Sunday Salon: November 22, 2009.

This has been a slightly crazy week. Coming off from my wedding shower last weekend, I was kept busy with a lot of unpacking and organizing at the apartment. Then I spent a good deal of time cleaning out my closet and my dresser in efforts to ease the final move over in January, after the wedding.

I also kind of hit a low point on Friday. I had a panic attack in front of Matt, which I am sure freaked him out. Stress from being unemployed and having no money kicked in, so I freaked out. After a reality check with Matt and my mom, I know things will be okay. And of course, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. As soon as we’re back from Florida and our honeymoon, I have no more commitments to prevent me from getting a job. I just have to keep telling myself that everything will be okay.

In reading news, I finally finished Great Expectations, which I was starting to think would never happen. I even entertained the idea of quitting my little reading project and going back to reading the science-fiction, fantasy, and YA lit I love and miss. But to only give up after 10 books is pretty weak and I just need to keep my head down and keep going. I know that by reading through this list I am proving a few things to myself in regards to determination. Also, how could I ever expect my future students to keep going if I gave up this early on?

This week has truly been a lesson for me. I think I just needed a little reality check and I am all set to continue.

So, I have finished the first 10 books off the list of classics I made. Which means I am a whole 4% complete with my list! Only 240 more books to go!

This week I am planning on getting through The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and The Stranger by Albert Camus. I also want to get into Germinal by Emile Zola if I can. It’s doable as long as I set aside the time to read, which I haven’t been doing recently.

I think this is the first year since I started tracking the number and titles of books where I won’t be hitting the magical 100. Last year I barely hit 100, but the year before I was at 108. Realistically, there is no reason why I shouldn’t be there, but it took me entirely way too long to get through Great Expectations. I have 14 books to read before January 1st, and with the holidays, the wedding, and the honeymoon, I think it just won’t happen, but I am going to try.

Here’s to a great week of reading ahead of me.

Book 10: FINALLY Finished.

I finally finished Great Expectations last night. I was so happy to be done with it, simply because it seems as if Dickens took over my life for awhile.

So, what did I think of it?

The first 350 pages are all exposition (the setting up of the story). You meet the characters, Pip comes into his wealth, some small problems pop up, and next thing you know, you’re 350 pages in and nothing has really happened. Yes, it is all important. You learn a LOT about the characters so that by time the action does happen, you understand why they do what they do. But still, 350 pages?

The last 100 pages are where the action is. Magwitch reveals himself, Pip realizes what a whiner and idiot he is, and things resolve themselves. Finally all those little details Dickens throws in seem to matter.

So.

Here are my thoughts.

Had the book been half the size, I think it would have been a lot easier to read. Dickens is known for being wordy. Why? Because when he first published his novels he released them in a serial format. A chapter or two a week would be printed in a magazine. Every week the next chapter or two would come out. Obviously people would have to buy all those magazines if they wanted to read the entire story. What makes more money; a 200 page novel or a 500 page novel? Obviously Dickens padded his works to make more money, and you can’t really fault him for that.

However, now reading it in novel form, it is just too much. Too much description, too many details, too many things that just don’t need to be there to make it an effective story.

Besides all that, I did like the story. The premise of it is interesting. Pip is poor and an orphan. He’s adopted by his older sister and her husband, who bring him up in hopes he will be an apprentice to Joe and also be a blacksmith. However, he soon has a few encounters with some mysterious characters (Magwitch and Ms. Havisham) who alter his future. He is told that he has a benefactor, a person who wants him to become a gentleman and he goes off to London to learn more.

Through all of his learning, he becomes rather snobby towards his beginnings and assumes he knows everything. It is only after he learns the truth that he realizes that having expectations does not mean a better or more successful life.

Really, it is a good story. It just could have been shorter. A lot shorter.

In any case, I am glad to be done with it and moving on to something I will hopefully enjoy more.

1 Dickens down, 6 to go.

Book 10: The Bright Light of Manwich.

I see a light at the end of the Great Expectations tunnel. I read 140 pages yesterday, so I am only 120 from the end. I am sure you are just as happy as I am.

I finally told myself that I just needed to get it over with and to suck it up. Turns out, the book gets slightly more interesting after page 350. Pip finally learns who his benefactor is and there’s a little more explanation about what has been going on. I also like the fact that the guy’s name is Magwitch, which really just reminds me of Manwich. So instead of picturing a man, I just picture a big Sloppy Joe walking around. It makes for more entertaining reading.

I think I figured out why the first 350 pages were so hard to get through. They’re all exposition. There seems to be no drama, no challenges, nothing until Manwich comes back and stirs things up a bit. Up until that point you just get Pip whining and treating the people who raised him like crap.

(And really, the funeral? Couldn’t Dickens have given Pip a LITTLE EMOTION about that death? REALLY??)

So now I seem to be in the home stretch. 120 pages to go. I’m going to try and finish today, but we shall see.

There are so many more interesting books left for me to read that I simply want to be done with this one.

Book 10: Procrastination.

I’m starting to think Great Expectations is haunting me; mostly because I haven’t read any of it in a week. Granted, it has been an incredibly busy week. My wedding shower was on Saturday, so we had to get prepared for that. Then I had to unpack everything at the apartment, which is a huge process.

There’s also the whole “I can’t stand this book so I don’t really want to read it.” I’m dreading picking it back up because the last 2 times I attempted to get more reading done, I fell asleep.

But I still think the book is haunting me. My mom, sister, and I decided to relax a little on Friday night and watch a movie. We picked P.S. I Love You with Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler. I figured it would be a nice little romantic movie to watch and a way to de-stress before the shower (I was also getting a migraine that ended up lasting all through my shower and into Sunday), so what better way to cure it than to watch a beautiful man act?

Until a reference from Great Expectations ruined it all for me. One of the characters told Hilary Swank’s character that she was turning into Miss Havisham. I flipped out hearing the reference and turned around in my seat to stare at my mom and sister. I believe I said something to the effect of “The book is stalking me!!”

So of course, I haven’t read it since then. In fact, I haven’t done any reading since last Wednesday when I fell asleep in the chair at the apartment with Hemi the cat. Today I spent a lot of time cleaning out my dresser and my closet, but now it is time to sit down with Pip and attempt to get through this so I can really get on to other books.

I think the problem is that I know I don’t like Great Expectations, so by pretending it doesn’t really exist I’m just not reading it. I’m almost telling myself it is okay to not read it because I don’t like.

But I will conquer and hopefully sooner rather than later. I assure you, it doesn’t normally take me this long to get through a book. But then again, if this were any other book I didn’t like, I would have set it aside LONG AGO.

Book 10: Charles Dickens Made Me.

This will be a short entry tonight, mostly because I am trying to refrain from boring you with my own tales of boredom.

So, I was reading Great Expectations tonight curled up in the La-Z-Boy at the new apartment while Matt was off doing something else.

The next thing I know I am jerked awake by the cat jumping up on my lap and nuzzling against me. The book is still lying open where I had left off reading when I apparently fell asleep.

I checked the page number and realized that I only read 25 pages before falling asleep. The funny thing is I wasn’t even remotely tired when I started reading. Charles Dickens just made me fall asleep. I was so bored by Pip, sleep just seemed like a better option.

You know, I think it really says something when I can’t even stay awake when I am not feeling tired to read a book.

Charles Dickens, you made me fall asleep.

I fear I will never conquer you.

Book 10: Invitations and Torture.

At times I wish I would have waited to start this project until after my wedding. The last 4 days I have been addressing, stuffing, and doing everything possible to my wedding invitations. Now there is a huge stack of sealed envelopes downstairs to mail tomorrow and I finally feel like I have some time to breathe.

So, with that said….Great Expectations.

*sigh*

It started out fine. I was hooked into the beginning with the convict and that drama, which quickly ended. Then it just kind of rambled on and on and on…until I finished the first section of the book where Pip leaves home to go to London to learn how to be a gentleman.

And 150 pages later….I am bored out of my mind. I think that I could like the premise of this story. A boy (Pip) wants to move up in the social ladder and is willing to give up the family he has known to do so. I like that, it’s interesting.

Charles Dickens does not make it interesting. He rambles on and on and on about things that I really don’t care about. It makes me want to gouge my eyes out. But, I have 300 or so pages left and at the rate I’m going, I’ll be done by Thanksgiving (hopefully I’m just kidding about that because I really want to be done with this so I can read something more interesting).

Anyway, now that I am free from the torment of writing out invitations, I can torture myself with Charles Dickens.

Yuck.

Book 10: One Good Thing.

I have decided to focus on the one positive I can find in Great Expectations.

The chapters are really short. Which helps when you want to tell Pip to shut up and stop whining.

Book 10: My Hatred of Charles Dickens.

I have a deep and abiding hatred for a Mr. Charles Dickens. My first exposure to him was somewhat positive, with his A Christmas Carol. To be perfectly honest, you are a scrooge if you don’t at least halfway enjoy that tale.

My second exposure was in ninth grade Honors English when we had to choose between reading David Copperfield and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (now my favorite book). After reading the back covers of each book, and weighing them in my hand (a very scientific process), I decided on Card’s book, which eventually led to my love of science fiction. I thought to myself at the time that I made a very narrow escape, as the kids who choose David Copperfield all confided that it was a miserable bore.

Unfortunately for me, later that same year we were all assigned to read Great Expectations. And I hated every minute of it. I believe I read the first 100 or so pages before deciding I would rather gouge my eyes out than read more about Pip. After that, I went to sparknotes.com and managed to squeak through the rest of that unit—sorry mom. I never finished the novel and I thought to myself that I would rather die than read any more Dickens.

Alas, for an English major, it is quite hard to avoid Dickens, but I tried my best to do so. I actually switched sections for one of my required classes because I heard that the professor I had class with LOVED Dickens and FOUR of his novels were on our reading list. Switching ended up being a good decision. There was only one Dickens novel on the list, Hard Times.

In that class, the professor told us we could manage to get away with only reading half the books if the reading was too much. I had never heard that from an English professor before and all of the kids in my class had their mouths open. Then he amended what he was saying and said that if you read half the books, you could squeak by with a passing grade of 1.5.

That class ended up being my favorite English class I ever took at MSU and the professor, Professor Watts, was my favorite. We read A LOT and while some things I didn’t enjoy, I discovered a love for many 19th century authors in his class.

When it came time to read Hard Times I would like to say that I tried. In fact, I think I read 5 pages before making a very hard decision. Hard Times became the ONLY BOOK in my entire college career that a professor assigned that I did not read—again, sorry mom. I couldn’t stand those five pages and my prejudice from my previous experiences with Dickens solidified my decision.

I graduated with and English degree without reading any Charles Dickens. Doesn’t that sounds horrid??

Well, when I decided to embark on this little challenge of mine, I was kind of annoyed to find that so many of Charles Dickens novels were on the A.P. list and on “best of classics” lists. I even thought about ignoring his work and pretending he didn’t exist, merely so I wouldn’t have to read anything written by him. After deciding that I would be cheating if I did so, I relented and put on the novels written by Mr. Dickens that seemed to pop up the most. They ended up being the following:

1. Bleak House
2. David Copperfield
3. Great Expectations
4. Hard Times
5. Nicholas Nickleby
6. Oliver Twist
7. Tale of Two Cities

7 books to challenge me more than any others (well…perhaps the Russians might give Dickens a run for his money). You might notice that I left A Christmas Carol off the list, mostly because I know it too well and I wanted to keep the number on my list to a rounded 250 titles.

Instead of leaving these to the end and sloughing through them, I have decided that since I have read 9 wonderful books, I might as well throw in an awful Charles Dickens experience to get it out of the way. Besides, six is a much better number to have looming over my head than seven.

So, Book 10 is a Dickens wonder (HA!). And to make it even more super-duper fun, I have decided to give my arch-nemesis a go and get it over with. Great Expectations has the honor and privilege of being Book #10 and I will probably hate it just as much this time as I did the last time through.

Let’s just say that I have no great expectations for Book 10 (HA!).

Here I go.