Finished: The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman (Sterne). Eh, one of those farcical books that I'm not so fond of, but so many authors recommended it in their top ten books of all time! It is a unique book...I'll give it that. The author apparently was meticulous about each book being printed just right because he did such unorthodox things as including squiggly lines -----~~~~~~---- in the middle of text...and sometimes little symbol-like drawings....or the use of strings of asterisks ******** for racier dialogue. And, he even left an entire chapter out that he decided not to include, but then also left those pages out...so the book literally goes from page 240 to page 251 with no pages in between. Oh, and later towards the end of the book when the author gets to the part of the book where one of the main characters is going to have "relations" with a lady friend, he leaves the two chapters with the details of what may have happened completely blank, lol. Granted, this was written in the 1700's, so the writing tended to be more prudish. However, Sterne was just a bit too out there for me. Not to mention, his many, many tangents!! He dedicated many pages to how he'd draw the lines to how his chapters had gone thus far (hence the squiggly lines) and self-admitted the tangents with signs of several loopy-de-loops in his straight lines. He was an obvious fan of Cervantes and his Quixote. Anyway...there were a few bits of the book I enjoyed, so I was determined to read it til the end!

I loved the good-natured, and true-hearted character of Tristam's Uncle Toby. As a matter of fact most of the book was about him! Tristam, who was the narrator, and who the book was supposed to be about, didn't even make his birth appearance until the third chapter. And then...much had already been made about the fact that 1) he'd had an unfortunate conception, 2) he was going to come out head first, which his father believed would squish his brain and make him dumb, 3) his nose was crushed by the doctor's forceps, leaving him with a small nose (his father believing that a large prominent nose was necessary for success), and 4) his unfortunate name. His father had wanted him to be named Trismegistus, after a respected Greek author...however the nurse messed the name up and told the baptismal priest Tristam, his father's "least favorite name in the world". See how even my blog post is nonsensical?? That's how the entire book was. :-)

So...a couple of passages and words of wisdom I liked.

Tristam's unfortunate conception. His mother blurts out a question to his father right in the middle of baby-making:

   I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;---that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;---and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;-----Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,-----I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me. Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracts and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter. "Pray, my Dear," quoth my mother, "have you not forgotten to wind up the clock?"-------"Good G--!" cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,----"Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly questions?" Let me tell you, it was a very unseasonable question at least,---because it scattered and dispersed the animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand in hand with the Homunculus, and conducted him safe to the place destined to be his reception. 

Once Tristam was born, his father set out writing out a detailed set of instructions for his successful and healthy childhood. He was so into his work, however, by the time Tristam was three years old, no one had even read the father's advice for the first three years, so it was basically useless, lol:

   This is the best account I am determined to give of the slow progress my father made in his Tristra-paedia; at which (as I said) he was three years, and something more, indefatigably at work, and, at last, had scarce completed, by his own reckoning, one half of his undertaking: the misfortune was, that I was all the time totally neglected and abandoned to my mother: and what was almost as bad, by the very delay, the first part of the work, upon which my father had spent most of his pains, was rendered entirely useless,---every day a page or two became of no consequence---
   ---Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, That the wisest of us all should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.

I love that last quote! :-) And, even though it was a struggle at times, I'm glad to have read the infamous Tristam Shandy!