a year of classics

We've reached the midway point in the year, can you believe it?  For 5 Minutes for Books' Classics Bookclub, that means round two of the check-ins.  I made a goal back in December, and yes, it was a pretty modest one-- four official "classics" over the course of the year.  Well guess what?  Not only did I meet the goal for this quarter with my planned reading selection, but I also exceeded it by adding two more classic choices, thanks to my trusty online book club!

Back in April, we read The War of the Worlds, a book that I can say with definite certainty that I would never, ever have chosen to read on my own.  Quite honestly, I almost bagged it, but I really wanted to renew my commitment to the book club and I couldn't skip out in only the fourth month.  So, I read it, and I was really surprised when I found myself actually engaged and sucked in to a science fiction story!  Here were my immediate thoughts, via my mini-review:

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
I never would have picked this book up on my own, but thanks to my book club, I gave it a try, and I found myself surprised by my immediate engagement with the story.  While much of the vocabulary and language structures challenged me, I certainly got pulled in by the intensity of the story.  The narrator's voice was compelling and totally believable in a (hopefully) unrealistic story.  My favorite passage involved a conversation between the narrator and another man who had so far survived the still-ongoing Martian attack.  The man was woeful about the meaning of the attack, wondering why something this horrific was allowed to happen.  "All our work undone, all the work-- What are these Martians?"  To which the narrator responds, "What are we?"  That central theme of considering our role as people among a world, and a universe and beyond, was both humbling and thought-provoking

When June rolls around, the bookclub goes Shakespearean, and since they opted for a comedy this year, I was a teeny bit hopeful that I'd have more success with it than I usually do.  Much Ado About Nothing was the choice, and I just read/watched the movie this past week.  My first thoughts:

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Well.  Technically, I read the play, while I watched along with the Kenneth Branagh movie version.  I was entertained, there were parts in which I laughed out loud, but I'm not sure that I would have gotten the story as well without the visual interpretation.  (That just goes to show how much difficulty I have with reading Shakespeare...)  I guess I just didn't understand how the characters would so quickly go from one extreme emotion to another without thinking much about what they're so immediately accepting as truth.  Eh.  I liked it- I especially liked Benedick's character, but I can't say that it was a favorite of mine of the few Shakespeare pieces that I'm familiar with.

So, with those two under my classics belt, my planned reading doesn't have to be standing alone in this post.  My second selection was going to finally gain me entrance into the Austen readers club.  Yes, I had never read anything by Jane Austen before, other than a failed attempt at Sense and Sensibility which I could not get into at all after a few chapters.  But with Pride and Prejudice, I finally did it!  Woo-hoo!  Read on:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
I did it!!  I read something undeniably categorized as a "classic," and not only did I make it all the way to the end, but I actually enjoyed it!  The 4/5 stars is more of an indication of my reading abilities and preferences than of the quality of Austen's beloved novel.  While this took me longer than the average contemporary novel does, I was so pleasantly surprised by the level of humor and lightness in this classic, so I tried to sneak away as much reading time as possible.  I also haven't seen the well-known movie version, but sadly, I did find myself drawing parallels to the Bridget Jones book/movie, with which I am familiar.

I may have reached my four-book-minimum, but I'm not stopping now!  I've got two more selections planned- Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton and A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, and of course, my ongoing time with good old Tom Sawyer.   Who knows what else will get added to the reading list as the year goes by.  Yay!

If you're reading down the classics road, you may want to join us over at 5 Minutes for Books!  Also, the classics have been on my mind for a couple of reasons, and I wrote about my experience reading another classic book along with JAM- introducing a nine-year-old to Mark Twain, and we're actually doing it in a much different format for us- on a Nintendo DSi XL with their new piece of ultra cool, and uber-fitting software, 100 Classic Books!  Fun, fun!


Classically yours,