of the Wonka-verse portrayed in this book, especially the subplot with the Space Hotel. So much of the book seems like an excuse to toss in clever puns and knock-knock jokes, mostly spoken by characters other than the main cast. Even Wonka's angry gobbledygook speech in "Martian" is one long word gag. And there's another downside--I know I shouldn't take it too seriously, but the treatment of the Chinese side characters seems very racist. Then again, almost every side character in the book looks like a total buffoon, including the president of the United States, so maybe it's equal-opportunity childrens' book satire.

But it is neat that the three grandparents besides Grandpa Joe form the new cast of Misbehaving Young'uns. They aren't as ill-mannered as Veruca Salt and the other kids from book one, but they do fill similar roles. Unlike Charlie and Grandpa Joe, they don't believe in Willy Wonka's crazy methods and they frequently label him as a loony. Which, yanno, is kind of an accurate assessment. But in the Wonka-verse, non-believers in the Wonka craziness are usually left out in the cold.  The grandparents also complain loudly when Wonka puts a stop to their fun, which is also reminiscent of the chocolate factory brats from the previous book.

I do still love how Wonka refuses to explain anything. He says that the elevator is powered by "skyhooks", but when asked to explain more about skyhooks, he just replies that he's getting deafer every day and ignores the question. And I also like when the cast finally gets back to the chocolate factory, and we get to see some more cool inventions like Wonka-Vite, a pill that makes you younger.

Things that Happen in the Great Glass Elevator that People Think Happened in the Chocolate Factory: 1. The mention of vermicious knids. They are mentioned in the 1971 film Willy Wonka, but not in the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In this book, vermicious knids are actually a main villain.

Villains that Look Like Guitar Picks, With Eyes.

2. The phrase "We have so much time and so little to do! No! Wait! Strike that! Reverse it! Thank you!" Again, the line is in the 1971 movie, but not in the original book.

There are some high points to this sequel, but unless you're a dedicated Roald Dahl fan, this might be one book to skip. Grade: B-

Best lines:

-"Charlie," said Grandma Josephine. "I don't think I trust this gentleman very much."

"Nor do I," said Grandma Georgina. "He footles around."

-"Oh my dears!" cried Grandma Georgina. "We'll be lixivated, every one of us!"

"More than likely," said Mr. Wonka.

[To my surprise, lixivated is actually a word: "Lixivate, to wash or percolate the soluble matter from."]

Book Review: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl Link Free Download