Eugene Onegin Readalong 2014

Marian at Tanglewood Classic Lit Book Reviews is hosting a readalong of Alexander Pushkin's verse novel Eugene Onegin.  I've had this on my shelves for a while now, and have been a little intimidated to start it.  So hearing other people's thoughts as we go should be very helpful and enjoyable.  I will be posting after every two chapters, about every 10 days or so, per the schedule.  Reading starts tomorrow!

Classics Club

2nd Annual Classics Club Readathon

Well, here goes my first readathon!  Adam at the Classics Club is our host today, and he has given us the following questions to start the day with: 

Name and blog:  Amy, book musings
Snacks and Beverages of Choice:  Tea, tea, tea, and probably some toast.
Where are you reading from today?  Houston, Texas
What are your goals for the Readathon?   My tentative plan is to spend the entire day reading The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  It's been on my shelves a long time, and it's longish, and I wonder if I can finish it today.  Also, it's a nice gothic-ish type of thing to read by the fire on a cold day.  I treasure the very few cold days we get here on the Gulf Coast.
Are you excited?  To be honest, right now my main emotion is worry that I won't really be able to just read all day--it's Saturday, a pretty busy day around here.  But my ever-understanding husband has graciously agreed to handle all the kids' needs to be taken places today, so that I can undertake this geeky enterprise, lol.

I'll check in with progress once or twice during the day, and be checking some other blogs to see how they're going, too.  Happy reading...

2:15 pm CST:  I'm 75 pages into The House of the Seven Gables and enjoying it very much.  I probably won't finish it today, but will likely get a considerable part of it done.  Having lunch now.  

9:00 pm CST:  200 pages in now, out of 312--I may finish this thing tonight!  And it's a great read. 

12:20 am CST:  Finished The House of the Seven Gables!  Starting The Nortorious Jumping Frog of Calveras County and Other Stories by Mark Twain.  I pulled this off my shelf because it's so short, lol.  Maybe I can finish it, too, although I'm pretty tired now. 

12:45 am CST:  Know what?  I'm beat.  Reading all day was lovely, but I'm tired now and don't feel up to any more.  See you all in the morning... :)

Adam at the Classics Club has some wrap-up questions this morning:


What book(s) did you read during the event?   I read The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in its entirety.
What did you like about our event?  I loved giving the day over to reading--I never do that.  And I loved being able to check a book off my massive TBR list.
Do you have suggestions for future Readathons through The Classics Club?  Nope.
Would you participate in future Readathons?  Yes, schedule permitting.
Anything else you’d like to share?   Here's a quote that shows the humor that sometimes lightened this book, which I had not expected to find in a work by Hawthorne:

Discerning that Clifford was not gladdened by her efforts, Hepzibah searched about the house for the means of more exhilarating pastime.  At one time, her eyes chanced to rest on Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord.  It was a moment of great peril; for--despite the traditionary awe that had gathered over this instrument of music, and the dirges which spiritual fingers were said to play on it--the devoted sister had solemn thoughts of thrumming on its chords for Clifford's benefit, and accompanying the performance with her voice.  Poor Clifford!  Poor Hepzibah!  Poor Harpsichord!  All three would have been miserable together.  

 Thanks Adam and Classics Club for hosting this fun event!

Wrap-Up: Mount TBR Challenge 2013

The Mount TBR Challenge attracted me this year as a way to chip away at my massive TBR list--the books I own but haven't read.  I attempted to read 12 of those books this year, and alas, it looks like I only read eight, while continuing to purchase new books.  So much for whittling the list!  The books I read were:

The Assault by Harry Mulisch
Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

The favorite?  Austerlitz--lovely and wistful and sad, and so very unusual in the way it is told, as a slowly meandering unfolding of memories.  I've just made it sound boring and depressing, and it's anything but.  It actually gets more suspenseful as it goes on, and I couldn't put it down once I saw where the narrative was going.  I read most of it on a train through Germany and the Czech Republic last summer, which adds to the specialness.

Thank you Bev at My Reader's Block for hosting this challenge.

Wrap-Up: Chunkster Challenge 2013

For the Chunkster Challenge, I committed to reading four chunksters (books of 450 pages or longer) this year.  But it turns out I read six!  These were:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Middlemarch by George Eliot


The favorite (and the biggest surprise) was Les Miserables.  It is so very long, and I had always heard it described as near-torture, that I had some trepidations going in.  But this book hooked me immediately by starting off with the life of the good Bishop of Digne, with whom I am now in love.  

There is no least favorite;  there were no disappointments;  I enjoyed them all.  Actually, in this blog you will rarely read of disappointments, because I rarely continue reading a book I dislike.  I'm not in school, haha.  

Thanks Wendy and Vasilly, for this enjoyable challenge!

2nd Annual Classics Club Readathon

I've been a member of the Classics Club for two years now, and I've been reading away, but I've never participated in a Classics Club event.  I've never joined in on a readathon, because I never seemed to be free all day on the day.  But the stars seem to have aligned, and this year's Classics Club Readathon will be on January 4, 2014, and I have nothing planned!  No travel and no visitors expected--yay!  Now I just have to decide what to read...

Classics Club

The Wine of Solitude

In finishing The Wine of Solitude, I have read all the Nemirovsky in my collection.  I can't overstate how much pleasure this writer gives me.  In this, her most autobiographical book, she evokes the Kiev of her childhood, which she hated, but which with its air full of summer dust and the scent of lime trees sounds lovely to me.  She convincingly recreates a childhood that leaves her unable to trust or to form attachments, and her choice of the high road at the end of the book feels well-earned. 

The Remains of the Day

Add Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day to the long list of books-I-was-exposed-to-in-my-youth-and-failed-to-appreciate.  Not that I read the book back then, but I saw the movie in college and found it rather dull.  I wonder now how this book could ever be filmed without being dull;  it's mainly one man's mental suppressions.  I must see it again and find out.

But I now know, having also read Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World a couple of years ago, that reminiscence is a powerful tool in this author's hands.  In both books, the narrator tells the story of his life in flashback.  The narrator in The Remains of the Day is a butler looking back on his years of service to a disastrously foolish nobleman. The narration starts out in a very self-satisfied tone, and as it goes on, the narrator can't help revealing more and more of the reality of events, which is less and less flattering to himself.  At the end, we feel that we finally understand the the man's life and choices, and we feel him facing it at last.  The revelations are so subtle, so carefully and elegantly revealing, that it's like listening to him mentally unfolding his memories.

I have one more book by Kazuo Ishiguro on my shelves--A Pale View of Hills, which also features a narrator recounting memories.  I'm very interested to see how like these other two it will turn out to be.  Ishiguro is obviously very interested in the phenomenon of memory and how we use it to rewrite our lives.  I'm strongly reminded of W. G. Sebald, another writer obsessed with memory.  I read his Austerlitz last summer and fell heavily for Mr. Sebald, more of whose work I also want to read.

Classics Club
Mount TBR Challenge