Things that really matter

I picked up this book due to a recommendation I heard from Lexicon Valley, a Slate podcast about language which is super interesting. A Jane Austen Education follows William Weresiewicz as he works on his dissertation. He begins graduate school disliking Austen basically on principal, preferring more modern and complicated works like Ulysses. This is a view I have gotten from a lot of people (mostly men) who think that Austen is boring.

Each chapter covers one of Austen's books and is tied to how Weresiewicz grows from a young adult into a well rounded person. The transition that he goes through is especially interesting to me since I feel that I am in the same age of change as he was. For example, this really hit home for me:

"When you're young - when you're in high school and college and even your early twenties - you take your friends for granted. Of course they'll always be there. You take friends for granted. Why would you ever have trouble making new ones? Then all of a sudden - and it can feel very sudden indeed - everybody's gone. Some have moved, some have married, everyone's busy, and the crowd of potential friends by which you've always been surrounded has evaporated." 

One thing I was grateful about was that despite these books being around for forever and having so many adaptations of them, Weresiewicz never gives away the ending to any of them. Which is great because I have a confession to make. I, lover of Pride and Prejudice and Jane Austen in general, have never read two of her books. Mansfield Park and Persuasion have just never made it onto my selves and after reading this book, I am committed to buying, reading, and loving them. I also think I might dust of an Austen biography that has been sitting on my selves for a long time.

A full Austen loving convert, Weresiewicz ties in thoughtful pieces of critical reading of her works and information about her life in a way that I think would be accessible even to those who aren't Austen crazy. I highly suggest it.

Now I've begun again

It's been a long time.

I'm just going to get right back into the swing of things here. Lady Chatterly's Lover has a lot of history behind it; it was banned both in the UK and the US for being pornographic. This is one a lot of lists of the classic great books so I thought I better give it a shot.

I did not like it.

Connie Chatterly's husband was wounded in the war and is confined to a wheelchair. They live on a great English estate that included a giant industrial mine. While Connie is set up to be an educated and forward-thinking woman, I found her annoying. Surrounded by modern thinkers and culture, there is no meaning in any of the actions or thoughts of any of the characters. They just go through the motions.

"Sex and a cocktail: they both lasted about as long, had the same effect and amounted to about the same thing."

Connie has affairs that seem just ways to pass her time. Until she meets him, Mellors, the groundskeeper. He is also married, but his wife left him and lives on the other side of town. They start on together and there are some pretty explicit scenes. I've never been a fan of bodice-ripping romance novels, but this doesn't seem like the same thing. I mean, Connie weaves flowers into his pubic hair.

I guess my problem is that I don't buy their idea of love. Connie and Mellors just seem to be in lust. They don't really have conversations, he mauls her in the woods and has sex with her while she is half-passed out. He has some really strict demands on what a woman does during sex.

While her father and sister are fine with her having an affair, they are not pleased with the thought of such a scandal over a man of lower class.

There are bigger things going on in this book besides these two having sex. Old England is being destroyed by a newer, industrial England. The characters are only half-living, crippled by their inability to deal with the changing world.

I think that the idea of the scandal around this book is more appealing to me than the actual book itself. Color me unimpressed.

All is mere illusion and calamity

Candide is one of those books that I bought because, frankly, I felt that my bookshelves were lacking in some hard core classics. Books that I might never actually read but tell myself that someday I will. And the cover is cute. So, I was trolling the shelves the other day, looking for the next big thing and I picked this guy up. I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but it sure wasn't what I got.

The premise of the book is that Candide is brought up living with a Baron and is taught by his tutor Dr. Pangloss that this world is the best possible of all worlds. Everything is how it should be and it's all hunky-dory. Cue every bad thing you could imagine happening to happen. Candide tried to make sense of all the tragedy around him while trying to reunite with his main squeeze, Cunegonde.

I adored this book. I thought it was funny and witty and smart. Every time someone (usually Candide) would say how great things were or how their fortune had turned for the better I was itching to know what catastrophe would happen next. I haven't felt the burning need to write a research paper on a book for a while; where was this book when I was in college? The secondary characters had lines I could see coming out of my own mouth. Martin especially. I could see him rolling his eyes as his sarcasm bounced off of the ever cheerful Candide.

Interesting note - this book has the first recorded use of the word Optimism. The word is only used twice in the whole book.

Voltaire does a great job commentating on the purpose of philosophy. The introduction of this edition goes into Voltaire's use of the word "but" to make this clear. The characters can go on and on about their viewpoints on human suffering, but they still have to deal with the real things going on in the world around him.

One thing that bothered me about the book (and this spoils the end) was the fate of Cunegonde. Everyone who we thinks has died come back through some miracle coincidence (save the Barron and his wife) and we catch up with Cunegonde twice during Candide's travels. The second time she is continually mentioned as being extremely ugly. They all keep harping on how horrible she looks now. Candide, ever the honorable man, does still marry her, but has to literally step back when he sees how ugly she is. I just wasn't really sure why this was necessary to the story. But I'm nitpicking here.

These are a few quotes that stuck out to me, although I underlined a whole lot of this book.

"He could prove to wonderful effect that there was no effect without cause, and that, in this best of all possible worlds, His Lordship the Baron's castle was the finest of castles and Her Ladyship the best of all possible baronesses. " page 4

"If this is the best of all possible worlds, what must the others be like?" page 16

"My dear young lady,' replied Candide, 'when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the Inquisition, there's no knowing what you may do." page 22

"Private griefs are crueler even than public miseries." page 56

"The man of taste explained very clearly how a play can be of some interest but of almost no merit. He showed in few words how it was not enough to contrive one or two of those situations that are to be found in any novel and which always captivate the audience; that one needs to be original without being far-fetched, frequently sublime but always natural; to know the human heart but also how to give it a voice; to be a poet without one's characters seeming to speak like poets; and to have perfect command of the language, using it with purity and harmony, and without ever sacrificing sense to rhyme." page 64

"the honest ones admitted that the book dropped from their hands every time, but said one had to have it in one's library, as a monument of antiquity, like those rusty coins which cannot be put into circulation." page 76 in regards to Homer - who I also have and I am pretty sure I've never really read the whole thing

"Fools admire everything in an esteemed author. I read for myself alone; I only like what I have a use for." page 77

Pride and Prejudice

What can I say about this book that has not already been said?

I turned to this book because I feel like I'm reading so many books that are new to me, and every now and then I need a familar face. As I've said in my Kindle review, this book has a lot of sentimental value to me. I love this book a lot. I would have a hard time believing that there are people out there who haven't read it (I'm sure there are, but it's more like I don't want to believe it) so I don't really feel like I need to recap the plot. Mr. Darcy is dreamboat.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." ~ I actually had a friend quote this at me the other day in regards to some guy we know and it pretty much made me idolize her.

There are too many lines I have underlined and too many comments I wrote in the margins for me to recap here. I need to go drink a cup of tea.