The Reading List

What I am reading:

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (via audia tapes)

What I want to read:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade shaped the World, by William Bernstein

The University Time Leech

I was once told that the amount of time available to read novels while at university would drastically decrease. I kind of laughed, and said that I would be an exception to that world, because it is well...me.

Well, they were half right. It is hard to find time. But, in the 2 and a half weeks I have been at school, I have read two novels. That is a great accomplishment by some people's standards, but this is averaging less that one book a week, and for me, this is, really, very low. I managed to read the sequel to Confessions of a Shopaholic, and Cheaper by the Dozen.

The two recent movies, Cheaper by the Dozen, and Cheaper by the Dozen 2, are modern adaptations made from the original novel written in the earlier decades of the 20th Century. There is also an older adaptation that follows the book fairly well, and is quite amusing. I don't know if I saw the older or the newer adaptation first, but I do know that I discovered the book sitting on my bookshelf soon after I saw the old adaptation.

The book is charming. The story of 12 children and their cooky adventures is a true story, and one that is lovingly written by two of the children that grew up in the Gilbreth family. It is really a biography of their father, and to a large extent their mother, who defined and drove the family in all its peculiarities. It is laugh out loud funny too, and one that is worth pulling off the bookshelf to read at least once per annum.

What I like about a book that contains people of all different ages and stages of life, is that everyone can relate, and find something relevant. I especially understand the plights of the teenage girls, as they deal with boys, brothers, and life with a large family. I guess it becomes more enjoyable because I can relate to the logistical nightmare of having a big family; I am the oldest of five children.

Note to self: Find the sequel Bells on their Toes from the library.

Not a Cliché

I have no powerful opening sentence for this post, but to say that I have stumbled across a literary treasure. For some reason in the past, I had no desire to delve into the pages of this classic piece of English literature. I speak of Sherlock Holmes. I'm not sure why I was never interested in it. Perhaps I thought it cliché. The characters by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are so ingrained in popular culture and media that I thought I already knew Sherlock; wrong!

The plot lines of the books are amazing, but that is not so much what drew me in. I started reading A Study in Scarlet earlier this summer. I didn't have much free time, but when I had five or ten minutes, I could be found pouring over the book, in an attempt to hear Sherlock's latest remark on the case at hand. I finished A Study in Scarlet, and found myself immediately flipping the page for the next novel. I have since finished reading The Sign of the Four.

The character of Sherlock has so much depth. As much as I hate to use the over-used phrase, he leaps off the page. He has a way of noticing the world around him that is beyond what an average mind can comprehend. Though he is literary, he is large as life. Just reading it makes me want to be more observant. Here is an example of how it has affected me: This is a excerpt from A Scandal in Bohemia:

"You see but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room?"

"Frequently."

"How often?"

"Well, some hundreds of times."

"Then how many are there?"

This passage drove me crazy. I went to count my own stairs (which number 14, by the way).

Sherlock can also create disguises very well. The character of Dr. Watson comments that when Sherlock puts on a disguise for a case, his personality, speech, and movement also change. He said that, "The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime." (A Scandal in Bohemia) He can also tell about the type of servant a person has from looking at their shoes, and can differentiate between Russians, French, and Germans writing letters in English; but, this is only after he tells Dr. Watson precisely where the paper the letter was written on was made.

Every time I read a Sherlock Holmes adventure, my mind is blown, something I do not say lightly.

This post ends here; I need to return to the stories of a certain consulting detective.

A Sheldon Cooper Moment

I got my new laptop yesterday, and one of the first things that I did with it was to catalog my book collection. It is something that I have always wanted to do, but decided to wait and do when I got a laptop. I found a freeware application for my macbook that allows me to form databases, and I added fields such as author, publisher, publishing date, et cetera. I had done about 30 books, when a scene from a recently re-watched episode of Big Bang Theory jumped into my head.

I've included a link for this clip of youtube. I had this flash of horror when I realized that I had become Sheldon Cooper. But then again, I'm writing this on a macbook, so I must be safe.

A Grisly Series

While at the cottage I picked up a rather old looking volume from the bookshelf and spent a few hours "perusing" it. It was Robert Louis Stevenson's New Arabian Nights.

In the front cover was a picture that looks something like this one:

This is, quite frankly, the ruggedly handsome face that I had come to expect the author of such romantic prose and poetry to possess. Take a look at that moustache!

The book is actually a compilation of short stories in which a small group of characters regularly pop up, and intertwine all the story lines. The first group of stories made up a sub-section called, "The Suicide Club". What an awful title! The three stories feature a Bohemian prince and an English gentlemen who together try to catch all the members of a dangerous "club" which take turns murdering each other or being murdered. Obviously recruitment must happen for the continued vivacity of the club!

Other than the grisly nature of the story, the thing that struck me was a feeling like the plot line never seemed finished, or nearing a literary climax. So curious did this make me that I did a reckie on the origins and publication of the book to make sure that I wasn't dreaming all this up.

It turns up that my instincts are right up to snuff. The stories, R. L. Stevenson's first published works, were written as periodicals for a few newspapers. The stories were intentionally written so that anyone could pick one up an read it, but using the same characters for continued readership. It was an interesting read, but a little odd.

Plunged back into Victorian times

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."- Jane Eyre

I am so overwhelmed by my newly found love for this book that I hardly know where to begin. Written about a half century after Jane Austen published her novels, Jane Eyre is a wonderful story, and I need no convincing to classify it as a classic piece of English literature.

Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyre in 1847 under the pseudnym Currer Bell. Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were the names that the Bronte sisters had given themselves, to use in publishing. Both of Charlotte's sisters wrote novels as well. I have tried to read some of the other Bronte works, such as Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, but could never really get into them. Jane Eyre is the most popular work to come from that literary family, and the only one that I had a strong desire to keep reading. I got so into it, that I read 4/5 of it in a day. It is also a very long book. Most editions are over 400 pages, making it one of the largerst novels that I have ever read.

I really loved the character of Jane. Her mein isn't contained in the pages. She has real struggles, and believable feelings. It was extremely refreshing; I cannot recall the last time that a character has seemed so alive to me. She is also not a "perfect" heroine. She makes mistakes, and has to ask for forgiveness a lot. She, over the course of the novel, comes to know that she is a sinner, and Christ holds the key to forgiveness. Faith is a prominent theme, and I think that in the character of Jane, a lot of the values that Charlotte herself held, can be seen.

From the beginning of the book, the ending is extremely predictable, but events between the beginning and end are not. The plot twists are crazy enough to suck someone in, but real enough that they are not unbelievable. Events that might seem cliche aren't; Charlotte Bronte did it first, and mastered it. Aside from the plot, the manner in which the narrator, Jane, speaks is engaging too. Compared with our difficulty of reading old English prose of the same period, Charlotte's prose is clear and enjoyable. It has style without being wordy. It is timeless enough that I reached only once for a dictionary; the word, by the way, was "conflagration," which means "a destructive fire;" Good to know.

Another thing I noticed was the attention to detail. Even the most minute action of a minor character is recorded, without making the flow of the story slow down or feel monotonous. When I write fiction, I find myself taking out many of the interesting little details, because I find that it burdens my writing. Charlotte Bronte has no such problem. Jane Eyre, is full of detail, and the talent of the author can be seen in the fact that her description is never boring.

I hope that if you have not already done so, you will pick up Jane Eyre, and give it a whirl. It is delightful, and I cannot remember when a novel grabbed hold of me in such a way. Happy reading to you.

Nostalgia Trip

There was a book that my father read to me as a child. It was a Dr. Seuss book called On Beyond Zebra. In the book, a young boy grows bored of using the same 26 letters of the alphabet, and searches to see what it would be like to go, "on beyond" the z in zebra. I loved the crazy sounds that his new alphabet made, and would often read it aloud to my younger siblings (they however got annoyed that I pronounced "zebra" and "zed" the British way!).

While I could never exhaust the deep well of Jane Austen, I wonder, "what else is out there." The desire to continue blogging paired with some great books that I am reading led to On Beyond Austen, if I might be permitted to borrow a catchy turn of phrase from Dr. Suess.

I hope that you will check in every once and a while to see what is on my reading palate. The contents of this blog are not confined to classic literature, but since that is what I usually read, that will comprise the majority of this blog. I will also not promise to blog, for example, every week. I have nothing to prove, so I feel no guilt in not publishing regularily.

I'm glad to have you back, devoted readers. See you around.