Category: Reading Challenge

Neil Gaiman Reads

Posted on by Dana

I never outgrew a fondness for being read to, and if you didn’t either, you might want to check out this site, which features videos of Neil Gaiman reading his new novel The Graveyard Book in its entirety.  You can browse inside the book at Harper Collins’s site, and you can check out an NPR story about Neil and Neil’s blog.  Neil is one of the most accessible authors, and really seems to care about his fans.  What more perfect book for Halloween than a tale of a boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard?

What are your favorite Halloween books?  Are you participating in the RIP Challenge this year?  I couldn’t because I didn’t feel I should commit to a reading challenge with grad school taking up extra time.  I really wanted to do the challenge this year, when the chill in the air is the perfect accompaniment to a gothic novel.  I also really enjoyed my selections from last year, though I still haven’t finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  I honestly did enjoy what I read, and I do want to finish it, but I found it was a challenging and very long book, and perhaps would be best to read when I feel I have time.

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Northanger Abbey

Posted on by Dana

Northanger AbbeyJane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is the story of the naive Catherine Morland. Catherine accompanies Mr. and Mrs. Allen, family friends, to Bath and meets and befriends Isabella Thorpe, the daughter of one of Mrs. Allen’s school friends. Catherine also meets Henry Tilney and is instantly smitten. Catherine also befriends Tilney’s sister Eleanor and secures an invitation to visit the Tilneys’ home Northanger Abbey from General Tilney, Henry and Eleanor’s father.

Every synopsis of Northanger Abbey that I’ve read has been misleading. Even the title is misleading. I was misled into believing the entirety, or at least a large portion of the book would take place at the imposing Northanger Abbey, ancestral home of the Tilneys. I judge about half the book is actually set at Northanger Abbey. Also, most synopses of the book that I’ve read reference Catherine Morland’s romantic imagination convincing her that a strange gothic history has taken place at Northanger Abbey, but that episode occupies only a small part of the plot of the novel — a few chapters at best.

I don’t think this novel is so much a parody or satire of gothic novels as it is the story of how a young girl loses her naiveté. It was a quick, enjoyable read, and I liked it better than Emma, though I don’t think it quite tops Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility. Catherine was a likable character, and I enjoyed the dialogue in the novel (as always in Austen’s writing).

I read Northanger Abbey as part of the Historical Fiction Challenge. At this point, my progress in the challenge stands thusly:

I don’t think I’ll pick up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell again next, but I’m not sure what I will read, as I expecting a bunch of books in the mail and would like to choose from among them; which one I choose depends on which arrives first. I’ll update once I have the books in hand and have made a decision.

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Wuthering Heights

Posted on by Dana

I finished reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I was originally supposed to read it in high school, but I quickly fell behind our class’s reading schedule, and before I knew it, the unit was over and assessment was done. I donated my copy to my teacher, who gave us extra credit for book donations because she was trying to grow her classroom library. Alas, I didn’t return to the book until this year. I loved it!

I think my favorite part of the book was the setting. I could so clearly see Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and all the moors surrounding them. In a way, the setting was almost a character, too. I found the characters, for the most part, easy to dislike, yet strangely sympathetic. Just when I had truly written Heathcliff off as totally evil, Nelly jumps in and reminds the reader of his boyhood, and her concern for him near the end of his life awakened my own. I disliked Linton intensely, and I found myself annoyed with Cathy for her sympathy for him. Then, I would feel guilty because he was, after all, slowly dying, and who knows how that altered his character (not to mention contempt from his father and the loss of his mother). And speaking of Cathy, her treatment of poor lovesick Hareton I found horrid. What a forgiving sort he turned out to be. In short, one thing I think Brontë did quite well is paint characters who while flawed and perhaps even reprehensible, still manage to evoke the reader’s sympathy.

I think my favorite character was the storyteller Nelly Dean. She spoke her mind when she felt the need, and I sensed a deep respect for her from the other characters. I did wonder a couple of times why she would dish the family dirt to a complete stranger (Mr. Lockwood). At first, she struck me as gossipy. Later, when I decided that wasn’t exactly the case, I was at a loss as to determine why she would tell the story. I came to the conclusion that she was lonely for the first part of the story. After Heathcliff died and Mr. Lockwood returned, I decided she wanted the story preserved in some manner.

Mr. Lockwood is an interesting character. Through Nelly, he knows more about the true events of the whole story than some of the principal characters, and he is, I think, deeply affected by the story (witness his visit to the graves of Catherine, Heathcliff, and Edgar Linton).

I’m not sure if this will make sense, but this book struck me as so quintessentially English — I couldn’t imagine it in another setting. I imagine that many other British novels and plays could (and indeed, in the case of Shakespeare especially) have been re-imagined in different locations. Wuthering Heights, however, belongs to the moors of Yorkshire.

I will have to think carefully about how to teach this book so that my own students won’t fall into the trap I did. This reader’s guide Web site is excellent, and if you are interested in Wuthering Heights, you might wish to check it out.

I have to take a break from the Historical Fiction Challenge to read some summer reading so I can create assessments for my students. For the record, I planned to read the following books (titles stricken through I have completed):

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is long, but Northanger Abbey is fairly short. I think I can manage to finish the challenge by October, and perhaps the idea that I need to finish the challenge will compel me to finish the former — I put it aside because it was taking me forever, and I wanted to read some other things.

My next book is Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman, a story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.

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Wide Sargasso Sea

Posted on by Dana

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is a parallel novel that explores perhaps one of the most interesting and mysterious characters in literature: Bertha “Antionette” Mason, the mad woman in the attic in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Upon first reading Jane Eyre, I found parts of it to be somewhat slow, particularly Jane’s childhood recollections; however, after some months to reflect, I can find little to criticize in the novel, which is perhaps why I didn’t enjoy Wide Sargasso Sea as much as I did Jane Eyre.

It was interesting to learn more of Antoinette’s possible background. I have read that Rochester comes off rather badly in Rhys’s novel, but I didn’t find this to be the case. He doesn’t come off well, but he’s certainly no worse in Wide Sargasso Sea than he is in Jane Eyre. In fact, I sympathized with him, as his account of his marriage in this novel agrees with his account in the other in one important respect: he was tricked, and he was forced. How much of his paranoia about his wife being insane actually drove her to insanity is debatable.

However, Antoinette is certainly a much more sympathetic character, as most characters are when they are able to tell their side of the story. In many ways, her past, filled with rejections from her mother and the society in which she lived, was as sad as Jane’s. She no more deserved what happened to her than Jane did. But Rochester still doesn’t quite come off the villain for me. Who is? I suppose that’s something I’m still trying to figure out for myself, too.

I did feel cheated by not seeing Antoinette’s motivation for some of her actions in Jane Eyre. Only the last twenty pages or so are devoted to events in Jane Eyre. One could argue that as Antoinette was insane at that point, and clearly fuzzy on many details of her life, she didn’t recollect what she was doing in order to tell about it. However, I still wanted to see her light Rochester’s bed on fire, rip up Jane’s veil, and stab Richard Mason. While she is told about Mason, she has no recollection and almost seems to feel she is being lied to.  I wanted to see that moment of madness and rage, rather than read yet another second-hand account.  What drove her?  What motivated her?  That piece of the puzzle was still missing.  I wanted to see whether or not she realized who and what Jane was. This novel didn’t satisfy that desire, but it was a quick read and a good book that I would recommend to anyone who enjoyed Jane Eyre.

My next book is Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which I failed to finish in high school and consequently have decided to return to.

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Change of Plans

Posted on by Dana

Readers might recollect that I am participating in the Historical Fiction Challenge.  I have a change of plans.  Instead of reading Ferrol Sams’ Run with the Horsemen for the challenge, I will be reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. It is my recollection that I didn’t finish the novel in high school, and now I would like to read it.  I haven’t decided for sure, but I’m thinking of substituting Edward P. Jones’ The Known World for Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.  Actually, I’m going to go ahead and make the substitution.  I think reading Wuthering Heights and Northanger Abbey back to back will be fun.

For the record, if you’re keeping track, I have already read Confessions of a Pagan Nun by Kate Horsley and Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess.  I am currently reading Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (which I will probably finish soon).  I still plan to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

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Confessions of a Pagan Nun

Posted on by Dana

Kate Horsley’s Confessions of a Pagan Nun has been on my to-read list for at least a couple of years, and I finally decided to take it off the shelf and read it. Serendipitously, I discovered the Historical Fiction Challenge and was able to use this book as part of the challenge.

For those of you who may have read The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier (review here) or The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, the premise of this novel is not new. Confessions of a Pagan Nun is told from the viewpoint of a woman a the crossroads in history: she is born into a pagan culture and watches, reporting her observations, as Christianity gradually subsumes paganism and druidism. Gwynneve, the narrator, longed to learn to read and become a druid as a child. She tells her story from the monastery of St. Brigit, where a confluence of strange events leads to wild accusations against her.

This book is different from The Virgin Blue and The Mists of Avalon because Gwynneve sees wisdom and beauty in both Christianity and paganism; she also sees violence and ignorance in both, and boldly reports what she sees. I was reminded that while history is written by the victors, the truth usually reveals itself, and words have the power to transmit the truth when we have nothing else. It was refreshing to read a book about the conflict between paganism and Christianity that casts neither as evil in and of themselves, but lay bare that men have used both to their own ends for the worse.

Confessions of a Pagan Nun is a quick, enjoyable read. In terms of historical fiction, I saw no inaccuracies that I could tell, having studied this time period — 6th century British Isles — quite a bit. I certainly think that should one be interested in learning about life in 6th century Ireland, this book would not disappoint.

One of these days, I need to re-read The Mists of Avalon. It’s one of my all-time favorite books. My next book for the Historical Fiction Challenge is Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess (yes, author of A Clockwork Orange). This book is about Shakespeare’s love life, a topic which never fails to inspire much speculation and not a few pretty good stories.

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Confessions of a Neglectful Reader

Posted on by Dana

I have had Kate Horsley’s novel Confessions of a Pagan Nun for so long that I did a search of my blog to see when I first mentioned it. I don’t know when I bought it, but I planned to read it as long ago as the summer of 2005. I seem to remember buying with a birthday gift card, so it may be that I didn’t have it yet that summer; it was on my wish list for a while before I bought it. In any case, it has been sitting on my bookshelf for too long, and I really have wanted to read it for a long time, so it’s my current work in progress. However, I have decided my choice to wait until now to read this book is well-timed: I can include it as part of the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. To complete the challenge, I must read six historical fiction novels in six months. I plan to read the following as part of the challenge:

  • Confessions of a Pagan Nun by Kate Horsley: Sixth-century Ireland as Christianity supplants paganism.
  • Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess: Sixteenth-century England, the story of William Shakespeare’s love life.
  • Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke: Nineteenth-century England, rival magicians change history. This one feels a bit like cheating because I put it aside as part of another challenge, but I never finished it. I really want to finish it, and maybe a challenge will help me.
  • Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys: Nineteenth-century Caribbean, the mad woman in the attic tells her side of the story.
  • The Known World by Edward P. Jones: 1840’s Virginia, the story of black slaveowners in the antebellum South.
  • Run with the Horsemen by Ferrol Sams: 1930’s Georgia, Porter Osborne grows up on a farm during the Depression.

I have many books like Confessions of a Pagan Nun that I bought some time ago and haven’t read yet. And I try to tell myself that when I’m in the bookstore, but I don’t often listen.

On an unrelated note, I have added a new feature to the sidebar. Random quotes about books and reading will appear. If you have one you want to share, feel free to leave it in the comments; maybe I will add it to my collection.

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