a new beginning

After finishing my first Tolstoy novel, Anna Karenina, I have decided to embark on a new, even longer journey. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, is 1200+ pages to Anna Karenina's 800, so I'm certain it will take me a while to finish. I am incredibly looking forward to reading this, and to adventuring alongside the protagonist Edmond Dantès. If anyone has read The Count of Monte Cristo, please do let me know- I'd love to find out what you all think of it.

unhappy families

"All happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

There are many unhappy families in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, a wonderful, wonderful novel with I have been reading for over a month now. Usually, I am a fast reader. There are many books I have sat down with, and have not stood up until I had finished reading it. Anna Karenina, however, is- as I've said before- a process. It is beautiful and a lengthy near eight hundred pages. It catalogs several groups of characters, all who intertwine.

For example, the novel does not begin with the title character. It begins with Stepan "Stiva" Oblonsky and his wife, Dolly. He is having an affair, and this is where the unhappiness begins. He is the brother of Anna, and she comes to fix the problem.

However, when Anna starts to have her own troubles, everyone around her begins to have troubles as well. By the end of the novel, Stiva and Dolly's marriage has completely fallen apart. Kitty, Dolly's sister, is rejected by Vronsky, who becomes Anna's paramour  instead. Anna's husband becomes controlled by a woman who tells his son that Anna is dead.

Tolstoy, I have found, is a genius of the written word. There is so much in Anna Karenina that at first caused me to wonder about it inclusion, but by the end, everything comes together. It is not neat or tied with a bow, and it is not happy.

But Tolstoy certainly shows his readers the differences in unhappy families.

To Aspire to Greatness

Some people- generally people who don't actually read- believe that for a book to be good, it must have likable characters. This, however, is only true for "good" books. It is true for those fluffy, summer (or winter, spring, or fall) books that are nice to read but would never have a term paper written about them. While I am certainly not trying to insult these books- I do enjoy them, really- today, I am going to talk about the not those books books.

The not those books books are classics. They have successfully mounted symbolism, vaulted over plot, and won the battle of the "signpost". They are books like Jane Eyre (spoiler: he kept a WIFE in the ATTIC), The Grapes of Wrath (what, are there three nice characters?), and The Great Gatsby. 

I do not really like any of the characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic. Nick is much too passive, Jordan only a little less so, Tom is violent and unfaithful, Daisy betrays both her husband and Gatsby, and lets Gatsby take the blame for Myrtle's death. Even Gatsby- while wonderfully romantic- is obsessive, wanting Daisy to tell Tom she NEVER loved him. He is, as Nick says, worth the whole lot of them. That lot, though, is not much to measure up to.

So why do I love The Great Gatsby so terribly much? Because F. Scott Fitzgerald was a wonderful writer. The novel is well written and tragic, entertaining and full of symbolism. He gives us a novel full of terrible people, and makes us root for them.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between a great author and a good one. They may not give unappealing characters every time; that would be much too predictable. But they can write those characters. They can make girls fall in love with Gatsby.

People Have Tattoos of This

Today, I saw a simply wonderful production of the play To Kill a Mockingbird. It's one of my favorite novels, and the play exceeded expectations by including several direct quotes. One of these is a particular favorite of mine:

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

And another amazing Atticus Finch quote:

"Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win."

(The ham costume, unfortunately, was not included.)

Times New Roman

Although tattoos aren't for everyone, and I certainly do not have one (yet), there's quite the appeal for literary ink. The first of these images is from, obviously, Alice in Wonderland. Though the quote is not my favorite, I am quite a fan of the font. The second is not a quote, but still counts as literary. Both these link back here.

The Eclectic Authoress Recommends...

22. "Les Miserables", the book by Victor Hugo