Sheryl’s Comments (group member since Sep 26, 2012)

Sheryl’s comments from the Reading the Classics group.

Lorri wrote:
#1 read a sensation novel

Unless you count Robert Louis Stephenson (some do, some don't), Wilkie Collins remains my favorite sensation author, although all I've read by him is The Woman in White and The Moonstone.

"#3 read a text with a female protagonist"

Strongly recommend Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh for that. Finally got around to reading it this year and thought it terrific.

Perhaps she is named Charity because she was taken in by someone else and thus given charity.

This was my thought, however it was a reasonably popular name at the time and within the story someone might've named her Charity for the same reason she might've been named Emily; because they liked the name, or because she was named after a friend or family member.

From the author's perspective, however, I assume she got the name as a charity case.

Just an FYI. In the library, Charity kept her lace wrapped on the remains of "The Lamplighter", which was a best seller in 1854 written by Maria Cummins. Women wrote a lot of best sellers back then -- some years (1847, 1856, 1863 and 1864), women wrote all of the best sellers (two of them Bronte imports). The Lamplighter remained in print until the 1920s, when the "New Criticism" pushed a lot of books written by women out of favor. One of the other books she mentions,

Opening a Chestnut Burr, by E.P. Roe, was another best seller, from 1874, while Uncle Tom's Cabin was one of the greatest best sellers of the century, and of any century, remaining in print to this day, and so regularly performed on stage that there were troupes that toured for literally three generations performing it.

Not a library for adventurous readers, apparently, although Mr. Harney does seem to find a few volumes worthy of note.

Welcome back, Jenn! I'll give it a shot.

Jan wrote: "You italicized "so". I've been trying to figure out how to italicize on goodreads. "

The same way you bold, only with a different letter. To italicize you frame the words with angle, i, angle at the beginning, and then angle, backslash, i, angle at the end. Like this, only without the extra spaces: < i > words I want to italicize < / i >. To bold you replace the letter i with the letter b.

Hameeda -- From what little Hemingway I've read, I'd have to agree. His writing style is so spare, you have to share some of his fundamental assumptions and world views to even understand what's going on in his stories sometimes, and I don't. I'm fine with reading stuff from a very different perspective than mine, but what's the point if I then need someone to translate?

If I love a story, then I'm always eager to read what other people thought of it. But when a story leaves me "meh," I'm not so enthused about sharing perspectives.

Thanks for the link to your review, Josh, although I think it confirms my suspicion that, although the questions it raises and what it has to say on them sound fascinating, don't think I want to read the book. Or at least, that there are other classics I will read first.

Just finished re-reading Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf, which I still enjoy, but which kind of irritates me because he presented it as factual. I'm about halfway through Ivanhoe, my other "purse-sized paperback" right now. Middle daughter was trapped in the orthodontist's waiting room with me when I hit the jousting tournament, and I kept reading bits to her, pointing and laughing at how ludicrous it all was, until she got exasperated enough to say, "Mom, if it's that bad, just read something else."

But for all the inaccuracies make me laugh, I'm enjoying it, pretty much. I generally don't expect historical fiction to be accurate anyhow, to be honest. Few authors really get into the heads of people of another time, so I'm happy so long as I don't get thrown out of the book by a blatant anachronism (someone in the 1500s looking at a wristwatch, for instance). Ivanhoe is probably not the best choice for my first Sir Walter Scott book, but I guess we'll both survive.

Hilary,
It's a BBC series, actually. I'm watching Season I; Season II is being broadcast right now, I believe. I quite liked Richard II; somewhat less enthused about Henry IV part one, however I'm not sure if that's because there were different production crews or because of the plays themselves. Richard II was visually symbolic in a way that Henry IV part one wasn't, but I don't think the style of Richard II would have worked with Henry IV, even if the same guys had done both.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2262456/

I am also very bad about jumping from one thing to another. I set down the last of the sequential Anne books halfway through and let it sit for a month or more. Just picked it up and resumed it this week; fortunately it's a re-read, or I'd probably have to start all over! I've got a Tarzan book floating around I'm only a few chapters into, and I don't know how many non-fiction library books I'm in the middle of (I keep a record of what page I'm on with my library list).

Sometimes I think reading multiple books at once is a dreadful habit I should work harder to break, but other times I think I end up reading more books that way. I often set books aside while I'm processing something they brought up (new ideas, with non-fiction; often technique -- or lack thereof -- with fiction, where I'm trying to figure why something works or doesn't) ; I seem to be able to process that book while reading this one, so as long as I get back to the first maybe it's not such a bad thing.

I've been watching the first season of "The Hollow Crown" and reading the Shakespeare plays for it -- finished Richard II and Henry IV part one, just starting Henry IV part two.

Also read a nice stack of twenty-some sequential Uncanny X-Men comics from the early eighties (mostly the "bug arc," as hubby calls it -- i.e., the Brood story), that hubby picked up for next to nothing at a garage sale. I can still see why comics appealed to my past self, and also why I quit reading them, so all in all a nice trip down memory lane.

I'm re-reading the Anne of Green Gables series -- just finished Anne of Windy Poplars, and I'm missing Rebecca Dew already! But I'm also looking forward to getting re-acquainted with Captain Jim in Anne's House of Dreams.

Andrijana

I disliked the book The Color Purple -- perhaps I should give the movie a try yet.

Madge
How did I miss this thread so long? I hated the book The Princess Bride as well, and avoided the movie for years based on my hatred of the book. I liked the movie, but I think I'd like it a lot more if I'd never read the book.

Emily,
I have yet to find an Alexandre Dumas book I like as well as the movie. I suspect that part of the problem there is that I'm so familiar with the story before I read the book -- I generally like Dickens, but Oliver Twist was a slog of a read, probably because I've seen so many different versions of it.

Julia
I think of Blade Runner the movie and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as two totally different things, and enjoy them both. Same with Escape to Witch Mountain. Actually, there are a ton of Disney movies like this -- where they bought the rights to the book, then did something so totally different you almost can't compare the two.

As a child, I learned to separate book from movie pretty cleanly by tracking down books the Disney movies were based on. I think it was the book One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing that had a young man who had a young nanny who was pretty indistinguishable from a mistress (although they do marry at the end), a subplot Disney definitely didn't make use of....

Some books, however, I like so much I haven't risked the movies, for fear they'll mess with my head canon, Austen topping that list.

I read this book after I'd read all the books I brought to Grandma's in the old book my dad or his sister had left behind. I was nine or ten years old, and picked it up thinking it was just another "talking animal" kinda book. I found it well written and compelling, so I read the whole thing, but it was definitely NOT what I was expecting! :D

Haven't read it since, so it'll be interesting to see what I think of it now I'm considerably older.

Erika wrote: "is tuck everlasting worth reading?"

I enjoyed it, and it's a quick and easy read. I think it's more worth reading than "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle," and less worth reading than "A Wrinkle in Time," but which one it's closer to in terms of longevity of appeal I couldn't guess.

Everyman wrote

Letting himself be led around like a lap dog doesn't show me a lot of character.

Heh. That description made me chuckle. But I think you're applying modern standards and not seeing the situation as it really was. When outside of London, guys of Darcy's class usually had guests at their own home, or hung out with their friends and relatives, and accepting the host's offer of entertainment was basic good manners; the fact that Darcy chose to hang out with Bingley means Darcy has to go to parties he doesn't want to attend (or he's not a true gentleman), yet Darcy is still with Bingley, rather than staying with someone so stuffy they'd never expect him to do to such a thing.

Darcy's also rich enough he could have stayed with someone who spent the entire visit trying to butter him up, who treated him the way Mr. Collins treats Lady Catherine; or with someone who is in complete awe of him and would never do anything that displeased him. Instead, he's with Bingley, who clearly likes and respects him, but who is also perfectly willing to tell Darcy to his face that he's being over fastidious. Actual Darcy doesn't take offense at Bingley's teasing scold, but the proud, cold man Darcy is supposed to be wouldn't have a friend who would even do that.

you said he showed some good qualities "from the first," and we don't see this until well into the book.

We're told that Darcy is falling for Elizabeth the second time we actually see him, which I don't think of as "well into the book." But your comment made me go look; in my copy, it's page 21 of 332 pages, which to me is pretty early on.

Part of our disagreement might be that, with that title and that opening, my first time through I worked hard at separating "actual character" from "gossip about character," meaning that the "start" for me is when we actually see Darcy; prior to that, "no opinion" is the only valid conclusion.

Elizabeth doesn't know she's in a book, but as the reader, I was alert for signs that Darcy was not what Elizabeth would think him before he even opened his mouth. The fact that he promptly insults Elizabeth, thus encouraging her prejudice, also "says" that she's not seeing the whole picture.

I think the first Austen I read was Emma, and I spent that whole book yelling at Emma for being such an idiot and for jumping to such ridiculous conclusions, which probably prompted me to question Elizabeth's perceptions first time through. As it turns out, Elizabeth has a much better grasp of reality than Emma did, and her conclusions about people are mostly trustworthy, but I didn't know that going in.

I give Darcy points for allowing Bingley to drag him to parties he has not the least interest in, probably because I hate parties of strangers about as much as Darcy does. Although that is admittedly not a point the average Darcy fan makes. But his friendship with Bingley, and what he puts up with for the sake of it, is to me a strong and early indicator that he's a basically good guy.

Among Darcy fans, the fact that Darcy dismisses Elizabeth as a beauty, but then falls for her intelligence and personality, is universally acknowledged as a major aspect of Darcy's attraction. The fact that he doesn't let Miss Bingley influence him against Elizabeth after Jane gets sick is also to his credit, and is in sharp contrast to Elizabeth's easy acceptance of Wickham's lies about Darcy.

Admittedly Darcy sees right through Miss Bingley anyhow, and likely has for a long time, but he could have easily tagged Jane as a gold digger (Mrs. Bennet certainly is, and by that point makes no effort to hide it), and Elizabeth the same. I suspect the complete prig Elizabeth thinks he is would have done exactly that.

Patrick wrote: "Why any woman, notwithstanding early 19th century matchmaking customs, would WANT to match with that dude escapes me."

I'll tell you a secret as it was told to me. The "hero" of your average romance is both hero and villain; the heroine's job is to help him change from a complete jerk into a tolerable human being.

Personally, I can't stand romances with what I call "saved by the love of a good woman" plots, and that explanation didn't help, however I'm right fond of Mr. Darcy. First, because he shows some good qualities from the first; second, because his interference in Jane and Bibgley's romance, though misguided, was sincerely well meant; and last because he repents so thoroughly and does his best to make restitution rather than just writing off the situation as "lesson learned."

That said, I still wouldn't want to hang out with him, thank you very much -- but I enjoy watching Elizabeth match wits with him, and I love the scene where she tells him what an ass he is. His, "I screwed up" letter is pretty fun as well.

I agree with you that we are more comfortable with science in this era. Yet the debate over "creating life" is probably more intense than ever, since cloning and the like are more possible than ever. And, personally, I am not convinced that pursuing cloning or other methods of life creation are necessarily a good idea. I agree with a lot of people in Shelly's age that God is the source of life, and that trying to be God by "imposing on God's territory" is wrong.

So there is a sense where I agreed with Victor that he'd done wrong by trying to create life, because I do think he was seeking "to be like God" in the satanic sense. But I also felt he was wrong by insisting that his sin of creation meant that the Creature he created must be inherently wrong. The Bible teaches that God can bring good out of evil -- Victor refusing to see that was just a continuation of his original sin of trying to be a god. He was still, to my mind, giving himself powers that are rightfully God's, and then compounding that sin by demonizing someone else.

Which I'd think would be a legitimate line of thought for a Christian of Mary Shelly's day, even if they were wary of science dabbling in God's particular province. But of course none of the commentary I've read on Frankenstein has been from a Christian perspective, and certainly Mary Shelly and her crowd were not Christian; could be Christians of the time didn't read that sort of thing, much.

In my own youth, Christians who read science fiction were tough to find; Christian fans of such speculative fiction were probably even rarer in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries!

Lobstergirl asked:

"How far away is the monster? How is it he can see everything that goes on in the cottage?"

He's in a lean-to shed,where one wall is shared with the "adjacent cottage"; the cottage chimney helps to keep the shed warm, and he can look into the cottage through chinks in the shared wall. I found some things in the novel unrealistic, but the idea that he can hear conversations from the next room isn't, particularly when it's been shown he has extra-human abilities.

The fact that Victor and the monster are psychically attuned (a common idea in romantic literature) excused a lot of stuff that would have otherwise been crazy circumstantial, however it makes Victor's conviction that the monster would kill Victor, and not his wife, on his wedding night beyond stupid! I had no patience with that even before we find out what happened.

I like Everyman's comparison of the situation between Victor and the monster to that of a mother rejecting a deformed child. I think Victor was right in feeling that he was the cause of the monster's murderous rampage, but at the same time Victor never grappled with the greatest evil he did, that of abandoning and demonizing the monster.

Somewhat ironically, the monster doesn't hold Victor nearly so accountable as I would have. He repeatedly complains about other people who didn't have the full picture rejecting him, but when he tells his story halfway through the book, he lets Victor off. His earliest memories are so vague, I'm not sure he consciously realized what Victor had done, or that Victor had deliberately shunned and abandoned him.

But I think the fact that Victor never confronts himself with the full evil of what he has done -- he blames himself for bringing evil to life, rather than recognizing the influence he had in turning that life toward evil -- is a deep flaw. The monster originally just wanted a family; he turned to the idea of Victor creating a wife for him out of the conviction that there was no other choice, but had Victor offered him the friendship and affection he so craved, he probably could have coped with the fact that he could never marry and was the only one of his kind.

I'd heard the book was about the dangers of scientific progress, which is certainly what Victor thinks is going on; but I think it's really more about a failure of love. Victor wanted to create life out of sheer pride; when that pride resulted in a "child," he rejected it, because it wouldn't give him what he wanted.

It's my belief that the natural response to humor is to discount it, and to assume humorous books are lightweight. IMHO, "The Important of Being Earnest" has a lot of heavy things to say about marriage, about hypocrisy, about "little white lies" -- I disagree with Wilde on just about every point he makes, but I do see him as making some statements about serious subjects.

Everyman wrote:

"And what did he mean that it would be impossible if truth were either plain or simple?"

I think he meant that there would be nothing to write about if truth were plain or simple -- literature is about conflict, and if truth were plain and simple enough that everyone could clearly see it, then there is no conflict and thus no great literature.

I believe he's wrong, for the record -- I think the truth often IS plain and simple, but it is also COSTLY, meaning there will be some willing to see the truth and act on it despite the cost, and others who do not want to pay the cost and so do their level best not to see the truth.

In other words, truth is plain and simple, but human beings are complex and struggle to see reality from any perspective but their own; being able to truly see from your opponent's perspective will generally reveal what is right and true, but few of us can do it. Literature, to my mind, at its very best takes us out of our perspective and into someone else's; like Travel, it "broadens our minds".

Just finished Walter E. Williams' autobiography Up From the Projects and am going back to hopefully finish Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery before the month is out.

Although Carthage Must Be Destroyed is tempting me, and I may break down and go to the library today, in which case Notes from the Underground will join it -- along with half a zillion other books.

If only it were true that buying books (or getting them from the library) DID mean you'd have time to read them!