Back to the Classics 2018 Wrap Up

Back to the Classics 2018 hosted at Books and Chocolate is one of my 2018 reading challenges. I committed to read at least 6 books for this one, each in a different one of the 12 defined categories. The challenge host asked for contact info in the wrap up post. Mine is maryarussell (at) gmail.com

I read books for 9 categories:

• A 19th century classic: The Portrait of a Lady
• A 20th century classic: A Separate Peace
• A classic by a woman author: The Robber Bridegroom
• A classic with a color in the title: The Scarlet Letter
• A classic by an author that's new to you: The Catcher in the Rye

• A children's classic: The Horse and His Boy
• A classic crime story, fiction or non-fiction: Fer-de-Lance
• A classic with a single-word title: Dracula 
• A classic travel or journey narrative, fiction or non-fiction: Pickwick Papers

If you want to get in on this challenge the sign-ups are open for Back to the Classics 2019. I will be signing up shortly. 

The Horse and His Boy

The Horse and His Boy
by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the 3rd story in the Chronicles of Narnia and takes us away from Narnia and the familiar characters to tell the story of Shasta, a boy who was taken in by a fisherman when he was found as an infant in a boat that drifted ashore. Queen Susan and her siblings do play a role here, but it is a supporting one. I was struck by how Christ-like Aslan is in this story. It was an exciting adventure and had the same delightful narrative style as The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
This is one of my Classics Club titles and counts toward the Back to the Classics 2018 Challenge as a children's classic.

Fer-de-Lance

Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

American writer Rex Todhunter Stout published this, the first of the Nero Wolf mysteries in 1934. By 1975 there would be 72 Nero Wolfe tales.
A Fer-de-Lance is a very large snake which plays a small, but significant, part in this book. The novel introduces the eccentric genius Nero Wolf, his loyal and street-smart assistant Archie Goodwin, and the various other men who make up the Nero Wolf world. There are women in the stories, but none are part of the core group.  I have read various of the Nero Wolf books (and love the TV series) but had not read this one. The way Stout jumps into the story in what is clearly a long established operation worked very well. One of the strengths of this series is that you can jump in anywhere as the basic set-up never changes, only the individual case. It is a fair criticism that the series lacks character development, but the adventure and the puzzle are always a great mix of "little grey cells" and hard-boiled action.
This title is on my Classics Club list and also counts toward the Back to the Classics Challenge as a classic crime story.

Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was Charles Dickens first novel and it was published by Chapman and Hall in installments between March 1936 and November 1837. The last sections of this novel, according to CharlesDickensInfo.com, overlapped with the writing/publication of Oliver Twist which began in January 1837. This novel tells the adventures, many of them quite ridiculous, of Mr. Pickwick and his friends Mr. Snodgrass, Mr. Winkle, and Mr. Tupman. Pickwick's loyal servant Sam Weller assists and adds commentary to many of the events. Interspersed in the novel are several short stories (tales told to the friends in pubs mostly). There is a line of serious commentary on the failings of the legal system throughout the book. Dickens is no fan of lawyers. The premise of the whole thing is that Pickwick and his companions are the "Corresponding Society of the Pickwick Club" and will travel around observing the country and send back their reports to the club (which votes to pay the postage and cover the cost of packages).
I first heard about this book when I was quite young and read Little Women for the first time. The sisters play at being the Pickwick Club and have meetings as such in Alcott's novel. I wasn't as taken with Pickwick Papers as the March girls were, but it was definitely an enjoyable novel. 
This book is on my Classics Club List and it counts toward the Back to the Classics Challenge as a classic travel or journey narrative.

Dracula

Dracula
by Bram Stoker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars (really 4.5)

This book tells the story of a small group of people who come into the world of Count Dracula and end up fighting for their lives and their eternal souls. It is told entirely through letters and journal entries by the various characters and is incredibly well told.
According to The Oxford Companion to English Literature (5th ed., 1985) the tale was influenced by an 1872 story called "Carmilla," which appeared in Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly.  It is difficult to imagine what reading this book must have been like in 1897 when all the mythology of the vampire was not well known. There were many layers of mythology and various actions taken by characters in the novel that must have built the suspense and the mystery of who, and what, Count Dracula is very well. Knowing all the tropes of vampire novels now it was totally obvious why garlic flowers were ordered and what it meant that there were 2 small puncture wounds on someone's neck and why that bat kept lurking at the window. This diminished the suspense of the unfolding tale, but it still deserves credit for the wonderfully built tension.

This book is on my Classics Club List and it counts toward the Back to the Classics Challenge as a book with a single word title.

Back to the Classics Check-in

Back to the Classics 2018 hosted at Books and Chocolate is one of my 2018 reading challenges. I committed to read at least 6 books for this one, each in a different one of the 12 defined categories.

I have read books for 5 categories so far:

• A 19th century classic: The Portrait of a Lady
• A 20th century classic: A Separate Peace
• A classic by a woman author: The Robber Bridegroom
• A classic with a color in the title: The Scarlet Letter
• A classic by an author that's new to you: The Catcher in the Rye

These are the remaining categories with some ideas of what I might read for them:

• A classic in translation.  
  Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak; The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio; Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 
• A children's classic.
  Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting; The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
• A classic crime story, fiction or non-fiction. 
  Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie; The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton; The Deep Blue Goodbye by John D. MacDonald; Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout
• A classic with a single-word title.
  Dracula by Bram Stoker; She by H. Rider Haggard; Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• A classic that scares you.
  Swann's Way by Marcel Proust 
• A classic travel or journey narrative, fiction or non-fiction.
  No ideas for this one -- if you have a recommendation please let me know.
• Re-read a favorite classic.
  There are several possibilities for this, but I am not much of a re-reader so am not sure I will complete this category.

The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was the 50th book I read for my Classics Club list! 

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” ― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

This novel was written in 1850 and is set in the 17th century in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts. The author provides an introduction about (among various other things) how he came to write about this woman. The introduction seemed excessively long and rambling, but once the tale began it moved along at a good pace and didn't wander into unrelated asides. Hester Prynne is being publicly shamed for her sin--she has born a daughter with a man not her husband--at the start of the novel. How she, and the others involved, deal with this makes up the story. The writing is of it's time, but was not hard to read.
This book also counts toward the Back to the Classics challenge as a "classic with a color in the title."

The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"He took down the picture, carried it toward the window, related some curious facts about it. She looked at the other works of art, and he gave her such further information as might appear most acceptable to a young lady making a call on a summer afternoon. His pictures, his medallions and tapestries were interesting; but after a while Isabel felt the owner much more so, and independently of them, thickly as they seemed to overhang him." p. 311

Henry James is a writer who generates great passion among both his admirers and those who despise him. I fall into the first camp, but can appreciate that his prose is not for everyone. I need to be in the right mood for the meanderings through every thought and all the tiny details James sets before his reader but if I am I find them quite wonderful.
Isabel Archer, the "lady" of whom this is a portrait, is a character I found it difficult to identify with. This may be a difference of time as much as character as she makes choices and sees obstacles that seem ridiculous to my modern sensibilities. The architecture of this tale, how the various people she interacts with influence Isabel's choices, is fabulously constructed and kept me intrigued through 600+ pages. 

This book is on my Classics Club List. It also counts, since it was published in 1881, toward the Back to the Classics Challenge as a 19th century classic, 

A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace 
by John Knowles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a beautifully written novel that takes us into the mind of a young man who is faced with entering WWII as he leaves his adolescence behind. The things that happen to him, and the choices he makes are presented unflinchingly and with a constant attention to the complexities of human nature. It is set in a boy's school in NH, probably based on Philips Exeter Academy which the author attended.

"I did not have New England in my bones; I was a guest in this country, even though by now a familiar one, and I could never see a totally extinguished winter field without thinking it unnatural. I would tramp along trying to decide whether corn had grown there in the summer, or whether it had been a pasture, or what it could have been, and in that deep layer of  the mind where all is judged by the five senses and primitive expectation, I know that nothing would ever grow there again." (p. 139)

This book is on my Classics Club List. It also counts, since it was published in 1959, toward the Back to the Classics Challenge as a 20th century classic, or an author that is new to me.

Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Maybe you have to be an adolescent boy to appreciate this novel, but I don't get what the appeal is. I did like the observation about the museum and how the viewer's perspective is what changes. 

“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they're pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody's be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way—I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.” (--p. 121)

This book is on my Classics Club List because it is one of those books I felt like I needed to read because it is a cultural touchstone. It also counts, since it was published in 1951, toward the Back to the Classics Challenge as a book by an author that's new to me. 

The Robber Bridegroom

The Robber Bridegroom
by Eudora Welty

This is a fairy tale set in the American south by a master of Southern fiction. It was well-reviewed by the NYT when it came out in 1942 and I was inspired to read it after having read Atwood's The Robber Bride. The original tale is in the Brothers Grimm collection, and a variant of it is retold in Neil Gaiman's "The White Road." Welty's tale has the tempo and language of a classic fairy tale and blends in myths and legends from 18th century Mississippi.
This is one of my Classics Club titles and counts toward the Back to the Classics Challenge as a classic by an author who is new to me or as one by a woman author.

2018 Reading Challenges

I have decided on 5 reading challenges for 2018 (in addition to the Canadian Book Challenge which ends on Canada Day):

#1 - Non-Fiction Reading Challenge hosted at Doing Dewey
I am challenging myself to read at least 12 non-fiction books this year.

#2 - What's in a Name 2018 hosted at The Worm Hole
This will require reading 6 books, one for each category:

• The word ‘the’ used twice (The Secret By The Lake; The End Of The Day, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time)
• A fruit or vegetable (The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society; The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake)
• A shape (The Ninth Circle, The Square Root Of Summer, Circle Of Friends)
• A title that begins with Z – can be after ‘The’ or ‘A’ (Zen In The Art Of Writing; The Zookeeper’s Wife, Zelda)
• A nationality (Anna And The French Kiss; How To Be A Kosovan Bride; Norwegian Wood)
• A season (White Truffles In Winter; The Spring Of Kasper Meier; The Summer Queen; Before I Fall; The Autumn Throne)

#3 - Back to the Classics 2018 hosted at Books and Chocolate
For this one I will need to read at least 6 and up to 12 books all at least 50 years old. No more than one for each of the categories:

• A 19th century classic - any book published between 1800 and 1899.
• A 20th century classic - any book published between 1900 and 1968. 
• A classic by a woman author. 
• A classic in translation.  
• A children's classic. 
• A classic crime story, fiction or non-fiction. 
• A classic travel or journey narrative, fiction or non-fiction. 
• A classic with a single-word title. 
• A classic with a color in the title. 
• A classic by an author that's new to you. 
• A classic that scares you. 
• Re-read a favorite classic. 

#4 - 2018 European Reading Challenge hosted at Rose City Reader
This will require reading 5 books by different European authors or set in different European countries (Deluxe Entourage level)

#5 - I am also participating in the GoodReads 2018 Reading Challenge with a goal of reading 100 books.