12 Classics: The Catcher in the Rye

I managed to squeeze another "classic" in this month besides everything else I've been reading!  The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger makes all of the "Top books of the last century" lists I see and was on my AP reading list back in high school. I remember my peers recommending it, but I never got around to it until now.

The story is about 16 year old Holden Caulfield (what a great name!) who, at the beginning of the book, is expelled from yet another fancy all-boys boarding school. Over the next few days he leaves school but instead of going home, wanders around New York City. He has a series of meetings and conversations with various people, but nothing much really happens.

Honestly, I can't say that I enjoyed it at all. The book is narrated in the first person from Holden's point of view, and includes all of his speech patterns, which I found annoying and immature. The plot is rambling at best, lagging at worst. Holden is aimless and depressing, and I wanted to smack him more than once during the book.

I'm a little bit sad that I didn't read this back in high school, because I think I might have actually enjoyed it--or at least appreciated it more. Not that I was ever anything like Holden, but I knew people who were. I can understand why many of my whiny, angsty, smart guy-friends in high school cited it as their favorite book of all time, and I can see the merits of the book as a story about trying to find oneself and failing at every corner. However, between the narration, the aimlessness, and the lack of connection I felt with Holden, I didn't enjoy it and I probably won't reread it if I can help it.

12 Classics: Brave New World

So despite being sadly behind on my 12 Classics challenge for the year, I'm still chugging ahead. I optimistically checked out several classics from the library last week, and still hope to go back to the few classics that I put down halfway through, including Persuasion and The Three Musketeers, but probably not Dune. My husband has also convinced me that I can add True Grit to my list of finished classics as it is a "modern classic" according to people who like westerns (?).

But that's not what this post is about! From my pile of books I got from the library, I read Brave New World in under a week, making it my 4th classic of the year, if you count True Grit.

Brave New World is a famous dystopia novel published in 1931 about a society heavily influenced by industrialization and a strictly controlled caste system. The reader is taken on a detailed tour of how this society works, and gets to see the reactions and observations from a happy insider (Lenina), an unhappy insider (Bernard), a savvy insider (A World Controller), and an outsider (John the Savage).

I've read quite a few dystopian novels so I knew a bit about what to expect, and I was excited to find several parallels with my favorite dystopia novel of all time; Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee. The infantile nature of the citizens, with every need catered to an every pleasure highly encouraged was almost identical in both books--from drug usage to sexual attitudes. Citizens in both worlds are also young-appearing and healthy for their entire lives, and the characters who are unhappy are generally unhappy for almost the same reasons. There are substantial differences of course, but I'm fairly certain that Tanith Lee would list Brave New World among her inspirations for the society depicted in Biting the Sun.

Brave New World is also often categorized or compared with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I personally greatly preferred Brave New World.  I felt like Orwell didn't give us a good enough description of how the society in Nineteen Eighty-Four came about, how it worked, or where it was going. It was too Clockwork Orange in it's ending and not rewarding enough in the journey for me. Though Brave New World had a sad ending too, I felt that it was justified and made sense for the character. John the Savage ended things on his terms and the society, unaffected, continued on in it's factory-like efficiency.

Overall I really enjoyed this classic, and I'll probably read it again in a few years to get a broader impression of it. It's probably not appropriate for anyone less than a mature high schooler, but I think that paired with a few other dystopian novels, it can really give people something to think about regarding our future as a civilized society--it certainly gave me things to think about!

12 Classics: Gone with the Wind

After rereading some old favorites, I ordered a bunch of stuff from a book club online to fulfill my membership, and found Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell in my lap. Things had evened out a little bit in my life, and I was ready to tackle another classic! 


#2: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

For being like, the longest book ever, it was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I can't say that I liked Scarlett at all, but I couldn't put the book down. I stayed up late every night after Gunnar was snoring, fascinated by the fortitude of the characters and the devastation that was the civil war. I mean, I studied the civil war in AP US History in high school, but that was nothing compared to shivering under the covers while Scarlett drove a nearly dead mule out of Atlanta, hiding from the retreating confederate army, with her best enemy, a newborn, and a slave girl all depending on her while Atlanda burned around them. Talk about doing whatever you have to do to survive! 

As shallow and greedy as Scarlett was, I had to admire her. She had fortitude and determination within herself that even she didn't know about. There was amazing incongruity between her selfish proclamations against caring for anyone but herself and her actions and sacrifices for the sake of those around her. When she honed in on something she wanted, she wasn't going to let war, or morals, or conventions get in the way of attaining her goal. She was an exciting heroine, and I found myself shocked by her behavior over and over throughout the entire book! She was a very human, flawed character, and I could identify with both her strengths and her weaknesses. My favorite Scarlett moment was when she stole her sister Suellen's fiance. My jaw dropped open and I burst into surprised laughter. What a backstabbing bitch! Sure her sister was one of the most unforgivably annoying characters in the entire book, and sure Scarlett was desperate for the money in order to save Tara, but it still seemed extreme and underhanded.

In a stark contrast to Scarlett was Melanie. I didn't really like her as a character until they go back to Tara and she comes down the stairs to face the Yankee intruder, lugging the too-heavy saber of her dead brother and wearing only her nightgown, ready to do what she had to do, even if it killed her. She was an honest and true friend to Scarlett, practically glowing with kindness and love. But on the other hand, her meekness, her willingness to follow conventions, her pathetic helplessness...all of it got on my nerves. I wanted her to realize how stupid she was being about for trusting Scarlett unconditionally, to call Ashely out on the near adultery between him and Scarlett, and to just outright hate someone in her life! I probably had a hard time relating to Melanie because I'm more of a Scarlett myself. 

Vivien Leigh as Scarlett in the 1939 film.

As for the men in the story, I didn't particularly like any of them. Rhett was a rough and rude scalawag, who I might have liked if he had admitted to loving Scarlett in the beginning, and I started to admire when he showed affection for his daughter Bonnie, but the vision of him at the end, broken-hearted and weary of Scarlett, is what resounded in my mind. Ashely was too sad and pathetic--he described himself, accurately, as a defeated man and a relic of the past who must somehow try and survive in a world he didn't belong to. I also couldn't forgive him for not just telling Scarlett from the beginning that he didn't love and and would never be with her.  

The plot moved fairly quickly for such a long book, and was a good close look at the South before, during, and after the Civil War. It presented multiple points of view about the war, from the fervent nationalism and optimism of the Tarleton boys to the logical skepticism of Ashley Wilkes to the outright disdain of Rhett Butler. It showed the economic hardships faced by the soldiers and those left behind, and the utter horror in the number of men who died horribly in the battle. Numbers and statistics in history books are one thing, but hearing the names of all Scarlett's old suiters listed among the dead--characters who were funny and interesting and handsome--drove it home. Scarlett's search for a doctor when Melanie was in labor graphically demonstrated the number of dead and dying soldiers, laying out in the sun with no medicine, no doctors, and no water, while the entire city evacuated around them. Scarlett notices that they don't care about the war or the Confederacy. They only care about the pain, their imminent deaths. 


I was aware of the controversy regarding Mitchell's portrayal of slavery in the book, and took everything written with a grain of historically biased salt. I felt that Mitchell at least accurately portrayed the attitudes of the people at the time, even if those attitudes were ridiculous and outright wrong.  It was interesting to me that the northerners were just as racist as the southerners in the book, in different ways. Though they freed the slaves in the south, they didn't actually want anything to do with them. The Union failed to offer jobs and support for these men and women who had lived most of their lives being told what to do and when to do it. Like prisoners who serve long sentences in penitentiaries, they were uneducated and many were unskilled except as hard laborors or servants. There was no labor for the laborers since the plantations were burned up and the plantation owners were broke, and no servant openings since the northerners found black servants distasteful and the former slave owners, again, were mostly homeless and broke during the Restoration. One scene that really struck me was when Scarlett was riding with Uncle Peter in the carriage during the reconstruction, and a white lady splutters her dismay at the idea of letting a black person touch her baby, insulting Uncle Peter, Scarlett, and her beloved Mammy ( the slave woman who was Scarlett's nurse) all in one go. Of course, it's also telling that Scarlett didn't step up and defend Uncle Peter. I really want to read The Wind Done Gone and other slave-centric works about the same era for some perspective.

Despite it's length and other snags, I loved Gone with the Wind. It was captivating, romantic, and inspiring. The characters were real and flawed, and that my love of American History (Little House on the Prairie anyone?) made it all the better. I highly recommend it as a classic piece of American literature, and a must-read for anyone interested in the Civil War or historical romance! 


Pictures are from the Wikipedia commons.

12 Classics: Anna Karenina

Instead of New Years resolutions, I make Reading Resolutions. In 2010, my goal was to read 100 books. I got to about 75. This year, my goal is to read 12 "Classics."

My definition of classics is pretty open, but the basic idea is to continue my education in spite of no longer being in school, admire the greats to improve my own writing, and to generally increase my writerly street cred. In general I'm allowing everything from stuff assigned in college literature classes to genre classics to books listed on those ubiquitous "best 50 books ever written" lists. I don't have a list set in stone, and generally just go surf the web until I find one that seems classic enough and interesting enough, and hop to it.

#1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

In January I got through the entire unabridged Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and was surprised by how much I liked it. I tried to read it a few years ago, but I think that back then I just wasn't ready to read it. Now that I'm older and married it touched a nerve with me that it didn't before when I was an overwhelmed, happily engaged college student

I've learned the hard way that with any non-English classic, the translation you read makes a huge difference. I read the new Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky version, which was very readable. It had endnotes instead of footnotes, which was annoying, but there weren't so many of them and they weren't of vital importance to understanding the story.

In order to get through the beginning, I had to keep a sticky marker on the "who's who" cast of characters list because all of the Russian names and nicknames were a killer to keep straight. I did come to understand the characters and their relationships and nicknames, but it took a good quarter of the book to figure out.

As for the overall story, I really liked it. I went into it thinking it would be boring, but it was anything but. The characters were dynamic, if sometimes frustrating. I liked the comparison between Anna's despair (self inflicted) and Levin's (unfounded) and how they each went about trying to get rid of it. I liked the three women and how each of them dealt with love, loss, and aristocracy.

Spoilers ahead! If there is such a thing for a book which was published over 100 years ago...

The moment that grabbed me in this book and convinced me it wasn't boring was when Vrosnky lost the race and his horse. In the beginning of the book everything goes well for him-he's charming and handsome and rich and generally gets whatever he wants. When he lost the race, I was shocked. Shocked! Suddenly I knew that this book had some serious stuff in store for these characters. It wasn't just going to be dancing and parties and philosophical discussions. Tolstoy was just setting us up.

Vrosnky and Anna hooking up wasn't actually my favorite part of the story. My favorite arc was the Kitty/Levin romance. It was brutally realistic and not sugar coated at all, but at the same time beautiful and fulfilling. They each had their conflicts to overcome, so when they did finally get together it was very satisfying. I also thought that Kitty was much more likeable than either Anna or Dolly, so I was rooting for her to be happy.

I wish that I hadn't known the ending when I started reading it, but alas, I was looking up movie versions on Netflix to see what sort of costumes they wore in Russia in that period, and one of the reviews mentioned the ending. I honestly wonder if I would have been surprised, but now I shall never know. Actually I probably I would have been surprised, because I'm not good at picking up on those themes and foreshadowings in literature. Of course because I was looking for it, I can see how that character got to that point very obviously.

Overall, I give it 5/5 stars. It might not be for everyone, but I like historical fiction, and Russia, and books about female characters in general. And within that category, I can see how it definitely deserves to be a classic. Thanks for a great read Tolstoy!