There was nobody else — there never could be anybody else for me but you. I’ve loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.
I’m so glad I’m finally getting around to reading this series. I enjoyed the first two Anne books, and this one was no exception. This one is about Anne’s college years, her relationship with her friends Priscilla and Philippa, and also about her beaux Gilbert and Royal.
Spoilers ahead, but it probably doesn’t matter as most of you have already read the book anyway…
Of course, how could she choose anyone BUT Gilbert? I do wonder why it took her so long to realize that. Besides their relationship, I enjoyed reading about Patty’s Place, Davy’s further development, and all the other girls’ drama. I do think I enjoyed Anne of Avonlea just a bit more than this one, but I still fell in love with Anne of the Island as well. I probably won’t get to the others in the series until next year, but I’ve enjoyed these first three books tremendously.
I love Masterpiece Theatre AND Jane Austen. Put them together, and I’ll be in heaven. Gillian Anderson is the new host! Can’t wait for this season!
The Complete Jane Austen TV PG Premiering Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Complete Jane Austen, beginning Sunday, January 13, 2008, features all new productions of Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility. The lineup also includes the acclaimed Emma staring Kate Beckinsale, and the Emmy Award-winning Pride and Prejudice that made Colin Firth a leading man. Four of the titles — Emma, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility — were adapted by celebrated screenwriter Andrew Davies.
To Kill a Mockingbird doesn’t really meet my own definition of a classic, which is a work 50 years or older; but, it is very nearly 50 years old, and I have no fear it will be a classic in years to come.
I know many people don’t like Heart of Darkness. I can’t say I ‘loved’ this book, but Conrad is a masterful writer. To think that English was his third language, wow.
I can’t wait to read more of George Eliot; I’m planning on reading Middlemarch next year. Silas Marner really demonstrates how a warm heart can grow cold but still find its way back to warm again.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn really surprised me. A wonderful book with such a powerful sense of time and place. Francie is a character I will never forget.
I will be reading more of Joseph Conrad’s work. English was his third language after Polish and French, and his writing is superb.
Heart of Darkness tells a story about colonialism in the Congo, but it is so much more than that. It is more about men’s ‘hearts of darkness’ and what they become after they leave ‘civilization’. Marlow is a steamship captain in search of Kurtz, who is one of the best ivory traders The Company has. It is said that Kurtz has become ill and The Company does not want to lose him because of his high productivity in obtaining ivory. But just how does Kurtz maintain his high productivity?
Kurtz isn’t the only one to leave his morals behind when he leaves ‘civilization’. The actions of The Company Men leave moral questions as well. Is it only the ladies, as Marlowe states, who try to uphold society’s mores, or are they just deluded in thinking society, left to itself, has any morals?
It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset.
This book is short but very complex. It is one that I’ll definitely read again at some point to try to understand it a bit better. I’m still trying to figure out “The horror! The horror!”
Some interesting passages:
I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work — no man does — but I like what is in the work — the chance to find yourself. Your own reality — for yourself, not for others — what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
The mind of man is capable of anything – because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage – who can tell? – but truth – truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder – the man knows, and can look on without a wink.
I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.
The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words — the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.
When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong — too dull even to know you are being assulted by the powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil — I don’t know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place — and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won’t pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other.
Whether he knew of his deficiency himself I can’t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last — only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vegeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude — and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core….
But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had — for my sins, I suppose — to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering to one’s belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself, too. I saw it — I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.
Wow! What a fantastic book. I don’t know why I’ve never read this before. I really thought I already knew what it was about–a girl’s father defending a black man for r*ping a white woman. It is about so much more than that, although of course that plays an important part.
Scout and her family live in Maycomb, Alabama. In the beginning of the book, Scout is going into the 1st grade and her brother Jem is going into 5th. Her father is an attorney, her mother died when she was 2, and her caregiver is a sweet, smart black woman named Calpurnia. The family relationship among all members is strong–very strong. Scout and Jem play together at home (but not in school–Jem insists). Scout and her father always read together in the evenings. This is a point of contention with Scout’s teacher Miss Caroline. Some of my favorite passages come from this section and they are hilarious to me as a former teacher who now homeschools.
The teacher asks if anyone knows what the alphabet is, and then. . .
…as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from the Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading. [...] “Now you tell your father not to teach you any more. It’s best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I’ll take over from here and try to undo the damage–”
The Dewey Decimal System consisted, in part, of Miss Caroline waving cards at us on which were printed “the,” “cat,” “rat,” “man,” and “you.” No comment seemed to be expected of us, and the class received these impressionistic revelations in silence. I was bored, so I began a letter to Dill. Miss Caroline caught me writing and told me to tell my father to stop teaching me. “Besides, she said. “We don’t write in the first grade, we print. You won’t learn to write until you’re in the third grade.”
…as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.
I don’t want to give away too much of the story, so from here I’ll be brief. Scout, Jem, and their friend Dill (said to have been inspired by Lee’s childhood friend Truman Capote) spend a lot of time together in the summer trying to see Boo Radley, a neighbor who is a recluse. In fact, they are obsessed with this endeavor. Atticus Finch, Scout’s father, takes on the r*pe case. The fallout from the case is felt by the Finches from the community as well as from their extended family. The book ends well, though, with a very satisfying conclusion.
To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961 and was made into an Academy Award winning film starring Gregory Peck. It is the only novel Harper Lee ever published.
I listened to parts of this book on Audio CD read by Sissy Spacek. Highly recommended.
Caution: There are a few curse words and adult themes in the book. I would recommend this book for high school level and up.
It is said that Robert Louis Stevenson revised A Child’s Garden of Verses and wrote Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a time span of under two years–if only all of us could be so productive! This is a very short book and can easily be read in a few hours, so I encourage you to read it if you have not. I was very surprised I waited this long myself.
It tells the story of how Dr. Jekyll conducted an experiment to separate the evil and the good in his personality. Mr. Hyde was the result of his evil side coming out. Dr. Jekyll’s appearance was so altered that he was unrecognizable–both in appearance and actions. What was very interesting to me was that the experiment was done not just for “scientific research”, but because Dr. Jekyll admitted to actually enjoying his more sinful side. He wanted to separate the two personalities, in other words, so he could participate in the evil activities while still considering his “real self” to be essentially good. Of course he eventually loses control of the experiment with disastrous results. This simple tale teaches us the true nature of good and evil and our propensity to desire sin. It should be read by all!
Favorite passages:
First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man’s shoulders; and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.
I could have screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul.
I was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as an ordinary secret sinner, that I at last fell before the assaults of temptation. There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.
I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 1:20-21, ESV)
There was nobody else — there never could be anybody else for me but you. I’ve loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.
