Book Review: On Stories and Other Essays on Literature

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Barbara Harper

Someone recommended On Stories and Other Essays on Literature by C. S. Lewis some time last year. I asked for and received it for Christmas, but then set it aside when I entered a number of reading challenges for this year. But something in How to Read Slowly touched off a train of thought that reminded me of Lewis’s book, so I was happy to pick it up recently. Then realizing it could qualify for Carrie’s Narnia Reading Challenge for July made me push a little harder to try to get through it by the end of the month.

Nineteen of Lewis’s essays were compiled for this book by Walter Hooper, one of his biographers, his private secretary for a time, and eventually the literary executor of his estate. The last selection in the book is a transcript of a discussion recorded with Lewis and two colleagues. Many of the essays were previously published in magazines or in Lewis’s books: others had been unpublished until this book. Some are Lewis’s thoughts on fiction, science fiction, writing for children, etc., while others are critiques of other writers’ work (Dorothy L. Sayers, Rider Haggard, George Orwell, Tolkien, and others).

There is no way to really review a book like this, so I am just going to share some observations.

I hadn’t known and was fascinated to learn in Hooper’s mini-biography which introduces the book that in Lewis’s time “the most vocal of the literary critics were encouraging readers to find in literature almost everything, life’s monotony, social injustice, sympathy with the downtrodden poor, drudgery, cynicism, and distaste: everything except enjoyment. Step out of line and you were branded an ‘escapist'” (p ix). I’m glad Lewis not only stepped out of the box but succeeded and made it okay to enjoy stories as stories.

Lewis states many times in various essays that he did not write the Narnia series or his science fiction trilogy with morals or symbolism in view, as many people in his time and since have thought. They started with certain pictures in his mind (a faun carrying an umbrella) and developed from there. “Never…did he begin with a message or moral, but…these things pushed their own way in during the process of writing” (p. xv). He says in the transcript at the end, “The story itself should force its moral on you. You find out what the moral is by writing the story” (p. 145).

Reepicheep and Puddleglum the Marshwiggle were his favorite characters (p. xi).

He decried the kind of fiction where “the author has no expedient for keeping the story on the move except that of putting his hero into violent danger. In the hurry and scurry of his escapes the poetry of the basic idea is lost” (p. 10). Of course he had no problem with putting the hero in danger, as you know if you’ve read Narnia or the Space Trilogy: sometimes that’s a necessary part of the plot. But if that’s all the story is, it might be enjoyable to some, but there’s no deeper meaning.

He also believed that the “marvels in a good Story” should not be “mere arbitrary fictions stuck on to make the narrative more sensational” (p. 12). In other words, the story itself should be intrinsic to the “world” in the story. A story about pirates should have a different feel and problems than a story about giants and dragons. The plot shouldn’t be such that it could be stuck into any setting.

He quotes Dorothy L. Sayers as saying, about the assumption that she wrote to “do good”: “My object was to tell that story to the best of my ability, within the medium at my disposal — in short, to make as good a work of art as I could. For a work of art that is not good and true in art is not good and true in any other respect” (p. 93).

When asked what he thought of a certain book, he replied, “I thought it was pretty good. I only read it once; mind you, a book’s no good to me until I’ve read it two or three times” (p. 146).

I found his thoughts on critiques and book reviews quite interesting in “On Criticism” and in his answering of some criticisms of his work in “On Science Fiction.” Then to see/read him “in action” critiquing other books was enlightening. He didn’t pull any punches, but he wasn’t mean or belittling, and he complimented and praised the good while sharing honestly what he thought was bad. He made a strong case for truly evaluating what was good and bad and not deeming a book bad just because one doesn’t like a particular genre.

He thought The Lord of the Rings would “soon take its place among the indispensables” (p. 90). He was right. 🙂

I didn’t look up every word I didn’t know in this book, but I should have, especially with a dictionary app at hand on my phone. I eventually started doing so partway through the book.

Though Lewis has such a wealth of knowledge, I found him very readable and not hard to follow for the most part. I’d love to have sat in on one of his classes.

And here are some of my favorite quotes:

“It might be expected that such a book would unfit us for the harshness of reality and send us back into our daily lives unsettled and discontent. I do not find that it does so….Story, paradoxically enough, strengthens our relish for real life. This excursion into the preposterous [speaking here of The Wind in the Willows] sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual” (p. 14).

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty – except, of course, books of information” (p. 14).

On the topic of frightening elements in children’s literature, he agreed that “we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless,” but to withhold “the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil…would be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the Ogpu and the atomic bomb. Since it is so likely they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making destiny not brighter but darker. Nor do most of us find that violence and bloodshed, in a story, produce haunting dread in the minds of children…Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book…I think it possible that by confining your child to blameless stories of child life in which nothing at all alarming ever happens, you would fail to banish the terrors, and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable” (pp. 39-40) (emphasis mine).

On The Lord of the Rings: “Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; this is a book that will break your heart” (p. 84).

“‘But why,’ some ask, ‘why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?’ Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is that of mythical and heroic quality” (p. 89).

“The value of myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the ‘veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat (otherwise dull to him) by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse,apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. This book [LOTR] applies the treatment not only to bread and apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly” (p. 90).

I love that – that by seeing truth in stories we sometimes see it more clearly than we otherwise would have.

If you like Lewis or like literature, I highly recommend this book to you.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: Just Jane

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Barbara Harper

Just Jane: A Novel of Jane Austen’s Life by Nancy Moser caught my eye when it came through as free or inexpensive for the Kindle app because I so enjoyed How Do I Love Thee?, her novelization of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s life.

The novel is written from Jane’s point of view beginning when she is in her early twenties. She’s the seventh of eight children, the youngest of two girls. She enjoys writing and her family enjoys hearing her stories, but there doesn’t seem to be much thought of publishing yet. She has had some encounters with a Tom Lefroy to the point where she believes they have an understanding. While he is away at law school she cherishes hopes of their coming union. But, if you know her life story, you know she never hears from Tom and he marries someone else.

She continues at home doing all the things a single woman in the 1800s would do, with the addition of writing, until her family moves to Bath. She not only doesn’t want to go, but she is furious that the decision was made without even consulting her. She has lived in the rural village of Steventon all her life and hates Bath. She has no choice but to move with her family, but she does not write during the years they live there.

Though she has another romantic encounter or two, she never marries. When her family moves again to more commodious accommodations, she is inspired to pick up her pen again. Her first novel is rejected, which may be an additional reason she stops writing for a while, but eventually, as the world knows, she is finally published. She writes anonymously at first but eventually her secret comes out.

The book ends some years before her death, but the author provides a postscript with details of her remaining years. I much appreciated a section at the back where Moser tells what is fact and fiction in the book. Unfortunately, many of Jane’s letters were destroyed, and though Moser drew from them and even seamlessly wove some into the story, she had to fill in the best she could with what she knew.

I thought I would really like this book since I liked the earlier book of Moser’s and since I generally enjoy Austen’s books. I didn’t dislike it per se, I just didn’t love it as much as I thought I would. Sometimes when you approach a book with high expectations it makes it especially hard for it to live up to them. I felt there was too much information about her family: by the time she’s in her mid-twenties, most of her brothers have either already married or are getting married, and the drama of their relationships wasn’t really what I was reading the book for. Then again, I’m sure she and her parents and sister would have been involved and interested, so it was definitely a part of her life and I can understand its inclusion. I missed her humor: some of her writing has been described as “biting satire” (some of the “bite” goes a little too far for me sometimes), but some of it has a lighter touch. I just finished listening to Northhanger Abbey and loved some of the humorous interchanges with Henry especially (also the name of her favorite brother) and the way she subtly gets across to the reader some of the things naive Catherine Morland misses in her first foray away from home. I also thought she came across as somewhat negative (downright grouchy sometimes), but near the end she did say that she wrestled with discontentment and was guilty of “the unforgivable act of complaining. For what good comes from that particular vice – for the complainer or her unlucky listener?” Moser says in her afterword that Jane was “witty, wise, discerning, creative, loyal. She was also stubborn, judgmental, insecure, and needy. She was…a lot like us.” She did learn along the way that she could “wallow in unhappiness or make a determined choice to leave it behind and move forward. Life is not fair – nor often understandable. But it is ours to live to the best of our ability.”

I did empathize with what seemed to be an inclination towards introversion: though she loved visiting family and having them visit, there were times she declined certain activities because she just needed some time alone. She “embraces silence and solitude.” Though she attended balls in her younger years, she seemed to be more of a homebody later on.

So…upon reflection I guess I did appreciate more from it than I thought. 🙂 That’s one thing reviews are good for – going back over the story and trying to put it all into perspective. I did enjoy her more at the end of the book than at the beginning or middle and appreciated what she learned about contentment and life and finding one’s place.

And I loved the cover!

One last note that I especially liked: when one reviewer seems to portray Jane’s work as “educational,” she says, “I didn’t mean for it to be educational…at least not with any conscious intent.” Her sister Cassandra replies, “Your stories portray true life. In that there is always education.” Amen to that. I think that’s what resonates with us in the books that most appeal to us, no matter the setting: when they depict something of real life and touch our hearts with truth.

Linking to the Austen in August challenge:

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Barbara Harper

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a collection of short stories published after the first two novels. All were originally published in magazines. I’m not a great fan of short stories, but it was a nice break to have each case end with the chapter rather than having novel-long plots and twists and characters to keep up with. I enjoyed the audiobook read very nicely by actor Derek Jacobi.

The format of the stories is much the same as the novels. The ones in this volume are not told in chronological order: some occured while Watson still lived with Homes, others occured after Watson married. At the beginning of many of them Watson explained why he chose to chronicle that particular case out of the many Holmes had solved. Though there are similar characteristics in each story, Doyle did an excellent job in keeping them from becoming formulaic and predictable. Some involve the police, some don’t. In a few Holmes let the perpetrator go for various reasons (in one, the man did not have long to live; another involved a young man whom Holmes thought would go right after the scare of almost getting into big trouble). Some involved a crime that had already been done, some involved a crime that had yet to be committed, some involved other mysteries.

This book contains twelve stories: probably the most notable is “A Scandal in Bohemia” for the mention of Irene Adler. Some portrayals of this story of Holmes cast her as a love interest, but in this story she is not that. He admires her wit, which rivals his own, and the fact that she is one of very few people who have ever outsmarted him. In fact, Watson says,

It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer — excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.

I thought it interesting, after wondering aloud in my review of The Sign of Four whether a genius in one area has to be unbalanced in others, that Watson says Holmes has a “precise but admirably balanced mind” while explaining that emotions were “abhorrent” to him — which seems a little unbalanced to me. 🙂

I enjoyed more unfolding of Holmes’ personality. Some accounts I’ve read cast him as manic-depressive or autistic, but I think (at least so far) that he was just a classic introvert. He claims Watson as his only actual friend, spends a great deal of time alone and thinking, but can be genial and even soothing when he needs to be. Some modern versions also portray him as rude, but in these first three books I haven’t seen that, at least that I can remember.

I’m glad that more modern versions of Holmes’ stories cast Watson as a strong character rather than a doddering old man who is only along as a sidekick. He is a skilled doctor and apparently handy with a revolver (from his army days) since Holmes asks him to bring it along for particularly dangerous cases.

I’m trying to read the Holmes stories in publication order, and the next is another collection of short stories, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I may skip ahead to The Hound of the Baskervilles, which I’ve been particularly wanting to get to. I don’t think the reader will lose anything by reading them in any order: I just wanted to partake of them as the general public would have at first in order to see how they unfold. But I’ll put off that decision for a little while in order to take a break from Holmes to participate in the Austen in August challenge.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Austen in August Challenge

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Barbara Harper

I just saw yesterday, while perusing the What’s on Your Nightstand posts, that Lost Generation Reader is sponsoring an Austen in August reading challenge (HT to Bluerose). As the name indicates, the idea is to read something by or about Jane Austen during the month of August. Since I’ve already started Just Jane, a novelization of her life by Nancy Moser, I’m delighted to be able to jump in without straining much from the other challenges I am participating in this year. I’ll also listen to Northhanger Abbey via audiobook. I have more Austen books both on hand and in my audiobook library, so after I finish these two I’ll decide if I want to add any more.

Book Review: I Will Repay

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Barbara Harper

When I mentioned to someone that I liked The Scarlet Pimpernel, about an Englishman who disguised himself and rescued those slated for the guillotine during the French Revolution, this person (sadly, I’ve forgotten who) told me the author, Baroness Orczy, wrote several books about The Scarlet Pimpernel’s adventures and she really liked I Will Repay. So I put I Will Repay on my TBR list, and recently took advantage of its being free for the Kindle and only $2.99 at Audible.com (at the time of this writing) to get both and use their “Whispersync” connection to go back and forth between text and audio, depending on my circumstances.

The story begins with a heated argument between young Vicomte de Marny and the older Paul Déroulède. Between rage and too much to drink, de Marny insists on a duel. Déroulède easily wins the duel, but de Marny tries to fight further. When Déroulède puts up his sword to disarm him, de Marny charges at that moment right into Déroulède’s sword and dies.

The young man is carried home to his invalid father and 14 year old sister Juliette. They are told by the young man’s friends that he died “in fair fight,” but the father, described as “almost a dotard,” makes Juliette swear that she will somehow avenge her brother’s death. He adds to the oath the torment he says that her brother’s soul will undergo until she exacts her revenge (though, of course, in reality nothing we say or do after a person has died has an effect on the state of their soul). Juliette, grieving, young, and impressionable, agrees to this oath and lives under the weight of it for the next ten years.

By this time the French Revolution is well underway. Juliette’s father has died and Déroulède has become a favorite of the people, probably due to the bourgeois ancestry which had kept him from being fully accepted by the aristocracy despite his wealth. Juliette tricks her way into becoming a guest in his home, but it takes several weeks for a plan to come to mind to deal with him. In the meantime, she finds qualities about him that she likes, and he falls in love with her rather quickly. Thus she is torn between her feelings and her oath to her father on her dead brother’s body. “That awful oath, sworn so solemnly, had been her relentless tyrant; and her religion – a religion of superstition and of false ideals – had blinded her, and dragged her into crime.”

When I first started the book, I was a little dismayed because I’ve always thought the whole tradition of duels was rather silly, and I was afraid the ensuing romance would be fairly silly, too. However, I was greatly surprised by the depth of the novel as well as the unexpected twists and turns the plot took. I had an idea how the story would ultimately end up, but it didn’t go any of the routes I thought it would. This is one audiobook that I looked for ways to listen to beyond the usual, even carrying it around with me while I dusted.

In a conversation with Sir Percy Blakeney, aka the Scarlet Pimpernel, Déroulède describes Juliette as a saint and an angel and says he has fallen “madly, blindly, stupidly, hopelessly” in love. Sir Percy responds,

“And ’twill be when you understand that your idol has feet of clay that you’ll learn the real lesson of love,” said Blakeney earnestly.

“Is it love to worship a saint in heaven, whom you dare not touch, who hovers above you like a cloud, which floats away from you even as you gaze? To love is to feel one being in the world at one with us, our equal in sin as well as in virtue. To love, for us men, is to clasp one woman with our arms, feeling that she lives and breathes just as we do, suffers as we do, thinks with us, loves with us, and, above all, sins with us. Your mock saint who stands in a niche is not a woman if she have not suffered, still less a woman if she have not sinned. Fall
at the feet of your idol an you wish, but drag her down to your level after that – the only level she should ever reach, that of your heart.”

I disagree that you have to sin together to really be in love, but I do agree that a couple needs to understand that they’re both sinners and that they’ll need grace to live with one another, that true love happens when that happens, not when we’re in a state of near worship. And indeed, Déroulède finds later “She had ceased to be a saint or a madonna; she had fallen from her pedestal so low that he could not find the way to descend and grope after the fragments of his ideal.” What happens then I will leave for you to discover.

And even though this is not a religious book per se, it does contain spiritual truth when more than one character has to learn that “‘Vengeance!’ which is not for man…[is] God’s alone.”

All in all I really enjoyed this novel. I don’t know that I’ll seek out any more of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s adventures any time soon. I like a good swashbuckling adventure every now and then, but I don’t like to make a steady diet of them. Still, these books are as good a source as any of this kind of tale, so the next time I am in the mood for one, perhaps I’ll look up another in the series.

Some readers will want to know that the word “demmed” for “damned” occurs a handful of times.

The full text of I Will Repay can be found online through Project Gutenberg.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

This also completes one of my selections for the Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate.

Book Review: The Brothers Karamazov

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Barbara Harper

Dostoyevsky is one of those people I’ve thought about reading for a long time, but his works tend to be pretty chunky volumes. However, I did read somewhere not long ago that his books are actually fairly easy to get into, so when I saw his The Brothers Karamazov on Carrie’s Reading to Know Classics Book Club list, that seemed like the perfect opportunity to give him a try. This book is the selection for August, but I kept thinking it was coming up in July and I wanted to get a head start on it, so I started listening to the audiobook some weeks back and just finished it a few days ago. I wanted to go ahead and write a review wile it was still fresh in my mind.

The first of the title brothers is Dmitri, also called Mitya, the oldest (about 28 when the book begins), passionate, impulsive, tempestuous. He has a running feud with his father over his inheritance and over a woman who is called Grushenka.

The second is Ivan, brilliant, logical, skeptical. He can’t reconcile the idea of God with the suffering he sees in the world, particularly that of children, and feels that if there is a God, He is malevolent. He comes to find out that the logical conclusions of his philosophies have natural but unforeseen consequences.

The youngest is Alexei, also known as Alyosha, about age 20, who lives at the monastery (Russian Orthodox) while training to become a monk. He is kind, reasonable, thoughtful, compassionate, a peacemaker and has a genuine love for people.

It’s widely believed that there is a fourth illegitimate brother called Smerdyakov. His mother was a retarded homeless girl who died in childbirth. He is found and raised by the senior Karamazov’s servant, Grigory, who raises him. He becomes a servant in the Karamazov household as well. He is epileptic and has a mean, warped streak.

The father of this brood is Fyodor (the three sons all have the middle name Fyodorovich, which means “son of Fyodor”). Fydor is wealthy but debauched, wicked, and greedy. He has had little to do with any of his sons’ upbringing, and they all hate him except for Alyosha.

It is not much of a spoiler to say that Fyodor is killed: the author refers to his coming death early on and hints at a terrible event: it’s not much of a stretch to connect the two and realize that Fyodor is going to come to a bad end. And, indeed, he does: he is murdered. One of his sons is arrested for the murder and the evidence seems pretty certain against him (again foreshadowed by the author as he often comments that this or that happened “as so-and-so testified later.”) But the evidence isn’t conclusive, leaving the reader to wonder for a while who actually killed him. Besides being a major factor in the plot, Fyodor’s murder is also a major catalyst in the lives of his sons for different reasons.

Amidst all the action there are several philosophical discussions, notably between Elder Zosima, Alyosha’s mentor, and various people, and later between Ivan and Alyosha, touching on the nature of God, free will and whether it is a burden, moral responsibility, and other subjects.

I am heavily indebted to SparkNotes for getting much more out of this book than I would have from a surface reading/listening. I liked reading the chapter analysis and summaries at intervals (but I have learned from past experience not to look at the plot overview or character analysis there until finishing a book because they reveal key details of the story). The chapter analyses did help me see the connection between the philosophical discussions and the action: those discussions weren’t isolated rabbit trails: they were integral to the story (possibly the main points of the story), and the action played out the truths discussed. For instance, I hadn’t connected Alyosha’s ministrations to a dying child (Ilyusha) to his earlier discussion with Ivan, but SparkNotes pointed out:

Ivan looks at the abstract idea of suffering children and is unable to reconcile the idea with his rational precepts about how God ought to be. His solution is to reject God. Alyosha, on the other hand, sees an actual suffering child and believes that it is God’s will for him to try to alleviate the child’s suffering to whatever degree he can. His solution is to help Ilyusha. Again, Dostoevsky shows how the psychology of skepticism walls itself off, in elaborate proofs and theorems, from having a positive effect on the world, while the psychology of faith, simplistic though it may be, concerns itself with doing good for others. This very subtle response to the indictment of God presented by Ivan in Book V brings the philosophical debate of the novel onto a plane of real human action, and shows the inadequacy of Ivan’s philosophy—which Ivan himself would readily acknowledge—to do good in the real world.

As with many older classics, this book can seem a little tedious and wordy by today’s standards. Newer stories start off with action that grabs you and makes you want to know what happens next or causes you to care about a character right away: older books have a lot of explanation and description first. The first style is usually more exciting; the latter takes a little more patience but does usually pay off in the end.

This story that has more layers than one would think at first, and it is causing me to think and make connections long after I’ve finished it – a hallmark of a classic. I didn’t agree with much of the theology, but the overall theme of a quiet faith lived out in everyday life with love and service towards one’s fellow man appealed to me.

I also enjoyed reading more of Dostoyevsky’s background at Wikipedia and SparkNotes.

I usually like audiobooks for classics, for several reasons, but in this case it was probably not the best way to go. For one thing, the multitude of polysyllabic Russian names and nicknames was hard to distinguish at first, but after a while I was able to distinguished who was who (whom?) Secondly, there were a few sections of philosophical discussion that were hard for me to follow just by listening while driving, fixing hair, etc.: those would have benefited from being able to go over them on the printed page a couple of times. Nevertheless I thought the narrator, Constantine Gregory, did a good job telling the story.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

This also completes one of my selections for the Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate.

Book Review: My Man Jeeves

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Barbara Harper

Bertie Wooster is an amiable but not terribly bright English gentleman (as he says, “I’m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use, don’t you know”). His “man,” Jeeves, is the quintessential unobtrusive English valet with not only “genius for preserving a trouser-crease,” but also a penchant for solving the various problems of Bertie and his friends.

My Man Jeeves by P. D. Wodehouse is 1919 a collection of short stories involving the fictional pair, but there are a few stories in the middle about Reggie Pepper, who doesn’t seem to have any connection with either of them. The plot lines are similar in all the stories, though: someone has some kind of problem (often another English gentleman whose source of financial support is threatening to cut him off if he doesn’t jump through certain hoops that he doesn’t want to, but some of the stories involve romantic troubles as well), appeals for help, and then Jeeves or Reggie comes up with some kind of scheme that usually involves some kind of deception that usually backfires in some comic way.

The Jeeves and Wooster books are good for a light-hearted read, especially if you like English comedy, one reason I decided to pick this up when Carrie listed it as her Reading to Know Classics Book Club selection for April. Unfortunately, the first few stories sounded very familiar, and I found that some of them were rewritten from Carry On, Jeeves (linked to my review), the only other Jeeves book I’ve read. That was irritating, but there was enough new material and enough I’d forgotten from the previous book that it wasn’t a total wash.

I have to admit that the plots got tiresome after a while, but Wodehouse’s writing is delightful. I enjoyed the narrative quite a lot and had fun picking up on certain expressions and idioms (I don’t know if the British still use these, but apparently being “in the soup” in a bad thing while being “full of beans” is good). Here are some examples:

“I’m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare — or, if not, it’s some equally brainy lad — who says that it’s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.”

Of an awkward gathering: “And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy, bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it after all.”

“That’s always the way in this world. The chappies you’d like to lend money to won’t let you, whereas the chappies you don’t want to lend it to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift the specie out of your pockets.”

“Absent treatment seemed the touch. I gave it to him in waves.”

“I wasn’t particularly surprised to meet Bobbie at the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely gum-drop at an Eskimo tea-party.”

The full text of this book is available online here. I listened to the audiobook, read very nicely by Simon Prebble.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

This also completes one of my requirements for the Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate.

What’s On Your Nightstand: April 2014

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Barbara Harper

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.

Oh wow – I was totally caught off guard for the Nightstand post this month. That’s more likely in months like this when there are five Thursdays, but I think I have an especially good excuse for being distracted since the premature birth of my little grandson. 🙂 Anyway – here is the super-quick version:

Since last time I have completed:

Crowded to Christ by L. E. Maxwell, reviewed here.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens via audiobook, reviewed here.

Made to Crave Action Plan Participant’s Guide by Lysa TerKeurst and Ski Chilton, reviewed here.

My Man Jeeves by P. D. Wodehouse for Carrie’s Reading to Know Classics Book Club April selection, review coming soon.

The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival by Sara Tuvel Bernstein via audiobook, reviewed ~~coming soon~~ here.

I’m currently reading:

The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge for Carrie’s Reading to Know Classics Book Club for March. Yes, March. 😳 I just haven’t been inclined to pick this one up very much, but I am almost done.

Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God by Michael Kelley

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, a reread that I enjoyed it the first time but am getting much more from now.

Courageous by Randy Alcorn (audiobook).

Next up:

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

The Book of Three by Alexander Lloyd, first book in the Prydain Chronicles.

I think I am going to skip the May and June selections from Carrie’s Reading to Know Classics Book Club, just because I have so many other books to get to, but I may get an early start on July’s choice of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I have a feeling that one will take a good while. 🙂

Happy Reading!

Book Review: Bleak House

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Barbara Harper

It’s hard to summarize in a line or two what Bleak House by Charles Dickens is about, as there are several story lines going on at the same time. In fact, it is a little hard to get into at first because, like A Tale of Two Cities, different strands of the whole are mentioned individually at first and not woven together until several chapters in (as opposed to David Copperfield, which starts at the beginning with David’s birth and progresses from there.) SparkNotes helped a lot with the early chapters, although I’d advise against reading the character list or overview until after you are well into the story due to spoilers (ditto with the Wikipedia article on the book). I followed the individual chapter discussions and analysis on Sparknotes.

The point of view switches back and forth from a third person present tense narrator to a first person past tense narrative of Esther, one of the main characters. From what little I’ve read Dickens was praised by some and criticized by others for this. The two viewpoints do give us the advantage of two perspectives and I enjoyed hearing both.

One strand of the story is the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce which has been languishing in the Court of Chancery for years. Dickens based the Chancery on the real-life one, and the opening foggy scenes are symbolic of it. One note said the Jarndyce case was based on a real one that went on for 53 years. We’re not really told what the case is about except that the inheritance of some of the characters are tied up in it. John Jarndyce himself has given up on it and wants no more to do with it.

Another strand of the story involves bored, cold, haughty Lady Dedlock, whose demeanor, we discover, hides a secret sorrow and then a secret fear.

Another involves Esther Summerson, an orphaned girl who was raised by her aunt until the aunt dies, then sent to school, then asked by John Jarndyce to become a companion to his niece, Ada, who had become his ward as well as a nephew, Richard. Esther shares the narrative at points, and one of the interesting things about the writing is how her voice seems faltering at first (she claims she is not clever) and then gains confidence as she goes on.

Ada and Richard fall in love, which pleases Mr. Jarndyce, but he urges Richard to choose a profession before the relationship goes any further. Richard is affable and likable but doesn’t have any clear interests. He tries apprenticing at a few different professions before ending up in the military. However, after visiting the Chancery one day, he gets caught up in the Jarndyce case, and it becomes the focus of his life, despite his guardian’s warnings against pinning his hopes on the outcome of a case that could go on for years.

Another strand involves the poor of the town, particularly a mother, Jenny, whose baby dies, and a boy named Jo who is apparently homeless and constantly being told to “move on.” Others involve a somewhat flighty lady named Miss Flite who has been waiting for years for her own settlement and the noble soldier George Rouncewell.

One of Dickens’ skills is creating memorable characters, and there are some four dozen in this book. There is Mrs. Jellyby, caught up in the cause of Borrioboola-Gha in Africa while severely neglecting her own family. Inspector Bucket was based upon a real Scotland Yard detective and is reputed to be one of the first detectives in English literature. Mr Skimpole, whom I did not like, was also based on a real person (who evidently did not take kindly to the portrayal.) He calls himself “a child,” especially in business or money matters, but something about him seemed not quite right to me, which proved to be the case. He did not have the same endearing qualities as the feeble-minded Mr. Dick of David Copperfield.

There are different kinds of love portrayed – romantic, familial, friendship. If I can say this without giving away a major plot point, the Dedlocks certainly don’t seem the epitome of a warm and loving couple, but his response late in the novel showed he loved her deeply. I particularly loved the Bagnets and his calling her “the old girl” and asking her to tell his opinions. One of my favorite scenes was her birthday when the family was making her dinner while she tried to subtly signal to her daughters to add more of this, less of that, and nothing was done the way she would have done it herself, but she endured with grace out of love for them and their efforts. There are a couple of mysteries, including a murder. There is a case of spontaneous combustion, which Dickens was severely criticized for including, but he countered that at the time he wrote it was thought to be a real phenomenon. There are different people affected by the Chancery, mostly negatively. There are observations of social injustice. There is sadness and joy and humor. There are a lot of secrets causing varying degrees of sorrow to those involved. There are a variety of reconciliations, a couple of them sorely delayed due to pride and shame, and the most heartbreaking is the one that did not occur but could have.

Esther’s story did end up where I hoped it would. One of the oddest things in the story (minor spoiler alert) was when her guardian proposed. That seemed a little creepy to me, but he releases her from the engagement later on. Another favorite scene is after he proposes, when Esther is in her room brushing her hair, determining to make him very happy, but crying, for reasons which she doesn’t quite know – or at least doesn’t tell the reader, but the reader guesses. It’s not a favorite scene because she is crying but because of Dickens’ way of showing what was going on in her heart without spelling it out.

I have heard the 2005 BBC production is really good and would like to see it some time. Here is a trailer for it:

But as it is over 8 hours long, I might have to wait for a heap of ironing or some sick days or summer break when there is nothing else on.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Peter Batchelor but dipped into the hard copy at points and read its introduction and afterword as well.

Some say this is Dickens’ best; some disagree. I think it is masterfully written and I enjoyed it a lot (especially the last third or so of it), but I liked A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield much better. Dickens’ books usually improve upon rereading, though, so next time I visit Bleak House I might enjoy it even more.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

This also completes one of my requirements for the Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate.

Book Review: The Woman in White

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Barbara Harper

I had never heard of Wilkie Collins until a few years ago. When I first started listening to audiobooks, I’d scroll through the listing of classics, and his The Woman In White would come up often. I thought, “How can this be a classic if I have never heard of it?” 😳 I read the description, but it didn’t sound all that interesting. Then last year his book No Name was chosen as one of the books for Carrie’s Reading to Know Book Club. I looked at the description for it and wasn’t interested in it enough to commit the needed time to it, so I skipped that one as well. But then everyone who read it thought it was really good. So when I decided to participate in the Back to the Classics Challenge, one of the categories was “an author you’ve never read before,” and I thought this would be an opportune time to try out Mr. Collins and chose The Woman in White.

I am so glad I did. It was a totally enthralling story. I can understand now why there is not much description of his books on sites that sell them: you can’t tell much about the story without revealing surprises and clues it would be better for the reader to discover in context.

The story is laid out in a series of testimonies. Within them, at least that of the major characters, the narrative is in more of a story form, although one takes the form of a journal.

The story begins with Walter Hartwright, a drawing teacher who finds himself “out of health, out of spirits, and out of money.” A friend fortuitously comes across an opportunity for Walter to teach two young women from a prestigious family in the country, and though Walter has misgivings, he has no good reason to refuse and every reason to accept, so he does. On the eve of his departure, as he walks home from his mother’s house late one night, he is startled by a young woman totally dressed in white who asks him the way to London. There are several things strange about her manner and the whole situation, and most surprising of all is that as they discuss where Walter is headed, this woman knows the very family he is going to. Walter is at first unsure of what to do, but he not only points her in the right direction; he also escorts her to a cab and sees her off. Within minutes a carriage comes by containing two men who are looking for a woman in white.

Where they are from and why they are looking for her is a major factor in the story, so I won’t share it here and ruin the surprise, but as this woman is the title character, obviously her presence and influence will come up again.

The beginning of the book says it is a story of “what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.” It’s noted as one of the first detective stories written as Walter, though not a professional detective, uses many such techniques to get at the truth of the conspiracy, deceit, and betrayal that arise later in the story.

Collins was a good friend of Charles Dickens, and this book was first printed in installments in one of Dickens’ magazines, but his style is quite different from Dickens’.

Though the story is perhaps a little more drawn out than a modern novel would be, I never felt the story got bogged down. I listened to it via audiobook with several narrators taking the different testimonies of the story, and by the last few chapters I was carrying my phone around with me everywhere to listen and find out how it was all going to end. I had an idea of a couple of things that were going to happen (the foreshadowing of a terrible event pointed to either one of a couple of people because those people hadn’t given any testimony yet), but I didn’t guess exactly how things would work out. I did get a library copy of the book as well to go back and look through some passages a little more closely, but there is a free (at this time) Kindle version of it. And, of course, if you’d like to know more of the plot, including a lot spoilers, there is always Wikipedia.

I’m definitely planning on exploring more of Collins’ books in the future.

Have you read The Woman in White? What did you think?

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

This also completes one of my requirements for the Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate.