Day Fifty-Six
Persuasion by Jane Austen Page: 249 Finished
A Apple Pie and Traditional Nursery Rhymes by Kate Greenaway Page: 96 Finished
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Page: 57
Persuasion was excellent and the ending as satisfying as all of Austen’s. Her heroines are the most cerebral in fiction and I love the way all her stories are stories of thoughts, impressions and manners. Her characters are so recognizable and the frustrations endured within the family circles she creates are true today though we often do not have the patience-to-endure that her heroines exhibit. I’m sure her social life must have contained many of the little irritations she describes so well.
Reading Kate Greenaway’s book makes me feel like I’m cheating. It’s both short and incredibly easy to read but truly, I’m glad I read it, I’m glad it’s on my list. The illustrations are marvelous and just the kind of thing I want to have around for Alex and Luc to read and look at. I think it is important to have beauty around and both Greenaway’s and Caldecott’s illustrations fill the bill.
I haven’t long intended to read Marquez’s book and as I start it the contrast between it and Austen seems sharp. I’m not sure how the novel will develop but I’m pretty sure that the “carnal love” referred to on the flap will end up being full-blown sexual sin but not identified as such, although the Catholicism of the culture may provide the appropriate check. Some people can read Christ into any work of art no matter how opposite that reading may be to the intentions of the artist. But I’ve a harder time seeing past the surface of such works and identifying the ways in which reality breaks through the pretensions of art. Anyway, we’ll wait and see.
I’ve firmly decided on Ulysses for my read-aloud and hope to start this week. I have to wait until the book arrives though, so hold your Thursday night schedule in suspense until mail-time that day…
I had one of those mom-days today. Alex spit-up all over me (the result of too much roughhousing I think) and when I went home to change clothes I realized that I’d forgotten that I didn’t have my house keys. They were nowhere to be found this morning because Jared mistook them for his (which he’d left at Veritas on Saturday) and absconded with them early this morning. I had Quinn drop by and lock the house up this morning but failed to get my keys back from Jared before heading home to change. Therefore, I’ve been wearing my fleece jacket all afternoon and ROASTING in it. Better than smelling of baby puke but still not comfy. Blech.
February 25th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I love Austen, but I have yet to read Persuasion – I started it a few months back and didn’t get past the first several chapters. I’m reading Northanger Abbey right now, and, while I enjoy it, I’m wishing I could read it for pleasure, rather than for a class.
I am glad you are reading Ulysses. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard many good things about it. I am rather a fan of modernist works (Eliot’s The Wasteland tops my list), so I’m a bit biased in that vein. I read Joyce’s short fiction “The Dead” about a year ago, and fell in love with it. I hope Ulysses is a fulfilling experience for you.