March Reading Roundup

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (fiction, audiobook)

This is my favorite Dickens novel yet. I positively adore it and it has certainly earned its place in my Top Ten list. From beginning to end it is riveting. Pip's discontent with his lot and later behavior to his friends may be reprehensible, but Dickens makes it understandable. Next time I read it, I want to look at as a kind of Condition of England Novel - showing, perhaps, the discontent of youth in the lower classes, the apathy of the upper classes and the conditions that lead to crime. Abel Magwitch is delightfully ironic – both in his own perspective on his relation to Pip and in how I as reader am led to vacillate in my sympathy for him and disgust with Pip's disgust for him. Ultimately I don't know how anyone can not be made better by how the novel broadens our sympathies. The novel can be gothic, and no author but Dickens could so successfully immortalize Miss Havisham's wedding cake, but it's also a storehouse of chortles. (My favorite, at present, being Wemmick's wedding, placed in a patch of Dickensian sentimentality.)

A Favorite Quote: When we had fortified ourselves with the rum-and-milk and biscuits, and were going out for the walk with that training preparation on us, I was considerably surprised to see Wemmick take up a fishing-rod, and put it over his shoulder. "Why, we are not going fishing!" said I. "No," returned Wemmick, "but I like to walk with one."

I thought this odd; however, I said nothing, and we set off. We went towards Camberwell Green, and when we were thereabouts, Wemmick said suddenly:

"Halloa! Here's a church!"

There was nothing very surprising in that; but a gain, I was rather surprised, when he said, as if he were animated by a brilliant idea:

"Let's go in!"

We went in, Wemmick leaving his fishing-rod in the porch, and looked all round. In the mean time, Wemmick was diving into his coat-pockets, and getting something out of paper there.

"Halloa!" said he. "Here's a couple of pair of gloves! Let's put 'em on!"

Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography by Susan Cheever (nonfiction, biography, around 275 pages, I listened to some of this as an audiobook and read some in print)

Some of my thoughts on this became rather lengthy, so I'll be making a separate post on my Louisa May Alcott reading of the month.

A Favorite Quote: “They [the Alcotts] might starve, but they would starve as gentlewomen and as intellectuals, as farmers who revered the land or teachers who understood Plato, not as illiterate millworkers or factory girls.”

Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott (reread for about the fourth time, 311 pages, fiction)

Again, my thoughts on possible intertextuality in one of my favorite novels became rather lengthy, so will be included in the Louisa May Alcott reading post.

An Interesting Quote: "Not in words did the resolve shape itself, but in a quick impulse, which she obeyed - certain that it was right, since it was hard to yield to it." To my understanding, this is an interesting description of the combined Romanticism and stringent attention to character of Transcendentalism. What do you think, reader?

The Friendly Jane Austen by Natalie Tyler (nonfiction, around 280 pages)

There are some silly (non-capital 's') things in the book, such as its ratings of characters with Es for Elton vulgarity. But it also has some treasures not in every other 'introduction' to Austen - plenty of fabulous quotes I just had to copy, interviews with many Janeites, and historical information on everything from the Thorpe's favorite word "quiz" to the ingredients of Bingley's white soup.

From an interview with Captain Phoebe Spinrad (“a highly decorated veteran of the Vietnam War”) which condemns Mrs. Bennet for “teaching her … daughters... that sleeping around is a good way to catch husbands...” and commends Sir Thomas Bertram for “responsibility”, to Edith Lank's theory on Harriet Smith's parentage, it made me think and laugh... like Jane Austen does.

Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family Feuds by Lyndall Gordon (biography/history)

I listened to much of this as an audio book, but had to send it back to the library while I was in the final chapters. I'm going to finish it (in book form) later this month and will perhaps review it then. It was thoroughly absorbing and even frightening. I mean that there's something of Emily Dickinson's own feeling "as if the top my head were taken off" when you're plunged into a world where the Bronte's heroes and heroines were striding the moors, Elizabeth Barret Browning was crying, "Go from me!", George Eliot had let Maggie Tulliver run away and Christina Rossetti was longing for someone to fill and take her. And then there was my Eternal Emily Dickinson creating Infinity. I fell into a vortex of the Indescribable while washing dishes. (And, yes, I fell into strange punctuation and capitalization.)

Life Without Parole by Rick Fleck (nonfiction/autobiography, 248 pages)

Rick Fleck grew up in a dedicated Christian family in Alberta, so some of my friends and acquaintances know him and his family personally. Unfortunately, Rick didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus, so he became rebellious and developed habits that led to a mad cycle greed and addiction. Finally his wrong choices caught up with him, and he was accused and convicted of a murder he did not commit. He received a life sentence and has experienced the horrors of maximum-security prison life, with demeaning treatment and (frequent) brutal race riots. But he's also experienced the glory of God's nearness in the worst situations, because shortly into his prison experience, God was finally able to reach him.

I appreciated that (unlike a book about a drug-dealer-turned-Christian that I read last year) he showed how he'd developed habits that led to deceit and addiction, but didn't feel the need to confess every sin he'd ever committed to the wider public. Although I would never think twice about taking any kind of drug, I gathered from the book the importance of not allowing any behavior to take on an addictive nature. (Be it bloghopping or late night snacks ;) Fleck's book was an inspiring and fascinating testimony to the power of God to save to the uttermost and keep under the shadow of His wing.

Short Story: “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Susan Bailey mentioned this story in connection with an interesting post she made on the "rest in a dark room" cure prescribed for Mac in Eight Cousins. I knew of the story from The Madwoman in the Attic and am glad I finally read it. A few of my thoughts on the story are in the comments of Susan's post.