At the beginning of 2014, I resolved to devote the year to reading fiction, and only fiction. This was spurred in part by the growing pile of unread books I’d lugged from house to house (and country to country) and in part by being self-conscious about how few books I read.

So, a year later, Mission Accomplished. Reading mainly during my commute, I managed to knock off 17 novels and novellas. There were a mix of classics I was appalled I’d never read, some works of contemporary fiction that got a lot of attention, books by friends and a handful of science fiction, some classic, some less so.

Here’s how they break down:

Most Lackluster

The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson (2010).

I didn’t know much about “The Finkler Question” when I picked it up, but it had won the Booker Prize and the jacket copy promised an exploration of Jewish identity in modern Britain. Unfortunately, the protagonist was more caricature than person, and so the uneventful narrative, which mainly consisted of his bouncing between two other characters in London, never captured my attention. Many of the ideas raised are interesting and remain pressing – how should liberal Jews reconcile their alarm about Israel? – but as fiction, it was tepid.

Most Exhausting

Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (1851)

Reading “Moby-Dick” was a major project. I started it a few years ago before picking it up again and spent months reading it on and off before making a major push to finish that last few hundred pages. It’s a maddening book to read, as Melville interrupts his narrative with long sections on the nature of whales and the history of whales, filled with obscure classical and Biblical references and digs at other writers. The plot fades in and out, like a radio station in the mountains, and when it finally comes in clear and strong, in the last third of the book, it can be thrilling. Melville wrestles with big themes, about man, nature and God, and that’s probably how Moby-Dick earned its reputation, but he’s also a gifted stylist. There’s humor, horror and poetry in this book.

Most Satisfying

Middlemarch, by George Elliot (1874)

Like “Moby-Dick,” “Middlemarch” was an attempt to tackle a classic, one of those books that appear on lists of the 100 greatest novels and that produced a twinge of guilt because I hadn’t read it. I also wanted to read an English book – living in London, I felt a certain obligation to the natives – and “Middlemarch” is unmistakably English. Set in a rural town around 1830, a period of social and political upheaval, the novel traces the lives of a handful of men and women straining against the confines of their class and culture. The  plot gradually builds to a defining event that might seem incidental in another book, but because Elliot has so completely drawn the reader into her narrative, it feels like an earthquake. And while I expected a sophisticated, powerful novel, I was constantly surprised by Elliott’s sharp observations and biting word play. It’s a 19th century novel, but much of it feels fresh and alive.

Most Chilling

Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee (1999)

While Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” was probably the most horrifying book I read last year, it is fantasy – and set in a post-apocalyptic future, we are insulated from its terrors by the comforting reality of the present. Not so “Disgrace,” which, while set in South Africa and drawing on the dark history of that nation to spin its plot, is also about the rot and decay that lies within all of us. “Disgrace” tells the story of a Cape Town professor who, through his arrogance and narcissism, tumbles out of his position of privilege and into a state of numb apathy, powerless to protect his daughter from the violence of a country in turmoil. Coetzee writes with a spare elegant voice that makes the brutality all the more vivid. The final, quiet scene in an animal shelter is as grimly nihilistic as all of McCarthy’s evocations of depravity and cannibalism.

Most Dazzling

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen (2001)

“The Corrections” sat on a bookshelf for a decade, daring me to read it. I occasionally packed it on trips, only to return with it unopened, cowed by its reputation for brilliance. After biting the bullet, I realize now, my instincts were correct. It is brilliant: a dizzying, exhilarating, penetrating, often hilarious and sometimes creepy satire about America at the turn of the last century. There is sort of a plot, but it’s not really about narrative as much as about characters, an elderly midwestern couple and their three adult-ish children stumbling through their lives. Into this mix Franzen throws in a sharp critique of modern capitalism and culture, told in suburban kitchens, liberal arts colleges, cruise ship dining rooms, biotech investor days and Lithuanian palaces. Yet, despite Franzen’s abundance of shrewd observations, he failed to predict the future. Written on the eve of Sept. 11, the concerns of “The Corrections” can’t help but feel small and dated, compared to the horrors that were to come.

Most Surprising

The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick (1962)

Acknowledged as an alternative history masterpiece, I knew little about the “The Man in the High Castle” save it conjured an America after Germany and Japan won World War II. But rather than a conventional narrative focusing on the leadership and power structures of this new reality, as I imagined, the book follows a handful of ordinary and less ordinary characters making their way in Japanese-controlled California. As they bumble their way through a meandering, multi-threaded story, the geopolitical landscape unfolds and the atrocities of the Axis powers are slowly revealed. The writing is rich, intricate and oblique, with long excursions into the workings of the I-ching, and the market for Americana kitsch items among the new Japanese bourgeoise. The plot picks up in the last quarter, and resembles something like a conventional thriller before reaching its puzzling, challenging conclusion. Amazon is making a TV series based on “Man in the High Castle,” but apparently has little of the book’s nuance. It may be closer to what I was expecting.

Most Disappointing

Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965)

“Dune” was a victim of my unrealistic expectations. Since it routinely tops lists of the greatest works of science fiction, I had high hopes. And while there’s a lot to admire in the book’s ambition, sweep and creativity, the book let me down in a lot of ways. Set in distant future, where feudal lords rule planets, the plot centers over a struggle between two noble houses, one of which is exiled to a desert planet and crushed by their enemy. The son of the deposed lord immerses himself in the native culture, discovers hidden powers, becomes their leader and leads a revolt that topples the evil emperor. If that all sounds a bit pat, I thought so, too. Despite Dune’s vivid settings and glacial pacing, the plot is ultimately thin and predictable and the writing often pompous and clichéd. The rich detail is what kept my attention: Herbert dives deeply into the cults, rituals, politics and ecology of his invented world’s, and it’s often fascinating. Unfortunately, the whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts.

Here’s the full list of the fiction I completed last year:

1, The Man in the High Castle (Dick)
2, Disgrace (Coetzee)
3, The Finkler Question (Jacobson)
4, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Heinlein)
5, Beautiful Ruins (Walter)
6, Petropolis (Ulinich)
7, The Caves of Steel (Asimov)
9, Winter in the Blood (Welch)
10, Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel (Ulinich)
11, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Stevenson)
12, Moby-Dick (Melville)
13, The Road (McCarthy)
14, The Corrections (Franzen)
15, Leviathan Wakes (Corey)
16, Middlemarch (Elliot)
17, Dune (Herbert)

I finished Moby-Dick a few months ago and I’m still sort of astonished I did. It’s more or less how I felt after finishing my first marathon. It’s an amazing, exhausting, frustrating and brilliant book, and I’ve been tumbling the themes and images over in my head since I completed it. There’s a lot to say about it, but since there’s probably little I could say that hasn’t been said before, I’ve held off writing about it.

As I read it, I kept thinking how theatrical the book was and, particularly, how cinematic. Melville paints rich pictures of the sea and sky, the bloody work of whaling and hard, sweaty labor of the men who do it. Consider this description, in chapter 96, of the three harpooners boiling blubber into oil at the Pequod’s “try-works” as the ship sailed deep into the night:

Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod , freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul.

Consider, also, the scenes when Tashtego falls into the whale’s skull, or when Ahab rails at the St. Elmo’s Fire on the masts, or when the Pequod is pursued by Malay pirates as it chases a pod of whales, or when Starbuck picks up Ahab’s musket and contemplates murdering the sleeping captain.

Melville wrote Moby-Dick as a novel, because what other choices did he have in 1850? The influence of Shakespeare is obvious, but the book would fail written as a play; without the sea and ship and, of course, the whale, it would lose all the tension between man and nature that is at the heart of the book. But what about a movie? If Melville were alive today, would he want Moby-Dick made into a movie? I think yes (not least because he was broke).

Moby-Dick has been filmed, and I was surprised to discover how many versions there are (I confess to having seen none of them). There’s the well-regarded 1956 version directed by John Huston (screenplay by Ray Bradbury!), with Gregory Peck as Ahab. There’s a 1998 TV movie, with Patrick Stewart as Ahab and Peck returning to play Father Mapple. There’s a 2011 TV miniseries, with William Hurt as Ahab and Ethan Hawke as Starbuck. There are silent versions, a cartoon versions, parody versions. There’s even a version set in a nuclear submarine, featuring a 400-foot whale that attacks helicopters. (Seriously. Check out the trailer.)

I conjured up a version directed by Steven Spielberg (Jaws meets Amistad!), and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Ahab. I had fun on Twitter casting the movie and soliciting suggestions. But I also encountered resistance from one follower, who argued that the format of the novel – which includes lengthy non-fiction digressions about whales and the history and nature of whaling – makes it impossible to film and maintain the integrity of the work. He argued that the digressions needed to be in the movie, as true to Melville as possible.

I disagree. Melville’s long, often tedious asides are essentially footnotes, there to help the reader understand the world of whaling. They’re not part of the narrative, but they support the narrative. In a movie, what’s necessary to the telling of Moby-Dick can be told through the characters, and what’s not can be excluded.

Slavish devotion to the source material can be as big a mistake as ignoring it. “Watchmen,” Zack Snyder’s 2009 movie version of the 1985 comic book, was as close to a panel-for-panel adaptation is possible, and yet failed because what works in a comic doesn’t necessarily work in film. Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Ring” struck the right balance, cutting scenes and manipulating the order of events to suit the conventions of movie making, yet staying true to the tone and spirit of Tolkien’s books.

Later this year, “In the Heart of the Sea,” a big-budget movie by Ron Howard opens. The movie is based on a 2000 non-fiction book by Nathanial Philbrick, but very prominently claims to be “based on the incredible true story that inspired Moby-Dick.” This might be Hollywood’s latest solution to tackling Melville: by adapting a modern book, it maintains a modern sensibility yet preserves the man vs. whale conflict at the heart of the book.

It’s understandable, but unfortunate, but because won’t have the slightly unhinged richness and mania of Melville. It easy to make an earnest account of the dangers of whaling; much harder to include – as Melville does – scenes of Fleece, the cook, arguing with sharks; Ishmael and the polynesian harpooner Queequeg sharing a bed in port; and later, Queequeg commissioning a coffin that eventually saves Ishmael life. Melville writes with humor, wit and passion, and that’s much harder to adapt for film than any of his treatises on whaling law or flensing technique.

(NOT Rosamond Vincy, but close enough. By Thomas Sully).

For the last month I’ve been steadily churning through Middlemarch, George Elliot’s masterpiece about class and society in an English country town. It is very good, and suggests all sorts of interesting questions, one of which I plan on writing about here. I have two caveats: I have not finished the book and it’s entirely possible the coming events will make this post meaningless. Also, there will be spoilers.

There are three main female characters in Middlemarch:

1, Dorothea Brooke is perhaps the most prominent of all characters in the novel. She’s headstrong, virtuous and naive. She pursues a marriage to Casaubon out of a sense of misplaced desire to have a life of significance and learns quickly the error of that decision. She loves Will Ladislaw, but is powerless to act upon it.

2, Mary Garth is a plain girl from a poor family, but has strength of character. She refuses to consider Fred Vincy until he gets his act together, and when urged to burn the will of Peter Featherstone, her employer on his death bed, she refuses, unwilling to be drawn into his family drama.

3, Rosamond Vincy is a pretty girl from a respectable family. Pursued by the town’s eligible men, notably the foppish Ned Plymdale, she is drawn to the confident doctor, Tertius Lydgate.

Initially, Rosamond has none of the dimension of Dorothea and Mary, and seems to serve only as a model of a respectable young woman of her age. For much of the book, Rosamond hovers in the background, appearing only drive home points about the male characters. We meet her first as the well-mannered good daughter, in contrast with her brother Fred, who is in debt and causing his family trouble. Then she’s the object of Lydgate’s attention,  and it’s in his courting of her that we see how superior he is to the other men of the Middlemarch.

But it’s through her marriage to Lydgate that her character is fully realized, and Rosamond becomes among the most interesting people in the novel. For Rosamond, Lydgate is a stepping stone to a bigger, more exciting world. He comes from a prominent family from northern England, and while he seems to despise them, she hopes to leverage his connections. She has no interest in his work as a doctor – she thinks his experiments are morbid –  but admires his breeding and status.

Lydgate’s intensity, however, has made him unpopular in town, and his reluctance to prescribe the useless medicines favored by his peers is viewed suspiciously by potential patients. His practice suffers, and he soon realizes their lavish lifestyle has left them in debt. He confronts Rosamond with this and tells her they need to sell some of the silver, and she is horrified. When Lydgate proposes additional sacrifices, including making do with one servant instead of three and – most drastically – moving into a smaller house, Rosamond rebels.

She quietly sabotages Lydgate’s efforts to find a new tenant for their house, and without telling him, writes his wealthy uncle asking for help. The uncle refuses, and Lydgate is aghast. Throughout their debt trauma, Lydgate is brusque and demanding, rejecting any suggestions from Rosamond about how to improve his practice and insisting she obey him. But as drawn by Elliot, she’s even worse.

Unwilling to accept any inconvenience, Rosamond conspires against her husband to advance her own goals. She listens placidly to Lydgate’s lecture, then ignores him, believing herself to be the injured party. Convinced of her correctness, she dismisses any other possibility. Lydgate, the uncle, the debtors, even her father, were all responsible for her distress:

“In fact, there was but one person in Rosamond’s world she did not view as blameworthy, and that was the graceful creature with blonde plaits and little hands crossed before her, who had never expressed herself unbecomingly, and had always acted for the best – the best naturally being what she best liked.”

Rosamond’s behavior is abominable. But, crucially, it is effective.

This is what make he so interesting: Rosamond pulls the few levers available to her to get what she wants. Consider her options in England of 1832. She resents her husband, who she believes has deceived her about the life together she was to expect. Divorce is not an option. She owns no property, and has no means to earn her own living. Instead, she exerts force where she can, squeezing Lydgate to get what she believes she is owed.  As she tells him: “I think it was to be expected that I should try to avert some of the hardships which our marriage has brought on me.”

In her view, he has defaulted on the contract and she is resolved to salvage what she can from it. As I stipulated, I haven’t finished the book, and it’s possible her resolve crumbles (or that she dies, a proven solution for disposing of inconvenient characters). But through this episode, at least, she manages her options deftly.

Compare her to the Dorothea Brooke, who never acts in her own interest, but sacrifices herself first to Casaubon, then to an idealized sense of propriety. Or Mary Garth, who rejects Featherstone’s promises of money her family desperately needs.

Rosamond isn’t likable, or even admirable. But in a novel – and world – where many characters, and most women, are swept along by forces out of their control, she is unyielding.

I picked up this famous novella because I wanted to read something English and specifically, London-ish. Despite my vow to whittle down my stack of unread novels, I was getting frustrated with the American content of the pile, given that I live  in London.

Like,  I suspect, a lot of people, I knew the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde without actually knowing the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That is, I knew the broad outlines, mostly as they’ve appeared in other media (in my case, comic books like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). I knew scientist Jekyll drank a potion and turned into the monstrous Hyde. The actual novella tells a slightly more complicated story.

Stevenson’s tale is a mystery that follows Gabriel Utterson, the lawyer of prosperous London physician Henry Jekyll. Utterson is in possession of a strange will of Jekyll, who leaves everything he owns to the mysterious Edward Hyde but refuses to explain their relationship. Utterson gradually learns that Hyde is a small, vicious thug, and when Hyde is witnessed bludgeoning a member of parliament to death, Utterson implores Jekyll to drop his association with Hyde. Jekyll assures Uttterson he has renounced all dealings with Hyde. Matters come to head after Jekyll’s servant report that Jekyll has disappeared and Hyde has taken his place and locked himself in Jekyll’s chambers. Utterson crashes through the locked doors to find Hyde dead of suicide and a long letter from Jekyll explaining what happened.

For a modern reader who know the basic story, the build up to the climax is frustrating. There’s no real mystery, and it’s just a matter of finding out how and why. Stevenson writes in typically ornate Victorian style, so we get a lot of detail about everyone’s appearance, their character, their motivations and in the case of Jekyll, his torment. It’s only in the last chapter, Jekyll’s account, that the story really comes alive. In his telling, Jekyll’s potion didn’t just transform him, but reverted him to his evil nature. Hyde is smaller than Jekyll (counter to my prior conception of the brutish Hyde) because the staid Jekyll theorized he suppressed that side of his character for so long it was under developed. As Hyde, he was aware of Jekyll, but, as he explains, viewed him as means to escape detection, in the way a bandit views his hideout cave. As Hyde, Jekyll gleefully indulges in his worst tendencies, which run toward violence but perhaps can be read as sexual deviancy, as well. In a Freudian structure, Jekyll is all superego and Hyde is all id. That within a proper English gentlemen lies a raging monster fits nicely with our modern idea of Victorian repression, and the dangers of not understanding our true nature.

While Jekyll initially had to consume his potion to transform into Hyde and back to Jekyll, soon he needs more and more to change back. Eventually, he is startled to discover that he changes into Hyde without the potion. After the murder, he resolves to never venture forth as Hyde again, only to discover he has run out of the chemical he needs for the potion. In his last lucid moments as Jekyll, he kills himself rather than live as Hyde forever.

Books completed this year:

1, The Man in the High Castle (Dick)
2, Disgrace (Coetzee)
3, The Finkler Question (Jacobson)
4, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Heinlein)
5, Beautiful Ruins (Walter)
6, Petropolis (Ulinich)
7, The Caves of Steel (Asimov)
9, Winter in the Blood (Welch)
10, Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel (Ulinich)
11, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Stevenson)