Wuthering Heights - CELEBRATION!!!

I finally did it!

I reached the end of Wuthering Heights more than a year after I started. This reading experience was more about endurance than enjoyment. It was a battle from the first page.

I will admit that I was beginning to enjoy it towards the end, but I think that may have been the elation of realising I was getting close to that last page.

Apart from the satisfaction of not giving up, reading the book helped me appreciate and understand Jasper Fforde’s Wuthering Heights references in his Well of Lost Plots.

Now I think I should concentrate on getting this blog up to date.

So many books read – but nothing written about them!

Defeat? Or Coming to my Senses?

Could this be an admission of defeat? A confession of failure?

I suppose so it could be viewed that way – but I’m not proud or stubborn enough to battle on for the sake of making a point.
Now what on earth am I referring to?

It had been my intention to overcome the difficulties I’ve faced with finishing books by resolving to finish every book I start. That I will no longer back away and give up on a book once I’ve started it.
I have now realised the futility of such a plan. Why should a book I am not enjoying be given that kind of respect? Life is too short to waste it on bad books.

Now by “bad” I am not intending to make an overall value judgement of a book’s merits. I am merely recognising that a book is “bad” for me if the reading of it becomes a chore rather than a pleasure. After all I’m not following a compulsory required reading list. I went through that in the early 1990s when I studied for my BA.

I want to read for pleasure and for knowledge and not as a sport. It should not be an issue of endurance, or of ticking a book off a list to reach a desired target. So I have therefore decided to officially put aside Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, and I will remove it from my “currently reading” list so that I don’t feel compelled to stick with a book that I have no desire to pick up and continue.

But I WILL continue with Wuthering Heights. While I’ve struggled with this book it IS one I want to read and eventually it will make its way onto my “read” list.

Last Post for 2009.

After today I’ll be away from my computer until after the New Year holiday.

My attempt to become more disciplined in my reading has been reasonably successful, but Wuthering Heights remains on my “currently reading” list because I haven’t picked it up for a few weeks. Eventually I’ll finish it off but I think it will be more of a chore than a pleasure.

I also added Zadie Smith’s White Teeth to my current reading list, even though it’s a book I started many months ago and put aside. I have read a few more chapters but it hasn’t really maintained my interest.

Since I started this blog I’ve tried to write short “reviews” of books as I complete them, but maybe “review” isn’t an accurate description. I’ve merely tried to record some personal impressions of each book including (when possible) my reasons for reading it and how the book came to my attention: (i.e. why THIS book and not one of the countless others that I could have purchased and read?).

There seems to be so little time to read and far too many books that I would like to read. Prioritising my time is never easy with so many other things demanding attention. With a week or so off from work over Christmas I might be able to find a little more reading time and hopefully another book or two will be ready to be transferred from my reading list to the completed list before the end of year.

One title that will soon be added to those I’m currently reading will be The Time Traveller’s Wife – a Christmas present (but shhh I’m not supposed to know that yet!)

Withering Heights: wrestling with a classic

In escaping my “reader’s block” I’ve run into the first obstacle. It could have been avoided with adequate preparation and the application of more thought.

Instead of finding an irresistible, can’t put it down, what happens next, guaranteed good read to start me on the way, I picked up “Wuthering Heights”.
And in place of the thrill of anticipation and the desire to turn back to the book at every opportunity, I am begrudging the thought of spending my reading time plodding through its pages.

Its one of those books that has been sitting on my shelves for over twenty years along with many other “classic” Victorian era novels; then after seeing the recent dramatisation of the book on TV I thought I should see how the story REALLY played out. The series seemed to be rushed, trying to cram a lifetime of experience into two episodes and therefore missing so much of the character development that might explain the actions and attitudes of its characters.

I am barely 90 pages into the book and it seems I have more interest in how many pages are left to read than I am in the fate of its protagonists. However, having started, I am hesitant to add another failure to the growing list of books I’ve been unable to finish.

What is it that makes one of these books into a “classic” of literature? Why has this book survived and maintained a following when others of the same era have been forgotten? Is its style merely a trait of its era, common to most books of that time? (I don’t recall the older Jane Austin novels being so hard to read). Or is the style a peculiarity of the Brontes?

I have found myself continually re-reading sentences that on my first attempt have seem badly structured. But again that might be a matter of the linguistic differences between 19th Century Yorkshire and 21st Century Australia.

It’s been a long time since I read anything of its particular era, but I still recall the difficulty I had when I first read Thomas Hardy. I battled through Tess of the D’Urbervilles as if it was a test of endurance yet eventually, on reaching the end, I appreciated why it was considered a classic. I’m still not sure whether that was because I had finally grasped and enjoyed the point of the book, or whether it was merely relief that the ordeal was over