The Waste Land and Other Writings by T.S. Eliot

October 18, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Borders Classics, 2007. Originally published 1922. 151 pgs. Purchased. This collection of poems and essays includes a selection of Eliot’s poems written between 1917 and 1920, critical essays on poetry and the nature of criticism itself from 1917 to 1923, and “The Waste Land”, which was published in 1922 and is largely considered Eliot’s masterpiece. Poetry is not a particular love of mine; I often find myself caught up in cleverness of the rhyme rather than the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry • Tags: T.S. Eliot

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

August 23, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Ann Arbor Media Group, 2006. Originally published 1826. 414 pgs. Purchased. Set in 1757 during the French and Indian War (or, Seven Years’ War for non-Americans), the second novel in Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales follows two young women named Cora and Alice Munro as they travel through the woods from Fort Edward to join their father at Fort William Henry. The two women are escorted by Major Duncan Heyward of the British Army and a singing teacher named Gamut, and […]

Categories: 101 Great Books, 2018 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, New England, North America, United States • Tags: James Fenimore Cooper

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

March 14, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Maggie Gyllenhaal. HarperAudio, 2016. Originally published 1963. 7 hours, 24 minutes. Library copy. Sylvia Plath’s novel opens with her main character, Esther Greenwood, in the midst of spending the summer in New York City. Having won a fashion magazine’s contest, Esther is being mentored by editors and writers on both her chosen field and the state of her complexion — a combination of feminism and femininity — as she and the eleven other winners of the […]

Categories: 101 Great Books, 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, New England, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Sylvia Plath

The Classics Club: Two Years Later

July 15, 2016 by Christina

Two years ago today, I put together a list of seventy-five classics I wanted to read by July 15, 2017 and, thus, joined The Classics Club. Last year, I reflected back on my progress — how many books I had read so far (16 from the list + eight other classics), how I overcame my fear of Edith Wharton, and how I tackled one of the longest books on my list. This year? I’ve read two books — Far From the Madding Crowd by […]

Categories: Bookish Notes, Classics Club

The Iliad by Homer

February 8, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Translated from the Greek by Stanley Lombardo. Read by Stanley Lombardo and Susan Sarandon. Parmenides Audio, 2006. Originally published 800 BC. 15 hours, 13 minutes. Library Copy. Grouped into twenty-four books (or, chapters), Homer’s saga covers a series of battles during the final year of the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states lead by King Agamemnon. The war was launched because the Trojan prince Paris took Helen from her husband and the King of Sparta, Menelaus, after […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fiction, Greek, Translated • Tags: Homer, Stanley Lombardo, Susan Sarandon

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

December 10, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — eBook. Amazon Kindle, 2012. Originally published 1874. 512 pgs. Free download. Hardy’s novel focuses on the follies of the heart with the heroine, Bathsheba Everdene,  falling for the superficial rather than the practical. At the beginning of the novel, young Bathsheba tells her first suitor, a promising sheep farmer named Gabriel Oak, that she should never want to marry him because she’s afraid he could never tame her the way a wife needs to be tamed in order for the marriage to work. […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Chunkster, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Thomas Hardy

The Classics Club: One Year Later

August 15, 2015 by Christina

A year ago today, I decided to join The Classics Club and created a list of seventy-five classics I would like to read within a three year period. I said in my introductory post that I hoped to read twenty-five classics each year and, a year later, I’ve read sixteen books off of my original list plus an additional eight books that could also be considered classics. All of my book reviews for those titles I’ve read for the club are available […]

Categories: Bookish Notes, Classics Club

Beloved by Toni Morrison

May 15, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — print. Vintage, 2008. Originally published 1987. 324 pgs. Library copy. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988, this tale focuses on Sethe, a young salve who escaped to Ohio to join her mother-in-law (although her marriage to Halle was not legally binding) and her three other children, and the young daughter named Denver that Sethe was pregnant with during her escape. Eighteen years after her arrival in Ohio, she and her youngest daughter, Denver, live together in […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, Nobel Prize, North America, Pulitzer Prize, United States • Tags: Toni Morrison

Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson

March 25, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — print. Borders, 2006. 212 pgs. Purchased. Now acknowledged as one of the greatest American poets, Dickinson wrote over 1,100 poems and only six of those were published — without her permission, too — during her lifetime. This collection arranges over 100 of her poems into four categories — Life, Love, Nature, and Time and Eternity — and includes a longer poem known as The Single Hound. I don’t consider myself a great fan of poetry, and I find […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, North America, Poetry, United States • Tags: Emily Dickinson

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

January 7, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Anna Fields. Blackstone Audio, 2004. Originally published 1905. 13 hours, 42 minutes. Library copy. Set against the backdrop of the 1890s New York upper class society, Wharton’s fourth novel tells the story of Lily Bart, an unmarried woman, beginning with her visit to Lawrence Selden’s apartment. Lily has feelings for Lawrence but must marry a wealthier man in order to keep her social standing. An unexpected visit by Lawrence causes her to change her mind […]

Categories: 101 Great Books, 2015 Reads, AP Literature, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Anna Fields, Edith Wharton

A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

January 6, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — print. HarperCollins, 1981. 175 pgs. Purchased. Here in the attic of Shel Silverstein you will find Backward Bill, Sour Face Ann, the Meehoo with an Exactlywatt, and the Polar Bear in the Frigidaire. You will talk with Broiled Face and find out what happens when somebody steals your knees; you will get caught by the Quick-Digesting Gink and find out what happens when they put a brassiere on a camel. “They’ve put a brassiere on the camel. She […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, Juvenile • Tags: Shel Silverstein

Roots by Alex Haley

January 5, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Avery Brooks. BBC Audio, 2007. Originally published 1976. 30 hours, 7 minutes. Library copy. Subtitled “The Saga of an American Family”, Haley’s book begins in the eighteenth century with the story of Kunta Kinte, a young African male of the Mandinka people captured from present-day Gambia and sold into slavery in 1767. The story progresses through the lives of seven generations of Kunta Kinte’s descendants and is largely based upon the stories passed down to […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Africa, Audiobook, Chunkster, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, North America, Pulitzer Prize, United States • Tags: Alex Haley, Avery Brooks