Saturday, May 21, 2016
Review: Spoon River Anthology
WHEN I Discovered This Classic I found an illustrated 1915 edition of this book in a used bookstore.
WHY I Chose to Read It I needed a break from Midnight's Children, and this was a nice break.
WHAT Makes It A Classic I think that there are a couple of things that make this book a classic, but mostly the unique form. The book is a collection of poems, each of which is the epitaph of one of the denizens of the town cemetery. Woven together they tell a story of the town and it's inhabitants over time.
WHAT I Thought of This Classic I enjoyed it. I will probably read it again.
WILL It Stay A Classic I would guess so.
WHO I’d Recommend It To I would recommend this book to people who enjoy poetry, words, and who would enjoy the challenge of piecing together the story from the many bits of information.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
Book Review: The Good Neighbor
The Good Neighbor by A.J. BannerMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
This was so dreadful. I got it for free on Amazon, and I started reading it one night when I wanted to use my Kindle so my husband could sleep. At first I thought that the writing was just very simple. Sometimes, with good plotting and characters, that works. But this didn't have any of that. Just over halfway through I got to a section that was so badly written, that if it had been a book, and not my Kindle, I would have thrown it. Why, oh why, Amazon reviewers, did this have four stars? Abandoned, unfinished.
View all my reviews
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Books to read again
My blog seems like as good a place as any for a list like this. I keep thinking of books that I want to read again; and want to capture those thoughts.
Some I have read once, and some many times.
Some have been brought back to mind by seeing someone else reading the book.
Some have been discussed in something that I have read recently.
Some want to be reread now, at a different time in my life than when I first encountered them.
Some I just love so much that I know they need rereading.
My plan is to try to read at least a few of these this year, and when I do write a reflection on the rereading. I will be adding to this list over time.
-Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
-The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon
-Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamot
-Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
-. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmeyer
Some I have read once, and some many times.
Some have been brought back to mind by seeing someone else reading the book.
Some have been discussed in something that I have read recently.
Some want to be reread now, at a different time in my life than when I first encountered them.
Some I just love so much that I know they need rereading.
My plan is to try to read at least a few of these this year, and when I do write a reflection on the rereading. I will be adding to this list over time.
-Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
-The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon
-Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamot
-Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
-. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmeyer
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Review: Gone With the Wind
So my April classic challenge read was Gone With the Wind. I need to answer the following questions about it:
WHEN I Discovered This Classic
WHY I Chose to Read It
WHAT Makes It A Classic
WHAT I Thought of This Classic
WILL It Stay A Classic
WHO I’d Recommend It To
Like most people, my first exposure to GWTW was via the movie. I had not ever really thought much about the book, but it kept popping up on various lists of books that should be read, great books, etc., so I added it to my Filling in the GAPS Challenge list. I love historical fiction, and Margaret Mitchell was removed enough from the time period of the novel that it qualifies as historical fiction. Also, as a history major, I became very interested in the experience of the Civil War in the south and the difficulties of reconstruction.
I think that the timeless themes that GWTW deals with are part of the reason it's a classic. Survival, adaptability, love--of people, land, money, a way of life, are among the major themes of the movie. . In addition, the writing is good, and the story is compelling. The novel Vanity Fair is subtitled "A Novel Without a Hero," and I felt that that would have been a very appropriate subtitle for this book. I kept feeling echoes of other women in literature who were the strivers, schemers, or the ruiners of their own happiness. In different ways I found Scarlett to bring to mind Rebecca Sharp, Lily Bart, Emma Bovary, & Anna Karenina. The characters are flawed, but real. (With the exception of Mammy. Mammy is awesome.)
This book left me with such mixed feelings. I enjoyed the story and the writing, but it is difficult to read such a rose-colored view of slavery. Yes, some slaves were well-treated, and some did choose to stay with the families who had owned them after emancipation. Some were nearly family, being freed and left property, etc., but even the most well-treated were property. And many more were not treated well, were brutalized, hunted, etc.
It will be interesting to see what happens with GWTW as a classic. There are those who are trying to erase from history or culture any indications that the Civil War had issues and causes aside from slavery. There are those who deny many of the realities of the reconstruction era, the Democrat political background of the KKK, and the way that racism was propagated and enshrined in law up through the Jim Crow era. There has already been a published call to ban it, from a writer in the NY Post. This book doesn't hew to the ONE RIGHT WAY to look at history, so who knows how long it will last.
I would recommend this to people who like long books and historical fiction, don't mind reading a book in which they don't really like most of the characters, don't need a happy ending, and can look at a variety of viewpoints on history to try to understand the motivations and thought of the people at the time, without trying to retrofit modern attitudes to another time and place.
WHEN I Discovered This Classic
WHY I Chose to Read It
WHAT Makes It A Classic
WHAT I Thought of This Classic
WILL It Stay A Classic
WHO I’d Recommend It To
Like most people, my first exposure to GWTW was via the movie. I had not ever really thought much about the book, but it kept popping up on various lists of books that should be read, great books, etc., so I added it to my Filling in the GAPS Challenge list. I love historical fiction, and Margaret Mitchell was removed enough from the time period of the novel that it qualifies as historical fiction. Also, as a history major, I became very interested in the experience of the Civil War in the south and the difficulties of reconstruction.
I think that the timeless themes that GWTW deals with are part of the reason it's a classic. Survival, adaptability, love--of people, land, money, a way of life, are among the major themes of the movie. . In addition, the writing is good, and the story is compelling. The novel Vanity Fair is subtitled "A Novel Without a Hero," and I felt that that would have been a very appropriate subtitle for this book. I kept feeling echoes of other women in literature who were the strivers, schemers, or the ruiners of their own happiness. In different ways I found Scarlett to bring to mind Rebecca Sharp, Lily Bart, Emma Bovary, & Anna Karenina. The characters are flawed, but real. (With the exception of Mammy. Mammy is awesome.)
This book left me with such mixed feelings. I enjoyed the story and the writing, but it is difficult to read such a rose-colored view of slavery. Yes, some slaves were well-treated, and some did choose to stay with the families who had owned them after emancipation. Some were nearly family, being freed and left property, etc., but even the most well-treated were property. And many more were not treated well, were brutalized, hunted, etc.
It will be interesting to see what happens with GWTW as a classic. There are those who are trying to erase from history or culture any indications that the Civil War had issues and causes aside from slavery. There are those who deny many of the realities of the reconstruction era, the Democrat political background of the KKK, and the way that racism was propagated and enshrined in law up through the Jim Crow era. There has already been a published call to ban it, from a writer in the NY Post. This book doesn't hew to the ONE RIGHT WAY to look at history, so who knows how long it will last.
I would recommend this to people who like long books and historical fiction, don't mind reading a book in which they don't really like most of the characters, don't need a happy ending, and can look at a variety of viewpoints on history to try to understand the motivations and thought of the people at the time, without trying to retrofit modern attitudes to another time and place.
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