Twelfth Night by Shakespeare

Title: Twelfth Night 

Author: William Shakespeare

Pages: 200?

Finished: September 12, 2020

First Sentence: If music be the food of love, play on.

Summary: Viola, saved from a shipwreck, disguises herself as a man to serve Count Orsino. As a man, she becomes Orsino's messenger to the fair Olivia, who in turn falls for Viola/Cesario. Viola, of course, has fallen in love with Orsino. 

Thoughts: My only experience with this play was actually through an Amanda Bynes movie called She's the Man from when I was a teenager. So how did reading the play live up?

Do you ever read classics and think, "Huh... English teachers held these to some really high standards, but this is really a bawdy joke that I'd get in trouble if I made it in class in modern terms?" That's how I feel when I read Shakespeare. It's held high as this lofty thing, but it was meant for the masses. That's not to say it's bad, just not the high-brow literature we're led to believe.

Once you get through the Elizabethan language, the plot itself is fairly simplistic. I specifically picked teh Folger Shakespeare edition for the notes I know they add in, but found myself skipping over them once I got into the rhythm of the language. 

In terms of the storyline... meh. It takes a long time to set up, and then the end could have been resolved at least one act earlier if people had communicated rather than talked. I suppose that's part of the comedy though. 

Having not seen numerous movie version of this (the way I have with Much Ado About Nothing), I felt I didn't appreciate it as much as I could. As this is a play, it's meant to be a visual medium. Without that, I do feel like I'm missing quite a bit. I think, in general, I appreciate Shakespeare better when I've seen either a production or a movie version to go along with it. 

That being said, glad I read it and I'm happy to cross another book off my Classic Club list. I believe this counts for a ton of challenges, but at this point, I've basically decided I'm not even attempting to finish them with how my reading tastes have just completely diverged from what I was reading at the beginning of the year.

A Room With a View by E. M. Forster

Title: A Room With a View

Author: E. M. Forster

Pages: 196

Finished: April 14, 2020

First Sentence: "The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all."

Summary: Lucy and her cousin Charlotte visit Italy where they meet all manner of characters. Namely a rector named Mr. Beebe who they both know previously and who will be taking up the position at Lucy's hometown, a novelist named Miss Lavish who apparently writes terrible novels, and the Emersons, a father and son who society doesn't entirely find appropriate. Oh boy was that a run-on sentence. Anyway, while on an excursion, Lucy and George kiss and Lucy must hastily leave Florence to avoid scandal.

The second half of the book takes place back in her place at Windy Corner where she has just accepted the hand of Cecil Vyse in marriage. However, through all sorts of machinations, the Emersons end up there as well and Lucy finds herself torn between doing what is socially acceptable and following her heart.

Thoughts: For such a slim volume, this book took quite a bit of time to sort through. The main issue I had with it was, while I felt I understood the surface plot just fine, I felt I was constantly missing subtext clues. Not reading closely enough. It felt like the book was trying to say much more than I was picking up. Some of the social commentary I did understand quite nicely, but there was plenty more that just felt like, I knew Forster was making a point, but I didn't know what that point was.

Now, to be fair, this is my first ever Forster, and I'm fairly unfamiliar with Edwardian times. Also, I'm reading this in a really weird time in the life of our planet much less my own. I'm sure I could go look up notes and the like, but at 38 weeks pregnant in the middle of a pandemic... I have to admit I'm disinterested in doing that much work.

It's also important to note that my first experience with this story was watching the 1985 movie with Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy. And I seem to remember feeling much the same way, that the plot was fairly simplistic but there was much more going on that I was aware of.

Read for basically all my challenges. Let's see where it fits in...
- Beat the Backlist
- Virtual Mount To Be Read
- Classics Club List
- Reading Classic Books New To Me Author
- Back To the Classics - 20th Century Novel

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Author: Oscar Wilde

Pages: 239

Finished: January 22, 2020

First Sentence: The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

Summary: Basil Haliward paints a beautiful portrait of his new friend Dorian Gray. He also, reluctantly, introduces Dorian Gray to his friend Lord Henry. Upon conversing with Lord Henry, Dorian finds himself not exactly thrilled with the idea of growing up and wishes his soul into the picture. Oddly enough, it happens. Dorian stays young and looks pure forever while his portrait takes on all his sins and aging.

Thoughts: This was not what I thought it was. Not that I can even define what I thought the book was about, but this wasn't quite it. I think I've perhaps been influenced by how he exists in various pop culture.

Also, I'm realizing that if things in my life aren't going well, it bleeds over into what I'm reading. Two days after I started this book, my dog unexpectedly died and the book became the biggest slogfest. Perhaps I should have put it down, but I wanted to finish it for my spin.

So what is it that I objected to?

I think it was the slowness of the book. I knew it had something to do about a painting and that Dorian Gray didn't age but his painting did. I knew there were supposedly some homosexual overtones in it. I knew there was a painter named Basil who was fairly innocent, and who died (primarily because someone played him in an RPG I was in. I played Martha Jones from Doctor Who. She and Basil were good friends and used to drink tea together.) And that's all I knew. I had some vague inkling that he cheated death and kept his painting hidden.

But the amount of time it took for him to discover that the painting held his soul was tedious. Only to be followed by an even more tedious chapter going into great detail of how he spent eighteen years of his life in debauchery. I felt sorry for him in the beginning dealing with Lord Henry and his snake tongue. But the long decent was just... long.

I also had a really difficult time reading pages and pages of misogyny from Lord Henry. What an odious man!

I think my biggest issue with the book is that I don't tend to enjoy books about people's descent into evil. And I didn't have any idea that that was what this book was about. So I was expecting a vaguely fantasy/scifi book where Dorian Gray's soul is in this painting, and instead I watched a man thoroughly corrupt someone else. It wasn't what I signed up for, and it certainly wasn't what I shoudl have been reading just after losing my dog.

I suspect I'll be returning to this book in ten years or so. I feel like it deserves another chance. It's a book I was so excited to read. I was honestly shocked at how incredibly disappointed I was in it.

Book counts for lots of challenges:

Beat the Backlist
Virtual Mount To Be Read
Library Love
Reading Classic Books LGBT+ category (Oscar Wilde may have been gay? Half the research I find says yes, the other half says no. He did have male lovers.)
Back to the Classics: Person's Name in Title (Dorian Gray)
Classics Club AND Current Spin

2020 Goals/Challenges

I thought long and hard before committing to any challenges this year. The reason for that is that I'm pregnant with my second child! It's due in May. But with that being said, I have no idea just how things are going to go between time and brain power. I considered not joining any and just being directionless, but then decided I probably wouldn't end up reading at all if I did that. So I've signed up for a few and decided to continue my others. However, I'm not going to feel bad if pregnancy/new mom brain takes me completely off track. As long as I'm reading, I consider that a win.

1. Beat the Backlist / Virtual Mount To Be Read
   Last year, I participated in the TBR challenge from Roofbeam Reader. I did poorly in it, and it's not coming back this year. So I've found some others. Both Beat the Backlist and Virtual Mount To Be Read seem like they'll fit the bill. If you scroll down, you'll see twelve books I'm going to use to start, BUT books listed in the other challenges will count as they've been part of my Backlist / Mount To Be Read. However, the other challenges are a little more specific in their rules. For Beat the Backlist, I'm on Team Borrowers. For Virtual Mount TBR I'm starting at the Mount Crumpit level which is 24 books.

2. Read "half the books" remaining on my Classics Club list

    Half is in quotes because a number of the books on my list are SUPER long. So I added together the page lengths of the books and divided it in half. In 2020, I hope to read approximately 3000 pages from my list which comes out to either three chunky books or basically all the other ones. Hopefully I can fit these into some Back to the Classics Categories as well.

3. Complete my Newford Collection Challenge
    This feels doable. I enjoy reading De Lint so I don't think this will be too difficult at all. Of course, since this is lower down on my priority list, and there are a lot of books to read, there's a fair chance that I won't get through this one. But that's okay.

4. Complete my Austen Challenge

    Last year I decided to read all of Austen's writings including novels, novellas, unfinished works, and juvenilia. Midway through the year, I added a modern book that someone had written a favorable review for. And then I dropped this challenge to low priority. It's low priority this year too, but I would like to finish it if possible.

5. Reading Classic Books
    It seemed as though Back to the Classics was not coming back this year, so I searched and found a similar challenge that I signed up for called Reading Classic Books. While I have gone ahead and fit some books I plan on reading this year into the categories, this is by no means a final list.

6. Library Love Challenge - January
    Natural challenge for me to join as 99% of the books I read come from the library. In fact, looking at the books listed below, at least 40 of them will be checked out from the library.

7. Back to the Classics
    Looks like it did come back. Categories listed below. My aim is to fit six of my books this year into the categories. I have an idea of what will go where... but of course, that depends on what I actually read! Books listed are completely subject to change.

Beat the Backlist / Virtual Mount To Be Read:

1. Nights At the Circus - Angela Carter 
2. Endless Night by Agatha Christie 
3. Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow 
4. The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang
5. Water for Elephants - Sarah Gruen
6. Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman
7. The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey 
8. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
9. Heart's Blood by Juliet Marilier
10. Uprooted by Naomi Novik
11. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
12. The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer

Remaining Books on Classics Club List:

1. Atwood, Margaret - The Handmaid's Tale
2. Austen, Jane - Sanditon and Other Tales
3. Barrie, J.M. - Peter Pan
4. Byatt, A.S. - Possession
5. Cervantes, Miguel de - Don Quixote
6. Dickens, Charles - Martin Chuzzlewit
7. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan - A Study in Scarlet
8. Forster, E.M. - A Room with a View
9. Shakespeare, William - Twelfth Night 
10. Shakespeare, William - A Winter's Tale (folger shakespeare library ILL)
11. Steinbeck, John - East of Eden
12. Thackeray, William Makepeace - Vanity Fair
13. Tolstoy, Leo - Anna Karenina
14. Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Grey

Remaining Books in Newford Collection:

1. Trader (novel)
2. Someplace to Be Flying (novel)
3. Moonlight and Vines (collection)
4. Forests of the Heart (novel)
5. The Onion Girl (novel)
6. Tapping the Dream Tree (collection)
7. Spirits in the Wires (novel)
8. Medicine Road (novella)
9. The Blue Girl (YA)
10. Widdershins (novel)
11. Make a Joyful Noise (YA) (available in Crow Girls)
12. The Cats of Tanglewood Forest
13. The Hour Before Dawn (IN Muse and Reverie)
14. Old Man Crow (In The Very Best of Charles de Lint)
15. Little Grrl Lost (Find somewhere (buy?))
16. Promises to Keep
17. Dingo
18. Muse and Reverie (collection)

Austen Challenge

1. Northanger Abbey
2. Persuasion
3. Pride and Prejudice
4. Letters to Pemberley
5. Sanditon and other Stories

Reading Classic Books

1. Over 500 pages - Anna Karenina
2. POC author or main character ???
3. Set in country other than where I live - Peter Pan OR A Study in Scarlet
4. Translation - Don Quixote
5. New to you author - A Room With a View
6. Poetry ???
7. 1800-1860 - Persuasion
8. LGBT author or main character: Picture of Dorian Gray
9. Woman Author - Pride and Prejudice
10. Novella - Lady Susan
11. Nonfiction ???
12. Banned or censored: Twelfth Night

Back to the Classics

1. 19th Century Classic. - Martin Chuzzlewit
2. 20th Century Classic. - A Room With a View
3. Classic by a Woman Author. - Pride and Prejudice
4. Classic in Translation. - Don Quixote
5. Classic by a Person of Color. ???
6. A Genre Classic. - Peter Pan OR A Study in Scarlet
7. Classic with a Person's Name in the Title. - Picture of Dorian Gray
8. Classic with a Place in the Title. - Northanger Abbey
9. Classic with Nature in the Title. - A Winter's Tale
10. Classic About a Family - Anna Karenina
11. Abandoned Classic - East of Eden
12. Classic Adaptation. - Twelfth Night