Forced experience

"One is forced, step by step, to get experience in the world; but the learning is so disagreeable." - Charlotte Brontë

This quote does not appear in one of Brontë's novels, but in a letter featured in Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. Miss Brontë's life was not an easy one, but a series of disagreeable experiences.

RIP Mr. Harding

Poor dear, sweet Mr. Harding. Never completely appreciated by his friends (save Nellie) until it was too late: 

Up to this day no one would have said specially that Mr. Harding was a favourite in the town. He had never been forward enough in anything to become the acknowledged possessor of popularity. But, now that he was gone, men and women told each other how good he had been.

Land Ho!

"It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away." - Anthony Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset

So many great novels based on this very idea. The first ones that come to mind: The entire Forsyte Saga by Galsworthy, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. Others?

Me and Catherine Morland - Out at the ball game

My eldest son begins his very first little league baseball season today. Compared to other boys today, his age is quite advanced for a beginner - he's already NINE. What an old man, in baseball years.

In honor of the two games he'll play this weekend and the subsequent lack of reading I'll be doing, here's my all-time favorite baseball literary quote. (Incidentally, it may also be the very first)

...it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books  

- from the opening paragraphs of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

How I love Catherine Morland! How we all love Henry Tilney!

39 and Holding

"Let her who is forty call herself forty; but if she can be young in spirit at forty, let her show that she is so" - Anthony Trollope in The Small House at Allington

Literary Heroes

Great advice from Anthony Trollope for writers of romance:

"heroes in books should be so much better than heroes got up for the world's common wear and tear"

From Framley Parsonage

My 2010 Book List

Here's what I read in 2010:

Lots of Gaskell.  I also re-read all the Austens and several other books I claim as "favorites" that I haven't read in decades.  The newest thing to me was graphic novels.  I'd read Marvel's Wizard of Oz at the end of '09 so I read two more graphic novels this year and really loved them.

I'm very proud to be one of the few people on earth who have actually read all 9 novels and various interludes of Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga.  The original trilogy with the interludes is wonderful but I'm glad I took the time to read the later books too.  My favorite books are still 19th century classics, but I'm learning that there are authors aside from Austen -- I love Gaskell, Trollope and Collins too.  I also read my first Dickens recently and my challenge for next year is to read another.  I tried reading Pickwick Papers a few years ago and just couldn't do it.  I'd also like to read some Barbara Pym this year.

Top Reads of the Year, not in any particular order (no re-reads):

Small Island by Andrea Levy

The Likeness by Tana French

Imagined London by Anna Quindlen

Swan Song by John Galsworthy

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Most fun book of the year:

Stuff Christians Like by Jonathan Acuff

Best reading experience of the year: reading P&P with my dear friends DeeDee, Amy, Melissa and Jill :-)

Most disappointing of the year: Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor - I've read about this novel for so long, I expected Gone-With-The-Wind-ish greatness but it's just a big ugly mess.

Worst read of the year: A Reliable Wife by Goolrich - complete trash. "There was an almost sexual pleasure in the boundless sorrow..." A writer who equates misery and tragedy with sex is really not my cuppa. Icky, icky book. This is a bodice ripper dressed up to appear literary. I was not fooled.

1. Pride & Prejudice the graphic novel, adapted by Nancy Butler

2. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

3. Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire

4. Swan Song by John Galsworthy

5. Maid in Waiting by Galsworthy

6. Flowering Wilderness by Galsworthy

7. Over the River by Galsworthy

8. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

9. A Reliable Wife by Goolrich

10. Gustave Caillebotte: Parisian Impressionist with a Passion for Water

11. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

12. Imagined London by Anna Quindlen

13. I'm Fine with God...It's Christians I Can't Stand: Getting Past the Religious Garbage in the Search for Spiritual Truth by Bickel and Jantz

14. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

15. Emma by Jane Austen -- re-read. I want to re-read all the Austen I can this year. :-)

16. Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire

17. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - reread

18. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

19. Persuasion by Jane Austen - continuing my goal to re-read all Austen this year. 3 down!

20. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - my joy in re-reading Jane continues. This novel is so laugh-out-loud funny. Love, love, love it!

21. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - it gets even better every time.

22. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Book 1, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

23. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (re-read)

24. Percy Jackson and the Olympians 2: Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

25. Lady Susan by Jane Austen - An Austen novel I had never read before!

26. Small Island by Andrea Levy

27. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

28. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

29. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Ringler

30. Wuthering Heights (reread) - by Emily Bronte

31. Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor

32. A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 34 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen

33. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

34. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

35. The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James

36. Jane Austens Guide to Good Manners: Compliments, Charades & Horrible Blunders by Josephine Ross

37. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

38. The Warden by Anthony Trollope

39. The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James

40. Stuff Christians Like by Jonathan Acuff

41. Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler

42. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

43. Romeo and Juliet the graphic novel

44. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope (re-read)

45. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

46. The Likeness by Tana French