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

Finished: The Woman in White (Collins) Finally, a book written in the 1800's with a happy ending...and what's more...it was a page-turner! This one definitely deserves it's spot on the Top 100 list. :-) The author was too subtle for me to put my finger on it, but he kept me in suspense with each chapter, and I just had to keep reading to see what was going to happen! I feared the worst, having read so many books written about English folks in the 1700's and 1800's. I was so pleasantly surprised to get a happy ending...even though in the middle of the book we think the beloved heroine, Laura Fairlie, had died. I just knew there was a switcheroo up his sleeve, and rather than Laura dying, her look-a-like, the "woman in white" Ann Catherick had died instead and had been mourned and buried in her place! The book is far too immense for me to outline the entire plot, but I'll give a brief synopsis. The young drawing master, Walter Hartright, is hired to be the drawing instructor for young adult sisters, Marian and Laura Fairlie. Since the death of their parents, they have lived with their uncle at his massive estate, and Laura Fairlie, age 20, stands to inherit the entire property when her uncle dies, and a nice sum of money when she turns 21 left to her by her parents. Marian isn't in the inheritance discussion because Laura's father (the brother of the uncle) had married Marian's mother (a widow) after she already had Marian, so Laura and Marian are half-sisters who are devoted to each other, nonetheless. As you might assume, Walter falls in love with Laura, and she with him, but they never act on their feelings or even admit them because, sadly, Laura is engaged to be married to Sir Percival Glyde. This arranged marriage was promised to her father on his deathbed, and though Laura hardly knows Percival, she is bound to the marriage. Marian breaks the news to Walter and they all three realize that the proper thing for him to do is leave right away. Before he can leave, though, Laura receives a disorienting letter from a woman who claims that she should stay far away from Percival Glyde...that he is evil and will ruin her life. Walter and Marian set out to find out who wrote the letter and if it could possibly be true. Walter thinks back to when he first walked up the road to arrive at the estate and he recounts his exchange with a mysterious woman dressed all in white in the middle of the night who he came across on the road. She was in apparent distress and asked him only for his help in procuring her a cab. Walter aids her and can't shake the meeting with the mysterious woman. As Walter and Marian dig deeper, it turns out that the woman in white wrote the letter! She was actually an escapee from an asylum who had known Laura's mother as a young girl. Laura's mother had been the only person who was kind to her. And, as a young girl, she bore a striking resemblance to Laura! Her name was....Ann Catherick. As the plot goes on after Walter says a heartbreaking goodbye to Laura, Percival charms and ingratiates himself into the family. You can just tell that he's up to no good! He brings along his good friend, and Italian expatriate, Count Fosco and his wife...who just happens to be the aunt of Laura and Marian and the sister of their uncle. The uncle had disowned her of her substantial inheritance years before when she married the Count against his wishes. Upon reading that, you just know that Percival, the Count and the Countess are all in it together to get Laura's money....especially when Percival's lawyer insists that the huge inheritance that Laura will receive when she's 21 shall go to her husband if Laura predeceases him, and not her sister as she had planned. As it turns out, both Sir Percival and the Count are broke and desperate for money, so dangerous plots ensue! Rather than kill Laura, though, they actually find the mysterious woman in white, who Percival detests because he thinks she knows a deep, life-changing secret of his. She is already suffering from a bad heart, and it doesn't take much to excite her into fainting into death. They then drug Laura and have her committed to the asylum, declaring she is Ann Catherick, and they "mourn", bury and inherit the money of the dead, Laura. It takes the determination and courage of both Walter and Laura's sister Marian to figure things out and realize that Laura isn't dead at all! She is frail, however, and doesn't remember many details of how things occurred. As they nurse her back to good health, Walter goes on a mission to find out Percival's secret, to prove that Laura is very much alive, to bring her good name back to her uncle, to make Percival and the Count both pay, and to have her name removed from the burial cross where she was laid to rest with her mother. And....oh my gosh...it all actually happens. :-) And, as Laura grows stronger, she and Walter rekindle their old love and are able to marry after Percival accidentally burns himself up in a rectory trying to destroy the evidence of his big secret, hee hee! That is a very short summary of what turned out to be a really good book! So glad I stuck to my guns to complete the Top 100 list!

Finished: Missing You (Coben) Another page-turner by one of my favorite contemporary authors. :-) I'm thinking that Coben may be introducing a new police detective, Kat Donovan, who he will write more stories for. I like her already. And, her story didn't really finish when the crimes in this book were solved. Yes....the bad guy...Titus Monroe is still alive and kicking at the end. I definitely smell a sequel. And, I love how Harlan Coben makes references to his other characters who he has written several novels about...Myron Bolitar, Win Lockwood, Esperanza, etc. All in all, a great read, especially for the beachy days in the Bahamas. :-)

Finished: Night (Wiesel) It blows my mind every time I read about a person's concentration camp experience during WWII that my parents were alive and teenagers while this was going on. How could this happen in our world?? I know other horrific things have happened in my lifetime. I just can't ever shake myself of the horror that Hitler put these innocent people through. Night is Elie Wiesel's personal story of his family being torn apart...women one way, and most likely incinerated in the giant chimney the first night of separation, and men the other way. He was fifteen years old and managed to stay at the same camps as his father, who passed away towards the end of their horrific experience. Elie was sixteen when they were finally liberated, but oh the horrors they went through. :-( Have I used the word horror too much? I don't think so. How about the word chimney? It has an entirely different, heartbreaking and permanent meaning to Elie Wiesel than it will ever have to me. How sad is that? There really are no words.

Finished: Finnegans Wake (Joyce), or as I call it, the emetic jibberish of Finnegans Wake. I hope to never waste that much time of my life reading such a useless piece of  "literature" again. That is all.

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.