The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

I am very proud to say that I finished this book. Now that that's out of the way, I should tell you that this post will not at all resemble a review, because I feel completely underqualified to pass any kind of judgment on this book.

I know there are a lot of you out there who have either never read the book, or couldn't finish it. That's the very reason I finished it. (Shamelessly.) I made very little effort to really understand the book. In the beginning, I almost believed that I would finish it and have so little to think or say about it when I was done that I would hardly be able to blog about it, but I actually have plenty to say about it.

The truth is, I'm not sure Faulkner even really intended this book to be understood. (But like I said, I can't make any real judgments, because I haven't devoted any time to the study of the book or Faulkner--I just read through it.) It reminds me of art. Most art is pretty much beyond me. Even the art that seems obvious (nothing is obvious to me in art). But even though I can't see much meaning in a lot of art, that doesn't mean I can't look at it and feel emotion. And isn't that kind of the point of art, anyway? That's exactly how I felt about The Sound and the Fury. I don't even really know enough about it that I could write an accurate summary. But I sure felt emotional about it. The first chapter made me feel uneasy and almost afraid of what the rest of the book had to offer. The second chapter made me feel sick but had me flipping pages constantly. The third chapter made me so angry I had trouble finishing. And the last chapter...well, in the last chapter, I finally got to the part that wasn't very emotional at all, but was all the descriptive and introductory stuff you usually find in the first chapter of the book.

I've heard people say that the best way to read The Sound and the Fury is to read it backwards. And believe it or not, it would actually be way easier to understand that way. But I'm not sure that it would necessarily be easier to read. I think the last chapter might be Faulkner's way of peering over his glasses at us pointedly and saying, "Now do you see the value of the other chapters?" (I don't know whether he wore glasses or not, but he probably did at some point, right?)

Literary Heroes and Heroines

Here's the meme question for this month:

Who is hands-down the best literary hero, in your opinion? Likewise, who is the best heroine? 

That's a toughie. The best literary hero, I would have to say, is Jean Valjean from Les Miserables. He is just way too amazing to be passed up by any other literary hero. Enough said.

Literary heroine is a little bit harder. Jane Eyre would be a good choice, of course. Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird is pretty great, too. And I really love both Scarlett and Melanie from Gone With the Wind. And then there's Jo in Little Women. And Margaret Hale in North and South. All great in different ways.

What do you think? Which literary heroes and heroines are the best?

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

This was the book chosen for me for the Classics Spin. For the most part, I was relieved, because this book is so short and easy. But on the other hand, I've already attempted to read it twice now, and neither time did I successfully make it to the end of the book.

This is rather embarrassing for me, since this is one of the shortest, easiest novels in the history of the Western canon. Plus, I'd already read The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway, and I loved that one. So why could I never get into this book?

Well, I started out fairly similar to how I started out before. The book seemed almost too simple. It's all about a fisherman trying to catch a big fish. All by himself. In a little boat out in the middle of the ocean. I don't know anything about fishing, and it doesn't particularly interest me. I kept finding myself thinking, Just CATCH the stupid thing, already! (I'm not really proud of that.)

But this time, finally, about halfway through, I started to see something much more to this book than just a simple fishing story. Probably since I had just read The Paris Wife, I started questioning why Hemingway himself was so emotionally invested in this story. I actually first compared the fish to his marriage to Hadley (probably, again, because of The Paris Wife). The fish was actually too good for Santiago, the fisherman; it was so big and so wonderful that he couldn't protect it, and lost it before he got to shore. But then I arrived at what is probably the most common interpretation, which is that the fish could represent Hemingway's own success in writing--a rather miserable thought, actually. Hemingway was getting along in years himself when he wrote The Old Man and the Sea, and he may have begun to think that he had tried to go too far out to sea by being a writer, and that he wasn't good enough or strong enough to write his own ideas. The supposed "irony" of this (according to the introduction) is that the book won a Nobel Prize, but I'm not sure that's actually ironic. Hemingway probably felt just the same about his writing pre-Nobel Prize as he did after it.

Beating Up Austen...Or Not

Here's the question from The Classics Club for March:

Do you love Jane Austen or want to "dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone?" (Phrase borrowed from Mark Twain).

1. Why? (For either answer)?

2. Favorite and/or least favorite Jane Austen novel?

Well. I do feel that as a classics blogger, Jane Austen tends to follow me around everywhere, and this is just more evidence of that. But I always love to answer the Classics Club questions and I haven't quite addressed this on my blog yet, so I'll answer it.

I've heard numerous complaints about Austen, but the main one I've heard is that her novels are distant, cold, and inaccessible. And I would have to say that I agree with them. But I also really like Jane Austen.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

This book was my much-anticipated leap into the wilderness of Dickens. I knew next to nothing about the plot (I think I had it a little mixed up with David Copperfield and Oliver Twist), so ironically, I jumped into it with few expectations at all.

If you are anything like me and need some informing about the plot line, the story follows young Pip, an orphan being "brought up by hand" by his rather unloving sister and his kind but ignorant brother-in-law Joe. Pip gets into some trouble, meets some rich people, and decides that he isn't at all happy with his life and his future as he knows it (he's destined to become a blacksmith), and he dreams of being a gentleman. Then one day he discovers that he is about to "come into property," and he has "great expectations" by the hand of a mysterious benefactor. 

Of course, I've left out some important details, but that's the gist of it. The story is about Pip growing up, making some foolish mistakes, and in the end, learning what's truly important in life. 

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Ivanhoe, set in medieval England, is the story of the knight Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a Saxon, who seeks to help Richard the Lionhearted come back to power, defeat several cunning and vicious Normans, and marry his sweetheart, the Lady Rowena. Along the way, we meet various characters--Saxon, Norman, and even Jew--who are intent on supporting King Richard, Prince John, or on raising their own Saxon royalty back to power.

I read this gorgeous
collector's edition.

During the first 100 pages or so of Ivanhoe, I'll admit I was not impressed. The characters seemed stereotypical and flat, the plot seemed overdone and uninspired, and everything about the story seemed unrealistic and fantastic (and not in a good way). It seemed to me (as I mentioned in this post) that Sir Walter Scott was using history to serve as a convenient backdrop to his own heroical fantasies.

But after doing a bit of analysis on the character of Cedric and learning about Sir Walter Scott, I began to see a little deeper into this book. I began to see a side of Ivanhoe where history doesn't take second place to story; story serves to illuminate history.

The characters weren't what I would call "real," but I began to see them less as stereotypes (Hero, Villain, Damsel in Distress, etc.) than as representations. Cedric himself is the older generation; he wants to keep everything the same, to preserve the traditions of his people. The next generation, however (Ivanhoe and Rowena) aren't really interested in this purpose; although they respect Saxons, they are less interested in preserving the actual blood line than they are in preserving the Saxon values (courage, masculinity, integrity). They respect Richard Coeur-de-Lion because he is good and just to everyone, not just his own people.

The story is really about how a nation is created by merging two distinct peoples and cultures. As the reader, we can see both sides. Cedric, as well as the other Saxons, are disrespected and insulted by the Normans; naturally, they want to take control of their own nation again and get rid of the Normans. But on the other hand, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, who is a Norman himself, is a good king and promises to be just to both Norman and Saxon (and he carries out his promise). Why not create a new nation where both can dwell as one under a good ruler?

And your lucky number is...

Last week, I signed up to participate in the Classics Spin hosted by The Classics Club. The number of the book we're supposed to read was announced yesterday! Even though I'm not posting this until today, I was really excited about it...so excited, in fact, that I ran to the computer to check yesterday morning. (My classics nerdiness is almost overwhelming.)

The number chosen was number 14, which means that I will be reading...

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 

Wow! What a relief! I was so afraid one of my big chunksters was going to get chosen, I rushed to finish Ivanhoe before yesterday so I wouldn't have three big books to read at a time. (I will get to those chunksters one day, though!) I'm pretty sure The Old Man and the Sea is the shortest book on my spin list, and I could probably read it in a day.

To be honest, I've tried to read this book twice now, with no success. Twice! And it's one of the shortest and easiest classics there is. I really don't know what my deal is with this book. So now I'll have some real motivation to finish it. I'll probably wait until March to read it, so I can focus on finishing Great Expectations this month and so it will match up with A Modern March.

Are you participating in the Classics Spin? Which book are you going to read by April 1st?

February Classics Club Meme, and some burning questions

Here is the Classics Club meme question for this month:

"What classic has surprised you most so far, and why?" 

The book that immediately comes to my mind is Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Even though I had been told otherwise, there was still a part of me that was expecting the book to in some way actually resemble the black and white film adaptation I saw growing up. Well, of course, it didn't--not at all! I was stunned by how powerful and poignant the book turned out to be. I think it's unfortunate that this great book sometimes get overlooked as a classic because of its current reputation. Plus, it's a pretty quick and easy read! Definitely recommend it.

Now that I have your attention, I also have a couple of questions that I really hope you'll help me answer!

First: Ever since I've been blogging (which, as some of you may know, hasn't been very long), I've been interested in read-alongs, especially for some of the more difficult books I have on my Classics Club list (like Moby Dick and War and Peace). So I've been on the lookout for these things to be announced. However, every time I hear about a read-along, it's from a participant who's already halfway into it and it's too late for me. Any tips from more seasoned, experienced bloggers on how to find good read-alongs (in time to actually participate in them)?

Second: I really need to add a book by Emile Zola to my Classics Club list, but I'm at a loss which one to choose. I know next to nothing about Zola so I need a good introductory work. Any suggestions?

Thanks, everyone!

My Classics Club Spin List

The folks over at The Classics Club have made a fun challenge for all the participants. The idea is that we each choose 20 books from our Classics Club list that we haven't read yet, and list them at our blogs, numbering them from 1-20. Next Monday, February 18th, a number will be announced, and we have to read whichever book on our list has that number by April 1st! Fun, eh?

So without further ado, here is my spin list (in five categories I made for myself):

Books I'm excited to read: 

1. Wives and Daughters
2. Our Mutual Friend
3. Their Eyes Were Watching God
4. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Books I know almost nothing about: 

5. Middlemarch
6. The Bell Jar
7. Song of Solomon
8. Of Mice and Men

Books I'm afraid of: 

9. Moby Dick
10. The Sound and the Fury
11. Don Quixote
12. The Crucible

Books that would work great for A Modern March (hint, hint): 

13. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
14. The Old Man and the Sea
15. A Room of One's Own
16. A Room With a View

Books chosen randomly (by closing my eyes and pointing): 

17. Slaughterhouse-Five
18. Breakfast at Tiffany's
19. Agnes Grey
20. Bleak House

Well, wish me luck!

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Can I just say I loved this book? Austen's dry humor came through so completely in her telling of this story that I just couldn't help but laugh out loud sometimes. I think it's one of Austen's best, actually, although you hardly ever hear about it.

One of the most interesting themes in the book is the idea of reading and how it can influence us--for better or for worse.


I recently read The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe, which made Northanger Abbey even more fun. Northanger Abbey's main character, Catherine, is obsessed with Ann Radcliffe's horror stories (rather like a Twi-hard fangirl today, actually). She's so taken by the Gothic trend of the time that she begins seeing evidence that one of her close acquaintances actually murdered his wife!...or worse...

January Classics Club Meme: Favorite So Far

The Classics Club meme question for this month:

What is the best book you've read so far for The Classics Club -- and why? 

I've only read 4 classics from my list so far, having only recently joined the Club, but the answer is, hands-down, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It's so relateable, sweet, and such a lovely book that, despite the blatant didacticism, I enjoyed it thoroughly and will, of course, force all my daughters to read it, if I have any. It's the classic I wish I read when I was a teenager.

Have you read Little Women? What do you think of it?

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Note: I actually wrote this review last week and then left it unfinished it without even publishing it. Then I promptly convinced myself that I had, indeed, published it. Whoops. Here it is, finally! 

Little Women is one of the most precious, beautiful books I have encountered. It's the perfect book for winter nights by the fireplace, eating Santa's cookies. (Not that I did this, but I wish I had.) This book is the comfort food of books, the warm fuzzy blanket of classics.

But I'm sure many of you already know this, so I'll just jump into my own personal experience with it.

One of my least favorite things a novel can have is didacticism. Actually, I usually despise it. If an author wants to whack her readers over the head with a particular message, then maybe she should write non-fiction. Just saying. A novel, in my mind, is supposed to give the reader an opportunity to find his or her own truth, not persuade the reader of one specific truth.

Anyway, I had a love/hate (mostly love) relationship with the didacticism in Little Women. I mean, let's be honest with ourselves, the book is one of the most didactic classics I have ever read. There's a moral lesson on practically every page.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Well. Well, well, WELL.

Before I begin, I should warn you that in my experience so far, one can either say nothing about Mrs. Dalloway, or one can write a hundred pages about it. Finding a middle ground is practically impossible. I'll attempt to find the middle ground right now, but I'm just warning you, I might get carried away.

Reading this book was sort of...surreal. Probably because it was a stream of consciousness novel (I know--Captain Obvious here). I'd never actually read a stream of consciousness novel before, so it was quite a bit of of a stretch, but it was well worth it.

Going off the stream of consciousness theme, these were probably close to my thoughts as I read the first 25 pages:

"What? What? And...who? What? Where? What? And what's that...and this? And who? And what?"

Okay, you get the picture. It would have been easy to throw this book away, never to look at it again (except for the fact that I had to read it for a class--whoops). But like I said, this book was worth the mental journey.

November Meme: Intimidating Classics

Today I'm going to answer the November meme question from The Classics Club:

What classic piece of literature intimidates you, and why? (Or, are you intimidated by the classics, and why? And has your view changed at all since you joined our club?) 

Oh, dear. There are really quite a few classics that intimidate me.

First of all, War and Peace. I know that's on basically everyone's list of intimidating classics, which might be why it intimidates me. It's not so much the length that's frightening; it's Tolstoy. I don't have a great history with Russian literature. I ended up putting down both Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina after getting a good way through them (although the main reason was time constraints, not so much boredom). I'm not sure at all how I'll fare with War and Peace.

Second, The Divine Comedy. I know next to nothing about it, honestly, and there is just nothing that interests me about it. I'll read it someday. But who knows when that day is...

Third, pretty much anything from the modernists. I'm just starting the modernism unit in my British Literary History class, so I can't really escape it now. I'm excited and intimidated at the same time. Mrs Dalloway is sitting on my bookshelf, waiting to be picked up and read, but I'm afraid I won't like it... I mean, I have read some modernist classics, of course, but I feel far from any understanding of the period.

What books intimidate you? 

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Okay. Honestly? I didn't like it. And I don't feel guilty about it one tiny bit.

I probably wouldn't even have finished it, despite the fact that it's short enough to be a novella, except I had to for a class. It served mainly as a reminder that I do not like science fiction.

I didn't like the time traveler--self-serving, self-righteous, superior, overly restless, condescending, violent, and know-it-all. I'm not sure that's really the impression Wells wanted his readers to have of the time traveler, but I couldn't see much good in him. The Eloi were basically good because they were sort of like him and he thought they were beautiful (even though they were pitiful and stupid, according to him). The Morlocks were obviously evil, because...uhhhh...because they were ugly. And because they raised other species for food. (Oh, wait. Where have I heard of that before?)

October Meme: Why Read Classics?

Over at The Classics Club they have a meme question for the month of October. I thought, what better way to start up my blog than to respond to...

Why are you reading the classics? 

There really isn't an easy answer to this question. One answer is that, being an English major, I am often surrounded by very literary people who have read seemingly every classic work of literature that exists in the Western canon. (And they talk like that, too. And despite all that, they're really very likable people...for the most part.) And frankly, I haven't. Yes, I am halfway through my college career of studying literature and yet, in the world of literary riches, I feel completely destitute. (Oh dear...I think I'm starting to talk like the rest of them...)

One of my favorites.

So yes. I have a reputation to uphold.

But it's more than that. Much, much more than that.

I love the classics. I would be lost without them. Without classics, I would just be a young, spoiled American girl who has never known hunger or loss or heartache. I'm not saying classics brought those things into my life--I mean, I am still that spoiled American girl, if I'm being downright honest--but they have made me more than that. They show me, through a peephole, a world beyond myself, where more than just myself exists.

Classics are a social miracle. They allow us to have relationships with people we would never have had otherwise. Right now I'm forging a relationship with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who lived two hundred years ago in a different country. I would never have known a single thing about this person--I would never have been aware of her existence--but now I am able to see into the deepest part of her mind, I can see all her mystery and her passion, through her classic novel Frankenstein. 

Welcome and Classics Club List

Hey everyone! Welcome to my book blog!

This blog has been a long time in coming. As an English major, of course, I love to read books and write about books, and I've finally decided to use blogging as an outlet for doing that. But talking about books isn't the same unless other people speak up and respond--so I hope you'll feel free to openly agree or disagree with anything I say!

Since I love reading classics and I realize my severe deficiency in that area (aren't we all deficient in that area?), I've decided to join the Classics Club, which I've been wanting to join for quite some time now. The idea is to read at least 50 classics in five years.

The list is a living list--I'll change it according to my reading and how things are going. If I read a book by an author that I absolutely love and I want to read more by that author, I might add it. Or if I really hate a book and I can't bear to finish it, I might replace it with a different one. No matter what, though, I'm going to keep a list of at least 50 which I'll finish by November of 2017.

So here's my list! If you have any recommendations, feel free to give them!

1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
2. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens
3. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
4. Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
6. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
7. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
8. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
9. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
10. Les Miserables (re-read) - Victor Hugo
11. Middlemarch - George Eliot
12. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
13. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
14. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
15. Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
16. Ulysses - James Joyce
17. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
18. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
19. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
20. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
21. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
22. 1984 - George Orwell
23. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
24. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
25. Dracula - Bram Stoker
26. A Room With a View - E.M. Forster
27. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
28. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
29. The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
30. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
31. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
32. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
33. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
34. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
35. The Crucible - Arthur Miller
36. Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
37. Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
38. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
39. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
40. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
41. The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allen Poe (short story)
42. Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
43. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
44. Their Eyes were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
45. The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling
46. Joan of Arc - Mark Twain
47. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
48. The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
49. Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl
50. Arabian Nights
51. Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
52. The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
53. Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley