I'll Confess Mine If You Confess Yours

Fellow readers, I have a dirty little secret to admit to you today, and I wonder how many of you out there suffer from the same...well, addiction.  What is this horrible malady, this shameful weakness of which I speak?  I think the best, most descriptive title I can give it is Luxuriating.  Book Luxuriating, to be exact, and while it's not illegal or anything, it can certainly be hard on both your wallet and your available shelf space.  Yes, folks, I confess that I sometimes buy another copy of a book that I already own, because some other publisher has released their own edition of it with a gorgeous new cover, or additional appendices--what video afficianados call "better special features"--or has restored the original illustrations.  The list of reasons can be never-ending, really.  Let me give you an example of a book that I have not yet begun Luxuriating in, but am considering it very seriously.  (Obviously, if these books are being simultaneously released by multiple publishers, we know we're dealing with classics, books for which the original publishing copyright has expired.)  Exhibit A:

Jane Eyre



Collector's Library Edition
This is the one I currently own.



Everyman's Library Edition
This is the current movie tie-in, as well.



Penguin Hardback Classics Edition
This whole series is so gorgeous,
and very reasonably priced if bought one or two at a time.
My secret ambition is to someday own them all.



Penguin Drop Caps Edition
To further torment me, Penguin is just getting ready to release
the first few volumes of this new, elegant series as well.

You see my predicament?  If you're thinking that it doesn't get much more "First World Problem" than this, you're absolutely right, and it is that very realization that makes this a problem.  It engenders guilt, you see; I mean, I don't really NEED all these different editions of one book, now do I?  What's a bibliomaniac to do?  Honestly, it's a fun problem to have, but I'd still be interested in hearing how all of you handle the issue, if you've come up with some creative solutions to the problem of Book Luxuriating.

My Re-Education Reading Challenge

Faithful few readers, I'd like to tell you a little story, and ask you how you all think it should end.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was raised as the daughter of a fundamentalist Southern Indiana Pentecostal preacher, who spent at least as much time in scary little fundamentalist schools as she did in public school--actually, a fair bit more, come to add it up.  She was assigned lots of readings describing an Earth that is only 6,000 years old, "proving" that dinosaurs and human beings once co-existed, and discussing how Noah's Ark is still stranded on a mountain in Turkey, but the mean Turkish government won't let a bunch of Americans climb around all over their mountain and prove it.  Curiously absent from the girl's reading were books written for children throughout the history of the English-speaking world, as well as classics not written for children that are usually assigned in school to teach students to stretch their minds and their critical thinking skills.  Not a single Shakespearean play, narry a mention of modern authors like Kafka or Virginia Woolf, none of the childhood favorites by Frances Hodgson Burnett managed to slip through the net of censorship cast around the girl's plastic young mind.

Some of these gaps were filled in when the young woman finally decided to attend a state-sponsored, liberal arts university.  By the time she finished her BA and three MAs, she'd read more Poe, more "Norton Anthologies," more about Yellow Wallpaper than she ever wanted to, really.  Nevertheless, the now 35-year-old book blogger is still finding books all the time about which her peers say, "Oh, yeah, I read that in high school!"  And in this season when a book blogger's fancy turns to thoughts of next year's reading challenges, this particular blogger is hoping to form a cooperative challenge with the help of her loyal readers.  Are you willing to help me in a "Re-Education Challenge"?

You guys are basically the bosses on this challenge, but I think we should set out a few basic ground rules, just to keep things running well and make sure I live up to the spirit of the thing.  So, here we go:

1.  You don't have to have a blog to challenge me; you just need to visit this blog and leave comments relating to my "Re-Education."

2.  Since this is supposed to be about exposing me to ideas that I should have encountered a long time ago, let's please restrict this to books that any well-educated American should have read before graduating high school.  In other words, if you cannot imagine HOW I've survived this long without reading 50 Shades of Grey, I'm sorry, but you still can't recommend it.  Any teacher who required his or her students to read a book about S&M would get quickly fired, and we all know it.  Still, I think this leaves you with a lot of leeway, anything from standard YA to Dickensian favorites.

3.  If by some miracle I already managed to read the book you suggest somewhere along the way, I won't be adding it to the challenge, because that would basically be me cheating, now wouldn't it?

4.  Limit 5 suggestions per contributor, please.  I'm setting the cut-off at 100 books, as I know I could never get through more than that in 2013.

5.  I reserve the right to reject anything that would simply give me too many nightmares, like Stephen King's It, which I have always known myself too well to ever try to read.  (Surely that wouldn't really fit the qualifications, anyway.)

So, come help out a poor, deprived, recovering fundamentalist and add your suggestions.  The suggestion box is open through December 31, 2012, after which I will gather the titles, weed through duplicates and ones I've already read, and announce the master list in a post.  You're welcome to read along, if you like, and leave us links to your own posts!  Meanwhile, I will update the list periodically, with reviews, as I plow my way through.

Review of "Farmer Boy"

Farmer Boy

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

 Honestly, it has taken me 25 years and several failed attempts to finally finish reading this book, and now that I have, I really have no idea why, because it is just simply DELIGHTFUL!  I was taken aback a couple of times by how much social mores and attitudes have changed, but that's always to be expected when you're reading about events that happened in the 1860s.  I must admit that I did not envy or appreciate the role of women in the book, no matter how nostalgic I may get for by-gone days, but then, some of the characters in the book commented on that same issue themselves.

When I was younger and first tried to read this but just couldn't get interested, my mom postulated that it might have been because the protagonist was a boy, and I think she was definitely on to something.  After all, I hadn't often stumbled upon many girls in books with whom I could identify as strongly as I did with little Laura Ingalls, who was as big a tomboy as I was and yet still knew how to be feminine at times.  Having finally found her, why would I want to take a break from HER exciting adventures to read about some boy?!

Many literature classes and quite a few life lessons later, however, I've since gotten over any such reservations, and it was fascinating to me to read about what Almonzo was up to when he and Laura were both children and hadn't yet met, to see the same general time period from the point of view of a more established and prosperous family than Laura's.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and recommend it to children of both genders and any age.

Review of "Mansfield Park"

Mansfield Park

by Jane Austen

Yes!  I finally read this book, and now have only Northanger Abbey to go before I can officially say that I have read the entire Jane Austen "Sacred Six"!  It's funny, I've actually read a bit of her juvenalia, but still haven't finished the "canon" yet.  I'm quite surprised at myself about it, really.

You know, the more I read Jane Austen, the more I decide that she only crafted one plot, and kept writing it over and over, improving it each time, in each novel in which she used it.  The most amazing part of the whole enterprise is that she manages to keep me glued to the page EVERY TIME!

It's not actually the same plot, of course; it's a formula of re-arranging certain required elements into different patterns, and it is that very quality that allowed Austen to DEFINE the "comedy of manners".  Someone will behave in an absolutely infamous way when judged by the standards of the time.  At least one, and usually two people will be so impossibly stupid and annoying that the reader cringes every time that character appears on the page.  At least one main character is impossibly good, usually the heroine, though not always.  The one redeeming factor of this aspect is the fact that Austen uses it as a sort of quiet rebellion; though she never actually says so, she makes it clear to the audience that the snarls to happiness would have gotten untangled much quicker if that character hadn't been such a paragon of the virtues of Jane Austen's time.

So, it goes without saying that this book was that novel again, and that like all the others, this one had its own twist, its own take on the themes.  Nothing remains to give you but spoilers and my own opinion, and as I'm diametrically opposed to all spoilers, I'll just say that I enjoyed it, I always enjoy them, even though I'd sometimes be hard-pressed to outline exactly why.  Jane Austen was an absolute genius; what else is there to be said?

Review of "The Cricket on the Hearth"

The Cricket on the Hearth

by Charles Dickens

This is the third and final Dickens Christmas Book that I read this Christmas season, which means I have finished the Christmas Spirit Challenge!  Hurray!  Yes, well, I'll try to compose myself now and write a dignified review of the book.

Those of you who have read my reviews of A Christmas Carol and The Chimes know that Mr. Dickens' Christmas works are kind of a mixed bag, but I enjoyed this one quite a bit.  The stars of our show are a married couple who are a sort of May-December romance.  They are not wealthy, but they have a cozy home, they are very kind, and they have the obligatory adorable baby, and a daft teenaged nursemaid who is definitely the comic relief.  Naturally, the plot develops around the much ado about nothing that always threatens such blissful domestic tranquility in these tales.  Having finally read this, I understand much better the origin of many Christmas cliches, especially the character of the villainous toymaker.  I don't know if that one was already old news in Dickens' time, or if we got that strange archetype from him, but either way, his version is pretty entertaining.

Unlike the other two Christmas Books, the supernatural element, though definitely present, is not quite as strong in this one.  Let's just say that of the three, this is the only one in which the "miraculous" elements could easily have just been the good agency of the hero's own mind.  With a surprise ending that I think must have inspired O'Henry, The Cricket on the Hearth is a sweet enjoyable read that ends on an unexpectedly fun note.

Review of "The Chimes"

The Chimes

by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens wrote a brief series of stories, of which A Christmas Carol was one, that were originally serialized in newspapers and have come to be known simply as The Christmas Books. None of the others achieved anything like the phenomenal fame of Scrooge's tale, however.  One of my favorite characters in fiction, Anne Shirley, once said she couldn't forgive her big liberal arts college for not being the small, local teacher's training school that she attended first.  I think some of my response to The Chimes is simply an inability to forgive the book for NOT being A Christmas Carol.

Basically, this book is the original "It's a Wonderful Life."  Dickens seemed to feel that the intervention of the supernatural into the affairs of men was one of the required elements for his Christmas Books, so like the Jimmy Stewart film, The Chimes takes us on an unexpected metaphysical adventure.  Our guides, however, are not angels, but spirits who have a somewhat more sinister feel.

One aspect of this book that surprised and, I must confess, annoyed me, was the intended target of Dickens' morality tale.  The wealth, greed, callous behavior and blissful unconsciousness of the world around them often displayed by the well-to-do in Dickens are simply a backdrop in this tale, a fact of life that must be accepted and expected in this uncaring world.  Dickens' lesson is intended for the poor, and it is simply that any moment of losing faith and hope is every bit as wicked as Scrooge's years of grinding usury.  No matter what crushing experiences we may face in life, we must carry on, believing that life will not always be so dark; refusing to do so, at least for Dickens' characters, can lead to dire consequences.

This is certainly a fine and very necessary moral, one of which I need to be reminded periodically as regular readers of this blog are no doubt aware.  Still, it was as if Dickens had slapped Bob Cratchett for crying when Tiny Tim died.

Having said all that, however, I do not wish to leave you with a false impression.  This is a decent read, interesting enough to keep me asking "what happens next" until the very end, which is the most basic criterion for reading a book, isn't it?  I simply felt that the plot moved a little slowly at times, and did not always hang together as coherently as I would have expected.  If you enjoy Dickens, you need to add this one to your TBR pile.  If he's not usually your cup of tea, you're quite safe skipping The Chimes.

Review of "A Christmas Carol"

Oh, good grief!  How can anyone still offer a review of "A Christmas Carol", as if this story hasn't been done to freakin' death?!  Yeah, I know.  But I read it for The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge, and my policy is, if I read it, I get to review it.  Especially a book that I have this much history with.  It was fascinating to compare my view of it now with what I remembered of it from having last read it when I was about 11.

A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens
(Completely useless side note:  Did you know the man had 10 children?!)

Do we REALLY need a synopsis of this one?  I'm kind of doubting it.  Stingy miser.  Four ghosts (total; think carefully).  Change of heart.  " 'God bless us every one,' said Tiny Tim the last of all."  Let's move on.

My strongest overriding impression throughout this book was, "I read this when I was ELEVEN?!"  I have a pretty clear memory of what my vocabulary and field of experience contained at that point in my life, and I have no idea how I got past about page 5 of this book at that age.  There are just so many historical and cultural references to everyday British Victorian life that I know must have sailed right past me.  However, I have some vague memory also of plunging straight on, knowing that I was alreay familiar with the outlines of the tale from television and films, and that it didn't really matter that much to the story what a "cravat" was.  (Now that I know what a cravat is, it still doesn't matter that much to the story, frankly, so I guess I was right.)

Still, I enjoyed the book a lot more this time, when I could grasp so many more of its subtle nuances.  Those of you who participate in Wondrous Words Wednesday will know that I dedicated an entire post to the number of English words which have changed meaning since Dickens penned them, which was educational in itself and also quite fun to investigate.

Believe it or not, this book did contain one big surprise for me, as I had completely forgotten some of the more nuanced elements.  My beloved husband, aka Good Man Michael, often complains that Dickens was the beginning of the end of the Western world seeing Christmas primarily as a religious holiday.  He used to insist that good old Charles made us all think mostly of social justice issues, rather than the birth of Christ, around this time of year.  I can fully understand why he thought so--he's never read the book!!  He's only ever seen the same 40,000 adaptations of it that we've all watched over the years.  Even I had begun to think he was right, until I read the book and discovered that Dickens makes his views of "the Reason for the Season" extremely clear.  (I really kind of hate that phrase, by-the-way--it's so kitsch and cliche and smarmy.  But, in this case, it gets the point across.)  He also has a few choice words for those religious leaders who were actually contributing to the misery of the London poor. 

A Christmas Carol is both feel-good Christmas story and harsh indictment in pretty much equal measure.  I think maybe that's why we all go back to it year after year.