Number Five: Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville is certainly one of the most well known books in American Literature.  I'm not going to pretend that I enjoyed this book.  When I read it, I expected it to be an exciting adventure, but it turned out to be little more than a tech manual on how to go whaling.  The storyline that there was in the book was at least interesting.
The theme of this book is obviously revenge and its consequences.  The captain of the vessel in which the protagonist has embarked on a whaling expedition, Captain Ahab, was once maimed by a white whale, named Moby-Dick, and he has sworn a vendetta against this whale.  Throughout the book, Ahab focuses on nothing other than killing this whale.  He does not enjoy the successes he and his crew achieve throughout the book because he is blinded by his hatred for the whale.  When he and his crew finally sight the whale, he stops at nothing in his attempts to kill it.  Moby-Dick eventually destroys the ship killing all of the crew other than the protagonist.  Ahab's hatred for this whale eventually cost the lives of him and his entire crew.
This theme really is great.  I can not say a word against the ideals of this book, but the ideals are not the problem.  The first problem in this book is the language.  Sadly, some parts of this book had to be read extremely slowly because the language was just too complicated.  This is not a huge issue, and it certainly wouldn't have condemned the book alone, but there was a far bigger issue.  This bigger issue was the massive breaks in the storyline in which the author attempted to teach the reader everything he or she could ever need to know about whaling.  This information had absolutely nothing to do with the story, and it took up at least half of the book.  These gaps were frustrating and nearly pointless.  In my opinion, this book was really not worth the time it required to read.  I would not recommend this book to anyone who does not have an extremely great interest in whaling and the ocean in general.  I certainly wouldn't recommend it to children because I do not expect that most would enjoy so much as a word of it.

Sorry to have to give any classic book a review like this,
Jodath

Number Four: Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe really is a remarkable book.  When I first read it, I found it to be relatively long, but still an excellent book.  Now that I am old enough to understand the book a bit better, I find it to be truly wonderful.  As a Christian, very few books have ever had a greater impact on me than this.
The overarching theme of this book is without question God's just punishments tempered by his merciful providence.  The main Character in this book, Robinson Crusoe, chose to break with the wishes of his father and God himself time and again during the first part of the book.  Twice, God made it very clear to Crusoe that if he should continue down that path then he would come to destruction and then God blessed him for obeying him for a time.  Crusoe chose to disobey God again, and God marooned him on an island all alone.  Crusoe hated his life on this island for a very long time until he became extremely ill and nearly died.  After this, he saw everything in a different light.  From that point in the book on, Crusoe was no longer miserable, but rather understood the amazing blessings God had given him on the island.  Crusoe became content with his lot, and God blessed him.  After a time, God sent Crusoe a companion on the island, and not long after that God gave him release from the island.  In his absence, God blessed Crusoe with enough wealth to last him a lifetime.  Crusoe's life was not perfect after this, but he trusted God completely for the rest of his life.
From a Christian perspective, it doesn't get much better than this.  Crusoe's life illustrates how important it is to submit to God in an amazingly simplistic yet powerful way.  There have been books that I enjoyed more, but this book is certainly one of my favorites.  I wouldn't entirely recommend this book for people who are too young, because it is pretty long and doesn't have a particularly exciting plot line for long stretches, but for anyone old enough to get through it, I would highly recommend this book.

Sincerely hoping that you all read this one,
Jodath

Number Three: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne really was a fascinating book.  When I read this book around four years ago, I found it to be quite enjoyable despite a relatively slow moving storyline.  This book was full of amazingly real and complex characters and a wonderful story describing the wonders of the world under the sea.
When I read this book, I found the character of Captain Nemo to be fascinating.  He was an extremely well educated man who loved science, literature, and music, but he was also an extremely troubled man who harbored many demons.  This man truly loved his men as if they were his children, but he also ruthlessly hated those who lived on land.  Throughout this book, he used his vessel to explore the world of science in ways in which they had never been explored before, but he also used the same vessel to end the lives of many people.  In the end, Nemo sailed his submarine into a whirlpool where it was likely destroyed.  Without question, Captain Nemo is one of the most complex characters I have discovered in literature.  With amazing characters like Captain Nemo, this book couldn't help but be good, but this book also contained several good life lessons.
There were only two issues that I had with this book.  The first is a relatively minor problem, and this problem was the scientific nature of the writing.  Clearly Verne had a great love for science which he put very prevalently in this book.  Throughout the narrative, there were many pauses in which the author explained the many different scientific principles of the submarine or explained the various life forms which the crew were studying.  This type of writing could be extremely interesting to some people, but I didn't exactly love these breaks in the narrative.  The other issue that I had was the lack of really heroic characters.  There were a plethora of interesting characters throughout this book, but there were none who were really heroes.  To me, a book without true heroes cannot truly be considered great.
My conclusion: this was a really good book.  It wasn't the best book I have ever read, but it was certainly far from the worst.  I wouldn't necessarily suggest if for a younger audience, but for people who are old enough to understand the scientific and psychological studies which are explored throughout this book, I would definitely say that its worth reading.

Hoping that you are out there reading these books for yourself,
Jodath

Number Two: Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift was certainly an interesting read.  When I read this book around six years ago, I was too young to understand much of the symbolism of the first three quarters of the book, and I certainly didn't fully understand it.  Luckily, I have been blessed with a relatively good memory, and after a brief review of the facts, much of the book returned to me.  Even when I read it the first time, I knew that it was absolutely full of the authors opinions about human kind.  Sadly, I disagree with most of the author's conclusions, and I find the book to be a relatively unimpressive read.
The idea which struck me when I read this book, and has remained with me ever since, is the idea of humans being no better than animals at heart.  At the fourth island that Gulliver visits, he finds animals called Yahoos which are exactly like humans in every way other than their minds which are the minds of brutish animals.  Living near these animals, he finds horses which speak with the tongues of men and have far more intelligence than any men described in the story.  Gulliver begins living amongst these horses and eventually decides that humans really aren't very different from the Yahoos.  Eventually, Gulliver was cast off of the island because the horses decided that he really was an animal himself and they couldn't allow him to live amongst them.  At the end of the story, Gulliver returned home but found that he couldn't be part of human society any longer because humans really were nothing more than disgusting animals.
Personally, I find this theme to be extremely far from the truth.  Human's are not animals, but rather beings created in God's own image.  They are damaged by their sin natures, and many do live their lives in sin, but they still aren't animals.  This book truly praises nothing.  It contains no bravery, it makes a mockery of religion, of law, and of humans in general.  There really are very few redeeming qualities in this book.

Hoping that someone enjoyed it more than I did,
Jodath

Number One: Treasure Island

Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson is truly a wonderful book.  When I read this book, I was only eleven years old, but even then it seemed absolutely amazing to me.  Now, eight years later, it is every bit as good as it was then.  Before writing this review, I decided to refresh my memory on some of this story, and in doing so I once again found myself lost in wonder of this excellent story.  Like most classic books, this one truly can be read at any age and still thoroughly enjoyed.
The biggest thing which stuck out to me in this book was Jim Hawkins progression from the obedient, but relatively uninteresting, young boy to the confident and assertive young man he becomes by the end of the book. He goes from a mere passenger on board the ship to the hero who saved the ship in the end of the book.  There is an amazing progression from a boy seeking adventure to the man who, instead, cares about saving his friends and keeping his personal honor above all else.  In the end, he was unquestionably willing to sacrifice whatever was necessary to save his friends.  In the end, he truly was a hero.
Not a page in this book was wasted.  There was absolutely no drag in the story in any place, and there was enough adventure to keep even an eleven year old boy excited.  Few books can equal this in excitement, and at the same time it manages to convey an excellent message.  In Treasure Island Stevenson really did manage to pull of a Great Book which I would highly recommended absolutely everyone reading.  I hope that I can find the time to read it again soon.

Hoping that you will enjoy this book as much as I did,
Jodath

The Destination

Around six months ago I set out on a quest (Now it is important to note that our lives are in fact full of journeys and it would be entirely untrue to say that I have chosen this journey in exclusion of others) to learn as much as I could about the Great Literature of Human History.  To this end, I searched for a list of the all-time best classic literature, and eventually I discovered a list of two hundred such books.  I made it my goal to read each and every one of these books.  Certainly, I am far from achieving this goal and it will take many years before I can accomplish this quest, but I am still attempting to do so.  When I discovered this list I had read a meager five of these books, but I decided to take on the challenge all the same.  Six months later, I have read 11 of these books leaving 189 to go.  Sadly, this list does not contain every book that I would like to read, and most likely I shall have read twice this number by the time I finish the list, but I do hope that someday - if I am spared - I will read this entire list.  

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
2. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
3. The Aeneid by Vergil
4.  Aesop's Fables by Aesop
5. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
6. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
7. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
8. The Ambassadors by Henry James
9. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
10. The Arabian Nights by Anonymous
11. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
12. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Other Writings by James Weldon Johnson
13. The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction by Kate Chopin                                                                                        
14. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
15. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
16. The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
17. Beowulf Translated by John McNamara
18. Billy Budd and The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville
19. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
20. The Bostonians by Henry James
21. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
22. Bulfinch's Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch
23. The Call of the Wild and WhiteFang by Jack London
24. Candide by Voltaire
25. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
26. A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, & The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens                                                                                                                                                                                        
27. The Collected Oscar Wilde
28. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
29. Common Sense and Other Writings by Thomas Paine
30. The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings by Karl Marx
31. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I by Arthur Conan Doyle
32. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II by Arthur Conan Doyle
33. The Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo
34. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
35. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
36. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
37. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
38. Daisy Miller and Washington Square by Henry James
39. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
40. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
41. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
42. The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
43. The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
44. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes 
45. Dracula by Bram Stoker
46. Emma by Jane Austen
47. The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
48. Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson
49. Essential Dialogues of Plato by Plato
50. Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
51. Ethan Frome & Selected Stories by Edith Wharton
52. Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen                                                                                                                                   
53. Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
54. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
55. The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay
56. Founding America: Documents from the Revolution to the Bill of Rights Edited by Jack N. Rakove
57. The Four Feathers by A. E. W. Mason
58. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
59. Germinal by Emile Zola
60. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
61. Great American Short Stories: From Hawthorne to Hemingway Edited by Corinne Demas
62. Great Escapes: Four Slave Narratives Introduction and notes by Daphne A. Brooks
63. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
64. Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm
65. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift                                                                                                                                                                                        
66. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
67. Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction by Joseph Conrad
68. The Histories by Herodotus
69. The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
70. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
71. The House of the Dead and Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky
72. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
73. Howards End by E. M. Forster
74. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
75. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
76. The Iliad by Homer
77. The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays by Oscar Wilde
78. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs                                                                                                                                           
79. The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
80. The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
81. Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
82. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
83. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
84. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
85. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
86. The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
87. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
88. King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
89. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
90. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
91. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman                                                                                                                               
92. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Writings by Washington Irving
93. Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
94. The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell
95. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
96. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
97. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
98. Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
99. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
100. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Writings About New York by Stephen Crane
101. The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
102. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
103. Man and Superman and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw
104. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas                                                                                                                              
105. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
106. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
107. Metamorphoses by Ovid
108. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
109. Middlemarch by George Eliot
110. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
111. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
112. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
113. My Ántonia by Willa Cather
114. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
115. Narrative of Sojourner Truth
116. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
117. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
118. Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
119. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
120. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
121. Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky
122. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
123. The Odyssey by Homer
124. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
125. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
126. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
127. Paradise Lost by John Milton
128. Paradiso by Dante Alighieri
129. Persuasion by Jane Austen
130. Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie                                                                                                                               
131. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
132. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
133. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
134. Poetics and Rhetoric by Aristotle
135. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
136. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners by James Joyce
137. Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky
138. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
139. The Prince and Other Writings by Niccolò Machiavelli
140. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
141. Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain
142. Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri
143. Pygmalion and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw                                                                                                                                               
144. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
145. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
146. Republic by Plato
147. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
148. The Rise of Silas Lapham by William D. Howells
149. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
150. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
151. Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum
152. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
153. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
154. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
155. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
156. Selected Stories of O. Henry by O. Henry                                                                                                                                   
157. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
158. A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
159. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
160. Silas Marner by George Eliot
161. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
162. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
163. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
164. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson
165. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
166. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
167. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
168. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
169. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy                                                                                                                                                 
170. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
171. Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
172. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
173. Three Theban Plays by Sophocles
174. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
175. The Time Machine and The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
176. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
177. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
178. The Turn of the Screw, The Aspern Papers, and Two Stories by Henry James
179. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
180. Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana
181. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
182. Utopia by Thomas More                                                                                                                                                                                                 
183. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
184. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
185. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
186. The Virginian by Owen Wister
187. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
188. Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
189. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
190. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
191. Ward No. 6 and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
192. The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot
193. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
194. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
195. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James                                                                                                                                                 
196. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
197. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
198. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
199. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
200. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Quite the list, isn't it?  Yes, it is a little intimidating, but I think I can get through it.  If you know anything at all about literature, I am sure that you noticed that many of the books on this list are somewhat on the feminine side... Sadly, discrimination based on the intended audience of books would make this quest nearly useless.  I will have to persevere through all of the books on this diverse list.  

Now, I would guess that you are wondering why exactly I am writing all of this out.  The answer to this very good question is that using this blog, I will be able to write my own feelings on each of these books (and almost certainly many other books which I have read and will read throughout this journey).  Without doubt, I will not always remember how I felt about all of these books merely because there are too many books to remember.  My hope is that in the future I will be able to look back at this blog and remember something of these books.  I have little hope that this blog will ever be of much interest to anyone else, but perhaps at some point someone else will read my views of these books and decide to read them for themselves.  Either way, for my own sake or for others, I am going to do this.  If nothing else, it will give me a chance to write.  

Wishing you all the best,

Jodath

P.S. If anyone wishes to comment on my opinions of these books, I am certainly open to other views.  Also, if there are any other books which you would recommend that I read, please feel free to mention them - I am always looking for more books to read.