Day Nine-- Summer Reading

Here are a couple of reviews on books I've read or am reading this summer. Besides The Alchemist and Crime and Punishment, I also read the Stieg Larsson series (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and The Book Thief. Very good for me as I'm a slow reader. I know, I know, English teachers are supposed to rip through them, but I just can't--maybe because I'm a writer too?

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Mixed feelings about it. Really liked it in some places and then other times it was too heavy-handed for my taste. I did really like some of the writing. I'll add some of my favorite quotes later.

Here's one of my favorite quotes:

"But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood,....It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as a part of a search for something believed in and desired" (62).



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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Read years ago in college, but I wanted to read it again.

I'm just starting the third chapter--slow because I'm trying to read too many books at once, but I remember now how brilliant Dostoyevsky is and why I love this book.

Here's the speech by the drunkard Marmeladov who has reached the depth of his despair: "...He will summon us. 'You too come forth,' He will say. 'Come forth, ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children of shame!' And the wise ones and those of understanding will say, 'Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these men?' And He will say, 'This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.' And He will hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down before Him...and we shall weep...and we shall understand all things! Then we shall understand all!...and all will understand, Katerina Ivanovna even...she will understand..."

Oh my. That is astounding.

Here's another great quote (Part II, Chapter 5) and very apropos, I must say.

"What answer had your lecturer in Moscow to make to the question why he was forging notes? 'Everybody is getting rich one way or another, so I want to make haste to get rich too.' I don't remember the exact words, but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We've grown used to having everything ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for us. Then the great hour struck, and every man showed himself in his true colours."

Quite fits, doesn't it? Uncomfortably so.



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Day Eight--I'm going to England!

Ever since I watched the old black and white version of Midsummer Night's Dream when I was just a wee lassie, I've been an anglophile. I was only about seven or eight years old, and I understood very little of what was said, but I thought the physical humor was hilarious! I still have that image of Puck, with his tiny horns, in my head all these years later.

As I was growing up, before the days of cable, yes, I know, I am old, my mother used to watch Masterpiece Theatre and later Mystery on Public TV. Through those shows I learned to love British literature. Watching I, Claudius, The Pallisers, The Barchester Chronicles, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Bleak House, introducing me to four of my favorite British authors, Robert Graves, Anthony Trollope, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Oh, and there were so many more.

Then came Mystery! I watched faithfully and became enthralled with the police procedural/detective story set in Britain: Prime Suspect, Inspector Morse (and now Lewis), Poirot, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Adam Dagliesh (P.D. James). Oh, I just couldn't get enough.

And how can I forget the comedy: Fry and Laurie, French and Saunders, Fawlty Towers, Are You Being Served, Benny Hill, The Young Ones, and of course, my favorite, Monty Python's Flying Circus. The Spam skit still cracks me up, and Bicycle Repair Man, and Argument Clinic and the cheese shop and the Grand Inquisitor and the Lumberjack song and...and... and. Oh, how I loved to laugh, even when I didn't really get the joke. It just sounded funny.

And all those great British actors: Alan Rickman, Derek Jacobi, Anthony Andrews, Susan Hampshire, Daniel Craig, Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, Hugh Laurie, the list goes on and on.

My favorite courses in undergraduate school were Victorian Literature and 17th Century British Literature. In graduate school one of my areas of concentration was 19th Century British Literature, and at Blue Ridge Community College, where I work, I teach British Literature I and II.

But I've never been to England!

In a couple of weeks, the long drought ends. I go to England for five glorious days. Riots or no riots, I'm going. It's a theater tour arranged by a dear friend of mine. We'll see three plays--Richard III starring Kevin Spacey, Andrew Lloyd Webber's production of The Wizard of Oz, and Warhorse, winner of five Tony awards, including Best Play. We'll also visit some of the famous sights and generally drink in the London atmosphere--away from the tear gas, I hope. I'm getting excited just typing this. To see plays and some of the sights of London that I've only read about is such a special gift. I don't know how I will repay my friend for her generosity.

I suppose I can best repay her by enjoying this trip as much as I possibly can and bringing home to my students a deeper understanding of the great literature of Mother England.