The Breast by Philip Roth

A lecturer in Kafka and Gogol wakes up one morning to discover that he has turned into a six foot high mammary gland. What more can be said?!

Silk by Alessandro Baricco

I'm still ploughing through Wild Swans by Jung Chan, so this little novella by Alessandro Baricco, about silk, made a welcome retreat while I had my lunch. A short book, a short tale, a bittersweet tale. I'm glad that the list of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die is opening my eyes to a different sort of literature, to books I would not have chosen by myself.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

I really enjoyed studying this at uni. My favourite passage was the hellfire sermon. I have drawn on it many a time since to demonstrate Medieval religion to little Year 7s.

I've just looked it up. The sermon is about seven pages long.

"Consider then what must be the foulness of the air of hell. Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jellylike mass of liquid corruption. Imagine such a corpse a prey to flames, devoured by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense choking fumes of nauseus loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions and millions of fetid carcasses massed together in this reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell."

And that's just the smell! The sermon goes on to describe the horrors, the tortures that would be faced by those in hell. And then the pupils at Stephen Dedalus' school are reminded of the sins they might commit that could send them to hell. No wonder this sermon sparked off Stephen's questioning.

The Rainbow by DH Lawrence

Again, it's been some time since I read this ... It was part of the course at uni.

Here is the opening paragraph.

"The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the meadows where the Erewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating Derbyshire from Nottinghamshire. Two miles away, a church- tower stood on a hill, the houses of the little country town climbing assiduously up to it. Whenever one of the Brangwens in the fields lifted his head from his work, he saw the church-tower at Ilkeston in the empty sky. So that as he turned again to the horizontal land, he was aware of something standing above him and beyond him in the distance."

Our lecturer began. "Many would say that the church tower is a phallic symbol, that it represents sex, and power ... I say that it represents that there was a church in the village."

Well, it got a laugh out of we first year students, who were used to having obscure symbolism pointed out to us in the literary texts that we studied, and having had English teachers who had seemed more than usually preoccupied with sex. In fact, my choice of personal essay in my Higher had been based on the fact that my English teacher seemed preoccupied with sex, and funnily enough that was about another, more well known, Lawrence novel.

It's interesting re-reading that paragraph now ... I used to live near there. But would never have expected that at the time I studied it!

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

It's been some time since I read this. I had watched and enjoyed the film first, and at some point got round to reading an old, second hand, blue and black copy of the book. Enjoyed it, but can't remember much about it ... I remember the couple crossing the moor, handcuffed together, in the film, but then I've read articles since then that point out that the romantic interest was added for the film and was not present in the book, but I can't remember, so maybe I ought to read it again sometime. But there are still so many more to read ... I think I will keep plodding on.

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

What a coincidence that this one should come next! We watched Apocalypse Now again a few nights ago, and it continues to amaze me that I was foolish to pass up on the opportunity to watch this at uni while I was studying the novel. I suppose loud, violent war movies didn't appeal to me then, even if they would have added a slant on the literature I had to study.

My favourite line?

`The last word he pronounced was - your name.'

Marlow to Kurtz' fiancee.

When he had actually said ... "The horror! the horror!" I always thought that was full of meaning. I mean, obviously "the horror" is full of meaning, but the implication that his Intended could also have been part of that horror. I've just been reading some interpretations, about how Marlow has managed to lie in order to protect the woman, but I've always thought it was an indictment on her. The Heart of darkness.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I read this the way it was meant to be read. As a little girl, on holiday in the Ardennes, with rumours of a child kidnapper in the air. No, I don't think that is the way it was meant to be read ... be patient! Anyway, we were in a big, rambling farmhouse. The owner remembered that he had some old magazines in English in the attic somewhere. So off he went - and returned with two or three bound folders, full of original copies of The Strand. A very interesting magazine, I was soon devouring every page of it ... and more so when I started reading the serialised account of The Hound of the Baskervilles! It was a beautifully hot and sunny Belgian summer, and I could hear my parents looking for me, to go outside for a walk down to the bridge or to play outside, but there I was, lying upstairs on my bed, head in dusty old magazines, and imagination far away on English moors.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

No, I haven't read this one recently. But I had started this list by wanting to write about the books that I have read on the 1001 Books list, and then recently I have been adding the books that I have been reading at the moment. Well, at the moment I am reading "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang, and since we also have a visitor this week, and are waiting to be inspected at school, I am a bit behind with that. So I thought I'd use this opportunity to catch up with a few more of the books on the list that I have read. Dracula is the 37th book on my original list (which consisted of 91 books - I am pleased to report that I have read a few more books since then, so my total is a bit higher - those books have already been written about on here, though!)

So, Dracula. We watched a film a couple of months ago which was a variation on the theme. In it, Arthur Holmwood had contacted syphillis, so when married Lucy, he could not sleep with her without passing on this illness. The non-consummation of the marriage upset Lucy, who confides in her friend Mina that she is sad, but does not explain precisely why. In the meantime, and unbeknownst to Lucy, Arthur has contacted some strange characters who have said that they can cure him of this disease by giving him a blood transfusion. Mina's fiance, Jonathan Harker, is sent by his solicitor's firm to Transylvania. Mina does not hear of him again, so she is very sad too. Dracula eventually comes to England ... and finally bites Lucy etc etc. So it was Dracula with a twist. But I suppose that is one way to interpret Dracula - an STI that causes people to die, but not before they have passed it on. Very topical ...