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

Sweetmeats and sugarplums

"The end of a novel, like the end of a children's dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums." - Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope

I love that Trollope tells us exactly what he knows we want to hear...but in a manner so obvious that we feel a little shamed and sheepish when we read it.

Happiness in love

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.- Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

This sentence is a great encapsulation of what I love at Trollope.  Funny, ironic, everything good.

Delicious Insanity

From Kathryn Stockett's The Help:
"I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious"

Return no evil for evil

From Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell's Wives and Daughters:

"...don't repeat evil on any authority unless you can do some good by speaking about it."

Lovely fools!

From Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell:

"But sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom."

And this quote by Mr. Gibson is so true in the case of poor Cynthia -- it is only her foolish love that makes her likable.  Her calculated relationships are what makes the detestable parts of her character.  But her love for Molly is very, very sweet.

Ah...Regret

From Cynthia Kirkpatrick in Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters:

"How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly..."

Cynthia's life is not one of forethought, but rather one of regret.

Clergymen

Assume what you will, but I love funny lines poking fun at the clergy.  This is a classic:

"He seems to see good in everyone. No one would take him for a clergyman." - Lucy Honeychurch, Room With a View by EM Forster

Wonder of the World

I have only read around 100 pages of Andrea Levy's Small Island, but already her characters' voices are tumbling around my imagination. While Hortense is unintentionally funny, Gilbert goes for the laughs.

Regarding the shock of bland English food to his Jamaican palate:

"How the English built empires when their armies marched on nothing but mush should be one of the wonders of the world."

Austen at her saucy best

I just finished reading Jane Austen's Lady Susan for the first time.  I've read all the major ones (Emma, S&S, P&P, Mansfield, etc.) many times but had never read this one.  LS seems to me a complete departure.  This heroine is completely unlikable for anything except her infamous schemes and flirtations.  How unlike Lizzy, Emma and Elinor!  Lady Susan has many very funny lines but this one seems to best sum up her character and motivations:

"Where there is a disposition to dislike, a motive will never be wanting." - Lady Susan, letter 5, Lady Susan to Mrs. Johnson

She has determined to make Mr. DeCourcey like her simply because he seems determined no to do so.  And boy, does she!

An evening with my Forsytes

Flipping through one of my favorites tonight.  I love those Forsytes.  This is why:

"When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte died—but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their property." - The Forsyte Saga: Man of Property by John Galsworthy


Life as a possession.  Very Forsyte.  Very Galsworthy.

Summertime (or Summer Time)

I cannot keep a schedule this summer. Every day there is either too much fun to be had to keep my time well planned or we're so exhausted from our fun that I just want to do nothing.

From Jane Austen's Mansfield Park:

"Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch." 

Oh, Miss Crawford, a rare moment that I agree with you!

Forgiveness without Forgetfulness

From Volume 3, Chapter 15 of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice:

Mr. Collins writes of Mr. and Mrs. Wickham: "You ought certainly to forgive them as a christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing."

Mr. Collins, the esteemed rector of Hunsford, gives such an amazing illustration of his notion of Christian forgiveness.  Thou shalt forgive, but apparently, never forget.  This brought to my mind a great post on the Texas Faith blog: What is the sin in your faith?  Read all the responses: very powerful, challenging stuff.

Rapid Passion vs. Slowly Building Affection

To me, this is a common theme in so many Austen novels.  The happiest couples are the ones who do not rush into a passionate affair, but take their time in getting to know the character of their partners.  Think, in this instance, of Lydia and Wickham vs. Lizzy and Darcy.  Or Mr. and Mrs. Collins vs. Jane and Bingley.

And in the midst of the Wickham/Lydia elopement, Lizzy has this thought in chapter 50 of Pride and Prejudice:

"But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture."