Book Review: The Complete Novels by Jane Austen

The Complete Novels by Jane Austen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The novels of Jane Austen are among some of the most beloved, most read, and most adapted from the English language. Featuring memorable characters, locations, and narratives the “big four” Austen novels—Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma—all have similar narrative clichés, but all done in unique ways that makes each story fresh. The later three novels are a mixed back of youthful inexperience (Northanger Abbey), different tone (Persuasion), and unique literary style (Lady Susan) with mixed results. Overall, this is a great collection especially as it has all four of Austen’s major works together.

Sense and Sensibility (3.5/5)
Pride and Prejudice (4/5)
Mansfield Park (3.5/5)
Emma (2/5)
Northanger Abbey (1/5)
Persuasion (3/5)
Lady Susan (2.5)

View all my reviews

Review: Lady Susan by Jane Austen

Lady Susan by Jane Austen
My rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

A beautiful middle-aged recent widow is on the prowl for a young man for herself and one to take her despised daughter off her hands. Lady Susan is the last complete work of Jane Austen published, over 50 years after her death, in which the titular character is annoyance to her family.

Lady Susan Vernon, a beautiful and charming recent widow, visits her brother- and sister-in-law, Charles and Catherine Vernon, with little advance notice at Churchill, their country residence. Catherine is far from pleased, as Lady Susan had tried to prevent her marriage to Charles and her unwanted guest has been described to her as “the most accomplished coquette in England”. Among Lady Susan's conquests is the married Mr. Manwaring. Catherine's brother Reginald arrives a week later, and despite Catherine's strong warnings about Lady Susan's character, soon falls under her spell. Lady Susan toys with the younger man's affections for her own amusement and later because she perceives it makes her sister-in-law uneasy. Her confidante, Mrs. Johnson, to whom she writes frequently, recommends she marry the very eligible Reginald, but Lady Susan considers him to be greatly inferior to Manwaring. Frederica, Lady Susan's 16-year-old daughter, tries to run away from school when she learns of her mother's plan to marry her off to a wealthy but insipid young man she loathes. She also becomes a guest at Churchill. Catherine comes to like her—her character is totally unlike her mother's—and as time goes by, detects Frederica's growing attachment to the oblivious Reginald. Later, Sir James Martin, Frederica's unwanted suitor, shows up uninvited, much to her distress and her mother's vexation. When Frederica begs Reginald for support out of desperation (having been forbidden by Lady Susan to turn to Charles and Catherine), this causes a temporary breach between Reginald and Lady Susan, but the latter soon repairs the rupture. Lady Susan decides to return to London and marry her daughter off to Sir James. Reginald follows, still bewitched by her charms and intent on marrying her, but he encounters Mrs. Manwaring at the home of Mr. Johnson and finally learns Lady Susan's true character. Lady Susan ends up marrying Sir James herself, and allows Frederica to reside with Charles and Catherine at Churchill, where Reginald De Courcy “could be talked, flattered, and finessed into an affection for her.”

This novella is essentially the titular character playing havoc with her in-laws and their familial relations while attempting to pawn her daughter off to the richest man that will have her while looking to score an even richer man whether he is currently married or not. If this had been a full-length novel with Susan Vernon as the lead character, she would have been one of the most hated characters in the English language who is not evil incarnate. As for the other notable characters, Mrs. Vernon and Frederica were written as morale opposites to Lady Susan and came off well-written, meanwhile Reginald comes off as a fool and is played like one by Susan through much of the story.

Lady Susan was completed by Jane Austen 17 years before her more famous works were published and itself published over 50 years after her death. It’s short length is one of it’s best features as the titular character would not be someone a reader would want to follow for an entire novel.

Book Review: President McKinley by Robert W. Merry

President McKinley: Architect of the American Century by Robert W. Merry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though nowadays overshadowed by his young, energetic successor that built upon his foreign policy successes in history, if not for his transformative Presidency the 20th Century could have gone differently for the United States. President McKinley: Architect of the American Century by Robert W. Merry explores the four and a half years of William McKinley in office and whether he led events or where led by them.

Merry begins his biography by leading up to its end, the assassination of McKinley in Buffalo at the Pan-American Exposition after the recently reelected President made a speech that seemed to show him turning towards freer trade and away from the protective tariffs that had defined his political career. After this dramatic beginning, Merry goes back to the first McKinleys to arrive in the Ohio territory where the future 25th President would live his life when not in the Union Army or in politics. Quickly going through McKinley’s early years, Merry spent a little more time following McKinley’s military career and how he rose quickly from a private to a Lieutenant within a year before finishing the war as a Major. After quickly covering McKinley’s time in law school, Merry covered his early years in Canton as a rising lawyer and meeting his future wife, Ida. As McKinley’s political career began and slowly took off, Merry slowed the pace of the narrative to give more facts including the how McKinley became a specialist on the tariff and dynamics of the Ohio Republican party that would impact his career. Once McKinley is in the White House, Merry slows down the narrative and focuses on the eventual four and a half years the redefined the United States at the end of the 19th Century leading to the 20th on the world stage from the lead up to and through the Spanish-American War to the Insurgency in the Philippines afterwards and the Boxer Rebellion in which the United States became a Great Power. Though McKinley’s time in office is now viewed as more foreign policy Presidency, McKinley himself had wanted to focus domestically more and Merry covered the many issues at home from the tariff to the gold standard to anti-imperialist sentiment that McKinley dealt with.

Merry began and ended his Presidential biography with how McKinley having been reelected based on his accomplishments of his first term was evolving his long-held political positions to meet new requirements to set up and complete his view of McKinley making decisions then incrementally push the political attitudes of others towards supporting his new position. Throughout Merry’s look at McKinley’s time in office, he showed evidence of McKinley’s incremental decision making and its high success rate but also the times when events moved too fast and how McKinley dealt with those events. Though focused on McKinley’s time in office more than the rest of his life, Merry’s biographical background of McKinley before his Presidency was fine but at times went back and forth in time during his political career that made things hard to follow and anticipate.

President McKinley is a well-written, informative political biography by Robert W. Merry of the 25th President’s time in office and how he made the decisions he made. While not a thorough biography of McKinley, it succeeds at it’s aim at covering the four and a half years that dramatically changed the United States standing in the world.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To raise from his short, brutish existence man willing give up his freedom and rights to protect himself if others do the same to one strong man who promises to protect them. Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan revolves around this idea but leading up to it and expounding upon it is a surprising amount of insight of both political and religious thought.

Hobbes’ work is divided into four parts with the first, “Of Man”, covering human nature and why men form governments not for the greater good as other postulate but to protect themselves and their stuff. Hobbes essentially says that men give up their freedom to the government to be protected from other men so they can keep their life and possessions that they can add to. In the second part, “Of Commonwealth”, Hobbes argues that the perfect government is under one absolute sovereign—whether a monarch or legislative body—that will control all aspects of the government with the aim to preserve the persons of the governed by any means necessary and that the govern must obey the sovereign in all aspects of life including in religion and taxation, the later must be used to support those unable to maintain themselves. In part three, “Of a Christian Commonwealth”, Hobbes discusses how a Christian commonwealth should be governed and essentially says that the civil power is the final arbiter of all spiritual revelation and thus the religious power is subordinate to the sovereign as seen in the Holy Scriptures. In the final part, “Of the Kingdom of Darkness”, Hobbes turns his focus towards ignorance of the true light of knowledge and its causes which stem from religious deceivers through four things—misinterpretation, demonology and saints, the mixing of religion with erroneous Greek philosophy, and mixing of these false doctrines and traditions with feigned history. Hobbes blames all the churches and churchmen for these causes as they are the beneficiaries at the expense of the civil power which endangers the commonwealth and the preservation of every man in them.

As one of the earliest and most influential works on social contract theory, Hobbes’ political ideas are often cited and quoted. However, the fact that almost half the work is a religious discourse was a surprise and insightful. That Hobbes discredited church-led states was gratifying, though he then recommended state control of religion was a disappointment but not surprising given the theme of his work. Besides his views on the church-state relationship, Hobbes’ work is primary to understanding how the political thought of today began and how his contemporaries and those that followed him reacted to his views.

Leviathan is Thomas Hobbes’ magnum opus of political thought and has been influential for centuries, whether one agrees with his conclusions or vehemently disagrees.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Treasure of Khan by Clive & Dirk Cussler

Treasure Of Khan by Clive Cussler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Genghis Khan conquered half the world, now another Mongolian looks to conquer the rest through oil but inadvertently runs into the one man who can stop him. Treasure of Khan is the nineteenth book in Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series and the second written with his son Dirk, as the elder Pitt returns to centerstage in a mostly land based adventure.

During the second failed Mongol invasion of Japan, a ship is swept out into the Pacific by a series of typhoons and survive long enough to land in the Hawaiian Islands. Several years later, reconstructing an old Polynesian ship and an elderly navigator the Mongol leader returns to China and a personal audience with Kublai Khan. In 1937, a British archaeologist unearths a box containing a scroll to the location of Genghis Khan burial location, but it is stolen by his Mongolian assistant as the archaeologist evacuates before the advancing Japanese. A relatively small oil company headed by Borjin, a Mongolian who is bent on taking control of the world oil market and re-uniting the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia—where he has found significant oil deposits buried at unusual depths—with Mongolia, has stolen a machine which can create an earthquake. He uses the machine to destroy major oil production facilities through the world, crippling China oil supply in a matter of weeks along with the rest of the worlds. He then uses this shortage to make an offer to supply China all the oil it needs. He demands that Inner Mongolia be ceded to Mongolia, and China pay market price for the oil he will supply them, which he guarantees will meet the colossal demands of the Chinese economy. China accepts this deal, not knowing of the hidden oil deposits they are handing to him. Dirk Pitt intervenes to end the situation and discovers that the grave of Genghis Khan has been located by Borjin, whose father stole the scroll to the burial location, and used the treasures to finance his company. Off the Big Island, Summer Pitt discovers a 13th-Century Chinese royal junk that eventually leads to Dirk Sr. figuring out where Kublai Khan’s tomb is located on the island from the other scroll that the elder Borjin did not take.

The return of the elder Dirk to the main character and the focus on Summer not being the damsel-in-distress Hawaiian subplot was a new wrinkle after the previous book. Both the main and subplots were well-written and resulted in a quick page turning story that is one of the best in the series. Unlike the previous novel, Borjin and his siblings were not memorable antagonists especially compared to some that the Pitts have faced in the past. Besides this one blemish, this second father-son effort by the Cusslers is a great follow up to their first.

Treasure of Khan is a particularly good installment in the decades-long Dirk Pitt franchise coming off the heels of another great previous installment. The decision to have Dirk Cussler join Clive in writing the series as so far paid off in a rise in quality.

View all my reviews

Review: Persuasion by Jane Austen

Persuasion by Jane Austen

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A young woman listens to her elders and mentors that the man she loves is not a good—social—match for her and breaks her engagement, she regrets it ever since. <i>Persuasion</i> is the last completed novel of Jane Austen that was published after her death, which follows a woman who must interact with her former fiancée now a war hero.

The story begins seven years after the broken engagement of Anne Elliot to Frederick Wentworth, the middle daughter of Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall and a young undistinguished naval officer with a low social standing. Anne's father and her older sister, Elizabeth, maintained that Wentworth was no match for a woman of their family and Lady Russell, a distant relative whom Anne considers to be a second mother, sees the relationship as imprudent for one so young and persuaded Anne to break off the engagement. All this happens when Anne's younger sister Mary was away at school. The story begins the Elliot family is in financial trouble on account of their lavish spending, so they rent out Kellynch Hall and decide to settle in a cheaper home in Bath until their finances improve. Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth's new companion, Mrs. Clay, look forward to the move; Anne is less sure. Mary is married to Charles Musgrove of Uppercross Hall, the heir to a respected local squire. Anne visits Mary and her family, where she is well-loved. As the war against France is over, the tenants of Kellynch Hall, Admiral Croft and his wife Sophia—Frederick’s sister—have returned home. Wentworth, now wealthy and famous for his service in the war, visits his sister and meets the Uppercross family where he crosses paths with Anne. The Musgroves, including Mary, Charles, and Charles' sisters Henrietta and Louisa, welcome the Crofts and Wentworth, who makes it known that he is ready to marry. Anne still loves Wentworth, so each meeting with him requires preparation for her own strong emotions. She overhears a conversation in which Louisa tells Wentworth of Charles first proposed to Anne, who turned him down. This news startles Wentworth, and Anne realizes that he has not yet forgiven her for letting herself be persuaded to end their engagement years ago. Anne and the young adults of the Uppercross family accompany Wentworth on a visit to see two of his fellow officers, Captains Harville and Benwick, in the coastal town of Lyme Regis. Benwick is in mourning over the death of his fiancée, Harville's sister, and he appreciates Anne's sympathy and understanding. They bond over their mutual admiration for the Romantic poets. Anne attracts the attention of Mr William Elliot, her cousin and a wealthy widower who is heir to Kellynch Hall despite having broken ties with her father years earlier. On the last morning of the visit, the youthful Louisa sustains a serious concussion at the sea wall while under Capt. Wentworth's supervision. Anne coolly organizes the others to summon assistance. Wentworth is impressed with Anne's quick thinking and cool headedness, but feels guilty about his actions with Louisa, causing him to re-examine his feelings for Anne. Louisa, due to her delicate position, is forced to recover at the Harvilles' home in Lyme for months. Benwick, who was a guest as well, helps in Louisa's recovery by attending and reading to her, resulting in them getting engaged. Following Louisa's accident, Anne joins her father and sister in Bath with Lady Russell while Louisa and her parents stay at the Harvilles' in Lyme Regis for her recovery. Wentworth visits his older brother Edward in Shropshire. Anne finds that her father and sister are flattered by the attentions of their cousin William Elliot, secretly believing that if he marries Elizabeth, the family fortunes will be restored. William flatters Anne and offhandedly mentions that he was "fascinated" with the name of his future wife already being an "Elliot" who would rightfully take over for her late Mother. Although Anne wants to like William, the attention and his manners, she finds his character opaque and difficult to judge. The Crofts arrive in Bath with the news that Louisa engagement to Benwick. Wentworth travels to Bath, where his jealousy is piqued by seeing William trying to court Anne. Wentworth and Anne renew their acquaintance. Anne visits Mrs Smith, an old school friend, who is now a widow living in Bath under strained circumstances. From her, Anne discovers William's true nature. The Musgroves visit Bath to purchase wedding clothes for Louisa and Henrietta—long engaged to a cousin—both soon to marry. Wentworth and Harville encounter them and Anne at the Musgroves' hotel in Bath, where Wentworth overhears Anne and Harville discussing the relative faithfulness of men and women in love. Deeply moved by what Anne Wentworth writes her a note declaring his feelings for her. Outside the hotel, Anne and Wentworth reconcile, affirm their love for each other, and renew their engagement. William leaves Bath with Mrs Clay soon following him to become his mistress, ensuring that he will inherit Kellynch Hall. Lady Russell admits she was wrong about Wentworth and befriends the new couple. Once Anne and Wentworth have married, Wentworth helps Mrs Smith recover the remaining assets that William had kept from her. Anne settles into her new life as the wife of a Navy captain.

A lot of things happen in a short about of pages, but Austen’s writing made it all come together well. Anne is not the greatest protagonist that Austen has written but given she comes after Emma and Catherine she is welcome change especially since she is older than most, if not all, of Austen’s other protagonists. None of the other characters really stand out, but it was interesting that Anne’s younger sister Mary was written as the annoying character instead of the usual widowed or unmarried older relative.

<i>Persuasion</i> is a fine novel, while it is not Jane Austen’s best work it is not her worst either. While I would not recommend it as your first Austen novel to read, I would recommend it if you’ve enjoyed one of her best works..

Book Review: The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When the publication of a novel results in a major restoration effort for a centuries old Gothic church that features as a significant secondary character, it must be a special book. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is Victor Hugo’s first novel that established him as one of the greatest French writers.

The story is set in Paris in 1482 during the reign of Louis XI. The beautiful gypsy Esmeralda captures the hearts of many men, including those of Captain Phoebus and Pierre Gringoire, but especially Quasimodo and his guardian Archdeacon Claude Frollo. Frollo is torn between his obsessive lust for Esmeralda and the rules of Notre Dame Cathedral. He orders Quasimodo to kidnap her, but Quasimodo is captured by Phoebus and his guards, who save Esmeralda. Gringoire, who attempted to help Esmeralda but was knocked out by Quasimodo, is about to be hanged by beggars when Esmeralda saves him by agreeing to marry him for four years. The following day, Quasimodo is sentenced to be flogged and turned on the pillory for two hours, followed by another hour's public exposure. He calls for water. Esmeralda, seeing his thirst, approaches the public stocks and offers him a drink of water. It saves him, and she captures his heart. Later, Esmeralda is arrested and charged with the attempted murder of Phoebus, whom Frollo attempted to kill in jealousy after seeing him trying to seduce Esmeralda. She is sentenced to death by hanging. As she is being led to the gallows, Quasimodo swings down by the bell rope of Notre-Dame and carries her off to the cathedral, temporarily protecting her – under the law of sanctuary – from arrest. Frollo later informs Gringoire that the Court of Parlement has voted to remove Esmeralda's right to the sanctuary so she can no longer seek shelter in the cathedral and will be taken away to be killed. Clopin, the leader of the Vagrants, hears the news from Gringoire and rallies the homeless citizens of Paris to charge the cathedral and rescue Esmeralda. When Quasimodo sees the Vagrants, he assumes they are there to hurt Esmeralda, so he drives them off. Likewise, he thinks the king's men want to rescue her, and tries to help them find her. She is rescued by Frollo and Gringoire. But after yet another failed attempt to win her love, Frollo betrays Esmeralda by handing her to the troops and watches while she is being hanged. When Frollo laughs during Esmeralda's hanging, Quasimodo pushes him from the height of Notre Dame to his death. With nothing left to live for, Quasimodo vanishes and is never seen again. Quasimodo's skeleton is found many years later in the charnel house, a mass grave into which the bodies of the destitute and criminals were indiscriminately thrown, implying that Quasimodo had sought Esmeralda among the decaying corpses and lay beside her, himself to die. As the guards attempt to pull the embracing skeletons apart, his skeleton crumbles to dust.

This book is hard to judge, mainly because when the narrative and drama is going it is great but early on Hugo liked to focus on other things namely architecture then it was hard to read. While Hugo’s descriptions of Notre Dame are fantastic and are necessary considering its central importance to the book, however the history of Paris and its architecture was a tangent that slowed things down enough to make the book feel like a drag. Hugo’s characters were extremely well-written from the hypocrite Frollo to the love-sick Esmerelda to superficial jerk Phoebus and the book’s titular character Quasimodo.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame features a fantastic narrative, however some of Victor Hugo’s decisions early in the book make it struggle to get through as it veers away from any narrative flow. However, I did enjoy the book overall and would recommend it for people to read yet with a warning about things early so they are prepared to either endure it or plan skip parts of the book.

View all my reviews