A Word for Wednesday

"Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. 

Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, 

spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. 

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: 

for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; 

and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived a faithfully hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

~from Middlemarch by George Eliot~

Let's Bust a Recap : A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Okay, we're going to start off this final week of September/first week of October (what?!) with the book that's been hanging out in the To Be Blogged About pile the longest. Last year, I completely lost my blogging rhythm (I attribute this solely to the fact that I joined the world of Instagram), and when the time rolled around to document what I read in 2019, I realized there were seven books that I had intended to write recaps for that remained recap-less. Now, I don't write recaps for every single book I read. I don't usually put in the time for re-reads, and some books I just don't care about recapping. But these seven were still out, waiting for their spot on the blog, and I just hadn't gotten to them. I decided to re-evaluate, took your comments into consideration, and determined that I really did want to write recaps for three of the seven: King Lear, The Count of Monte Cristo, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. And now, over nine months after finishing it, I'm finally getting around to recapping A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and officially catching up on backlogged posts for 2019. You know. In this completely self-imposed, non-paying chore hobby of blogging. (Feel free to roll your eyes at me all you want; there's a lot of it going on in this house already.)

Alright, alright, enough rambling already. Let's get down to the actual recap, right? 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn published in 1943 is the first (and most acclaimed) novel of Betty Smith. It is considered one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century and was particularly popular among WWII soldiers as it was one of the Armed Services Edition books shipped for free to American military service personnel. Smith said she received ten times more fan mail from servicemen than she did from anyone else. 

In it, we meet our leading character Francie Nolan and read about her life from ages 11 through 17 growing up in the tenements in Brooklyn with her fun-loving brother Neeley, alcoholic father Johnny, hardworking mother Katie, and other extended family, particularly Katie's sisters and mother, the other Rommely women. The story of Francie details the personal dreams and desires of our avid book-loving protagonist while living in poverty in the early 1900s but more broadly portrays the hopes of early 20th century immigrants to rise above poverty through their children. Francie is ultimately symbolized by our title tree that tenaciously grows in the midst of the tenements despite almost impossible conditions. 

The novel is largely an autobiographical account of Betty Smith's own childhood growing up as the oldest daughter of poor German-American immigrants, and it is sad. There are so many people who dearly love this novel and laud its hopefulness and the picture of Francie rising out of poverty, but my heart ached for this young girl and her strained relationship with her mother, her grief over the father she idolized as he grappled with alcoholism and eventually succumbed to an early death, her struggle to get an education from teachers who were just too overworked and overwhelmed to really care about the young minds walking into their classrooms each day. While I smiled at many of Francie's and Neeley's antics as young Brooklyn kids, the novel left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I hated finding out that Francie's first young love was just some boy on a trip to the big city using her, and I wished the whole book through that she and her mother could just connect. I wanted so desperately for the Nolan family to find the true source of Hope instead of fulfilling the requirements of an empty religion.

I see why the book was a success, and I definitely get why it was so popular among young servicemen during the war, many of whom I am sure could intimately relate to the Nolan family and their experiences. I think it's an excellent novel, and I would much rather read a book that makes my heart ache than one that doesn't make me feel anything at all or worse, makes me regret spending the time to read it in the first place (lookin' at you, Kite Runner). 

But ultimately, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn left me feeling melancholy and even though it's a book I would actually recommend, I'm not sure if I'll ever revisit it myself. Does that make sense? Have you ever read a book that you thought was really good, but you were just sad that it made you sad? I loved the Nolan family, and I just really, really wanted them to be happy. You know?

If you take anything away from this recap, please take away the fact that almost a year later, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is still making me feel big feelings. And those are the kind of books that I think are worth reading. Those are the books I set out to read when I came up with this little blog about Reading the Best Books First. 

A Word for Wednesday

"We mortals, men and women, 

devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; 

keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, 

and in answer to inquiries say, 'Oh, nothing!' 

Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts—not to hurt others."

~from Middlemarch by George Eliot~

"Victorian Lady in a Rose Hat" by Sue Halstenberg

Let's Bust a Recap : The Four Loves

Okay, this has exactly zero to do with today's recap but first things first: Blogger has changed EVERYTHING and in my very mature, grown-up, totally zen, go-with-the-flow-man opinion: it's stupid and I hate it. We all know I'm not a tech-savvy individual in the first place and CHANGE IS HARD, y'all. If there's anyone out there reading this who can do anything about it, make the option to revert to legacy Blogger interface permanent, prettypleasewithacherryontop! (And before you tell me to go leave "official" feedback for Google: done.)

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, on to today's recap. The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis was published in 1960 and explores the nature of love from a Christian and philosophical perspective. My edition of this book is about 80 pages long and is actually included in a larger collection entitled "The Beloved Works of C.S. Lewis" which includes four of his books, the only other one of which I've read is Surprised by Joy. Even though in regards to length this is a somewhat brief treatise on the topic of love, it was dense and took me several days to read and absorb, much like The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God by D.A. Carson did a couple of years ago.

So let's break it down a little bit. Lewis introduces The Four Loves by talking about his intention to contrast what he calls "Need-love" (such as a child's need for his mother) with "Gift-love" (God's love for humanity) and disparaging "Need-love" in comparison. But in exploring this idea further, he quickly came to the realization that these basic categorizations of love are much more complex than they may at first seem. 

He goes on in his second chapter to develop the idea that in our love for the sub-human (i.e. love of nature or love of country), we find an additional categorization of love: Appreciative love. Throughout the rest of the book, Lewis shows how each of these three categories of love (Need-love, Gift-love, and Appreciative love) work themselves out within the four different types of love humans experience: Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity. 

He devotes one chapter to each of these four types of love and that's the book. In each chapter, he defines the love and gives positive examples; then he goes on to show how that love can be perverted if it's made out to be the absolute sovereign of a human life and gives negative examples. 

For instance, when two people discover a special common interest like stamp-collecting, a friendship may arise. These two can find fulfillment and enjoyment in their mutual friendship, but when they elevate this bond to the highest place, they are prone to become snobbish or exclusive thus distorting the love of friendship and corrupting it to something base. 

The only love that isn't susceptible to this kind of perversion is Charity or the divine love of God. Affection, Friendship, and Eros are what Lewis considers natural loves which must be contained by Charity in order to retain their integrity. He starts off his chapter on Charity like this:

William Morris wrote a poem called "Love Is Enough" and someone is said to have reviewed it briefly in the words "It isn't." Such has been the burden of this book. The natural loves are not self-sufficient. Something else, at first vaguely described as "decency and common sense," but later revealed as goodness, and finally as the whole Christian life in one particular relation, must come to the help of the mere feeling if the feeling is to be kept sweet. To say this is not to belittle the natural loves but to indicate where their real glory lies. (emphasis mine)

While I found The Four Loves very interesting and ultimately helpful, it took my full and undivided concentration to read. It's certainly not a book to be read quickly or casually, and it's one that will definitely be improved upon with rereading. As has become par for the course with Lewis, I was floored by his brilliant analogies and ability to follow a thought to its logical and rational end in a concise and intelligent manner. What a writer.

I'm thinking I may need to follow The Four Loves up with Till We Have Faces in 2021 which is Lewis' fictional treatment of the same subject, but I'm also very interested in reading Present Concerns and his space trilogy so who knows where I'll end up. Any advice?

Let's Bust a Recap : Middlemarch

Ah, Middlemarch. The book that wouldn't end. This is not, in actuality, the longest book I've ever read, but it sure felt like it. I started reading this tome at the very beginning of March and didn't turn the final page until the tale end of July. Five solid months. Though to be fair, I largely ignored it for all of April. I know there are a lot of fans of this classic out there, but I can't say I've joined your ranks. 

Middlemarch was written by Mary Ann Evans under the pen name George Eliot and originally published in eight installments in 1871 and 1872. In it, we follow the lives of Dorothea and Celia Brooke, Reverend Edward Casaubon and Sir James Chettam, Tertius Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy, Fred Vincy and Mary Garth, and Camden Farebrother and Will Ladislaw among a host of others, but these were the ones I was most interested in so they're the ones I'll mention. They all live in the fictitious village of Middlemarch and the novel is mainly about who marries who and how that goes for them. While the portraits Eliot paints of each character are penetrating and real and the situations complex and compelling, none of the characters were likable (except Farebrother who ends up with the rawest deal of them all) and all the politics of early 19th century provincial life had me falling asleep every time I was trying to read (what a slog). I was expecting something in the vein of Jane Austen, but what I got was something akin to the wordiness of Dickens married to the obscure politics of Tolstoy. 

For all that, this is not a bad novel. My sister-in-law read this along with me (although she was smart enough to tackle it via audio) and when I finally finished (months after she did), I told her that the entire novel was almost worth it for the very last sentence of the book alone. I mean, Eliot writes the absolute glorification of and resulting disillusionment with marriage in the cases of Dorothea and Casaubon and Rosamond and Lydgate with heartbreaking accuracy. She portrays the ruinous effect a completely self-absorbed wife (*cough*Rosamond*cough*) or an indifferent, neglectful husband (lookin' at you, Casaubon) can have on a marital relationship with poignancy. And her depiction of the acute strain financial hardship puts on a couple was strikingly vivid. Eliot managed to evoke strong emotions in me with her writing; unfortunately, they were mainly the negative emotions of frustration and exasperation. I wanted to shake Dorothea and smack Rosamond around a bit. I think the biggest problem I had was that my expectations were out of line with what ended up being my actual experience. I went into books like Anna Karenina and The Count of Monte Cristo being intimidated by their length and the fact that they were classic works in translation, then ended up being pleasantly surprised; whereas I approached Middlemarch with enthusiasm and ended up being underwhelmed and a bit disappointed even. 

Overall, I don't regret reading Middlemarch. I maybe didn't choose the best time to read it or approach it with the right mindset, but after the deaths of Thackeray (in 1863) and Dickens (in 1870) George Eliot became recognized as the greatest living English novelist at that time and Middlemarch is largely considered her greatest work though I tend to agree with the critic who said it was "overwrought and would have benefited from hastier composition". Interestingly, I learned in writing this post that Middlemarch is included in the same list as Ballet Shoes (which I also read this year) of the BBC's 100 Most Inspiring Novels, and it shows up on most every list the BBC puts together of exceptional novels. 

Would I recommend it? I mean, probably not if we're being honest. It's not one I'll be revisiting in future; but for its place in the canon of Victorian literature it might be worth a go if you're willing to give it some time.

I have one other Eliot novel in my collection—Daniel Deronda—but after making it through Middlemarch, I may call it quits with Eliot and stick Daniel Deronda in a Little Free Library somewhere. 

What do you think? Do I need to give Eliot another chance, and if so, what book can I not miss?

Let's Bust a Recap : Ballet Shoes

Okay, you guys, I've wanted to read the Shoe Books ever since 1998 when I first saw You've Got Mail which is one of my all time favorite movies to this day. In the movie, Kathleen Kelly's little Shop Around the Corner has just closed and she makes her way to the children's section in Fox Books. A frazzled mom comes in looking for the "Shoe Books" and Kathleen Kelly proceeds to tell the clueless sales associate everything he needs to know to find the books. Click here to watch the scene. It's a gem.

I've never been able to find the books but in 2018, they got a makeover and were republished by Random House Children's Books. I immediately added the four books mentioned in You've Got Mail to my amazon wishlist and my sweet husband (ever my book-enabler) got them for me for my birthday last year. It was a no-brainer for a Shoe Book to have a slot on my 2020 book list, and naturally I had to follow Kathleen Kelly's advice to start with Ballet Shoes (her favorite). 

And the flawless Kathleen Kelly did not lead me astray. I enjoyed every charming second with this lovely children's novel.

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild was originally published in 1936 by J.M. Dent & Sons. It was Streatfeild's first book for children, and since its publication it has been adapted twice for the screen and also been included on BBC's list of the 100 Most Inspiring Novels. In it, we are introduced to Pauline, Petrova, and Posy Fossil; three adopted sisters who were each discovered as babies by Great-Uncle-Matthew (lovingly referred to as "Gum") and sent back home to his niece Sylvia who raises them with the help of her childhood nanny, Nana. When Gum doesn't return home from his expedition abroad in the promised five years, Sylvia falls into financial hardship and decides to take on boarders to help make ends meet. One of the boarders helps Sylvia arrange to have the girls enrolled in the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training so that they can learn a skill that will help provide for themselves and the household. 

I loved every minute. The girls' unique personalities and talents, their relationships with the boarders who become like family, the lessons they learn; with each turn of the page I couldn't stop smiling. Highly recommend you give this one a look and then just for fun, go watch You've Got Mail. I can't wait for my next Shoe Book. (Next in publication order would be Theater Shoes, but I'm tempted to skip ahead to Skating Shoes as that's the other one Kathleen Kelly particularly loves.)

Have you read any of the Shoe Books? Have you ever been inspired to read something just because it was mentioned in a movie or TV show you were enjoying?

Let's Bust a Recap : Sisterchicks Down Under!

Happy Monday! I decided to start this new week off with the book that's been waiting the longest to be recapped. (Well, technically that's not true. I still want to write a recap for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which I read last year, but this one's been waiting the longest in 2020 so we'll count it.) I read this book back in April between Maisie Dobbs and Charlotte's Web and it's just been sitting at the bottom of the stack of my finished books while others keep piling on top. 

I know I say it every time I mention Robin Jones Gunn, but she's one of my very favorite authors and I always turn to her when I need a pick-me-up. Not just in the sense that things are crazy and I want to read something easy, but more because I know I'll be encouraged and refreshed when I read something she's written. And Sisterchicks Down Under! was no exception.

Sisterchicks Down Under! was published in 2005 and is the fourth book in the Sisterchicks series which consist of eight standalone novels. It's also the fourth one that I've read, and this one definitely had a different tone. It's the first one I've read that wasn't set up as a girlfriend getaway. In Sisterchicks Down Under!, Kathleen and her husband pack up and fly off to New Zealand for a short-term job opportunity that her husband has been offered. Even though Kathleen is initially excited for the opportunity, upon arrival she finds that more than her geography has flip-flopped and she has a harder time embracing the adventure than she anticipated. Through a series of God-things, she ends up meeting another California girl and they instantly become sisterchicks and take a fun trip together to Australia. 

Reading this one during the height of all the initial drama and unknowns with COVID-19 was a sweet reminder to make the best of the circumstances God has placed us in and look for ways to connect with others, even when it might seem more appealing to hole up and wallow. 

Another home run from my favorite author; no surprise. Pretty soon I'll be recapping her most recently published novel Being Known (which I also read in April) so be on the lookout for that!

Do you have certain books or authors that you turn to when life gets to be a bit too much? Have you found any new favorites during this pandemic pandemonium?