Classics Challenge Completed

I finished Romola by George Eliot this afternoon, which means I completed my Classics Challenge for 2012.

To recap, here are the books that constituted my challenge and my links to their reviews:

Silas Marner - George Eliot

This was my second time reading this book, and I loved it and appreciated it so much more the second time through.  A truly lovely tale of how love can redeem a lost soul.

Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck
Overall disappointing, but it was an early work of Steinbeck's and prefigured my favorite, Cannery Row, in several significant ways.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes - Robert Louis Stevenson
An interesting travel memoir, and another early work by a classic writer.  Walking memoirs evolved into one of my reading themes this year, and so this book fit into both classics and walking.

Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope
I did end up liking Barchester Towers more than The Warden, the first in the series, which I didn't dislike but I found the discussion of church politics in mid-19th century England to be a bit mind-numbing.  I thought the narrative voice to be calmer and less intrusive than in The Warden also.  Also, I became acquainted with two marvelously drawn characters, Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Slope.

Romola - George Eliot
Wow, this book has been a roller-coaster.  I thought I would loathe it based on the first few chapters, but then it got interesting and readable.  Halfway through, I was wondering why it was titled Romola as it really seemed more about Romola's husband, Tito, but then the focus shifted and I came to understand why it was titled as it was.  Romola is definitely cut from the same cloth as Dorothea Brooke, from Eliot's Middlemarch, one of my all-time favorite heroines, but in the end I found her a bit too saintly to be a really interesting character. Tito, on the other hand, was fascinating.  I'm now listening to a Great Courses lecture series on the Italian Renaissance to help me understand what was going on in the novel!

Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens
After a long hiatus from Dickens, an estrangement really, I decided to make up with the great egotist and read a book whose mini-series I have long wanted to watch. I enjoyed the book and mini-series very much, and was thrilled to discover the Little Dorrit and her family visited Venice, which happened to be another of my reading threads for 2012.

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
In my opinion, one of the greatest American novels ever written.  I came to it prejudiced against it, expecting it to be cloying, pedantic, and self-righteous. It was none of those, and really helped me understand the forces that led to the American Civil War, which happens to be another reading thread for 2012.  If you haven't read this wonderful book, I urge you to do so.  Should be on every high school reading list along with To Kill a Mockingbird.

My thanks to Katherine Cox for hosting this Classics Challenge and providing such wonderful monthly prompts.  I really enjoyed reading everyone else's classics reviews, and I look forward to another year of great classics reading and rereading.  Working on my 2013 list now!

Romola & Shakespeare

I've just started Romola, by George Eliot.  It's the last of my Classics Challenge books for 2013, and I'll be hard pressed to finish it by the end of the year.  It's slow going and the temptation to put it down and read something easier is strong, but I'm determined to read all of George Eliot's novels and novellas and so I press on.  Just to give you a feel for its density, the editor felt the need to provide 177 notes for the first seven chapters and the Proem (i.e., prologue).  It's full of Latin phrases, references to Renaissance Italian figures, ancient texts, and Mediterrean geography, most of which is "Greek to me."

So how does this relate to Shakespeare?  The basic plot thus far could have easily been that of a Shakespearean comedy.  A stunningly gorgeous young Greek man, Tito Melema, is shipwrecked and makes his way to Florence on the day after Lorenzo d'Medici has died, leaving Florence all in uproar.  A locuacious and philosophical barber, Nello, finds him sleeping in a street or alley or parkbench, I can't remember, and takes him under his wing.  All that Tito has left after the shipwreck are some gems but he is also (so he says) of good family and well-educated.  Nello introduces him to Bardo de' Bardi, a blind scholar currently in disgrace because of his philosophies, who also happens to have a beautiful and devoted daughter, Romola.  Romola and Tito find each other irresistable, and Bardi sees in Tito all that his own prodigal son was not.  However, before Tito meets Romola, he happens upon a sleeping milkmaid, Tessa, a kisses her awake.  This is not a good sign of things to come, methinks.

There's a lot of The Tempest in the plot thus far, some Twelfth Night, some Comedy of Errors, some As You Like It. Hopefully, alls well that ends well, but I have a feeling there's some tragedy ahead for Romola.