Monday, May 16, 2011

VICTORY

I finished Middlemarch! 800 pages of White Middle Class Problems, my favorite! In all seriousness, though, Middlemarch is a great book about a provincial town in 1830s England and all the juicy gossip/scandal/Reformation, et cetera, that happens in and around it. It follows several overlapping storylines about various families and their attempts to marry off their daughters, find employment for their sons, save their farms, and other such business.

It was great! The best way I could describe it would be to say it's like a Jane Austen novel but times four. The payoff was amazing in the end, I was really emotionally invested in a lot of the characters' futures (especially MARY GARTH, this plain, poor girl who is super sarcastic and super witty and she's my hero because despite her plainness she manages to ensnare two hot catches).

The writing was excellent. George Eliot was super profound and incisive. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"A kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gunk or starch in the form of tradition."

"Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable."

"We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time."

"People were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy."

"People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors."

And a quote by Mary Garth, number one BAMF:

"Husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order."

YOU TELL EM MARY.

All in all, it was great, such an endeavor! Next up on my roster is Don Quixote, so don't expect to hear from me for several months.

2 comments:

kenny said...

MONTHS?! This did sound like an interesting book, but maybe what you should do is read 100 pages of Don Quixote then 100 pages of a much shorter book, and so on and so forth, so that you will emerge a little more often to frequent us with your prose!

P.S. What is your break schedule with work? Do you get one break a day and take it in some enchanted cafeteria? Do you read then?

Kelsen said...

Maybe I will try just that strategy, Kenneth. Because I started Don Quixote three days ago and I am only 3% into it (I'm reading it on my Kindle).

I get a 45 minute break every day to eat lunch and read, etc. I do a lot of reading on the bus to work as well. So jes!