The Waves

The Waves 

by Virginia Woolf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel is the interior lives of a group of six people who are bound together by the loss of a friend. It is beautifully written and strikingly insightful. Like the other novels I have read by Virginia Woolf I plan to read it again because there is so much happening here that I am sure I missed details that will come out upon rereading. 

"Always it begins again; always there is the enemy; eyes meeting ours; fingers twitching ours; the effort waiting. Call the waiter. Pay the bill. We must pull ourselves up out of our chairs. We must find our coats. We must go. Must, must, must--detestable word. Once more, I who had thought myself immune, who had said, 'Now I am rid of all that,' find that the wave has tumbled me over, head over heels, scattering my possessions, leaving me to collect, to assemble, to heap together, summon my forces, rise and confront the enemy." (p. 293)

This book is on my Classics Club list.

Orlando

Orlando by Virginia Woolf
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was quite different from Mrs. Dalloway or To the Lighthouse and is definitely my least favorite of the three. There is an excellent post about this novel at Conceptual Fiction which explains the novel much better than I can. There were things about the novel that I liked: the voice of 'the biographer' that Woolf takes when dealing with time transitions and other awkward story transitions was very clever; the comments on the 'great men of letters' were very funny; and the whole section about the romance with the Russian princess was excellent. Ultimately though the book just didn't come together for me. 
This book could count toward either of two categories for the Back to the Classics challenge: 20th century classic, or a classic by a woman author.

Double Date Challenge

Writing My Own Fairy Tale is hosting the Double Date Challenge for Bout of Books 9.0. You must pick two books that you would recommend someone read together (like a double date!) and explain your reasons for the recommendation. 
I have 2 double date recommendations:

Drood by Dan Simmons 
and 
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Drood tells the story (fictionalized) of the relationship between Collins, who is writing The Moonstone, and Charles Dickens.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham
and 
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Two great books, one is (among other things) the story of the woman who is writing the other. 

Challenge Update - October 2013

Since July 1st I have read 4 books for the Canadian Book Challenge 7, so I am on track with 1 per month. I need to read two books one month to hit the goal of 13, but mostly one book per month will suffice.  I have a good sized pile of Canadian books (thanks Lisa!) waiting to be read, plus there are 2 more books in the MaddAddam trilogy that I must read now that I finished Oryx and Crake. Also my friend Rob pointed out this cool list of Canadian authors.

Tea and Books Challenge: The book I am working on for this is 1,076 pages (not counting indices or the notes which I read as I go along). I have  484 pages to go which should be doable in 2 months. The book is a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt which is very well written and keeps my attention. The tough part is that the book is too heavy to carry around with me or to read in bed. It is a good thing I only signed on for 2 books.

For the colorful reading challenge I have 2 books left to read, so if I read 1 in November and 1 in December I will complete this challenge.

In my first year of Classics Club (Sept. to August) I finished 10 books from my list. My goal for that project is to read 10-12 titles from that list each year so I did fine for year 1. Since the beginning of September I have read Something Wicked This Way Comes, Agnes Grey, and To the Lighthouse, so I am a little bit ahead at this point for year 2.

I need to read one more book for What's in a Name. Something with a "party or celebration" in the title. Recommendations would be welcome.

I am a few books ahead of schedule (at 88%) with my Goodreads goal of 101 books in 2013 and have read at least the minimum number of books committed to for my other 2013 challenges.

To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The plot of this novel is very simple: a large family is staying at their summer home (which has a view of a lighthouse) with several friends; then many years pass during which a World War occurs and the family doesn't visit the house; then some of the people from the first summer come back to the house and take a boat out to the lighthouse. However, woven into this little bit of action are the thoughts and feelings of all the people involved: the little routines of daily life, the great life-changing events, and the philosophical musings of quiet moments are intermingled.
The same technique of passing the narration from the mind of one character to the next that is used in Mrs. Dalloway is used here. This works very well because the reader can follow the change of perspective easily and it gives a much greater depth to the work than would be possible with a single point of view. There are many points in the book where I had to stop and consider the observation, to fit it into my own context. Woolf apparently expected this:

"But he was absorbed in it, so that when he looked up, as he did now for an instant, it was not to see anything; it was to pin down some thought more exactly. That done, his mind flew back again and he plunged into his reading." (p.283) 

The book is constructed in three parts (like movements in a piece of music). The first one is the longest and introduces the reader to the various characters and their connections with each other. The middle section is an amazing piece of writing, almost like poetry, that describes the passing of time and into which a few plot points are inserted parenthetically.

"But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers." (p.192)

The final section goes back to the style of the first and shows us how the passage of time has changed the people we met in part one.
This book is different from Mrs. Dalloway in that it is looking at the world through a wider lens, but it is just as powerful and brilliant a book. Well worth reading, and rereading.
Other thoughts:

• A review from the NY Times (written in 1925 and full of SPOILERS -- I agree with him about the middle section, I'm not sure about the overall conclusions.)
• Helen Dunmore’s introduction to a new edition (2011) reprinted in Granta (an analysis of the text beginning from the premise that it is autobiographical -- I have doubts about this interpretation, but it is an interesting perspective.) 

What is Modernism?

As part of Modern March I wanted to get a handle on what it means for a work to be "modern." The article at The Literature Network was quite helpful, though it has a lot of pop-ups.  The wikipedia article on Modernist Literature was also helpful.

• The art and literature of the early 20th century
• A response to the horror and upheaval of the "great war," and the world war that followed it
• A period of literary and artistic introspection
• A conscious rejection of the traditions of the past that strove to reflect a new reality
• A reaction to the restrictions of Victorian society and the excesses of Victorian art
• A movement that included the authentic voices of women and minorities
• A sparse style of language with a focus on images
• A period of experimentation with form and a desire to make work that was new

Among the big names of the period are T.S. Elliot, James Joyce, E. M. Forster, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, and Virginia Woolf.

A Modern March

A Literary Odyssey is hosting a Modern March to encourage reading of modernist writers. I have several of these titles on my reading list for Classics Club, so I am signing up to participate and will commit to reading at least one of these titles during March 2013.

Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway 
Dubliners, James Joyce

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

10 Books I Recommend

The Book Blogger Recommendation Survey is being conducted at Reading with Tequila. 

Strictly speaking the survey asks for your favorite books of all time, ranked 1-10. I cannot even begin to say what that list would look like, for one thing there are the billions of books I haven't read yet.

I have compiled (and added to the survey) a list of mostly recent books that I really liked and can wholeheartedly recommend (the order is random).

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
• Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• Stardust by Neil Gaiman (the audio book version with Gaiman reading is fantastic!)
• Soulless (Parasol Protectorate #1) by Gail Carriger
• The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer (kleenex may be required)
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• Julie & Julia by Julie Powell 
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Classics Club Meme

The Classics Club Meme for October 2012 is "Why are you reading the classics?"

"One loses one’s classics. Oh not all. That is what I find so wonderful. A part of one’s classics remains, to help one through the day." --Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days

I am reading the classics because I think they provide a context for other reading (and for movies, and plays, and talking to people). I have read quite a few classics, getting a degree in English Literature made it very hard to avoid them.  Some of them I loved and thought were amazing books that I enjoyed reading (The Great Gatsby, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Mrs. Dalloway). Others I didn't really enjoy much (Moby Dick, The Last of the Mohicans, The Red Pony). But whether I liked the books or not, I feel like reading works that are considered classics gives me the ability to have a deeper understanding of the world, of myself, and of the things--classic or not--that I read. When a novel or a movie makes a reference to something from one of the classics I have read I know what they are referring to which gives me a more complete understanding than I would have otherwise. The more classics I read, both in general and in specific genres like mystery or science-fiction, the more I will be able to appreciate the other things I read. 

The other reason for reading the classics is that they speak to a universal experience that, as Winnie points out, can help on through the day.