My Penguin Classics project is proceeding ve-e-e-e-ry slowly. I requested La Regenta, by Leopoldo Alas, via interlibrary loan. It took forever, but it finally came, all the way from Dallas! (Written by Alas, sent from Dallas. :) ) And you know what? They only let me have it for three weeks, and they refused to renew. Why they bothered to send it at all, I do not know. No one could read this thing in three weeks. La Regenta is a 19th century Spanish novel over 700 pages long. The first fifty pages were intriguing, as was the description in the Penguin book (“an intelligent woman’s quest for fulfillment through marriage, adultery, and religion”). I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and buy it. Hey, wait! Chrismubirthdaykah is less than two months away! But I don’t want to wait that long. It’s been ages since the last Penguin Classic and there’s fun stuff coming up after this one. After Alas comes Alcott, and then Horatio Alger, and then, whoa! Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis, one of the funniest books ever and long overdue for a re-read.
Category Archives: Penguin Classics
What else has been keeping me busy
I’ve been reading some, though not as much as I’d like. Here’s a rundown:
Penguin Classic: I only got halfway through Le Grand Meaulnes before I had to return it. It was an ILL and it came all the way from Ripon College in Wisconsin, no possibility of renewing it. Okay, this is an admittedly obscure title, but jeez, it’s a Penguin Classic, it’s not exactly out of print. And there was no copy closer to Ann Arbor MI than Ripon? Well, anyway. I sort of enjoyed the half that I read, but I was definitely handicapped by my lack of familiarity with the customs & mores of late 19th century rural France. There were a lot of descriptions of clothes that I’m sure were significant, but the significance escaped me entirely. For example, all the guys were wearing smocks. Smocks. Now I know they weren’t wearing oversized men’s shirts, backwards, with the sleeves cut off at the elbows. I know they weren’t fingerpainting. But there’s got to be some reason why these smocks (?) were mentioned so frequently. Honestly, I never thought I’d say this about any novel, but this one could have used some footnotes, or at least an introduction. Still, I’d like to go back and finish it some day. Despite the smocks, it was a vivid portrait of adolescent boys, coming of age, friendship, first love, etc. And, to answer your burning question, Meaulnes rhymes with moan, and it’s the main character’s name.
Lately
I finished Esther. Whew! It was quite a ride.
So, Esther is this young woman full of radical modern ideas who falls in love with an Episcopalian priest. She falls in love but she cannot reconcile her freewheeling ideas with her fiancé’s church. “I never saw you conduct a service,” she tells him, “without feeling as though you were a priest in a Pagan temple, centuries apart from me. At any moment I half expected to see you bring out a goat or a ram and sacrifice it on the high altar.” The novel is about her inner struggle. Will she subsume herself and marry him? Will she find a way to reconcile her beliefs with his, and make a happy marriage without squashing herself or him? Will the force of his charismatic preacher personality lead her to see the light and renounce her views and make a happy marriage that way? Will the force of her charismatic strong-woman personality induce him to leave the church? Or will she keep the courage of her convictions and break off her engagement?
Panning Martha
It was great to get out last night and get together with my book group. We’re all moms of young kids and occasionally it happens that the energy level is a bit low on a Tuesday night. But last night we had a jolly time, including a very energetic discussion of Martha Beck’s memoir, Expecting Adam.
Flatland
My first foray into the wonderful world of Penguin Classics: Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions, by A. Square (Edwin A. Abbott), first published in 1884.
This was an odd little . . . volume. I can’t really call it a novel, although it’s certainly novel. It takes place in a world where — well, A. Square describes it better than I can:
On choosing
My book club met last night to discuss Bittersweet by Nevada Barr. As always, it was a treat to get out of the house, hang out with friends, consume wine and cheese, and talk about books. The book, however, left much to be desired.
