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Good Day Froggies! It is May 2nd 2026 and it feels like winter out there! So what ever happened with global warming?!? I want some warming to The Ugly Frog TM can get out on the water and catch some fish! However, in the meantime, let's talk about books, classics. I started reading "Dubliners" by James Joyce (The Penguin Twentieth Century Classics publication of it) on 19 April 2026 and finished it this morning. I was reading it last night at a cafe and got to 2 pages of it's end and headed home and left that two pages until this morning. Isn't that amazing my ability to do that? Well I know of one reader / colleague who was astounded that I could leave a book's ending until the next day with just a few pages to go. So if you see this Steven, I did it again! And this time with just 2 (TWO!) pages to go! Prior to reading this one I tried to read "Finnegan's Wake" by this author and had to DNF it at the 25th to 27th page, I cannot remember, because it was completely nonsensical. In all those pages all I could pick up was we were in some cabin or hut in the woods somewhere. That's a lot of pages to convey that! When I passed the book to a HS Student and requested he read X page and tell me what happened or what was going on, he read it and said he couldn't understand a thing, I decided to DNF that book. I do not DNF many books at all. This was and continues to be only the second one! After that "experience" I read Ulysses by this author and found it better, but as I recall, I found it not very exciting at all. Perhaps even boring. Here, I decided to read another of his to give it a try, because, well, who doesn't like Ireland? Right? So something named Dubliners has to be good. I did not skim the book or read the back so when I plucked it from my classic literature library, I did not know it was a book of short stories, until a lady who was going to also read it pointed that out to me when she started in to it. That was fine. I like reading short stories as well and have read many many classics over the years. I am happy to report that Dubliners, I enjoyed more than Ulysses. There was a variety of stories in there and picked up a lot of quotes for conversation and thought and some new words. . . those things are always indicators of whether I find a book enjoyable or worthwhile reading. This one at least passed that litmus test. Some of the stories, of course, I didn't care for. For example, there was a polical one which I felt could have been good if it had more pointed conflict, but it fell short of that and was kind of boring. One story had an ending which I still cannot really figure out the significance of. That is actually not necessarily a bad thing. I kind of like books or stories that leave the ending somewhat ambiguous to allow the reader to explore in their mind the different outcomes that could have been or the different meanings which could have been intended. There were a couple of stories in there that fit this bill actually, and I liked that. One a lady owned a boarding house and one of the tenants took a shining to her daughter and it was not all that clear whether it was all a set up by the mother to offload her daughter, a scheme to get money out of him, or in fact given the ultimatum she gave him which path he chose. In another story I enjoyed these two guys made a little wager about one of them picking up a lady they seen on the street and the ending was very confusing to me as to how it ended up. Again, I don't think it was necessarily a detraction from the story's value. Do you think those kind of ambiguous or open-ended endings are good for stories? or do you like the author to spell it all out for you so you know what happened to who what when and where and how it ends without any room for interpretation or confusion? Overall, I enjoyed the read and short adventure to Dublin. Is it going to be in my favorites of all time? No. Would I say it was worth the read? Yes, it was enjoyable. I think he did good in creating the picture of some of the characters. There were a couple in there that, like I do from time to time, would like to try to sketch/draw my interpretation of him or her. In the drawings section you can see some book characters of classics I have sketched (in my amateur way) so far. Till next time I bid you "beannacht libh!" |
 Discussion / Thought Questions Inspired by my Reading of this Book:
I will leave you with two quotes to see how you think on them: "Better pass boldly into that other world in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age." P224 A couple things to think about. Next up I am going to read yet another work by James Joyce and that is the Barnes and Noble Classics publication of "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners": A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Let's see if the trend of James Joyce getting better with every book I read of his continues or will this go the way of Finnegan's Wake?  |