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. :-)

Finished: The Rainbow (Lawrence) Hmm...well, it was complicated, deep, a bit consternating...and now I'm done with it. :-) I'm not sure it belongs on the Top 100 list, but there it sits...and so I read it. Maybe I'm just not deep enough or smart enough? I don't know...I think it just isn't my kind of book. I was interested in the characters, as usual, but there was just far, far, far too much detailed inner turmoil and introspection for me. The story follows three generations of the Brangwen family in rural England. From Tom Brangwen, who falls for the Polish widow, Lydia, who has a young daughter, Anna, we see how quick people were to marry after just meeting another available person. Though, they had two more children together and remained married until their deaths, I never really got the sense they were madly in love. Tom did adore his step-daughter, Anna, though. Then, we follow the independent Anna as she falls for her step-cousin, Will, and marries him. Their relationship is volatile, and mostly sexual, and swings from dark to light to dark...but they stay married and have 9 children together! Anna comes to see that her "role" on earth, and one that she truly cherishes, is to have children and be a mother. Will always has his dark nature, and even alienates his oldest daughter Ursula, who grows up adoring him...but grows to hate him as he treats her cruelly due to his own inability to relate to people. Ursula, the first born of Will and Anna takes on the rest of the story as we watch her also very independent nature come to terms with her own powerful feelings about all things in nature, and then her own sexuality. She falls in love with Anton Skrebensky, but then also has a love affair with a woman. She is never ready to totally conform or give herself over to Anton to be married...yet she hates the independent life she carves out as a teacher. As the story ends, she's not at all fulfilled in her life, but she realizes that she's got a lot more of life to live and many more experiences to come that will define her being. All of the characters analyze their sexual desires and feelings towards their partners to death, and I think that's where the book lost me a bit. I can see where it would have been a bit scandalous in the early 1900's when it came out. And, of course, his sequel, Women in Love, which is the continuing story of Ursula and her sister, Gudrun, is also on the Top 100 list, so I'll probably be reading that at some point.

Finished: Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan) A reaffirming story of what is means to walk the walk as the life of a Christian. The pilgrim in the story, literally named Christian, begins his journey towards accepting God's way and Jesus as his Savior, much to the dismay of his family and friends. From then on, the story becomes an allegory with all kinds of negative and positive attributes becoming people and places that Christian must encounter. With names like Faithful, Hopeful, Ignorant, Good Will, Giant Despair, Destruction, Vanity Fair, Hypocrisy, and on and on, Christian must face these cities, friends, and foes as he walks the "straight and narrow path" and journeys to pass through the "wicket gate" to get to the "Celestial Palace". Along the way he strays off the path a few times, and those are the times he faces the worst persecutions. The story is nicely written with bible verses written at the end of nearly every chapter. I spent the first half of the book with my bible open, looking up verses as I went, but it became too distracting and made the story not flow smoothly enough for me. Pilgrim's Progress is widely considered the second best book next to the Bible to own for a Christian. It certainly has some nice lessons, puts things in simple words, and even has nice explanations and positive lessons you are supposed to learn from the book all listed in the back. It got a little too preachy for me at times, but then at other times it was soul-refreshing to just read  and feel peaceful at the same time, knowing what the future does hold in the life hereafter for a Christian. :-)

Finished: Dark Places (Flynn) My third Gillian Flynn book. Not quite as good as the other two, but still a nice page-turner. And, it was really a story that made me sad at the poverty and tragedy of the Day family. Libby Day, the only surviving member of a family who is slaughtered one night, apparently by her 15 year old big brother, Ben, is living a meager existence physically and emotionally 25 years later when a group who believes her imprisoned brother to be innocent, wants her to recant the testimony she gave as a 7 year old which helped put Ben behind bars. The book goes back and forth between the viewpoints of current day Libby, 15 year old Ben, and their bedraggled mother. Every scenario you can come up with as a reader just leaves you sad at the poor circumstances of the divorced, single mother of four children, trying to keep the farm from being foreclosed on, trying to keep any kind of food in her children's bellies, trying to make ends meet....and really, as we see her personality unfold, realizing she's just not that great of a mom. Libby, the super-screwed up adult, does get to the bottom of things eventually. I spent the whole book thinking Ben actually DID do it, after reading all his chapters. He was also a messed up kid due to his familial circumstances...messed up with a wild older girl who was into devil-worship and was pregnant with his child. Yeah, a "dark" book as the title suggests. Off to read something lighter I think. :-)

Finished: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll) After having read that, I'm pretty sure I read that sometime in my childhood. A bizarre little dream story that I wouldn't put on the Top 100 list over the books Little House in the Big Woods or Charlotte's Web, but oh well. No need to recap it really...everyone knows it's about Alice going down the rabbit hole and having all her weird adventures with the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Mock Turtle, the Griffin, the Duchess, and the Queen of Hearts! :-)

Finished: A Clockwork Orange (Burgess) Hmm. I'm not really sure what to think about this book. It was quite a trip though! Does it belong on the Top 100 list that has been staring me in the face for over 2 years? I'm not sure that it does. Even the author (in the preface) says that this is the least of his works he'd like to be known for, but known for it he is. It's some kind of cult classic, I suppose, that scares me to think that people who read this book actually sympathized and/or glorified the actions of the miscreant, violent, soulless 15-year old  Alex....the "protagonist"...the "anti-hero". Hmm, I say again. I don't think I've ever read such a violent book...though the horror of Lolita comes close to being as unsettling with the constant rape of a young girl by her mother's widowed husband. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex and his "droogs" (one of the made-up words of the nadsat, half-Russian, half-English, half-teenage babble language used throughout the book) roam the streets at night and attack innocent people...violently. (I had to have the urbandictionay.com open on my phone so I could look up words as I went along, and sure enough, most of them were there "from A Clockwork Orange", it would say.) They don't stop at beatings and theft, but continue on with brutal rapes. They get hopped up on drugs and live to be violent. Alex gets caught and sent to prison after an elderly woman dies from his behavior. After two years, so he's now only 17, he is sent to be the guinea pig in an experimental treatment by the government where he is forced to watch the most violent of films over and over, strapped down, and with his eyes forced open by clamps. Injected with a substance that makes him violently ill as he watches the films, his body is literally reprogrammed to reject all things violent...even violent thoughts, because he begins to get violently ill when he starts thinking those thoughts. In other words, he's not a morally changed person...but he's forced to adhere to a certain, simpering behavior to avoid becoming ill. What the doctors do at this facility is cruel and scary, and is a huge statement about the government forcing their own kind of violence. When Alex is released after two weeks of torture and deemed "cured", he tries to go home to his parents, but they have let out his room. He wanders the streets and is viciously beaten by two police officers who turn out to be one of his old "droogs", and one of their former droog enemies. Left out in the country after being beaten, Alex stumbles to a house where a kindly man takes him in and feeds him, etc. He recognizes Alex from his picture in the paper as the inmate who was treated and "cured" and released back into society. The man is pretty off his rocker himself and tells Alex he will become part of his group of people who is trying to stand up to the government. The group uses Alex by confining him in a room and causing him to relive some the music associated with his anti-violence treatment, causing Alex to jump out a window to take his own life rather than listen to any of it for a second more. The group of men stand around him. It was what they wanted....for Alex to die so they could blame the government for what they did to this boy. Alex doesn't die though. He is battered and broken, but he lives. And somehow the broken bones, head injury and/or the subsequent treatment at the hospital undo his "cure" and he's back to his violent tendencies. However, by the famously "left out" 21st chapter, which was included in the book I read, Alex is now 18 and tired of all the behavior. He decides he wants to change, lead a "normal" life...even maybe have a wife and son. Hmm, I still say. Oh, and the nice man who treated Alex kindly is one of Alex's former victims!! At the time of that particular piece of brutality, Alex and his droogs had on masks, so the man doesn't recognize him...but this was the home where they broke in, tore up this man's life's work...a novel in progress called "A Clockwork Orange", beat the man to a pulp, and all brutally raped his young wife. The man now lives alone, he tells Alex, because his young wife died of her injuries from a brutal rape and attack. Alex is taken aback and tries to hide who he is...but that all becomes a moot point since the man is now whacko and wants to just use Alex to get back at the government. Anyway....finally, I read it. I read it pretty fast, so it did hold my attention. I'm just still a bit unsettled to think this is a book in the Top 100.

Just a taste of the nadsat language used constantly in the book:

gulliver = head
listo = face
pretty polly = money
veshch = thing
horrorshow = good
oddy knocky = own (like on my own)
cally = shitty
rot = mouth
rooker = hand
smeck = laugh
tolchock = punch
malchicks = teenage boys
devotchkas = girls
glazzies = eyes
malenky = little
viddied = saw
zoobies = teeth

and this weirds me out because I can remember calling teeth "zoobies" in college, but I never knew why that was slang for teeth. Was is from this book? Hmmm.....

Finished: All The King's Men (Warren) Wow, a book I never in a million years thought would suck me in...being about a political icon from Lousiana...but it sure did. In fact, even though it's a Pulitzer Prize winning book, and in the top 100 of every single darn book list I had dug up, it was one of those books I had just decided I wasn't going to force myself to read. I'm so so glad I changed my mind. :-) This book was about so much more than "Luzianna" politics and Willie Stark, i.e. the thinly masked character based on the 1930's governor of Louisiana, Huey Long. This book was first, for me, whose father was a Northern Louisiana boy, about being enveloped by the whole feel of that state...or of that part of the state. I can't even describe it, but I could feel it...just remembering the long drives we would make from Texas up through the piney woods of Louisiana to see my grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins. Honestly, I read the entire book with the Louisiana accent completely embedded in my head, lol. Secondly, the book was more about life lessons, right and wrong, how a great man could be a scoundrel, but how it could all come from his heart, deep down, being in the right place, but his human nature being one of never taking no for an answer...no matter what the cost...and no matter who he had to bribe. I've never read a thing about Huey Long until two days ago when I read a bio to see who exactly I was reading about in this book. It seems as if he was loved by many and hated by many, but by gum, he certainly made a difference in Louisiana. In All The King's Men, Willie Stark makes his imprint on the poor people of the state as well, and on the other politicians too. He comes from humble and even naive beginnings. It is when he is actually used by the shady incumbent governor of the state...encouraged to run against him, that he actually gets a whole lot of reality thrown his way. He thinks he's loved and being encouraged because they think he can do good...when in reality, the incumbent governor just wants him to run so the people who are ready for a change, will split the vote between Willie Stark and the other guy running against the incumbent, thereby assuring the incumbent of a win. That is the turning point for Willie Start...when he realizes that he's got to turn to granite to make it in that world of politics. Third, the book is actually more about Willie Stark's right hand man, former reporter turned governor's confidant and do-everything man, Jack Burden. Jack is the narrator of the story and this book is actually more about Jack and his realizations, his growing up, and his self-evolving than Willie's. Jack is one of the few people who Willie trusts implicitly, and he's one of the few people who will tell Willie exactly how it is. We have some wonderful flashbacks into Jack's life growing up on the coast of Louisiana next to his childhood friends, Adam and Anne Stanton, who both play prominently in the story later down the line. And, we've got some great characters in the story who are so vividly described and meticulously written, that you feel as if you can look up and see them walking down that small-town Louisiana street...right up to the courthouse in the square in the middle of the town where the four busy streets surround it. Amazing the imagery of the book. Yes, Robert Penn Warren is very long-winded...over 600 pages worth, but I savored every word of it. Anyway, there are characters like Sadie Burke, Lucy Stark, Judge Irwin, Tiny Duffy, Sugar-Boy O'Sheean, and on and on. I'm not saying I'm in love with this book. It will take me awhile to digest it and figure out if it belongs in my favorites...but it is definitely a book that belongs on the top 100 list. There's massive heartbreak, there's humor, there's intensity, there's reminiscing, there's love, deep love, and there's hate, there's passion. I love many of the passages, so I will include a few below. I also had no idea that Robert Penn Warren was a three time Pulitzer Prize winner (two for poetry) until I read his bio.

When Willie and Jack go to Chicago on business, they are shown the town by a man named Josh Conklin. The little gem about "the real thing" is the kind of writing Penn did all over the book...little things you might not have thought of before, and he puts them into words:

Up there a fellow named Josh Conklin did us the town, and he was the man to do it, a big, burly fellow, with prematurely white hair and a red face and black, beetling eyebrows and a dress suit that fitted him like a corset and a trick apartment like a movie set and an address book an inch thick. He wasn't the real thing, but he sure was a good imitation of it, which is frequently better than the real thing, for the real thing can relax but the imitation can't afford to and has to spend all the time being just one cut more real than the real thing, with money no object.

This passage is from when Jack Burden's childhood mentor and father-figure, Judge Irwin, has declared that he will back Willie Stark's opponent in the upcoming election. Willie "the Boss" had counted on his support. He wants Jack to find something out in the upstanding, honorable, squeaky clean Judge's past that he can use to "convince" him to come back over to his side. I just love Willie's way with words:

    It all began, as I have said, when the Boss, sitting in the black Cadillac which sped through the night, said to me (to Me who was what Jack Burden, the student of history, had grown up to be), "There is always something."
    And I said, "Maybe not on the Judge."
    And he said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something." 

And, of course, Willie was right, and there was something...something that sent shock waves and repercussions reverberating through the rest of the book...affecting, in particular, Jack, Anne, Adam, Jack's mother, and Judge Irwin himself. And, when Jack finds out later in the book that his childhood sweetheart and love of his life, Anne, is actually having an affair with Willie, he just can't handle that and hops in his car and drives west all the way out to California for a few days:

I was doing seventy-five but I never seemed to catch up with the pool which seemed to be over the road just this side of the horizon. Then, after a while, the sun was in my eyes, for I was driving west. So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving west. For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar's gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go. It was just where I went.

And, on his trip West, Jack relives in his mind his childhood with Anne and Adam and we see that instant when Adam's kid sister, who always tagged along with them wherever they went, ended up becoming the girl who stole Jack's heart. It is several pages long, but there was just one little snippet of passage I really loved. It was so vivid I could see every emotion:

And little girls sit on hassocks and lean their cheeks pensively against the dear father's knee while his hand toys with the silken locks and his voice reads beautiful words. That was Anne Stanton. And little girls are fraidy-cats and try the surf with one toe that first day in spring, and when the surf makes a surprising leap and splashes their thighs with the tingle and cold they squeal and jump up and down on thin little legs like stilts. That was Anne Stanton. Little girls get a smudge of soot on the end of the nose when they roast wieners over the campfire and you---for you are a big boy and don't get soot on your nose---point your finger and sing, "Dirty-Face, Dirty-Face, you are so dirty you are a disgrace!" And then one day when you sing it, the little girl doesn't say a thing back the way she always had, but turns her big eyes on  you, out of the thin little smooth face, and her lips quiver an instant so that you think she might cry even though she is too big for that now, and as the eyes keep fixed on you, the grin dries up on your face and you turn quickly away and pretend to be getting some more wood. That was Anne Stanton. 

Oh my, I just loved that description. :-) So....yes, I would say I'm so very glad that I read this book which I avoided for so long!