Books, The Classics Club

Book 369: Symposium – Plato

I understand how important this work is, you know, history and stuff (hello sarcasm), but there is no need for the introduction to be roughly half the length of the entire work! Seriously, by time I actually got to the work which I would say is about 60 pages long, I’d read 30 pages and knew almost the entire story! Whoever wrote the introduction quoted almost all of it.

Mostly this book brings back the time in my first year of undergrad where I thought I wanted to study Ancient-Medieval history and then I scrapped by with my worst grade ever in my Greek history class and spent the next three-and-a-half years trying to make up for it and improve my GPA. On the plus side, this book counts towards my Classics Club reading list and I’m slowly chipping away. Finishing this, I’ve now passed the 40 books mark (41/100) and I’m nearing the halfway point. I’m behind schedule, but I threw the schedule out the window ages ago.

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Books, The Classics Club

Book 368: Anthem – Ayn Rand

Going into Ayn Rand’s Anthem I had very little “real” knowledge of her, her writing or her politics. Everything I know about her is word-of-mouth and I’m sure exaggeration. I have no plans to change that. If I write something incredibly wrong please someone point it out, I’m just writing about my response to this story as a piece of literary fiction. And that response is wow.

I’m not sure why Rand’s masterpieces Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead get all the credit when this is a big piece of work in such a tiny package. I mean Rand was writing about post-apocalyptic dystopias before it was cool. She was contemporaries with Aldous Huxley and their bleak views  really must’ve inspired modern-day writers or maybe I’m just seeing connections where I want to see them. Either way, I would be shocked to find that the likes of Margaret Atwood, Wilkie Collins and George Orwell to name a few hadn’t read this work.

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Books

Book 367: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo

There are a couple of reasons I sought out this book and read it earlier than I thought I would. Apparently it’s been climbing the charts since it was translated from Japanese into English this past fall, but for me it first came to light when my friend, Carlie, started posting about it on Instagram. For those of you that have been following for a LONG time she got me to read The Hunger Games way back in 2010. I still haven’t read the other book she recommended, The Beans of Egypt, Maine, but I should probably get on that as she’s two-for-two.

After I asked about the book section of this tidying book she sent me the entire section via PM and I realized I wanted to read this book. I’m moving in August so it was the perfect time to take a look at all of my stuff so I grabbed a copy and devoured it.

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Books

Book 366: The Adventures of Captain Underpants – Dav Pilkey

What a charmingly cute chapter book! I read this book for Episode 7 of Come Read with Me and it was delightful! I’ve obviously heard of the story before, but have never had any impetus to read it as the book came out after I was past this reading age/level.

I read this in one quick sitting while commuting home from work one day. It was definitely one of my more interesting choices for a commute read but hey no shame in my game right? I’m sure I could read the entire series, 12 “novels” and various spin offs, all in one day, and honestly they would probably be worth the read. It was engaging and there was enough humor, potty and otherwise, that I found myself smiling for most of the read.

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Books

Book 365: The Brontë Project – Jennifer Vandever

I’m not sure what it is about Brontë fan-fiction, but they’re just not as whimsical as the Austen fan-fiction. Looking at the subject matters and general ambiance of the works and the author’s lives it is fairly obvious, but when you think about it the options for fan-fiction are limitless. I picked this book up in late 2012 and have finally gotten around to reading it.

The only other Brontë fan-fiction I’ve read include Solsbury Hill and The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë and they were both a bit ho-hum. I did enjoy the vilification of Charlotte in Michael Thomas Ford’s Jane Fairfax trilogy, but that could be the problem. Emily and Anne died so early and Charlotte had so much time to cultivate/purge their images in society that it’s all about Charlotte and not the rest of the family. (“What’s more, she [Charlotte] has become adept at spinning her own legend and constructing her image before the public.” (59) – and I would even argue spinning Emily and Anne’s images, obviously). Even this novel, whose main character, Sara, is in love with Wuthering Heights ends up being predominantly about Charlotte.

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