SOS - The Prince, Night-Dawn-The Accident, Slave, Sherlock Holmes, Artemis Fowl I-III

[lavivi]

This is very much delayed, and I'm afraid that I've forgotton some of my intial impressions from the books I read first.

• The Prince:  Yes, that one, by Machiavelli.  I got a pretty recent edition, made in 1997, that had lots of wonderful footnotes.  Even so, it was a mere ninety-seven pages, though it took me an inordinate amount of time to finish.  But I didn't want to miss anything.
  
  It wasn't that badly written at all (in terms of difficulty), for being written in the sixteenth century.  Easier than Jane Austen, I think.  And even though some of the chapters, especially in the beginning, were practical advice for rulers about different states they might rule, and not practical for me at all, I didn't lose much interest.
  
  It was Slytherin philosophy throughout, as I had been told.  I did appreciate and agree with all of it, but was not particularly taken aback or shocked (in a good way) by any one statement.  That I remember, anyway.  Was tickled by the references to the rulers Severus and Commodius (the latter from the movie Gladiator).
  
  I do have one quote, actually, that's not related to the Slytherin philosophy or any other merit of the book, but the part that did surprise me the most:
  
  Indeed, I judge this, that it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman: and if one wants to keep her under, it is necessary to beat her and knock her.
  
  
• The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident: The first two were required school reading, but when I looked them up in a bookstore, I only found the first by itself, and then one copy of all three books in the trilogy together.  So I got that, and read them in three nights, one per night.
  
  When I was younger, I was fascinated by the Holocaust, and read a lot of books about it.  So nothing in Night shocked me.  It was well done, though.  The ending in particular struck me:
  
  Three days after the liberation of Buchenwald I became very ill with food poisoning.  I was transferred to the hospital and spent two weeks between life and death.
  One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength.  I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall.  I had not seen myself since the ghetto.
  From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.
  The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.
  
  Dawn was interesting - about eighty pages covering approximately nine hours.  The same boy who went through the concentration camp is now a terrorist in what is to be Israel, before it is a country of their own - they fight the British government controlling them.  One of their men was captured, and was going to be hanged, so the terrorists capture a British soldier as a hostage.  The British don't relent, and the Jew is going to be hanged at dawn, so the hostage will also be shot - and the Holocaust-survivor-turned-terrorist is chosen to be the one to shoot him.  So it's all an internal conflict battle.  Pretty interesting, and the last line corresponds to the ending of Night, with him looking at his reflection.
  
  The Accident, however, was...not.  It reminded me of the existentialist books I had to read last summer, The Fall and The Stranger.  Hey, they even have the same kind of titles.  Perhaps that's a characteristic of existentialism that my teacher failed to mention.  Anyway - it was more depressing than the books last summer.  Its message and a lot of lines pretty well escaped me.  What I did get was that the theme seemed to be how the main character felt he was dead - living, but thoroughly dead, and killing everyone who came into contact with him.  Proof of this was by a woman named Kathleen, who apparently was at first a passionate, fierce woman, but after he was done with her, she was utterly depressed, drinking, nearly as dead as he was.
  
  I feel like I must be fair, since it stems, like Dawn, from Night.  But, if you were to take it by itself, I would say it is the kind of thing that results from listening to too much Evanescence.
  
  
• Slave:  I read this three-hundred page book (and no small length was it, either) in one night.  It was written in very simple sentences, of course, though its message was not simple. 
  
  It was very revealing about the things that still go on in today's world, since Mende, the slave, escaped only in 2000, and published her book in 2003.  She was born and raised in a very happy, though what we would call "primitive and barbaric," culture in the Nuba Mountains in Africa.  What struck me as the worst part about it was the practice of circumcising girls - oh God, that sounded horrible.  And it said some Muslim girls still do it, too.
  
  So she was kidnapped by Muslim raiders (her tribe and general culture follows Islam, though) at age twelve.  She was taken to a city in Kudan and sold to a woman named Rahaab, who was generally a demon bitch.  Mende (that's a really beautiful name) went through adolescence in her house, under much abuse, including being beaten by a hose, having a scalding hot pan held to her arm, and being pushed so she cut her leg open. 
  
  Now, Mende didn't write the book entirely by herself - her friend, a British journalist, helped her.  The journalist obviously has some talent for writing, but there's a reason he's a journalist and not Ms. Rowling.  But all the same...there was something about the description of her that was crystal clear, at least to me - the description of her emotional growth and fear, her terror of Rahaab and her power.  Very little was ever explained to Mende, and having grown up in such a remote setting - she barely knew how electricity worked, had never heard of America or Britian or anything.  One part - I can't remember what, actually - was such a tearjerker it made me choke up.
  
  When she was twenty, though, she was sent to London to work for a relative's family.  She became really depressed, since she never left the house - they told her if she did, she would be killed almost immediately by criminals on the street, and she had so much work, every day.  Eventually, though, she was left at a friend's house while they went on vacation, and she learned not to be afraid to go out, so she went out looking for another man from her country, and by a miracle, she found one, and he helped her escape one day.  Then she got her journalist friend, all the media caught her story, and finally she got asylum so she didn't have to go to Sudan and instantly be killed for running away and telling everyone about how slavery still exists.
  
  A good book, on the whole.  I recommend it. 
  
  
• Sherlock Holmes:  Now, I've read quite a few of the Sherlock Holmes stories when I was younger, but not all of them.  I was loaned, however, the entire collection, and so I re-read and read all of them. 
  
  As a proper Ravenclaw, I didn't just fall in love with Sherlock Holmes.  He turns me on.  (I'm trusting that no one is reading at this point.)  And the sad thing is, I'm not even completely kidding.  I got a shiver when it said he had "extroardinarily strong fingers."  C-cool.
  
  Unrelated to that, however, I was much saddened by Sherlock's "death," and thoroughly thrilled by his return.  Nearly as much as Watson was.
  
  But, coming back to the objective literary analysation.  Yes.  The narration isn't as eloquent as Jane Austen and other works of the 1800's, but it's still beautifully done.  Sigh.  Must love Watson.
  
  I don't think I have one favorite story in particular, but I like all the parts when Holmes gets indignant, especially with Mary Sutherland's stepfather, or when he subverts the law, as in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, the blackmailer.  So awesome.  I think I will reproduce the indignant episode in The Case of Identity:
  
  Our visitor collapsed into a chair, with a ghastly face, and a glitter of moisture on his brow.  "It's - it's not actionable," he stammered [meaning what he had done, tricking his step-daughter, was not illegal].
  "I am very much afraid that it is not.  But between ourselves, Windibank, it was as cruel, and selfish, and heartless a trick in a petty way as ever came before me. ..."
  ...
  Our visitor had recovered something of his assurance while Holmes had been talking, and he rose from his chair now with a cold sneer upon his pale face.
  "It may be so, or it may not, Mr. Holmes," said he, "but if you are so very sharp you ought to be sharp enough to know that it is you who are breaking the law now, and not me.  I have done nothing actionable from the first, but as long as you keep that door locked you lay yourself open to an action for assault and illegal constraint."
  "The law cannot, as you say, touch you," said Holmes, unlocking and throwing open the door, "yet there never was a man who deserved punishment more.  If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought to lay a whip across your shoulders.  By Jove!" he continued, flushing up at the sight of the bitter sneer upon the man's face, "it is not part of my duties to my client, but here's a hunting crop handy, and i think I shall just treat myself to -" He took two swift steps to the whip, but before he could grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps upon the stairs, the heavy hall door banged, and from the window we could see Mr. James Windibank running at the top of his speed down the road.
  
  Wow.  I loved re-reading that over and over.
  
  Two more quotes, not so long - the first tickled me for reasons inexplicable, and I delighted in the second's wit:
  
  "I expect developments, Watson."
  "When?"
  "Now - within a few minutes.  I dare say you thought I acted rather badly to Stanley Hopkins just now?" 
  "I trust your judgment."
  "A very sensible reply, Watson. ..."
  
  "His coachman -"
  "My dear Watson, can you doubt that it was to him that I first applied?  I do not know whether it came from his own innate depravity or from the promptings of his master, but he was rude enough to set a dog at me.  Neither dog nor man liked the look of my stick, however, and the matter fell through.  Relations were strained after that, and further inquiries out of the question. ..."
  
  
• Artemis Fowl, I-III:  This is just a review of the first three of the series, since I just finished re-reading the third tonight, and have barely gotten a few pages in of the fourth.
  
  As I wrote in my personal journal: "The author is interesting - in the first one, his style is mostly superb, with a few melodramatic flaws here and there. They may just be part of the less-than-brilliance you find in an author's first book of a series." 
  
  After finishing the third, however, I've decided that rather than being intermittent blemishes, the melodrama and other characteristics are part of the author's efforts to direct the books toward children.  Bad form, Eoin Colfer, bad form.  Look at The Series of Unfortunate Events.  That's a children's book, but it utterly acknowledges and glories in reality and Shades of Gray (no, that's not a book, just my fun with select capitialization and italicizing of common phrases).  But due to Colfer's efforts, the books lose points from what would be a very large amount.   But no, instead, everyone's carrying on about stunning instead of killing.  Gah.
  
  The style in the first and second was highly familiar narration - in third person, with an interjected "I" every now and then and reminding the readers every now and then that the fourth wall is demolished.  In the third book, however, I don't remember being slightly caught off guard by the familiarity - I think the author realized it didn't make the book any better. 
  
  That's pretty much the end of the criticism, though.  The stories are very lively and entertaining, keeping your interest and attention, sucking you in nearly as well as any good book does.  There's excellent wit, and good characters.  I particularly love Foaly - and, of course, Artemis himself.
  
  Reading Artemis Fowl as a direct sequel from Sherlock Holmes - it's an interesting, and rather critical, experience. The author says clearly that he means Artemis to be a second Sherlock, but,  if you really want to get into it, he is not.  This isn't the author's fault - it takes genius to write genius, which definitely says something about Sir A. Conan Doyle, Orson Scott Card, and Cassandra Claire. 
  
  He doesn't completely fail, though.  At this point, I'm utterly in love with the boy.  Of course, it clearly doesn't take much - make the character a genius and not deformed, and I'll fall in love with him.  But I'm even more in love with him since with the mind-wipe he's going back to being a most excellent Slytherin.  Which is the way he should be.  I nearly cried when he was turning into a Gryffindor.  Artemis, my beautiful Artemis, what are they doing to you?  They're ruining you! 
  
  But really, I was captivated enough to embroirder in a version of myself, which I think is something I've been doing less.  But I had to daydream my own input into the book, of course, as I was dying to tell certain characters certain things.  And I think this may turn into an original short-story, what began as a girl in a boarding school with Artemis.  Hm.  We'll see.
  
  Anyway.  Quotes.  From the first book:
  
  Artemis leaned back in the study's leather swivel chair, smiling over steepled fingers.  Perfect.  That little explosion should cure those fairies of their cavalier attitude.  Plus there was one less whaler in the world.  Artemis Fowl did not like whalers.  There were less objectionable ways to produce oil by-products.
  
  Artemis put on his best sinister face.  Evil, he told himself, evil but highly intelligent.  And determined, don't forget determined.  He put a hand on the doorknob.  Steady now.  Deep breaths, and try not to think about the possibility that you have misjudged the situation and are about to be shot dead.  One, two, three....  He opened the door.
  "Good evening," he said, every inch the gracious host, albeit a sinister, evil, intelligent, and determined one.
  
  The second:
  
  [a  text message from Foaly]  CMNDR ROOT.  TRBLE BELOW.  HAVN OVERRN BY GOBLNS.  PLICE PLAZA SRROUNDED.  CUDGEON + OPL  KBOI BHND PLOT. NO WPONS R CMMUNICATIONS.  DNA CNONS CNTRLLED BY KBOI. I M TRPPED IN OP BTH.  CNCL THNKS IM 2 BLM.  IF ALIVE PLSE HLP.  IF NOT, WRNG NMBR.
  
  Then, strangely, he calmed down.  In fact, he seemed almost happy.  Those who were close to the commander knew that when he was happy, somebody else was about to be extremely sad.
  
  And the third:
  
  "According to my men, a group of armed bandits attempted to rob the establishment, but they were interrupted by an earthquake.  And if that's what really happened, I'll eat my badge.  I don't suppose you can throw any light on the situation?"
  "A competitor of mine disagreed with a business strategy.  It was a violent disagreement."
  
  Be at peace with yourself, girl, the Japanese instructor had said.  Find that quiet place in your core and inhabit it.
  Juliet generally had to stifle a yawn when Madam Ko started on the kung fu wisdom stuff.  Butler, on the other hand, had eaten it up.  He was forever finding his quiet place and inhabiting it.  In fact, he only came out of his quiet place to pulverize whoever was threatening Artemis at the time.
  
  I hate the beginning to the third book - just so depressing.  I won't say more because Gina hinted she might actually read this, so I'll just say it's always really, really depressing to me when people who are really talented or skilled get old and start to decline.  But the critical, tragic moment was very well done. 
  
  Can't wait to read the fourth now.  I really, really hope the author doesn't make him relapse into Gryffindor tendencies.  Oh God please no.
  

Sigh.  The sad thing is, I put so much effort into that, and I know no one's going to read all of it.