My Reading Experiment (Book #3) - his Monkey Wife
Target: 100 books
Current: 3 books
I paid for this book in Bitcoin. It was a super snowy weekend when I visited my friends up in Boston. I still cannot believe that my reasonably comfortable journey on a Wi-Fi equipped bus cost me just $4! I suppose it had something to do with my ungodly hour of arrival. It was my first time in Boston, and I wanted to take a walk around the Harvard and MIT campuses. Along the way, I learnt a cringeworthy little something about the tradition of peeing on John Harvard's foot. I learnt of the infamous three lies of Harvard. And I visited the Harvard Book Store. While there, I picked up His Monkey Wife, and my friend paid for it because yours truly had a problem with her card. He asked to be paid back in Bitcoin, and that's when I decided to get a Bitcoin of my own. It tanked right after I bought it. Sigh!
#3
His Monkey Wife
- John Collier
Mildly amusing, Fiction, Tough read, Literary gold mine, Satirical, 1920's women
I almost never pay much attention to the foreword. I think of it as a space where one of the author's cronies usually waxes eloquent about his/her literary genius. This book, however, was an exception. Huh! All these years, and until this moment I never knew the difference between a Foreword, a Preface, and an Introduction. I found Eva Brann's introduction to His Monkey Wife quite delightful. Here's how she starts - "It is a truth universally acknowledged that an unattached monkey in possession of a liberal education must be in want of a human husband". See what I mean? Eva lets us know upfront that our heroine, Emily the chimp, gets her man in the end. Eva gives us a tour of the genre of primates in novels, and says "Throughout this multifarious genre, there is no chimp like Emily, none so to captivate the human heart, none with whom one would so wish to have a cup of tea."
This is the story of Emily, a mute chimp, who learns to read, think, and love like humans. She loves her master Mr.Fatigay, and wants to prevent his marriage to Amy. I did not particularly admire any of the three principal characters. Emily is slavish, Mr.Fatigay is dull as dishwater, and Amy is air headed and conniving.
The book itself is a good exercise in reading. It is strewn with hundreds of allusions to other literary works, over ninety percent of which I am not familiar with. It has words and expressions that one almost never encounters. Some sentences run to almost a page in length, and can be quite complex in construction. I found myself using Google Now quite often, asking questions like "Ok Google, what does the word japanned mean?" I learnt that a primate in the context of England could refer to the Archbishop of Canterbury. And I learnt something that came to me as a rude shock - That a parasol means an umbrella of some sort, and not some kind of waxy polish/cleaning agent that all these years I assumed it to be! If you are the kind that prefers not to look up the meanings of things, or are uncomfortable with not understanding all that goes on in the pages, I suggest you give this book a pass. However, if you are like me, you'll know that although hard to read, this is the sort of book that can widen your horizons.
Current: 3 books
I paid for this book in Bitcoin. It was a super snowy weekend when I visited my friends up in Boston. I still cannot believe that my reasonably comfortable journey on a Wi-Fi equipped bus cost me just $4! I suppose it had something to do with my ungodly hour of arrival. It was my first time in Boston, and I wanted to take a walk around the Harvard and MIT campuses. Along the way, I learnt a cringeworthy little something about the tradition of peeing on John Harvard's foot. I learnt of the infamous three lies of Harvard. And I visited the Harvard Book Store. While there, I picked up His Monkey Wife, and my friend paid for it because yours truly had a problem with her card. He asked to be paid back in Bitcoin, and that's when I decided to get a Bitcoin of my own. It tanked right after I bought it. Sigh!
#3
His Monkey Wife
- John Collier
Mildly amusing, Fiction, Tough read, Literary gold mine, Satirical, 1920's women
This is the story of Emily, a mute chimp, who learns to read, think, and love like humans. She loves her master Mr.Fatigay, and wants to prevent his marriage to Amy. I did not particularly admire any of the three principal characters. Emily is slavish, Mr.Fatigay is dull as dishwater, and Amy is air headed and conniving.
The book itself is a good exercise in reading. It is strewn with hundreds of allusions to other literary works, over ninety percent of which I am not familiar with. It has words and expressions that one almost never encounters. Some sentences run to almost a page in length, and can be quite complex in construction. I found myself using Google Now quite often, asking questions like "Ok Google, what does the word japanned mean?" I learnt that a primate in the context of England could refer to the Archbishop of Canterbury. And I learnt something that came to me as a rude shock - That a parasol means an umbrella of some sort, and not some kind of waxy polish/cleaning agent that all these years I assumed it to be! If you are the kind that prefers not to look up the meanings of things, or are uncomfortable with not understanding all that goes on in the pages, I suggest you give this book a pass. However, if you are like me, you'll know that although hard to read, this is the sort of book that can widen your horizons.
"Is love less strong in its defense, or more so, when it is bestowed on the unworthy?"
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