Book Blogger Book Swap: Round 1

 Allie of A Literary Odyssey recently started The Book Blogger Book Swap. A few times a year she partners participants (anonymously) with another blogger to exchange a package of books and goodies. The gifts are chosen based on a short survey we each filled out (wish list books, favorite things, food preferences, etc.). Anyway, I got my first box!!!

It was just awesome! Jenna of JMill Wanders filled it to the brim with so many things I love. There were the first three books in the Fairyland series, which I've been dying to read. Since getting the box I've already made it halfway through the first book and I love it. She also included a Harry Potter onsie for my little soon-to-be reader who is due in January! 

There was an Out of Print banned books tote, which couldn't be timed any better. I celebrate the freedom to read during Banned Books Week every single September and now I'm going to do it in style!  

Let's not forget the delicious dark chocolate with blood orange and raspberry. I tried one of them before I even finished opening the whole package. I'd never had blood orange before and I think I'm in love. Plus a Doctor Who bookmark and something called Biscoff, which is a cookie spread (kind of like Nutella). How did I not know that was a thing?!? 

On top of all those goodies she also sent me an electronic version of the new season Orphan Black so I could catch up! After all that I am sure that I've been spoiled. : )

(Ollie shoving his nose into the box to try to smell 

ALL OF THE THINGS, while I tried to open it.)

The whole package was amazing and so thoughtful! Things like this remind me of why I love being a part of the blogging community. Yes, sometimes I get behind in my posts. Sometimes life gets in the way of visiting all the blogs I want to comment on. But in the end, it's the people I've met while blogging that make this it so rewarding.

Photos by me.

The Odyssey

The Odyssey

by Homer

★★★★☆

After the ten-year Trojan War ends the warriors return to their home lands. Odysseus’ journey is longer than most because he has angered Poseidon. He runs into one obstacle after another as he fights to return to his wife and son. He fights a Cyclops, travels to the land of the dead, narrowly misses the call of the sirens and spends years trapped on Calypso's island. When he finally returns to Ithaca his home is filled with suitors attempting to woo his wife.  

I first read The Odyssey in high school, rereading it a decade later was a very different experience. This time I paid much more attention to Penelope’s story. She is such an incredible character. Her loyalty and patience is remarkable. Even though her husband has been gone for 20 years she still holds out that he is alive and will return to her. It made me wonder how long someone would wait nowadays. Obviously there were fewer communication options back then, but still a couple decades is a long time to hang on to hope.

Penelope is surrounded by suitors and keeps them at bay by telling them she’ll consider them once she finishes what she’s weaving. She weaves all day and then at night she undoes everything she’s woven. Margaret Atwood wrote an interesting novella about her story, The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus.

I enjoyed his son Telemachus’ journey. When his father leaves he is only a baby, but he’s grown to become a man in Odysseus’ absence and he longs to find his father. He isn’t sure if he should search for his father or stay and protect his mother, it’s a difficult decision.

For me, it’s important that Odysseus is not a god. He is just a mortal man. So many of the stories in Greek literature are about the gods or demigods. Odysseus is neither, he occasionally has help from the gods, like Athena, at other times he is persecuted by the gods, especially Poseidon, but he has none of their powers. He must rely on his intelligence and cunning to outsmart his captors.

BOTTOM LINE: An absolute must for classic lovers. It’s also one of the most accessible pieces of Greek literature and a gateway drug into that world.

p.s. This time around I listened to the Robert Fagles translation on audio and it was read by the magnificent Ian McKellen. I would highly recommend it!

I reread this as part of the readalong hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey

Also, in the book they climb Mount Parnassus. I’m even more excited to visit the Parnassus bookstore in Nashville next month!

Nikki at Book Pairings posted on this book today too!

The Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden

by Ernest Hemingway

★★★☆

Newlyweds Catherine and David are enjoying an extended honeymoon while he tries to write his next book. As Catherine putters around the coastal town she begins to change both her appearance and her attitude towards her husband. Then everything in their relationship changes when she makes friends with a woman named Marita.

Such a strange book, published posthumously, and one that I never would have guessed was written by Hemingway. It contains his clean prose, but his characters are wildly different from anything else I’ve read of his. After A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and other big Hemingway novels I thought I know what to expect from his writing. If it’s fiction there is usually a badly drawn female willing to do whatever the hero wants. This book is the polar opposite of that assumption. It makes me wonder if he only wanted to publish the incredibly masculine novels he wrote during his lifetime.

While Catherine and David are still attempting to find their footing as a couple, Marita’s presence throws them off kilter. They begin to reevaluate their roles in the relationship. Catherine carefully pushes and prods until David accepts Marita as a friend and then as a lover. The ménage à trois relationship sneaks slowly into their lives until it’s hard to remember what they were like as a twosome.

After reading The Paris Wife last year it made me wonder how much of this book was inspired by bits and pieces of Hemingway’s own life. His first marriage ended when a close female friend (Pauline Pfeiffer) slowly worked her way into the lives of both Hemingway and his wife Hadley. There are even some parallels with destroyed manuscripts, though in the novel it’s a malicious act and in real life the manuscripts were stolen while in Hadley’s possession.

  

BOTTOM LINE: A strange look inside one couple’s marriage. A crucial book to read if you think you really know Hemingway’s work, but not a must for those who just want a taste. I’d highly recommend his nonfiction book, A Moveable Feast, about his time in Paris to provide another aspect of his writing style.

Roof Beam Reader’s great review of the book prompted me to check this one out.

  

I read this as part of Allie's Modern March event. 

The Return of the Native

The Return of the Native
by Thomas Hardy
★★★★★

Damn this man can write tragedy! In this novel Hardy creates a love triangle (quadrangle?) that is both beautiful and disastrous. Using his incredible gift for lyrical prose he takes us into the wild land of Egdon Health.

Diggory Venn, a local reddleman, is in love with Thomasin Yeobright. She in turn is in love with Wildeve, a restless self-centered man. He is torn between his feelings for her and his love for Eustacia Vye. Add Thomasin’s cousin Clym Yeobright, the man who catches Eustacia’s eye, to the mix and you’ve got quite the quandary.

Each of the characters is wonderfully developed. We feel Eustacia’s restlessness and Thomasin’s earnest devotion. We long for Venn to find love and Clym to find happiness. We watch their lives unfold with a mix of apprehension and excitement, wondering all the while if the characters are falling in love purely for the escape they offer each other or if their feelings are true. Do they want something because someone else wants it or because it’s truly their heart’s desire?

“The sentiment which lurks more or less in all animate nature – that of not desiring the undesired of other – was lively as a passion in the supsersublte epicurean heart of Eustacia.”

I loved how the health is one of the main characters in the book and all of the characters are shaped by their reaction to it. Eustacia desperately wants to leave it and will do anything to get away. Clym returns from Paris aching for the wild health he loved so much in his childhood. Thomasin feels that she is a country girl and is comfortable living in the health. Only Hardy could make the background setting of a drama such a definitive character in the action. He even describes the effect the health has on the women who live there…
 
“An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine.”
 
SPOILERS

All of the characters desperately want what they can’t have. Another person, money, success, peace, travel, etc. Even Clym’s mother Mrs. Yeobright longs for different partners for her son and niece. She wants their happiness, but when they’ve chosen their lot in life she has such a hard time accepting it that she perpetuates unhappiness in their lives. Each character is destroyed by their own longing except for Venn. Early in the book he comes to terms with the fact that he’ll never have the woman he truly wants. He accepts that and decides that he’ll do everything he can to make her happy from a distance. Then, in the end he’s the only one who ends up getting what he wanted. It’s a beautiful picture of selfless love.

SPOILERS OVER

BOTTOM LINE: This book is so beautiful and poignant I just can’t get over it. It’s definitely a new favorite of mine. I’d recommend it if you enjoy Victorian literature, tragic love stories or just gorgeous prose.
 
 “Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days.”

“Humanity appears upon the scene, hand-in-hand with trouble.”

“What a strange sort of love to be entirely free from that quality of selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passion and sometimes its only one.”

I read this as part of the Victorian Celebration hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey.

p.s. Amanda's recommendation is one of the main reasons I made this books a priority. She was so right!

 

Villette

Villette
by Charlotte Bronte
★★★★☆

Lucy Snowe is an orphaned girl who finds herself taking a job as an instructor at a French boarding school in the town of Villette. Throughout the course of the novel we’re introduced to a wide selection of characters: the spoiled young Polly, handsome Dr. John, Lucy’s cruel employer Madame Beck and her nephew the cranky professor M. Paul Emanuel, the insufferable coquette Ginerva Fanshawe and more.

This novel is famous in literary circles because of the illusive heroine. Lucy keeps secret from the reader and never lets us completely into her world. There’s so much we don’t know about her and at times that can be frustrating, but I do love her acerbic nature. She’s often short or condescending; she sometimes calls people out on their bad choices in love or challenges them in other ways. Lucy is beyond interesting. I also love the fact that her job is important to her and that throughout the book the pursuit of education is valued.

Lucy’s character reminds me so much of Esther from Bleak House. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that I read both books in the same year, but it’s not just that. Both women are quiet and reserved, never giving the reader a complete picture of who they are. Both are instrumental in getting to close friends together, both fall for someone, but assume they can’t ever be together for one reason or another. I just kept having flashbacks. I checked the dates and the books were actually published in the same year, though Dickens’ was serialized the year before. I doubt either author was aware of the other’s novel when they were writing their own.

In so many ways I can understand why Villette is considered Charlotte’s masterpiece. The characters and their relationships are much more complicated and the tone is much darker. I also think the writing is exquisite, even better than in her earlier work. Villette really was way ahead of its time. But I will also say it didn’t impact me in the same way that Jane Eyre did and I think a big part of that is my own personality.

Most of the people I know who have loved Villette more than Jane Eyre identify with Lucy in a very personal way. They are usually quieter, more introspective and reserved and that’s just not me. I’m a bit of a chatterbox and I tend to be incredibly social. I do love being at home alone and curling up with a good book, but I like being out and about with my friends just as much. So it was harder for me to connect with Lucy. It’s not that Jane Eyre is Miss Social Butterfly, but she does stand up for herself and she’s a bit of a rebel. I love her open dialogue with the reader. I felt like I knew her in a way that I never did with Lucy.

I missed the humor you find in Jane Eyre. I felt like the chemistry between Jane and Mr. Rochester was palpable and I never felt that way with Lucy and either of her love interests. I also couldn’t connect with the all-encompassing loneliness that plagued Lucy. I think it’s unfair to judge this book entirely in comparison to Jane Eyre, but I can’t help myself. I couldn’t seem to stop.

I think Villette really embodied the pain Charlotte was going through at that time. It was the last novel she completed and at that point all of her sisters had died. She was alone and heartbroken and that darkness seeped into her writing.

SPOILERS

The ending totally took me by surprise. I know some people say it’s ambiguous, but to me it was pretty clear (maybe that makes me pessimistic). I couldn’t help thinking WTF on that last page. It’s not that the writing wasn’t beautiful or fitting, but still I felt like I was punched in the stomach. I wanted Lucy to have a bit of happiness in the second half of her life and I felt like she was so close but never quite got it. Her happiest years were those anticipating the life she was never able to have with M. Paul Emanuel; that broke my heart.

SPOILERS OVER

BOTTOM LINE: It’s a must for anyone who loves the Bronte sisters or Victorian classics. It didn’t trump Jane Eyre as my personal favorite, but it’s a more challenging book in many ways and one that I know I’ll reread in the future.

“If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep-inflicted lacerations never heal-cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge-so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo; caressing kindnesses-loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself.” 

I read this as part of the Victorian Celebration hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey.

Check out this great article comparing Jane Eyre and Villette

A few months ago Wallace at Unputdownables hosted a read-along of Villette. If you read it I’d recommend following her posts on each section here.

Also, Chrisbookarama’s review was a great reflection of my own thoughts.

Kristi’s wonderful review gives a wonderful perspective on Villette being better than Jane Eyre.

A Victorian Celebration Giveaway!

Giveaway Closed: Kerry @ Entomology of a Bookworm is the winner!

Last year I participated in a Victorian Literature Challenge and read 15 books that fall into that category. I developed a huge appreciation for the genre* and realized how much I enjoy it. I also discovered a few new authors whose work I’m looking forward to exploring.

So when Allie at A Literary Odyssey decided to host a Victorian Celebration this summer I couldn’t resist. To join in the fun I’m giving away three Victorian novels that I love: Jude the Obscure, Jane Eyre and Great Expectations. All three are wonderful in their own ways and if you haven’t read them yet, this is the perfect opportunity.
 
For a chance to win all three books (seen above) leave a comment with your email address and your favorite Victorian novel. This giveaway is open to US residents only, sorry guys!
 
For my own reading choices for the Celebration I decided to definitely read Villette by Charlotte Bronte (1853) and The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (1878). I’m also going to try and fit in a couple more from the following list:

- The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)
- Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868) 

- The Warden by Anthony Trollope (1855) 


- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844) 

- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848)

If you’re looking for other ideas of Victorian books to read, here are the books I finished for last year’s Challenge.
1) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)


2) The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)


3) Middlemarch by George Eliot (1874)

4) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850) 


5) The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881)
 

6) The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905) 


7) The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (1897)
 

8) Heidi by Johanna Spyri (1880) 

9) Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901) 

10) King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard (1885) 

11) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1869)


12) The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)


13) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869) 


14) A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)


15) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass (1845)

* The Victorian era is usually defined as the lifespan of Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837-1901. Books published during these particular years and authors who lived during this time usually fall in the “Victorian” category.

Shakespeare Reading Month: Othello and As You Like It

 

Allie at A Literary Odyssey decided that January would be the perfect month to celebrate Shakespeare. I can never resist an opportunity to read more of his work and discuss him, so obviously I joined in. I read one tragedy and one comedy, a perfect balance of his work. I have now read 19 of his plays and never miss an opportunity to see them performed live.

 

My favorite comedies are Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest. Favorite tragedies include Hamlet, King Lear and histories are Richard III and Henry V. I’d say the comedies are a great place to start if you’re new to Shakespeare, because his humor and clever streams of dialogue tend to be in full force in those.

 

As You Like It

by William Shakespeare

★★★★★

As You Like It follows Rosalind, the daughter of a Duke, as she escapes persecution in her Uncle’s court with her cousin Celia. They take refuge in the forest, waiting for a time when Rosalind’s father gains power. Before leaving however, she has just enough time to fall in love with Orlando, who fortunately ends up in the same forest.

I loved this one; it reminded me so much of The Tempest. There are two brothers who, just like in The Tempest, are both Dukes. Their daughters are central to the plot, falling in love for the first time, just as Miranda does in The Tempest.

 

The play includes so many of Shakespeare’s finest elements. There are women pretending to be men, women falling in love with those “men” and men confiding their love to those “men” without knowing who they really are. Confused? Don’t be, it’s all good fun.

 

In one section a young man goes on and on about how he’s in love. He tells the older man who is his companion that there’s no way he could possibly understand, because he’s so old. I love how Shakespeare often pokes fun at the naïveté of the young. They believe no one has ever gone through what I’m going through right now.

 

The play also includes the famous “All the world’s a stage” passage. I love reading one of his plays for the first time and stumbling upon one of those wonderful lines. It’s always a treat. I read this just after finishing Othello and it complemented the tragedy so well. It provided the comedic balance, cross dressing, falling in love, and mistaken identities that I craved after reading such a downer.

 

***One other bonus from this play, there is a character named Oliver! We named our puppy Oliver last year because of all the great literary references (and he just looked like an Ollie), but I didn’t even realize that it was the name of one of Shakespeare’s characters as well.

 

“Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.”

Othello

by William Shakespeare

★★★★☆

 

Othello, a moor from Africa, is a well-loved and respected Venetian nobleman. After the beautiful Desdemona falls in love with him, the two wed in secret. Their blissful existence is thrown into chaos as Iago, Othello's personal attendant, begins to plant doubts of Desdemona’s faithfulness in Othello’s mind.

 

Iago is one of the most conniving and depraved characters I’ve ever read. His cold calculating nature is sociopathic. He feels that Othello has slighted him and sets his mind to destroying his life. He moves each pawn to further his plan, all the while maintaining his alleged devotion to Othello and poisoning his thoughts with rumors of jealousy. He does it in such a calm, unbothered way that it’s all the more disturbing.

 

The worst part of the whole things is that Othello is in the thralls of newly-wedded happiness. He and his wife Desdemona are so incredibly in love and then he acts as the tool for his own destruction. He is manipulated by someone else, but no one truly forces his hand. He allows himself to be persuaded to believe that worst about his wife and causes his own downfall by his lack of faith and trust.

 

I loved the character of Emilia. She’s Iago’s wife, but she’s also Desdemona’s hand maid. She asks as a conscience for the players, holding them accountable when they have committed a wrong. She stands up for her lady’s honor when others doubt it.

 

Othello pulls no punches when it comes to the issues it touches on. It deals with marital abuse, racism, trust, jealousy and more. It gives readers a lot to chew on and would be a great book to discuss. I’ve never seen this one performed live, but I’m sure it would be incredibly powerful. 

 

As I mentioned in another Shakespeare post I’d highly recommend The Riverside Shakespeare if you are looking for a definitive edition with lots of extra info.

 

Also, I recently found a great book to introduce kids to the world of Shakespeare. It’s called William Shakespeare & the Globe by Aliki. It’s so much fun!

 

The Iliad

The Iliad
by Homer
★★★★

Set in Ancient Greece, The Iliad is an epic poem about a decade-long war. The book starts when the Trojans and Achaeans have already been at war for years. The war itself begins because Paris (a Trojan), steals Helen, the wife of Menelaus (an Achaean). This gives the Achaeans an excuse to load up their ships and head to Troy to attack them. Helen is the woman behind the infamous “face that launched a thousand ships.”

***SPOILERS***

Paris’ brother Hector is a great warrior, unlike Paris, and because of this he leads the Trojan side of the battle. The Achaeans’ greatest warrior is Achilles, but a falling out with Agamemnon (Menelaus’ brother, leader of the Greeks) over spoils of war causes Achilles to refuse to fight. It’s not until Hector kills his close friend, Patroclus, that Achilles rejoins the war to avenge his friend’s death.

Confused yet? It’s pretty straight forward while you’re reading it, but it sounds convoluted when you try to summarize it. It’s considered the greatest war story ever told and so obviously there are a lot of battle scenes.

I really liked the moral dilemmas, but after awhile the battles seemed repetitive. I loved The Odyssey, (Homer’s book that followed one of the warriors on his journey home after the Trojan War), so much because it’s one man’s journey and every aspect of his adventure is new and unexpected. With the Iliad, Homer has to convey the exhaustion the men feel after fighting the same battle for years. The fatigue was contagious and I felt it about half way through the book. Things pick up towards the end because big players are dying and you know it’s all coming to a head.

The plot is frustrating at times, because the meddlesome gods cause more problems than they solve. They’re petty and territorial and they choose humans that they want to champion and they don’t care who is hurt along the way. It also seems to remove the element of free choice in the warriors; lives. They can choose to do something, but the gods will just prevent it from happening if they want to.

After Hector is killed there is a brief mention of Helen's loneliness. She was taken from her home and is treated horribly by most people in Troy because they see her as the reason for the war. Hector was always kind to her and she realizes that none of her only friends is now dead and the loneliness is overwhelming. Even though this is a tiny part, it was really poignant to me. She’s always painted as a guilty party in this legend, leaving her husband for another man, causing a war, etc. I never thought about how terrible her life must have been.

I couldn't believe that the infamous Trojan Horse makes no appearance in The Iliad. It's my own fault for assuming it was part of the book, but I kept waiting for that part ... and then it ended. Apparently the Trojan Horse in mentioned in The Odyssey, which I remember, and then the full story is found in The Aeneid by Virgil.

One of my favorite scenes in the book is the exchange between Priam and Achilles. Priam (Hector’s father) goes to talk to Achilles after his son is killed. He begs Achilles to let him have Hector’s body. The beauty of this scene is that it strips away ten-years of war and reduces the powerful Priam and Achilles to two grieving men. They aren’t on opposite ends of an epic battle; they’re just heartbroken individuals lamenting the cost of war.

***SPOILERS OVER***

In the end, The Iliad is a must read, not because it’s the best book ever, but because it’s a cornerstone of literature. It has provided the basis and inspiration for countless war stories in the centuries since its creation. It’s one of the oldest and most well-known stories in existence and that’s not something anyone should miss. But I would recommend The Odyssey over The Iliad if you’re only going to read one, even though that story comes after this one in chronological order.

I read this as part of A Literary Odyssey’s read-along.