Category: Classics

Reading Update: August 2, 2010

Posted on by Dana

Finished scarfAfter finishing The Map of True Places, I decided to re-read The Lace Reader. I won’t give away the spoilery ending, but I will say that The Lace Reader is an interesting and different book on a re-read after the reader knows how it ends. I had forgotten that Ann Chase, who appears in The Map of True Places, was also in this book, but when she mentions being friends with Towner Whitney, I looked it up and discovered she had indeed been a character. She is such a fun character and so well drawn. It would be interesting for Barry to give her a story in which she takes center stage. Barry casts Ann Chase as a descendant of Giles and Martha Corey, which isn’t possible because they had no children together. I don’t know if it’s a mistake, poetic license, or Towner’s error. It might have been fun to cast Ann as a descendant of John and Elizabeth Proctor—perhaps even the baby Elizabeth was carrying that saved her life until the hysteria died down. Lace reading is one of those things that sounds so true it’s a bit of a surprise to learn that Brunonia Barry invented it. I’ll bet it has some practitioners now. At any rate, I think I’m actually enjoying this novel more on a re-read than I did the first time around, perhaps because I recently visited the novel’s setting or perhaps because I’m reading it with different eyes knowing the ending. Either way, I’m turning the pages. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Barry signed my paperback copies of The Lace Reader in addition to my copies of The Map of True Places. I won two copies of each book as part of my prize package. I’m on about page 60, but will probably read some more before I call it night.

Aside from The Lace Reader, I’m also reading Georgette Heyer’s Charity Girl for Austenprose’s Celebration of Georgette Heyer. It’s a quick read, but I have to admit that the Regency slang is hard for me to navigate. I have had to use the dictionary a lot (thank goodness I’m reading it on my Kindle, so that’s easy). I have a quibble with the Kindle edition, however. Many of the words are broken up (i.e. to gether) and the paragraphs are formatted wrong. No indentation at the beginning of a new one and little indication of a new paragraph. It’s been maddening to read from an aesthetic viewpoint. I think I’ll finish it quickly. I’m 46% done now.

I am also reading Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, which I have never read. I am teaching American literature again this year, and it’s the only required book for summer reading. The other books are choice books. Because we are supposed to teach the required book as our first unit, I need to read it. It’s not bad, but it’s not really what I want to read right now in my current frame of mind, so I’ve not got too far. I’m also reading it on the Kindle, and I’m 12% finished.

So what are you reading? Is it good?

photo credit: Maria Keays

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Reading Update: July 31, 2010

Posted on by Dana

WitchI have been reading Georgette Heyer’s Regency romance Charity Girl for the Celebration of Georgette Heyer at Austenprose. I am about 1/3 the way through. I also picked up Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms because I need to have it read before school starts: it’s summer reading for my 10th grade students, and I haven’t read it before. I know, shocking! I like it so far, but I can’t deny that I have truly been wanting to read something set in Salem ever since my trip. I tried to tell myself I was going to finish these two books first and then I could indulge, but you know what? It’s summer, and I’m going to read it now if I want to. So I have started Brunonia Barry’s The Map of True Places. I will probably move on to something else set in Salem for as long as the mood lasts. I had a wonderful time there, and I so enjoyed seeing everything I had read about.

Plus, how cool is it that the first few results in my Photodropper plugin that helps me find Flickr images I can use on my blog returned my own photographs?

photo credit: danahuff

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Sense and Sensibility

Posted on by Dana

Sense And SensibilityJane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is the story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood who, along with their younger sister Margaret, are children of their father’s second marriage. When their father dies, their older half-brother John and his wife Fanny decide not to provide for their younger sisters and step-mother, leaving them in much reduced circumstances. Fanny does everything in her power to make her husband’s family feel unwelcome, especially in light of Elinor’s attachment to Fanny Dashwood’s brother Edward Ferrars, which Fanny sees as an inappropriate match for her brother. The family removes to a cottage in Devonshire, where Marianne meets and falls in love with John Willoughby. The novel follows the romantic fortunes and misfortunes of Elinor and Marianne as they learn to strike a balance between sense and sensibility.

I first read this novel in 1998, during my first year as a high school teacher. It was refreshing to return to it again and discover I loved it as much as I remembered. I had completely forgotten Willoughby returns upon hearing of Marianne’s illness to confess he still loves Marianne to Elinor. I can’t remember if that scene was absent from both movies I’ve seen or just the most recent. I have always admired Elinor as the kind of person who puts others before herself and rolls up her sleeves to do what must be done. I wish I were more like her. To Marianne’s credit, she realizes her behavior is selfish and repents of it. Her essential romantic nature and love for music and books is what I admire about her.

I can’t tell if I like this book better than Pride and Prejudice or not. Elizabeth Bennet is a spunky, admirable character, and Mr. Darcy a worthy romantic hero. Yet, the Misses Dashwood certainly have their charms. I have thoroughly enjoyed my re-reads of both books this year.

Rating: ★★★★★

I re-read this novel for the Everything Austen Challenge. It is the second of six Austen-related activities I have planned. Others:

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My Life in Books: To Kill a Mockingbird

Posted on by Dana

To Kill a MockingbirdMy first encounter with To Kill a Mockingbird came in sixth grade. As a reward, our classes were allowed to watch the movie during school. It was such a great story. Two years later, I was looking at the books my language arts teacher had on her library rack, and I picked up the copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. With the unerring sense of an English teacher sniffing a student interested in a book, she was at my side in a moment asking me if I would like to read the book. I sheepishly put it back on the rack. I was scared to read it at that time, and I can’t think why. I had read other adult books, and one could argue that this, despite it’s cover, was not even an adult book. The cover was yellow with some adult-looking print.

Yellow To Kill a Mockingbird

I thought it looked like a mystery or a spy novel. I don’t think I put it together with the movie I had already seen.

To Kill a Mockingbird was assigned reading in my 11th grade English class (American lit.). I usually have a hard time keeping up with a school reading schedule, but I stayed ahead in this book. I devoured it. I read more than I was assigned. I was entranced by the characters. I fell in love with the book. It was the first assigned novel I read for school that I really liked.

What Harper Lee did masterfully in this book is capture real people. I knew folks just like all the characters in the book. While the book has some critics, I still consider it one of the best books I’ve ever read and one I would definitely consider worthy of its place in the literary canon. Parts of this book still have the power to make me laugh aloud and cry real tears. My favorite books have almost always been character-driven. I love good characters, and I am willing to forgive flawed writing and hackneyed plot if the characters are good. I think I trace that love of character to my first experience reading To Kill a Mockingbird.

In the years since that first reading over twenty years ago, I have had the pleasurable experience of teaching the novel, and many times, students react to it in the same way that I did. Harper Lee has famously described the novel as “a love story.” In a way, it is. It’s a snapshot of a moment in time and place. It’s a moving homage to Lee’s own father, Amasa Lee, who was her model for Atticus—Harper Lee gave Gregory Peck, who played Atticus in the film, her father’s own pocket watch. It’s a loving tribute to the innocence of childhood. To Kill a Mockingbird means so many things to so many people. My personal hero Morris Dees says he became a lawyer because of Atticus Finch.

Happy 50th birthday, To Kill a Mockingbird.

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Reading Update: July 1, 2010

Posted on by Dana

Well Read. tee-shirt on sale at the Decatur Book Festival, September 2009I am in the midst of reading three books at the moment: Gulliver’s Travels via DailyLit, The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox (paperback), and The Three Weissmanns of Westport (Kindle).

As of today, I have read 80 of 115 sections via email of Gulliver’s Travels. My verdict so far: I am ready to be finished with it. My favorite part has been Gulliver’s stay in Brobdingnag, which might change before I finish the book. As I read, I find myself annoyed with Gulliver for repeatedly abandoning his family on what look like frivolous voyages to me. If I were his wife, I’d have divorced him.

The Meaning of Night is taking me some time to get into. I’m currently on p. 244 out of about 700. I am being patient because my husband says it’s really good, but it hasn’t grabbed my interest yet. My husband keeps saying it will, and he rarely gushes about books. I don’t think I can give the book too much longer or I will have given it too much for too little return. It does have a good atmosphere, and the author captures Victorian England well.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport is indeed Sense and Sensibility set in modern Westport, CT and New York. I like it so far. It’s full of modern pop culture references (Gawker, Oprah, subtle shades of James Frey). I’m not sure how well it will stand the test of time as a result. I think the author does more telling rather than showing, but I’m entertained and intrigued enough to finish. I’m 41% finished with it. I’m reading it for the Everything Austen Challenge.

What are you reading? What do you think of it?

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Sunday Post #38: December

Multiple Copies

Posted on by Dana

Emma’s recent comment on my review of The Annotated Pride and Prejudice inspired this post. I don’t own multiple copies of many books, but I do own multiple copies of a few. Perhaps it is telling in terms of my literary interests?

I own two copies of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-TimeThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The image on the left is the US cover of the novel, and the reason I have a copy of that edition is that I use it to teach the novel. The image on the right, which is my favorite of the two, is the UK edition, which my friend Roger sent me.

I have three editions of Wuthering Heights. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite book, but it might be Wuthering Heights. Certainly it’s safe to say it’s one of my favorites based on the number of copies I own.

Wuthering Heights, Norton Critical EditionWuthering Heights, Barnes and Noble Classics SeriesWuthering Heights audiobook

I have the Norton Critical Edition for teaching. It includes a variety of lit. crit. articles and reviews. I think it might be most appropriate for college studies, but I use it with my high school students, too. I am not a fan of the Norton typeface, and neither are my students. I especially like Emily Brontë’s diary, which is included in this text. The edition to its right is the Barnes and Noble classics series edition. I love the pink cover and the beautiful image on the cover (Weymouth Bay by John Constable). This edition is the first one I read. It is directed at high school students, I think, and it has really good footnotes, a list of famous quotations from the novel (with page references),  Charlotte Brontë’s preface to the 1850 edition, an introduction by Daphne Merkin and notes on the Yorkshire dialect by Tatiana M. Holway, and a good family tree in the front. For some inexplicable reason, the Norton edition, which throws in everything but the kitchen sink, does not have a family tree. I don’t know how to keep track of the characters in Wuthering Heights without a family tree. The third edition I own is the audiobook as narrated by Janet McTeer and David Timson. Janet McTeer has actually played Nelly Dean before. Both actors do a masterful job with the text, McTeer of course reading the parts narrated by Nelly Dean, and Timson the parts narrated by Lockwood. I have every intention of buying an edition for my Kindle (I am just settling on the right one). *Yes, I bought a Kindle after doing the research on Kindles, Nooks, and iPads, and I will post about it, soon.* I also really want a paper copy of this edition because I’m in love with the cover:

Wuthering Heights Penguin Edition

Here is the full image, front and back:

Ruben Toledo Wuthering Heights cover

Click on the image to see a larger version. Gorgeous, right?

I also own two editions of Pride and Prejudice: the annotated edition Emma described as her favorite (mine, too), and the Bantam Classics edition, which was the first edition I read.

The Annotated Pride and PrejudicePride and Prejudice, Bantam Classics

The cover of The Annotated Pride and Prejudice is actually a drawing of Austen’s niece, Fanny Knight. Bantam‘s cover painting is Miss Rosamond Croker by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

There was a time when I didn’t mind mass market paperbacks at all. Over the last few years, I have decided I don’t like them much, and I don’t know whether to attribute it to older age and failing eyesight or the fact that mass markets crowd too many words on the page, too closely together, which just doesn’t make for as pleasant a reading experience as a trade paperback or hardcover. For a mass market, the BN edition of Wuthering Heights is pretty nice, and the words aren’t too crowded, but the Bantam edition of P&P—well, the Bantam edition of anything, really—seems more crowded. I actually stopped reading my Bantam edition of Persuasion because it was too hard on my eyes and took up reading the book on Stanza on my iPhone.

I have two editions of Persuasion, too. The Bantam edition I just mentioned and an audiobook version I won from Austenprose. I haven’t listened to the audiobook yet, but I am excited to do so. I’m not sure whether Persuasion or Sense and Sensibility is my second favorite Austen novel. Maybe they’re tied. Nah. Sense and Sensibility is second. But I do love Persuasion, and I especially love Captain Wentworth’s letter. I deleted Persuasion from my iPhone after I finished it to save space. I wouldn’t necessarily do that on my Kindle because I only intend to have books on the Kindle, but my iPhone has all my music and tons of other apps, too.

The only other books I own multiple copies of are the Harry Potter series. I have multiple copies of these books for several reasons:

  1. I have read some of them so many times I literally wore them out and had to replace them.
  2. We couldn’t share books when they were first released because we all wanted to read them (we have multiple copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows).
  3. I really wanted the tenth anniversary edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I have to say the paper feels very nice, and the cover is gorgeous.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Which books do you own multiple copies of and why? Please share in the comments.

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Crime and Punishment

Posted on by Dana

Crime and PunishmentThough I wasn’t due to finish Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment via DailyLit until next week, I decided to go ahead and finish today. I really wanted to like this book. It’s one of those books you hear a lot about. It’s one of those books people like to say they’ve read. I should preface this review by saying that I’ve read very few Russian classics. I tried to read Dr. Zhivago; my sister Lara is named after Yuri Zhivago’s love interest. I couldn’t get into it, even though I loved the movie. I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (review), and I really didn’t like it all that much, although I found the concept intriguing.

The central character of Crime and Punishment is Raskolnikov, a student in St. Petersburg who murders a pawn broker and her sister with an axe. Most of the book centers around his mental state both before and after the crime. I had a great deal of difficulty with the names. Some of the characters have nicknames, which made it nearly impossible for me to keep up with the characters. I’m sure this is purely a cultural-based confusion because if a character in a book were named William but variously called Will, Willie, or Bill by other characters, I doubt I’d have trouble. However, in a book with names that are already challenging for me to keep straight, I found myself quickly confused, and I think that confusion hampered my enjoyment of the novel. I might have done better to read a version with more notes. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that the end result is that I’ve been put off Dostoyevsky. I’m not sure I’d want to try another book of his after not enjoying this one, especially when I think about the large number of books in the world I could read instead that I might truly enjoy. I found parts of the book compelling—the murder scene, Svidrigailov’s death, a fight among some of the women (whose characters I confess I had the most difficulty keeping straight) in the middle of the book, and the end—but these moments were few. Most of the book I found hard to get through both because of my confusion and because the story was not grabbing my interest. I had already reached what I call “the point of no return” before I decided I didn’t like the book. The “point of no return” is the point at which you’ve read so far into the book that you feel you should just go ahead and finish. I really, really wanted to like this book, which is why I pushed myself up to that point. When I realized I didn’t like it, I felt sad. I have so rarely been disappointed by classics.

My next novel from DailyLit will be Gulliver’s Travels, a much shorter novel, and one I have neglected. I was supposed to have read it in high school, but I found it difficult to understand at that age. I think I will enjoy it better twenty years on from the last time I tried to pick it up. It’s a British book, which will enable me to continue to the next level in the Typically British Challenge.

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Pride and Prejudice

Posted on by Dana

Pride and PrejudiceI first read Pride and Prejudice during my first year teaching (which was 1997-1998, and I know it was 1998 when I read the novel). I fell in love with Jane Austen that year. Despite my affection for Ms. Austen, I had not re-read any of her novels, though I have watched adaptations in film. I decided I was overdue for a re-read of Pride and Prejudice, and this annotated version of the novel appealed to the scholar in me. I had hoped to learn some new interesting things or gain new insights from the David Shapard’s annotations, and I was not disappointed.

In some cases, the annotations were repetitive (for example, for each reference to “town,” Shapard reminds the reader that “town” refers to London). However, learning the differences between the different types of carriages, gaining insight into the conventions of the day, and so much more that I can’t possibly list it all here really enhanced my enjoyment of the book. I am currently listening to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and I find that the annotations in Pride and Prejudice have enhanced my enjoyment of that novel, too—after all, it owes a great deal to Jane Austen. A sojourn in Jane Austen’s novels is always rewarding, and I wonder if it’s possible to feel homesick for a place you’ve never even been except in books.

If you haven’t seen the new blog Following Jane, you might want to check it out. It’s interesting to read the perspectives of man dedicating himself to reading all of Jane Austen’s novels and blogging about his experiences. In a recent post written before he started Northanger Abbey, his first selection, he mentioned he was anxious to finish the book he had been reading at the time so that he could start reading Austen. I know that feeling. As I reach the end of the book, my thoughts are turning toward my next read, which will be A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro. All the talk about Shapiro’s new book, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, has inspired quite a lot of quick reviews of A Year in the Life, which I have on my shelf and haven’t read. Austen and Shakespeare, my two favorite authors. How I’d love to sit down and have tea with them both.

Typically British Challenge

Pride and Prejudice is my fourth selection for the Typically British Challenge, and concludes the “Gordon Bennett” level of four novels that I committed to read. I may read other British authors over the course of the year (the challenge expires on December 31), but I can claim for the first time ever that I actually finished a reading challenge.

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Reading Updates

Posted on by Dana

I have three books going at the moment. I am listening to The Help whenever I’m in the car, and sometimes I have to sit in the car a little longer so I can finish a particularly good part. I am absolutely loving this book, and I can’t wait to discuss it with my faculty’s book club.

I’m also re-reading Pride and Prejudice. This annotated version is helping me understand nuances I’m not sure I picked up the first time I read it years ago. The only problem I have with the annotations is that they give away much of the plot. I would like to use this edition with students, but some of the annotations should be read as they are reading, and some will give away the plot a great deal, which I think some students may find frustrating.

Finally, I am still working through Crime and Punishment on DailyLit. I am just not enjoying it at all. I found the murder of Alyona Ivanovna and her sister Lizaveta chilling and compelling to read, but for a few scenes since that time, the book never grabbed me. I am close enough to the end to stick it out, but I’m not inclined to read any more Dostoyevsky. I don’t know whether I should feel stupid that I’m not getting something that so many people in the past have clearly enjoyed and esteemed, or just accepting that it’s OK to feel the way I feel about this book.

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Tales of the Jazz Age

Posted on by Dana

Tales of the Jazz AgeAmerican literature lovers (and teachers)! Tales of the Jazz Age: 11 Classic Short Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald is available on Amazon for $4.99. I don’t usually do this kind of thing, but it sounded like a great value to me, so I’m passing it on. The collection includes “The Jelly Bean,” “The Camel’s Back,” “May Day,” “Porcelain and Pink,” “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Tarquin of Cheapside,” “O Russet Witch,” “The Lees of Happiness,” “Mr. Icky,” and “Jemina.” I’m not sure how long this price is effective, but I decided it would make a nice addition to my library, and I thought I’d pass it on to anyone else who might be interested.

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