Due to primarily my laziness, and secondarily to the lack of fiction in UoB's library, I read very few books in 2018. Going behind China's great firewall was a good opportunity to catch up on some classic novels (because gutenburg.org) on my kindle (the only screen that I'll read at lengths on).
First up: Ivanhoe
iirc, I was chatting with a stranger that stumbled across this blog a month prior to my previous trip to China and he mentioned that this was his favourite novel. If not, then it was Don Quixote and I have not gotten to it yet despite also having it on kindle.
I don't think this is super great, entertaining definitely. It's enjoyable the same way that a superhero movie is enjoyable. Although I must credit it for motivating me to learn more about England's history. Surprisingly wikipedia is not blocked in China, so I was reading about Saxons and Normans for a good two afternoons.
Surprisingly, the subplot that I was the most invested in was Bois-Guilbert and Rebecca's unfortunate courtship. It contains pretty much the themes of the novel as a whole. Although this ship was sunk from the beginning ah ha...
Otherwise, this quotation sums up the invisible hand of the plot:
Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives!—Fight on—death is better than defeat!—Fight on, brave knights!—for bright eyes behold your deeds!another one that I noted but can't remember where its from:
A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those, which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them....
Also finished two short Dostoyevsky books: Poor Folks and his short story collection White Nights & Other Stories. Not much to say aside from "White Nights", which wins for the most feeling inducing story out of all his works that I've read.
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