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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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