courtneydoss's reviews
785 reviews

Like many people, I was drawn to read this book because of the hype. It seemed as though everyone was raving about this book and Lisbeth Salander, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. While I can’t profess to believe that it deserved all the hype, I do think it was a pretty solid book. I appreciated the uniqueness of the characters, the quality of the mystery, and the departure from an “everyone gets everything they want” ending. With that said, I did find that there seemed to be a fair amount of violence for the sake of violence, and more often than not the violence was aimed toward women. Yes, the central arch of the story relates to violent murder of women, and perhaps the awful things that happen to Lisbeth are meant to lead to bigger things in the future but I am not a fan of rape as character development and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the marked difference between the way violence against men is described as compared to the women. Our male protagonist suffers an attempted strangling and the violation of a kiss, whereas our female protagonist suffers hours of brutal sexual torture. As if that isn’t bad enough, her torture and rape are typically followed by scenes of consensual sex between the male protagonist and his lover. There were at least two instances of this in the book, and to be honest I thought it was a little strange. It was almost as if it was drawing a parallel between our characters by placing them in sexual situations at the same time, but he sexual situations of our female protagonist were in no way similar to the male. Setting all of that aside, as I’m not an authority on the author’s intent with those scenes, the book was good if not a bit long winded. I look forward to seeing where Lisbeth Salander ends up after this.

As a fan of Carrie Fisher as a person more than as an actor, I was eager to read her books since I found out that she’s written them. “Wishful Drinking”, the first of her memoirs, seemed an appropriate place to start. This book did no disappoint. Many of the oft quoted witticisms by the late, great Carrie come from this book. She is funny, but what makes her so relatable is the way she has succumbed to her pain; collapsed into her heartbreak and made her home there because she could see no other options. There is raw emotion on her jokes that ring true through the hollow parts in all of us. Her struggles were her own but her feelings about them were not unique. They are universal, and there in lies the magic of Carrie Fisher. RIP.

Every so often, I will stumble upon a work of fiction that is so wonderfully immersive and wildly entertaining that I will be loathe to leave it. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" was one of those books for me. I devoured the thing. I could not put it down, try as I might. The characters were vibrant and interesting, the pacing perfect, and the story expertly told. I was enamored with Helen and her story. I felt her pain when she was hurt, and my heart skipped when she fell in love. I can honestly say that Helen is one of my all time favorite heroines, because she is so complex.

What I found most impressive about Anne Bronte's novel was the realism displayed in her description of a relationship turned abusive. Although there was never any physical violence, the pure psychological torment inflicted upon her by a man so charming and lovable at first comes straight out of a Signs of Domestic Abuse pamphlet. Helen, too, accurately depicts the personality changes of a young woman who goes through the horribly demeaning experience of psychological abuse. I can't help but wonder how Anne Bronte became so intimately acquainted with this aspect of the human condition.

The long and short of it is this: I loved this book and I will happily read it again at some point in the future.

My first read-through of "Wuthering Heights" was over ten years ago when I was a high school senior. A friend of mine at the time suggested the book, and upon suffering through the 300+ pages, I realized that she was far more sophisticated than I was. I just didn't get the allure of something filled with such abominably terrible human beings. This distaste, I now realized, came from making a rather common mistake with this book; believing it to be a love story.

Sure, this book has a lot of love in it. Heathcliff and Cathy are the 19th century equivalent of that super volatile, incredibly sexy couple that we all love to ship in fiction, but would run away from in real life. Heathcliff is that dirty, passionate bad boy that we all obsess over in our younger years in hopes that maybe we can be the girl good enough to turn him around. I think its a common enough reaction to find romance in Heathcliff's destructive reaction to losing Cathy, but when you consider the specifics of his actions, its really hard for me to continue liking him.

Hindley and Heathcliff are pitted against each other from the start, but I think they're really the same kind of person. Jealous of his father's favor toward Heathcliff, Hindley nurses a bitterness toward him that is only exacerbated by the death of his beloved wife and the alcoholism that he uses to cope with it. These things combined together make him a volatile, poisonous man who destroys himself in the process of torturing others. Heathcliff, on the other hand, directs his poisonous feelings outward and destroys everybody around him rather than himself. Regardless of the ways in which they manifest their malice, it is malice all the same. And yet, one is a beloved literary character (for some ungodly reason), and the other is generally disliked. #justiceforhindley

Heathcliff is a spousal abuser, dog murderer, and vengeful prick. There is no way around that; it is written in black and white. For this reason, fancying him as the protagonist in a love story turned me off from Emily Bronte's only novel at first. But upon this read-through, and upon reading more about Emily Bronte herself, I realized that I had made the age-old mistake of confusing the fans of the work for the writer. Just because people think of this as a love story does not mean it was intended to be one. Rather, Emily Bronte meant this story to be a tale of vicious, over-the-top revenge. She meant to put the darkness of the human condition on display and marvel at it. And in that way, she excels in crafting a work of genius. In that context, "Wuthering Heights" is fantastic.

All in all, the characters on display in "Wuthering Heights" are insufferable assholes. The narrator and Ellen are both nosy and self-righteous. Hindley is, as stated before, a terrible father and an alcoholic mess. Cathy is a two-faced, selfish drama queen, and Heathcliff is just plain Evil with a capital E. Even the kids, Cathy 2.0 and Linton are spoiled, whiny, and ultimately lack empathy for others. The only good person in the entire thing is Hareton Earnshaw, as far as I'm concerned. But together this cast of terrible people make one of the most interesting stories in the English language. So if you want to like the characters you're reading about, avoid this one. But if you're open to watching the train wreck that is these people's lives, then this is a book that can't be missed.

Alice No-Last-Name is a curious, imaginative little girl. Bored to tears by the idleness of the afternoon, Alice falls down the rabbit hole into a world of wonder and weirdness. While in Wonderland, Alice meets a slew of iconic characters, trips over her words more than once, and finds herself changing far too often for her liking.

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is a classic piece of children's literature that has remained popular over 150 years. Almost every character within this rather short book is vivid and memorable, and has inspired dozens of adaptations and references throughout pop culture since its release in 1865. The reason for this longevity, perhaps, comes from how freaking weird this book is.

Wonderland is a place where nothing makes sense. The rules of decorum, of language, and of physics are constantly in flux and at odds with what Alice expects. She routinely manages to put her foot in her mouth and offend just about everyone she meets, because she knows nothing about what is expected of her in this wondrous, strange place. This is the land of word play and dad jokes, where even the most innocuous statements can be turned around into something else entirely.

The confusion that Alice feels in navigating her way through Wonderland seems to me a metaphor for the confusion that comes with growing up in the real world. The culture of England in the 1860s was not a very child-friendly one, in that there was a strictly enforced code of conduct that would likely have been rather difficult for someone as restless, creative, and strong-willed as Alice to live up to. Whether or not this was the intent of Lewis Carroll, it is an interesting lens through which to read this book; analyzing every mistake that Alice makes as a metaphor for something in the real world.

One of the lighter books in my 100 Books to Read Before You Die list, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is a cute little novel that will inspire your inner child, or your actual children if you feel so inclined to read it to them. While criticism can be hurled at this book as to the writing style (elsewhere referred to as "word salad"), or to the potentially pedophilic attachment Lewis Carroll felt toward Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice, it cannot be denied that "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is a truly iconic piece of literature and deserves a place on everyone's Literary Bucket List. There is simply nothing quite like it, and anything that comes close came afterward.