Sunsets, Stars, West, Wind
David Levy’s Guide to the Night Sky by David H. Levy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A good, but somewhat sporadic, book on astronomy by one of the astronomers who discovered the comet Shoemaker-Levy (yeah, the one that crashed spectacularly into Jupiter). The information seems a bit dated, even though this is a second edition (or a reprint ten years later). I went in search of astronomy books on the shelves of my local library and gave this a whirl.
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
I’m reading this, my third Victorian literature novel, as part of the KC Public Library‘s ‘A Taste of Victorian Literature‘ reading group. I’ll be reading this throughout the month of April 2011 and will join the group at the Plaza Branch on Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. for a lecture and discussion.
The following were provided in handouts from the Kansas City Public Library, emailed to the participants in the reading group.
The title of this novel is a succinct description of both the setting and the chief external conflict: the Dorlcote Mill located on the River Floss, which is operated by the Tulliver family. The business creates conflict within the family as Mr. Tulliver sends his doltish son Tom for schooling (in preparation to run the mill) rather than his bright and bookish daughter Maggie. After a lawsuit threatens to bankrupt him, Mr. Tulliver asks his son to swear an oath of enmity on the family Bible – an oath that soon changes Maggie’s life as well.
The nuanced relationship between Tom and Maggie is the novel’s foremost concern as the siblings unintentionally create a snowballing series of tragedies. Meanwhile, Eliot applies a keen moral sense to all her characters. Few are left unscathed.
The Mill on the Floss presents one of the finest portraits of domestic life in the early Victorian era, offering readers insights into the rituals of meals as well as the procurement and preparation of food. Eliot’s acute eye for village life also manifests in colloquial dialogue.
A true Victorian novel given its time period, The Mill on the Floss is also a distinctly modern novel in that Eliot gives all the characters true minds of their own: psychology trumps plot and narrative convenience and even reader expectation.
George Eliot (1819 – 1880) took up her career as a novelist later than most. Named Mary Ann Evans, she grew up in a modest home and attended school under the influence of an evangelical spinster. She left school as a teenager in order to care for her father, who would be her near constant companion for the next 15 years until his death. During this time, she struggled with her own concept of moral duty as well as religious notions that nearly compelled her to forsake reading for pleasure.
At 35, Eliot fell in love with George Henry Lewes, a married man prevented by Victorian law from obtaining a divorce from his wife despite her infidelity, which produced four children. Rejecting respectability and social custom, Eliot lived with Lewes as his unmarried wife. This happy union proved the catalyst for Eliot to take up the pen.
Eliot published her first novel Adam Bede in 1859, adopting at that time the convention of female authors taking male pseudonyms. Widely hailed by critics and the public alike, only Charles Dickens immediately identified this debut author as an incredibly talented woman. The Mill on the Floss (1860), her second novel, proved part autobiographical in its depiction of a close brother-sister relationship.
Eliot wrote several more important novels: Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862), Felix Holt (1866), Middlemarch (1871), and Daniel Deronda (1876). She passed away in 1880, two years after Lewes died.
In her time, Eliot was known as the greatest living English novelist. She is praised for her focus on the psychology of her characters as well as the moral force of her fiction and its intelligence. Virginia Woolf would later defend Eliot against disparaging attacks by declaring Middlemarch as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”
Happy April Fool’s Day!
But I’m not joking about reading, especially fantasy and science fiction. Here’s a preview of what’s being read at a select few of my GoodReads book clubs and groups:
687 members
Black Sun Rising: The Coldfire Trilogy #…
4588 members
2623 members
266 members
Share book reviews and ratings with Fantasy Book Club Series, and even join a book club on Goodreads.
Not quite as busy as last month, but still lots of good reads I’m looking forward to!
Ciao, Jon
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
4.25 to 4.75 stars
Five stars is a gift, because parts of this ‘story’ frustrated me to no end, though the novel carries a very strong four star rating for me. Yet the hidden gems I found along the winding road this tale took made me laugh, cry, rage, cry some more, laugh some more, and scratch my head in wonder.
Pros: Exceptional story telling (occasionally, sporadically), often lyrical prose, beautiful deep embedded world building beyond the mere descriptive paragraph. I loved the scenes with Master Elodin, Devi, Bast and to some degree with Denna, a character I had little sympathy for in The Name of the Wind.
Cons: When we finally leave the University (a full one-third of the way through the novel), the action and adventure is quashed in a couple of sentences, at least as it respects the actual journey east. All the chapters seem too short to me, but that might be because I tend to read epic fantasy where the length of the chapters can approach one hundred pages or more. And here we are, back at the University again when we reach the end of the second day.
I plan to re-read, in succession, both novels of the Kingkiller Chronicle, later this year. I decided not to re-read The Name of the Wind prior to reading The Wise Man’s Fear and feel now that was probably a mistake. I struggled to remember some of the characters the author referenced in passing in the second novel.
And now the waiting begins, and if history is any indicator, at least a half decade will pass before the past (Kvothe) and present (Kote) converge in the final (or is that ‘next’) Kingkiller Chronicle novel.
I attended the second of four reading group discussions sponsored by the Kansas City Public Library in the Cohen Center conference room of the Plaza Branch yesterday evening. As I noted in last month’s blog post, I’m picking up the other three books in the ‘A Taste of Victorian Literature’ during this encore performance.
Brontë Background
Gothic Elements and Contemporary Criticism (p. 2)
Scandal (p. 3)
Discussion Questions (p. 4)
Katie Stover, head of Reader’s Services at the Library, spoke briefly on the focus of the reading group, including a tie-in for next month’s book, The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. Melissa Carle, Reference Librarian and Weekend Supervisor for the Plaza Branch, assured the group that several copies awaited them upstairs should they not already have it checked out. Katie then introduced our lecturer, Andrea Broomfield, associate professor of English at JCCC. An author in her own right, she’s currently working on new book tentatively titled Dining in the Age of Steam. Katie had one final tidbit for anyone interested in seeing the recently released theatrical version of Jane Eyre, the movie opens at the Cinemark and Glenwood Arts on April 8th.
Andrea began her lecture by referencing a couple of handouts we received via e-mail (and hard copy if you forgot to print), including a brief biography of Charlotte Brontë and a few paragraphs about the impact of Jane Eyre after publication in 1847.
Andrea touched on just a few key points with respect to Charlotte’s childhood. Her mother died while Charlotte was still young, leaving her father with five children (one son and four daughters) to raise on his own. As a direct result, his children had free reign over his library, not unheard for a son, but scandalous in the early Victorian Era (1820s & 1830s) to let his daughters read a gentleman’s library. The children especially loved the works of Byron. The Brontë children nurtured their imagination by creating the fantastic realms of Gondol (articles and poems written by Anne and Emily) and Angria (Byronic stories written by Branwell and Charlotte). They also created their own periodical similar to Blackwood’s Magazine.
Her two sisters, Elizabeth and Maria, attended the Clergy Daughters School, but the deplorable conditions of the school caused Patrick Bronte, their father, to withdraw Anne, Emily and Charlotte from the school. Elizabeth and Maria contracted and died of tuberculous, exacerbated by the terrible conditions extant at the school.
While Patrick was in Manchester having cataract surgery, Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre, using the pseudonym Currer Bell, bucking the trend of the ‘normal’ three volume serial novel most common then.
The Bell Brothers (Anne wrote under the name Acton Bell and Emily wrote as Ellis Bell) had a stellar year in 1847, for in addition to Jane Eyre, both Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were published. Andrea admitted Charlotte Brontë to be her favorite Victorian Era author, favoring Vilette as her most mature effort. The following couple of years left Charlotte bereft of all but her father, as first Emily and Branwell died, in 1848, followed by Anne in 1849.
Andrea’s next couple of presentation slides included modern day photographs places important in Charlotte’s life and which she used symbolically throughout Jane Eyre. The Brontës lived in West Yorkshire in the Haworth Parsonage.
In less than thirty minutes, I’ll retire downstairs to the lecture and discussion of Jane Eyre sponsored by the Kansas City Public Library ‘A Taste of Victorian Literature‘ reading group. So stayed tuned for another long recap blog post similar to last month’s post entitled ‘Toasting (or Roasting) Fanny Price.’
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Written in the 30s, during the depths of the Depression, before World War II, this dystopian classic paints a grim picture of America’s fall into it’s own flavor of fascism. Some of his assertions stretched my belief nearly to the breaking point, most notable being the seemingly easy evaporation of two of our three branches of government after the League of Forgotten Men rise in power and seize the executive branch.
The novel follows the life of Jessup Doremus, an elderly (nearly retirement age) editor of a small town Vermont newspaper, uniquely positioned to lead us down the slippery slope of disappearing civil liberties and rising paranoia among the citizenry. The evils promulgated by petty near-thugs upon strangers, neighbors, friends and family … almost indiscriminately … all as an exercise in absolute power (as far as I could tell).
Not a comforting read, except for a brief glimpse of hope at the end. I can understand the shock value it would have had when it was published. I’m glad I read it, and even more glad none of it has proved prophetic for America … yet.
I read this novel as one of the suggested readings for my local library’s adult winter reading program called ‘Altered States’ and blogged about my reading journey.
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
3.5 – 3.75 stars
I struggled a bit with PKD’s prose, which at times staggered about like an alcoholic or drug addict and/or a mentally ill person rambling about their innermost incoherent thoughts. But an occasional brilliance burst through the befuddlement to guide me back if I strayed too far off course.
Written almost twenty years after World War II, PKD presents us with an America divided up as spoils of war between the Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany. He portrayed a believable view of American life under two fascist regimes. I surprised myself by feeling empathy not only for the victimized Americans (including Jews hunted to extinction, Blacks reduced to slaves, and other insidious persecutions of non-Aryan races), but also the Japanese, some of whom begin to see the writing on the wall.
I couldn’t help but compare the Oracle (aka as the I Ching or Book of Changes) to the Cosmological Interventionists represented by two out-of-control orphaned Blitz children in Willis’ Blackout/All Clear. It’s a stretch, but the conclusion of both novels left me with the same intriguing warm fuzzy feeling.
I read this novel as one of the suggested readings for my local library’s adult winter reading program called ‘Altered States’ and blogged about my reading journey.
Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward
I admit to a science fiction reader shortcoming: I love to watch science fiction, but usually don’t care to read it, especially the sub-genre of ‘hard science fiction.’
And to be completely honest, I thought I gave myself a migraine reading the first pages of Dragon’s Egg (an astrophysics crash course in neutron stars). Once past the cold hard super-heavy facts, I thoroughly enjoyed the development of the cheela life-form and the brief interaction the human scientists experienced.
I completely sympathized with the crew of the Dragon Slayer not wanting to blink, let alone sleep, as they watched the astonishing development of cheela society. In just a few hours, the cheela civilization went from ‘savages, stagnating in an illiterate haze’ to outpacing human development by ‘many thousands of years.’ Relatively speaking, of course.
I didn’t connect to any one particular cheela, since their lifespans were so short in human terms, nor with any of the scientists, who got the short-end of the stick when it came to their story-line. But my eyes teared up reading a farewell delivered by a cheela robot to the human scientists, a fitting benediction to a benevolent mutually beneficial first contact interaction.
Recommended for all fans of science fiction, first contact stories and hard sci-fi novels.
The reason I read this book? It won the poll for the March 2011 Beyond Reality science fiction selection.
Peril’s Gate by Janny Wurts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I’m speechless and breathless (and have been for several weeks) after finishing this penultimate tipping-point volume in Janny Wurts’ Wars of Light and Shadow series. Even taking a break and reading a half dozen other books hasn’t allowed me to express the emotions that wracked me or the wonders assuaging them. Not since reading Janny’s To Ride Hell’s Chasm has a book’s pacing been so unrelenting and rewarding. And to think she wrote that novel after Peril’s Gate to step back from writing this series!
I highly recommend this book, but also strongly suggest you not start with this novel. Begin at the beginning, with Curse of the Mistwraith and immerse yourself in all things Atheran.
Please see Stefan’s outstanding review of Peril’s Gate for a concise synopsis and insightful comments.
