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review 2015-08-26 20:17
The World in a book
War and Peace - Larissa Volokhonsky,Richard Pevear,Leo Tolstoy

Henry James, not himself known for brevity of written expression, considered War and Peace a “large loose baggy monster, ” but each time I’ve read through Tolstoy’s 1000++ page rendering of the Napoleonic Wars era in Russia I’ve fallen completely under its spell. The first time, when I was in college, I had only four days to get through the book, which turned out to be wonderful because I became so immersed in the story that when I heard steeple bells ringing on Sunday it was as if I had been transported to Moscow with its hundreds and hundreds of churches.

 

It’s an immense, sprawling literary adventure and I love it too much to write rationally about it. In defending War and Peace against its critics, Tolstoy claimed that it’s not a novel, not an epic poem, and not a historical chronicle, but is instead a convention straddling work of artistic prose whose form was dictated by its subject matter.

 

The book has lots (and lots) of main characters--many of my favorites in literature--and it involves readers deeply, even tenderly, in their lives, loves, hopes, struggles, and spiritual odysseys. There are battles, balls, evening soirees, and family estates ruined then resurrected, but the plot is only part of the story. Also included are philosophical digressions on the truths of life and death, discussions on the forces of history, rants about historians (people who subscribe to the “great man theory” will not find support from Tolstoy), and even a little battlefield algebra--but often these metaphysical excursions are made using capacious poetic metaphors and similes that make reading them a pure pleasure.

 

And did I mention that I love the characters? Though I have nothing against romance novels  I never seem to enjoy them, but I swoon over the romances in War and Peace. It’s not a book without flaws. For one thing, now that I’m older, I noticed that in the Epilogue Tolstoy seems to write off  people over sixty, and maybe Tolstoy spends too much time away from the plot while propounding his favorite theories. But having finished the book for the fourth time I’m sorry it’s over, and I know that after a few years go by I’ll be happily lost in its pages once more.

 

Just a note on translation--I think this rendition by husband and wife team Richard Pevear (American) and Larissa Volokhonsky (Russian) is particularly good at capturing the nuances and beauty of Tolstoy’s writing.

Source: jaylia3.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/the-world-in-a-book
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review 2015-05-11 14:00
Victorian novel with a non-irritating version of Jane Austen’s Emma
Miss Marjoribanks - Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Resourceful, optimistic, determined, and unflappable, Miss Marjorie Marjoribanks would make a delightful, though perhaps slightly controlling, companion. While staying dutifully--albeit perhaps a bit technically--inside the closely circumscribed boundaries of what is correct and proper behavior for a young Victorian woman, Miss Marjoribanks is able to manage just about every aspect of life in her little town, including politics, even though she can’t, of course, actually vote.

 

After finishing school and taking a brief tour of the continent, Miss Marjoribanks comes back home to “be a comfort” to her dear papa, a modest and selfless goal she mentions frequently at the most strategic times. Her mother had died a few years back and while her father, the town doctor, finds his life quite complete, Miss Marjoribanks is determined to make it better. She also has a quite a few other things in mind to improve the social life of the town as well, including holding lively and soon beloved Thursday evening gatherings in her father’s drawing room, which she had specially painted in a shade to flatter her complexion (she thinks of everything!).

 

Miss Marjoribanks decides she’ll continue on this course for 10 years, long enough to make up for papa having had the expense of redecorating the drawing room, before she thinks about getting married. But even Miss Marjoribanks can’t anticipate everything that will happen.

 

Some readers and reviewers have remarked that Marjorie Marjoribanks is like Jane Austen’s Emma but less irritating, and I concur completely with that sentiment. It’s a long book, and it did drag a little in the middle for me, but the story has a wonderful ending and it’s filled with a variety of spirited, humorous, mostly lovable characters.

 

My pleasure in this book was greatly enhanced by dialogue with reading partners--Miss Marjoribanks was an April buddy read with the Dead Writers Society on GoodReads and the Reading the Victorian Book Club on BookLikes.

Source: jaylia3.booklikes.com/post/1163125/victorian-novel-with-a-non-irritating-version-of-jane-austen-s-emma
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review 2014-07-08 16:04
Entertaining Victorian classic
Barchester Towers (Oxford World's Classics) - Anthony Trollope,Edward Ardizzone,John Sutherland,Michael Sadleir

Trollope seems to be having a lot of fun in this second novel of his Chronicles of Barsetshire series making it an entertaining, almost light, book for this reader in spite of the length and the somewhat heavy issue the plot revolves around--the heated battles between England’s low and high church clergy. The story is full of clever, often laugh-out loud asides by a very present, quite friendly, somewhat cozy omniscient narrator who frequently parses the actions, thoughts, and feelings of the characters rather than just reporting them.

 

Most of the main characters from The Warden, first book in the series, are back, and it’s part of the fun to see how they are getting on with their lives, but there are many new and wonderful additions too, including a bishop cowed by his wife and curate, the oily manipulative Mr. Slope, the steeped in ancient Anglo-Saxon tradition Thorne siblings, and the scheming Stanhope family fresh from Italy and full of continental ways. Trollope writes characters who can be silly, weak, selfish, stubborn, pompous, and irresponsible and still you feel some sympathy for them. Like many Victorian novels Barchester Towers is long, but the ending is perfect, with every character arc and plot thread resolving in a way that is highly satisfying.

Source: jaylia3.booklikes.com/post/923542/entertaining-victorian-classic
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review 2012-09-22 00:00
100 Must-read Classic Novels - Nick Rennison
Since the author of this guide begins with questioning what a classic is. And then continues to talk about the difference between enjoying classics and being a book snob I think I'll combine both parts of his opening to form my own. So here is my 'foreword': I don't know about all the other list reviews but have they actually read the book?

And there you have it 'snobbery' and a 'question'. Now it's time to quit being ridiculous and to jump on the bandwagon!


I've read it all...well aside from essays and letters and...well I've read the books

J.R.R Tolkien
Edgar Allan Poe

I think I'm finished with you...

Jules Verne
Lewis Carroll
Bram Stoker
Mary Shelley
Alduous Huxley
William Goldman
John Bunyan
Baroness Orczy
Franz Kafka
E.R. Eddison

I (solemnly) promise to go through and complete your collections...

Charles Dickens
C.S. Lewis
John Steinbeck
Charlotte and Anne Bronte
Mark Twain
H.P. Lovecraft
Jane Austen
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Edgar Rice Burroughs
H. G. Wells
Mervyn Peake
Roald Dahl
Edith Wharton
Isaac Asimov
Ray Bradbury
George Orwell

Maybe I will, maybe I won't finish your work

Agatha Christie
Joseph Conrad

Still trying to get the fuss...

Cormac McCarthy
Ayn Rand

Haven't read yet but will

Victor Hugo
Evelyn Waugh
William Thackery
James Joyce
Henry James
George Bernard Shaw
Ann Radcliffe
Thomas Hardy
Margaret Mitchell
Leo Tolstoy
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Anne Frank
Rafael Sabatini
Virginia Woolf
Elizabeth Gaskell
Wilkie Collins
Truman Capote
Gustave Flaubert
Flannery O'Connor
George McDonald
Gaston Leroux

Reluctant to begin

Earnest Hemmingway
e.e cummings
Ovid
Dante
Jean Rhys
Mikhail Bulgakov
Vladmir Nabokov
Joseph Heller
Herman Melville
J.D. Salinger

Know the story but I haven't read

Alexander Dumas
Lew Wallace
Homer

Solo masterpieces

Harper Lee
Emily Bronte
F. Scott Fitzgerald

I would see you on a stage!

William Shakespeare
Oscar Wilde
Christopher Marlowe
Arthur Miller
Reginald Rose
Tennessee Williams
George Bernard Shaw

I read a poet and I did know it!

Sylvia Plath
Emily Dickinson
Ted Hughes
John Milton
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
William Butler Yeats
William Blake
Dorothea Mackellar
Banjo Patterson
Henry Lawson
E. A. Poe

Short geniuses (stories that is)

Anton Chekhov
E.A. Poe (what's he doing here a third time!)
H.P. Lovecraft
Isaac Asimov
Roald Dahl

Potential classics (in my mind)

Italo Calvino
David Mitchell
Ian McEwan
Neil Gaiman
Christopher Priest
J.M. Coetzee

Not necessarily potential classics but entertaining

Susanne Collins
Matthew Reilly
Robert Ludlum
Brandon Sanderson
Robert Jordan
Joseph Delaney
Rick Riordan
John Flanagan
G.R.R Martin
Steven Erikson

Not-potential classics that I enjoyed but weren't 'great literature'

Terry Brooks
Christopher Paolini
Eoin Colfer
This book? - let's be honest it was ripping off the plots of so many other novels
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review 2012-09-21 00:00
100 Must-read Classic Novels - Nick Rennison I probably won't read this, but inspired by Paul Bryant's review (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/414335058?page=2&utm_content=A&utm_medium=email&utm_source=comment_instant#comment_58462302) and a trio of others in the same style (MJ Nicholls, http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/416412716?utm_content=A&utm_medium=email&utm_source=comment_instant#comment_58466501, and
Stephen M, http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/416606510, and Manny, http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/418996600), here's my first draft in a similar vein:


Put off for too long, but then enjoyed
Miguel Cervantes (Don Quixote)
Anthony Burgess (Clockwork Orange)
Franz Kafka
Albert Camus
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fell for the hype – and wished I hadn’t
Joshua Ferris
Sophie Kinsella
Julian Fellowes
John Boyne
Joseph Connolly
Brett Easton Ellis
Marina Lewycka

Guilty pleasure
(I'm sure there ought to be something for this category - watch this space)

Guilty dislike
Proust (I prefer Monty Python: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwAOc4g3K-g)
Virginia Woolf

Guilty
Vladimir Nabakov

Different every reread
Margaret Drabble
Mark Haddon
Franz Kafka

Different every book
David Mitchell
William Nicholson
Arnold Bennett

One-hit wonders (in terms of my liking them)
Cormac McCarthy
Aldous Huxley

Wrote too little
Mervyn Peake
Carson McCullers
Franz Kafka
Charlotte Bronte
Elizabeth Bowen
Richard Yates
Marghanita Laski

Wrote too much
Douglas Adams
Gene Brewer

I'm not at school any more
Jane Austen
William Shakespeare

Grim – but amazing
Ian McEwan
Anthony Burgess

It’s all a blur - I don’t want what he’s having
Dave Eggers
Charles Bukowski
Raymond Carver

Never would have read without GoodReads
Walter Moers = good
Lisa See = good
Kathryn Stockett =good
Pearl Buck = good
Mark Dunn = bad
Louisa May Alcott = bad
Suzanne Collins = very bad

Need to find another career
Neil Jordan (and he has one)

Pretentious poppycock
Jasper Fforde
Paul Coelho
Richard Bach

Style over substance
Ivy Compton-Burnett
George Grossmith
Bill Bryson

Long-term relationship
PG Wodehouse
Mervyn Peake
Carson McCullers
John Wyndham
Alan Bennett
Richmal Crompton

Awesome. Just Awesome
Mervyn Peake


There are quite a few authors I need to add to this, but I haven't thought of a suitable category for them yet.
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