Review: "The Leopard"

There are some books that thoroughly deserve the honor of being called classics. "The Leopard" by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa is one of those books. There can be no doubt that it is a classic, a master piece of Italian literature.

If you haven't seen the film, then please please read the book first. It makes more sense that way and I promise you won't regret it. Both the book and the film are splendid. Written by Sicilian prince (yes, no kidding) Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, they tell the story of a crumbling aristocratic family but the story of the author is almost as good. Growing up among the upper classes on Sicily, Lampedusa was in many ways the last of his kind and the edition of the book that I read had a great introduction to the author and his work which was quite an advantage.

"The Leopard" opens in a magnificent villa in Sicily during the time of the Risorgimento when Italy went from being several states to one single state known as Italy. The Prince is ruling his house and his family, dominating the Princessand their brood of children, the dogs, the horses, even the pastor - only the Prince's nephew, Tancredi, can soften the Prince. The Prince is truly a fomidable man, the last of his species. At the hands of Garibaldi, the Italy of his youth is changing and a new class is taking over, a class that the old aristocracy considers crass, vulgar and nouveau riche. 

One of these new families are Don Calogero and his peasant wife and their beautiful daughter. Angelica is everything that the Prince's own daughter's with the good breeding and traditional values can't be. She is sensual and sexual, beautiful, radiant, intelligent and accomplished. So accomplished that she can even fake the breeding and connections that she lacks. 
Although he has previously been courting Concetta, the Prince's daughter, Tancredi falls hard and fast for Angelica and the Prince has to come to terms with the new ways of the world and accept that people that would previously not have been invited for dinner are now to be considered part of the family. 

It is an stunning story of a changing world. Not only is "The Leopard" quite possibly the best way to learn about a very important time in Italian history, it is also a lesson in the way the world changes and the way that we have to change with it - or at least accept change - in order to survive and thrive. 

Read if it: You're interested in Italian history or just history in general. You like classic literature with strong characters. And don't forget - read it before you see the film!

Survival Kit for the Confused Reader

Today I am not reading a book but the Sunday Times  - it is Sunday after all and there is something about lazing indoors with a newspaper and a cup of coffee when it is raining outside. In the "Culture" section I came across a really interesting article about books; an author named Sandra Newman has written a book called "The Western Lit Survival Kit: How to Read the Classics without Fears". 

What is this, you now ask?

Basically, it is guide to all of the greats and goods of Western literature from a women who has read them all. Not only does she give you an idea of storyline and context but she also grades the books out of ten! Yes. Grades. Them. Proust, Austen, Dante. They all get a (fair) trial and are awarded points based on level of humour, importance and accessibility and some of them get a fair bit of criticism thrown in - Kipling, apparently, is irritating. 

From the interview in the Times, Sandra Newman sounds like a breath of fresh air. She tells it how it is, even when it comes to her collaboration with editors who apparently weren't that keen on a book about literatur: “They stubbornly wouldn’t believe that anybody was interested in literature. They thought we should do a book comparing literature to celebrities, or television...” 

Book bloggers of the world unite and prove them wrong. This sounds like a fascinating book and it will go straight on my TBR. Actually, if wasn't Sunday and it wasn't raining, I'd be heading straight for the book shop now!

Read the article here. 

Top Ten Tuesday: My Top Ten Classics

Every week the delightful people over at the The Broke and The Bookish provides us with another theme for a Top Ten and today I am going to do my Top Ten Classics - a list of masterpieces that should only be bought in hardback editions to be read again and again. 

10) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Some parts of this book were difficult to get through because they really touched me and made me worry so much about justice and fairness and the way that life sometimes does not go according to plan. 

9) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Be ready for some serious emotional rollercoastering when you read this book. I went through loving, hating, pitying and being infuriated at the main character Emma Bovary is so trapped by dreams of something, someone better than she forgets to live her life and instead stumbles in her own greed for a better version of life. 

8) Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Another book that made me emotional and enthralled me. A beautiful piece about the difficult dynamics of marriage and a novel that I personally enjoyed more than The Great Gatsby by the same author. 

7) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Don't let the brand and image of this book scare you off. It is a masterpiece both in terms of writing and in terms of the way it deals with an incredibly difficult storyline. Read it, then judge for yourself. 

6) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

This book is the classic love and mystery novel. It is the novel that has inspired a whole tribe of romance novelists such as Victoria Holt but no one ever comes even close to mastering it the way Charlotte Brontë does. Chuck out your romance paperbacks and buy a hardback edition of Jane Eyre instead. 

5) Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

My favorite children's book even and one that can easily be read and enjoyed by adults. A book that makes me both cry and laugh 

4) Emma by Jane Austen

Emma is the popular girl, the pretty girl, the lucky girl you want to be. She is also egoistical, bored and unable to think through the consequences of her actions - yet she is lovable and you will root for her as she tries to make couples of all of the single people in her village and instead makes a mess. A humorous classic that Elizabeth Bennett (See number 1 on the list) would have loved. 

3) The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Not only does this book have four main characters that all have each their own definite personality, it also has a plot that is full of political and love intrigues and the most scary female villain ever. Dumas is at his best in the action packed classic and I am still debating with myself if it should be number 2 or number 3 on my list... 

2) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

This novel has it all: love, revenge, hate, jealousy, a plot that twists and turns. Maybe that is why it is so incredibly long... mind you, I wouldn't have edited out even one page. A masterpiece from an author that I will never stop loving. 

1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

If you are a living, breathing person and have not read this book yet then go buy it and call in sick until you have turned the last page. This has to be one of the best novels ever written. The story, the characters, the heartbreak and the humour, this book has it all and Austen writes like no other author ever has or will.  Oh and it features my all time favorite main character Miss Elizabeth Bennett. 

Review: "The Brontës Went to Woolworths"

If you like a bit of whimsy and if you find yourself drawn to Anne Shirley from "Anne of Green Gables" (by L.M. Montgomery) because of her tendency to escape into her own fantasy world, then you will love this book. Being completely honest - which I find to work best for me on this blog - I was drawn to "The Brontës Went to Woolworths" by Rachel Ferguson not because I liked the sound of the plot but because I loved the title. Simple as that. And the title is actually very describing.

Meet the Carnes. A family consisting of three girls and their mother as well as a sour governess and several made up chacters. Living in pre-war London, these women have made good lives for themselves. Deirdre, the main charater, is a journalist with a good head on her and her sister Katrine is an aspiring actress. Both of them are clever girls, well able to to take of themselves and to take on the sour, constantly offended governess who tries to protect little sister Sheil from the rest of the family. Now why is the governess so protective and so worried that Sheil will be damaged by her vivacious older sisters?

The question lies in the irrepressible imaginations of these two girls. Not content with the normal everyday lives of middle class girls, they have dreamt up a world of their own which their mother is quite happy to participate in. In this world, they regularly get visits from Ironface, an old doll of Deirdre who married above her station and is now living a socialite's life in France from which she descends upon them with her la-di-da manners. They are also close friends with Dion Saffyn, a pierrot, whom the close family friend Judge Toddington does not think is good company.

Toddy, as they affectionately call him, is the man of the house. Calling them every evening, bringing them splendid presents and being ever so dear to them. Only they've never met him in real life... And one day reality strikes when Deirdre meets Lady Toddington - or Lady Mildred - as they call her, at a society event and is drawn into a friendship with her.

The clash between the real and the imagined is very relevant today I find. When I was a teenager, it was all Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise (who are now middle-aged, gee I feel old!), today I guess it is Justin Bieber, there isn't a teenage girl who hasn't had a crush on a guy she didn't know, whether celebrity or just a boy on the bus. This book is like 1930's YA. It is a great alternative to unimaginative boy-meets-girl stories and the perfect present for the girl who loved "Anne of Green Gables". This is quality people!!

For the Carne girls, especially Deirdre, Toddy is that secret crush-from-afar, the Justin Bieber. She adores him, and her worry and fear when he suddenly becomes part of real everyday life, I can completely understand. Oh how I felt for her. Sometimes, isn't it better to have a good daydream than a harsh reality? Anyway, I will not say anything more because I don't want to throw spoilers at you but let me just say that Rachel Ferguson turns this story on its head and invites the reader to ponder what is most strange - eccentric girls with their own fantasy worlds or realists who are unable to partake in daydreams?
And where do the Brontës fit in? Well apparently Katrine and Deirdre saw them go into Woolworths to fetch some highly everday-boring items, including a hairnet.

Read it if: You are a daydreamer. If you love Anne of Green Gables. If you too believe that the losers are not the people who allow themselves to let their imaginations soar and dream big and grand but the people who are unable to follow them into the realms of imagine.

Pride and Prejudice. Love and Hate.

Can't fall asleep so have given myself a fun little challenge - finding Pride and Prejudice covers and reviewing them in one word and one sentence.

CLASSIC
A hardback edition for those of us who read this classic again and again and again.



ENCHANTING
A beautiful cover for a beautiful book


MISUNDERSTOOD
For those who think that Edward Cullen is the modern girl's Mr. Darcy (he is not!)



UNNECESSARY
Wrapping up a classic in a modern jacket to attract a new audience - kind of like if The Rolling Stones had botox in order to perform at the MTV Movie Awards



SACCHARINE
Designed by somebody who has seen the movie but not read the book...




GIRLY
Special edition for girls who closets full of shoes




STRANGE
A great British romance set in a Japanese garden?


Which one is your favourite? I would love the second one but in a hardback edition!

Review: "Wuthering Heights" - Wuthering emotions

Let me come clean straight away and admit that I read Emily Bronte's classic "Wuthering Heights" as part of Back to the Classics 2011 Challenge. I know that I should have read this before but I never got around to it so now seemed as a good time. What's more I have it in a really pretty hardback edition given to my by my wonderful Li'l Sis who is as addicted to books as I am.
This book was quite a read. The emotions run so high and I felt drained at times while reading it, constantly dreading the mental terror that was looming on the next page.

The story is a love story but not your regular man-meets-woman-and-they-end-up-happy story. This is the story of love gone wrong and of the intense relationship between love and hate. The plot is complicated though it's involves only few characters. However, I will give a very limited summary of some of the plot because I don't want to give too much away for those of you who haven't read this classic.
When Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw's father brings home an orphaned child to the family, he starts a life-long drama that will last a long way into the next generation. Earnshaw openly favours the orphan Heathcliff who is also a favourite of Catherine, they are best friends and sweethearts until the day Catherine's eyes are opened to the neighbouring family, the Lintons. Suddenly Catherine's allegiance sways and she favours Edgar Linton over Heathcliff. Heathcliff leaves the neighbourhood brokenhearted but years later he returns to revenge the pain that has been inflicted on him by jealous Hindley and flighty Catherine. Catherine is torn between her husband Edgar and her love of Heathcliff and Heathcliff is so obsessed by his hatred of Linton that he ends up concoting a scheme to take over everything that has belonged to the Earnshaw's and the Linton's, not caring who will have to pay the price for his broken heart.

Being honest, you would have to be made of stone not to be touched by this story. It is so full of raw emotions. The story takes place on the North English moors where nature rules, just as the emotions rules the space between Catherine and Heathcliff. Their love is almost an insanity and it craves large sacrifices and it was those sacrifices that touched me most and deepest.
Love seems to be a force to which all most bow and everything else must give way. And the children must pay for the folly of their parents, their punishment being almost Biblical as they become pawns in the game of Heathcliff.
It is disturbing reading but addictive and the ending took me by surprise. It is beautiful and raw and full of real emotions. Tired of washed-out paranormal teenage love? Then this is the perfect cure!

P.S. Don't miss out on this beautiful Kate Bush song Wuthering Heights

Review: "The Shooting Party" - On the brink of change

Just the title "The Shooting Party". And the lovely cover! I had to get my hands on this one but once I started reading it, I lost focus and put it aside but this week I finally managed to get it read on the plane from Paris. I like planes in that way, you get so much quiet time to read and relax - with absolutely no disturbances. It is perfect.

"The Shooting Party" by Isabel Colegate takes place right before the first world war breaks out and it chronicles the weekend party of a bunch of well-to-do upper class people. They are Edwardians and children of the Edwardians and their primary worries are centered on the hunt and their other pleasures. As the weekend unfolds we get insight into these people, their thoughts and dreams. At the heart of the party is Minnie, the wife of Sir Randolph Nettleby, the mother-in-law of Ida and the grandmother of the flighty, dreamy Cicely and the young Osbert, the child of the family. Then there are the guests - the ladies that lunch and gossip and the men who compete and whose sole focus is the hunt. And there are the locals, the teacher who oppose the murder of animals, the gamekeepers and servants who are the ones that make the weekend party a reality and who work behind the scenes.

It is a society at the edge of chance and as the reader, the spectator, I constantly had the ominous feeling that something dark was about to happen. You know that these people are living on borrowed time as the WWI approaches and will turn their lives upside down. That feeling of something dark approaching, an impending doom, is the strength of this novel. Colegate lets the contrasts play - the shallowness of some of the characters as opposed to the grim reality closing in on them, the murder and carnage of the hunt opposed to the so-called civility of these people, the love affairs and jealousy of the adults opposed to the uncomplicated affection that little Osbert feels for his pet duck Elfrieda Beetle. Those opposites are the heartbeat of the novel as the precise language, the perfect prose is its breath.

This is a beautiful novel and one that I will read again - and if you loved Vita Sackville-Wests "The Edwardians", you will also love this one.

Review: "Lady Audley's Secret" - The Villainess

Again this is one of those books that have been talked rather a lot about in the blogosphere. It was written by Mary Elisabeth Braddon in 1862 and it caused a bit of a stir when it came out because of its different main character - the infamous Lady Audley.

Lady Audley, formerly the governess Lucy Graham, is a doll-like creature with a mass of blonde curls who is seemingly mild, calm and naive. A bit childish many people observe. Her husband, Lord Audley, is in love and as you know love makes blind and he sees none of her faults. All he sees is the perfect woman, the woman who has awoken a feeling of love in him that he has never experienced before. Sir Audley's nephew, the male main character, Robert Audley, is at first taken with his aunt. The beautiful woman makes him as blind to her duplicity as Lord Audley that is until Robert Audley brings his friend George Talboys to visit Audley Court.
Lady Audley seems to disappear whenever Talboys is visiting and then one day George Talboys disappears leaving Robert Audley depressed and sad. The former indolent, lazy lawyer finds a purpose for his existence - he has to discover what has happened to George Talboys. Soon he realises that Lady Audley is not what she appears to be and that she has something to do with the Talboys affair. More ingredients are murder, arson and of course love...

What I liked most about this book is the fact that the men are all rather weak. Not too clever, lazy, indolent. In the end Robert Audley does rise to the occasion but in general it is the women in this tale who are the strongest, the cleverest. They are the ones that take decisions, acts coolly and carry the plot. Especially (of course) Lady Audley but also Clara Talboys and Robert Audley's cousin, a young lady with lots of energy.

I was not bowled over by this novel. I liked it but I have to admit that the plot was a bit too easy to figure out and since the mystery part by far outweighs the love part, I would have liked a bit more mystery... A lovely read though. I loved the strong women, as always and the language is beautiful, full of great descriptions.

Let's read!!

Have you stopped by Quinn's blog "Seeing Dreaming Writing" - http://www.seeingdreamingwriting.blogspot.com/? Otherwise I recommend that you do, it is a really great blog with lots of interesting posts. Quinn has just posted a really thought-provoking list from the BBC - according to BBC you are well-read if you have read more than 6 books from this list.

Always up for a review of my

Instructions:

• Copy this list.

• Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.

• Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The King James Bible
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four (1984) – George Orwell
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
Emma - Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Inferno – Dante
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So I think I qualify as being well-read :-) But there is still a long way to go if I want to read all of these. And to be honest, I think all of the books on this list deserve to be read! Which ones have you read? And which of them are your favourites?