In 2012 I read #44 books, up from the 37 of last year. Of the 44 only 13 where from my original 199 Barnes and Nobles classic set. The others where new purchases or library check outs. Soooo have not made a lot of progress on my original 199 lol but that’s not from lack of interest in them nor from less passion for the classics in general. The original books just lead me down a rabbit hole of connected works. For example, the two Scott Fitzgerald books in my set lead to reading almost all of his books, plus Zelda’s, a biography, and essay collection. The one Hemingway short story included in the set, was actually pretty boring lol, but some how I ended up becoming obsessed with Hem and reading 4 novels, several short stories, and two biographies (one of which I am midway through).

Sometime during the summer, I think-can’t remember exactly when, I made up a new list of books to read: my Modern Classics list. I’ve made pretty good progress on this list, 14 out of 72 in just a few months. The tricky thing about the Modern classics is deciding which to buy and which to check out from the library. For example, I bought Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and although it wasn’t a bad book I do not think I will ever read it again. On the other hand, I’m finishing up a library check-out, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and I can see myself rereading it some day because it is so complex. Another thing that bums me out about library books, is most of the ones I check out are beat to hell and who doesn’t prefer a nice fresh book. It adds to the experience, doesn’t it?

I signed up for a few reading challenges this time last year. My results where decent, read half of the books for Adam’s To Be Read Pile challenge including: The Great Gatsby, The House of Seven Gables, Sherlock Holmes collection 2, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Mansfield Park, and Les Miserable. I checked off one book for almost all of Sarah’s Back to the Classics challenge categories however, I did not read any plays, Russians, or finish rereading Wuthering Heights. Ah well. I do not feel bad at all about not checking everything off my list. It better to follow the reading whims imo. I am very pleased to have checked Les Miserable off my list because it was AWESOME.

For 2013 I won’t even pretend to have a challenge list. For one thing, I realize that going to school leaves me plenty of time to read but zero time to blog! Majoring in English means my writing energy and time are completely zapped. For now, I’ll have to be happy with updating the blog during quarter breaks. Also re: challenges, as much as I love a list, I hate feeling obligated to read something. I have to follow my moods when it comes to picking a book. Each book has it’s own time. If read in that magical little window it comes alive. If read by force in another time, completely ruined.

Now my favorite books from 2012:
All-of-the-Hemingway
Especially The Sun also rises, and A Farewell to Arms. I want to reread them both RIGHT NOW. Also love all of the bits in all of the stories where Hem is talking about writing. I have the book: Hemingway on Writing on my Xmas list, *crossing fingers*
All-of-the Scott-Fitzgerald
Yeah, pretty much obsessed with these two, Fitz and Hem. Their writing and their biographies. I’m looking forward to rereading all of Fitzgerald’s novels because I think they will be even better the second time around. I’m already enjoying This Side of Paradise more. The first time I read it I was like: 1- who the hell are all these writers that I’ve never heard of!? 2-Princeton sounds beautiful but I’ve never been there, therefore have no idea wtf you are talking about. 3- Amory is kind of a tool. This time around, I am more focused on the choice of words and the beautiful flow Fitzgerald’s writing has. Also, I am more accustomed to his male characters being kind of lazy good for nothings and am willing to forgive them lol.
Papa Hemingway
Everybody knows Hemingway could be a bit of an asshole but this books captures how kind and loyal he could be to his friends. It also explains what went wrong at the end and it was SO DAMN SAD to read about a genius deteriorating. It still makes me ache to think of a great mind falling apart into paranoia likes Hem’s did.
Lust for Life by Irving Stone
Speaking of falling apart, this biographical novel on Van Gogh was flipping amazing. I bought it earlier this year, read the first chapter or so and found the writing a little awkward. I set it aside for a long time. When I picked it back up again I fell right into it. The writing gets much smoother and Stone really brought Van Gogh, his bother Theo, and the other characters and painters from this time to life.
Les Miserable
As I said above: AWESOMESAUCE I thought it would be a difficult read but I felt like I flew through it. I did read an abridged version but it was still 800+ pages. To use an annoying phrase, it was action packed. I was constantly either loving or hating someone and yes, there were tears!
Save me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald
I’m including this in my favorites even though it was not quite what I expected. The book is more poetry than prose. Many sentences did not makes sense or where almost bizarre but I know each time I read it, I will get something new. Like poetry, I think it can be read in bits and pieces. I could probably spend an hour on a single page.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Again, not what I was expecting. A spin off of Jane Eyre that was so very different. But the ending was fantastic and thinking back on the book, I can almost feel the hot island sun and smell the intoxicating flowers. Another to reread.

My books completed in 2012 list

#44 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
#43 Scott Fitzgerald by Andrew Turnbull
#42 Lust for Life by Irving Stone
#41 Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days by Scott Donaldson
#40 Les Miserable by Victor Hugo
#39 The Garden of Eden by Hemingway
#38 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#37 1984 by George Orwell
#36 A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#35 Papa Hemingway by A.E. Hotchner
#34 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
#33 Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
#32 Save me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald
#31 Gardner’s Art through the Ages Volume I
#30 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#29 The Awakening and selected short stories by Kate Chopin
#28 The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
#27 The Professor by Charlotte Bronte
#26 For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
#25 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#24 A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#23 Persuasion by Jane Austen
#22 Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
#21 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#20 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
#19 The Cambridge Companion to The Brontes
#18 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#17 Middlemarch by George Eliot
#16 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#15 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#14 The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
#13 The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
#12 A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
#11 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (reread)
#10 Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma
#9 Classic Greek Myths to Read Aloud by William F. Russell
#8 Deconstructing Penguins by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone
#7 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
#6 Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
#5 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
#4 The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
#3 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
#2 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
#1 Love and Freindship and Lesley Castle by Jane Austen

She heard him moving about the room, every sound indicating impatience and irritation. Another time she would have gone in at his request. She would, through habit, have yielded to his desire; not with any sense of submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but unthinkingly, as we walk, move, sit, stand, go through the daily treadmill of the life which has been portioned out to us.

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening has much in common with Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. I don’t know enough about Chopin to know if it is intentional but to me The Awakening feels like Chopin saying to Flaubert,
“And what exactly do YOU know about being a woman locked in society’s cage Monsieur? Tell me, when have you ever felt like a slave; or a belonging, only somewhat more valuable than the sofa or a picture on the wall, in your own home? Oh you haven’t? You’ve always had complete and utter freedom? And when you imagine a woman drowning, suffocating, locked away in her salon day after day with no mental, physical, or emotional stimulation, the only reasons you can come up with for her unhappiness is vanity, selfishness, and conceit. Pardon me Monsieur Flaubert but  since you obviously know not of what you speak, I must kindly request that you shut it and I will tell you of Madame Bovary’s real misery.”

Compared to Madame Bovary, The Awakening feels much more authentic. It is not overly sympathetic to the main character Edna; the story is told in the 3rd person, like M.Bovary, so it gives some distance that allows you to question Edna. Unlike M.Bovary though, there is no moralizing with a sarcastic undertone and the reader can draw their own conclusions about the main character’s ultimate motivation. Where as in Flaubert’s story it is laid out plainly that M.Bovary is a selfish brat in search of shallow romantic thrills; in The Awakening you can ponder, does Edna have more complex motivations or is it simply sexual independence she is after? What are her true feeling towards the people in her life? Does she really love Robert, does she care at all for Alcee? What about her feelings for her children?

As I said, The Awakening is complex. What gives it that complexity I think is the conflict of Edna’s conscious (public self) and her subconscious (private self). At the beginning of the story Edna is the typical “good” turn of the century wife. As my quote above illustrates, she is used to obeying her husband’s wishes unthinkingly.

At some point in her childhood, one can guess it was when her domineering religious father drove her mother to the grave, Edna subjicated her real self. Her inner and outer selves where split. All her independence, desires, and individuality were buried into the sub-conscience. Edna frequently returns to a childhood memory that marks her last moment of complete self, rebellion and freedom.

“The hot wind beating in my face made me think- without any connection that I can trace- of a summer day in Kentucky, of a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean to the very little girl walking through the grass, which was higher than her waist. She threw out her arms as if swimming when she walked, beating the tall grass as one strikes out in the water. Oh I see the connection now!”
“Where were you going that day in Kentucky, walking through the grass?”
“I don’t remember now. I was just walking diagonally across a big field, My sun-bonnet obstructed the view. I could see only the stretch of green before me, and I felt as if I must walk on forever, without coming to the end of it. I don’t remember whether I was frightened or pleased. I must have been entertained.
“Likely as not it was Sunday, she laughed; “and I was running away from prayers, from the Presbyterian service, read in a spirit of gloom by my father that chills me yet to think of.”
“And have you been running away from prayers ever since, ma chere?”

When Edna’s subsonscience is awakened, by her desire towards Robert and the exhilaration she feels swimming independently in the sea for the first time, she quickly abandons herself to it. Surprisingly though, even after her awakening I still got the feeling that Edna was not completely in control of her life. She lets her subconscious rule her and seems to be almost unaware of her true desires and the effects of her actions. This is illustrated in many passages where the narrator shares Edna’s thoughts or feelings but then says Edna was not thinking (consciously) of this. Another example of this is in Edna’s actions such as when she she moves out of her “husbands” home into a small cottage that can in no way accommodate her husband or children. And yet, she never admits to herself that she is actively leaving them behind.

So even once Edna asserts her independence, she is still not able to bind her inner and outer selves. It seems through out her life she must choose one or the other; to either let her conscience self or subconscious self rule. She is her own protagonist and antagonist.

***********MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD**************

The end of the story is the ultimate example of Edna’s split. Prior to walking out to the beach Edna’s public self converses with friends, asking them to set her a place for dinner, remarking that she prefers fish but don’t go to any special trouble. As she walks towards the sea though the narrator gives us Edna’s inner feelings, the things that she is not “thinking of” but that are guiding her.

Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never lifted. There was no one thing in the world that she desired. There was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone. The children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul’s slavery for the rest of her days. But she knew a way to elude them. She was not thinking of these things when she walked down the beach.

When Edna walks out to sea she rejects her public self, the woman society would have her be, and chooses to free herself by complete immersion into the subconscious.

I started with Austen’s Mansfield Park. I’ve never been much of a Janeite. I like her work but I don’t get giddy about it. However, that totally changed with Mansfield Park; I finally get the Austen love. I was obsessed with MP and could not put it down. It’s funny because MP seems to be the least popular of Austen’s novels. I’ve just got to be contrary I guess. I can see why people would dislike the main character, Fanny Price. She is a very quiet, controlled character; always doing right, frequently crying, or feeling dejected and out of place in her Uncle’s home. I really related to her shyness though and her isolation within the family. I preferred her to Austen’s more forceful, saucy leading ladies. I certainly like some sauciness but the combo of a sarcastic, biting narrator, and the same in the main character, is too much for me. It leaves me with no one to really feel for. Mansfield Park was much different in that respect. It is a much quieter book, there is not the same bouncy dialogue, as in Pride and Prejudice for example, but there is still tons of sarcasm from the narrator, she pretty much never stops mocking her characters, which is always good fun.

As for the plot of Mansfield Park, I was much more into it than other Austen works, probably because I genuinely cared for Fanny. *******SPOILERS AHEAD Avert thy eyes if you haven’t read MP***************

I really loved Henry and wanted Fanny to come around to him. I knew where Austen was bound to lead the story but I didn’t want to believe it. When the Henry bit went down I was all Noooooooooo. Imagine that boy from the Britney Spears Youtube vids: Why Henry Why!!! *SOB* Yeah that was me And I really did not want Fanny to end up with Edmund. What a boring pair plus kind off creepy. I know the cousin thing was okay back then but he was more like a brother. Ick.

******END SPOILER******

A taste of Austen sarcasm in Mansfield Park

In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete; being prepared for matrimony by a hatred of home, restraint, and tranquility; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry.

Since I was feeling the Austen love, next I read Persuasion, which is the last of the JA novels I hadn’t read. Like Mansfield Park, Persuasion is a quieter story with a subdued main character. Probably my favorite aspect of this novel was Austen branching out to different types of people / sections of society. In most of her books you get almost exclusively upper middle classes but Navy men and their families are very prominent in this book (and not simply as flirts, as in Northanger Abbey). Austen’s contempt for status and appearance obsessed upper classes is also blatent. I think this is the most traditional society challenging of all Austen’s work. Some people say Austen was very conservative but in Persuasion I think you can see how she may believe in the maintaining of the classes, but she is fully against the upper classes neglecting their duty to those below them.

My favorite characters in Persuasion were Admiral and Mrs. Croft. They are so sweet! I love how able Mrs. Croft is, she goes everywhere, around the world on a ship even, with her husband. The thought of them bouncing through the countryside and tipping over their carriage cracks me up. The Croft’s are the only example of a wonderful marriage in Austen’s books that I can think of.

After Austen I did a 180 and decided I needed to read more Hemingway. Previously I had only read a couple of his short stories, The Old Man and the Sea, and A Moveable Feast. I loved the last two, was almost obsessed with A Movable Feast, so I expected goods thing but didn’t know if Hem’s other novels would be too war focused for me. I started with A Farewell to Arms and was surprised to find it was more love and relationship focused and less scenes of battle. Like when I read The Old Man and the Sea, I found my mind completely wrapped up in A Farewell to Arms after I put it down. The most engrossing thing about the book for me was reflecting on how the entire story and characters are not necessarily meant to be “true” or multi dimensional, rather they are completely formed and recalled from the main character (Frederic) Henry’s memory. It’s all from Henry’s perspective and his memory is warped by guilt, hopelessness, and knowing how it will all end. At first I was annoyed by his love interest Catherine ( I swore if she said Darling one more time I was going to gag). It’s easy to see Catherine as a poorly written character with the theory that Hemingway doesn’t understand women and can’t write one without making them into some sort of angel/whore stereotype. But I don’t think that is the case. I see Hem’s female characters written as his male characters and entire plots are written, with the depth all below, or even previous the plot, and to be formed by the reader’s own mind (his Iceberg theory). We see Catherine only through Henry’s memory. She and all the characters in the story are distorted reflections. If you think about how you remember people from your past, it’s not a multi-dimentional view. I think we tend to remember the idiosyncrasies, unusual vocab or speech patterns they used and we construct an imagine of them from their most distinct elements. Our memories are also very distorted by the emotions we have tied up in that relationship. It’s very easy to look back and remember someone as perfect, as eternally giving, and forget all the disagreements you ever had.

Next I read The Sun Also Rises. Like Catherine, the female character in this book, Lady Ashley, is a puzzle. Hem likes to let little pieces of the past slip into the story and it’s only when you walk away from the book and put all these pieces together do you start to understand the actions of the characters. Lady Ashley on the surface just seems like a drunken ho but when you begin to understand her past relationships and consider that the hopelessness created by WWI was not confined to the men who served in the war but how it wiped out for an entire generation the belief in or possibility of the “normal happy life”, you begin to understand the stupid things she does and why she is so hungry for a distraction. I actually respect Hemingway for showing that it was NOT just the men who suffered but, like Catherine in A Farewell to Arms, many women were driven nearly crazy by the suffering that was all around them.

In The Sun Also Rises the war is just a looming black cloud, it ruined the past and obscures the future. There is barely any plot to the story, let’s be honest the only real “action” is drinking (if you don’t have vicarious liver damage, than you’re not reading Hemingway). If I learned anything from Moby Dick it was that plots are over-rated and so, I loved The Sun Also Rises. Even if you are one of those people that wants “a story”, read this book to the end anyway because the last line is ah-mazing. I’m going to live the rest of my life in constant trepidation, just waiting to spring out my Hem quote on someone.

So while there’s not much that really happens in this book there are some great characters. I grew to understand Lady Ashley but I never liked her much. Who I loved was Bill. Jake is our main character and Bill is his one friend that is not a complete utter pita; he’s also very funny.

I could go on forever about how the characters in both of these books are constructing imaginary lives because the war made them aware of the illusion of a “future” and about how to me the term Lost Generation so perfectly sums up their inability to, within the rubble of the War, find the path that leads forward into life BUT it’s getting late and I must get back to reading For Whom the Bell Tolls

I’m currently on Chapter 5, Britain at War, and so far I’ve found the essays very well written. The authors seem to know their subject very well and express their points clearly with factual information to back it up. I’ll compare this to what I feel are some lesser and more jumbled essays next.

David Hume had taken the skepticism of the Enlightenment to its logical conclusions. In his Treatise of Human Nature Hume argued that the notions that we have of cause and effect are simply linked to the way which we experience the events in space and time and that such notions of causation have no objective existence. Thus, one’s knowledge of causation is a matter of habit or custom, not a logical certainty. Hume expressed radical skepticism about the nature of the human self, concluding that what one called the self was merely an ever-changing ‘bundle of sensations’. It was this position that ..laid the foundations for the Romantic Idealism
~Peter Kitson, Beyond the Enlightenment

The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel 
I purchased the kindle version of this book and I’m glad that I did because I’m not very impressed with it. Unlike the Blackwell companion, the essays in the Cambridge companion can’t seem to express a complete thought or theory. This book has 11 essays putting the Victorian novel in historical context, discussing the industrial revolution, gender roles, race, etc. So far I’ve read 6 of the 11 and most of the essays are less about sharing with the reader “actual information” and more about the authors musings. I often felt like the authors were not expressing their opinion clearly and they jumped on to another topic or aspect of their topic before they had fully expressed or gave any backing evidence for their first opinion. The exception to this sort of scattered writing was chapter 2, Simon Eliot’s The business of Victorian publishing. Eliot seemed to know his topic very well and shared much interesting information and perspective.
I’m not sure if I will go ahead and finish this book or not. I was pretty disappointed with it but maybe the last couple chapters will surprise me.

The Cambridge Companion to The Brontes 
Now after the Companion to Victorian novel mess, I was concerned that this title would also be a total flop. I bought this book on Amazon used for about $2.50, so at least I didn’t have much invested in it lol. To my relief though, this Cambridge companion is great. I haven’t been able to put it down. When I saw that the very first essay was by Juliet Barker my spirits and hopes where lifted. I have the humongous The Brontes by Juliet Barker on my shelf. I haven’t read it yet but I know she is one of THE experts on the Brontes. As expected her essay, The Haworth context, was very interesting. She gave me a whole new view point on the Bronte’s father Patrick.
I am now on Chapter 6, Shirley and Villette, so excited to read this today. Probably my favorite essay so far was Angela Leighton’s The Poetry. It lead me to looking up Emily Bronte’s poem Remembrance which I posted the other day. The first line: Cold in the earth- and the deep snow piled about thee, is still running around my mind.

‘Cold in the earth- and the deep snow piled above thee’, doubles not only the fact but also the sensation of cold. The line gets colder. It probes the buried source of coldness, making cold felt. By piling on snow as well, the poet transforms the sensation of cold into literal weight, as if to force or hold something down. Snow buries the dead doubly ‘deep’, as if earth itself were not deep enough.
~Angela Leighton, The Poetry

Jane Austen in Context, the Cambridge edition
I bought this title used from Amazon as well, in the hardcover. My edition, Jane Austen in context, is just one of the series that cover all of Austen’s novels, her juvenilia, and letters. I’ve flipped through the other titles online, and it looks like each includes a lengthy introduction, numerous notes on the text, and in some cases several appendixes. Not sure if I will make it a goal to collected each but I am tempted.
JA in Context covers in Part 1: Life and works, a short biography, essays on Austen’s language, literary influence, her poetry, etc. Part 2 Critical fortunes includes the reseption of Jane’s work, publishing history, and the cult of Austen. Part 3, Historical and cultural context, is the longest section. It has several essays detailing all aspects of Jane Austen’s times, Agriculture, Dress, Education, Money, and Rank, etc.
I read through the first essay, the biography. It was short but well written and it made its main focus something that is often over looked in other Austen bios, her personal finances. I’ve read snips of some of the other chapters and so far, they all look very interesting and well researched.

Edward Austen (Jane’s brother) eventually enjoyed an income greater than Mr. Darcy’s, nearly £15,000 a year, but he was not at first remarkably generous to his mother and sisters after his father’s death in 1805 left them virtually homeless. Still, his initial pledge or £100 a year did almost double his mother’s income, and eventually he housed her and his sisters in the cottage at Chawton that has become the Jane Austen museum.
~Jan Fergus, Biography Jane Austin in Context

If you are interested in flipping through any of these books you can find them in my Classics Book shop, under Companions and Context. Well, you won’t find the Cambridge Victorian companion becasue I don’t recommend that one lol but you will find the others plus some other goodies to boot. The Classics book shop is just a project I am working on for fun. It is an Amazon affiliate store that I don’t really expect any traffic on but it is hella’ fun picking out my favorite books to add to it lol.
You can find additional companions, literary criticism, and biographies in the book shop under the Lit movement category pages and under the individual authors. Note that the list price for each book is just the Amazon price, click through to check for deals on used editions. The main link for the Book Shop, if you feel like browsing, is at the top of the blog home page.

Cold in the earth — and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern leaves cover
Thy noble heart forever, ever more?

Cold in the earth — and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring;
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!

No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.

But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.

Then did I check the tears of useless passion –
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?

~Remembrance, Emily Bronte