Tag: Classics

Posted in Year of Classics

Year of Classics, April 2019: Rebecca

Posted on by Sarah S.

SPECS

Author: Daphne du Maurier

Page Count: 386 (not counting the epilogue or any additional content included)

Challenge Prompt: a classic romance

THOUGHTS:

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady’s maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives–presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

I was very ambivalent about this book. On the one hand, the last 100-ish pages were utterly riveting, and the writing was absolutely gorgeous. But the first 300-ish pages were utterly dull. Nothing at all seemed to happen and our narrator (who didn’t even have a name!) was one of the more boring characters I’ve encountered. She did absolutely nothing, had zero personality beyond her crippling insecurity, and spent the entire book lamenting about her husband’s dead first wife. It got rather old after nearly 300 pages of “WOE IS ME, I’M IRRATIONALLY CONVINCED THAT MY DEAR HUSBAND (who is old enough to be my father, by the way!) IS STILL IN LOVE WITH HIS DEAD WIFE!”. And Narrator’s descriptions of her lack of belonging in her new life were so painfully relatable that I couldn’t enjoy the long stretch of the book that it populates. After the big twist (I won’t reveal it here; feel free to Sparknotes it if you’re curious) at about the 3/4 point of the book, things started to pick up veeery quickly. Granted, it still wasn’t exactly rip-roaring action, but I was just thrilled that anything at all was happening. So that was good. So was the writing – du Maurier’s prose is lovely, and her ability to capture the essence of a setting is almost unparalleled.

But…overall, this was kind of a drag.

CLOSING

Deserving of Classic Status?: most likely, if only for the quality of its writing.

Rereading Potential: many will probably give “Rebecca” the highest marks in this category; for fans of gothic novels and other such things, it’s certainly a well-written one. But I didn’t enjoy enough to put it above “moderate.”

Recommended If: you like gothic novels, slow-paced, contemplative stories, well-realized settings, and beautiful prose.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Confused Llamas

Posted in Year of Classics

Year of Classics, February 2019: White Nights

Posted on by Sarah S.

SPECS

1772910.jpg

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Page count: 51(!)

Challenge Prompt: a classic by an author whose work you dislike

THOUGHTS

White Nights, is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was published in 1848. Set in St. Petersburg, this is the story of a young man fighting his inner restlessness. A light and tender narrative, it delves into the torment and guilt of unrequited love. Both protagonists suffer from a deep sense of alienation that initially brings them together. A blend of romanticism and realism, the story appeals gently to the senses and feelings.

Before I read White Nights, all I’d ever read of Dostoevsky was “Crime and Punishment,” which I absolutely despised. I read the last 313 pages (which I remember only because they were so painful) in a single, miserable car ride – thirteen hours in 106-degree California heat, driving in a car with no air conditioning and poor ventilation. (Pure hell, by the way.) So I thought, naturally, that I didn’t like his work. So, when I chanced to stumble across a description of “White Nights” somewhere on the interwebs, I was intrigued. What was this? A Dostoevsky novella that seemed genuinely interesting?

I knew immediately what I had to choose for this prompt. And though I still hate “Crime and Punishment,” and will probably not be reading “The Brothers Karamazov” anytime soon, I must admit that I misjudged Dostoevsky. This obscure little novella is an absolute gem.

The main reason I loved “White Nights” so was because of its characters. I can’t overstate it enough, really, how much I adored them. The nameless protagonist, a young man so caught up in his daydreaming (he should probably have seen a psychologist about that) that he can no longer function in society to an extent, is an absolute smol. I know I’m supposed to take classic lit as seriously as a heart attack and never, EVER use fandom speak, but it’s just a fact. He is a smol. Case in point: he talks to houses, and spends the first several pages recalling how distraught he became when the owners of a house he considered a particular friend repainted it an ugly color. This would be very worrisome in real life, but in a book? Adorable. I love him. And Nastenka…oh, Nastenka, you poor, repressed darling. I was about to chuck the book across my room at the end because dang it, *SPOILERS* Nastenka deserves better than a crochety old dude. Nastenka deserves nothing less than our narrator, Maladaptive Daydreamer and Friend of Domestic Residences. I’m mad. *SPOILERS* Not to mention the fact that it’s, at its core, an unrequited love story and a love letter to the city of St. Petersburg – two things that I loved about it. Just…yes. And the way our narrator said things was…*swoon.* HE TALKS LIKE I TALK, AND NO ONE DOES THAT IN REAL LIFE. DO Y’ALL HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH I APPRECIATE THAT? Probably not, but no worries. Just know that I do.

However, a word of warning: if you’re not won over by that glowing review, you definitely won’t be won over by the massive walls of uninterrupted text that make up most of the book. Short it may be, but it is also incredibly dense. The narrator is quite long-winded. That wasn’t a drawback for me, but many people hate that style, and I completely understand why.

CLOSING

Deserving of Classic Status?: A MILLION TIMES OVER, YES. I have quite a bit of personal bias because of how much I fell in love with the characters, but still.

Rereading Potential: high, for me at least. It’s an endlessly lovable story and so short that it isn’t much of a time commitment to revisit. However, some may find the blocks of text (we’re talking uninterrupted two-page lines of dialogue) to be so daunting and/or painful that they aren’t worthwhile. I’d understand that perspective, as much as I loved this.

Recommended If: you’re a dreamer at heart, you love almost unrealistically quirky characters, or you’re looking for a quick but substantial read.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Confused Llamas

NOTE: This story is in the public domain, which means that there are several ways to read it free of charge. One is as an online PDF (link below); Amazon’s Kindle store also has a free ebook of Dostoevsky short stories that includes White Nights. I chose to read a print copy, but am attaching a link for your viewing pleasure: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36034/36034-h/36034-h.htm

Posted in Year of Classics

Year of Classics, February 2019: Frankenstein

Posted on by Sarah S.

You might have read my 2018 “Year of Classics” recap. The concept – to become more well-read by reading a classic novel every month of the year – caught on, and I’ve decided to complete the challenge a second year. So, barring my January book (“Gone With the Wind,” which I chose not to review because it is very controversial and I did not want to risk assessing it in a way that could offend readers), I will be recapping each monthly classic I read. For February, I chose “Frankenstein” in accordance with the prompt “a sci-fi classic.”

SPECS

frankenstein@2x.jpg

BOOK: “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley

LENGTH: 170 pages

GENRES: classics, sci-fi

THOUGHTS 

NOTE: since this book has such a well-known story, I’m not going to bother trying to explain it here. Thus, this review assumes that one is at least semi-familiar with enough basic plot information to understand what I’m talking about. (None of it requires detailed knowledge beyond “Frankenstein makes a person. That person is ugly and shunned for his ugliness, so he gets all murdery.”)

To be quite honest, I’ve never been a big sci-fi reader. Other than “Enchantress from the Stars,” an excellent and (from what I can tell) semi-obscure fantasy/sci-fi novel I was assigned to read in eighth grade, I can’t name any sci-fi novels that I’ve enjoyed. This is sort of strange, because I actually quite enjoy sci-fi films – I guess I’d never really explored the genre enough to know whether I liked it or not. So it took me a while to find a book for this prompt that didn’t seem too out there for my sci-fi-uncultured self to enjoy. That, and not any sort of compelling interest that I had in the book itself, was why I chose Frankenstein. I wouldn’t normally have chosen to read it, but I had to read something, so it might as well be this. Naturally, I wasn’t terribly surprised when I didn’t love it, but I didn’t dislike it, either. It was kind of just…there.

Frankenstein’s main flaw, in my mind, is that it suffers from an acute case of pacingitis. The first half of the book, in which the titular character (the scientist, not the monster, as every book snob in the history of book snobs will insist) discusses his childhood, is…dull. That’s all it is. Dull. It’s a good thing this was so short that I didn’t have to read much a day to finish on time, because I couldn’t read that in long spurts. Literally couldn’t. But once I reached the second half, where Frankenstein is reunited with his creation and proceeds to hear how the creature was shunned by society so many times that he began to murder people, it started to pick up. There’s murder, the monster’s story is actually quite compelling and fast-paced, and things begin to escalate, culminating in everyone running off to the Arctic to Die In Peace. It’s a pretty gripping read once you get past 86 lines of prose describing the younger Elizabeth Lavenza’s surpassing radiance and seraphic beauty and/or Victor’s emotional turmoil after making and abandoning sentient life that comprise most of the first half.

I do not always like the classics I read, I’ll admit. In that vein, I can’t say I loved Frankenstein. But it was not a bad read, and even if it had been, it was short enough to make myself pull through it.

CLOSING

Deserving of Classic Status?: yes, for the timeless ethical questions it poses, but not necessarily for entertainment value (imo).

Rereading Potential: low, although some will probably enjoy it enough to want tor reread it.

Recommended If: you like to ponder the nature of life and one’s responsibilities to their fellow man.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Confused Llamas

Posted in Reviews, Sarah Reviews Required Reading

Sarah Reviews Required Reading: “The Great Gatsby”

Posted on by Sarah S.

My high school does not like classic literature. We’ve read a few of the books a school practically CAN’T skip over – “Romeo and Juliet” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” when I was a freshman, “Things Fall Apart” and “Julius Caesar” as a sophomore – but most of the books that students at other schools mention having to study are simply absent from the syllabi of my English classes. Therefore, this miniseries about popular required reading books might seem pointless and will certainly only be updated intermittently. But…why not?

That said, we begin this series with the reason for its existence: I, like every high school junior in America, finally read The Great Gatsby. Since this is a different sort of review from my typical ones, it’s going to be in more of a Q&A format – if that format grates on you or somehow looks pretentious, please let me know! I am to please. 🙂

Also, unnecessary disclaimer: if my opinions on this sound like BS, it’s probably because I’m…um, a teenager. Totally aware that nothing I say about classic lit is valid due to my age and relative lack of knowledge of how to properly read it, but I love it, so I’m taking a stab at it anyway.

the-great-gatsby

SPECS

Title: The Great Gatsby

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Page Count: 180 (bless)

Q&A

Having read this book, why do I think is it required? Should it be, or is it a waste of  students’ time?: 

Yes, definitely. It takes a lot of effort to fully appreciate “Gatsby” – such is the way it’s written – but if anything, that makes it a great challenge for a generation of readers (including myself) who are probably not accustomed to that sort of deep contemplation of a novel. No one in this book says or does what they actually mean, everything is a symbol, and the prose makes it incredibly unclear what is actually going on; its length is deceptive in that it gives the appearance of ease when in reality it’s not an easy book to get your head around.  Schools typically assign books that they think will make students think (although, as I’ve discovered, they usually can’t – almost no one even reads the assigned books, sadly). I think “The Great Gatsby” is so commonly required because of its wealth of opportunities for analysis/discussion, the light it sheds on its era in history, and the fact that it’s, quite simply, a masterclass in prose. HOLY HECK, SO MUCH PRETTY WRITING. It sort of reminds me of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in that once you’ve read it, almost no other book seems well-written (in terms of the actual…well, writing…you know what I mean). Good writing works by osmosis – take enough in and you’ll start seeing your own writing improve. In that light, “The Great Gatsby” is a fantastic piece of writing to absorb. Clearly, given my gushing, I am COMPLETELY okay with this book’s place in the Super Overused Required Reading Canon.

Is this book accessible to an average high school student? Having read this book through teenage eyes, what do I think of it?: perhaps. Prose-wise, not really. I’m in an honors English course, so my view is a little different because most people in my class are most likely more adept readers than their regular-English counterparts, but if a completely average student read this, they’d probably find it very difficult by virtue of the writing alone. A lot of students just don’t read, so throwing this book full of insanely gorgeous but very difficult prose (I had to reread sentences quite often) at them is a recipe for confusion. Many people also argue that “The Great Gatsby”‘s themes of the futility of the American Dream, etc. are completely irrelevant to high school students, which I can understand. However, I would argue that there is a lot students can see of themselves here. Many of the characters are young, restless, and have no clue what he want, and no one understands that feeling of disillusionment and lack of clarity better than teenagers. We’re thrown into high school, given four years to figure out who we are, and told to know exactly what we want to spend the rest of their lives doing by the end of that time, and for a lot of us, that answer isn’t as cut-and-dry as adults want to make it seem. That sense of purposeless drifting, so evident behind all of the glamor and wealth in this story, is much like our own. However, 96% of students would immediately hone in on the fact that LITERALLY EVERY CHARACTER, OBJECT, AND EVENT THAT HAPPENS IN THIS BOOK is a metaphor for the American Dream, declare it “irrelevant,” and wouldn’t bother trying to find anything they related to in the story. So…maybe. But for myself, and other students who enjoy reading and are willing to put in the work, it’s perfectly accessible and even enjoyable.

Did I enjoy this experience? Did I even understand what was being said?: enjoy = yes, understand = maybe. As I said, I often had to reread sentences I didn’t get, and I didn’t pick up on nearly all of the symbols or implications until either my teacher, other students, or thought-provoking discussion questions brought them up. But I loved it. The writing was beautiful, and there’s something so intriguing about watching people with few redeeming qualities ruin their own lives on-page. (I sound like a psychopath. Oops.)

CLOSING 

Short Summary: everyone reads it, few get it, makes you work.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Confused Llamas

Does this book earn its required-reading status?: absolutely.

NOTE: I hope my repeated characterizations of high school students as unenthusiastic readers doesn’t offend anyone. I am 100% aware that there are many exceptions to this rule (I am one, clearly) but in my experience, even the smartest of students don’t always enjoy reading. The girl who’s most likely our valedictorian – one of my best friends, whom I adore – hates reading with a passion, and she isn’t alone. So there ya have it.

Posted in Uncategorized

What My First “Year of Classics” Taught Me

Posted on by Sarah S.

Last December, when one of my best friends insisted that I read Pride and Prejudice, neither one of us knew what she was starting.

It was her favorite book, and I’d lately been thinking that, for someone who loved to read as much as I did, I was shockingly ill-read. I’d barely touched a classic, other than the few I’d read for school and the ones my mom had made me listen to on audiobook during long car rides as a kid. So after I finished Pride and Prejudice (and loved it), I proposed a means to become the well-read, cultured human being I wanted to be: a two-man, classics-only book club. It was a simple setup: one classic novel, which we’d select in advance, for each month of 2018. She agreed to participate but didn’t have time; I finished out the year. And I’m incredibly glad I did. Each of the twelve selected books taught me something and, on this first day of my second annual classic lit challenge (books to come! I’m still waiting for my first to come via library request because I’m a diva and can’t read an 800-page book on a screen – sorry, can’t), I thought it might be nice to reflect on the reading I did this year.

  1. January: The Scarlet Letter

The Lesson: the trick to finishing a book is to convince yourself that you love it until it’s over.

When I was reading “The Scarlet Letter” – which my friend chose, not me – I thought I liked it. I convinced myself that I loved Hawthorne’s obsession with run-on sentences and describing everything in mind-numbing detail because it was “evocative” and pretended I didn’t care that reading ten pages made me want to sleep. And that was good. It allowed me to get through a book that I would later openly acknowledge that I’d hated.

Perhaps I’m too young for things like this. I know someone’s probably going to yell at me in the comments about how I’m a disrespectful heathen youth who should have more reverence for the classics. (*slinks into the corner* I’m sorry, I’m trying!) Even so, I just did not enjoy this. The value in my reading it? I learned early on how to finish a book I didn’t like – and I had to do that a lot this year.

2. February: The Count of Monte Cristo

The Lesson: classics aren’t inherently unlike any other books – you can love them just as much as you would anything else.

IT HAS BEEN ELEVEN MONTHS AND I AM STILL IN LOVE WITH THIS BOOK. Perhaps my experience was altered by the fact that I read the only copy my school library had, which was abridged by half its length, but still. Page count excepted, “Count” has such a compelling story that it’d easily be my first recommendation to anyone who’s never read a classic and thinks they don’t want to. I finished the 500-page version I read in about a week during an incredibly busy part of the school year because it sucked me in. I’d never felt that way about a classic novel and I didn’t even know I could. I always sort of assumed you were supposed to read them coldly, detachedly, admiring from afar without getting attached. Boy, was I wrong.

This is my best friend’s favorite book, which was part of the reason we chose it. Not only can I see why after having read it, but (as you know if you’ve seen the About page) I think I can safely say that it’s one of mine as well.

March: My Ántonia

The Lesson: don’t let your past reading experiences determine your book choices.

I thought that I hated pioneer books.

This is because, when I was a small child, my mother tried to make me read “Little House on the Prairie” OVER and OVER and OVER, and also homeschooled us with a curriculum that included a great deal of snore-inducing middle grade novels about pioneers. So when my friend (who picked, I’m pretty sure, every book on here except The Moonstone and Les Mis) selected this book, I had to physically try not to groan. I thought I’d hate it. I did not hate it. Conclusion: Child Sarah is not a reliable source of opinions about books.

If I had allowed my bias against pioneer books to prevent me from reading “My Ántonia,” I would have missed out on what has to be the best feel-good classic I’ve ever read.

(Is it bad that I shipped Jim and Ántonia, thought…?)

April: Les Miserables

The Lesson: there’s nothing scary about long books once you’ve actually read one.

I was the one who chose this book. I love the musical version of Les Mis more than life itself so I wanted to check out the book, not realizing how long it was. (I read the Barnes and Noble version, which cut out about 400 pages of what it said was “sociological analysis,” but it was still 800 pages!). This was unfortunate because the month I had to read it, I was in a play (which means tech week, ew) and had to prepare for my AP Exams, which were in early May. Busy month + the longest book of the challenge = very bad idea, clearly. So I was a bit intimidated.

But I survived, and I enjoyed it, and I’ve never been prouder of myself than I was when I finished an 800-page book during the busiest month of the year only two days too late. (May 2nd, I think.) And most of all, I learned that I CAN read a long book if I plan it well. They’re not scary, they just need to be approached correctly.

May: Sense and Sensibility

The Lesson: you won’t always like all of an author’s work equally, no matter how much you enjoy that author.

I loved Pride and Prejudice. Naturally, not having read any other Jane Austen books, I thought that meant I loved Jane Austen. I do still enjoy her work, but not all of it is equally enjoyable to me. “Sense and Sensibility” bored me half to tears. And it was then that I learned that I won’t always enjoy everything an author writes – and that’s fine. Really, one of my biggest takeaways for the year was that it’s perfectly fine not to like every book you read; this is no exception.

June: Northanger Abbey

The Lesson: opinions change – sometimes very frequently.

I was not optimistic about this third Jane Austen novel after finishing S&S. But I loved NA. It was incisive and funny and I LOVED Catherine. (She’s a morbid, melodramatic bookworm! ME!) I don’t have a lot to say about it, but it was a great time. And it definitely showed me that my opinions will change more often than I ever expect them to.

July: Wuthering Heights

The Lesson: finding your least-favorite book is just as important as finding your favorite.

I DESPISE this book. (Sorry! I know it’s probably someone’s favorite and I just desecrated it! But I did!) I don’t know why but once the Scarlet Letter Technique of pretending to like it until it’s over got me through this (mostly read on a plane flight to Wisconsin), I just could not stand it. It was so not my thing that I quite literally wanted to fight a book. I’ve got nothing – no excuse. I just. Could. Not. Stand. It.

And for that, it stuck with me as much as any book I’ve ever loved. (This also happened with “The Name of the Rose.” More on that later.)

August: Jane Eyre

The Lesson: the amount of variation in works within a narrow genre can be astounding.

Wuthering Heights didn’t leave me with a rosy view of Gothic romances. I was surprised, then, when I found myself enjoying Jane Eyre. Thinking back on it, that was probably due in large part to the fact that Jane is a fantastic protagonist. I adore Jane and that is just a thing that I have decided. She’s independent and has a brain, and I love that. I also love that her prudence and bright intellect drive so much of the story. And yes, the romance is problematic in many ways, but coming on the heels of Wuthering Heights (I read this one early, on the same trip on which I read W.H.), it looked downright blissful – and that made it VERY romantic. It’s amazing how different two supposedly “similar” books can be – don’t judge a book by its Goodreads “you might also like” suggestions…

September: A Room With a View

The Lesson: “meh” is okay, as long as the book is short.

I neither loved nor hated A Room With a View. It was…there. However, since it was less than 200 pages, this was okay. It had its bright spots: Lucy Honeychurch is an adorable smol for whom I would willingly die, and THE VIOLET FIELD KISS, AH. Someone get me a 16-or-17-year-old male who is willing to kiss me and a field of violets so I can reenact that, pleeeeease? It was pleasant in an entirely forgettable way, hence the “meh.” And I was okay with that. You don’t have to passionately adore a book to like it.

October: The Moonstone

The Lesson: it’s okay to be disappointed by a book you thought you’d love.

I chose The Moonstone and eagerly waited for ten months to read it because I thought it would be the kind of riveting adventure/mystery that I adored. It was a good book, I’ll give it that, but I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. It was a quiet, peaceful stream where I’d been expecting the Amazon River. In a class-five rapid. I did like it, but my high expectations dampened the eventual reality of the book. I have to say that the most anticipating book on my list being rather meh was a disappointment, but then again, so was “The Name of the Rose.” (Again, more on that infamous weekend binge later…)

November: The Phantom of the Opera

The Lesson: even if you’ve seen the movie, there’s no substitute for reading the book.

I LOVE Phantom-the-musical. It is just about my favorite thing ever. My first crush in high school was essentially a haze of 9th-grade me pining over a senior (love ya, Sergio!) to “Think of Me” while doing nothing about it, and then confessing long after the crush had died, and finding out it was mutual all along-

Anyway. Enough about that. The point is, I chose this book not expecting it to live up to the musical. But it did, in its own way. It was at least six times weirder, but that lent it its own Gothic-horror charm that was largely missing from the far more lavish and palatable musical. I would never have understood the vibe of the story had I only seen the musical. So, even if you’ve seen the movie…

Read the book, kids.

December: A Tale of Two Cities

The Lesson: you probably don’t hate that author as much as you think you do.

I read half of Oliver Twist. Couldn’t finish. So depressing, sigh. (I know that was the point, but I was having a hard time and didn’t need to be further dragged down by a book.) Thus, I thought I hated Dickens – but I didn’t. “A Tale of Two Cities” is slow-moving, but it has to have the single most beautiful ending in all of literature. The whole book is poetic as heck and it especially comes out in the denouement – both in the writing and in the timelessness of the events themselves. People, when in doubt, go with the Jesus ending. Tragic self-sacrifice gets me every single time. 

 

BONUS ROUND: Other classics I read this year, briefly described!

A Passage to India (Feb.): lovely, if a bit stale. I like that period in history, so that helped.

Much Ado About Nothing:  makes me almost IRRATIONALLY happy. (The film is delightful too.)

The Name of the Rose: I’ve taken ten years of Christian theology and I STILL UNDERSTOOD ZERO OF THE RELIGIOUS REFERENCES IN THIS INCREDIBLY LONG-WINDED BOOK ABOUT MONKS. (Sorry, religion teachers…you never really covered tiny details of the history of the papacy or obscure Medieval heresies.) IT SPENDS SIX PAGES DESCRIBING A DOOR. SIX. AND THEN TEN DESCRIBING A VISION THAT ACTUALLY ENDS UP BEING FROM A BOOK THAT’S CRITICAL TO THE STORY SOMEHOW. AND LIKE HALF THE BOOK IS THIS BLIND SPANISH MONK YELLING AT EVERYONE ABOUT HOW LAUGHTER IS A SIN. HELP ME. WHY ON EARTH DID I READ THIS BOOK? I THOUGHT I WAS SMART, THAT’S WHY. I THOUGHT I WAS AN INTELLECTUAL. I AM SO, SO, SO NOT. AND I WON’T EVEN START ON THE ENDING… *MANIACAL DESPAIR LAUGHTER* help…

(I read this in a single weekend, because I had nothing else to do at a family event in the most boring city on earth. Bad idea. But hey, it made me think.)

Crime and Punishment: I also hated this one, but at least I’m not using caps…

This one has a story too. I read the last 313 pages on a 13-hour car ride in 106-degree heat. The car had no air conditioning. We only stopped for food and water once in the entire day. I sweated through a pair of shorts so thoroughly that it felt like I’d bathed in them when I got up. And a ratty used-bookstore copy of Crime and Punishment was my sole source of entertainment. I was sort of set up to hate this book even if I didn’t find it relentlessly depressing and dull. Oops.

The Age of Innocence: poetic and boring.

The Scarlet Pimpernel: so much fun. Also, Marguerite Blakeney is the hecking love of my life. It’s not Wednesday, but Marguerite is my WCW every day of the week.

Anna Karenina: long, but rewarding. I vastly preferred Kitty and Levin to Anna and Vronsky, though.