4
Nov
2009
The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
The Country of the Pointed Firs, written in the 1890’s, captures the customs and dialects that were dying out in Maine at the time. Sarah Orne Jewett tried to preserve as much as she could in her fiction before it was forgotten.
29
Oct
2009
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
This is one of those books where nobody will ever know if it’s really a ghost story or if the narrator is nuts. Certainly, there seem to be two strictly divided camps in the world of literary criticism.
6
Jul
2009
Becoming Jane
Last week I watched Becoming Jane for Stephanie’s Everything Austen Challenge. I’ll be totally candid in saying that if it weren’t for this challenge, I probably wouldn’t have watched it.
24
Jun
2009
Jane Austen Challenge: Because I Need Another Challenge Like I Need a Hole in My Head
I convinced myself to do this challenge for three reasons:
29
May
2009
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he’s got to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there’s One that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I’d been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire.”
It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie-and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie- I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
18
May
2009
Empress Orchid & The Last Empress by Anchee Min
I’m reviewing these two books together because in my opinion, they should have been one book. It might have been about 3″ thick, but that is not a good enough reason to split it into two separate books, if you ask me. I guess it boosts sales this way.
8
May
2009
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Have you seen Apocalypse Now? Good, then you already know the story of Joseph Conrad’s most famous novella. No? Then DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WATCH THAT MOVIE UNTIL YOU READ THIS BOOK.
27
Apr
2009
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
For some reason, everyone loves Jane Austen, to the detriment of the Brontë sisters. To some extent this makes sense. Austen’s novels numerate more than all of the sisters’ works combined, and each sister really only has one classic. But, say we take Jane Eyre and compare it to any of Austen’s novels. The plot is far more intricate than Austen’s. Brontë might not focus on the banality of privileged life, but her satire and class criticism (and hypocrisy therein) can be just as biting.
22
Apr
2009
Hawaii by James Michener
Before my sister, Sally, had her baby last summer, we were sitting around trying to think of names. My other sister, Monique, suggested Jerusha. ”No,” Sally said. ”If I were going to name it after some from Hawaii it would be Wu Chow’s Auntie.” Wu Chow’s Auntie Handley didn’t flow too well, so literature was dropped as a source of inspiration.
21
Apr
2009
The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro
In the weeks I spent back home in Michigan after my Dad died, I read this book. I had been excited to read it when I bought it a month or so before, because Alice Munro traces her family history from Scotland in the 19th century, to their emigration to Canada. The Oldfields also came from Scotland and England to Canada, and some, eventually, to Detroit. I had actually thought that if I liked the book, I’d give it to my Dad. Instead, I read it as part of my mourning.
