Finished: The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Gaiman) Thanks for the recommendation, Caroline! A very good story, hard to put down, and I want to know if the little boy ever sees Lettie again?? I just realized that his name is never said or known, but I feel like I know him well. Anyway, a very good story, but very short...leaving me wanting more. The boy is only 7 years old, but a very bookish boy, and though his mother sets a huge table for his birthday party, nobody comes. :-( He has no friends, really. He lives with his mother, father and sister. When things get tight money-wise, he's got to give up his bedroom so they can take in renters, the first of which is a scruffy old opal miner who accidentally runs over and kills the boy's brand new kitten, Fluffy. :-( :-( Not long after, the old renter takes their family car down a country lane and kills himself because he's spent all the money people gave him to invest in America. The boy has gone along with his dad to get their car, and they are shocked to see the dead body. An eleven year old girl, Lettie Hempstock, whose land they are on, offers for the boy to come back to her house for a bit while the police do their thing. Here the boy finds a new, protective friend, and meets her mother and grandmother. She learns that Lettie considers the pond out back on their farm to be an ocean. He also soon learns that there is more to the Hempstock women than he could ever have imagined. They never exactly say what they are, but not witches. They are ageless, though, and have special powers. When Lettie and the boy come across an evil, huge, bat like "flea", a being that wants to escape into our world and thrive, Lettie tells the boy not to let go of her hand as she starts reciting old language to contain it and put it away. However, the flea throws some kind of fireball at the boy and he instinctively reaches out to catch it. At that moment, he feels a sharp pain in his heel, and unbeknownst to Lettie, who thinks she's contained the flea, the flea has entered the boy! The next day the boy and his sister have a beautiful but sinister new nanny, Ursula, who wreaks havoc on their family. Having found the new hole in his foot, and pulled part of a slimy worm from it, the boy just knows that this is the evil being. No one would believe him if he said anything though. The flea takes control of his father when the boy tries to leave the yard and makes the father get angry and nearly drown the boy in the bathtub! (The mother suddenly has a new night shift job.) The flea has threatened to lock the boy in the attic if he tries to leave the property again. The next night, the boy hears his father with the nanny and though he doesn't know exactly what they're doing, he figures they'll be preoccupied for awhile. He climbs out his window and makes his way to Lettie's....but not before Ursula comes flying through the air after him. Lettie protects the boy and Ursula flies back to his house. Lettie, her mother and grandmother all know that they must rid the earth of the flea, but she has created a "door" inside the boy which is her portal. The grandmother pulls the portal out of the boy's foot, and Lettie and the boy set off back to his house to put the flea back in the portal. (Why the grandmother and mother don't do this, I don't know...I guess they figure Lettie is capable.) Anyway, Ursula refuses to go back into the portal so Lettie must summon the awful "hunger birds" to come and literally eat Ursula away. They won't leave when they're finished though because they say there is still a little bit of Ursula's portal left...inside the boy! Lettie puts the boy in a safe faerie circle and tells him not to move no matter what. It takes her all night but she comes back with a bucketful of water from her "ocean". She has the boy step in the pail and suddenly he's immersed in a huge ocean and he knows all things! He can see how earth was created, how it will end, and everything in between. When he comes out of the ocean, he is actually exiting onto Lettie's property, and though the piece of Ursula's portal isn't removed from his heart, he is protected on her property. When he comes out of the ocean, his mind starts getting blurry and he forgets all the wonders he just knew. So, Lettie, her mother and grandmother know there is a battle to come with the hunger birds. They don't count on them being so relentless though. Even though they can't swoop down and take the boy, they start eating everything surrounding the farm in sight, the forest, a fox, a constellation! The boy, seeing that everything in the world will be destroyed because of him, breaks free from Lettie's hold and runs to the edge of her property. Once off their land, the hunger birds swoop down on him to eat his heart. Lettie throws herself on him, though, and in that time the grandmother has come out. She's very powerful and admonishes the birds and they fearfully leave....not before they have done apparent irreparable damage to Lettie though. :-( She appears to be pretty lifeless, so her mother carries her into the "ocean" where a huge light-filled wave envelops her. They are all very sad and the grandmother tells the boy that they may see Lettie again someday, but they don't know. It will take a long time for the ocean to heal her if ever. The ladies take the boy back to his home and thank his parents for letting him come to Lettie's going away party...she's off to Australia with her father. A bit confused, the family and even the boy come to know this as the real story and forget all else that has happened. When the boy is a man with two grown children and a divorce behind him, he goes back to the area for a funeral. He makes his way to the pond and suddenly everything comes back to him! The grandmother makes her way down to sit by him and says that Lettie wanted to see how his life turned out...was her sacrifice worth it? Was he a good human being? The boy says he can't believe it took him so long to come back. The grandmother says, oh you've been here before, twice before....he just doesn't remember. They always take the memory from him. At the end, he heads back to the funeral reception and Lettie fades from his head again. Pooh, I really wanted some communication between Lettie and the boy at the end! No matter what, though, it was a really good book and makes me want to read more from Neil Gaiman! :-)

Finished: The Leftovers (Perrotta). eh, not as good as I hoped it would be. This is supposed to be one of my summer page-turners that I can read on the treadmill, but this Left Behind rip-off, sans in depth Rapture angle, wasn't as page-turnery as I hoped. In this story, we are focused on the town of Mapleton where in one instant, people of all ages, shapes, religious affiliations, and morals suddenly disappear. There is no apparent rhyme or reason, though there is a contingency of people who do believe it was the biblical Rapture. These people form a group called the Guilty Remnant, leave their families, live in a commune, begin wearing all white, take a vow of silence, and start smoking cigarettes...yes, that's a requirement. In pairs they creepily stalk and follow other people who are trying to get on with their lives in the town. During the course of the story, two GR's are murdered and skittish town folk are suspected. By the end of the story, there is a third GR death, and the reader comes to see how far down the road to martyrdom the Guilty Remnants will go to make their point. One of the main characters of the story is Kevin Garvey. He and his wife, Laurie, are a normal, busy, harried couple with two teenage children when the event occurs. None of their family disappears! However, 13 year old Jill's best friend disappears before her eyes. College freshman Tom becomes too freaked out by the whole thing and leaves college to go and follow the whackadoodle man, Gilchrest, who forms a sort of cult across the country when his young son vanishes. All kinds of young folks follow him, and he eventually gets a big head and starts taking young teenage "wives", trying to father the "chosen" son who will lead them all to some kind of salvation? Anyway, Tom gets mixed up in that group. Meanwhile, Laurie, the mother who should be thanking her lucky stars that her family remained intact can't get over the where, why, and how of it all. She leaves her family to join the Guilty Remnants!! Ugh. I hate, absolutely abhor, mothers in stories who abandon their children. I think we are supposed to feel something for her, but nothing I feel towards her is positive. So, three years later, Kevin has tried to pick up the pieces and he's become mayor of the town. He rarely speaks to his son who sometimes calls from the road. And, Jill, a former straight A student, has shaved her head, let her grades slack, and fallen in with the druggie group...including her new best friend Aimee who moves in with Kevin and Jill. Jill clearly aches for her mother and can never understand why she left them. On the other side of town there is another mother, Nora, whose husband, 6 year old son and 4 year old daughter all disappeared from the dinner table in a snap. She's considered somewhat of a town hero as she's considered the "most affected", having lost everyone. Nora and Kevin attempt dating, but Nora truly can't get over her lost family. She spends most of her days watching reruns of her son's old favorite cartoon, Sponge Bob Squarepants. Anyway...blah, blah, blah...the story follows everyone as they make decisions on where to go next with their lives. The problem is I just never grew to care that much about the characters. The ending does supply a couple of surprises, one a bit nice that might actually draw Kevin and Nora together. And, one that is a little shocking that regards that martyrdom issue and Laurie. As I said in the first sentence, eh. However, lol, I think I will tune in and watch at least one episode of the upcoming television series just to see how closely they follow the book. :-)

Finished: Journey To the End of the Night (Celine) Dark, negative, depressing book about a few years in one French man's life. "I'd always worried about being practically empty, about having no serious reason for living. And now, confronted with the facts, I was sure of my individual nullity. In that environment, too different from the ones where my petty habits were at home, I seem to have disintegrated, I felt very close to nonexistence. I discovered that with no one to speak to me of familiar things, there was nothing to stop me from sinking into irresistible boredom, a terrifying, sickly sweet torpor. Nauseating." Uggh, over 400 pages of negative narrative like that. This was hard to read for a person who is generally positive and optimistic. I don't really feel like rehashing the plot, because it just involves the very negative, unmotivated, cowardly, selfish Ferdinand Bardamu as he fights in the war, does a stint in the colonies of Africa, is indentured on a ship to America, escapes from the ship, works in the Ford factory, generally detests America, makes his way back to Paris, becomes a sub par doctor, doesn't save anyone...mostly due to his non-effort and caring, etc. etc. Blech...Top 100? No way. On to book # 100! :-)

Finished: Bittersweet (Beverly-Whittemore) A current day nice little page-turning book about the mystery and family secrets that a poor college girl finds out about her very rich room mate and her family when they go to the family lake house for the summer. A pretty good read, and definitely in my category of "treadmill" books. These are the books that I can take with me to the gym and read while I'm on the treadmill and they make the time fly by. :-) Mabel Dagmar is the less fortunate room mate of Ev Winslow, who usually just ignores Mabel, until one day Mabel enters their dorm room to find Ev distraught and Mabel comforts her. They become fast friends, or so Mabel thinks. Mabel, with family demons of her own, jumps at the chance to go to the Winslow family lake house compound for the summer when invited. All kinds of family intrigue occurs once Mabel, renamed May by Ev at the lake, meets Ev's parents Birch and Tilde...and then all her siblings. With sturdy locks on all the cabins, a wacko sister of patriarch Birch's, Aunt Indo declaring there is a huge family secret, and lots of shenanigans going on, Mabel tries to uncover the mystery. Meanwhile, Ev is in love with "the help", longtime handyman, John. Of course....this true love can never be because John ends up being Ev's half-brother, as Birch impregnated John's mother, also "the help" many years ago. Meanwhile, the only normal brother seems to be Galway, who is very attracted to Mabel and she to him, but it turns out he's married. Well...pretty much a marriage of convenience. He was helping someone get their green card and he really loves Mabel. Birch is very much the control freak and very intimidating. When Ev and John elope, Mabel breaks down and tells John that she figured out he's Ev's half-brother. He goes off in a storm, and the next thing you know, John's invalid mother is dead and so is John. :-( The mother is strangled and John has flown off the cliff. Everyone assumes that John killed his mother in a rage and then jumped. However, Ev's younger sister Lu is traumatized and saw it all! Her own father strangled John's mother and then pushed John (his own son!!!) off the cliff to keep the secret from coming out. Clearly Birch will do anything to have his way. Meanwhile, the rantings of Aunt Indo are coming true as an old diary of Birch's mother shows that their family avoided becoming destitute in the early 1900's by dabbling in major stolen goods, artwork, etc. for years and years, even dealing with the Nazis. Eventually Tilde stands up to Birch when she realizes that he is threatening her own girl, Lu. She tells Mabel she knows just as many powerful people in all kinds of places that Birch does. Before you know it, Birch is dead of a "heart attack"! Hmmmmmmmm. Mabel ends up marrying Galway now that the abusive Birch is no longer a part of or threat to the family. And, together with Tilde, they profess their horror at the family's illegal dealings in the past and set up a foundation to see that all the stolen art is returned to the rightful heirs.Of course there are a lot more details, but that's about the gist of it. A pretty good summer read. :-)

Finished: Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais). A farcical book about benevolent father and son giants and their adventures is just not my cup of tea. I know the "masterpiece" is full of satire, double entendres, and scathing nonsensical commentary about everything from morals, to society, to religion, to lawyers, to sex...but I just don't enjoy books written in that manner. Much the same way I really didn't enjoy two other heavily lauded books, Gulliver's Travels and Tristam Shandy. It could be that I'm just not deep enough to understand all the implications. :-) I'd rather just read a good story! One thing about this book DOES fascinate me, however, and that is the fact that it was written in the 1400's and so many of the ideas still apply to today. That's pretty cool or pretty sad, however you want to look at it. Anyway...so glad to be done with this literal behemoth of a book.

Finished: Women in Love (Lawrence) Hmmm...not sure why this very probing, psychological book about the love between men and women is on so many top lists, but I am done with it. Now, only 3 more books on the top 100 list to read. :-) This is my 3rd Lawrence book, and I must say I liked the other two, The Rainbow and Sons and Lovers, more, though none of Lawrence's books make MY top 100 list. Women in Love is a sequel to The Rainbow and focuses on sisters Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen. Living in early 1900's England, they both way over think what love and the relationship between a man and woman should be. Whoa. If you give that much thought to it, of course you can talk yourself out of it! Or, into it! Ursula, who already experienced both a lesbian affair and the love of a man in the first book, has now met the older Rupert Birkin, whose ideas on love are way out there. He practically disdains physical love, though he gives into it. He feels like there must be something more between a man and a woman, something that makes them both rather metaphysical or something. He wants that connection with Ursula. He wants to run around naked in the woods and forget the rest of society, lol. All she basically wants is for him to tell her he loves her. Don't get me wrong, she's a very complicated, deep thinker about it all too, but she basically just wants to be loved by him and, more importantly, be all that he needs. Of course, she's not all that he needs. There's a very intense scene between Rupert and his friend, Gerald Crich, where they get naked and wrestle on the floor for an extended period of time. Though they slough it off as men being sporty, they both feel an intimate attraction. Rupert even offers the idea of having a relationship to Gerald, but he pretends not to really understand what Rupert is talking about. Anyway, Gerald is another complicated one. He's the good-looking oldest son of a rich coal-mining family. As a youngster, he accidentally shot and killed his own brother. He has recently become very attracted to Ursula's younger sister, Gudrun. Again, both characters spend an exorbitant amount of time over-thinking their feelings for each other. When Gerald's father dies, he goes to Gudrun's house in the middle of the night and they have their first sexual experience. From there, they don't know how to act, but Gerald asks Gudrun if she'll go on an extended vacation to the Alps with him. Gerald thinks he's in love with Gudrun, but Gudrun wants more out of life than becoming a wife and mother. She seems to alternate between passionate love and hatred for Gerald. When they get to the mountains, Gudrun is so infatuated and in love with the beauty of it all that Gerald is jealous of her love for it. Meanwhile, Ursula and Rupert have traveled with them and they all have a few fun-filled days. Soon, though, Ursula and Rupert want to move on and explore other scenery. Gerald and Gudrun are left alone to mingle with the other inhabitants of the hotel. One in particular, Loerke, has peaked the interest of Gudrun. He is a fellow artist and though he is not at all attractive, Gudrun is attracted to his views on the world. She realizes she doesn't really love Gerald...not that she loves Loerke, but her rejection of Gerald leads him to try and strangle her. Gerald stops in his tracks when he realizes he doesn't really want her dead. He then wanders the slopes of the snowy mountains in despair until he lays down to sleep and freezes to death. Ursula and Rupert rush back to the retreat where Gudrun is in shock, but not really mourning a love lost. Rupert however, finally breaks down in tears and lets Ursula know that Gerald was the ideal man that he would have wanted a relationship with...that Ursula and Gerald together would have made his life complete. Ursual, but do you still love me? Rupert, yes, but I needed him too. Ursula and Rupert then accompany Gerald's body back to England while Gudrun decides to leave her future and destination wide open. The end. Really, a way too intricately analyzing book for me about how each of them felt about the other at any given moment! It took away from the pleasure of just reading the story. :-) So...on to book #97. Yay!

Finished: Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable aka The Trilogy (Beckett). I'm not at all entirely sure what I just read, especially the last 100 pages, but I'm pretty sure this was Samuel Beckett's big ode to what it must be like to be in the throes of death. Ugh. I have to say that out of the 295 books I've read in the past 2 years and 4 months, this trilogy comes in second to last...SECOND TO LAST! And yet, it is supposed to be one of the greatest works of fiction of all time! I just don't get it with some of these books. Are they supposed to be so difficultly profound that they are considered great fiction? The three separate books, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable were all combined into this trilogy intentionally I suppose. Molloy deals mostly with an old character named, Molloy, who appears to be speaking from his own room where he is about to die. He recounts an adventure where he wandered old and crippled through the countryside trying to find his mother. He kills another man he comes across. The second part of Molloy deals with Moran, the "secret agent" who is sent out to find Molloy. He ends up with much the same ailments as Molloy, also kills another man, and by the end of the book, I'm pretty sure we are to think Molloy and Moran are one and the same person. In Malone Dies, we are treated to the musings of Malone, who is now confined to his bed and dying. He can only reach things, like his daily soup bowl and his chamber pot, with his beloved stick. He also recounts the tail of another character Macmann...but I think they are all supposed to be the same person...Molloy, Moran, Malone, Macmann...hmm, definitely an M pattern here. Then, in The Unnamable, again we have a character babbling on about his surroundings. At first it sounds as if he may be in kind of a Danteish hell, as other characters kind of swirl around him as he is frozen in one spot. However, I think he is just the same character who is so close to death now that he is bedridden, comatose, and all the thoughts of existence that are in his head are just being regurgitated onto the pages of the book. I think he may be aware of other people standing around waiting for him to die. And, the last 6 or 7 pages of the book are one long run on sentence with the ending words being "....it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on." I think it's all rather sad if you think about it, to be lingering long enough to have 400 pages of nightmarish thoughts, remembrances, and finally gibberish as one approaches death. :-( Anyway, this was just a step above Finnegan's Wake for me, in that at least you could, for the most part, understand what the words were saying. I can't tell you how glad I am to have this book off my list, and with a little sadness I can say that I will mostly likely NEVER pick up another book by Beckett again since the two of his I've read are in the bottom 3 all time of books I've read.

Bottom 10 I've read during this reading project, all, by the way, considered the absolute tops in fiction:

295. Finnegan's Wake (Joyce - you know why, total gibberish. Or should I say...gallop paper eix eix labba dabba excrement daisyloo peephole? That makes more sense than anything I read in the book.)
294. Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable Trilogy (Beckett - death by nonsense.)
293. Waiting for Godot (Beckett - waiting for nothing)
292. The Trial (Kafka - I was able to read several of his others, but this one was so confusing and nearly unreadable.)
291. Lolita (Nabakov - Not for bad writing, but for the horrific subject material alone.)
290. Gulliver's Travels (Swift - Just couldn't stand this one, ugh.)
289. On The Road (Kerouac - Whiny, self-absorbed people who many consider heroic?)
288. The Tropic of Cancer (Miller - Just unpleasant subject material.)
287. Heart of Darkness (Conrad - Didn't get the pull of this "classic" ATALL.)
286. Tristam Shandy (Sterne - Maybe funny a few hundred years ago, but didn't do it for me today.)

Finished: The Invention of Wings (Monk Kidd) Book Club Book #5. A very good book about the real life southern sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke who grew up in the early 1800's and became some of the first female abolitionists in the country. Growing up on a plantation in South Carolina, Sarah Grimke is "given" her own slave, a 10 year old girl named Handful, for her 11th birthday. Sarah immediately sneaks into her lawyer father's office that night and looks up the lingo for freeing a slave, and writes a letter freeing Handful! She finds the note torn in two and left outside her door the next morning. She assumes it is her rigid, extremely southern and set in her slaving ways, mother. Her father, though the typical patriarch and slave owner, has always let Sarah into his study to read his books, though he doesn't really take her aspirations to someday be a lawyer like him seriously. He saves those hopes for her brothers, and eventually scoffs at Sarah, dashing her hopes in front of everyone. :-( Anyway, it ends up being her father who has torn the note apart, so Sarah is forced to keep Handful as her slave. The story alternates between Sarah's viewpoint and Handful's. We hear the story of Handful's mother, Charlotte, also a slave on the plantation. Charlotte has a rich history and is an amazing seamstress. She has made a quilt  full of black triangles which represent the blackbirds from her own mother's Africa which represented the freedom to fly away. Charlotte also makes a "story" quilt, which has appliques on different squares showing her own history of being born and then put into slavery. Handful and Sarah spend so much time together that they become lifelong friends, and even though it is against the law, Sarah secretly teaches Handful how to read! When Sarah's father finds out, Handful is punished with a cruel lash and Sarah is punished by being forbidden any books whatsoever...her beloved books. They are all stripped from her room and she is banished from her father's study. As Sarah grows up, she is outspoken in her views and never embraces the typical southern belle behavior like her other sisters. She does end up with one suitor, who she falls for completely, but he ends up being a cad who was just trying to get into her skirts! Heartbroken, Sarah resolves that she'll never marry. When Sarah is 12 her mother has her last child, another little girl named Angelina. Sarah begs her mother to let her be her godmother. Her mother relents, and Sarah's anti-slavery viewpoint becomes prevalent in "Nina" as well. Meanwhile, Charlotte meets a free black man named Denmark Vesey who has "many wives". Charlotte becomes involved with him and becomes pregnant. Charlotte has saved money on the side from selling quilts that the "Missus" knows nothing about. She plans to someday buy her own and Handful's freedom. One day, though, with a pass into town to do the marketing, Charlotte doesn't return home. The Grimke's think she has run away, but she has actually being taken by a slave-trader. Handful mourns her mother's disappearance and even sneaks out and over to Denmark Vesey's to see if he knows anything, and he tells her the grim news that he thinks Charlotte has been taken and probably sold to another slave owner. Handful sees that Vesey has a secret list of many of the area slaves and plans a huge uprising! However, the authorities find out, and execute Denmark and his "lieutenants" by hanging, crushing the hopes of the slaves. There are so many cruelties that are shown against the slaves: the workhouse, where Handful's foot is crushed by a giant water wheel; the bridle like mouth contraption used as punishment; the tying of Charlotte's one leg by a belt to her neck as she's made to stand on the other leg for an hour; the horrible whippings; and, of course, the general degradation as they were treated as less important than the plantation animals. Sarah, unable to live on the plantation any more, leaves and goes north where she actually becomes a Quaker. The Quakers are anti-slavery, but they are also anti-women's authority, so Sarah is always butting heads against the elders as she'd like to speak out and become a minister. Nina, also less and less tolerant of her life, eventually joins Sarah in Pennsylvania and also converts to being a Quaker. The sisters become very involved in the abolitionist movement, even writing pamphlets. When their pamphlets are published, they are asked to tour the northeast speaking out to women about anti-slavery. Of course, they are shunned by their family, and even start rubbing their male associates the wrong way as the topics start to veer just as strongly towards women's rights as much as slave rights. Meanwhile, having run away from her current owner, Charlotte finally makes it home 14 years later, with Denmark's 13 year old daughter in tow. Handful is beside herself and embraces her now fragile mother. And, now she's got a sister...Sky. After Charlotte's passing, Handful is determined that she and Sky will run away and make it to the north where Sarah and Nina are...where there are free blacks. With Sarah's help in the end, Sarah, Handful and Sky all escape on a ship north, with Handful and Sky dressed in the mourning attire belonging to Missus and the little Missus (Sarah's sister Mary). A few years before Mr. Grimke had passed away, thus the mourning attire. And, that's where the book ends, but certainly not the history! The sisters were inspirational, as well as Charlotte, Handful, Sky and Denmark, but boy, it is just so hard to read about the horrors of slavery. I would have to say that Slavery and the Holocaust are the two most horrific blights on the humanity of mankind. And, the treatments and sexual mutilation of the women in Africa is worth being added to that list as well. :-( I hope we never forget, never.

Finished: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (Fielding) This was a very good book with ANOTHER happy ending!! What's going on with my British Lit here?? :-) At over 800 pages, the author did get a bit preachy and wordy in his descriptions at times....especially including a message to readers, critics, etc. taking up the first chapter of each of the books within the book. That was completely unnecessary to me. I don't like it when authors break that dimensional plane...is that what it's called? Anyway, the story itself was compelling and kept me interested. Tom Jones, the hero of the story, was not all like what I imagined Tom Jones to be. I for some reason always thought Tom Jones was a womanizing scoundrel, but he wasn't at all that. He was a very young man who had a couple of dalliances that got him into some trouble but then he fell in love with Sophia Western, the heroine of the story, and his heart was true to her from that moment on! The problem was...Sophia was from a well-to-do family and Tom was a bastard child who had simply been raised by a well-to-do man, Mr. Allworthy. Yes, he was just like his name sounds...a very compassionate, worthy man. Taking in what he thought to be a town girl's illegitimate child when she abandoned it, he raised Tom like his own son, giving him all the benefits of a gentleman's upbringing. And, when Mr. Allworthy's sister married and had her own son, always only known by his last name, Blifil, the boys were raised together. Of course, the story being predictable, Blifil was really the scoundrel, and pretty hateful behind Tom's back, while Tom grew up with the most honorable and appreciative of inner beings. So, when Tom and Sohpia fall in love, neither can even acknowledge it because his history of being a bastard with no fortune of his own to his name is well known ,and a lady cannot marry beneath her in that day and age. All manner of things occur to keep them apart, mainly Mr. Western trying to marry Sophia off to Blifil, which prompts her to run away to London. Both Tom and Sophia go through many trials and tribulations, but always maintain their love for each other. And, in the end, it is discovered that it was really Mr. Allworthy's sister who secretly gave birth to Tom before she was married, and before she could tell anyone, she passed away. Of course, she had left an explanatory letter with a lawyer who had handed the letter to Blifil (then a young man), who, in one of his more dastardly deeds, never showed his uncle and never let Tom know that he was, in fact, his own half brother. Anyway, it all comes out in the end and Sophia is free to marry Tom. All the good people are happy in the end, and all the not good people meet less than happy fates, but not fatal fates, lol. Yay!

Finished: The Tin Drum (Grass) Still digesting this very bizarre, yet attention-holding Nobel Prize winning book! I wasn't looking forward to reading this one from the Top 100 list, but now I'm really glad I did...even if it might not make my personal Top 100 list. It is obviously good literature, even if I might not "get" all the double, political meanings of everything. There is so much reference to World War II, through imagery and different metaphors, including the storming of Normandy, and the taking over of Danzig by the approaching Russians, and more. I think this is probably what gave the book it's Nobel Prize winning status. If you read between the lines, or I guess, read the lines and are able to interpret what they mean, it can be very powerful. I don't think my brain understood as much of it as it should...but then I didn't live during that time. I think sometimes you have to have truly experienced the war horrors and history being made to totally grasp it. I don't know.

Reading this story of Oskar Matzerath, a patient in a mental institution who stopped growing at the age of three and lived his entire life through banging on his tin drum is kind of like a train wreck...you just can't look away. I do like the author's writing, which is always important in keeping me engaged. Oskar weaves his tale, going back to the conception of his mother under his grandmother's huge skirts as she squatted in a potato field and harbored his soon-to-be grandfather, who took refuge under those skirts while running from authorities. While grandmother, Anna, pointed the authorities in the wrong direction, Joseph impregnated the helpful stranger. Once married, Anna and Joe had daughter, Agnes, who becomes Oskar's mother. The story takes place in Danzig in the beginning  years of World War II. Agnes falls in love with her Polish cousin, Jan Bronski, but they resist their love and Agnes marries German grocer, Alfred Matzerath. However, Agnes and Jan can't keep their hands off of each other, so Jan becomes a friend of the family and Agnes and Jan begin a love affair right under the nose of Alfred...who seems more interested in German party activities and cooking exotic meals anyway. Of course, Agnes becomes pregnant and gives birth to Oskar, who has the Bronski blue eyes. As Oskar grows up, in his mind he considers Jan to be his father, and Alfred his "presumptive" father. Oskar is born with extreme intelligence and can understand everything from the moment he's born. He hears his father say that Oskar will follow him into the grocery business and he hears his mother say that on his third birthday, she will buy Oskar a tin drum. Oskar decides then and there he will never be a grocer. He waits patiently for three years for his tin drum...going through all the antics of being a baby, etc. On his third birthday, sure enough Oskar gets his tin drum. He decides that he is picture perfect with his drum, and therefore, should never grow another inch. Oskar throws himself down the cellar stairs when the door is accidentally left open and while suffering only a small head injury, true to his word, he doesn't grow another inch. Doctors blame the fall. Though he does grow in mental  years, he acts to his family like a three year old until after he's into his 20's. Oh, and along with that, he develops this ear-piercing talent of breaking what glass he likes with his screams. So...just try and take that drum away from him! The story then goes on to tell all about how Oskar deals with his mother's death due to eating too much fish, his real father's death while defending the Polish post office in the war, his presumptive father's death by choking on his party pin after swallowing it to hide it from the invading Russians; and how he falls in love with Maria, then Roswitha, and how he even father's a child by Maria....all when he's in all their minds, just a three year old. After his "presumptive" father, Alfred, dies Oskar realizes just how much Alfred really meant to him and he throws his drum into the grave with Alfred, gives up drumming, and decides to finally grow. And grow he does...but only about another foot in height. He also grows a hump, and his head grows a bit abnormally large. In other words, he appears to be more of a "dwarf", as he is called, than just a small child. I don't know if he was actually a "little person" all along, or not. After all, he is telling this story from a mental institution, so what do we believe? And, so the story goes on and on and flits back and forth between Oskar in the mental institution then back to his life story. Oskar does all kinds of things...becomes the Christ-like leader of a group of teen hooligans, does a stint in a traveling circus-like show with his mentor and friend, Bebra the dwarf, becomes a gravestone carver, becomes a nude model, takes the drum back up and becomes a drummer in a jazz band, and then on his own stage show, becomes wealthy...AND...falls in love with a nurse, Dorothea, who lives in his same rental flat, but who he never sees face to face. However, when Dorothea ends up murdered, Oskar is suspected, tried, declared insane, and committed to the institution where he spends two years drumming away on his drum once again, and reliving his life by "drumming" it out. At the end of the story, Oskar turns 30 years old and finds out from  his lawyer that they have a new suspect in Dorothea's murder and that he will likely be set free. Oskar laments about what he will do back in the real world. It sounds bizarre, because it is, but in a way I can't put my finger on, it is also intriguing. :-)

A couple of interesting quotes: When Agnes tries to take Oskar to Kindergarten when he turns 5, needless to say, Oskar has a terrible first day, shatters all kinds of windows, and is asked by the teacher not to return. There is a quote that blew my mind!

No more pencils. No more books. No more teacher's dirty looks.

OMG...aren't those the lyrics to Alice Cooper's School's Out For Summer written at least 30 years later?? I was just floored by that...wondering if Alice Cooper was some literary guy or something, lol.

The next quote I liked was when Oskar was born and heard his mother's first words:

    Mama was thinking less about the business and more about equipping her son: "Well, I knew it would be a boy, even if I sometimes said it would be a little lass."
    Thus prematurely acquainted with feminine logic, I heard the following: "When little Oskar is three years old, we'll give him a tin drum."

I just love that part..."thus prematurely acquainted with feminine logic"...lol