May Prompt - A Classics Challenge

This month the topic was Literary Movement.  And the book I chose was Alice's Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

The literary movement that this book is written from is Victorianism.  I tried to find something else that would describe the book more closely to what the book is, which I would place is Fantasy, but couldn't really find anything within a specific literary movement that would describe the book.    The values and ideals of the book that I can ascertain from reading what I have read is that somehow having an imagination or going to a place of imagination was not exactly idealized and the book talks a lot in metaphor.  Also the emergence of the notion of one having a "childhood", where one can dream about things that are not possible in the adult world.  Some of the other writers from this era are Charles Dickens, the Bronte Sisters, Mark Twain, Thomas Hardy, among others.

April Prompt - A Classics Challenge

This month's prompt on A Classics Challenge has to do with covers of a classic book.  I chose Anna Kerenina (kinda obvious there) and the most recent cover.

My first impressions of the cover is that book has something to do with something sensual.  There is no clothing that is near the woman's knees and just the way that her hands are placed with the flowers in her hands indicates something sensual about it.

From what I know about the book, the cover does reflect the overall theme of the book, almost like the individual in the cover wants a man to notice her and indicates how the main female characters feel about the men that they wish entice or seduce.

I think that this would have been something that I would have chosen; its sensual, but its also sort of hidden.

March Prompt - A Classics Challenge

For the month of March, the prompt on November's Autumn is location.  We are to chose a setting within a novel that intrigues me the most.  The one that intrigues me the most is the bricklayer's house that is mentioned in Chapter 8.

I will do the Level two and three questions for this prompt.

1) How do you envision it?
 I envision it as a small, dark space.  I can imagine that the furniture is quite close together, with the beds and the kitchen table probably quite close together, with a chair or two near the fire.  There probably isn't a cooktop, but rather the cooking probably takes place in the hearth.  There are probably a couple of windows, but they are probably quite dirty.   The floor is probably dirt, but it could probably be boards as well.

2) Do you feel the setting is right?
Yes I do.  Dickens makes you feel as though you are in home that doesn't have a lot of money, if any.

3) If this particular setting was changed how would it affect the course of the story?
How it would affect the course of the story is that it would not offer the contrast between the world of where Esther and Ada are living and the people that lived like the bricklayer and his family.  It also helps to give the story a bit of gloom to the tone of the story.

February Prompt - A Classics Challenge

For this month's prompt on Nov, we are be asked to write about a character that we find interesting.  This month I have chosen Konstantin Levin from Anna Karenina.

I am going to answer a combination of Level 1 and Level 2 questions.

My first impressions of Konstantin Levin is of somebody who doesn't enjoy being in the city and is clearly a person who feels pressed in when visiting his friend, Stepan Arkadyevich and somebody who prefers to be on his country estate and getting his hands dirty and not in a fancy home somewhere not doing things with his hands.

I have actually grown to like Levin and even though I think that he can be a bit awkward socially in that he would rather be by himself rather than around the social elite of St. Petersburg and Moscow and like my protagonists to be a little more socially attuned.  I find him to be totally believable because he sounds a lot myself, in which I would rather be with a few selected friends rather than amongst people that I really am not comfortable around.  I would also rather be in a space that is somewhat out of the way rather than in a place that is constantly busy, although I do like being in a place that is close to stores and activity so that when I do need it, I can easily access it. Like Levin, I would also rather be around books than people and find that being around people rather difficult.  I would like to meet him; he seems to be what one calls an old soul, as he is not really concerned about the things of the here and now and more concerned about things that require thought and study.

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Title: The Scarlet Letter
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Pages: 288
Published: 2009 (Originally published 1850)
Challenges: 2012 Library Challenge, 2012 Support Your Library Challenge, Back to the Classics 2012, 2012 Where You Are Reading, 2012 A Classics Challenge
Genre: Classics
Edition: Paperback
Source: Library
Rating: 3.5/5

A passionate young woman, her cowardly lover, and her aging, vengeful husband are the central characters in this stark drama of the conflict between passion and convention in the harsh world of seventeenth-century Boston.

Tremendously moving and rich in psychological insight, this tragic novel of sin and redemption addresses our Puritan past. Depicting the struggle between mind and heart, Hawthorne fashioned a masterpiece of American fiction. (via Goodreads)


Thoughts: This was a book I had been wanting to read for quite sometime due to just the fact of the nature of what it dealt with and because its a book that is referred to in many ways.  I think expected something more than what I actually encountered.  While it was well-written, I did find it a bit mundane and sometimes a little dull and slow moving.  While I understand the point of the book, it just felt like there was something missing and I suppose it was because there was this hype that surrounded the book that it was something that I was expecting.  In otherwords, what I expected isn't what I got out of the book.  It is very well written and from that standpoint it was very good and I can clearly see why its considered to be classic, especially in terms of the American canon of American literature.  Hawthorne clearly makes his point that we as humans struggle between what we know is right and what we feel is right and how the two are constantly in conflict with one another.  I recommend the book, but only with the pretext that it isn't the salicous book that its sometimes made out to be.  


Now if I take out my expectations of the book, the book as a whole rates higher than what I gave it, probably closer to a four than a three.  Hawthorne's language does draw one into the story and when you find out what happens in the end (I am not going to spill the beans for those that still wish to read the book), you can see why Hawthorne paced the book the way he did.  What I am bit surprised about the book was that it was Hawthorne's first major piece that was written and was really his only well-known work, unlike Dickens who seemed to turn out well-known pieces on a regular basis (did some research on Hawthorne and he wrote other pieces of fiction, but nothing that I recognized).


Bottom line:  If you are looking for something that is rich in detail, both the psychologist and physical environment, it is worth the read.    He gets into a place that very few writers have been able to get into and presents something that is rich and poses to us the fact that we are constantly struggling between what we know is right in our heads and what we feel is right at the moment and the turmoil that it gives us.  An really good read, but don't go in with preconceived expectations of what the book is about.


Pages for 2012: 1920

January Classic Challenge: Nathaniel Hawthorne

For the January Classics Challenge: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

As part of the Classics Challenge, I have started to read The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

This is a photo taken in 1848, about 3 years before The Scarlet Letter was published and probably would have looked somewhat like this at the time of the writing of his most famous work.

He was born on July 4, 1804, a year after the Louisiana Purchase was announced in 1803, in Salem, Mass. His father, who was a sea captain, died when Nathaniel was about 4 years old.  He mainly lived in the Salem area while growing, but lived in Maine from 1816 until he was sent away for school in 1819.    After he finished college in 1825, it is uncertain where he lived until 1839, when he moved to Boston to work at the Boston Custom House for about three years.  After marrying, he and his wife eventually settled in Concord.  After the publication of The Scarlet Letter, he moved his family to Lennox, Mass., returning a couple years later to Concord.  In 1853, he was awarded the position of United States consul in Liverpool.  Four years later, his appointment ended and the family toured France and Italy, eventually returning to the States in 1860.  He died in May, 1864.

Some of the other novels he wrote where The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni.

Some interesting facts:
• was a neighbour of both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
• was a friend of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Franklin Pierce and Herman Melville
• the home they bought in Concord in 1852 was previously own by Amos Bronson Alcott
• went to college with the future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge.

Information taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne

2012 A Classics Challenge

Katherine over at November's Autumn is hosting a Classics challenge that complements another classics challenge that I signed up for.  Its really quite simple: you need to read seven classics (3 of which can be rereads) and then return to her blog on the 4th of every month to participate in a series of questions about the book we are reading that month — questions that will be neutral enough to apply to any classic. Obviously, we post our answers and link back to her blog, so we can check out each other’s posts.  You can click the photo to find out more information.

My seven will be:
1.  Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
2.  Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
3.  The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
4.  North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
5.  Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
6.  Anna Karerina by Leo Tolstoy
7.  The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne