May Reading Roundup and Pathetic Tales

After a mentally, physically and emotionally hectic month ("those Israelites were such complainers - I wouldn't have complained so!") I have more to be embarrassed about than the fashionable lateness of this post. I don't have many or long reviews to post, because I didn't complete many books.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was going good until a post at A Classic Case of Madness sent me searching for a word coined by Sam that I was sure I would have noticed. It turns out that the 450 pages James Daugherty Edition I'd been reading was abridged. Allow me to vent: GRRRRRRRRRRRR! Finishing online is proving more distracting.

Lady Susan by Jane Austen (reread, epistolary novella)

It seems that the message of LS is that the only proof against calculated charm is deep-seated resentment incurred by a personal slight. For of all the characters who meet Lady Susan in person, it is only her sister-in-law Mrs. Vernon who never falls prey to her charms. And while it is obvious that Mrs. Vernon is intelligent and kind, I am convinced that she remains suspicious of Lady Susan only because she knows Lady Susan had opposed her marriage.

Love, Kirsten by Rainey H. Park (biographical true story, 120 pages)

The true story of a student missionary murdered on the Micronesian island of Yap in 2009. While the story was touching and inspiring, I must risk sounding calloused by saying I was most impressed by the Yapese government's inability to spell or write in clear English.

Flush by Virginia Woolf (biographical novel, 110 pages)

I must confess this minor work is the most delightful work by Woolf I've read yet. From its intimate descriptions of the Brownings' virtues and failings to its sympathetic fascination with dogs' preoccupation with smell, it is redolent, warm and humorous.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (Re"read", audiobook)

My thoughts on another year's reading of S&S may illustrate the several ways in which I am a Janeite. Reading it during a stressful move that I unabashedly compared to the Dashwood's expulsion from Norland (and Jane's own painful removal from Steventon to Bath) I gained comfort and courage. Comfort from the familiarity of the beloved story and the moments of losing myself in Austen's incomparable characterization; Courage from emulating Elinor and knowing that my beloved Jane Austen had been through something worse. So there are aspects of escapism and inspiration in such a reading of Austen. And, yes, I join with more subversive, feminist Janeites in my outrage at Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood's feelings that they have any right to grant Marianne as a "reward" to Colonel Brandon. So which Janeite school have I not included in this reading? Irony? God forbid!

Now I'm sitting in bed shaking my head over this meager list, wondering if I missed a title. However, I did read other things, including:
~blogposts (like this old one on Robert Browning and the Irony of Humility)
~powerful paragraphs and pages from old favorites (like Mindy - as this blogger has pointed out, one of the few "good old Adventist" books to have the emotional complexity of "worldly novels")
~ sentimental short stories (like the one in Joe Wheeler's Great Stories Remembered collection about the danger of female musical ambition when there are heathen to save, clashing with my sympathies with George Eliot's ambitious singing heroines)
~ and far more fanfiction than anyone should read in a month