Finished: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Marquez). Well, hmm. Another book I couldn't put down, but about which I have conflicted feelings. Truly, if there was a book that gives life to the quote "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. A man who never reads lives only once."....this would be such a book. The vivid imagery and spellbound way the reader is pulled into the generations of the Buendia family is undeniable. I was totally immersed in the town of Macondo. Are there any characters to be loved and cherished? Not by me. Most of them were flawed beyond repair by their predestined, I suppose, self-centeredness, and never rose above those usually fatal flaws. Perhaps just the original matriarch, Ursula, could be spared that description, but all of the male characters and most of the females evoked no enlightened loyalty from me that most great books inspire. Perhaps that's what kept me reading 'til the end...that hope that, finally, one of the newest generation would rise above the mistakes of past family members and actually be an unselfish, genuine person.

It truly was lovely writing, and I'm sure I'll be mulling over my feelings for awhile on it. I just really wanted to love at least one character! My favorite passage is very near the end of the book. If you're planning to read the book, then don't read the passage below. :-)

"Aureliano...skipped again to anticipate the predictions and ascertain the date and circumstances of his death. Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeateable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportuniy on earth."

Well, for the first time, I took a book off my favorites list. I reread The Taming of the Shrew and I decided I don't like at all how Kate ends up submitting to Petruchio because of his mind games! Hmmpphh! It's like she loses all her wit and fire, which I liked about her. I still think the writing itself is typical, amazing Shakespeare, but the overall feel of the book just doesn't do it for me anymore. I loved yesterday's The Comedy of Errors, so it has now moved onto the list. :-)

Finished: The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger). A book I couldn't put down. My heart broke for Holden Caulfield with the beyond-his-years running dialogue in his head. Sometimes stream of conscious writing is so hard for me to follow, but I followed this one so clearly. Maybe I have an adolescent mind? Maybe I related to the loss of his brother. The minute I read about Allie, I thought, therein lies all the turmoil, whether he knows it or not. I always wondered why I'd never read this book, and I realize, it was probably banned in the 70's when I was in high school! It is, though, now a book that will stick with me for a long, long time.

Finished: Heart of Darkness (Conrad). An interesting book, but I'm glad it was short! I found Conrad's writing hard to follow, especially because he doesn't indent for dialogue. He just includes it right in the middle of a paragraph, one person after the other. It can get confusing. He did have some profound thoughts, but I found this to be more of a guy's book, if that makes sense. The intense, profound man decides to take a journey up the Congo River to eventually pick up the other intense, profound man, all the while discovering his soul, or all of mankind's soul, in the intense, profound, darkness of the savage jungle. I can see my dad, who was very philosophical, embracing some of the prose. Like this:

"Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world....There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect."

Or this:

"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there---there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were----No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it---this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity---like yours---the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar."

"...but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity---like yours---the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar." Now that my dad would have liked. :-)

My son really liked this book too. I'm not saying I didn't...just that I might have a more intense feeling reading about wild lions in Africa, rather than the solitary Congo River journey and love/hate affair with the jungle. Show me that video of Christian the lion reuniting with the men who raised him after being introduced back into the wild and I cry every time! :-)

Finished: Catch-22 (Heller). What a great book! I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud while reading a book. :-) A funny, but scathing, tale of the chain of command and bureaucracy of the military and the atrocities, mental and physical, of war. As one of the book's future publishers stated in his critique: "It is a very rare approach to the war---humor that slowly turns to horror. The funny parts are wildly funny, the serious parts are excellent."

 I love the central character, Yossarian, who has flown more than his share of bombing missions in WWII and requests to fly no more missions. However, they will only ground pilots from flying missions if they are "insane" and if they are "sane" enough to know to request not to fly missions, then they can't be declared "insane"...hence, the Catch-22. The whole book is quick and witty as it explores Yossarian and all the characters. :-)

Passages like below, page after page. When the troops started asking too many deep questions at the weekly Question and Answer sessions with the officers:

     "Group Headquarters was alarmed, for there was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to. Colonel Cathcart sent Colonel Korn to stop it, and Colonel Korn succeeded with a rule governing the asking of questions. Colonel Korn's rule was a stroke of genius, Colonel Korn explained in his report to Colonel Cathcart. Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did. Soon the only people attending were those who never asked questions, and the sessions were discontinued altogether, since Clevinger, the corporal and Colonel Korn agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything."

I first laughed out loud during an exchange between General Peckem and General Dreedle, who were always trying to one-up each other, and always sending meaningless memorandums. (The higher the ranking officer, the more merciless his intelligence was treated in the book.) In this passage, Colonel Cargill has written a memo requiring General Peckem's signature, but of course before it goes anywhere, the mail-clerk, ex-P.F.C Wintergreen who reads everything, gets involved:

     "It takes brains not to make money," Colonel Cargill wrote in one of the homiletic memoranda he regularly prepared for circulation over General Peckem's signature. "Any fool can make money these days and most of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money."
     "T.S. Eliot," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen said in his mail-sorting cubicle at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters, and slammed down the telephone without identifying himself.
     Colonel Cargill, in Rome, was perplexed.
     "Who was it?" asked General Peckem.
     "I don't know," Colonel Cargill replied.
     "What did he want?"
     "I don't know."
     "Well, what did he say?"
     " 'T.S. Eliot,' " Colonel Cargill informed him.
     "What's that?"
     " 'T.S. Eliot,' " Colonel Cargill repeated.
     "Just 'T.S.---' "
     "Yes, sir. That's all he said. Just 'T.S. Eliot.' "
     "I wonder what it means," General Peckem reflected.
     Colonel Cargill wondered too.
     "T.S. Eliot," General Peckem mused.
     "T.S. Eliot," Colonel Cargill echoed with the same funereal puzzlement.
     General Peckmen roused himself after a moment with an unctuous and benignant smile. His expression was shrewd and sophisticated. His eyes gleamed maliciously. "Have someone get me General Dreedle," he requested Colonel Cargill. "Don't let him know who's calling."
     Colonel Cargill handed him the phone.
     "T.S. Eliot," General Peckem said, and hung up.
     "Who was it?" asked Colonel Moodus (Dreedle's Colonel.)
     General Dreedle, in Corsica, did not reply.....He brooded in ponderous speculation over the cryptic message he had just received. Slowly his face softened with an idea, and he curled his lips with wicked pleasure.
     "Get Peckem," he told Colonel Moodus. "Don't let the bastard know who's calling."
     "Who was it?" asked Colonel Cargill, back in Rome.
     "That same person," General Peckem replied with a definite trace of alarm. "Now he's after me."

And so it continued. OMG, I just loved that! :-)

Finished: Jane Eyre (Bronte). I loved this book! And, I love Jane Eyre, the character. :-) Finally, someone who beats the obstacles, keeps her faith, and has a happy ending. From the time Jane finally tells off her horrible aunt before being sent off to school, to her interactions with the beloved Mrs. Temple and Helen, to her falling in love with Edward ("He made me love him without looking at me.") and subsequent heartbreak, to her refusals to St. John, to her reconciliation with Edward, I love how Jane expresses herself, in thoughts and in words!

One of my favorite passages was Jane, only 10 years old, finally standing up for herself and telling off her cruel aunt (by marriage), after years of horrible treatment, and bullying by her cousins. And, the last straw...before sending her off to school, just as Jane thought she'd get a fresh start with new people, the aunt lies to the schoolmaster who has come to meet Jane, claiming she is a deceitful child and should be treated as such by other students and teachers. Once again, a mother is one of the cruelest characters in a novel, and she remains so until the bitter end. Jane says to her aunt:

     "I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty."

     "How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?"

     "How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back---roughly and violently thrust me back---into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day, though I was in agony, though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, 'Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!' And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me---knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions this exact tale. People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. You are deceitful!"

Another favorite passage...after Jane saves Edward from the bedroom fire and she knows she loves him, and cannot sleep the rest of the night.

     "I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy---a counter-acting breeze blew off the land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium: judgement would warn passion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as soon as day dawned."

I could go on an on, but I might have to re-read the whole book. I think it's going on the favorites list! :-)

Finished: Beyond the Horizon (O'Neill). Great, but tragic play. I'm glad to see the two brothers loved each other 'til the end, but what a sad end. I don't know if I'll read any more O'Neill, at least not for awhile...but I have a thick, old book here that belonged to my brother, so he must have liked O'Neill. If there's one thing that all this reading has really brought to light, it's how much I'd love to have both my father and my brother around to be able to ask them what they think about different books and plays! I miss their voices in every aspect.

Finished: The Jungle Book (Kipling). Ahhh, a nice tale about a boy who lived with and loved the jungle animals. I decided to read The Jungle Book after seeing the picture of Trump junior triumphantly holding up a dead elephant's tail he had cut from its body after hunting it down and slaying it. The picture, and the others like it, made me SICK! So, did it make you feel more like a man to slice off the dead elephant's tail after you (and about 20 other paid men with guns) made sure it was good and dead first, Mr. Trump? Needless to say, I do not believe in hunting animals for sport!

As for the book....I had no idea The Jungle Book was about more than just Mowgli! I got half-way through the book and Mowgli's story was over. Then, there were stories about the white seal, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the mongoose, Toomai the elephant boy, etc. :-) I enjoyed hearing the voices of the animals today. After Bagheera had to punish Mowgli, I liked this quote: " 'Now,' said Bagheera, 'jump on my back, Little Brother, and we will go home.' One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles all scores. There is no nagging afterwards."

Speaking of poetry...I've read quite a bit of that in years gone by. I have loved Shakespeare's Sonnets, Lord Byron's She Walks in Beauty, Yeats, Donne, Dickinson, Browing. That was a love poetry phase. :-) One of the first dramatic poems I remember being drawn to was Annabel Lee by Poe. My sister, who was four years older than me, was in high school...probably 9th or 10 grade, and she had to memorize the poem. I'll never forget her reciting it about the house so she could get it perfectly. I ended up memorizing it as well...or at least the first few lines. I can still say them today:

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

Then...I feel like I can remember her also having to memorize part of Chaucer's, The Canterbury Tales. I read that myself years later as an adult, and I could never find the part I thought she had memorized. I thought it was the Prologue, but that didn't ring a bell. In reading about Chaucer, though, I discovered my favoite poem of his, Merciless Beauty. I fell in love with it and the translation from Old English to new. Here's the first stanza:

Your eyen two will slay me suddenly;
I may the beauty of them not sustain,
So woundeth it throughout my hearte keen.

And but your word will healen hastily
My hearte's wounde, while that it is green
Your eyen two will slay me suddenly;
I may the beauty of them not sustain.

Upon my truth I say you faithfully
That ye bin of my life and death the queen;
For with my death the truthe shall be seen.
Your eyen two will slay me suddenly;
I may the beauty of them not sustain,
So woundeth it throughout my hearte keen.

The Old English:

Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly,
I may the beaute of hem not sustene,
So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene.

And but your word wol helen hastily
My hertes wounde, whyl that hit is grene,
Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly,
I may the beaute of hem not sustene.

Upon my trouthe I sey yow feithfully,
That ye ben of my lyf and deeth the quene;
For with my deeth the trouthe shal be sene.
Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly,
I may the beaute of hem not sustene,
So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene.

Love, love, love those words!

Finished: Brave New World (Huxley). Oh my Ford. What else can I say? I'm not sure which book was more unsettling, 1984 or Brave New World. And to think they were both written so long ago. I think I'm done with the futuristic phase for awhile. Poor Savage.

In between reading some of the longer books, I'm trying to read poems here and there to satisfy my desire to read some of the great poets as well. Before 1984 I read Walt Whitman's O Captain! My Captain!, As I Ponder'd in Silence, To the Garden the World, Adieu to a Soldier, Come Up From the Fields Father, and Poets to Come. He apparently wrote alot about war. I think my favorites were Come Up From the Fields Father for its heartbreaking, stark reality of a family getting word of the fate of their son & brother off at war; and O Captain! My Captain!, for the imagery it painted, the deeper meaning, and the passion of those first words. It reminded me of one of my favorite movies...Dead Poets Society, when the boys pay tribute to Mr. Keating by standing on their desks and saying O Captain! My Captain! I wouldn't have read that poem and known it was about Abraham Lincoln if not for Mr. Keating. :-)

Finished: 1984 (Orwell). Oh my gosh. That was intense! It took me a little bit to get into it, but once Winston Smith started interacting with other people, then I could hardly put it down. I kept thinking somehow he or his mind or his heart would win out in the end. Poor Winston! The book within the book...that was fascinating. The insights on war, the social hierarchy, the cost people were willing to pay at the expense of fellow humans to be in power. The concept of doublethink..."the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." The people in power used doublethink this way: "If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is to combine a believe in one's own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes." You have to admit mistakes to learn from them. But if you admit mistakes, you admit infallibitily. So with doublethink, you just believe both things, but separately...never thinking how they contradict each other. Oh my gosh, pages and pages of ideas like that. Of course...1984 came and went without us being thrown into an oligarchic society. Or, maybe I'm a "prole" and I just don't realize it. :-)

Finished: To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee). Wow, I loved this book! One of my favorites so far in this endeavor. The writing, the characters, the messages, the imagery. I love Atticus Finch...what a father! I didn't grow up in the south, because Texas wasn't really considered the south. It was just Texas. But...my father was from a very small town in northern Louisiana...almost to Arkansas. By the time we would visit there as kids, it still only had 5000 people. We were the city cousins from the suburbs coming to visit our small-town cousins. Oh how I wanted to grow up in that small town like they did. I loved it there.

 I can definitely feel the atmosphere of my dad's hometown when I read books about the south like To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm not sure I can put it into words...so many things hit close to home. Walking barefoot everywhere, the school building being the center of town (all grades, 1 thru 12), the church bells, the fishing poles, the climbing trees, "main street", rolling through stop signs riding on the tailgate of my grandpa's truck because you didn't really need to stop if there wasn't another car there, and yes, the "colored" part of town, most definitely separated from the rest. Only, they didn't used the word "colored" which may or may not have been the politically correct way to say it in those days. Folks there used the "n" word as easy as if they were saying their own names. That's just how it was. And probably why, I figured out years later, we weren't raised there. That wasn't a word allowed in our vocabulary.

I remember my dad, much like Atticus Finch, quietly, and with non-judgement, helping me learn a lesson in that town once. I was in 8th or 9th grade. It was our last night visiting before driving back home the next day. You know how families used to drive on their vacations everywhere? Being the adventurous souls we were, my cousins and I (female my age, male one year older and a friend of theirs one year older) decided we'd drive across the parish line into a non-dry parish and go to somebody's cabin and drink alcohol. We enlisted the older brother of the cousins, who reluctantly bought us some screw-cap bottle wine and sent us on our way. It was the first time I ever got drunk. I'm not sure how we got home, but I do remember my head hanging out a window.

When we got home, we went into my granny's house, and I was sick. Of course, my mother thought I was sick, sick. My daddy knew better. He took me into the downstairs bathroom and sat in there with me on the edge of the ceramic tub while I knelt on the floor and threw up in the toilet every few minutes. He'd just sit there and hold my hair back when it was needed, not saying anything. Finally, when it was all done he just said, "Whelp, that's one lesson you've gotta learn on your own...nobody can teach you that." No judgement, just a lesson learned in his books.

One of my favorite Atticus quotes, "...before I can live with other folks, I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

I guess reading about the quiet, strength of Atticus Finch, doing the best he knew to raise his children right...with the right morals and thoughts of their own, reminded me of my dad. Loved this book! :-) Never have liked wine since then.

For Christmas 2011 my son gave me the first book in The Game of Thrones series. I read it on the airplane home from Texas on Dec. 30, and over the next couple of days. It became the first book I read in 2012. I proceeded to get hooked on the characters and the stories and the direwolves. :-) I read the next four books in the series in quick succession, and now wait fervently for the 6th book, just like my son!

Trying to pull myself away from Winterfell, The Wall and King's Crossing, I looked for another great book to read. Hubby and I went and saw The Help one day, and went straight from the movie to the bookstore afterwards! I had to read the book! I was deeply moved by the book and fell in love with Aibileen and Minny. I grew up in Texas during that exact time period while my husband was growing up in small town Mississippi during that exact same time period. He had an Aibileen!! Her name was Pearlie Mae. The only difference was, my husband's parents were dirt poor, his dad being a student at Mississippi State at the time. They lived in Student Housing and his mother had untreated (at the time) bipolar disorder. They paid Pearlie Mae next to nothing. Pearlie Mae was the one consistent person during my husband's very young years while his dad went to school and then worked nights. He's convinced that he might not have survived the tumultuous highs and lows of his mother had it not been for Pearlie Mae. When he was about 5 and his sister 3, they could no longer afford Pearlie Mae and had to let her go. He stood at their screen door, banging on the screen, and wailed and wailed for Pearlie Mae to come back. So...needless to say, The Help resonated deeply with me.

Next I jumped into The Hunger Games series. I had told myself earlier that I would not read this series about children killing children, but the movie trailer peaked my curiosity. The series was about so much more than children killing children, and again, I was hooked. Being a general optimist and proponent of happy endings, I can't say that I'm happy with the way the series ended, but it is what it is. I'll never forget Kat or Peeta or Rue or Gale or Cinna or Haymitch or Finnick. I loved those characters!

I have a few current authors who I really love: Harlan Coben, Lisa Gardner, Linda Howard, Stephen White and John Sanford. They are similar and write who-done-it type mysteries...most of them using the same characters from book to book who I've grown to enjoy. Harlan Coben and Lisa Gardner are my favorites. I've read ALL their books and always wait eagerly for the next one to come out. I accidentally discovered each of them in the Portland, Oregon airport bookstore, looking for books to read on the long flight home after our biannual trip to the Oregon Coast. Oh, and Dean Koontz, I like most of his books. Just not the ones that get too supernatural. Anyway, after finishing The Hunger Games series, I read Buried Prey, by John Sanford. I needed something that was set in current time to propel myself out of Kat & Peeta's world and back to "reality".

It was after reading Buried Prey that I decided I needed to go on a literary bender. I couldn't shake a quote I read in A Dance With Dragons (book 5 of Game of Thrones series): Jojen says, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only once." I just loved that quote. I decided I wanted to live some of those lives through reading books....books that I'd heard about through the years and never read; books that I should have read long ago; books considered to be "classics"; books by esteemed authors considered to be the best in their field. So, the literary bender began. :-)

I've been posting my thoughts about the books I read on my facebook page, but decided that sometimes those entries are too long and probably aren't that interesting to many of the friends who have to scroll by them on their home pages. So, I decided to put my thoughts in a blog instead. Whether anyone ever reads it or not, at least the lives I've lived on the pages of the books will be written down!

Happy reading! (Whatever you're reading) :-)

I moved all my facebook thoughts about the books I read here. :-)

I'm on a literary bender! I've decided to read at least one book from each of the "top" 100 authors of all time. Of course, that list is debatable. :-)

I've read Shakespeare, Austen, Twain, Dickens, etc. but there are so many authors I haven't read! I started about 3 weeks ago after I finished reading The Help and was so moved by that book. Since then, I have read Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), Captain's Courageous (Kipling), Don Quixote (Cervantes), The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) & Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Rowlings)...no, I'd never read it! Anna Karenina was looooong, but amazing! I loved Tolstoy's writing, but not because I fell in love with Anna. She was my least favorite character, as a matter of fact. I don't have any empathy for her "love story". Captain's Courageous was a quick, lively read with a very nice message. Don Quixote was a bear of a book!! It is considered by many to be "the most important piece of literature to date", but I don't know if I'd go that far. I did enjoy much of the writing, but it was very, very repetitive and more sad than inspirational. I'm probably the only person who didn't read The Great Gatsby in high school...including my own kids. I just finished that one, and I must say, I liked the book much more than the movie. I didn't fall in love with Jay Gatsby though. (Robert Redford...a different story!) Harry Potter!!!!!!!!!!!! I could never get into the book in the past, but this time, reading it between Anna Karenina and Don Quixote, it was such a nice, entertaining read! Now...what to read next???

Finished: To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. Hmmm....really a stream of consciousness, throw the paint at the canvas, type of book. Probably the 3rd most peculiar book I've ever read...the first two being Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce, both of which I read years ago. In Lighthouse, about 90 percent of the book is just the constant stream of characters' thoughts, t...hat pops from one character to the next, sometimes within the same paragraph. Sometimes inanimate objects (like the lighthouse) got their OWN stream of consciousness that went on for paragraphs at a time. So... it made it difficult to read. I did start enjoying the Mrs. Ramsay character quite a bit though. She was the mother, and I could relate to many of her thoughts about her children, husband, etc. :-) In all, I have to say that I'm glad Woolf (and Joyce!) are checked off my list, and I probably won't revisit her as an author unless a must read book comes to light that is overwhelmingly recommended by several people. :-)

Finished: Lord of the Flies (Golding): Oh my. I don't know what else to say! I need a happy book next!

Finished: Slaughterhouse Five. What a trip of a book! I enjoyed it very much, though. So it goes. :-)

Finished: This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald). I really enjoyed this book. :-) It was my second Fitzgerald, even though I have so many "firsts" to get to. I can't say that I fall in love with his characters, but I really love his writing. I can't believe he was only 21/22 when he wrote this! An exampe: You know how it gets darker faster on a rainy day? Here's how Fitzgerald describes that "The unwe...lcome November rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night." I just love that. :-) I have a third Fitzgerald book on my list, and then he might just pop into that very short "favorite authors" category of mine. But now...I'm off to some Oscar Wilde.

Finished: The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde). How refreshingly delightful! Finally ...a lighthearted classic. :-) It was a short play, but a nice change of pace.
Mrs. Prism: "Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us."
Cecily: "Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened, and couldn't possibly have happened." :-)

Finished: Wuthering Heights (Bronte). Well, that was the most depressing book to date. And, Heathcliff is the most detestable, wretched character I've come across yet. Do people really consider him a romantic hero? I don't get that AT ALL. Heathcliff's actions were even more disturbing than children killing children in Lord of the Flies. I can't wait to get the taste of this book out of my mouth. :-(

Finished: Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury). That was an interesting book! A little scary, but moving. Creepy dog!!

Finished: The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky). That was a good book! :-) This was one of my dad's all time favorite books. There were a few too many debating-the-existence-of-God soliloquies for me by certain characters...some that went for pages and pages; eloquent arguments that could have been spoken more succinctly, rather than pounded over the head with. However, the writing was really amazi...ng and the characters very complex. The overall plot kept me turning the pages! How I wish I'd read this book while my dad was still alive so I could now ask him why he so loved this book. Knowing my dad, the deep thinker, I think I know the answer, but still. Hard to believe it's almost been two years. One of my favorite quotes from the book: "We are possessd by the noblest ideals, but only on condition that they be attained by themselves, that they fall on our plate from the sky, and, above all, gratuitously, gratuitously, so that we pay nothing for them."

Finished: Hamlet (Shakespeare). I can't believe with all the Shakespeare I've read, that I never read Hamlet! It was so nice to read Shakespeare's prose again. I had no idea so many common quotes/sayings came from Hamlet! "Frailty, thy name is woman"; "Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice"; "For the apparel oft proclaims the man"; "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"; "Now cracks a no...ble heart. Good night, sweet Prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest"; "Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief"; "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan ofts loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry (thrift)", etc. And then I had some other favorite quotes that might not be famous. :-) Ophelia's father warning her about Hamlet's wooing words, "When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul lends the tounge vows." King Claudius about Hamlet, "Madness in great ones must not unwatched go." King Claudius not really confessing his sins, "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go." Queen to her son Hamlet who is speaking to his father, the ghost, "Alas, how is't with you, that you bend your eye on vacancy, And with th' incorporal (bodiliess) air do hold discourse?" The Queen to the King about Hamlet's mental state, "Mad as the sea and wind when both contend which is the mightier." I could go on and on, but it's enough to have a smile on my face. :-)

Finished: Metamorphosis (Kafka). I'm not sure I have words. I was looking around online, actually, to see what I'd read after Hamlet. I knew Kafka was high on "the list", and there was Metamorphosis online. I started reading to see if it would interest me in the least. It's about a man who wakes up having turned into a bug for God's sake. What could interest me in that? I'm not a fan of bugs AT ALL! I couldn't stop reading. It's only 3 chapters....3 bizarre but mesmerizing chapters. Poor Gregor. That's the man-bug.

Finished: The Lady With the Dog (Chekhov). So...I'm trying so hard to avoid reading the Sound and the Fury. I've tried twice now to get into it, and I'm going to force myself today. In doing so, I was looking around at what other short bits I could read and came across Chekhov's, The Lady With the Dog. A very good short story! Though, why were so many stories back in the day centered around adulte...ry? I guess so many married for duty and not for love back then. Here is Gurov thinking about the many affairs he has had, and how he usually grows to detest the women he cheats with..."Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people -- always slow to move and irresolute -- every intimacy, which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing."

Finished: The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner). Wow, well that was certainly a very powerful book...especially if you have any southern roots at all. Brilliantly written (once I figured out how to read it!), but definitely tragic...in the big events that happened, and in just the every day life. Again...a horribly, narcissistic mother. What is it with "great literature" and Disney animated movies, fo...r that matter? The mothers are either worthless and/or detrimental to their childrens' lives or just plain dead! It helped me tremendously to finally be able to grasp this book by reading a pretty detailed plot summary and narration synopsis beforehand. Sure, it gave away major plot details, but I couldn't have made it through the book without them. And, I'm so glad I made it through the book. I had to read Quentin's heartbreaking chapter more than once, and I'm sure I don't still get everything. One passage I really liked...when Quentin is remembering what his father told him when he gave him his grandfather's pocket watch before Quentin went to college. "It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it." Now...I need something lighter to read. :-)

Finished: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Lewis). That was fun! :-) I would love to have my own Aslin! I might have to read the second one to see if the kids go back!

Finished: Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus) & On Baile's Strand (Yeats). ok...so while I was looking for the next book to read, I found this old high school book of mine! I can tell it's mine (and not my brother's or sister's) because it has my nickname from high school written across all the pages. You know...how we used to write our names along all the pages and then thumb them with our thumbs? Anywa...y....it is called Eight Great Tragedies. I started flipping around inside and there were actually notes I wrote in my flowery, high school handwriting in some of the margins! One where a teacher obviously told us to underline a phrase and write the word "irony". LOL! I certainly didn't appreciate books like this when I was in high school, but I'm glad I'm appreciating them now. I remember reading Prometheus Bound and Oedipus the King, but none of the rest. In Promethus Bound, Hephaestus says these words as he chains Prometheus to the rock, "Upright, facing the sun, Catching the full force of his searing ray, You will decline and wither like a flower, And plead that flaming day be hidden beneath The starry cloak of night, and plead again For sun to warm the icy shiver of dawn: Exchange of agony your soul relief." There's no way I would have given those words another look in high school, lol. I also enjoyed reading the Yeats story. I've ready plenty of his poems, but never a story. :-)

I'm thinking of starting a blog to record all my blurbs about the books I've read instead of posting them on Facebook where they show up on newsfeeds of all my friends. I get wordy sometimes! I'll try this today and see how it goes. :-) I started reading To Kill A Mockingbird last night.