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Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson

Posted on May 24, 2012
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Reason for Reading:
  • This was required reading for my American Lit II class.

I also recommend:

Summary from GoodReads

Work from the prolific American author best known as the author of Ramona, a novel about the ill-treatment of Indians in Southern California.

My Review:

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a point to reviewing older novels. I mean – there’s obviously a point to reading them, and Ramona presents a good case for that. But after reading a book like this it’s hard to imagine that others haven’t read it, or something like it… until I remember that until this past semester, I’d never even heard of Ramona.

For those of you who, like me, had never thought to pick this book up let me just say that it will frustrate, awe, and inspire you. The story is one that speaks of epic, sweeping love and loss, but it’s buried in pages upon pages of description which, back in the day before the internet, television, and radio, would have passed for entertainment but today just feels as if it’s one more thing to push through in order to get to the meat of the story.

Thankfully, I read this book for a classroom setting – so three days were set aside for us to get to the meat and actually talk about the themes and ideas in Ramona.

Here’s what I came away from this talks with:

Even in a story, such as Ramona, when the author is seeking to shed light on the issues of the time (specifically the tensions between whites, Mexicans, and Native Americans), in order for Ramona to be related to she is given “white” characteristics – i.e. blue eyes from her Scottish Father.

Sweeping stereotypes are made not only about the whites (and honestly, as far as stereotypes go, they were pretty harsh but necessary ones) but also about Mexicans. Even the Native Americans in this book did not escape judgement from Helen Hunt Jackson.

Jackson has no problem spending 70 pages talking about the little things – making a bed on a porch, tension-filled relationship between Ramona and her adoptive family, and so on.. but she spends less than a paragraph on a vital turning part of the story. In fact, the action and result of this turning part happened so quickly I thought I’d imagined it happening and had to go back to re-read it.

I understand from our discussions the importance of a book like Ramona and I believe that it’s important that it continues to be read and talked about – but more than anything, I wonder how that will be possible with the changing of our culture. We talk in 140 character tweets – so how can we expect young adults today to be patient enough to read pages upon pages of description? It saddens me to think that this story is one of many that will end up lost as a result – so if you decide to read just one “classic” American story this year, think about choosing this one.

Don’t just take my word for it! Check out what these bloggers say!

As The Crow Flies (And Reads!)


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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Posted on February 9, 2012
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Reason for Reading:
  • This was required reading for my American Lit class.

I also recommend:

Summary from GoodReads:

Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Intended at first as a simple story of a boy’s adventures in the Mississippi Valley-a sequel to Tom Sawyer-the book grew and matured under Twain’s hand into a work of immeasurable richness and complexity. More than a century after its publication, the critical debate over the symbolic significance of Huck’s and Jim’s voyage is still fresh, and it remains a major work that can be enjoyed at many levels: as an incomparable adventure story and as a classic of American humor.

My Review:

It’s always daunting, isn’t it, to review a classic that so many people have read?

We discussed Huck Finn in my American Lit class this semester, and overall there really was quite a bit to discuss, despite the story being a very well-known one (at least to me). There is more to this book than than a simple story of a boy and a man floating down the river in a raft.

What I loved about this reading of Huck Finn is that we were also to read Toni Morrison’s Introduction to it. It was through this Introduction that I was able to see the story in a completely new light – and to understand just what was so “wonderfully troubling” about it.

Morrison talks a lot about silence in the book – the silence in those moments of floating down the river, the silence with regard to learning much of anything about Jim’s family, the silence with which Huck treats his friendship with Tom. Then there’s the silence of Jim toward Huck – why did he fail to disclose who that man was under the cloth?

This is an extraordinarily troubling book, but yes.. a wonderful one as well. It’s enlightening – it shows how hard the struggle was to accept the idea that a human is a human, no matter his or her skin color. It’s educational, it reminds us of where we’ve come from in an effort to remind us of where we should not return. It’s captured history through the dialect of Jim. It’s a look at two individuals escaping slavery – Jim the actual slavery, and Huck, escaping abuse at the hand of his father.

I always recommend these books. Tom Sawyer is more suited to younger audiences (although I personally find Tom to be a scoundrel), but Huck Finn is a must read for teenagers and adults.

Don’t just take my word for it! Check out what these bloggers say!

Blatant Biblioholic

Good Books and Good Wine


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The Shining by Stephen King

Posted on February 8, 2012
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Reason for Reading:
  • A friend of mine is a HUGE Stephen King fan and I wanted to explore horror this year – so .. here we go!

I also recommend:

Summary from GoodReads:

Danny is only five years old, but he is a ‘shiner’, aglow with psychic voltage. When his father becomes caretaker of an old hotel, his visions grow out of control. Cut off by blizzards, the hotel seems to develop an evil force, and who are the mysterious guests in the supposedly empty hotel?

My Review:

Here’s the thing about Stephen King.

… He scares the bejeezus out of me.

Seriously. So, I’m going to tell you a story about picking this book up. No joke at all. This is what happened.

I picked up The Shining around 9pm at night. I wanted to read, it was there, it needed to be read. But I’d heard horrors about Anthony Hopkins and that hotel in Colorado and.. I wanted to be able to sleep. So I told myself – I’ll read ’til it gets scary.

150 pages later, I thought.. huh, this isn’t that bad. I’ll keep reading…

Then my mind began to process everything coming through it and OH MY GOSH I COULD NOT CLOSE MY EYES.

I fully expected lots of gore, lots of slashing madness, but what I didn’t expect was the psychological impact something like a shaking elevator, or locking someone in a walk-in fridge would do to me. My hands were SHAKING as I read the book, but.. to be honest, it was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to muster the courage to dive into my next Stephen King adventure – “It”.

Don’t just take my word for it! Check out what these bloggers say!

The Librarian Reads


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The Turquoise by Anya Seton

Posted on January 24, 2012
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Reason for Reading:
  • I’ve had this on my TBR for two years, figured it was time to get around to it.

I also recommend:

Summary from GoodReads:

It is the story of a beautiful, gifted woman who leaves the magic mountains of her native New Mexico for the piratical, opulent, gaslit New York of the 1870s—only to end her search for happiness back in the high, thin air of Santa Fe.

Santa Fe Cameron, named for the place of her birth, was the child of a Spanish mother and a Scotch father and inherited from both a high degree of psychic perceptivity. Natanay, an American Indian, saw this and gave the little orphan a turquoise amulet as a keepsake; this turquoise, the Indian symbol of the spirit, dominates her life.

For Santa Fe Cameron, life is made up of violent contrasts: the rough wagon of the gay young Irish medicine vendor who brings her East and the scented hansom cabs and carriages waiting before her own Fifth Avenue mansion; the glittering world of the Astors and a dreary cell in the Tombs.

My Review:

Have you heard of Anya Seton?  I sure hadn’t.  I’m not sure what possessed me to put this book on my TBR list back in 2009, but THANK GOODNESS I did.  Because y’all, this book was magnificent.

It was published first in 1946, and the copy I got from the library was bound in one of those old style books – unassuming, no pictures, gold lettering on top of an orange cover.  I looked at that book and thought.. what was I thinking?  And then I started to read… and I read more and more and next thing I know I’m waking up at 6am so I can pick up where I left off.

This is an epic story.  Santa Fe Cameron was born to a dying mother, and her father dies when she reaches the mere age of 7.  She is taken in and raised by a local family – but is always considered to be different, due to the Scottish features of pale skin and gray eyes.  Early in the story, she is told she will have to make one of two choices, and … you, the reader, can decide if she made the right choice.

Santa Fe’s trip through this story is a rough one.  It’s filled with love and heartbreak, gain and loss, and some of the most intelligent, strong, female characters I’ve ever read in a book of this age.  I adored this story, and like I said earlier, I am so glad I put it on my list.  This one is highly, highly recommended by me – and I cannot wait to get to the other Seton book I have here sitting on my desk.

Check out these reviews!

Book Group of One

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My Antonia by Willa Cather

Posted on January 12, 2012
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Reason for Reading:
  • I’ve heard about Willa Cather for quite some time now, so I figured it was time to pick something up.

I also recommend:

Summary from GoodReads:

The story of Antonia Shimerda is told by on of the friends of her childhood, Jim Burden, an orphaned boy from Virginia. Though he leaves the prairie, Jim never forgets the Bohemian girl who so profoundly influenced his life. An immigrant child of immigrant parents, Antonia’s girlhood is spent working to help her parents wrest a living from the untamed land. Though in later years she suffers betrayal and desertion, through all the hardships of her life she preserves a valor of spirit that no hardship can daunt or break.When Jim Burden sees her again after many years he finds her “”a rich mine of life”,” a figure who has turned adversity into a particular kind of triumph in the true spirit of the pioneer.

My Review:

I feel a sort of kinship with this book.  I wasn’t forced to read it when I was in school, so I approached it with fresh, adult eyes and I think that made the experience one that is an experience to cherish.  I also grew up in Nebraska, and it’s so farare that I read stories set there that I felt an immediate connection.

My Antonia begins somewhat slow – and after reading a particularly difficult book, I’ll admit, my heart sunk a bit.  But once the story got going, once I started being sucked into the narrative of this young boy, I started to fall in love with the writing, the story, and the characters.

Immigration, and treatment of immigrants, always provides an interesting topic to read, and write about, and that shows in this book.  As an adult, I appreciated much more the hardships and tragedies experienced, then I would have as a teenager, which results in putting Willa Cather on the list of authors I want to experience more of.

Check out these reviews!

Rocks, Waves, Beach

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Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

Posted on January 6, 2012
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Reason for Reading:
  • Part of the 1001 Challenge – plus I’ve always wanted to read Balzac!

I also  recommend:

Summary from GoodReads:

Nobody writes about money like Balzac, and his classic chronicle of a young man from the provinces clawing his way to success in 19th century Paris, even as an older man is victimized by the same milieu, shrewdly captures the financial dimension of so much that goes on between people. The boarding house in which the two protagonists live is a microcosm of their world, and Goriot’s treatment by his daughters would make Lear blanch.

My Review:

This book floored me.  I mean, jaw on the floor, gaping as I read, type of floored me.  Who knew Balzac could be so approachable?  I picked up this book fully expecting to struggle through it, much like my earlier trials with Middlemarch, and instead I found myself thoroughly intrigued by this drama.  And Balzac himself, as narrator of the story of Father Goriot, calls it a drama, although he hastens to explain that it isn’t quite the same as those other dramas of the time.

The word drama has been somewhat discredited of late; it has been overworked and twisted to strange uses in these days of dolorous literature; but it must do service again here, not because this story is dramatic in the restricted sense of the word, but because some tears may perhaps be shed intra et extra muros before it is over. – Father Goriot by Balzac

The story is focused around two characters – Father Goriot and a young, law student named Eugene Rastignac.  They are acquainted by being one of several boarders in a respectable, if a bit shabby, boarding house in Paris, France.  Goriot is the father of two married daughters, and Rastignac is, at the expense of his parents and two sisters, attempting to marry into society and wealth – but in a respectful way!

This drama has everything – murder and intrigue through the character of Vautrin, the Trick of Death.  It has humor – there is an entire scene which made me think of our modern day Snoop Dog “shizzle” moments – Balzac talks about how the diorama has recently been unveiled, and as a result, in passing, humorous conversation, the morpheme “orama” is added to the end of random words – such as Goriot-orama.  There is an entire scene at the dinner table in which words are bantered about, and even referenced later in the book that had me laughing out loud in sheer delight.  It has tragedy – the outcome of Father Goriot and his daughters relationship is one that, as Balzac foretells, worthy of tears.  It showcases both the good and bad sides of the human character, and provides an interesting commentary on situations and feelings that are relevant still today.

Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another’s happiness than in your own – Balzac

The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred - Balzac

I wish I could go further into the quotes and how many things I highlighted on my Kindle – but then this entire review would be just repeated quote after quote, since there are quite a few of them.  I have to encourage you to pick up this book and read it – I hope you will find it as fascinating as I did.  Such an incredible story of the tragedy of life.

 

Check out these reviews!

A Common Reader

Expressions

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Dracula by Bram Stoker

Posted on January 3, 2012
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Reason for Reading:
  • It’s Dracula. I mean, seriously… I had to read it.

I also  recommend:

  • The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Summary from GoodReads:

The aristocratic vampire that haunts the Transylvanian countryside has captivated readers’ imaginations since it was first published in 1897. Hindle asserts that Dracula depicts an embattled man’s struggle to recover his “deepest sense of himself as a man”, making it the “ultimate terror myth”.

My Review:

It’s not often my 17 year old brother tells me I have to read a book.  So when he does, I put it on the short list.

I’ve had Dracula on my list for a while though.  I thought it’d be a fun read after reading Frankenstein earlier this year, but Frankenstein did a number on me (it was not nearly as gripping as I had hoped it would be) so Dracula got put to the back burner.  I should have known better.

First of all – for those of you who have not experienced Dracula yet – it’s an epistolary novel.  Yup, all letters.  These letters grow in intensity as the story progresses, making the book somewhat unique, especially when compared to other vampire novels.

I grew up reading Anne Rice novels – none of this wimpy sparkling-vampire stuff for me.  I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer (bonus points if you can name the season in which the good Count shows up there!), I enjoy a good, thrilling story that has me wanting to leave the lights on, and Dracula gave me everything I was looking for and more.  Y’all, I actually dreamed of spider-like men crawling up my walls.  It was awesome.

Reading Dracula is kicking off a year of intense exploring of a genre I’ve always shied away from.  Horror.  I figured I had to kick the year off with a review of a class horror and fully plan to explore the genre more in 2012.  It should be interesting – especially if this is the type of novel from which inspiration is taken.

Check out these reviews!

A Literary Odyssey

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The Heroine’s Bookshelf by Erin Blakemore

Posted on November 15, 2011
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Reason for Reading:
  • Jane Austen in the title – I swear that made me want to get it!

I also recommend:

Summary from GoodReads:

 

Full of beloved heroines and the remarkable writers who created them, The Heroine’s Bookshelf explores how the pluck and dignity of literary characters such as Jane Eyre and Lizzy Bennet can encourage women today.

 

Each legendary character is paired with her central quality—Anne Shirley is associated with irrepressible “Happiness,” while Scarlett O’Hara personifies “Fight”—along with insights into her author’s extraordinary life. From Zora Neale Hurston to Colette, Laura Ingalls Wilder to Charlotte BrontË, Harper Lee to Alice Walker, here are authors and characters whose spirited stories are more inspiring today than ever.


My Review:

I am ashamed to admit that half the stories in this book have yet to be read by me.  That IS something I intend to fix (and one reason why this book should be sitting on your shelf – it has a fantastic list of titles inside that should make up an important part of your TBR list).

So, I did not read every essay – mostly because I don’t want to spoil the stories.  I did, however, read every essay of the books I’ve read and I found them enchanting.

One of the things I’m learning in school is how important it is to look at everything when it comes to literature, because of all the different ways literature can be interpreted.  I mean – Lizzy from Pride and Prejudice.. she embodies grace and fire and I loved reading, and re-reading about her as a teenager – and still do as an adult.  But not once did I think about her as a picture of what it means to be sure of ones self.

I don’t want to go into detail about each essay, because they should be read, taken for what they are worth, and allowed to inspire the readers to dive more through re-reading the classics they talk about (or read for the first time). I’ve found that older books have this amazing way to become incredibly relevant to life, and when things are down in the dumps, I remind myself that at least, my hair isn’t green like Anne Shirley’s, or I haven’t had to verbally lash a conceited, backhanded proposal given by a man who thinks himself better than me, like Elizabeth Bennet.

I think this book is going to be featured on my lists of good books to give for Christmas.  It’s the perfect size, and the essays are short and feature quite a bit of material about both the books and authors highlighted.  And… it’s just plain fun.

About the Author


For more reviews on The Heroine’s Bookshelf by Erin Blakemore, please follow the book tour.

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Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Posted on September 16, 2011
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 Reason for Reading:

  • This is one of my assigned readings from class this fall.

I also  recommend:

Summary from GoodReads:

Hawthorne’s classic tale of a young Puritan’s meeting with the Devil.

My Review:

In just 48 pages, Nathaniel Hawthorne strips the outer veneer of humankind and lays them bare for what they really are, or are they?

Religious beliefs really come into play when reading a story like Young Goodman Brown.  My own beliefs state that mankind is flawed, that we are first and foremost sinners – so what Young Goodman Brown saw when he made his walk through the forest, what he was confronted with wasn’t really that much of a surprise to me.   Yes, it was exaggerated, but I got what he was trying to say.

What was interesting to me was how far Hawthorne himself had come through his lifetime, and how sad as a person he must have been when he’d seen those outer layers stripped away and lost his faith, much like Goodman Brown.

Check these reviews!

Tasseled Blog

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Animal Farm by George Orwell

Posted on July 18, 2011
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Reason for Reading:
  • It’s a classic – and more importantly, a classic I haven’t read.

I also recommend:

Summary from GoodReads:

Animal Farm is the most famous by far of all twentieth-century political allegories. Its account of a group of barnyard animals who revolt against their vicious human master, only to submit to a tyranny erected by their own kind, can fairly be said to have become a universal drama. Orwell is one of the very few modern satirists comparable to Jonathan Swift in power, artistry, and moral authority; in animal farm his spare prose and the logic of his dark comedy brilliantly highlight his stark message.

Taking as his starting point the betrayed promise of the Russian Revolution, Orwell lays out a vision that, in its bitter wisdom, gives us the clearest understanding we possess of the possible consequences of our social and political acts.

My Review:

For the longest time, I got Animal Farm (the book) and Animal House (the movie) mixed up in my mind and thought they were one and the same – and so, I held off reading the book because I didn’t like the movie. (I know, I know, save your gasps for later).

So when I finally did get the two straightened out, I avoided reading Animal Farm because it was written by George Orwell and must, therefore, be boring because it was a classic and people kept saying I should read it. Mind you, I don’t consider Jane Austen to be boring, so I’m not sure why I avoided Orwell.

Then, fairly recently, I hosted a read-along of George Orwell’s 1984, and I found his writing to be completely approachable, easy to understand, enlightening, entertaining and .. well, fun. So I put Animal Farm on my short list to be read and, today, while going through my books, I decided to take the dive.

Animal Farm is a short, satirical story that’s meant to portray communism clearly. And Orwell succeeds at that. It’s important, or was for me at least, to understand that the animals are symbolic, and not to take the story as some type of fantasy in which animals can really walk, talk, read and create things like windmills. Once you get past all of that, the story really unfolds beautifully.

There’s nothing I can add to my review of Animal Farm that hasn’t been said by many, many more before my time, so I’d just like to apologize to George Orwell for mixing up Animal Farm with something like Animal House, to feel remorse for thinking that anything he could write would be dull and lifeless, and to walk away from reading this book with a more thorough understanding of why communism is frightening.

Check out these reviews!

The Ace Black Blog

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