Finished: Nostromo (Conrad) Well, it was a pretty good book, but not deserving, in my mind, to be ranked in the top 50 on nearly every book list I found. Maybe I'm missing something? I liked this book much more than Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and some of the writing was very nice, but it just isn't top 50 worthy to me...not really even top 100 worthy. The story of a small coastal town in South America that is rife with revolutions, there are several rich characters, and lots of action, but the story as a whole was a little disappointing. Nostromo is one of the main characters...an Italian transplant to the small town. He goes from being the right hand man of the town's ship's captain, to being the go-to guy about town for everything. Everyone counts on him to save the day, time after time....and he does. More than once he is the hero during the various revolutions. His character and morals are stellar, and most of the women fall in love with him. Two other main characters are the Goulds, Charles and Emily. They are English, but Charles being born in South America, has inherited the immense silver mine in the town from his father. Though the silver mine ruined his father, Charles has turned it into the economic mainstay for the town, for the whole area really. He procures a rich American backer and becomes immensely rich himself. He's fair to the local workers, but the silver mine becomes his life....even ranking over his lovely wife. The politics come and go, and different dictators come dangerously close to taking over the mine and even killing Charles at times. When a truly evil dictator is about to take over the town, the Goulds and other town bigwigs trust Nostromo with the job of transporting the current huge store of silver out of the town, out into the bay, and secretly onto a transport ship soon to come. This gives one of the other main characters, Martin Decaud, an idealist who hopes to go and rustle up some military strength to come back and liberate their town from the hold of the dictator, the opportunity to go with Nostromo and hopefully catch a ship for help. However, as Nostromo and Decaud row the silver out into the bay into the black of night, the transport ship approaches, but has been overtaken by yet another dictator whose sole purpose is to get to the town and steal the silver!! Nearly run over by the transport ship, whose captain doesn't realize he just passed the boat with the silver, Nostromo and Decaud have no choice but to make it to a small island, where Nostromo buries the silver and leaves Decaud with it. Telling Decaud he will be back for him in a few days, he swims back to shore. Why? Because he is Nostromo and he can do anything. Meanwhile, Decaud becomes distraught being alone, and also missing the beautiful Antonia, who he left behind and hopes to get back to with his idealistic "save the day". Nostromo arrives back so exhausted that he sleeps for 12 hours straight. When he awakens, he realizes that everyone thinks that he and Decaud have drowned and the silver is lost at the bottom of the bay. Nostromo becomes infuriated that he was used for such a task and that now everyone is going back about their business, and especially when Gould says, oh well, it's just silver. Nostromo had thought he'd been hired for the most important feat of their lives, yet it didn't seem so important anymore. The dictator who arrived in town for the silver starts torturing people to find out where the silver is. When Dr. Monygham, another main character, finds that Nostromo is alive, he convinces him to stay hidden until he can arrange for him to take a freight train out, go and get the General who Decaud was going after, and bring him back to fight the dictators and save the day. And, so he does. Nostromo is once again successful and a hero. Meanwhile, no one ever questions him that the silver may not actually be at the bottom of the bay. And, back on the island, Decaud becomes so unable to cope with his solitude when Nostromo hasn't returned in so long that he takes a few bars of silver to weigh down his clothing, goes out into the bay and shoots himself and sinks. :-(  As for our hero, jaded by how he feels used by all the bigwigs of the town, Nostromo, who was previously completely devoid of deception, decides to keep the silver for himself, digging it up a little bit at a time, until he slowly and patiently becomes rich. Unfortunately, Nostromo falls for the beautiful Gisele, who now lives on the little island with her father, Viola, an immense father-figure to Nostromo, and her sister Linda. He tells her of the silver, but says they cannot be together yet because he needs to get more of it into their hands before they can run off together. Viola doesn't realize that Nostromo sneaks back to the island every night to take a little bit of silver at a time. One night, thinking another town man has sneaked onto the island to kidnap his beautiful daughter, Viola accidentally shoots Nostromo and he dies. So, both Gould and Nostromo are lost due to their obsession with the silver....Gould just lost to the mine as his "mistress" and Nostromo, lost to this physical world. There is much more detail, and there are many tangents of story that I have missed, of course, but that is the gist of the book. That, and the fact that the "big bad European foreigners" came to town and basically used the locals for their own gain in wealth, even backing the right revolutionists at the right time, whether right or wrong, to keep the mine and the profits going. Anyway...as I said, it was a pretty good book, but not among my favorite that I have read in this journey. I like the name Nostromo though. :-)