Moll Flanders by Daniel DeFoe

Last year, when I signed up for the Back to the Classics Challenge, I knew there were a couple of categories that would really challenge me -- specifically, pre-19th century fiction and Russians.  I was not surprised, therefore, to discover my last three categories to complete are those two, plus a non-fiction classic.

Looking back at my reading history, I've read very few books published before the 18th century -- some plays by Shakespeare, which I haven't touched since college -- Candide by Voltaire, and Robinson Crusoe.  For this selection, I had it narrowed down to three choices.  I was originally planning to read Gulliver's Travels, since I just received a lovely Penguin clothbound copy from Adam at Roof Beam Reader in a drawing (thank you again, Adam!); however, I was also considering Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos or Moll Flanders.  I really, truly, tried to read all of them, but Moll Flanders finally won out for the simple reason that it was available on audiobook at the library, which was a great incentive. 

I think the hardest thing for me about the early novels is the language.  I had a Modern Library print edition of the book as well, since I rarely listen to an entire audiobook without some print reading mixed in.  I really do find the 18th century writing style it tough to get into.  Here's a selection from the first chapter:

Had this been the Custom in our Country, I had not been left a poor desolate Girl without Friends, without Cloaths, without Help or Helper in the World, as was my Fate; and by which, I was not only expos'd to very great Distresses, even before I was capable, either of Understanding my Case, or how to Amend it, nor brought into a Course of Life, which was not only scandalous in itself, but, which in its ordinary Course, tended to the swift Destruction both of Soul and Body.  

Now, I get that the Modern Library publishers are trying to preserve the original text, with the spelling, capitalization, and grammar as close to the original as possible.  Listening to it is easier -- at least I don't have the jarring random Capitalized Noun that pops up in nearly every Sentence.  And I am now grateful that I was not an English major in college, because I would have been required to read The Canterbury Tales in the original Chaucer.

Oh, and did I also mention that there are no chapter breaks in the entire novel?  That's right, the entire book is One. Long. Chapter.  No breaks!!  (Well, it could be worse -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote a book that is all one paragraph.  I've forgotten which one, but I can tell you right now I'll never read it.)

Anyway, as usual, I digress.  Once you get past the style of the language and get into the story, Moll Flanders is a pretty good tale about the fate of women in the 17th century.  Moll is born in pretty much the worst possible circumstances -- while pregnant, her mother is convicted of theft, and while sentenced to the infamous Newgate prison, she "pleads her belly," that is, puts off her sentence due to pregnancy.  After her baby [the future Moll] is born, she's transported to the colonies.  

Young Moll is put in an orphanage, and after a rough start she's placed in the care of a kind but poor woman who takes good care of Moll and some other orphans in a little school, where she's raised to be a future servant.  Moll's clever and good with a needle, and ends up as a companion/servant to the daughters of a well-to-do family.  Things are going well and she picks up a lot of skills like dancing, singing, and French, but she's also growing into a lovely young woman, which does not go unnoticed by the sons of the family.  The younger falls in love with her, but the hapless and naive Moll falls in love with the older, a rake who makes her his secret mistress, thus beginning her downfall.

This pretty much sets the tone for Moll's entire life.  She's acquired a taste for the finer things, and becomes a serial monogamist in her quest for a man to take care of her; I lost count of how many husbands she marries, legally and not-so-legally.  And don't even get me started on the children -- DeFoe hardly bothers to give the various husbands and lovers first names, much less the  offspring, whose fate is barely mentioned.  I though it made Moll come off as rather cold-hearted -- after multiple pregnancies and babies, there's only one instance of Moll really caring about the fate of one of her children.  As a mother, this bothered me, and it made me wonder how this aspect of the story would have been different if the author had been a woman.

Meanwhile, Moll gets older, and eventually she has to rely on her wits more than her feminine charms.  Since her choices are few, she inevitably turns to a life of crime. For a while, she's the luckiest thief in England, making countless narrow escapes as others are transported or sent to the gallows.  It gives DeFoe a chance to let the reader know that Crime Does Not Pay. Apparently such fictional accounts of criminal life were especially popular during the 17th century;  DeFoe himself was imprisoned in Newgate, where he must have met many women with Moll's problems.  I'm not quite sure if DeFoe was trying to comment on the terrible choices women had to make to survive at that time, or if he was just trying to preach.  Moll does admit that she gets greedy and could give up stealing, but time after time, she just can't quit the criminal life.  

It was an interesting read, ultimately.  Moll's pretty sassy and keeps her wits about her, and there's one section in which she's accused of a crime she actually didn't commit, which is my favorite part.  The outcome was pretty entertaining.  Now I'm going to have to go back and watch the BBC miniseries, which starred Alex Kingston as Moll and Daniel Craig as one of her paramours:  

Even Daniel Craig cannot pull off that hairstyle.  Sorry, 007. 

I'm quite pleased to have completed my 18th-century-or-older requirement for the challenge.  Only two more to go -- a Russian classic and a classic nonfiction.  I'm thinking about Crime and Punishment!  Thoughts, bloggers?  Who else is working on this challenge?  Have you finished?  Did anyone else read a pre-19th century book for this challenge?  How about a Russian?  And is Daniel Craig's hairstyle the most embarrassing EVER?  

My New Book Group

As I mentioned, I've started a new job as a librarian, at a different branch.  One of the hardest things was leaving the two book groups I'd been coordinating at my old branch, which was kind of heartbreaking -- I spent almost two years with both of them, and that was probably my favorite thing about that job.  So, naturally, I'm eager to start another book group at this new location. And I have this idea that's so crazy, it just might work. . . .  I'm starting a themed book group and the theme is. . . . nonfiction!!!

Yes, I'm going to attempt to start a new book group that will read nothing but nonfiction!  I've been really inspired these past few years by how much great non-fiction is available nowadays -- some of my very favorite book club selections have been nonfiction choices.  I'm going to call it the Stranger Than Fiction Book Group, and we're going to read a mix of history, biographies, memoirs, true crime, and adventure books, to name a few.

The group is going to start in January (no point in getting something off the ground until after the holidays) and I'm going to start publicizing it now.  Our branch is going to have a Friends of the Library Book Sale soon, so I think that's a great opportunity to publicize it.  I'm also going to try and advertise at some of the local senior centers.  Who knows, I might even get some male patrons to the group.

Anyway, I have some ideas about possible reads for the first couple of months.  They can't be too long, nothing over 500 pages, and we have to have enough copies in the library catalog, probably about ten, preferably with copies in large print and audio available.  And nothing too popular; also, I'd prefer not to choose books that most people (myself included) have read already.   So, I'm not even going to consider uber-popular works like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Eat, Pray, Love because so many people have probably read them.

Here are some of my top choices:

Isaac's Storm by Erik Larsen.  He's written some incredibly popular nonfiction books, plus it's about Texas, so that's a win-win.  Definitely on my list!

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.  This was all over the 2012 best-of-lists.  It might be a little depressing but I've heard it's also uplifting.  I hope so.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard.  History and true crime combined, sounds fascinating.

The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston.  The best-selling mystery writer moves to Italy, discovers a local unsolved crime, and ends up under suspicion by the Italian police.  How could you make this up?

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.  I've never read Krakauer but it's kind of an adventure/biography.  Plus, it was my daughter's assigned reading last summer.  And it's short.

Anyway -- those are just some of my ideas.  There are tons more nonfiction books I want to read -- hopefully I can find enough people to make the group work.  If not, I'll just go back to mixing up the genres like I did in my last group.  So -- good choices or bad?  Any other suggestions?

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

Another book off the TBR shelf completed!  Finally, this was one of the books I'd been meaning to read since forever.  When I posted my original list for the 2013 TBR Pile Challenge (hosted by Adam at Roof Beam Reader) this was the book that by far had the most positive comments.  And yet, I waited  almost a year to start it.

But back to Wild Swans.  I've been on a read nonfiction kick this year; almost 25 percent of the books I've read have been nonfiction, and I hope to read even more in 2014.   This is the story of three generations of Chinese women in the 20th century: Jung Chang's mother, who became the concubine of a warlord; her daughter, who embraced the communist cause after World War II; and finally, Jung Chang herself, a child of communism who survived the Cultural Revolution and became one of the first people to study abroad in the 1970s after Mao's death.

This book was both depressing and uplifting.  It's a somewhat long book, more than 500 pages, but it took me longer than usual because the writing is pretty dense and I was mostly able to read it in small chunks due to work.  However, this was probably for the best, because parts of this book were difficult to take.   I didn't know that much about what life was really like in communist China from the 1950s through the 1970s.  Basically, it sucked.  If you've read 1984 by George Orwell (which I haven't read since high school), it was pretty much like that, but set in China, and affecting nearly a billion people.  Spying, lies, backstabbing, doublespeak, paranoia -- with a backdrop of the cult of Mao.   Seriously, it sounds exactly like a cult.  The author admits it herself.

After WWII, when the Japanese left after invading Manchuria, the Kuomintang and Communists fought over control, and the Communists won out.  Mao took power, anyone remotely associated with the Kuomintang would be under suspicion for life (and often, the entire family was tainted by association); and things go from bad to worse with famine and the Cultural Revolution.  Remember that saying about how you should finish everything on your plate because there are children starving in China?  Well, know I understand why.  This book is really insightful about the history of China in the 20th century, the mentality of the Chinese people and how they wind up with Communism -- and how it's not what they were hoping for at all.

Parts of this book deal with really terrible things, but the story is so fascinating I had to keep reading to find out what happened next.  (Spoiler alert -- Jung leaves and writes a best-selling memoir!).  It sounds so awful, but there are good things too.  Despite all the hardships, Chang's family is very close and ultimately supportive of one another, and there are a lot of random people that end up doing really good and kind things.

Chang's story ends in the late 1970s when she moves to Britain to study English and she still lives there, but I'd really liked to know more details about her life since.  (I think it's in the introduction to the 2003 book, but I may have to take a little break before reading it.)  Chang has just published a biography of The Empress Dowager Cixi and now I really want to read that too.

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.

Big News

Not my library, actually.  It's the library at El Real Monasterio de El Escorial in Madrid.  But isn't it beautiful?

Well.  I haven't been very active on the blogosphere lately.  But here's why.  Big doings at work -- about a month ago, I interviewed (again) for promotion for a Librarian I position.  Which was great -- but then other stuff, which I probably cannot discuss publicly, happened. 

And then about ten days ago, I got the big news:

I.  GOT. THE. JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which is AWESOME -- I finished my Master's in Library Science almost FOUR years ago -- the job market for librarians is almost impossible, and I've been lucky enough to have HAD a library job for more than two years, just not a librarian, and I loved it.  I loved my patrons, my book groups, and, especially, my co-workers.  I had a great boss.  But -- I had to leave my branch, which was really hard.  

Tomorrow I start at a new branch, with new co-workers, and a new boss.  I've worked with most of them already, briefly, and they're also super nice.  I know I can do great things at my new branch, and I'll love them just as much.  I'll just miss all the lovely people at my old branch.

Years ago, the first time we lived in Texas, we kept hearing over and over, "After this assignment, you're going to Japan."  Which sounded amazing -- I'd always wanted to live abroad.  But then things changed, and we found out our next assignment -- which was not Japan.  In fact, we were going to -- wait for it -- Omaha, Nebraska!!!  Nothing against Nebraska, but it's quite different from Japan.  At first, I was disappointed -- I'd been so excited about going to Japan.  But then I thought about all the great things about Nebraska.  It was much closer to family; also, closer to Chicago, where I went to college, and still had friends.  Four seasons.  Good schools.  

So, we moved to Omaha, and had a great house, and my husband loved his job.  My daughter started preschool, and we had another baby.  I made some great friends, and joined a book group.  You know what?  Nebraska was AWESOME (okay, winters were cold, and long, but it was pretty, and the other three seasons were wonderful).  But I loved it, and after that we DID go to Japan, and when we left Nebraska, I cried.  

So, I'm pretty sure it's going to be like that.  I'm always sad to leave the place I'm at, but pretty soon I love my new place just as much.  And it's not like I'm traveling halfway around the world -- I'm only twenty minutes from my old branch.

Anyhow -- I hope it won't be a difficult transition.  It's all been very surreal.

The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt

"Three or four families in an English village is the very thing to work on."  -- Jane Austen

It's probably quite unfair of me to begin this review by comparing it to another book.  I'm sure it was probably unwise for me to read The Children's Book almost immediately after reading and reviewing what appears to be a similar book, The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.  Honestly, it just worked out that way -- I'd actually started The Children's Book first, then realized I might not finish it in time to start The Forgotten Garden which was a book group selection.  (Since I run the book group, it would have been inexcusable for me to not to have finished it in time).  But as usual, I digress.

Anyhow, at first glance both of them are historical fiction, mostly set during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Both of them heavily feature English fairytales, and have central characters who are female writers and storytellers, and include entire sections with examples of the aforementioned tales, which are original to the books.  Both of them are long -- The Forgotten Garden is just over 550 pages, and The Children's Book weighs in at 675.  But almost immediately, I realized they are actually vastly different.

I can only give the bare bones of the setup for The Children's Book, because there is so much packed into it.  It's the story of four loosely connected families in Kent and London, set around the Fabian and Arts and Crafts movements in England around of the turn of the 20th century.  The story follows the parents and children against the backdrop of the end of the Victorian Era, the Edwardian Era, and finishes during WWI.

The story begins in the South Kensington Museum, which will someday be known as the Victoria and Albert Museum.  Two young teenage boys, Julian Cain and Tom Wellwood, are watching a third boy sketching in the museum.  They discover the boy, Philip Warren, has been hiding out in the museum's basement, having escaped poverty and dire conditions of the pottery works in the Five Towns area.  Tom's mother is Olive Wellwood is a writer of fairy tales, who brought her son to the museum while she was consulting about her book with Julian's father, a curator at the museum.  Olive is not only a writer, she's a socially progressive do-gooder type, and she decides to take Philip under her wing.  She brings him home to her ramshackle farm in Kent, where he is exposed to artistic and socially conscious people who change his life, including the family of Benedict Fludd, a brilliant and eccentric potter.

Through Philip, the reader is introduced to a whole network of socially progressive people, artists, writers, craftspeople, and puppeteers who make up Olive's world, in England and on the Continent.  However, the novel is not so much about Philip -- we meet a whole generation of children who are growing up in a rather bohemian lifestyle.  The Children's Book basically a really great history lesson about English society as it transitions from the Victorian Era to the horrors of the Great War, with these families as a microcosm, if that makes any sense.

Where The Forgotten Garden is narrowly focused on one family's mystery, The Children's Book is about the upheaval of an entire generation from childhood to adulthood.  You could easily read The Forgotten Garden on a long flight, but The Children's Book took me well over a week of serious reading.  It is jam-packed with characters (seriously, I wish I'd made a chart when I started), fictional and real, plus history and commentary, which sadly, I think is to its detriment.

I loved learning about these families and their world, but Byatt packs so much into it, the narrative thread of the characters tends to get lost.  I could seriously have imagined this book split into two or even three volumes.  I loved learning about the Arts and Crafts movement, and the changing role of women, and the Suffragettes (to name but a few of the topics), but I felt like she was so into writing about the history that sometimes the characters were shoved aside.  Byatt often ends up telling us what the characters are doing and saying to get through the historical context, and less showing.  Some of the historical and political tangents were actually rather dry and sometimes preachy, and at the end, I wasn't even sure what happened to some of the most important characters.  I do wonder if she just ran out of steam or needed to finish on deadline.

I really enjoyed most of this book but I seriously think it could have used some editing.   Still, I'm sure it will make my list of Top Ten Reads of 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?

Classics Club Spin the Third

It's time for another classics spin!!  I participated in the first two Spins and wound up liking both of the selections -- The Mystery of Mrs. Blencarrow and Lady Chatterley's Lover.  So, naturally I've signed up for this mini-challenge again.  On Monday, the Classics Club will choose a number from one to twenty.  I've made a list of twenty books from my Classics Club list and whichever number comes up determines the selection from the following list.  On October 1,  I'll post about my selection.  So here are my choices:

Five really long books:

1.  No Name by Wilkie Collins

2.  Miss Marjoribanks by Mrs. Oliphant

3.  He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope

4.  Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope

5.  A Dance to the Music of Time (First Movement) by Anthony Powell

Five books I really want to read:

6.  The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
7.  Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton
8.  Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
9.  Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
10. Rachel Ray by Anthony Trollope

Five books I'm neutral about:

11.  The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
12.  Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
13.  Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
14.  Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
15.  Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Five books that are on the bottom of the TBR list:

16.  New Grub Street by George Gissing
17.  The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
18.  The Four Feathers by A. E. W. Mason
19.  Sylvia's Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell
20.  Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

I'm making excellent progress on my Classics Club list -- of the 75, I've already finished 32, so I'm nearly halfway there.  I'm currently reading #33, The Good Soldier Svejk, and it's taking a long time, but I hope to finish at least 38 from the entire list by the end of the year.

Is anyone else signing up for the next Classics Club Spin?  What's on your list?  Are any of them on this list as well?

Updated:  The Classics Spin came up with #4, so I'll be reading Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope.  I'm happy because it's a Trollope (ten read, only 37 left to go), and because it's on my owned-and-unread shelf, but sadly, it's on the long side.  How about your Classics Spin selection?  Happy or scared about it?  

The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

Short stories collections are really hard to write about.  Many people dislike short stories; my theory is that most people, once they get invested in characters and settings, want the stories to continue.  To me, a short story is a just a moment captured in time with these characters, an introduction.  Sometimes as a reader I want more.  

Edith Wharton is one of those rare writers that was equally good at writing both short stories and full-length novels.  Some of her novels are among my favorites; as are some of her short stories.  This collection, published by NYRB Classics, features twenty stories that are all set in New York, or includes characters that are New Yorkers.  

Some of her stories are sad, some are extremely funny.  Many of them are deliciously ironic, and she was especially good at ghost stories.  This collection includes all of these, and are selected from those published at beginning of her career to works published near the end.  It begins with "Mrs. Manstey's View," her very first published short story, and ends with "Roman Fever," from her last short story collection.  

"Roman Fever" is possibly Wharton's most famous short story and one of my personal favorites.  This was one in the collection I had actually read before, but I never get tired of it.  It's the story of two New York society ladies who meet unexpectedly while in Rome with their grown daughters.  They sit on the terrace of restaurant, admiring the view, and the reader learns the history of their complicated relationship.  The ending is deliciously ironic, and I'll say no more.  It's quite short so if you have a few minutes do click on the link and read it -- tell me in the comments if you liked it, but don't give the ending away!!

My other favorites in the collection are mostly ironic or funny.  They include "Expiation," an amusing tale about writers in the same family; "Diagnosis," about a wealthy man who has recently discovered the truth about his illness; and "The Pomegranate Seed," which is one of the ghost stories.   The only one I really didn't care for was "The Long Run," which, as the name implies, seemed to go on forever. 

Unfortunately, this collection does not include "Xingu," my other favorite of her stories, about a pretentious group of women who attend a "Lunch Club" to become more cultured.  I reread the story today before I finished this posting, and I suppose it wasn't included because it really doesn't have a New York connection.  It's still really funny though, and definitely worth reading.  Many of Wharton's works are available free online through Project Gutenberg, so you can just click on the links and start reading if you're curious.  They're really worth trying, even if you're not willing to tackle a 450 page book with twenty stories in it.  

This book counts toward my Back to the Classics Challenge and is one of the alternate reads for my TBR Pile Challenge.