Fini: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (de Laclos). Un livre sur deux personnes méprisables qui ruinent la vie des autres pour le sport. The despicable people in question...the Vicomte de Valmonte and the Marquise de Merteuil. Former lovers, they hatch many schemes of seducing and ruining the lives of family members of those people they want revenge against, and in some cases, just want to make sport of. In the Vicomte's case, he seduces the 15 year old, Cecile Volanges, innocent daughter of a woman he is mad at. And, the scheme is actually concocted by the Marquise, while she pretends to be a friend and mentor to the young girl. Meanwhile, the Vicomte, who is a notorious, home-wrecking, womanizing, soulless rake, is also in the midst of seducing Madame de Tourvel, the pious, prim, faithful, beautiful young wife of a man who is unfortunately out of town for several months. All told in a series of letters back and forth (much like the novel Clarissa was told), the heartless people succeed in all their attempted seductions, resulting in tragedy for all, and death from humiliation and a broken heart for the poor Madame de Tourvel after Valmonte mercilessly dumps her with a cruel letter after a couple of weeks of sex. When, the Chevalier Danceny, the beloved suitor of Cecile Volanges finds out about the betrayal of his "friend" the Vicomte, and the debauchery he has led the innocent Cecile to, Danceny calls out Valmonte for a duel and fortunately kills him. I was happy to see this horrid character meet his demise. Also in the end, when her true nature is revealed, the Marquise de Merteuil is shunned by all of her society friends and ends up surviving a bout of smallpox with horrific facial scaring and the loss of an eye. Her appearance prompts a former friend to comment that her ugly inner self is showing itself on the outside now. In all, the book held my interest in that I was hoping that the innocents like Cecile and Madame de Tourvel would somehow persevere and come out ok in the end....and...that the Marquise and the Vicomte would get their comeuppance. Does this book belong on the Top 100 list which is the only reason I read it? Nahhhh, I don't think so.

Finished: The Secret Garden (Burnett) A lovely book about how love, companionship, kindness and nature can help children overcome abandonment, low self-worth, and selfishness. The story of spoiled, loveless orphan, Mary who comes to live with her uncle at his mansion. The uncle, Mr. Craven, having lost his beloved wife ten years ago, lives in sorrow and pays no attention to his bedridden ten year old son, whose eyes look just like his mothers. Mary, because she has never learned any manners herself, is the only person to stand up to the sickly, demanding, equally spoiled, Colin. Both children are victims of their awful circumstances, in which their parents had all the money in the world, but basically ignored the children as if they didn't exist their entire lives. :-( They find kindred spirits in each other, and in Dickon, the younger brother of one of the housemaids. Dickon is kind, compassionate, a natural with animals, a nature lover, and an all-around good human being. Through example, Dickon teaches first Mary, and then Colin, how to love themselves, how to love others, how to appreciate the world around them, how to play, how to enjoy life, how to laugh, etc. And...all this is done in the setting of the "secret garden". The secret garden is the garden which has been closed down by orders of Mr. Craven for the past ten years....ever since his wife died there. His wife loved the garden, and everything planted in it, including her precious roses. However, after her death, Mr. Craven locks the only door to the garden, lets the ivy grow over the door, and buries the key. Mary discovers the key to the door one day after hearing about the secret garden from the old gardener, Ben. Then, Ben's friend, the little robin, chirps his way over to the door and shows Mary how to get in. And, the rest is history...Mary becomes healthy and lovable, as does Colin. Dickon makes two lifelong friends. And, Mr. Craven, who has been off on another months-long trip, has a weird dream about the garden. He begins to have a smidgen of hope and even second guess himself as to how he's treated his own son. He high-tails it home just in time to see Colin come bursting on two healthy legs out of the door to the secret garden. Thrilled with the story, and so happy to see his son healthy, the book ends...but we know the tale must surely go on. I would love to see the musical version of this now that I've read the book! It was one of my brother's favorite musicals when he was alive.

Nightmare Abbey (Peacock). Hmm, well, I would never have put that book on the Top 100 list. Granted, it was #100, but still. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a huge satire about the melancholy existence of some of England's great poets, and their woe-be-gone angst. I had to actually go and read about the book to understand it, and once I did...then it made a little more sense. The main character, Scythrop, the gloomy Mr. Glowry's dramatic son and heir, lives in the tower of Nightmare Abbey. He's supposed to be a representation of Percy Bysshe Shelley. And, the two ladies he falls for, Marionetta and Stella, are supposed to be Percy's two great loves. Anyway, with character names like Mr. Listless, Mr. Toobad, Mr. Asterius, and his son Aquarius, the book does bring a smile to my face at times. And, there are a few good lines to boot, especially from Mr. Listless. Mostly, it's just an 80 page forum for the author to discuss all manner of thoughts, like transcendentalism, etc., that poets discussed in the day. There's also a Mr. Flosky, who is supposed to be Samuel Coleridge, and a Mr. Cypress who is supposed to be Lord Byron. There are a couple of twisty surprises, but for the most part, I would put Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband or GB Shaw's Heartbreak House or Moliere's Tartuffe on the list of Top 100 way before I'd put this one there. :-)

Finished: Appointment in Samarra (O'Hara). I really, really liked this book! I think it definitely belongs on the Top 100 list, where it is. Now, I have to let it settle a bit and figure out if it belongs on my "favorites" list. I can't even exactly explain why I like it so much, but I just do...it moves along fast; it has lots of dialogue between the characters; it gives just enough character background, for those you love and you don't love; it's very well written; and it's just a simple book about a slice of life in America in 1930! The main characters, Julian and Caroline English are a young married couple, about 30 years old. They have both been raised in the "rich" part of their little Pennsylvania town called Gibbsville. Married four years, we are introduced to them in the midst of a party at the "club" with all their friends of equal socio-economic status on Christmas Eve. Julian is the owner of the Cadillac dealership in town. He's handsome and privileged and totally in love with his wife. However...it is clear that he's on his way to becoming an alcoholic, if he's not already one. After a few drinks, he commits an act that leads to a spiraling of unfortunate events that leads to his committing suicide two days later. :-( While he's sitting in the club listening to one of his friends, Harry Reilly, tell one of his notoriously boisterous, funny, and repetitive stories, Julian gets very annoyed at it and throws his drink in Harry's face. The problem is....Harry had recently loaned Julian $20,000 for his company... AND ...though no one really likes Harry, too many people owe him money for one thing or another, so everyone is aghast (even if fakely) at Julian. Caroline, a pretty, lovely girl who everyone adores, begs her husband to apologize to Harry the next day and set things right. She also begs Julian not to get drunk that day. Julian attempts to see Harry, but Harry won't see him. Julian proceeds to drink that day and ruin things further when he gets mad a Caroline for refusing to meet him out in the car for a quickie when they go to another party at the club that night. He proceeds to get drunk and flirt with the mistress of the local mobster, Ed Charney, another person that no one in town wants to anger. When Julian and the mistress sneak out to the car, everyone sees what they're doing, including poor Caroline. Julian is too drunk to actually have sex with the woman, but the humiliating damage is done. Caroline goes home to her mother and has a really nice mother/daughter talk. The next morning she is all set to leave to go home and have their own party which is scheduled for that evening. Julian is waiting for her on the street in his own car, and rather than apologizing, he just digs things deeper by being sarcastic and argumentative. He even tells her how he just got into another fight at the club with one of his best friends, Froggy, the war vet who lost an arm in the war. Julian is very upset because Froggy lambasted him for his behavior, and in a blow to Julian's self-esteem, ended up telling Julian that he's never liked him. Julian is in almost more despair about this than his fight with Caroline, since he considered Froggy one of his best friends. He wonders if none of his friends really like him. As he walks away from Caroline after his snarkiness, Caroline tells him to cancel the party...that this is it for her. She's going to stay at her mothers. Their marriage is over. Julian goes home and drinks himself into a stupor, goes out to the garage, starts his Cadillac, and kills himself from carbon monoxide poisoning. It's very drastic and sad. One of the reasons that this book is so good is that I don't ever NOT like Julian. Even with all his antics, he's somehow sympathetic, and I'm not one to have sympathy for an alcoholic womanizer. I don't know if womanizer is the right word since he's never cheated on Caroline and adores her. He just seems to make that first bad decision and things spiral out of control. Anyway, along the way, during this fast-paced story, we meet other characters, like Lute & Irma Fliegler. Lute works for Julian at the dealership and is in the "working-man" class. He and Irma have been married ten years, have three kids, and have the best relationship in the book. Lots of good characters!

At the beginning of the book, in the epigraph, you get a definite foreshadowing of things to come (not to mention the origin of the title of the book) when the author includes the famous retelling of a story by fellow author M. Somerset Maugham. I love it so much that I think I'll include it here:

A merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Shortly, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells him that in the marketplace he was jostled by a woman, whom he recognized as Death, and she made a threatening gesture. Borrowing the merchant's horse, he flees at top speed to Samarra, a distance of about 75 miles, where he believes Death will not find him. The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death, and asks why she made the threatening gesture. She replies, "That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

From that point on out, I was hooked. Anyway, it's just a good book that I'm still savoring, so I think that's it for now. :-)

Finished: Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez). Very nicely written Nobel Prize winner about unrequited love that spans a lifetime...with a huge gap in the middle, lol. I would love to say I'm so in love with this story, like so many people probably are, but there was one aspect of it that bothered me too irrevocably. In any event, though, it is very beautifully written and feeling-provoking. The story is set in a coastal town of Columbia and starts with the 80 year old Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his wife of 51 years, Fermina Daza. Dr. Urbino is a highly respected member of the community, and his wife the same. Educated in Europe, Dr. Urbino came back to his Columbian town to live and helped to improve the conditions to quell the outbreaks of cholera that were rampant at the time, and which had even taken the life of his own physician father. We read about some of the ups and downs of the fifty-plus year marriage, and see how their love has lasted and been tested over the years. Then, in a very bizarre twist, Dr. Urbino falls from a ladder while trying to recover his pet parrot and dies from the fall. The devastated town mourns the doctor and Fermina Daza is in shock. However, at the gathering after the funeral, Fermina is approached by another elderly man who proclaims his love for her as he tells her he's waited for her for over fifty years and that he's never stopped loving her. End chapter.

Flash back now to the 17 year old, Florentino Ariza, only child of an unwed mother, who works at the telegraph office in the same Columbian town. One day when he delivers a message to the home of a much wealthier town patron, he catches a glimpse of his beautiful 13 year old daughter, Fermina Daza, also an only child, and motherless to boot. Florentino falls instantly in love and spends the next year writing love letters to Fermina which are secretly given to her by her aunt. Florentino is wracked with love pains. He is also not very physically attractive, is very socially awkward, and has thick glasses for his poor vision, but boy can he write a love letter! Fermina has espied the young suitor from afar, and though his clothing and looks are rather unconventional, after a year or so, she begins to write back and the two teenagers fall madly in love, even though they only catch glimpses of one another and speak only a few times over the years. Finally, Florentino asks Fermina to ask her father for permission to see her. When Fermina does this, her father refuses and then seeks Florentino out to plead with him to leave his daughter alone...explaining how he worked himself up from poor to give his daughter a better life....not to have her marry beneath herself. Florentino replies that the decision is Fermina's. Infuriated...the father takes Fermina and goes on a trip to see his in-laws for nearly two years. Thinking that he has removed Fermina from the influence of Florentino, and therefore the feelings, he has no idea that due to Florentino's telegraph job, he's been in touch with Fermina the entire time with clandestine telegrams and letters, and they have secretly betrothed themselves to each other. By the time Fermina and her father return to town, Fermina is 16 going on 17 and her father declares her the woman of the house, in charge of meals, going to market, and all those decisions. Florentino waits and waits for Fermina's ship to arrive when she says it will, but he only sees women getting off the ship. He doesn't recognize the young woman Fermina has grown into, and so he thinks she's not made it home yet. Until...two days later he catches a glimpse of her at the market! He sneaks up behind her and whispers in her ear that this is no place for the "Crowned Goddess"...his nickname for her, and she turns in surprise to see Florentino. Then...much to Florentino's utter despair, Fermina realizes in an instant that it was all a huge mistake...that she's not in love with Florentino...that it was all child's play. She waves him off, asking him never to see her again...and asking for the return of all her letters. Florentino is devastated and heartbroken, but Fermina never relents and doesn't really look back. She goes on with her life feeling only a small amount of guilt. Florentino vows to wait for Fermina forever.

Life goes on for a couple more years this way until the dashing, highly sought after, young Dr. Juvenal Urbino comes back to town. Upon making a house call one evening, he meets Fermina for the first time and is instantly smitten. He tries to court her, but she'll have none of it! She's a tough egg to crack, but she is finally worn down by seeing her father's acceptance of Dr. Urbino into their lives..and by the persistence,  yet respect for her feelings, of the young man himself. Finally, by the time she is 21, Fermina decides she has hit her personal deadline for when she wanted to be married, so she agrees to marry Juvenal. Scared to death for her honeymoon night, Dr. Urbino exhibits the patience and tenderness of a rare man as he holds her each night and whispers sweet nothings and helps her to relax and get to know him during the day and during the night, and waits until they have been together on their cruise to Europe for three nights before making love to his new bride. The experience for Fermina is much lovelier than she would have thought, but she's still not sure what love is and if she loves this man or not. However, they are happily married, for the most part, with their ups and downs and their two children. Fermina becomes the respected member of the society circles as she is called on to do many civic duties with her husband. Meanwhile, Florentino wallows away in sadness. He works his way up job-wise in his uncle's shipping company. Knowing how love sick he still is, his uncle arranges for him to have a job several hundred miles away. Florentino takes off on the long boat journey to the new job. Florentino, who is irrationally saving himself for Fermina, is still a virgin...until one night when a female passenger on the ship, grabs him in a dark hallway, pulls him into a room, rips his pants off and "impales herself on him". Florentino is suddenly introduced to the physical aspect of love and he likes it. He decides that the physical has nothing to do with the heart, so he embarks on years and years of sexual relationships, all of them secret and discreet, so Fermina will never hear of them. Of course, Fermina has forgotten all about Florentino and goes on with her life.

Florentino decides to turn down the new job and go back home, but he doesn't see Fermina again until she is in church one day and is 6 months pregnant with her first child. He is still as in love as ever and realizes he will just have to wait however long it takes for her husband to eventually die for them to be together. The story goes on and on, with lots of beautiful writing. We hear more details of Fermina and Juvenal's marriage, including the one affair that he has that nearly breaks them apart. We hear more and more details of Florentino's increasingly sordid sexual relationships that so few people know about that the entire town considers him to be the odd little man that "must like boys". The years go by and all the main characters hit their 40's, then their 50's, then their 60's, and finally, into the age we first encounter them....Fermina at 72, Juvenal at 80, and Florentino at 76.

I think the thing that makes me not really love this book is that I don't really like the character of Florentino. Everything he does is very selfish and/or obsessed...either with thoughts of Fermina or with thoughts of his own gratification. For instance, and this is the biggest case.....at about 73, Florentino is entrusted with a 13 year old distant relative's daughter as her guardian. She comes to go to private school in the town and Florentino picks her up each weekend. He is responsible for reporting back to her parents how she's doing. And...she's smart as a whip and number one in her class. However... Florentino seduces her!! In graphic language that wiped out almost three hundred pages of lovely writing for me, we see how he first reels her in. Sickly, it is described that Florentino truly loves young America Vicuna. And, of course, she falls in love with Florentino, and their physical relationship continues for nearly three years....until Dr. Urbino drops dead. Florentino quickly ends things with America and tells her he's going to be married. He just assumes that she will be okay with this, and ignores the letters from the school when America goes from first to last in her class. He completely shirks his duty as the guardian and doesn't even inform her parents. So...after a year of patiently getting to know Fermina over again, when Florentino and Fermina finally go together on a river boat cruise...Florentino receives a telegram that young America has taken her own life because she failed her final exams. He knows there is more to it than that, of course, but she leaves no note to that regard, so he is off the hook. He mourns his "love" for her for five minutes before his attention is completely refocused back on Fermina. As I said...this just rubs me irrevocably the wrong way. I felt like I had jumped for a few pages from Love in the Time of Cholera to Lolita and I did not like that at ALL. Here's the particularly offensive passage which flashes back to when he first met her:

   She was no longer the little girl, the newcomer, whom he had undressed, one article of clothing at a time, with little baby games: first these little shoes for the little baby bear, then this little chemise for the little puppy dog, next these little flowered panties for the little bunny rabbit, and a little kiss on her papa's delicious little dickey-bird.

Sigh, I just can't tell you how much that part of the book disappointed me and made me root against the eventual un-requiting of Florentino's love for Fermina rather than the realization of it. Instead, they do fall into each others arms on the boat trip and realize some all-encompassing, later years love for the ages. I just didn't buy it. I will consider Fermina's true love to be Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Rest in peace, America Vicuna.

Finished: Robinson Crusoe (Defoe) Well, a good story idea, but a very tedious book. However, it was consistently listed on Top 100 Book lists, therefore, it made the Top 100 Book list that I'm working from. There were a few good moments, but mostly, it was just a repetitive diary of what happened to a clueless, impetuous 18 year old boy who decided to defy his parents and take off for a seafaring way of life. For the first 8 years, many bad things happened to him before he even got stuck on the island for almost 30 more years. I suppose he finally made some self-realizations and developed a relationship with God during his solitude on the island...but it was all just too drawn out for me. Yes, we met the well-known Friday, Crusoe's loyal, ex-cannibalistic servant, who Crusoe saves from a different tribe of cannibals...but not until way past halfway through the book. Anyway...I can see where the story had so much promise...but top 100? Not for me. And, the ending was anti-climatic...not ending with his eventual self-rescue from the island at over 50 years of age...but then continuing the story a bit further with Crusoe's trek up through Spain to France, including a horrific battle with wolves. Just a big "huh" on that one. I guess I view Robinson Crusoe much the same way I do Gulliver's Travels and Heart of Darkness....are they just boy books that only boys can understand and consider so great? I don't know. Anyway....one more book checked off the list and I'm off to read something new. :-)

Finished: Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston). Beautifully written story about the self-evolution of an African American woman in the early 1900's in the south, despite the expectations and limitations placed on her by her family, her husbands, and her community. The opening passage sucks you in with it's loveliness:

   "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail on forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
    Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly."

I do love that! Moving on from that, written in immaculate vernacular, we hear the story of Janie Crawford as she goes from being 17, forced to marry a well-to-do, older man with "land" by her grandmother...to Janie the 40ish woman who approaches her third marriage to the younger, more vital man, Tea Cake with a zest for life she's never known. Janie's grandmother first squashes Janie's curiosities about life and all it can be when she decides Janie should have what she, a former slave, never had...the respectability to sit up on the porch like a lady and watch the world unfold. Sadly, that's not at all what Janie wants. She wants to participate in life not watch it go by! Bored, mistreated, and stuck in a loveless marriage, Janie runs off and marries her second husband, Joe Starks, when he comes by her property one day and woos her with the adventure of heading to a new town that is just starting up in Florida. Joe Starks is a driven man who takes Janie to Eatonville, Florida and when he finds it's not exactly "starting up" the way he heard...well, he starts it up. He spends money, buys land, recruits people, builds a store, builds a post office, earns the fear and respect of the town people, and becomes mayor of the town. So...Janie becomes Mrs. Mayor Starks and rather than being in on a grand adventure, Joe basically wants her to be the prim and proper mayor's wife and help him run the store. He belittles her in front of other people often for her mistakes, and basically stifles her personality and her joy for life. Once again, Janie is unhappy, unloved and unfulfilled. Joe and Janie have no children, and as she reaches 40, he's into his 50's and unhealthy. After his death, Janie is a rather wealthy woman, and she knows exactly what the town men who come courting her want...her money and her land. However, when the unknown, and 15 years younger, Tea Cake comes to town with his irresistible grin and his outgoing personality, he woos and charms Janie until she agrees to go off and marry him. And, much to my surprise as a reader, he really wasn't after her money. As a matter of fact, Janie closes up shop and moves off with Tea Cake to the Everglades of Florida, leaving her money in the bank. Tea Cake is determined to make his living with hard work and support Janie, and he wants her there with him. Janie has never felt so alive in body and soul, and for the first time, she knows what it means to be loved physically and emotionally. Tea Cake and Janie have their ups and downs for the couple of years they are there...but mostly their ups. A hurricane in the "glades" becomes their undoing as they don't heed the warnings and try to ride it out before running at the last minute to escape the wall of water created by Lake Okeechobee. In saving Janie's life, Tea Cake is bitten by a rabid dog and within a few weeks, he's got the rabies symptoms something fierce. In his delirium, he tries to shoot Janie, and she's forced to shoot her beloved Tea Cake instead. After she is acquitted, she heads back to Eatonville to her home, where she ignores the gossiping magpies rocking on all their porches just waiting to hear how Tea Cake ran off with her money and ruined her. Instead, she tells her poignant tale to her best friend, Pheoby and then goes upstairs to air out her house. She relives the first moments she shared with Tea Cake in that house before they left town and she knows he made her alive for the first time in her life and he'll always be with her as she carries on. A very well written book, with some lovely passages and phrasing. And, the vernacular of the conversations was very easy to get the swing of, to where soon I was thinking how I was reading, if that makes sense. Now, does this book belong in the Top 100 list where it has been sitting, waiting for me to read it? I'm just not sure! I've read so many good books, that I feel like this one might be slightly over-rated. For instance, in terms of books about African American strife, slavery, bigotry, tragedy....I would rank Beloved, The Help, Native Son, Invisible Man and Gone With the Wind higher. I'll have to ponder this one a bit and let is sink in to figure out if it belongs in the Top 100 of all time. I imagine it will fit there, though. :-) One more passage...this time when they were waiting out the hurricane:

"The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."

Finished: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde). Intriguing classic by Oscar Wilde. :-) I really enjoyed this story, but then I enjoy Oscar Wilde's writing immensely. I'm glad I finally got around to reading this book. The eerie story of how young, beautiful, innocent, but spoiled Adonis-like Dorian Gray sits for a portrait painting which changes his life. The artist, Basil Hallward, is enamored by Dorian and feeds his ego, gushing about his perfection. It's not until Basil's good friend, the cynical Lord Henry, comes to watch the painting and meet the young man he's heard so much about that things start to go awry. Lord Henry espouses his opinions on the ways of life, including fulfilling all one's desires, no matter the moral cost. Though Lord Henry doesn't quite live up to those unscrupulous ways himself, he fully counsels young Dorian Gray to go and live his life to the fullest...to rip off the shroud of innocence in his sheltered life and live while he's young...before the lines of age start to mark his gorgeous face. Then, as the portrait is finished, and the men all look at the perfection of Dorian's face that looks back at them, Dorian throws himself on the couch in despair. He realizes that he'll never look this young and beautiful again as the days go by and he ages. He wishes with all his heart, why oh why, can't the portrait age and not himself?? So, we know, of course, the writing is on the wall there. The portrait does, in fact, age in place of Dorian. By the end of the story, Dorian is 38 years old, but still looks 19. However, his actions during all those years have been so ugly and disdainful, and his influence on other young people in society so duplicitous, that hardly anyone will associate with him any more. And...his portrait reflects the ugliness! Dorian now keeps the portrait hidden and locked in his old schooling room on his estate. The first time he notices the change in the portrait, it's a very slight change, but it's definitely a sneer in his smile, reflecting a cruelty that he never portrayed in his innocent youth. The incident that prompts this initial change in the portrait occurs right after the portrait is painted. Dorian meets and falls in love with a young actress, Sybil, very much beneath his station. He falls in love with her more so for her acting and the characters she portrays than the actual person herself. He kisses her once and decides he must marry her. He finally convinces Henry and Basil to go to the theater with him to see her perform, and she has an awful performance night where she just barely walks through her lines. Embarrassed in front of his friends, Dorian is furious. Later backstage, Sybil tells Dorian that she loves him so much that she realized her love for theater didn't compare, so she didn't even care about her job that night. Dorian screams at her and tells her THAT'S what he loved. He dumps her right there and breaks her heart. She begs him to reconsider and tells him she'll never underperform again, but he walks away from her. When he arrives home that night, that is the first time he notices the portrait has changed to the crueler expression. The next morning, Dorian finds out that Sybil has taken her own life in despair. Instead of showing compassion, Dorian finds that to be an exciting ending to the drama of it all. He's really not a very likable person at all. Over the years, his morals and his actions grow worse and worse. Finally, at the age of 38, Basil confronts him one night about all the despicable rumors he's heard about Dorian. Dorian blames the portrait, and therefore Basil, for his unpleasantness, and he ends up stabbing Basil, killing him!! At the very end of the story, Dorian decides, too little too late, that he'd rather get some good back in his life. Perhaps if he destroys the painting, he will get his life back. Instead, when he stabs the portrait with that same knife, the portrait changes back to it's original beautiful form and we finally see the old and decrepit and very dead Dorian Gray laying on the floor. In the meantime, throughout the story, Lord Henry peppers the entire story with more witticisms than I could count. Here is one of my favorites though:

"The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young."

So glad to have added another Oscar Wilde to my collection of read books. :-)

Finished: The Book Thief (Zusak) Book Club Book #4. An instant favorite...couldn't put it down...incredibly moving book! The story of a little German girl named Liesel whose impoverished mother is forced to give her to a foster family to keep her from starving to death. Of course, this doesn't happen until Liesel first loses her little brother to illness on the long train ride to the foster family's little town near Munich. Set during WWII and Hitler's fanatical days, Death is the narrator of this riveting, yet lyrical, story of Liesel and all the people she comes to love and lose. I think most of the horrific Nazi stories I've read about their inhumane treatment of their Jewish fellow human beings have been from the Jewish point of view. This is the first one I've read from the viewpoint of down-trodden Germans who suffer their own hardships, while not necessarily agreeing with Hitler's views and actions. The story is so fresh with me and going to resonate for awhile. I don't really feel like just spitting out the plot. I do want to always remember the relationship that developed between Liesel and her foster father, Hans, or "Papa" as she came to call him. A kind, gentle, understanding, introspective, man of few words...but always the right words, Hans comforts Liesel through her nightly nightmares about the death of her little brother and also teaches her to read. He also cheats death twice, but surprisingly not to Death's dismay, because of circumstances that move him out of the line of fire due to his innate goodness. He carries immense guilt because he lived and his close friend in World War I, the Jewish Erik Vandenburg, died in battle. Erik was responsible for seeing to it that Hans missed that particular battle that day. In return, 30 years later, Hans risks his life and Rosa's and Liesel's lives to hide Erik's 24 year old son, Max, as he tries to flee Germany. Max hides in their basement for nearly two years while Hans, Rosa, and Liesel, all keep the dangerous secret. Liesel and Max grow close as they both have nightmares of the loss of family, and they both have a love for words, books, stories, and writing. They manage to save each other's lives figuratively and literally. Sadly, Max has to leave the safety of their home when Hans generously, but unthinkingly, gives a piece of bread to a Jewish prisoner who is being marched through their town on the way to the concentration camp, Dachau. Whipped for his actions, Hans then realizes that the Nazi party will probably search his house, so the family heartbreakingly says goodbye to Max and sends him on his way. We find out later that Max is caught and placed in the camp at Dachau.

As for Liesel, she originally becomes the "book thief" when she steals her first book standing in the snow-covered cemetery watching her little brother be buried. A book falls from one of the grave digger's pockets. Ten year old Liesel takes the book even though she can't read. This is the book that her Papa, Hans, later discovers under her sheets, and the first book he helps her learn how to read. The book is called The Grave Digger's Handbook. Though the subject material is grim, it actually helps Liesel to cope with her brother's death to read through the book. Later, while picking up and delivering the ironing on the wealthier side of their little town, Liesel meets the mayor's wife, who is hollow and grieving the loss of her own son in war. The mayor's wife shares her library full of books with Liesel and lets her read a book each time she comes. When the mayor financially buckles down and cancels sending out their ironing, Liesel is forced to sneak in the window of the mayor's house and steal a book every so often. Of course, the mayor's wife is not fooled, and one time even leaves cookies for Liesel. Their relationship is another one that develops deeply, which I really like by the end of the story. And, then there's Liesel's best friend and cohort in almost everything, including stealing, neighbor boy Rudy. Rudy is instantly smitten with Liesel, but their relationship develops as a rough and tumble friendship as they weather the hard years together. They age to be about 14, and grow to actually love each other, but never admit it. Their actions are their admissions, though. They are there for each other through thick and thin. Sadly, Death lets us know at the beginning of the story that he comes face to face with Liesel three times in her life as he carries the soul of another person off right in front of her. Needless to say, many of those people who become so beloved to Liesel die due to the bombing of their small German town. It's not hard to figure out who is going to die as the story unfolds...but it is still so very, very heartbreaking. :-( Even Death appears to be heartbroken. He doesn't really like his job, but it's just that....his job. He tries to tenderly carry the souls of good people as he leaves, and he always cradles children in his arms. He never hangs around to watch how the loved ones left behind react, because he doesn't want to get into all the emotion. The exception is Liesel, and because he does spend so much time observing her, he grows to greatly admire her. At the end of the war, Liesel's entire street is leveled, and everyone killed, by a bomb. The only survivor...Liesel, because she was up in the middle of the night in the basement working on a book. Dead: Papa, Rosa, Rudy, Rudy's family, all her friends on the street. It's so, so sad. The mayor's wife shows up to take Liesel home with her, and soon we see that Max survived Dachau and he comes to reunite with Liesel. Death informs us that he doesn't go to take Liesel's soul away until she's a very old woman with children and grandchildren. Gosh, I'm still thinking of so many details, and I just can't write them all down. So many characters I love...and as always, the horrific plight of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazi's just breaks my heart.

Finished: The Forgotten Garden (Morton). Another good, mystery-weaving story by Kate Morton. The story of Nell, a tiny 4 year old girl who is abandoned on a ship from London to Australia in 1913. When no one shows up to claim her, the little girl is adopted by the harbor master and his wife, and raised as the oldest of their daughters. When she finally learns the truth about her mysterious adoption on her 21st birthday, Nell sets off on a journey to discover who her "real" family was and why they would have put her on a ship by herself to a land unknown. Spanning five generations, from the willful Georgiana Mountrachet, to her equally headstrong daughter, Eliza and Eliza's twin brother, Sammy, to Eliza's delicate, sickly cousin, Rose, and Rose's scheming, horrible mother, Adeline and Rose's perverted, disturbed father, Linus (Georgiana's brother and one of the main reason's Georgiana fled from Blackhurst, the family estate, as a young lady), to Nell's selfish daughter, Lesley, who dumps her own daughter in Nell's lap, to that very granddaughter, Cassandra, who travels to London after Nell's death to uncover the secrets, the book weaves tales back and forth of family, fairy tails, secrets, and the incomparable, maze-access-only "hidden garden". Within the story, we get to read three fairy tails by "the Authoress", Eliza Makepeace, whose rare book was illustrated by artist Nathaniel Walker, the husband of her cousin Rose. We meet Mary, one of the servants of Blackhurst Manor who becomes one of Eliza's closest friends. We find out that the artist Cassandra, now in her mid-thirties, suffered heartbreak 10 years earlier when her young husband and toddler son were killed in an automobile accident when she insisted they run to the store so she could get some painting done. Cassandra rediscovers her own vitality and the hint of a new love interest while uncovering the mystery of her grandmother's parentage and the secrets held in the garden and the ocean cottage protected by the garden. In the end, despite the tragedy that befalls some of the most honorable characters, we finally know who Nell's mother truly was, and all the pieces fit nicely together. Another good Kate Morton book. :-)