It's been quite a while!

I've taken a hiatus for the past- who knows how long. Apologies all around. It won't happen again.

Well, my classics group has not been such a success either. After My Antonia we chose Dr. Zhivago with high hopes, which were shortly completely dashed. I think one of the four of us made it through. It was heavy on philosophy and light on plot, and dull at that- that was our conclusion. Where was the story of Dr. Zhivago and his two women? Only in the movie version, which we watched at our meeting. Onwards and upward then to something completely different - Kidnapped by Robert Lewis Stevenson. Ahhh, finally, a rousing pick. A rollicking, swaggering, pirate, outlaw-being-hunted-through-the-mountains-and-moors-of-Scotland adventure. I love Stevenson's writing-sophisticated, vivid and readable. And half of the fun of the book is reading some of the accent-laden sentences out loud to yourself. All the sudden I found myself speaking in a Scotttish brogue! How exciting! Seriously, it was a fun read. I really enjoyed it and proved to myself that classics don't have to be BORING.

Next up is my HNS review book, Cardigan Bay by John Kerr, an espionage thriller/romance. We shall see :-)

A New Start for 2008

It's been too long since I last posted. In these past months, my contemporary fiction book club has disbanded, and I have since started up a classics reading group. We, in the contemporary group, were simply not enjoying our picks. We were consistently disappointed with the quality or the depressing tones of our choices. We didn't join a book club to be depressed!

I have been longing for quite a while to catch up on all the literature I missed out on in high school. I received a substanard education in a rural Kansas institution (the emphasis being on Kansas history--really, how much is there to learn about Kansas!!!) and then read mostly politically correct and obscure European literature in college. I crave to read the works of the great dead white men and women!!!! Tolstoy, Austen, Bronte, Dostoevsky, Defoe, Elliott, Lawrence, Trollope, Dumas...

We are beginning with Willa Cather's My Antonia (an-ton-ee-ya). It's a short novel, set in the 19th-century American Midwest; a farming tale of struggle, a love affair with the prairie. It's a story of immigrant survival in a rough new world. I have finished it and, in my opinion, it was a worthwhile read, if for nothing else but the horror stories the immigrants bring with them to the new world and the beautiful language Cather uses to illustrate her infatuation with the land.
When I began reading, I was very confused- I thought this book was about a girl named "Antonia," yet it read as though it was revolving around the life of Jim Burden, a young orphan, sent to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. In truth, it is about Jim, who is, from first sight, smitten with Antonia and tracks her life from that of a young girl to mature woman. The pace of the narrative varies: sometimes moving at a snail's pace, other times rushing by quickly.

(I'm writing this now in Nov 08, a long time since I started this post- I can no longer remember the details of My Antonia, but generally that our group was rather unimpressed. There were a few memorable scenes, however we chalked it up to an "interesting" reading experience (you readers know what that means!)

Wild Lavender by Belinda Alexandra

I found a wonderful new author! It's been a long time since I have discovered a story that has enveloped me like this. I was referred to this book by people who loved The Bronze Horseman by Paulina Simmons, one of my favorite authors. I was skeptical because, to me, Horseman was as close to perfect as a novel can get, so how could another book come even close to living up to perfection? Okay, so, it isn't perfect, but it surely was excellent.
Wild Lavender takes place in 1920's France and continues through WW2. It is two stories wrapped up into one. The first is Simone Fleuriere's (the daughter of lavender farmers in Provence) struggle to make something of herself and her life, to overcome the adversity of being destitute and dependent on people with very small hearts. The second revolves around her decisions and tribulations during the war in occupied France. This book took my breath away. I could smell the lavender, feel the fear in Paris during the war, and empathize with Simone. She is a a fully rounded, breathing character who pulsates with life. She is heroic, in the sense that she puts her life on the line for others, even for pets who are tossed heartlessly out on the street, and she handles her own heartbreaks with quiet, if sad, dignity.
I love WW2 era dramas- I don't know why, but this particular period speaks to me, almost as if I were there. Just as Horseman brought alive WW2 era Leningrad, Lavender brings WW2 era Paris to life. It is not quite as mind-blowingly intense as Horseman, which may be a relief to those who do not want to spend nights awake reliving the horrors of Leningrad, but there is enough passion and suffering in this book to make it claim a spot in your mind for a long time to come. It is a long novel, over 500 pages, perfect for cold winter evenings. It is what I call a "thumping good read" and I hope, if you decide the book is for you, that you enjoy it as much as I did.