Classics Circuit » Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

Classics Circuit: The Devil’s Elixir by ETA Hoffmann

Posted by Anastasia on October 17, 2011 13 Responses »

Oct 172011

Okay, so, I totally MEANT to have finished volume 1 of The Devil’s Elixir by today, but…then I got distracted by some reality shows and cat videos and stuff. So instead I’m just going to talk about the first 70% of volume 1 of The Devil’s Elixir.

Initial impression of volume 1 of The Devil’s Elixir:
1. Why are all these gothic novels so long ~~and boring~~?¹
2. I don’t know nearly enough about monks and Catholicism and so on as I probably need to in order to understand this book.
3. Lucky thing I have this dictionary in my Kindle, then.
4. This kind of reminds me of The Club Dumas.

Let me explain number four: The Club Dumas is two things. It is a) one of my favorite books ever, and b) a story about Satan and insane people who want to meet him/get power from him/etc.² The Devil’s Elixir, meanwhile, is about various people who are lured into drinking the Devil’s, uh…elixir, which makes them powerful and also insane. Or they’re already insane, and the elixir is just some old wine that acts like a placebo to make them THINK they’re more powerful.

Oh, and then they all try to kill each other.

Basically this is what happens in TCD, except instead of old wine/elixir they’re lured into reading a book and then doing a devil-y ceremony. Continue reading »

Classics Circuit: Austen vs Dickens

Posted by Anastasia on May 13, 2011 13 Responses »

May 132011

Jane Austen. Charles Dickens. Two authors I hadn’t ever really read before– half of Pride and Prejudice and a bad run at Great Expectations in high school don’t really count. Neither does, I think, A Christmas Carol, the only Dickens I’ve ever fully read. It’s so different from his other books that it’s not a “proper” Dickens experience, at least in my mind. So! I looked forward to finally finishing a book by each author.

Well, er, that didn’t exactly work out. I finished my Austen book, Northanger Abbey, but I’m only 7% into my Dickens book, The Pickwick Papers. I guess I should have checked lengths of the books before I picked them– I went with Northanger because people said it was funny, and I picked Pickwick for the same reason. But Northanger is WAY shorter than Pickwick, and Pickwick is so large it’s actually a chunkster! And here I was thinking I could finish it in two days. Yeah, er, no.

That was a boo-boo. But don’t despair! I’ve still got Northanger done and I can at least talk about the first 7% of Pickwick, and so here’s my post.

We would totally have been BFFs, I just know it.

Northanger Abbey

Okay, so I don’t know what was up with me not finishing P&P, but I just wasn’t into it back then (like over a year ago, I think). Northanger, though: I was totally into Northanger. I love it when authors get all snarky and sarcastic and make fun of each other, and I especially love it when they manage to do all that and yet still have likable characters and a coherent plot. Northanger is fun because it’s Austen being smart-alecky and because the characters are all so adorable.

Catherine and Mr Tilney? omg, so cute. Mr. and Mrs Allen? Adorable old(er) people! Captain Tilney and Isabella Thorpe? …okay, less cute. But basically everyone else, even General Tilney (who desperately needs to get remarried, by the way), were lovable in some way, which made reading Northanger Abbey an extremely enjoyable experience.

Also, the snark. I love the snark. I love how Austen deliberately made Catherine almost the exact opposite of the then-conventional romantic heroines. It made things so much more interesting! I mean, Catherine loved DIRT when she was younger! When was the last time you read about a heroine rolling around in the mud, even during her childhood?

I also love how Austen would set up events that, in a conventional romance, would mean heartbreak and tears for hero and heroine for at least three chapters– and then she’d cut it off at the knees. “Oh, you think it’s going to happen like this, do you?” she’d sneer. “Well, it’s really going to happen like THIS!” And then I’d laugh so hard that breathing became difficult for a while afterwards.

One of the more interesting rants Austen went on in Northanger was about the fact that the literati didn’t like “novels,” that they thought “novels” were trashy and if they read them they immediately disparaged them afterwards. Saying “oh it’s only a novel,” and the like. (“Written by some WOMAN.” Jane Austen, please marry me.) I equated that to how the literati think of what we call “genre novels,” where anything but straight up fiction is uncouth and only losers read vampire novels (or novels by women about “womanish things”). Interesting how things haven’t changed much from Austen’s time, eh?

So basically, in conclusion, I love Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey rocks, and I really want to read The Mysteries of Udolpho now.

"Fear me, schoolchildren (and Anastasia Finch)."

The Pickwick Papers

Like Fleur, I wanted to read The Pickwick Papers mostly because of Little Women. Also because I was told it was Dickens’ funniest book– but mostly because of Little Women, actually.

We got off to a rocky start, Pickwick and I. I’ll admit to being prejudiced against Dickens from unhappy English class experiences in high school, and I’ll admit to even being somewhat afraid of actually trying to finish one of his books. They’re normally depressing, his books, and I don’t like being depressed while I read, usually. But he also deliberately provokes me with his writing style. Compared to, say, Jane Austen’s writing, Dickens’ is a much tougher steak to chew. While I don’t entirely mind working to understand a book (looking at you, Mr Joyce), I do mind not understanding what the hell just happened in a scene because I couldn’t parse the sentences.

Turns out that, like Joyce, I just had to stick with it to be able to understand it. (Thanks for that tip, Jo M.!) By the time I reached chapter two I was going strong and really getting into the story. I even laughed out loud at one point in chapter three! Charles Dickens! Made me laugh out loud! Never thought I’d ever type those words, to be honest.

While I’m only 7% (somewhere in chapter four, I think) into what is, for me, a very long book, I think as long as I keep a steady pace I can make it through to the end. I’m interested in seeing what’s going to happen with the Pickwicks’ stranger (who is definitely a rascal), and more of the Pickwicks’ adventures. I just hope I have the stamina.

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Classics Circuit: The Odyssey by Homer

Posted by Anastasia on January 28, 2011 15 Responses »

Jan 282011

Okay, so two things:
1. I feel like an uncultured swine
2. I’m sort of unapologetic about it?

So, yeah: I never did much Classical stuff in ANY of my days at school. I think the most we did was a half-hearted attempt at Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar? So I never got indoctrinated into the Classical camp, and I’ve never read any of the Classical stories, either. I arbitrarily picked The Odyssey because I sort of remembered it had something to do with Odysseus, who I sort of remembered had something to do with maybe the Cyclops or something (I’m not really up on my Greek mythology, either). I didn’t know about how long it was, or really what it was about, and all I knew was that I had to get the Fagles translation because that one was the best one.

I got about 43% into it and then I just got bored. I was bored, y’all! I mean, I wasn’t bored because of the repetition, because I knew why it was there (oral tradition meant needing that sort of thing more than we’d need it today). I wasn’t bored because of the characters, necessarily– they were pretty fleshed-out people, with multiple dimensions and what not. And I wasn’t bored because of the story, either! Well, mostly.

To be honest, if I had been more into the story I would have forced myself to keep reading. But it was just okay.

You know that thing, where you’re sometimes SO saturated with something, with secondary source-somethings, that by the time you get to the original source you’re sort of…wiped-out by it all? And it’s almost like you don’t NEED to read the original source unless you’re super into doing that sort of thing? So, like, that’s what’s going on with me. Even though I don’t know ALL the details re:Greek mythology, enough of it is familiar that, in reading the Odyssey, I just feel like I’m reading stuff I’m already familiar with. And that’s kind of boring.

It’s like eating carrot cake every day for a month, and then the next month switching to red velvet cake. The red velvet may be more expensive and better-made and all-around lovelier, but you’re still stuffed full from cake and the red velvet ends up tasting like carrot.

So there it is. I can’t really get into The Odyssey, at least not enough to make myself finish. Maybe later, when I feel like it, I’ll finish. But for now? It’s a DNF (great translation nonetheless).

Don’t forget to check out my Classics Circuit partner for today, fictional100, who is writing about Oedipus the King!

Classics Circuit Review: Mr Scarborough’s Family by Anthony Trollope

Posted by Anastasia on December 6, 2010 9 Responses »

Dec 062010

Not Mr Scarborough

228. Mr Scarborough’s Family by Anthony Trollope
Publication: originally published 1883, ebook published 2004
Genre: Fiction, Romance
Rating: Borrow it
Read: September 8-December 3, 2010
Source: Project Gutenberg
Summary from VictorianWeb:
“MR SCARBOROUGH, WEALTHY owner of Tretton Park in Staffordshire, is dying. His eldest son and heir Mountjoy has gambled away his inheritance to avaricious money-lenders who hold post-obits to the entire value of the estate. As the story opens, Mr Scarborough astonishes Society by declaring Mountjoy illegitimate. He claims that he only married his wife shortly before the birth of his second (remarkably unattractive) son Augustus, thus making him the real heir. Mountjoy’s creditors threaten vain law suits against the estate; and the odious Augustus assumes his place as heir.”

Today’s fellow Circuiters: Things Mean a Lot | 2,606 Books and counting……

Review

I’ve been wanting to do a Classics Circuit for a while, but nothing ever worked out until this one, the Anthony Trollope circuit. I’ll admit I’m not overly familiar with Anthony Trollope. I read Rebecca’s review of Can You Forgive Her? and thought he sounded like a boring old fart, but he’s written SO many books that I thought I’d give him a chance and try at least one of his books. I decided on trying one of his lesser-known books for the Circuit because a) I assumed everyone else would be reading some of his more famous books anyway and b) I have a soft spot for forgotten books (it’s why I like Girlebooks and Persephone Books so much) and wanted to try highlighting something somewhat unknown.

Anyway. Instead of a boring old fart, Trollope’s really a money-obsessed, repetitive, prejudiced and possibly bigoted old fart. Or at least that’s how he comes across based on the two books I’ve read– this one I’m reviewing here and Miss Mackenzie! And I honestly don’t know if I can work up the stamina to get through another. I mean there’s only so many times I can read about how much someone got a year and why that makes him better than the other fellow who only gets this much a year, and will he marry that lady who has a small inheritance but is hella shrewish or will he marry the nice but poor lady, etc etc. It’s tiring, especially because I really don’t give a crap how much someone has (or makes) a year, at least not to the extent that Trollope blathers on about it.

Mr Scarborough’s Family was actually the lesser of two evils, by which I mean I enjoyed it more although it was miles too long. So:

On the one hand, the characters are quite a lot of fun. The characters are, I think, the best part of Mr Scarborough’s Family. They’re why I kept reading it even when everything else was annoying me, because I wanted to see what would happen to Harry and Florence, and whether Augustus would get his comeuppance and whether Mountjoy would finally break his gambling habit.
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