Sunday, April 27, 2008
Book #12 - Bleak House (Charles Dickens)
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The End of the Mill on the Floss (Spoiler Alert!)
Sunday, April 20, 2008
The Characters on the Floss
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Times Have Changed
In my mind the Victorian era was really the height of the novel. I mean seriously, how many of the great novels came out in the 1800s? Lots! And if you think about it, what else did folks have to do then for entertainment? It's hard to fathom, but there was no internet or TV or radio or recorded music. You couldn't talk to friends on the telephone. So what could one do at home at night for entertainment (besides drink oneself into a stupor)? Seems to me like reading and talking and playing a musical instrument were the only possibilities. So it's no wonder that books like "The Mill on the Floss" move at a slower pace, and are so rich and dense. Folks had more time to focus and savor the written word and ruminate about what they were reading, without the distractions of the modern day. Like blogging.
Plot update: Maggie and Tom have grown up, and their father loses the mill, having lost his lawsuit. The winner of the lawsuit buys the mill and lets the family stay on and work for him. Tom has become quite industrious, and is working and saving to help his father pay off his legal debts. Meanwhile, Maggie has reacted to the family's loss by undergoing some kind of spiritual experience, having read a book by the medieval monk Thomas A Kempis. It seems like she decides to live a life focusing on the troubles of others, and not living for her own wants and desires. Yeah, good luck pulling that one off, Maggie. It doesn't seem like her at all. We'll see how it goes. As one of my wife's southern relatives likes to say "You can't keep your nature crouched down".
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Vocabulary
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Book #11 - The Mill on the Floss (George Eliot)
Well, I've left the pre-Civil War America and taken a jaunt back to Merry Olde England. Same time period, just across the pond. The book is George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss". I thoroughly enjoyed "Silas Marner" and I'm eager to enjoy this one as well. I'm about 100 pages in, and it hasn't let me down so far. Yet the book is quite different from "Silas Marner". That book seemed something like a fable. The characters and the story had almost a mythical quality. But "The Mill on the Floss" is different. Here the characters are all quite human, and in wonderful ways. Let me just say that George Eliot rocks! It's not just her language that's so wonderful, though it is...thick and rich like maple syrup. It's her characters which she draws so well that they seem alive.