Favorite Lines Friday

I love this line from Pride and Prejudice. It's spoken by Mr. Bennet, the heroine's father, to his wife:

I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.


A Year of Books that are Older than Me

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read this book. I’m always excited to read it again. I wanted to read it last year, but didn’t get to it, and so I’m particularly happy that it’s older than me and therefore has a place in this year’s reading schedule.

I’m also particularly happy about the novel itself. This has to be the most enjoyment I’ve received from a reading of it, even though I knew exactly what was going to happen around every turn of the walking path. Some of that satisfaction may have come from the verified disappointment that was my second reading of Mansfield Park. Let me explain: I was a little scared that if Jane Austen had written something that I found so boring and irritating, perhaps my tastes had changed. Perhaps Elizabeth Bennet wasn’t as witty as I remembered. Perhaps she was just as prudish as Fanny Price. Since I found Elizabeth as enjoyable a heroine as I had before, however, I may have had so much fun this time through at least partially out of relief.

When I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time, it was under the recommendation of a friend, who described it as “light and fluffy” reading. There is little use in denying that this novel isn’t heavy stuff. There’s no real action or adventure. Nobody’s life is in real danger at any point. The villains aren’t in a position to really do much damage unless the protagonists allow them to affect their happiness.

But there are characters that are easy to love. There are secrets and a few lies. There is wit and banter. And, above all, there is a supreme use of the English language to tell a simple and believable story. Light and fluffy it may be, but I turned pages (actually swiped the screen; I read this as an e-book on my tablet) like never before. I was actually excited to get to the next part. Excited for Jane and Bingly to fall in love. Excited to laugh at Mr. Collins and his obsequious devotion to Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Excited to see Darcy revealed as a kind, generous, worthy companion to Elizabeth. Excited to see Elizabeth come to recognize this and come to learn to laugh at herself.

“It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” is the famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice, and, while it may sound like the beginning of a rather common or perhaps even dull topic, it in fact begins a charming story. Even if this novel’s plot is no longer full of surprises for me, I still find myself pleasantly surprised by how much I like it.

 

A Year of Books that are Older than Me

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

aka The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Just about everybody knows this story. A little girl gets blown to a magical land by a tornado, makes some odd friends, travels with them to see the Wizard who is supposed to be powerful enough to get her back home, suffers disappointment that said Wizard is a fake, destroys a wicked witch more or less by mistake, and eventually gets home again using a power she had at hand (or rather at foot) the whole time. The little girl, Dorothy, is pretty easy to like. She’s rather resilient for just a little girl, and she brings out the best in all her new friends.

I’ve read this book several times, of course. Many American girls have, I suppose, and I have enjoyed it on each occasion, even though I’ve always been hard pressed to let the printed word be the “real story,” since I saw the movie many times before I ever peeled open the cover of the novel. I do like that Dorothy is a very young girl (as compared to Judy Garland in the film), simply because it makes some of the silliness that takes place during her adventures more fun and less weird.

I’m a big fan of the fantasy genre, and this story was one of my earliest exposures to it. I like just letting The Wizard of Oz be a cheerful and wonderful fantasy story and really don’t need any more heft or “deep hidden meaning” to enjoy it as an adult. In the introduction to the novel, Baum himself wrote:

 

Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incidents.

    Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to pleasure children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and heart-aches and nightmares are left out.

 

I can’t completely agree that all the nightmares are left out. Dorothy lives for a time as the slave of the Wicked Witch of the West. And, really, the Tin Woodman had cut his own body to pieces. That’s kind of horrible. There must be something to conquer if one is to be the hero or heroine of one’s story, however, so some serious obstacles must remain. And while I don’t like seeking for morals to this story, I have always found it interesting that Dorothy’s friends, the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion continuously prove that they have plenty of what they are searching for: brains, heart, and courage respectively. Each is tested along the way and proves himself well-equipped without ever realizing it. The Scarecrow has all the best ideas, the Tin Woodman is the most sensitive, and the Lion must perform all the most dangerous physical tasks.

And this is why I like Dorothy. I feel like she’s the one who has brought this out in each of her new friends, even if she doesn’t notice or at least doesn’t mention it. I also like her for the same reason just about any little girl might like her: she doesn’t scream or cry or faint when plunged into a strange place with magic and witches and talking scarecrows. “But, you see, the Land of Oz has never been civilized,” says the Good Witch of the North, and such a land is the perfect place to play and have adventures, especially if the “heart-aches and nightmares are left out.” Mostly.

 

You might also like: Wicked by Gregory Maguire from A Year (Plus) of Books I Should Have Read by Now (a seriously adult view of this story)

 

Coming soon: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

 

 

Preface to A Year of Books that are Older than Me

Well, this new year is slightly used at this point, but here is the reading challenge I intend to tackle this year. Really, I’m still a rather Distractible Reader, so it will be more like a reading focus in which I hope to engage for the next 12 months. I’ve already spent a year on books I’ve read before and a year plus of books I should have read by now.

This year I’m going to read books that are older than me.

I’ve made no restrictions on the volumes I’ll read beyond the publication date. I hope to have them range from ancient classics to, well, somewhat modern books published just before I was born. Some will be books I’ve read before while others will be books I probably should have already read, and still others will be books I don’t know much about but have nevertheless piqued my curiosity.

I usually get quite distracted from my self-imposed reading challenges, especially by new books, tempters and temptresses on the public library shelves, and by books generously given to me as gifts. (Actually I’ve done much better at sticking with my reading plan in the last couple years than I thought I might be. I did recently acquire some new books that are burning a hole in my bookshelves, however, so we’ll see what happens.)

In addition to being distractible, I’m also not a very fast reader and I have a bit of a busy schedule (which includes keeping up with my other blog), so - and I feel a little bad about this – I don’t finish books or write about them as often as I’d like. That being said, this is just a personal reading journal by an amateur reader with no formal training in analysis of literature. I like to read, plain and simple, and here’s where I communicate to whoever cares to follow along what I think about what I’ve read.

And so begins the Year of Books that are Older than Me…

 

Coming soon: The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

 

 

A Year of Books that are Older than Me