The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

He lived one of those lives that seem otiose because they are not linked to any community of interest, because all the riches stored in them by a thousand separate valuable experiences will pass when their last breath is drawn, without anyone to inherit them. -- A Summer Novella

Short story collections are tough for me to review, especially enormous volumes like this one -- normally I have to spread out the reading over several weeks or even months, and it's hard to remember all the stories to comment on them as a whole. But I loved The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig so much that I sped through it in just over a week. They're so wonderfully written I simply could not stop reading this 700 page volume.

There are twenty-two stories in this volume, but the hardcover edition more than two inches thick and weighs in at two pounds! It's an unwieldy chunkster, to say the least, but luckily one of the nearby libraries had an ebook copy, so I could read it on my laptop and even on my phone. I made a goal of reading one short story every day, but I sped through them and sometimes read three or even four. Some of them are fairly short, and some are closer to novellas, like Amok and Twenty Four Hours in the Life of a Woman.

Stories are arranged chronologically by publication date. As I expected, most of them are set in Vienna and eastern Europe, but others are set in Renaissance Antwerp, Malaysia and Scotland. Like the stories of W. Somerset Maugham, several of them are framed as a story being retold to an anonymous narrator. I'm not going to going to go through all 22 stories, but here are some quick thoughts on a few of my favorites. 

Nice cover on this German edition.
Could it be Lake Como or Lake Geneva?

The Star Above the Forest: A waiter falls in love with an unobtainable countess. One of the shortest stories, but heartbreaking, beautiful prose.

Wondrak: A heartbreaking story about a disfigured recluse living in the forest, and her desperate attempt to save her son from being conscripted to fight in WWI. Sadly, this story is unfinished so we'll never know how it ends. I wish this story were a full length-novel.

Conscription: Another story about a man struggling with the decision whether to obey his orders to fight in the war. In this case he's an artist living in Switzerland. 

Amok: Closer in length to a novella, it's riveting story of a man's confession to a stranger on a sea voyage. It reminded me very much of the stories of W. Somerset Maugham, possibly because of the colonial setting and the shocking ending (and, sadly, the anti-Asian racism, which disappointed me).

Letter From an Unknown Woman: Another novella, about a writer who receives an anonymous letter from a woman obsessed with him. 

The Invisible Collection: Melancholy story of an antique dealer visiting a longtime collector during the period of massive inflation in Germany.

Did He Do It?: A cautionary tale of overindulgent dog owners, with a horrifying ending. 

The Debt Paid Late: The most uplifting story in the collection, about a woman's chance encounter with a faded actor. 

Stefan Zweig

I'm both glad I finally got around to reading this, and annoyed with myself for waiting so long! I definitely want to read more Zweig. I've also read The Post-Office Girl and Chess Story, both of which I loved, and I still have Beware of Pity unread on my TBR shelves -- might save it for next year's European Reading Challenge! I'm also tempted to buy his Collected Novellas and some of his other works published by Pushkin Press. I had actually resolved not to buy any new books this year but I do have a birthday coming up in a few months!

I'm counting this as my Austrian read for the European Reading Challenge; also counts towards the Chunkster Challenge.

Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge

I love a long, epic story, and if it's historical fiction and involves travel, better still. I was so looking forward to Green Dolphin Street because I was absolutely sure it fit the bill, but strangely, I was somewhat disappointed. Published in 1944, it was first titled Green Dolphin Country by renamed in the U.S. Essentially, it's a fifty-year love triangle between a man and two sisters who are his childhood friends. 

Set in the mid-Victorian period, the story begins in one of the Channel Islands (it's never referred to as anything but The Island, but clearly it's one of them). Young William Ozanne, about thirteen, has just arrived from England with his father, a widowed doctor. He soon meets Marianne Le Patourel, who is a bit older at sixteen, and her younger sister, Marguerite, who is only eleven, and the three become fast friends. Marianne pushes her wealthy father to take an interest in William, furthering his education and career. Both girls are smitten with the handsome and affable William, but Marianne is convinced that she has found True Love and that Marguerite has a mere schoolgirl crush. As Marguerite grows more beautiful, Marianne realizes William may be falling for her sister, and she fights hard to keep him close. 

I love this first edition cover, very folk-art influenced. 

Eventually William joins the Navy under the Le Tournel patronage, and ends up in New Zealand. After a long absence, he writes a long impassioned letter to Mr. Le Tournel asking for the hand of his daughter in marriage. However, he's extremely drunk at the time, and accidentally writes the wrong daughter's name in the letter, and is shocked months later when a different woman arrives. The rest of the book is the repercussions of William's split-second decision. Will he marry the wrong sister, and how will it affect all three lives?

This book started out really well -- I loved the descriptions of their life on the Island and the characters. However, in order to fit in the lifetimes of three people, Goudge writes the book in sections with big time jumps in between, usually ten years or so, and then kind of backtracks and sums up what happens during the gaps, and this started to bother me. It seemed like there was a lot more telling that showing -- there was so much condensed that could have been fleshed out. After one big time jump I put the book down for several weeks and didn't have much incentive to pick it up again, until I started to feel guilty about leaving it unfinished. It's a really ambitious story and maybe it would have been better as a series of books, with more details.

It's a bit blurry, but so Dickensian I had to include it.

Also, I think there could have been more character development -- I really didn't always understand what motivated the characters, and what explained their actions. I started to really dislike Marianne, who just seemed bossy and manipulative. I like strong female characters but it almost seemed like this was meant to be a bad thing. The book was published in 1944, and I don't know if Elizabeth Goudge was anti-feminist but that's the impression I started to get. 

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the racism in the book. Mostly set in New Zealand, there are some positive portrayals of native culture, but it's mostly negative stuff about the Maoris, and there's a white savior character that made me roll my eyes a bit. Overall it was the pervasively colonialist -- my edition also has a disclaimer in the beginning which is sort of a red flag. I was definitely Team Maori while reading the book. 

A 1965 paperback edition

Overall I mostly enjoyed it, because of the descriptions of life in the Channel Islands and New Zealand, and there's a lot of sailing, which always fascinated me. Some of the side characters were delightful, especially Captain O'Hara, captain of a clipper ship named -- you'll never guess -- the Green Dolphin, who makes recurring appearances. I don't know if I liked it well enough to read any other books by Elizabeth Goudge. 

Love this pulp fiction edition! So dramatic!

And I've recently discovered it was adapted into a movie in 1948, starring Lana Turner and Donna Reed. (Donna Reed is playing Marguerite, though they've obviously glammed up Marianne if she's supposed to be Lana Turner). It won an Academy Award for special effects and there's a copy at my local library, so I'll have to take a look and see how well they adapted it.

I'm counting this as my Classic by a New-to-Me-Author for the Back to the Classics Challenge; also counts for the Chunkster Challenge. 

Two More Reading Challenges: WWII Reading Challenge and Chunkster Challenge

Two more great challenges for 2021! I'd love to read one per month from each of these lists  which are books from my own TBR shelves. And of course some of them cross over and count for other challenges including my own Back to the Classics Challenge -- a win-win!

World War II Reading Challenge. Hosted by Becky's Book Reviews, it includes fiction and non-fiction, and basically includes any books written about or during the WWII era -- the war itself, leading up to the war, and the direct aftermath. Lots of choices from my TBR shelves! I don't have a lot of historical fiction but I definitely have quite a few books published during the era, and several nonfiction books I've been meaning to read. 

Non-Fiction:
Our Hidden Lives by Simon Garfield
Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood
A Good Place to Hide by Peter Grose
Maman, What Are We Called Now? by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar
Millions Like Us by Virginia Nicholson
Fashion on the Ration by Julie Summers
Our Uninvited Guests by Julie Summers

Fiction:
A House in the Country by Ruth Adam
A Footman For the Peacock by Rachel Ferguson
The Bachelor by Stella Gibbon
Westwood by Stella Gibbon
Chloe Marr by A. A. Milne
The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute
Ordeal by Nevil Shute (UK title: What Happened to the Corbetts)
The Foolish Gentlewoman by Margery Sharp
Growing Up by Angela Thirkell
The Headmistress by Angela Thirkell
Marling Hall by Angela Thirkell
Miss Bunting by Angela Thirkell
Peace Breaks Out by Angela Thirkell
Love Among the Ruins by Angela Thirkell

Chunkster Challenge 2021. Hosted by Impressions in Ink, it's any book more than 450 pages. I still have my unfinished list from the Big Book Summer Challenge, and if I can read one from this list every month, it would cut my stack nearly in half.
Here's what's left. Some of them could count for other challenges, as noted. 

Nonfiction:
Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain by Simon Garfield (544 pp)  (WWII Challenge)
Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood (495 pp) (WWII Challenge)
Trollope by Victoria Glendinning (551 pp)
Slipstream: A Memoir by Elizabeth Jane Howard (528 pp)
A London Family, 1870-1900 by Molly Hughes (600 pp)
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee (869 pp)
Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford (744 pp)
Charles Dickens by Michael Slater (696 pp)

Novels: 
T. Tembarom by Frances Hodgson Burnett (518 pp)
The Complete Claudine by Collette (656 pp) (European Reading Challenge)
Painting the Darkness by Robert Goddard (608 pp)
Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge (571 pp) (Also counts for Back to the Classics)
Bella Poldark by Winston Graham (688 pp) 
Penmarric by Susan Howatch (735 pp)
The Little Ottleys by Ada Leverson (543 pp)
The Macdermots of Ballycloran by Anthony Trollope (731 pp) (Classics Club)
Ralph the Heir by Anthony Trollope (770 pp) (Classics Club)
Marcella by Mrs. Humphrey Ward (560 pp) (Back to the Classics)
Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton (547 pp) (Classics Club)
La Debacle by Emile Zola (536 pp) (Back to the Classics, European Reading Challenge)

Short Stories:

The Canterbury Tales retold by Peter Ackroyd (464 pp) (Back to the Classics)

Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens (635 pp) (Back to the Classics)

The World Over: The Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. II (681 pp)
The Portable Dorothy Parker (626 pp) (Classics Club, Back to the Classics)
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (495 pp)
The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh (640 pp)
The Collected Stories of Edith Wharton (640 pp)
The Most of P. G. Wodehouse (701 pp)
The Collected Stories of Stephan Zweig (720 pp) (European Reading Challenge)

WWII/Postwar Era Fiction

Mr. Skeffington by Elizabeth von Arnim

Tea is So Intoxicating by Mary Essex

Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge 

English Climate: Wartime Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens (680 pp)

So, quite a few choices! I could even try to read separate books for each challenge, without crossing over -- which would be another 24 books from the TBR shelves completed! Bloggers, which do you recommend from these lists? 

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

As usual, I am years behind everyone else and am only now reading the Next Big Literary Thing.  (I suppose now it's just a Literary Big Thing.) Ten years!  That's how long it took me to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell,  though I've only owned this book for about three years (which I got at the bargain price of $1 at the library's Friends sale), and is yet another Big Fat Book that has been taking up space on the TBR shelves.  This book is almost 800 pages, and I've already started the audio of The Pickwick Papers.  I really and truly had no business starting this doorstopper, but it looked dark and mysterious, and that's exactly what I was in the mood for on New Year's Day when I picked it up.  

Quite frankly, it's just BRILLIANT. It's taken me almost two weeks to finish (due to interruptions), but honestly, I didn't want to rush through it. This is one of those books that I was glad to savor and read in bits in pieces. I didn't want to stay up all night to find out how it would end. I wanted it to last forever, because I knew I'd be sad when it was over. 

For those who don't know the setup, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell begins in 1806, in Yorkshire.  There is a society of magicians, who really don't know much about magic, but they've heard that there's a Mr. Norrell with an amazing library of magical books and who claims to be the last practicing magician in all of England.  A couple of them go to meet him, but either he's a snob or he doesn't like competition.  He makes them an offer: Mr. Norrell will do something amazing to prove he's a magician, but all the others must sign an agreement that they'll never try to do magic again.  All but one of them accept. 

Well, he does do something amazing -- he goes to a cathedral and brings all the statues to life.  Everyone's abuzz with the possibility of actual magic back in England. Mr. Norrell moves to London and meets a lot of fashionable people, and then he performs another unbelievable feat of magic. Soon all of London is crazy for magic. Mr. Norrell offers his services to help with the war against Napoleon. He also takes on a single pupil, Jonathan Strange, a wealthy young man who's a bit of a dilettante, but he seems to have found his calling as a magician. The rest of the book consists of the the development of the relationship between Strange and Norrell, and the changes that magic brings to England.

One of Portia Rosenberg's  illustrations from the novel

This 800-page book is set up very much like a Victorian serial.  There are 69 short chapters, all about ten pages long, which was really nice for reading in bits and pieces. This isn't a book I wanted to rush through.  It took me more than two weeks to finish this book, and I was glad to stretch it out.   I can definitely imagine this published weekly, like the novels of Dickens and Trollope.  It has a very Dickensian feel about it, though it's set in the Regency period which was the time of Jane Austen.   I normally hate comparing books to other books, but I couldn't help thinking that if Jane Austen and Charles Dickens could have met and written their version of Harry Potter, it would have been very much like this. Susanna Clarke nails the Victorian writing style more than any other historical writer I've read.  

It's also written as though it were an actual history of how magic came back to England, complete with footnotes to explain all the references they make, mostly about ancient magicians and stories of magical events in the past.  I also found it very funny in parts -- there are a lot of snarky little asides.

Some people have complained about the pacing of this book, but I thought it was just right.  I just loved the world of Strange and Norrell and I'm really sad now that I've finished the book.  It took Susannah Clarke about ten years to write it. I've heard that she's writing a sequel and I really hope that's true, and that it won't take too much longer for it to be finished.  

In the meantime, apparently the BBC is adapting it into a TV miniseries!  That's actually one of the reasons I decided to tackle this book -- I really wanted to read it before I watched it on TV. It's going to air here in the States on BBC America, though there's no word yet when it will actually be shown.  I'm glad it's a miniseries and not a TV movie or feature film, because the format is just right. Eddie Marsan is playing Mr. Norrell and though he's young for the role, I'm sure he'll do a wonderful job.

Bertie Carvel (left) as Jonathan Strange and Eddie Marsan as Mr. Norrell

There are some other production stills floating around the internet. I don't recognize any of the other actors but I'm really hoping it will live up to the novel.  Susanna Clarke also published a book of short stories called The Ladies of Grace Adieu, and I've already requested it from the library. 

Has anyone else read this? And how is your reading going for 2015?  

The Chunkster Challenge

Currently, I'm in the midst of two Big Fat Books -- how do I manage to get myself into these situations?  It started a couple of weeks ago, when I pulled Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell off my TBR shelf on a whim.  It was a dark and dreary day, and I wanted something that seemed like it would match my mood.  I got sucked into the story right away, but it's not what I'd call a quick read.

I also started listening to The Pickwick Papers on audiobook -- it's 25 discs, more than 32 hours of reading!!  The print copy from the library is about 800 pages of teeny tiny print.  My commute to work is pretty short so I've barely getting started. I'm keeping track of my progress with a print volume, but I've only completed about 120 pages worth so far.

That being said, I thought that was a pretty good excuse to sign up for the Chunkster Challenge.  The rules are extremely flexible -- there is no minimum amount of books required, plus audio is okay.  I think the only requirement is that the book be at least 450 pages.  You don't even have to have a blog!

Just for fun, though, I decided to make a list of some of the Big Fat Books from my TBR shelves I'd like to complete this year.  I've narrowed the list to an even dozen, since I think that's pretty manageable.  Besides my two current reads, I'm also including books that are still on my Classics Club list.

1.  Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (782 pp) .  It's slow, but it's just wonderful.  I'll be sad when it's over.

2.  The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens.  (801 pp).  One of the last works by Dickens on my to-read list.  However, I'm kind of underwhelmed by it so far.  I haven't given up though.

3.  No Name by Wilkie Collins. (748 pp).  I can count this as the 19th Century Classic in the Back to the Classics Challenge.

4.  Sylvia's Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell (528 pp).  This can count as the Classic by a Woman Author.

5.  New Grub Street by George Gissing (576 pp).  I read The Odd Women by Gissing a few years ago and really liked it.   I'm trying to expand my knowledge of Victorian writers beyond Dickens and Trollope.

6.  A Dance to the Music of Time (First Movement) by Anthony Powell (718 pp). This one is actually an omnibus of three shorter novels.  Also, the margins are really wide, so I don't think this one will take that long.  Can count it as my 20th Century Classic.

7.  Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson. (556 pp). Another omnibus.  This was one on my TBR Pile Challenge list back in 2013, and I never did get to it.

8.  The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope.  (794 pp).  Volume 3 in the Pallisers series.  Of course, before I read it, I'll have to read:

9.  Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope (752 pp).  Volume 2 of the Pallisers!  I loved Can You Forgive Her? so I'm really looking forward to this one.  Could also count this one for the Name in the Title category.

And to make it an even dozen from the TBR shelves:

10.  All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard (592 pp).  The final volume in the Cazalet series.  I read the first four in 2014 so I'm looking forward to this one, though I'll be so sad when I've finished it.

11.  Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.  I've read so many books set during WWII, I feel like I should read more books set during WWI.  And it's a little shorter, a mere 483 pages.

12.  The Quincunx by Charles Palliser (787 pp).  This one is almost 800 pages of tiny print, and it's another big fat historical novel -- this one's set during Victorian times, so it might be just the thing after I finish Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell --  unless I decide to read a bunch of short books first.

 So tell me, bloggers -- has anyone else signed up for the Chunkster Challenge?  Which big fat books do you want to finish in 2015?  And am I completely insane to read two 800 page books at the same time?

Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope

When the Classics Spin randomly selected my next classic read, Orley Farm, I was both delighted and (slightly) dismayed.  Delighted, because I'm always looking for an excuse to read Trollope, and this one has been on the to-read shelf for several years, ever since I went on a Trollope-buying binge after falling in love with The Way We Live Now.

However, I was slightly dismayed by the fact that it is 825 pages long.  Now, compared to many Victorian writers (ahem, Dickens!)  Trollope is actually a pretty easy read, though he does sometimes digress and get a little preachy in his asides to the reader.  This book selection was also complicated by the fact that in September I recently read a couple of other doorstoppers, started a new job and attended the 2013 Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America.  I have no one to blame but myself for the tardiness of this posting it's been nearly two weeks since I was supposed to have written about my Spin selection.

Nevertheless, Orley Farm awaits!  One of Trollope's best-regarded stand-alone novels (that is, not belonging to the Barchester or Pallisers series), Orley Farm is not so much about a farm as it is about a legal case regarding the possession of said farm.  Here's the setup:

A wealthy man, Sir Joseph Mason, a widower with grown children, remarries a much younger woman in his dotage.  His country estate in Yorkshire is already settled on the oldest son, John Mason, but his new wife gives birth to a boy, Lucius.  While Lucius is still a wee thing, his father dies, and it is revealed that at the last minute, Mason added a codicil to his will, leaving a smaller property near London, the eponymous Orley Farm, to his infant son.  There are questions about the legality of the codicil, the veracity of the signature, and about the witnesses, one of whom is Marian Usbech, daughter of Mason's lawyer, who is also left a legacy of two thousand pounds.  Mr. Mason, the heir, fights his stepmother in court, and loses.

Twenty years later, young Lucius Mason comes of age and now has the rights to his farm.  Part of the farm has been rented out to a Mr. Samuel Dockwrath, a lawyer who married Marian Usbech, with whom he now has a passel of children.  The lease is up and Lucius decides to try his hand at farming, thus denying Dockwrath the renewal of said lease.  Dockwrath decides to get revenge on Lucius by stirring up trouble -- he claims to have new evidence which implicates Lady Mason of forgery.  He trots off to Yorkshire to Lord Mason, who's still holding a grudge, offering his services so both of them can give that upstart what-for.

Mason and Dockwrath are equally unpleasant characters, and they join forces.  I was confused as to how they could charge Lady Mason for the same crime twice, i.e., double jeopardy, but in fact, they decide to charge her with perjuring herself at the previous trial.  So, the case is trotted out again, causing great pain and suffering for the Masons.

However, this wouldn't be a Trollope novel without some star-crossed lovers.  In fact, there are whole bunch of marriage proposals, some between the main characters, and some peripheral.  The Masons are friendly with their neighbors, Sir Peregrine Orme, his widowed daughter-in-law, and grandson Peregrine, Lucius' former schoolmate; also, the young men spend the holidays at the estate of Judge Staveley with a bunch of other young people, and various love triangles ensue.  There are also some proposals and love triangles among the older generation as well, which was rather refreshing -- it's not just those young whippersnappers who fall in love in a Trollope novel.

The intertwining stories of the trial and the love affairs are mostly strung along until the end of the 825 pages, though there are some big reveals relatively early in the book.  I have to admit that some parts of this book dragged for me.  As in The Last Chronicle of Barset, Trollope spends quite a few chapters with people agonizing -- is X guilty or isn't he?  Should X reveal this big secret to Y?  More than once, parts began to feel like filler.  I love Trollope, but there were a couple of chapters that I ended up skimming.

Overall, though, I really did enjoy this book.  The characters are mostly well-developed, the bad guys are deliciously evil, and we have the requisite comic side characters.  Love stories are resolved, some happily and some not so happily, which I find realistic and satisfying.  I also enjoyed most of the legal aspects of the novel, and Trollope gets in some good shots about the class system and people marrying up.

Among Trollope novels, I doubt that Orley Farm will ever be as popular as Barchester Towers or The Way We Live Now, my two favorites.  But it was an excellent read, and I only wish I'd had more time to finish it sooner.  It's definitely on my list of top reads for 2013.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

This book has been on my radar forever, but somehow, I'd never gotten around to reading it.  It seems to be one of these books that a lot of book groups are reading.  I have to confess, sometimes I'm a bit snobbish when it comes to book group books.  There are certain books that become extremely popular with book groups, but when it comes time to choose books for my two groups at the library, I'm sometimes leery -- there are some books that absolutely everyone loves, and I end up hating them.  I hated, hated, hated The Memory Keeper's Daughter, which was really popular a few years ago; in fact, I hated it so much I demanded a refund from Target.  I also disliked Water for Elephants and I was really underwhelmed by The Paris Wife, which we discussed last month. (Everyone else loved it). 

But people kept raving about The Forgotten Garden, so I gave it a shot, even though it's more than 550 pages long.  So, if you are one of the 12 other people in the world who has not read this book yet (there are more than 83,000 reviews on Goodreads), here's the setup.  Basically, this is a historical mystery, which jumps back and forth between three main characters, following their lives across two continents and more than 100 years.

The book starts about 1905, in Australia.  A little girl, about four years old, is found all alone on the docks after a ship has docked -- somehow, she's come all the way from England and no one seems to know her name or who she belongs to.  The only clue is a white suitcase with a book of fairy tales.  The port master takes her home, and he and his wife (who have been unable to have a child of their own) end up keeping her.  The little girl eventually forgets all about this and on her 21st birthday, the young woman, now renamed Nell, learns of her mysterious origins.

Then we flash-forward 90 years and Nell is on her deathbed, with her beloved granddaughter Cassandra.  Her final words are something about "The Authoress."  Cassandra, who was raised by Nell from the age of ten when she was ditched by her own feckless mother, starts asking questions.  Who is the Authoress?  Is she Nell's mother?  Did she kidnap Nell and put her on the boat?  What happened to her?

The story then jumps back and forth between the Victorian and Edwardian eras, explaining the origins of the mysterious Authoress, the book of fairy tales, and, ultimately, the mystery of Nell and how she wound up in Australia alone.   We also learn about Cassandra's childhood and her own personal tragedies.

The book jumps around a lot, so I was a bit confused at first about the various characters.  However, after the first couple of chapters, which are broken up between the main characters, I was hooked.  Morton does a really good job of creating distinct characters and histories, and she's especially good at setting the scenes.  I especially liked the earliest time frame, when we learn all about the Authoress -- her back story is really quite Dickensian.

Morton's plot is also really well developed; in fact, I would almost say it's a little too perfect, if that makes sense.  There are plot points and characters that are so convenient that some parts are rather contrived, but I'm being nitpicky; also, there were some plot twists that I could spot a mile away.  Nevertheless,  I really got hooked on the story and wanted to find out how what happened.  It's well over 500 pages long, but I hated putting it down and read the last 200 or so pages in a stretch, staying up waaaay past my bedtime the last night.  It's long, but it's actually a very quick read.

I can definitely see why it would be popular for book groups -- there's a lot to discuss, and it's not difficult as long as you can keep all the characters straight.  I actually coordinate two different book groups for my library, so I'm already planning on putting one of her other books on the list next year for the other book group.

Has anyone else read this?  What about Morton's other books?  Which one should I read next?  And are there any book club favorites that everyone loves that you just hated?

The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek

The Good Soldier Svejk was probably the book I was most afraid of reading from this year's TBR Pile Challenge, and, at long last, I have finished it -- all 752 pages!  Finally.

I'd first heard of Svejk in a book called The Novel 100 by Daniel S. Burt, which lists the Best Novels of All Time.  I really like The Novel 100 because, it's not just about The Best Books, it's really more about the most influential books, so it includes books like Gone with the Wind and The Three Musketeers.  It also includes books in translation, like The Princess of Cleves and Dream of the Red Chamber, and it has very interesting and readable essays about why each title is included.  [There's also an appendix with 100 runners-up, some of which I believe are in the updated and expanded edition of the book.]   

Anyway.  Svejk is long, it's about war, it's in translation, it's Eastern European -- a quadruple threat --  but it's actually a very easy and amusing read, though it did take me several weeks to get through it.  Basically, this is a picaresque novel about an everyman named Josef Svejk.  After a series of misadventures, he ends up fighting on the Austro-Hungarian side of WWI.  Svejk is either a complete idiot or an absolute genius.  He's constantly getting in and out of scrapes, and his superiors, the police, and medical professionals can't decide if he's really as dumb as he seems, or is just faking.  The book satirizes the futility of World War I, the military bureaucracy, etc.  It's kind of a WWI version of Catch-22, but much longer, and as if Yossarian traveled all over Europe.  (Which in fact he may have done -- it's been several years since I read Catch-22 and my memory of the plot is a little fuzzy).  I have heard that Joseph Heller may have been influenced by Svejk, but I haven't done enough research to be sure.

One of the illustrations from The Good Soldier Svejk.  Svejk is the character on the right.

It's quite funny in spots, and the translation I read was very easy, but it was hard for me to read more than a few pages at a time.  (It's not quite as long as it seems because there are lots of cartoony illustrations.)  Basically, Svejk travels all over during the war, telling funny anecdotes about other people, and the author pokes fun at pretty much everything.  There's a lot of drinking and gambling and carousing, and all the other kinds of trouble soldiers get into while waiting for war to happen. (There's also a lot of descriptions of bodily functions and numerous descriptions of food, including what the soldiers are eating and what they're dreaming about during wartime).  It was probably really shocking for its time, and I'd be surprised if it hasn't been banned or censored.

Svejk was pretty amusing to read it bits and pieces but since it was planned as six volumes, it goes on a long time.  There aren't even any actual battle scenes for the first 500 pages.  It's kind of the same thing over and over, but with slightly different settings and characters.  I could see this would be a good read if it was serialized, which it essentially was, being originally published in parts.  I actually got a little bored with it around 450 pages and put it down for awhile.  To be honest, the last 300 pages or so were a bit of a slog.  And the story is unfinished!  Svejk was planned as a six-part work, but Hacek died before he could complete it.  It's still one of the most famous works of Czech literature, and was also adapted into a movie.  He's kind of a cult anti-hero in Eastern Europe; apparently there are statues commemorating Svejk all over the place:

A manhole cover of Svejk from Bratislava

Just for fun, while reading this book I decided to do a Google blog search for Svejk, to see what other people thought about it.  I was delighted to find a blog posting about a Svejk Cafe in Riga, Latvia.  If you read the description, there's a link to a PDF of the restaurant's menu, which is extensive.  Some of the dishes are named after characters in the book, and if you look closely, you can see Josef Lada's illustrations imprinted on the menu's pages.  If I am ever in Latvia I'll definitely have to go.

Having finally finished it, I have a little more courage to read some of the other books from my TBR shelves that scare me, including Moby Dick, Les Miserables, The Jungle, and To The Lighthouse.  Maybe I'll even tackle some of the Russians -- I've never read Dostoevsky or Gogol, and I need to read something Russian for the Back to the Classics Challenge.  Any suggestions?  And has anyone else read Svejk?

Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rolvaag

Back in 2000, we moved to Nebraska, a state about which I knew absolutely nothing, except that it was surrounded by six other states which I'd not yet visited, and that they grew a lot of corn.  I did not know that it was full of kind and charming people, that the weather was lovely eight months of the year (I won't lie: winters were long and often harsh) and that it was within driving distance of several major cities, including Kansas City and St. Louis.  It turned out to be one of the nicest places in which I would ever live.

Anyhow, not long after our arrival, an old college friend came for a visit, bringing a hostess gift of two books about life on the prairies:  My Antonia and Giants in the Earth.  I did finally read My Antonia with a book group while living right there in the heartland (and I've accumulated another stack of books by Willa Cather) but somehow, Giants in the Earth kept getting packed and unpacked for the next three moves (it did not even cross the ocean for our assignment in Japan; it was relegated to storage for three years).  When I made this year's TBR Pile Challenge List, I buckled down and committed to reading it after schlepping it unread for thirteen years.

So, finally, I finished this book last week, while on vacation in Michigan -- not so much corn in suburban Detroit, but the weather was pretty nice and I had lots of spare time to read.  And I was pleased to discover that after all these years of waiting around and moving this book from house to house, I did enjoy this book.  It's the story of a Norwegian pioneer family after the Civil War:  Per Hansa; his long-suffering wife Beret; and their three (soon to become four) children.  

First published in Norwegian back in 1927, Giants in the Earth starts out as the family is alone on the prairie, trying to catch up with some other Norwegian families who have left Minnesota and are going to start a new settlement in the Dakota territories (not Nebraska, but relatively close to where I eventually lived in Omaha).  Per Hansa et al have become separated from the group and are lost on the prairie; Beret is pregnant and terrified of what will happen if they don't get their bearings and meet up with the rest.  Everything they own is stuffed into the wagon drawn by their two oxen, and it's like a giant sea of grass.  

Eventually, they catch up with the rest and all seems well.  The rest of the story is several years in the life of the family; basically, it's like Little House on the Prairie, but from the point of the view of the adults.  Seriously, what was it really like for Ma out there, all alone in the Dakota territory, living in a sod house?  They were miles from anyone else -- can you imagine giving birth all alone like that?  And living in a house made of dirt?  And the winters -- well, winters in Nebraska are long and hard.  I love the change of seasons, but I really enjoy the Texas winters -- it's rare if it drops below the thirties, much less snow.  Winter in Omaha can last about five months, and the wind whips over the plains, and boy, it is cold.  I loved living in Omaha but I don't know how people did it 150 years ago, miles from anyone else for days or weeks at a time.  And don't get me started on outhouses in the winter -- I haven't been camping for years, and it was in the summer.  I like my modern conveniences!

I've been a military spouse for 18 years, and since 1995 we've had six major moves, including one overseas.  They're always incredibly stressful, even in modern times with real beds, real toilets, and professional packers and movers.  I don't know how pioneer women did it back then.  These women had to deal with the cold and the dirt and they were lucky to see a midwife, much less a doctor.  And the stress of worrying about crops -- these people are dealing with plagues of locusts just like the Ingalls family in LHotP.  We've got some giant bugs in Texas but nothing like what they had to deal with.

Anyway, it's a really interesting book if you're at all curious about pioneer life.  It's an easy read (though many of the characters are named Per or Ole or Hansa) and my biggest quibble is how abruptly the book ended.  Afterward I realized that it's the first of a trilogy, so you find out what happens to the family in subsequent books, though they're harder to find.  I don't know that I enjoyed it enough rush out and track down the next two books right away but you never know, I might look for them after I've made some more progress on the TBR piles. 

This book counts for my 2013 TBR Pile Challenge; my 2013 Chunkster Challenge; and it's book #29 in my Classics Club Challenge.  

The American Senator by Anthony Trollope

One of the best things about Anthony Trollope is that he wrote 47 novels.  It's also one of worst things about Trollope, because now I want to read all of them, which could seriously take me the rest of my life.  

Anyway, I'm in an online group that wanted to read one of his novels, which is always great, but the book they selected was The American Senator.  Sadly, it's not one of the many Trollope novels languishing on my bookshelves.  If you've heard of The American Senator, you're probably a pretty hard-core Victorian lit lover (actually, if you've even heard of Trollope you're probably a hard-core Victorian lover!!) Compared to Dickens or even Thomas Hardy, Trollope's books are barely a blip on the radar.  And that's a real shame, because they are just wonderful.  I loved this book. 

The name of this book is really misleading, because the senator himself is actually a minor character.  This is the story of two cousins, John and Reginald Morton, and like many Trollope novels, it's full of love triangles, class conflict, and some jabs at the British aristocracy.  It's set against the backdrop of English country life, particularly the fox hunting season.  John Morton, the heir, has been living abroad in America while working in the British foreign office, and returned to his estate, Bragton, with a party that includes his grandmother; his fiancee, Arabella Trefoil; her mother; Lady Augusta, and a visiting American Senator, Elias Gotobed.  

John Morton is estranged from his second cousin Reginald, since Reginald's father married below his class to the daughter of a Canadian shopkeeper (gasp!)  John's grandmother would not receive Reginald's mother, and was furious when Reginald inherited a small part of the estate.   Reginald is close to his aunt, Lady Ushant.  Years before, Lady Ushant had taken in a companion, young Mary Masters, daughter of the Morton's solicitor, Mr. Masters, a widower.  Masters eventually remarried, and now Mary is back living with her father, stepmother, and half sisters, and is being courted by a local landowner, Larry Twentyman.  Mrs. Masters is eager to settle Mary with Mr. Twentyman, though Mary is hesitating, because she's secretly in love with Reginald, whom she's known her entire life.  As a Jane Austen devotee, I could see parallels between their relationship and Emma and Mr. Knightley.  Mary's stepmother also reminded me an awful lot of Mrs. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, though Mr. Masters is a much better father than Mr. Bennet.

Meanwhile, Arabella is jockeying for position between her suitors, and her strategy would make any politician proud.  As I was writing this, it occurred to me that the fox hunt is sort of a metaphor for Arabella's search for a rich husband.  She'll have to make bold moves to win the big prize, but if she's not careful, she could get left behind or thrown from a horse.  The book actually reminded me a lot of the first season of Downton Abbey, when Lady Mary is trying to make the best possible match since she can't imagine marrying her cousin Matthew, heir to Downton -- especially the episode where they go fox hunting and she meets the ill-fated Mr. Pamuk.  (If you haven't seen it, go out and watch it right now.  Seriously!)  The American Senator is set about forty years before Downton Abbey, but some of the themes are really familiar.  

This story starts out slowly, giving background about the village and the county, and the complicated history of the Morton cousins, to which I had to refer several times since I couldn't get into the book at first and sort of lost the thread of all the characters and their relationships.  But once I got going I was hooked and could hardly put it down.  The plot really takes off and I think I read most of it in about three days, which is pretty fast for a Victorian triple-decker.  

It's one of Trollope's comic novels and Arabella is a fascinating character, probably one of Trollope's most distinctive females.  She makes no pretense about her social climbing, and she and her mother are just an awful pair.  And they're funny.  The way they snipe at each other is pretty hilarious.  

I really enjoyed this book, but it's not my very favorite Trollope because I did find the beginning rather slow to get into, and also, I didn't really like the actual American Senator character.  Trollope uses him to get up on a soapbox and has the character spout off about some the appointments of the clergy, the British Parliament, and also about some of the stuff that the members of the aristocracy get away with.  I understand he wanted to make social commentary but sometimes it just felt awkward and forced, not very organic to the plot. Despite these minor flaws I just loved it and now I want to put everything else aside and just read more Trollope.  

Anyone else out there reading Trollope?  Which is your favorite?  Besides this one, I've read The Barchester Chronicles and The Way We Live Now.  Which one should I read next?