Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

At first, I didn’t love Sense and Sensibility. The characters felt like flat stereotypes. The elder sister, Elinor Dashwood, was full of sense and Marianne (and her mother) was flighty and emotional (the “sensibility” of the title). These two acted in the extremes of their stereotypes, and I didn’t feel drawn in to the story.  I felt a little disappointed in Jane Austen, since Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite novels.

But it grew on me. The main reason is Elinor Dashwood. Although she is stereotypically serious and sensible, she also was realistic enough that I felt for her frustrations. Although the title captures the two personalities of the sisters, this is a novel about Elinor. Even as she comforts Marianne through her emotional upheavals, Elinor is strong in dealing with her own disappointments and doesn’t break down and whine. I really admired that. Continue reading »

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The narrator of Alice Sebold’s first novel, The Lovely Bones, is dead.

Meet Susie. Susie Salmon was 14 when she was brutally raped and murdered in a cornfield near her home. Now, as her family recovers and learns to live again, she watches them from her gazebo in her heaven and begins to come to terms with her own death. Despite the brutal beginning to Susie’s death, her story becomes one of celebrating life.

By the end, there were a number of things I didn’t enjoy about this book, but overall, I found it more refreshing than that simple (and potentially gruesome) summary may sound. The Lovely Bones focuses on a brutal subject (assault and murder and the aftermath) and yet, from the beginning, the tone was calm.

Because the narrator was the one who was dead, we already knew she was “okay.” In some respects, it took the entire book for Susie and for the rest of her family to come to that understanding: it is okay to celebrate the dead, and it is okay to move on and keep living and loving.

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84, Charing Cross Road + The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff

I love a book about books, so I thought I’d pick up the slim 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, and the sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. Between reading the two books, I also watched the movie, staring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins as part of Chance #10 (Book/Movie Comparison) for the Take a Chance Challenge.

I hadn’t realized when I began reading that these books were true, but then I found them in the nonfiction section! The first is collection of letters between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, the proprietor of a used book shop in London, during their 20-year correspondence (1949-1969). The second book is Helene’s journal when she finally makes it to London, a lifelong dream that comes true only after the first book was published.

I loved the book talk, and while neither of these books were favorites of mine, I did love learning about Helene’s reading and studying style. Oh, the power of books!

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The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi is almost a fairy tale. There is a magical fairy, there are talking animals, and of course, there is talking marionette who wants to be a real boy. And yet, Collodi’s tale fell just a little short of fairy tale status because of the obvious moralizing lessons: the lessons substantially subtracted from the fairy tale-like charm. Nonetheless, children may enjoy Pinocchio’s adventures, and they will probably also learn from Pinocchio’s mistakes and scold him for his foolish choices as they follow him along the path to becoming a real boy. Continue reading »

Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers

Is there a movie from your childhood that you recall watching over and over and over again? One that you think of, still, with fondness?

For me, that movie was Mary Poppins.

In 2007, I read A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and loved it along with the movie; they both have their merits.

So this year, I thought that I might also come to love the original character of Mary Poppins, originally created by P.L. Travers in the novel Mary Poppins in 1933.

I was horribly disappointed.

Traver’s Mary Poppins was far from the lovingly-stern nanny Disney created. She seemed, basically, mean and unfeeling. The adventures she had with the children were odd, but they lacked the sense of fun that the movie created for me. Because my first exposure was the movie, this review will compare the book and the movie throughout. There are spoilers. Continue reading »

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as a teenager – and I loved it. Since then, I watched the A&E movie multiple times, and then last year I watched the newer movie, which was OK. I felt it was certainly time to revisit the novel itself.

I was not disappointed. I loved it even better now.

I listened to the Librivox recording of Pride and Prejudice. While the narration was amateur, I still enjoyed the words and found it far better to experience the novel than to experience the movie(s), much as I enjoyed them. There is something about Jane Austen’s language and character development that cannot be fully contained in a full-length movie – even a six-hour version as the A&E movie is. The book wins, hands down. Continue reading »

To Kill a Mockingbird, The Movie

Making a movie of To Kill a Mockingbird (reviewed here) was like killing a mockingbird: a sin.

In the beginning, I thought “Wow, this is bad; they should do a remake.” By the end, I decided that no remake could capture the beauty of the novel: any film is bound to fail. A picture is not worth a thousand words. Continue reading »

Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne

I’ve been reading The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne to my infant son. I can’t determine what he thinks of them — I read while he kicks and rolls around the floor — but I truly enjoy reading them.

The Complete Tales includes the story books, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House on Pooh Corner, and two books of poetry, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. I don’t love the poems — I feel like A.A. Milne’s poetry is a bit forced. I admit, though, that there are some classic and clever poems, and the more of Milne’s poetry I read, the more I like it. Favorite poems: “Teddy Bear” in When We Were Very Young and “Sneezles” and “The End” in Now We Are Six. (I still prefer the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson.)

However, I love the stories of Winnie-the-Pooh.

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