Category Archives: Classics

Vintage Children’s Literature Reading Challenge

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vintage

 

I didn’t think I’d be joining any challenges this year, but the Vintage Children’s Literature Reading Challenge caught my eye. Hosted by Arabella at The Genteel Arsenal, it has a very easy set of rules. I will be going for ‘Alice’ status and plan to read six vintage children’s novels by the end of the year. I wasn’t a huge reader as a child so I feel that I missed out on reading many of the classics that lots of kids read and love. This is a great opportunity for me to familiarize myself with some of the beloved books of childhood. Here are the books I plan to read for the challenge:

Black Beauty

The Secret Garden

The Wind in the Willows

Little House in the Big Woods

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Alice in Wonderland

What is your favorite children’s classic?

Classics Challenge {July}

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I’ve been very naughty this month and haven’t read my current Classics Challenge book, A Voyage Out, for even one minute. So I was really happy to see that for this month’s challenge I can talk about any of the books I’ve completed for the challenge this year! Which is only two, but still!  Here is the prompt for the challenge:

“What is a moment, quote, or character that you feel will stay with you? Years from now, when some of the details have faded, that lasting impression the book has left you with… what is it? –or why did it fail to leave an impression?”

Great Expectations is a book that will always stay with me because it was the first Dickens that I’d read in many years and it was thoroughly entertaining  and surprisingly moving. I love the character of Joe Gargery – his simple trust, kind heart and enduring patience with and concern for Pip are truly admirable. I love the scene when Pip awakens from his illness and finds Joe at his bedside ready to forgive and forget the neglect and ingratitude that Pip has heaped upon him.

And who can ever forget an encounter with Miss Havisham? She is possibly one of the most fascinating characters in all of fiction.  The crumbling, moldy, decaying Satis House where Miss Havisham reigns over Estella and plays so thoughtlessly with Pip’s emotions will forever be imprinted on my mind.

I am mostly failing at my challenges this year, but I am, nonetheless,  so very grateful for the Classics Challenge if only because it spurred me to finally read Great Expectations.

Have you read a classic this year that will stay with you forever?

 

Looking for a healthy version of the traditional chicken salad? I want to try this one soon.

And these tips for having a more positive body image have really helped me lately.

Howards End by E.M. Forster

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“There is certainly no rest for us on the earth. But there is happiness and as Margaret descended the mound on her lover’s arm, she felt that she was having her share.”

Margaret and Helen Schlegel, one of the best sister acts in literature, fatefully entwine themselves with the stolid Wilcox family and their lives are irrevocably changed by the association. Mrs. Wilcox’s family home, Howards End, is the crux of the novel as all hopes, dreams, irritations, misunderstandings and momentous decisions swirl inside its walls.

Margaret is one of the most brilliantly drawn, generous, intelligent, seekers of truth I’ve ever encountered in a novel and I marveled at her changeability and constant quest for connection and transparency in human relationships. Her loyalty to her sister, Helen, who is frustration itself, is the act on which the whole novel hinges.

E.M. Forster’s Howards End is a gloriously exuberant shambles and I mean that in a good way. He deftly juggles many different philosophies and social ideals while managing to also create engaging and sympathetic characters in a plot that is infused with humor. Sometimes he nearly misses, especially toward the end of the novel when his high-flown prose gets the better of the story, but mostly, it works.

I enjoy Forster’s novels because there is an innate joyfulness about them and I think he gives us really interesting and complex female characters to admire and identify with. I believe that A Room With a View is still my favorite Forster, but Howards End is a remarkable novel, one that I can only describe as a cornucopia of delight.

Have you read Howards End?

Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym

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The third Barbara Pym I chose to read this year is Some Tame Gazelle. I’ve seen a few bloggers claim this as their second favorite Pym, after Excellent Women of course, but I liked Jane and Prudence better. However, this novel does have its strong points and is another quietly charming and droll little Pym that is very enjoyable and thought provoking.

Some Tame Gazelle takes place in recognizable Pym territory – a small English village centered around the church. Belinda and Harriet are two spinster sisters who live together next door to the vicarage. Belinda has always been in love with the Archdeacon and Harriet has a “thing” for curates. Though she has many admirers and marriage proposals Harriet prefers to dote on the young curates who serve in the village to the point of becoming possessive of them. The plot ambles along describing the comings and goings in the village, the surprising couplings of some of the villagers, Belinda’s quiet devotion to the Archdeacon and Harriet’s more unrestrained passion for her curates.

As always, Pym is funny and her characters are outstanding, but I think this is an unsettling novel. It  has an underlying sadness that I did not feel from the other two Pym’s I’ve read. Belinda is a lovely person, but her constant devotion to a man who is a narcissistic jerk made her almost too pathetic to like. Her sister’s preference for curates over having a real relationship frustrated me. Is Pym trying to convey that fantasy relationships are better than actual ones? That it is easier to love someone you know will not love you back rather than accept a flawed and complex person to have a partnership with? After all, her male characters are not ones I would want to marry.

Barbara Pym’s novels seem like frothy, humorous confections that you wouldn’t think deserved a second thought. But I have given them much thought after reading each of the three I’ve finished so far. Her novels constantly challenge the idea of womanhood, wifehood and what it really means to be a single woman in a marriage-based society.

I am so glad that I started reading Barbara Pym. Her novels are deeply satisfying on many levels. I think that A Glass of Blessings will be my next one. Have you tried her yet?

Classics Challenge {June}

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Here I am leaving my Classics Challenge post ’til the end of the month again. I left it late because I was hoping I’d have more material to work with for this month’s prompt the further I read in The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf. But the majority of the book takes place on a boat and Woolf is not much for describing the sea, so I’ve taken a few passages from the beginning of the novel to illustrate her writing.

First, here is the prompt: “Select a quote from the Classic you’re currently reading and create, what I call a visual tour.”

“The Embankment juts out in angles here and there, like pulpits; instead of preachers, however, small boys occupy them, dangling string, dropping pebbles or launching wads of paper for a cruise.”

“After watching the traffic on the Embankment for a minute or two with a stoical gaze she twitched her husband’s sleeve, and they crossed between the swift discharge of motor cars. When they were safe on the further side, she gently withdrew her arm from his , allowing her mouth at the same time to relax, to tremble; then tears rolled down, and leaning her elbows on the balustrade, she shielded her face from the curious.”

“Some one is always looking into the river near Waterloo Bridge; a couple will stand there talking for half an hour on a fine afternoon; most people, walking for pleasure, contemplate for three minutes; when, having compared the occasion with other occasions, or made some sentence, they pass on.”

These scenes take place at the very beginning of The Voyage Out as Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose are on their way to board a ship that will take them to South America. This was Woolf’s first published novel and I am enjoying it to this point. Her writing is a bit ponderous, but she is funny and it helps to lighten her prose. Have you read Woolf? What is your favorite Woolf novel?

*click on images to see credits.