My year in libraries

Happy National Library Week!

In the past year, I've gotten to see and hang out in some pretty fantastic libraries.

Trinity College's Long Room
the most breathtaking

The British Library
the best old stuff, best books to buy

The Boston Public Library
the easiest to get lost in

The West Des Moines Public Library
the best place to read outside

The Des Moines Public Library

the most contemporary

Plus, special shout out to those not pictured, the library aboard the Norwegian Star and Drake University's Cowles Library.

Archer's Literary References

Have you seen the FX cartoon for adults, Archer? (I reviewed his book for the blog on August 2012.) It's a spy show that is incredibly funny and makes rather sophisticated nods to the spy genre and literature. Most of the literary references are over my head, actually. 

See for yourself: https://vid.me/HSxB

Be warned: Archer is pretty... crude or or inappropriate at times. Look out for near-naked cartoon ladies. 

Library Shout-out: Johnston Backpacks

Someone I know posted this on Facebook, and I thought it was too good not to share. A local library has backpacks you can check out that are filled with info about an area you might be visiting (like, one looks like it's labeled Colorado). I think this is such a cool idea, and what a great example of the library of the future that's not reliant on a major library structure overhaul or a bunch of expensive technology--which all has it's place, too. This just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like some kids might get to spend summer vacation learning, too.

The Good Thief's Guide to... by Chris Ewan

Amsterdam. Paris. Vegas.

I don't know how I came across this Good Thief's Guide series, but one day I was looking at my wish list on the library download site and thought, "Hey! You're going to Amsterdam soon, and the first book in this series is set in Amsterdam, give it a shot."

I know, my book-picking logic is flawless.

The stories follow author Charlie Howard, who writes a series of books about a thief getting into scrapes. The twist is that Charlie himself is a thief, and uses his experiences to write the books. You read a bit about the books he is writing but you're mostly following the adventures of Charlie.

I'm listening to this series on audiobook, which is the root of its charm. I've read some reviews that mention frustrations about the grammar and structure of the text. However, listening to it, the books are colloquial and easy to listen to. The characters aren't the most well-developed nor are the plots terribly plausible, but it's fun and I'll definitely venture to Berlin and Venice with Charlie.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Wow. I'm looking at my old post on Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and I think I'm going to have to do remove some parts to make it publish-worthy. Not only was I missing a few sentences, I think my recent BA in English had given me a License to Critique that was not quite approved. Here it is, the newly edited post on TOTC. 

Because I cannot possibly commit to reading Twilight (huzzah! 2015 me is still proud of that), I moved on to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Partially, because I love Brit lit. Partially, because I read it in the most traumatizing high school English class, and I thought it deserved a second go. But mostly because Dickens has to appear on the Subject GRE for Literature some how, and this is a classic. 

Verdict: GREAT BOOK. So many people hate it, and I don't know why. The story is compelling, the characters cover a broad range of good, evil, Christ-like, and badass, and the French Revolution is so damn interesting. I was in a page-marking frenzy with this book, like many Victorian novels before it, and I therefore have lots of thoughts to share.

humor

Dickens is one funny guy. Take, for instance, this passage, which describes Jerry Cruncher's hair.

"It was so like smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over." (10)

This is more of a reflection of what I personally find comical, but can't you just hear this at the beginning of Dragnet:

"The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hanging-sword-alley, Whitefriars; the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty." (48)

Little Cruncher's flight from the graveyard sounds just like a Mel Brooks scene.

"He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side--perhaps taking his arm--it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend, too..." (148)

Some of Dickens' descriptions of La Guillotine were lighthearted, despite the serious subject.

"It was a popular theme for jests; it was the best cure of a headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close" (255)

female characters

Madame Defarge knows her stuff. She is a genius with her secret knitted code, and she totally wears the pants in the Revolution. Her husband gets antsy and is worried they won't see progress. Not only does she never doubt, but she goes so far as to say she does not care if it is not seen in their lifetime--it's the change that matters, not their gratification. Then she hits him with all these examples of earthquakes and lightening ( 164) to tell him to stop whining. Bam! She even makes plans to act outside her husbands knowledge. But this does not happen, for Miss Pross kills her.

Miss Pross is just very comically drawn. A loud, brash and rather boastful Englishwoman, her culminating moment is the showdown with Madame Defarge. The scene is brilliantly written, with each woman speaking her own language and simply reading body language and tone to decipher the situation (343). What's interesting about her is that despite being such a strong character (and an important component of getting Charles out of France), she ends up deaf. Is this punishment for being too strong of a woman? Can the same be said for Madame Defarge? Why are the two strongest female characters in the novel injured, while innocent and beautiful (paragon of womanhood?) Lucie remains unfazed?

La Guillotine and La Force are the weapon of mass killings, and the waiting chamber for her. What is the significance of the guillotine being feminine? The book's afterward states that this emphasis is 'quite unhistorical' (361). For real? I am so surprised by that. Perhaps, simply because I am a h-u-g-e fan of the musical The Scarlet Pimpernel, a French Revolution musical that includes the graphic (and way-to-fun-to-sing) song Madame Guillotine: "Now gaze on your goddess of justice/ with her shimmering, glimmering blade/ as she kisses these traitors she sings them a last serenade."

final thoughts 

I would like to pose a question that I cannot answer: Why end the novel with a 'fictional' account of what happened? Does this save the narrator from making their own statement on the Revolution? Could it not have eerily ended on 'Twenty-Three'?

Stephen Koch wrote an afterward, and it largely focused on his reiteration of the reason behind the turmoil of this story--rape. Koch is quite right that I (and most readers) looked past the hideousness of rape and its importance in this story. However, I don't feel terribly bad about this. Should I? Do I miss it because Dickens clearly created more drama in other areas of the story? Is this discussed and studied academically? Of course in high school I didn't--but in college is this a thing? Huh!

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

I'm surprised at my past review of Northanger Abbey. I can't believe I didn't really flag any quotes! What a loss, because this book was full of them, my favorite being, "If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad." 

The image I've picked to run with the old review is the latest copy of the book I purchased from the British Library after seeing the exhibit: Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination. It was a delightful look at the fascinating, influential genre.
 

I generally like reading Jane Austen. Okay, love reading a JA book. I just finished Northanger Abbey and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It was certainly an easy read, and one that kept me motivated enough to finish it in just a couple days. But it didn't seem like there was much to the story. At all. This is where I miss being in English courses: some professor would bust out a bunch of awesome facts or theories or what have you, and I'd be totally into it. Reading for enjoyment, however, it's not the best book I've ever read.

Naturally, though, I have to give Austen some props. Her satirical writing style and development of characters is as amazing as always. She wrote characters that made me squirm with uncomfortableness. John Thorpe is a complete self-centered ass and Catherine Morland is terribly imaginative and curious to an annoying fault. When it comes to relationships and friendships, Austen rather accurately portrays what still happens today. Friendships take a back seat to relationships, and lots of conniving, flattery, and peacocking happen while it all gets worked out.

This novel also presents the question: Is the narrator the author? Truthfully, I do not know if Austen intended the story's narrator to be herself. She may have, and it may be a well-known fact. However, I don't know the answer, and so I must, at default, consider the author and the narrator two different beings. But, in this book, it's very hard not to conflate the two. Rather than simply a narrator, the narrator claims to be the author of the story as well. This person (which by default also, I assume to be female) interjects often, even when she does not directly reference herself with an "I." For example, "A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thin, should conceal it as well as she can" (104). This is not a statement of any character, but merely the narrator's commentary on the subject. Again, very hard not to see Austen in that statement. Other times, the narrator/author is more direct with referencing herself. "And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion; to a pillow strewed with thorns and with wet tears" (83). Oh how dramatic of this narrator/author! Perfectly fitting the novel's structure as a gothic parody.

In terms of gothic parody, Radcliffe and the Mysteries of Udolpho are mentioned multiple times. My main wish is that I had read that story, and others like it, in order to properly appreciate the references and parodies that Austen set. I wonder how Radcliffe reacted to this novel. I just wish I could time travel and get a good feel for the climate at the time.

One final note: Let's huzzah for the fact that this is a book by a shamefully famous female author, which parodies the work of a female author who piloted the gothic novel movement. Ladies making their way in the 1700s and 1800s. Huzzah!

Women's History Month Reading List

A friend sent me the link to this reading list for Women's History Month. I've never even considered reading to fit the theme of this month (although Black History Month was something I always thought should be influencing my reading), so it's great someone clued me in! Does it count that I'm reading Little Women? That doesn't seem too far fetched of a WHM pick.

This list has 30 books to read, either to encourage you to quit life and read one a day, or in case, like me, you've read a couple. I've read four, to be exact, and I doubt I read the full Year of Magical Thinking. On this list, I'm most interested in Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. She is the author of Fingersmith, another sexy little neo-Victorian book focused on the ladies. I've wanted to read more of her stuff since college. My next interest is Eleanor Catton's New Zealand mystery, The Luminaries. It's almost 900 pages and the author is young and smart and awesome, so I'm sold.

Added them both to my Goodreads... for next WHM.

Academic Endeavors in Literature

I recently came across a lot of papers I'd saved from high school and college classes, and I took note of a few of the books I read. College is probably less worth noting, since it's so specific to class interests, but I do find the high school list interesting. I feel like I had such a different experience than some of the people I went to high school with, not to mention people in other areas. I mean, I didn't even read Price & Prejudice? I did my best guessing on how to properly identify the works, italicizing and putting in quotations, but I admit I don't know that they're correct. Also, this definitely isn't a complete list. Like, I really think I read Great Expectations in high school, and there are a whole library of books missing because I didn't find info on my YA class and others from college and grad school.

High School English
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
-A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
-Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
-Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
-A Separate Peace by John Knowles
-"A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry
-Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
-Lord of The Flies by William Golding
-My Antonia by Willa Cather
-The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
-"Othello," "Macbeth," "Henry V" "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Taming of the Shrew," "Hamlet," "Romeo & Juliet"
-Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
-"A Visit of Charity" by Eudora Welty
- "A woman on a roof" by Doris Lessing
- "The Five Fourty Eight" by John Cheever
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- "Birches" by Robert Frost
- "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

College Women and Literature
-"Oroonoko" by Aphra Behn
-Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
-A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
-Beloved by Toni Morrison
-Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
-"A Room of One’s Own" Virginia Woolf

College The British Novel in the 19th Century
-Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
-Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
-Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
-The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
-Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
-Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
-Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
-The Rebel of the Family by Eliza Lynn Linton

 College Kinship and Class in 19th Century Britain
-The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins
-Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
-Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
-Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli.
-Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
-Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell