Romola by George Eliot - Book 1

I actually finished Little Women just a few minutes past midnight on January 1st, but I am going to call Romola my first completed read in 2020.

Why do publishers do this?  Romola, the main character, had golden hair.  It is mentioned over and over again in this text.  Who is this woman on the front cover????

I hadn't read a George Eliot novel in years.  I read Silas Marner back when I was a teen, and then a few times since.  I read Adam Bede in law school at the urging of another student who was a big George Eliot fan and I read Middlemarch after seeing the BBC production of it.  But I hadn't read anything since, which was at least 15 or 20 years.  I hadn't even heard of Romola before but I've been following Kate Howe's booktube channel and she mentioned wanting to read it in January.  So I joined in!

I absolutely loved this novel.  It was not the easiest read for me.  It is written in a formal Victorian style, very erudite, but everything about it is so well developed.  The characters, the plot, the accurate historical presentation, the probing of the issues that confront the main character.  It's all so well done, so thoroughly intelligent and immersive.

Romola is a young woman who has grown up under the tutelage of her learned classical scholar of a father, Bardo.  He's gone blind now and his son, Romola's brother, has abandoned the classics in favor of becoming a Dominican friar, something the non-believing father sees as a betrayal of the highest order.  A new person enters their circle.  A shipwrecked young Greek, learned and handsome with great charm, becomes Bardo's assistant.  He and Romola fall in love and marry.  But who is Tito?  What secrets is he hiding and how much will he sacrifice to get ahead in the tumultuous and dangerous world of Renaissance Florence?

So much goes on in this book and yet it never bogs down.  I felt swept up into the world of Florence that Eliot portrays so eloquently and so sensitively. 

Two thumbs up!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Years.

Back to the Classics Challenge - 2020

I've decided to do the Back to the Classics Challenge this year.  I'm doing quite a bit book-wise.  I actually started a youtube channel called Faith&Books if anyone is interested.  I'm not very good.  I go to other book tube channels and am knocked off my socks by their content and deep thoughts and their presentation.  And I pretty much just hem and haw in front of my little phone and then upload.  But I realize I don't really care.  What I do like is taking the hobby of reading to a new level and entering a community of bibliophiles.  It's wonderful!

I also started an instagram because so many people on booktube have one.  Though I realize I keep forgetting to link to it.  Ah well.  My youngest dd actually set one up for me months ago but I never could quite figure it out.  I am still trying to figure it out, in fact.

But back to the Back to the Classics Challenge.  Here are the twelve prompts:

1.  A 19th Century Classic
2.  A 20th Century Classic (must have been published by 1970 - can't be considered a classic unless it is 50 years old).
3.  Classic by a woman author
4.  Classic in translation
5.  Classic by a person of color
6.  A Genre Classic
7.  A Classic with a Name in the Title
8.  A Classic with a Place in the Title
9.  A Classic with Nature in the Title (a nature word)
10.  A Classic about a Family
11.  An Abandoned Classic
12.  A Classic Adaption  (one that has been successfully adapted to the screen)

So in conjunction with booktube, I am already participating in something called A Year with Louisa May.  Those books (one per month) I think are going to overlap at least a couple of times with some of these categories.  I just finished reading Little Women at about 12:20 a.m. on January 1st so that's going to be my #3 fulfillment - classic by a woman author.  I think I am going to make Eight Cousins be the book that fulfills the #10 prompt - a classic about a family.  Here's the list of books we are reading for the year with Louisa May.

November: Eden's Outcasts by John Matteson (I highly recommend this biography of both Louisa May and her father Bronson Alcott) December: Little Women (reread) January: Little Men (reread) February: Jo's Boys (reread)

March: Eight Cousins April: Rose In Bloom May: Hospital Sketches June: A Long Fatal Love Chase July: Work: A Story of Experience August: An Old Fashioned Girl September: Under the Lilacs

For each of the Back to the Classics Prompts:

1) 19th Century Classic - right now I am just starting to read Romola by George Eliot. I don't know if this is truly a classic as it is not one of her better known works, like Middlemarch or Adam Bede. However, her works are part of the Victorian classics cannon and it is set in Renaissance Florence so it feels very classic to me! I'm going to go with it as my entry for now.

2) 20th Century Classic - I am stealing Cleo at Classical Carousel's choice for this one! But seeing her choice reminded me that my oldest son has recommended it to me on a couple of occasions, the most recent being when he was home for Christmas. So A Canticle for Leibowitz is my choice for this category.

3) Classic by a Woman Author - Louisa May Alcott's Little Women - already done!

4) Classic in Translation - I think I will read The Hunchback of Notre Dame this year. I am also doing a Chunkster (or is it Chunker?) challenge where I am going to attempt to read six 800+ page books this year. And this was one of my picks for that. It will fulfill both the requirements.

5) Classic by a Person of Color - I had forgotten that back in November I decided that in 2020 I wanted to read more global works. One area I wanted to explore is Korea, which I have read precious little about. But my interest is piqued both because of politics but also because my youngest son decided to study Korean this year in college. I also wanted to read more about Western Africa because V is from there and I know so little. So looking through my choices, I think the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is considered a contemporary classic. It is set in Nigeria.

6) A Genre Classic - I wanted to read more mysteries this year - not sure I will do it, but I had thought to start my mystery reading out by rereading Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, which I think is widely regarded and so may be considered a genre classic? I'm counting it as such anyway!

7) A Classic with a Name in the Title - I've already begun dipping into The Little World of Don Camillo. That is a modern classic in Italy so I think it fits with this prompt.

8) A Classic with a Place in the Title - at the end of last year I discovered a classic travel writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor when I read his book A Time of Gifts about his walk from Holland to the Middle Danube. The next book is called Between the Woods and the River; On Foot from Constantinople; From the Middle Danube to the Iron Gates.

9) A Classic with 'Nature' in the Title - this means the title that has some aspect of the natural world in it. I could use entry #8 for this but I think I'll cheat just a little bit and use the Swallows and Amazons series for this category. I am reading that series also to fulfill the chunkster challenge (the rules include reading a series of books that total more than 800+ pages). So again, I am overlapping things!

10) A Classic About a Family - Louisa May Alcott's Eight Cousins will fulfill this one.

11) An Abandoned Classic - last year I finally finished The Brothers Karamozov. I loved it so much. So now I want to read more Dostoevsky. Back during a summer in college, I attempted Crime and Punishment. I got it out of the library and read up through the part where he murders his landlady. Apparently that scene was a bit too harrowing for me. I remember I had nightmares all night (note to self: don't read that particular scene right before bed!). So I was reluctant to pick it up again. I procrastinated and soon it was due back at the library and I went back to school never finishing it. Perhaps now in my 60th year, I will manage it!

12) Classic Adaptation - again I am taking Cleo at Classical Carousel's pick for this - Bleak House. However, I'm not really copying her! Because I already had Bleak House on my tbr for the chunkster challenge. And I did see the BBC adaptation first, which prompted me to buy the book, which I then never read. So it really is perfect for me for this category.

Happy New Year! 2020

I've decided to make my goals month by month rather than for a whole year.  Let's see how I do at the end of the month.

Reading:
Romola by George Eliot (started this last night)
The Tempest by Shakespeare
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (started in December, hope to finish by end of February.  It's 1,280 pages.)
Little Men by Louisa May Alcott

Domestic Arts:
Make homemade bread from scratch gf artisan bread in 5 minutes
Make tomato sauce and can it (from our garden tomatoes that I harvested and froze) *This might get moved to February.
Buy seeds for spring garden
Learn more about gardening
Declutter a bit every day
Tidy a bit every day

Weekday schedule for now:
6:00 wake by this time, dress, feed cat, coffee, read 5 minutes of Pascal's Pensees, study Latin for NLE until 7ish
7 - 4:30 - nannying duties (may have time to do a bit of housework, watch a booktube video, read or walk)
Dinners are 1x crock pot, 2x 30 minutes or less dinners, 1x pizza (Thursday nights - ESL) Friday everyone's on their own.

4:30 or so - my own free time - shower, read, study, etc.
6 or 6:30 - dinner, clean up
Evenings - read, watch TV with R
10 p.m. bed time

Fridays - laundry day

Saturdays:
Take myself to breakfast, then run all errands and weekly shopping - goal is to be home before 10 or 11 a.m.
Rest of day for fun, relaxing, napping, gardening, puttering, walking, studying, dinner, etc.
Sundays:
Mass, brunch, prayer, relaxing, reading, fun, gardening, puttering, walking, studying, dinner, etc

Church Stuff:
ASAP get Hypothermia stuff going
Season for Creation Art Display weekend of 1/11-1/12
ESL starts up 1/16?
Hypothermia Week 1/19

Classics Club Spin #22 Is . . . .

No. 13!  Which on my list means I get to read The Tempest by William Shakespeare by January 31st.  I am up for it!  It's funny because a few weeks ago a booktuber, whose channel is named Totally Pretentious* asked for help narrowing down what he'd read next and one of his choices was The Tempest.   And I voted for that.  I joked that he could read it for me and I'd watch his review.  You see, I saw an incredible production of the The Tempest at the National Shakespeare Company several years ago.  I really wasn't very familiar with the play.  I read a short summary of it before going but that was it.  I absolutely loved seeing that play.  The production was gorgeous!  The acting was wonderful!  And ever since then I've been thinking to myself I really ought to sit down and actually read the play myself.  So now I will!  And I just so happen to have a No Fear edition of The Tempest on my shelves, no doubt, left over from when my kids took a high school Shakespeare course at our homeschool co-op.


*His name is Lukas and he's a PhD candidate in Psychology and an incredible reader.  I really like his channel a lot.  Just a super smart, thoughtful, nice guy who really enjoys the intellectual life and learning about high culture (art, opera, etc). 

Check out The Classics Club!

Emil and the Detectives - Book 54

Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner is a classic German children's novel.  It was written in 1929.  I had heard about it over the years some place, not sure where!  But I saw it at a used book store recently and purchased it for a dollar.  It was a quick read and a fun one though the fact that it is set in the late 1920s in Berlin cast a shadow over the whole story.

Emil is a young man (maybe 11 or 12?) who is traveling from his small town to Berlin to visit his grandmother and cousins.  He hasn't been there for a while as he and his mother don't have a lot of money.  His father has passed away and his mother works as a hairdresser in the living room of their apartment. Emil is a very smart and sweet young man, who is very attached to his mother.  The grandmother is also rather poor and Emil's job is to bring seven pounds (money) to the grandmother.  This money has taken a while to slowly save up.  While on the train Emil falls asleep and is robbed.  He knows who did it and desperately follows the man, getting lost in Berlin and not sure how he can rectify the situation.  However, the code of boyhood and lots of helpful city boys come to the rescue.

The whole story is charmingly told.

I am currently reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and the idea of a bunch of boys banding together to fight crime in a city that was actually torn by violent political strife at the time (and which never enters the story) is an eerie and ironic reflection of what really went on with the storm troopers and the Hitler Youth.

Emil is a sweet young man and he'll be just old enough to be drafted into the Nazi army and go to war when the time comes.

The story is a fun and clever one.  The author inserts himself into the plot as a reporter which was a fun touch.

I'm glad I read this book, I'd heard about it over the years.  It's kind of an artifact of prewar Germany when perhaps people thought life was more innocent and simple.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

A Time of Gifts - Book 53

A Time of Gifts On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube by Patrick Leigh Fermor is an amazing memoir of a young man's trek across Europe in 1933-34.  Fermor's love for life and his exuberant enjoyment of all he experiences makes for a wonderful tale of adventure.  He's a young man of 18 who has been released from the confines of formal education (he could never settle down enough to follow the rules) and from training for army life.  Now he's free and he has gotten it into his head he's going to be a poet.  He plans to walk across Europe as fodder for his muse.  His good-natured mother lets him do it.  He begins in Holland, proceeds through Belgium and then into Germany and Austria, some Czechoslovakia before entering Hungary.  Hitler has just come to power and all of Europe and, indeed, the world, is on the cusp of devastating war and formerly unknown levels of evil.  But Fermor is having the time of his life.  He meets all kinds of people on the way, many hospitable and friendly.  He explores all kinds of art and history and architecture.

Fermor has an amazing talent for the English language.  His descriptive powers are marvelous.  We get to experience things as a 19 year old, but also has an older man looking back 40 years to his youth and also looking back on his time during World War II.

The book is a delight to read.  I am so happy I've discovered Fermor and plan to read the next book which continues his travels.

Five stars!!!  Two thumbs up!  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

A Day of Pleasure - Book 52

A Day of Pleasure and Other Stories for Children by Isaac Bashevis Singer was a pure pleasure to read.  This was a re-read for me.  As I read, I recalled the stories I'd first encountered many years ago.  Singer wrote in Yiddish and so all these stories have been translated into English, many by him with some other translator.  Singer won the Nobel prize for literature in 1978.  He wrote many adult novels too but they have many of the same features and same mood as these children's stories. 

The first third of the book is actually short chapters of memoirs of Singer's own childhood in the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw, just before and during World War I.  His father was a Hasidic rabbi.  His world is steeped in the Torah, the Talmud, Jewish neighbors and customs, Jewish folklore, grinding poverty, study and simple pleasures.  During World War I, the economy got so bad the family was in danger of starving to death, so they returned to their tiny village Biloray where Singer's grandfather was rabbi. 

All these stories have a sweetness to them, yet they are realistic, clear and intelligent.  Many have supernatural elements involving witches, house imps (with a name in Yiddish), dybbuks, Elijah visiting to help, angels, miracles, dreams.  Many of the stories feature Hanukkah, many feature young innocent love. 

The whole book is full of poignancy because all this takes place before the Nazi occupation and the Holocaust.  Singer himself immigrated to New York in 1935 because he feared what was happening next door in Germany.  And of course, he was right.  So a deep sadness fills these stories even as they reflect the innocence of childhood and a basic belief in a God of Creation who gave us this beautiful world.  Singer is looking back on a lost world and culture that was brutally obliterated by almost inconceivable evil. 

Two thumbs up for this exquisite book!  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.