Heart of Darkness (1899)

"Droll thing life is--that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself--that comes too late--a crop of unextinguishable regrets. "

It took me a while to reread Joseph Conrad's book because I found that so often I would stop and read over a particular sentence twice or three times over because of the fascinating was he uses language. The excerpt quoted above is an example. Of course, the more times I read this, the more depressed and desperate I felt. Not exactly an upbeat book.

Read this book slowly (it's not very long anyway) and fix each image in your mind and feel each emotion in your heart to get the full effect.

After you have read this book, rent the movie Apocalypse Now (1979) starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Harrison Ford, and Dennis Hopper. It is based on Heart of Darkness but takes place in Viet Nam. You may have heard the tag line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

I read this book via DailyLit. Somehow I managed to have a window on my iGoogle page with one installment a day and also receive four installments each day on the Google reader. It is fun to get a piece of a book each day but my eyes still get strained reading on a computer screen, especially when I read something over and over again. I think I'll stick with books.

The Knife of Never Letting Go (2008)

Imagine being able to hear everybody's thoughts. Everybody's. Even animals. And they can hear your thoughts. That's what it's like for Todd in Patrick Ness' book which takes place on a planet called New World. When folks left Earth they couldn't hear Noise, the name Todd calls all the thoughts he hears, but something caused everyone to hear them on this planet. Todd lives in a town of all men and he is the last boy to reach the age of thirteen, the age he will become a man. Having lost his parents when he was very small, he was raised by two men, Ben and Cillian. But something is out there in the swamp that surrounds the town that triggers events and his guardians pack him up and force him to run away into the swamp where he finds.....
One of the enjoyable aspects of reading this book is the humorous way the thoughts of animals are heard.

"Swamp Noise, tho, swamp Noise is just the birds all thinking their worrisome little birdie
thoughts. Where's food? Where's home? Where's my safety? And the waxy squirrels,
who are all little punks, teasing you if they see you, teasing themselves if they don't and the
rusty squirrels, who are like dumb little kids, and sometimes there's swamp foxes out in the
leaves who you can hear faking their Noise to sound like the squirrels they eat and even less
often there are mavens singing their weird maven songs and once I swear I saw a cassor
running away on two long legs but Ben says I didn't, says the cassors are long gone from the
swamp."

To say there is a lot of action in this book is quite an understatement as Todd and his dog, Manchee, are joined by another person in their flight to get to a town called Haven. Along the way he learns more about the history of the immigrants to this planet and why the men of his town are so desperate to catch him.
I highly recommend this book to readers of action novels. Sci-fi fans would also find this book a real page turner. Be forewarned that it is Part I of a series and you will have to wait for the sequel with baited breath.
My rating for this book: ++++

The Alchemist

"You should pay more attention to the caravan," the boy said to the Englishman, after the camel driver had left. "We make a lot of detours, but we're always heading for the same destination."
"And you ought to read more about the world," answered the Englishman. "Books are like caravans in that respect."

This is a "journey" book, a book about discovery and self realization, in which a young shepherd in Spain has his fortune told and is informed he will find a hidden treasure near the pyramids in Egypt. He decides to seek his fortune, he sells his sheep, and embarks on his journey. Along the way he meets all sorts of people and learns something from each of them. When I read this book I couldn't help but think of all the people I have met and books I have read over the years and how I learned something from each of them. We may not always have an "Aha" flash from each encounter like the shepherd boy has but something will sink in and make us wiser in the long run.

This book has an interview with the Brazilian-born author and a reader's guide which gives you some more to consider after you've read the book. This was an extremely popular book and has been translated into 65 languages from its original Portuguese. You can read it as a simple fable or as a deeper, more meaningful story. On either level it's bound to make you think about yourself.

My rating for this book: +++