Favourite Classic Book

Ah, the classics. Last year our book club decided to have a year of the classics. We’ve been together for just over a decade and thought it would make an interesting experiment as we all, voracious readers though we are, have gaps in our reading, untouched classics that really should be part of our reading experience.We tweaked the criteria a little because some of the members thought that a year of ‘classics’ as we’d been defining it might be a little onerous. Thus, we decided that it had to be a ‘well-known book, published prior to 2000.’

I think my entire book club would agree that the year was a bit of a bust. Reading-wise, that is. I was hoping to revisit some of the classics I’d enjoyed when I was younger, Jane Eyre, perhaps or Wuthering Heights. (Our rule is that you aren’t allowed to choose a book you’ve already read, so I wouldn’t have been able to choose either one of those myself: I picked Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca.) Instead, we sort of had a mish-mash of books as diverse as Zorba the Greek and The Great Gatsby. It was a relief when we started again last month and went back to picking whatever in the hell we wanted.

Despite our rather lackluster year, I still think classics are important. Sure the writing can some times be laborious and the plots slow-moving, but those characters and stories have stood the test of time for a very good reason. As I’ve mentioned before, Jane Eyre  was my first childhood  adult book and I absolutely loved it. But I read it 35 years ago and haven’t read it since. Wuthering Heights is another book which I credit for kick-starting my love of angsty tales of doomed characters. As a teacher I frequently revisit classics like Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird and I understand why these novels are still part of high school curricula. What Canadian female wouldn’t add Anne of Green Gables to her list of beloved classics? A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. Little Women.

So, do I have to choose a favourite? Really? Okay – I choose A Little Princess. I’ve read it multiple times. It never fails to make me cry and fill my heart with joy. It’s magical. And Sara Crewe is a character who has stayed with me always. There is nothing about this book I don’t love.

A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving.

It used to be that I finished every single book I started. I figured I owed it to myself to slog through every book I purchased (and I am a total book-whore, so I own rather than borrow) even those books that just didn’t do it for me. Sometimes I was rewarded for my perseverance and sometimes I wasn’t. I don’t do it much anymore. If I really, really think I should read the book and I start and it’s not grabbing me – I put it aside. At some point, I hope I’ll get back to it. Mostly, though, I don’t. I just have too many books on my tbr shelf (not the virtual one, either, the actual shelves!) and so I don’t labour over books that don’t speak to me pretty quickly.

That said, I have read books that I didn’t initially think would be my cup of tea. Yann Martel’s Life of Pi would be one such book. Just too out there for me. Still, I read it. I enjoyed it. I’m not sure I understood it, but when I was done I felt pretty proud of myself. It was a book club selection a few years back and we had a great discussion about the book. Another book that would fall into this category would be Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, a challenging book that ended up being so powerful and memorable I have often recommended it.

I am sure there have been others, but I am going to choose The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak as the book I didn’t think I would like but ended up loving. When it was chosen for my book club I was thrilled as it was on my tbr list, but when I started to read it I thought, oh dear, this just isn’t going to be my cup of tea at all. Since it was a book club pick, though,  I thought I would try to muscle my way through it; the discussion isn’t nearly as much fun if you haven’t read the book. About 50 pages in – wham! I fell madly in love with Zusak’s main character, Liesel, and the rest of the characters. Set in Nazi Germany, The Book Thief,  narrated by Death ( a conceit that actually never stops being effective) is Liesel’s story, but it is not hers alone. If you love books, if you love the notion that words have the power to set you free, if you abhor prejudice and hatred, if you have hope in your heart, The Book Thief might just be the best book you’ve never read. This book deserves the hype.

When I finished this book (after I wiped the tears away) I started making a list of all the people I wanted to read it: my children, my students, my friends…

I really, really love it.

Most overrated book.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Hands down this is the most overrated book for me. I read the book back in 2008 and talked about it here.

Then (and now) I can’t fault Gilbert’s writing; she is an excellent wordsmith. The thing I couldn’t quite understand about the book was its call-to-arms. Woman seemed to suddenly, in droves, re-examine their lives like Gilbert’s own search for self was somehow attainable for the average Jane. I said at the time:

Lots of people wish they could stop their hectic, horrible, messy, complicated, screwed up lives in order to find their deeper purpose; in order to mend their broken hearts and psyches, in order examine their place in the world, their connection to the people with whom they share the planet…and their relationship with a higher power (God, in Gilbert’s case, although she says “I could just as easily  use the words Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu or Zeus.”) Not everyone has the means. Plus, although Gilbert’s journey was preceded by a divorce, she has no children. Trust me, I’d love four child-free months in Italy, too.

I don’t think  Gilbert was really suggesting that we all take a year off in search of balance. That’s hardly possible for the general population. Yet, somehow, Eat, Pray, Love was held up as this example of what it means to search for (and ultimately find) peace in life, in love, in your higher power. I’m no cynic, but come on. I have no doubt that Eat, Pray, Love made a ton of money and allowed Gilbert to continue her quest for self-awareness and as I said in my original review, I enjoyed Gilbert’s journey but the book’s ability to guide me to my own center was a bit of a bust.

A book that makes you sad.

Oh, this is totally easy! Lots of books have made me weep over the years – including the one I talked about yesterday, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess which I included in the happy category for different reasons.

Top of my list – and no great literary work – The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller.  I say it’s not great literature because the writing isn’t amazing, but the story of one woman who has a chance to step away from her life to finally have great love, but doesn’t because she knows what she must give up in order to do so, just gutted me when I read it 15 years ago. I cried so hard, I couldn’t even see the pages and when I was done I immediately packed it up and shipped it off to my best friend.

I might have said that was the book that made me cry the hardest until I read The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Once I stopped trying to figure out the time travel thing and settled into Henry and Clare’s story I was captivated. The writing is beautiful, but their story is magnificent. Again, though, bawled like a baby.

But is crying the same as being sad? I recently finished Melanie Wallace’s book The Housekeeper. Now that was a sad, sad story. I didn’t shed a single tear, but I felt Jamie’s pain like a fist in my throat and I thought about her for days afterwards.

Either way, a physical reaction or an internal one – I like the sad books. Or, at least, I like the books that touch me emotionally and I guess given the fact that it was harder to talk about a happy book (although my friend Karen suggested I move Carol Shields’ The Republic of Love up my tbr list as it will make me happy) I must have a thing for the sad stuff.

A book that makes you happy.

This question is actually hard for me. Most of the fiction I read tends to be pretty grim. Well, that’s not always true – but I read predominantly literary fiction and generally it’s not exactly uplifting. So, I stood in front of my book cases for a few minutes, trying to channel a book that I’ve read that actually made me happy…

Yeah. Maybe I need to start reading some happier material.

Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic made me laugh out loud. I had to literally put the book down and wipe the tears from my eyes. But did it make me happy? I dunno.

Maybe I’m looking at book happiness in the wrong way. Maybe I just need to choose a book that made me grateful to be a reader. I’m going to dip back into my childhood again and pick A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The story of Sara Crewe who is left by her father at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies while he returns to India to fight in the war in India is both heart-warming and heart-breaking. Sara is imaginative and kind. When her father is killed Sara’s  life changes dramatically  and she goes from being a special pupil at Miss Minchin’s to a scullery maid, forced to earn her keep.

Why does A Little Princess make me happy? It is one of those magical books that showed me a different world and made me care about a character deeply. Although Sara doesn’t get the happy ending she deserves, Sara’s story is beautifully told and A Little Princess is truly one of those childhood books that gave me hours of pleasure.

Favourite book of your favourite series.

Well, I know that my choice for favourite series was kind of juvenile given the number series out there, but I don’t care. When I think back to those years, I have to give credit to Laura Lee Hope (no such person, by the way – you can read the story about the books and their creator here) for giving me the gift of independent reading at an early age. Of course I left those books behind, but I loved them and they have a special place in my heart.

So, if I had to pick my favourite book from that series, it would have to be The Bobbsey Twins and the Secret of Candy Castle. I do not remember a blessed thing about this book’s plot (essentially they were all the same anyway; the two sets of twins solved some sort of mystery either around their home or while on vacation, which they seemed to do a lot, vacation I mean). What I do remember. vividly, is the cover of this book. I was thrilled when it turned up on my birthday. I don’t know where this candy castle was, but I seem to recall that someone disappeared in it and the twins had to figure out where he went – secret passages and doors were involved, I think. (And what kid doesn’t like those?)

By today’s standards, The Bobbsey Twins are pretty lackluster heroes. Today’s young readers have Harry Potter and cohorts and Katniss from The Hunger Games to admire. But it is impossible not to have affection for the first books that you curled up with, those books you read alone but never felt alone reading.

Your favorite series.

The series that immediately popped into my mind was The Bobbsey Twins. I know I am showing my age by saying that, but I read Laura Lee Hope’s novels about Nan and Bert and Flossie and Freddie avidly from the time I was about 7  until I was 10 or 11. My uncle used to give me two hard cover books for my birthday and I loved them…and still have many. In many of the earliest books these mystery solving twins were really young, Flossie and Freddie only 4, but they consistently solved the mysteries in and around Lakeport, Michigan. (And yes, I am remembering all these names without looking them up! I was a fan, I tell you!)

I am not really a serial reader. I associate serials with mysteries and detective stories – the same characters, different crimes. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy mysteries, I’ve just never really followed one character through a bunch of different stories. I follow authors, though and have several I admire: Carolyn Slaughter, Thomas H. Cook, Helen Humphreys, Helen Dunmore. If they’re writing, I’m reading.

Well, school is just around the corner and that means the return of routine. I love the summer. I love the lack of structure –  the simplicity of the days, knowing the kids and I can just take off if we feel like it. (I have the luxury of being off during the summer because I am a teacher.) I thought that in an effort to get back into the swing of things and sort of turn my brain back on, I’d use these book-related questions courtesy of Portrait of the Would-Be Artist as a Young Woman. I’ll post one answer a day for the month of September.

What is the best book you read last year.

I am going to tweak this question slightly because it’s September and the year’s not done and I haven’t really started to reflect on the books I’ve read this year.

The best book I’ve read in recent memory, though, has got to be John Connolly’s tremendously moving novel The Book of Lost Things. I was teaching a writing course at the time I was reading it and I took the book in to one of the students in my class and said: “You have to read this book.” Although an avid reader, this young man mostly read fantasy stuff, but The Book of Lost Things has an element of the fantastical about it and I thought the student would like it. The very next day we passed each other in the hall and he said: “I am on page 280. I can’t put it down.”

The Book of Lost Things did everything a really good book should do: it transported, it instructed, it illuminated. As if that weren’t enough,  it was exciting and creepy and made my cry. I don’t think you can ask for much more than that. I have a couple other Connolly titles on my bookshelf. I hope they live up to my very high expectations!