Karl's Reading List

Published by Wordsworth Editions Limitied/Classics: Hertfordshire, 1993. First published 1818. I don't think this needs a lot of introduction. Frankenstein is a very popular book, having been continually in print since it was first written in 1818 by a then 18-year old Mary Shelley. A young scientist, mad with power, creates a creature and brings it to life, only to be overwhelmed by what he has done and reject the creature, leading to the monster growing up alone, isolated, and resentful.  The question "Which one of the two is the real monster?" has been asked ever since the book's publication, a fact not helped by the public association of the term 'Frankenstein' with the monster, when it is the name of the scientist - it's almost as if the question could be "Which is the real Frankenstein?" However, in the book the creature is a little more monstrous than I had anticipated: he is lonely and misunderstood, but he is also quick to violence, and ...

Published by Pan Books Ltd/Fabbri Publishing Ltd: Barcelona, Spain, 1992. First published 1895. One of HG Wells' most famous stories, The Time Machine is an 1895 novella that popularised the term 'time machine' itself! The novella is a very easy read, and not quite as grim as some of HG Wells' stories - though it still manages to be mildly cynical about the development of humankind. Our protagonist, only ever referred to as 'The Time Traveller', is an inventor who, at the beginning of the book, hosts some dinners, where he firstly demonstrates a model time machine, and then - arriving late and in quite a bad state to the second dinner - tells his guests (including our un-named narrator) the tale of time travelling that makes up the rest of the main narrative. The Time Traveller tells how he travelled forward to the year 802,701, where he encountered two species descended from modern humans: the innocent child-like Eloi, and the subterranean cannibalistic Morloc...

Published by Oxford University Press. First published 1864-1865. Some books take longer to read than others. This book took me quite a while. I have read it as my main book, read it as an occasional book, put it down for periods, picked it up again.... overall I think it's taken me four distinct periods of time to get through, with the last period (back as my main book) taking eleven days. It is an older book, written in a slower style, and having previously read Barchester Towers by the same author, I was aware of that going in. And yet Can You Forgive Her? was a much harder read.  In saying that, the book was still enjoyable. Mostly.  At other times (particularly when my brain wasn't in a 'slow-and-steady' place) attempting to read it was a struggle, even boring. So, do I recommend this book? It depends. How good are you with slower paced reads? How much do you appreciate texts from another era, with social norms far different to your own? Do you enjoy satire touchin...

Published by Naxos Audiobooks, 2006. Narrated by Juliet Stevenson. First published 1815/1816. Emma is the final work published by Jane Austen during her lifetime, and is very well written. Apparently Austen spoke about creating a protagonist that no one but herself would much like, and in one sense she accomplishes this: Emma Woodhouse is spoiled, has a high opinion of herself, and is quite ready to meddle in other peoples' affairs whether they want her to or not. And yet, in another way, Austen fails, because Emma is somehow immediately likeable, despite her obvious flaws. We groan when she makes an obviously bad decision, and yet we still understand her rationale, and wait for her to start learning the error of her ways. The plot, in true Austen style, is all about relationships, but the foreground relationships in Emma are not even 'real' relationships at all! Rather, Emma is trying to be a matchmaker, and is convinced that her choice of a husband for Harriet Smith (her ...

Published by Marshall Pickering/Marshall Morgan & Scott Pickering & Inglis: London, 1989 (1984).  Part of the 'Heroes of the Cross' series. Elise and I started this book together some time ago, but didn't stick with it. Recently I picked it up and finished reading it. The book is a fairly short (96 pages) and simple version of the life of someone that deserves a lot more recognition, but to give this book credit, it manages to highlight some of the most challenging aspects of Müller's life in a straightforward (and probably kid-friendly) way. To give the basic gist of what made Müller so inspiring: he believed that God had called him to run a number of orphanages, looking after those children who had nowhere else to go. This was during the Victorian era, when workhouses like those mentioned in Charles Dickens's novels were more the norm, and in fact, Dickens himself came to visit Müller at one point.  As part of his belief that God was directing him to do th...

Published by Puffin Books/Penguin Group: London, England: 2013. Book 1 in the 'WARP Series.' Followed by 'The Hangman's Revolution.' This at times surprisingly violent young-adult novel begins in Victorian London, where we meet Riley, a stereotypical Victorian street urchin. He has been trained by Albert Garrick, a stage magician and true psychopath, who has turned to the life of an assassin following the on-stage death of his lovely assistant. When we first meet Riley, Garrick is supporting him to attempt his first assassination, something that Riley is understandably a bit reluctant to do (thus the title). However, as the attempt goes sideways, Riley is sucked into a time portal, and emerges in the present day. Here he meets Chevron 'Chevie' Savano, a 17-year old FBI agent, hired under a now defunct youth programme. Chevie, who was somewhat responsible for the programme being shut down, is impulsive and a bit over-confident, and becomes our second protagon...

Published by Redhook Books/Orbit/Hachette Book Group: New York, NY, 2020 (2019). This is one of those books that caught my eye on a library shelf, and I got out with very little knowledge apart from judging it's cover. It is also one of those books that turned out to be very enjoyable. Charley Sutherland is a lecturer at Prince Albert University (a riff on Victoria University) in Wellington, New Zealand, and has the unusual ability to 'summon' characters to life from books he is reading. He has been able to do this since at least the age of four, when his mother found him playing with the Cat in the Hat, and demanded that he put it back. Charley's brother Rob (the main point-of-view character in the novel) is a bit embarrassed by Charley's 'weirdness' and wants to keep it a secret, including from his long-term girlfriend Lydia. This becomes more difficult as strange events start to escalate, including a Uriah Heep becoming an intern at Rob's law firm, an...

Published by Flame Tree 451: London, UK, 2013. Originally published 1796. Dickens needs to be read at a particular pace, but when I get on the right wavelength I love his writing. This book opens with a section over a page long which just describes the London fog, and yet it is a beautifully written section that even manages to say something about the various locations and characters that the fog rolls through.  Bleak House  is a great mix of comedy, tragedy, light romance and biting satire, as indeed many of Dickens' best works are. This particular novel focuses on a never-ending court case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, to which all of our main characters are linked in some way. A mysterious figure known only as 'Nemo' is found dead, and something about his handwriting seems to link him to the cold and distant Lady Dedlock. Meanwhile, Esther Summerson, a young woman of uncertain parentage, navigates her new life as ward of and housekeeper to John Jarndyce, as well as perhaps som...

Published by Marshall Cavendish Ltd: London/Barcelona, 1987. First published 1857. Book 2 in 'The Chronicles of Barsetshire.' Preceded by ' The Warden. ' Followed by 'Doctor Thorne.' I quite enjoy picking up a book and having no idea what to expect. With older novels this can also extend to not knowing whether an author was well-known in their day or what genre to expect. This is the first Anthony Trollope book I have ever read, and all I knew about him before reading was that I sometimes saw books by him for sale at the annual Founders Park Book Fair in the classics section. With Barchester Towers I had only the cover to give me further insight; the cover has a picture of an elderly clergyman and a woman on the cover, so I felt confident it had something to do with at least one clergyman. I was right on the clergy front, but what I didn't expect was that Trollope is very funny! Elise will attest that I sniggered or chuckled out loud at various times through...

Published by Profile Books in association with National Trust: London, 2012 (2011). This is a very readable history of England, from the time of the early Saxon kings up until the publication of the book in 2011. Jenkins clarifies early on that his focus is on England itself, rather than Britain as a whole, only bringing in other parts of the world as they interact with England. In practice this does mean that Britain often features (particularly once Wales and Scotland are to some degree 'absorbed' into the larger nation) but on the whole a reader of this book would need another resource to find out about those nations. I've always enjoyed English history, and my interest in it grew after working at Westminster Abbey from 2008-2009 during my OE. Although I knew some of the main facts of the various monarchs, particularly post-William the Conqueror, Jenkins fleshes them out well, somehow making certain elements more memorable than I had previously found.  The feud between H...

Published by Bridget Williams Books Limited: Wellington, New Zealand, 2016 (2015). This is an interesting little book about the first contact between Europeans and Māori and the subsequent journeys undertaken by Māori out into the wider world. The earliest journeys often reflect fairly badly on the Europeans, who seem to have abducted numerous Māori for various reasons, and which often end with the New Zealanders dying of scurvy or some European disease. Perhaps the strangest example in the book of Māori being kidnapped is that of Tuki Tahua and Huru Kokoti (told on pages 19-26) who were lured onto a ship with the offer of gifts and then forcibly taken to Norfolk Island in order to instruct the European prisoners there how to properly "dress the flax" (remove the straw from the fibres) for turning into useful materials. As O'Malley then states: "A huge amount of effort had gone into a scheme with one fatal flaw. For as the Lieutenant-Governor soon discovered from the...

Published by Penguin Books Ltd.: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1975. First published 1973. Like the previous book I read ( Three Men in a Boat ) this book also 'is what it says on the tin.' The Siege of Krishnapur is set in the (fictional) village of Krishnapur during the Indian mutiny of 1857. One of the British residents, known as 'The Collector', has been worrying that something like this may occur and has fortified his property and the surrounds with mud walls and other defensive elements. When the mutiny finally strikes Krishnapur, the British population retreat into this area and must defend against wave after wave of Indian attack. The book focusses almost entirely on the British element of the story, with Indian characters playing very minor roles. This might be a sign of the times in which Farrell was writing, however as with his other (retroactively awarded) Booker prize-winning work Troubles , Farrell has a very subtle edge of almost satirical humour wea...

Published by Fabbri Publishing Limited: Barcelona, Spain, 1991. First published in 1889. Well, no one could accuse the title of this book of being misleading. The plot of Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) is that three men - George, Harris and "J" (our narrator) - along with J's dog Montmorency, go on a boating holiday up the River Thames.  That's it. No extra plot. Just a boating holiday. And then it ends and they go home. But Jerome dresses this plot up with tangent after tangent, humorous anecdotes picking apart the contemporary society he was living in. Almost any single thing that happens to the three friends causes the narrator to be reminded of a story which must then be commented on in detail. Some of these drag on a bit long, but a number are so ridiculous that they had me giggling out loud from the absurdity of it all. Make no mistake, this is a funny book, although at other times it is just 'dumb' and at other times it morphs into a m...

Published by Viking/Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd: Auckland, New Zealand, 1987 (1973). First published 1872. This is one of the earliest 'New Zealand' novels, in that it was written by someone who had lived in New Zealand for a while and is set, in its early chapters at least, on a backcountry station that seems to be somewhere in the South Island. However, this setting is quickly abandoned as the protagonist, Biggs, seeks out new pastures 'over the range' and stumbles across the hidden land of Erewhon.  In a very Victorian style, Butler uses this setting as an excuse to poke satirically at English culture of the day, rather than have much in the way of plot at all. In fact, the plot could be summed up in a few sentences: Biggs believes there might be more land over the ranges, and upon crossing them finds Erewhon. He ends up living with an Erewhonian family, falls for one of the daughters, Arawhina, constructs a hot air balloon and escapes the country with Arawhina at his sid...

Published by Puffin Books/Penguin Group: London, England: 1994 (1990). First published in French, 1872. My second Jules Verne book on this blog. I began reading this one, was surprised by the level of humour involved, and decided to keep it to read with Elise once our previous book had been finished. I'm glad I did. Most of us probably have some idea of the plot of Eighty Days , probably through having seen a movie version - the most recent one being the Jackie Chan one - and there are certainly a number of the major beats of those films in the book. But, as is the case with many adaptations of older adventure books, a movie is developed to be more 'cinematic', and therefore bigger in scale than its source material. In terms of Eighty Days, that means that the movie versions cram in more locations and more modes of transport, whereas the book mostly focusses on passenger liner ships and trains. Phileas Fogg also has carefully plotted his course to be the most direct route ...

Published by Fourth Estate Limited: London, 2000. This non-fiction book follows the lives of some of the early fossil-hunters of England, the first individuals to begin uncovering evidence of the existence of the ancient world. Four of these individuals are highlighted enough to feature on the cover illustration (Richard Owen, Mary Anning, Gideon Mantell and Reverend William Buckland), but two in particular are focussed on in depth: Mantell and Owen.  Mantell is presented as a somewhat tragic figure, devoting his life to the ancient world to the detriment of his own personal and financial security. He is the one who discovers and names two of the three earliest dinosaurs known to the Victorian world ( Iguanadon and Hylaeosaurus ), and he is instrumental in presenting these creatures to the public, yet he continually fails to gain the recognition he deserves, or the financial benefits he needs in order to truly be labelled a success. Misfortune also has its hand in Mantell's life, w...