Just finished The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne. What a book! I loved it. I didn't think I would like it at all, as I definitely remember starting it once before and not getting far at all, but I loved it this time. Sometimes the only way to get yourself to read a book like this is to be on a plane and have nowhere to run from it!
What did I like about it? First of all, the language. It's like a King James Bible, and it makes the Puritanism of the characters so much more tangible. They are very somber and staunch, and their language is the same way. It fits the story perfectly.
Secondly, I love the character of Hester. She is one awesome woman. She has done something wrong, and instead of running away and starting a new life where no one would know that she had committed audultery, she stands up, sews herself a scarlet letter, and stays in the town, serving her punishment. She is honorable from that day forward, even when it would have been so easy not to be. I respect her decision to do the right thing and stick to it.
I really liked this book because it examines the effect of one mistake on three lives, and I love how it turned the husband who was cheated on into the bad guy. While Hester and the minister were paying for their crime, Roger Chillingworth was taking revenge, and his fate showed that revenge leads nowhere... loved it!!
One really interesting part was at the very end, and the narrator points out that hate and love seem to be almost the same thing...
"It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow."
Very intriguing!
All in all, I loved this book. Tons. Can't entirely put my finger on it, except that it seems to be a triumph over past sins... which is a theme I love, and it reminded me in a small way of East of Eden by John Steinbeck.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
A Room with a View
Well, I finished my first book! How exciting is that? After a year of thinking to myself, "Shoot, I still haven't read a book on my list!" and one close call where I thought I had (kicking myself for not actually including "Ethan Frome" on the list), I have officially read one of the books! And it was "A Room with a View" by EM Forster.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
I liked this book a lot overall... there were some passages that made me catch my breath for sure, and I really enjoyed the way Forster wrote with acknowledgements to the reader. I thought it was really funny that way. However, one of the biggest issues I had with the book was that the relationship between Lucy and George wasn't developed much at all. She faints into his arms, he throws some pictures in the river, she stands in front of some violets, he kisses her... it's love. There is no explanation for why they belong together past that. So I was frustrated with it, because it seemed to be mostly that he was sort of sensitive and misunderstood and she was pretty and a little more lively than most girls her age.
Another thing that bothered me was that the end seemed to have a very deus ex machina-type element to it. George says a speech, and she suddenly realizes she cannot marry Cecil, and then through a series of random events including George's father kissing her, she decides to forsake convention and marry George and live happily ever after.
Um, what?
It all happens in the matter of a few pages. It was abrupt, and I felt like it was Forster's way of cheating the more likely ending. Which I would have been fine with, if he had developed it more. And given a better explanation than one small paragraph about how George's father had his mother (still very confused about that... by not baptizing George, he had killed her in the "sight of God"? Hmm...)
HOWEVER, I still managed to love the book and underlined/dogeared many passages that I thought seemed more like poetry than prose. All in all, I would recommend this book, as long as I first warned the reader that it seems a little contrived at some points.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
I liked this book a lot overall... there were some passages that made me catch my breath for sure, and I really enjoyed the way Forster wrote with acknowledgements to the reader. I thought it was really funny that way. However, one of the biggest issues I had with the book was that the relationship between Lucy and George wasn't developed much at all. She faints into his arms, he throws some pictures in the river, she stands in front of some violets, he kisses her... it's love. There is no explanation for why they belong together past that. So I was frustrated with it, because it seemed to be mostly that he was sort of sensitive and misunderstood and she was pretty and a little more lively than most girls her age.
Another thing that bothered me was that the end seemed to have a very deus ex machina-type element to it. George says a speech, and she suddenly realizes she cannot marry Cecil, and then through a series of random events including George's father kissing her, she decides to forsake convention and marry George and live happily ever after.
Um, what?
It all happens in the matter of a few pages. It was abrupt, and I felt like it was Forster's way of cheating the more likely ending. Which I would have been fine with, if he had developed it more. And given a better explanation than one small paragraph about how George's father had his mother (still very confused about that... by not baptizing George, he had killed her in the "sight of God"? Hmm...)
HOWEVER, I still managed to love the book and underlined/dogeared many passages that I thought seemed more like poetry than prose. All in all, I would recommend this book, as long as I first warned the reader that it seems a little contrived at some points.
My Project
I am an avid reader who has decided to embark on quite a daunting project. I love classic novels, and I decided that it would be challenging and interesting to read the list of 100 classic novels. But when I found quite a few lists, I realized that I would have to cross off the ones I had already read and make myself a new list. My plan is to read all of these... however long that takes (probably a while!) and write one entry per book, kind of summing up my thoughts. My goal is to read five of these before I go back to college in the fall. So here is my project, the Novel 100 Project.
(This is a project I "started" almost exactly one year ago, on May 30, 2010. However, I never finished the book I started, and have only now actually read one on my list. So a year later, and one down. Not a good track record! Better get moving.)
This is my list:
1. Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov
2. Things Fall Apart- Chinua Achebe
3. If On A Winter's Night a Traveler- Itao Calvino
4. As I Lay Dying- William Faulkner
5. Ulysses- James Joyce
6. I, Claudius- Robert Graves
7. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter- Carson McCullers
8. All the King's Men- Robert Penn Warren
9. The Rainbow- DH Lawrence
10. The Age of Innocence- Edith Wharton
11. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie- Muriel Spark
12. Kim- Rudyard Kipling
13. A Room With a View- E.M. Forster
14. Wide Sargasso Sea- Jean Rhys
15. The Postman Always Rings Twice- James M. Cain
16. Atonement- Ian McEwan
17. The Big Sleep- Raymond Chandler
18. The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck
19. Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison
20. Ragtime- EL Doctorow
21. Lucky Jim- Kingsley Amis
22. Don Quixote- Miguel de Cervantes
23. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce
24. Clarissa- Samuel Richardson
25. My Antonia- Willa Cather
26. Under the Volcano- Malcom Lowry
27. Song of Solomon- Toni Morrison
28. The Cruel Sea- Nicholas Montserrat
29. The Sound and the Fury- William Faulkner
30. All Quiet on the Western Front- Erich Maria Remarque
31. War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
32. The Call of the Wild- Jack London
33. Tristram Shandy- Laurence Sterne
34. Portrait of a Lady- Henry James
35. Journey to the End of the Night- Louis-Ferdinand Celine
36. Brave New World- Aldous Huxley
37. The Way of All Flesh- Samuel Butler
38. Sophie's Choice- William Styron
39. The Pilgrim's Choice- John Bunyan
40. An American Tragedy- Theodore Dreiser
41. Native Son- Richard Wright
42. Tender is the Night- F. Scott Fitzgerald
43. Under the Net- Iris Murdoch
44. Cat's Cradle- Kurt Vonnegut
45. The Unbearable Lightness of Being- Milan Kundera
46. A Stranger in a Strange Land- Robert Heinlein
47. Winesburg, Ohio- Sherwood Anderson
48. The Naked and the Dead- Norman Mailer
49. Death Comes for the Archbishop- Willa Cather
50. The Way We Live Now- Anthony Trollope
51. Watership Down- Richard Adams
52. A Death in the Family- James Agee
53. Beloved- Toni Morrison
54. The Color Purple- Alice Walker
55. A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess
56. Sons and Lovers- D.H. Lawrence
57. The Wings of a Dove- Henry James
58. A Handful of Dust- Evelyn Waugh
59. The Moviegoer- Walker Percy
60. Pale Fire- Vladimir Nabokov
61. A High Wind in Jamaica- Richard Hughes
62. Madame Bovary- Gustave Flaubert
63. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius- Dave Eggers
64. Middlemarch- George Eliot
65. Dracula- Bram Stoker
66. The Last of the Mohicans- James Fenimore Cooper
67. The Count of Monte Cristo- Alexandre Dumas
68. Uncle Tom's Cabin- Harriet Beecher Stowe
69. Candide- Voltaire
70. The Scarlet Letter- Nathaniel Hawthorne
71. Cry, The Beloved Country- Alan Paton
72. Green Mansion- WH Hudson
73. Moby Dick- Herman Melville
74. The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde
75. The Tin Drum- Gunter Grass
76. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea- Jules Verne
77. House of Mirth- Edith Wharton
78. Of Human Bondage- W. Somerset Maughan
79. A Tale of Two Cities- Charles Dickens
80. Their Eyes Were Watching God- Zola Neale Hurston
81. The Caine Mutiny- Herman Wouk
82. The Castle- Franz Kafka
83. Cyrano de Bergerac- Edmond Rostand
84. Doctor Zhivago- Boris Pasternak
85. Go Tell It On the Mountain- James Baldwin
86. Look Homeward, Angel- Thomas Wolfe
87. Main Street- Sinclair Lewis
88. Tess of D'Ubervilles- Thomas Hardy
89. Tom Jones- Henry Fielding
90. Death Be Not Proud- John Gunther
91. The Deerslayer- James Fenimore Cooper
92. Ivanhoe- Sir Walter Scott
93. Le Morte d'Arthur- Sir Thomas Malroy
94. The Cherry Orchard- Anton Chekov
95. Swann's Way- Marcel Proust
96. Fathers and Sons- Ivan Turgenev
97. JB- Archibald MacLeish
98. A Long Day's Journey Into Night- Eugene O'Neill
99. The Moonstone- Wilkie Collins
100. 39 Steps- John Buchan
(This is a project I "started" almost exactly one year ago, on May 30, 2010. However, I never finished the book I started, and have only now actually read one on my list. So a year later, and one down. Not a good track record! Better get moving.)
This is my list:
1. Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov
2. Things Fall Apart- Chinua Achebe
3. If On A Winter's Night a Traveler- Itao Calvino
4. As I Lay Dying- William Faulkner
5. Ulysses- James Joyce
6. I, Claudius- Robert Graves
7. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter- Carson McCullers
8. All the King's Men- Robert Penn Warren
9. The Rainbow- DH Lawrence
10. The Age of Innocence- Edith Wharton
11. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie- Muriel Spark
12. Kim- Rudyard Kipling
13. A Room With a View- E.M. Forster
14. Wide Sargasso Sea- Jean Rhys
15. The Postman Always Rings Twice- James M. Cain
16. Atonement- Ian McEwan
17. The Big Sleep- Raymond Chandler
18. The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck
19. Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison
20. Ragtime- EL Doctorow
21. Lucky Jim- Kingsley Amis
22. Don Quixote- Miguel de Cervantes
23. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce
24. Clarissa- Samuel Richardson
25. My Antonia- Willa Cather
26. Under the Volcano- Malcom Lowry
27. Song of Solomon- Toni Morrison
28. The Cruel Sea- Nicholas Montserrat
29. The Sound and the Fury- William Faulkner
30. All Quiet on the Western Front- Erich Maria Remarque
31. War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
32. The Call of the Wild- Jack London
33. Tristram Shandy- Laurence Sterne
34. Portrait of a Lady- Henry James
35. Journey to the End of the Night- Louis-Ferdinand Celine
36. Brave New World- Aldous Huxley
37. The Way of All Flesh- Samuel Butler
38. Sophie's Choice- William Styron
39. The Pilgrim's Choice- John Bunyan
40. An American Tragedy- Theodore Dreiser
41. Native Son- Richard Wright
42. Tender is the Night- F. Scott Fitzgerald
43. Under the Net- Iris Murdoch
44. Cat's Cradle- Kurt Vonnegut
45. The Unbearable Lightness of Being- Milan Kundera
46. A Stranger in a Strange Land- Robert Heinlein
47. Winesburg, Ohio- Sherwood Anderson
48. The Naked and the Dead- Norman Mailer
49. Death Comes for the Archbishop- Willa Cather
50. The Way We Live Now- Anthony Trollope
51. Watership Down- Richard Adams
52. A Death in the Family- James Agee
53. Beloved- Toni Morrison
54. The Color Purple- Alice Walker
55. A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess
56. Sons and Lovers- D.H. Lawrence
57. The Wings of a Dove- Henry James
58. A Handful of Dust- Evelyn Waugh
59. The Moviegoer- Walker Percy
60. Pale Fire- Vladimir Nabokov
61. A High Wind in Jamaica- Richard Hughes
62. Madame Bovary- Gustave Flaubert
63. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius- Dave Eggers
64. Middlemarch- George Eliot
65. Dracula- Bram Stoker
66. The Last of the Mohicans- James Fenimore Cooper
67. The Count of Monte Cristo- Alexandre Dumas
68. Uncle Tom's Cabin- Harriet Beecher Stowe
69. Candide- Voltaire
70. The Scarlet Letter- Nathaniel Hawthorne
71. Cry, The Beloved Country- Alan Paton
72. Green Mansion- WH Hudson
73. Moby Dick- Herman Melville
74. The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde
75. The Tin Drum- Gunter Grass
76. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea- Jules Verne
77. House of Mirth- Edith Wharton
78. Of Human Bondage- W. Somerset Maughan
79. A Tale of Two Cities- Charles Dickens
80. Their Eyes Were Watching God- Zola Neale Hurston
81. The Caine Mutiny- Herman Wouk
82. The Castle- Franz Kafka
83. Cyrano de Bergerac- Edmond Rostand
84. Doctor Zhivago- Boris Pasternak
85. Go Tell It On the Mountain- James Baldwin
86. Look Homeward, Angel- Thomas Wolfe
87. Main Street- Sinclair Lewis
88. Tess of D'Ubervilles- Thomas Hardy
89. Tom Jones- Henry Fielding
90. Death Be Not Proud- John Gunther
91. The Deerslayer- James Fenimore Cooper
92. Ivanhoe- Sir Walter Scott
93. Le Morte d'Arthur- Sir Thomas Malroy
94. The Cherry Orchard- Anton Chekov
95. Swann's Way- Marcel Proust
96. Fathers and Sons- Ivan Turgenev
97. JB- Archibald MacLeish
98. A Long Day's Journey Into Night- Eugene O'Neill
99. The Moonstone- Wilkie Collins
100. 39 Steps- John Buchan
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