The eighth spin number has been chosen and it is
That means I will have until January 5 to read George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.
I’ve never read this book but I have seen My Fair Lady so I know, what I am assuming is, the general gist of the story. I haven’t read a play in a veeerryyy long while so this will be interesting! I’m looking forward to finally reading this one!
Hope y’all got satisfying spin books and enjoy reading!! :)
It’s been awhile since I’ve participated in a Classics Club event and I’ve missed all the fun! What’s more, I’ve missed the last 4 Classics Spins! Jumping into #8 with my list of 20 titles. No categories or bells and whistles, just a random pick from my master list :)
Next Monday the spin number will be revealed and I will post which of my twenty I’ll be reading this winter. The rules state I have until January 5 to complete whichever book is chosen.
Can’t wait to see what I get! :)
Happy spinning!
The Classics Club has just finished it’s 3rd Classics Spin and I am so thrilled I ended up with the book I did cause it was such a lovely read! *happy sigh!*
An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
Rating: 4.0 – 4.0
My Thoughts:
I think I was in Jr. High when I first read this book. Reading it again as an adult was a completely different experience and I think I appreciated it so much more the second time around.
Alcott tells the story of 14-year old Polly Martin, a simple, wholesome country girl who is introduced to the fashionable world of her friend Fanny Shaw. Her old-fashioned manners, notions, and morals clash with the fast, giddy, party-going, boy-chasing girls in Fanny’s circle of friends. Despite all of Fanny’s trying to make a fashionable young lady out of Polly, Polly stays the sweet, innocent girl whose warm heart and simple ways unwittingly bring sunshine and peace to the Shaw household.
This piece was originally a magazine serial of only six chapters but Alcott later continued the story with the chapter “Six Years Later” when Polly is a young woman of twenty, bound and determined to make her life one of useful purpose.
Being an old-fashioned girl myself, I could totally identify with Polly. While fashions and styles may change over the decades, our desires and behaviors don’t alter all that much. There are still high fashions, fads, and alluring pop culture. Relationships are still formed around the fluff of what looks and feels good and parties still last until dawn. I think Polly’s success in staying true to her values and goals and seeing how her sweet character changed the lives of those around her makes the story so sweet and heartwarming and reassurance that it’s all worth it in the long run! Definitely worth a personal copy on my own shelf!
It’s a simple story so I won’t share anymore about the plot but here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:
“Young men often laugh at the sensible girls whom they secretly respect, and affect to admire the silly ones whom they secretly despise, because earnestness, intelligence, and womanly dignity are not the fashion.”
“…a principle that can’t bear being laughed at, frowned on, and cold-shouldered, isn’t worthy of the name.”
“…with a very earnest prayer, Polly asked for the strength of an upright soul, the beauty of a tender heart, the power to maker her life a sweet and stirring song, helpful while it lasted, remembered when it died.”
I recommend this book if you’re in the mood for something on the sweet and sentimental side.
“I’m old-fashioned but I don’t mind it. That’s how I want to be as long as you agree to stay old-fashioned with me!” – Johnny Mercer/Jerome Kern
Th number for our 3rd Classics Spin is NUMBER 4!!
Which means I get An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott.
This is a re-read for me which is fabulous because I will not have time for heavy reading during the next month or so. I just got a new full time job (YAY!!) and I’ll have a full class load this semester (OI!). As you can imagine, it’s going to take a bit for me to adjust to my new schedule, etc. Sooooo, a nice, familiar story is just the thing for me now!
How did you all make out?
Happy reading :).
Whoot! It’s time for Classics Club Spin #3!
I’m taking it easy this time around due to the fact that I seriously need to pay more attention to my TBR list and my class load this semester is about to be very heavy!
Here’s my 20:
1. Little House in the Big Woods//Laura Ingalls Wilder
2. Anne of the Island//L.M. Montgomery
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings//Maya Angelou
4. An Old Fashioned Girl//L.M. Alcott
5. An American Tragedy//Theodore Dreiser
6. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
7. The Old Man and the Sea//Ernest Hemingway
8. Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown//Maud Hart Lovelace
9. Of Mice and Men//John Steinbeck
10. Heaven to Betsy//Maud Hart Lovelace
11. All-of-a-Kind Family// Sydney Taylor
12. Silas Marner//George Eliot
13. Mrs. Dalloway//Virginia Woolf
14. A Streetcar Named Desire//Tennessee Williams
15. The Jungle//Upton Sinclair
16. The Death of a Salesman//Arthur Miller
17. To My Husband and Other Poems//Anne Bradstreet
18. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm//Kate Douglas Wiggin
19. What Katy Did//Susan Coolidge
20. Jane Eyre//Charlotte Bronte
Can’t wait for next Monday!!
Second Classics Spin is over and I’m sure I can speak for most, if not all, participants when I say that I can’t wait for the third Spin!
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Rating: 3.0 out of 4.0
My thoughts:
I’m still not sure if I particularly liked this book…Let me re-phrase that: I’m not a fan of the story. It was too depressing. But it was definitely worth the read.
It was wonderfully written, to be sure, but it was rather frustrating. And I felt so sorry for Gatsby. In fact, I felt sorry for all the people in the book, except, maybe Nick Carroway. And Jordan Baker. What a reckless, frivolous existence! The glitz, the glamour, and the grandeur made me all the more thankful for the simplicities of my own life.
For such a short book, it had considerable depth in its own right with the green light and the eyes on the bilboard ad. The wild parties, the flowing champagne, the broken and illegitimate relationships, the pursuit of what could have been, they were all part of a snapshot of American history. In the midst of the whirlwind that was the 1920’s there was, perhaps, a longing for the innocence in the past. It wasn’t perfect, but it possessed qualities that were lost in the new era of the fast & loose generation. This was the tragedy of Jay Gatsby. It isn’t what happens at the end of the book that makes it his story a sad one, but the fact that he’s chasing what he can no longer have: the past. The past as he wants to remember it, in it’s innocence and purity.
The other thing that strikes you as you read is how stark it is. There’s no warmth, only empty camaraderie, barely any trust, and so many lies. Unhappy people trying to fill their lives with that which makes their lives shallow in the first place.
Sad. But poignant. Great piece of American literature when all is said and done.
There. No spoilers! Yay!!
I’m looking forward to comparing the book and the original film with the movie that just came out. I’m really curious to know what they did to it!!
Anyone up for Spin Read 3? ;)
Which means I’ll be reading
Which, in light of the new movie, is appropriate timing.
I’m kind of nervous to read it. I have a feeling it’s going to frustrate me a bit. I’ve never actually read anything by Fitzgerald so I’m not sure what to expect. I don’t even really remember much from the first movie, (except that Redford is gorgeous!) so it will be almost like a brand new storyline!!
Here gooooes!!
Hope all the rest of the Classics Clubbers got got a satisfactory read our second time around!
Happy Reading :)
Classics Clubbers are going for another spin and I’m super excited cause the first Classics Spin was a lot of fun :). I can’t wait for next Monday to see what book I end up with. I don’t own many of the titles on my CC List so this is a great excuse to buy a new book (or two ^.^).
Same rules apply. You can check out the original post here for more details.
1. Little Women//L.M. Alcott
2. Betsy-Tacy and Tib//Maud Hart Lovelace
3. Anne of Avonlea//Lucy Maud Montgomery
4. An Old Fashioned Girl//L.M. Alcott
5. Little House in the Big Woods//Laura Ingalls Wilder
6. The Great Gatsby//F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. North & South//Elizabeth Gaskell
8. Moby Dick//Herman Melville
9. Of Mice and Men//John Steinbeck
10. The Count of Monte Cristo//Alexandre Dumas
11. The Jungle//Upton Sinclair
12. Silas Marner//George Eliot
13. The Beautiful and the Damned//F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. An American Tragedy//Theodore Dreiser
15. Invisible Man//Ralph Ellison
16. Pride and Prejudice//Jane Austen
17. Northanger Abbey//Jane Austen
18. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm//Kate Douglas Wiggin
19. What Katy Did//Susan Coolidge
20. Jane Eyre//Charlotte Bronte
The Classics Club Spin was such a fun idea! And I’m so glad this book was my #14. On the practical side, it was short enough to fit into my crazy March days annnnnnd it’s on my TBR list so two birds, one stone. Oh yeah!
You can’t come away from reading a piece like this without a greater desire to develop a more noble character, to be the kind of person who doesn’t give up or take ‘no’ for an answer, who reaches out for higher things, who knows that value isn’t determined by what other’s think of you. Fredrick Douglass, was and did all of these things. He is an American hero.
SPOILER ALERT: This post does contain spoilers!! You have been warned ;).
The story of Fredrick Douglass is one of heartache and injustice and triumph. It’ll make you mad and want to knock a few heads together. It’ll have you cheering when a young man refuses to be whipped by his inane master and fights back or when a group of slaves quietly learn to read on Sunday mornings. It will have you thanking God that we no longer live in a time where it’s lawful for one American to own another. It will have you wishing you could search out the evil men in every dark corner of this country and the world who are still making money from modern slavery.
I’m not going to spin out the history he shares in this autobiography – it’s a short enough read that you can learn of it yourself in no time at all – rather, I want to share a couple of the quotes that I found especially poignant and awful in their searing truth.
“From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.”
“I have observed this in my experience of slavery, – that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.”
“Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.”
But the part that got me the most was in the appendix when he talked about the “slaveholding religion of this land”. The whole time I was like “Preach it!” It angered me to read about perhaps as much as it did Douglass to live through it. This part, in my opinion, was THE best part of the book:
“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of ‘stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.’ I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. . . . The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.”
BAM! And that’s not even the whole thing, he goes on and it was…moving to say the least. It’s like when the pastor says something that resonates with your entire being and you can’t help but say, “Well!” or “Have mercy!” or “Amen!” That’s me anyway ;).
I read this book on my Kindle but really want to get a hard copy for my bookshelf! It’s worth adding to the collection. And I’m going to add Douglass’s other books to my reading list!!
Y’all have a blessed day!
The Classics Club Spin has commenced! The wheel has spun, the number chosen and Classics Clubbers are scanning their lists for the lucky book which is to be finished by April 1st!
And the number is…14!!
That means I will be reading The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass!!
Changing it up with a little non-fiction! This is great because not only is this a title on my Classics Club list and my TBR 2013 list, it’ll also count toward the Nerdy Non-Fiction Reading Challenge so I’m doing triple duty with this one :). Unfortunately, I don’t own this beautiful Barnes & Noble copy, but I do have it on my Kindle Paperwhite so all is well :).
How’d y’all make out? Are you excited about the book you ended up with or perhaps a bit terrified?
unscripted 