Classics Project Book #6 ~ Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Peter Pan
by J.M. Barrie
Blackstone Audio
Originally published 1904
ISBN: 9781441715494

Barnes & Noble

Downpour
Powell's

Peter Pan is one of several classic children’s novels that escaped me in my youth. As an adult, I’m trying to make up for lost time and channel my inner child by reading them. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz delighted me, Alice in Wonderland is on the horizon and I just finished an adventure with Peter Pan.

So much of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is especially for the imagination and feeling of a child. Peter Pan is the boy who never wants to grow up. He’s gay (in the classic definition), innocent and heartless. As a child, he has the magical power to fly simply by tapping into “lovely wonderful thoughts”. He has very little sense of time and virtually no long-term memory because he is too consumed with new adventures and being a boy. While children often struggle with the limitations of their age, Peter Pan, the Lost Boys and their new friends Wendy, Michael and John Darling demonstrate that being a child is something special and that adults are at the disadvantage of not being able to recapture the magic of their youth.

Peter Pan lures Wendy, Michael and John from their cozy home, teaches them to fly and they have wondrous and sometimes dangerous adventures. The characters of Neverland include fantastical creatures like mermaids and fairies that children only read about in books but here are children interacting with them in their own exclusive world. The children are pitted against the most capitvating villain of their imagination: pirates. Neverland is exotic and different and a place where your average adults are not allowed.

I think the enduring legacy of the story of Peter Pan is it’s ability to tap into a child’s imagination in the most direct way possible. The story captures their imagination, speaks to their hopes and fears and provides them with heroes that they can identify with.

I enjoyed this book as an adult but do regret not having read it as a child. Most of the fantastical adventures were lost on me and I found myself more interested in the tail ends of the story when we're in the Darling home.

I got this book as part of a free audio book deal from Downpour.com . They are a great alternative to Audible especially if you don’t want to do business with Amazon. The audio book was narrated by Christopher Cazenove who I think did a wonderful job. It felt very much like a classic story time narration. I wonder what an audio narration would sound like with a much young narrator. I think it would be even better.

Classics Project Book #5 ~ The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

The End of the Affair
by Graham Grene
Audible
6 hours 28 minutes
Originally published 1951

Years ago I remember catching snippets of the 1999 film adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel The End of the Affair. The film starred Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore and there was one scene has a permanent spot in my memory. It’s when Maurice Bendrix (Fiennes) puts stockings and shoes on Sarah Miles (Moore). He tells her he’s jealous of her stockings, of her buttons and of her shoes and it’s one of the most romantic and heart-wrenching scenes I’ve ever been privileged to witness (you can read the lines from that scene here ).

Fast forward to 2012 when Audible announced their A-List line of celebrity narrated classic and literary audio books. I signed up for Audible so I could download Anne Hathaway’s narration of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (read my review here) and Colin Firth’s narration of The End of the Affair. Both proved to be incredibly listening experiences!

The film plays up more of the love affair between Maurice and Sarah. The book stays true to it’s title and focuses strictly on the end of their affair. The story takes place during World War II in London. Maurice will do anything to possess Sarah. He’s a novelist who has more control with the imaginary worlds he creates in his writing than with real life. Sarah Miles is a gentle woman, in love with Maurice but still devoted to her mild-mannered husband Henry. Sarah abruptly ends their affair when in a moment of despair she promises God she’ll end the affair if only Maurice survived the bombing. Maurice doesn’t know this and is convinced that Sarah is having an affair with someone else. He hires a detective, reads her diary and is constantly obsessing over every minute detail of their affair and of her life.

“We are possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.”

We as the reader are drawn in to Maurice’s story of jealousy and obsession. This novel is taut with emotion and we become fully enveloped in this beautifuly written yet haunting and dark story. The prose is magical, the characters feel real and the story is exquisite. Colin Firth’s narration is one of the best I’ve ever heard. He won the Audie Award for Best Audio Book of 2013 and it’s well-deserved (it was also nominated for Best Solo Narration - Male and Best Literary Fiction Audio). Die-hard Firth fans will swoon when they listen to this!

The End of the Affair is referred to as one of Graham Greene’s Catholic novels and religion, personal belief, tradition and atheism are all explored. The theme of religion becomes much more important at the end of the novel. I didn’t quite understand why this was considered a Catholic novel until I got to the last third of the book. The book is also loosely based on Graham Greene’s real life affair with Lady Catherine Walston as well as his own struggles with converting to Catholicism.

I highly recommend this book if you like beautiful prose with intense emotion. The scene I loved from the movie ended up not being in the book which I didn't mind. The movie played up the romance and the book focused on the end of the affair which seems to be fitting for both mediums.

Classics Project Book #4: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White 
by Wilkie Collins

I am very behind in my Classics Project reading. Out of 50 titles I have only read 4, eek! I listened to The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins some time ago but hadn't had a chance to review it until now. The audio book was great. It was narrated by Ian Holm who is one of my favorite actors. He did a wonderful job with the narration and the different voices and his voice suited the book very well. However, I struggled with finding time to listen to it. I only had access to it on my iPhone and had no way to listen to it in my car without blasting my iPhone's speakers. This  made the sound quite terrible and on the highway I could barely hear it. So I would mostly listen to it on walks. It was over 20 hours and it took me so long to read. I dreaded abandoning the characters so many times. In hindsight I should have either listened to it on a CD rather than an Audible download or read my physical copy of it.

The Woman in White is a well-written mystery with a terrific cast of characters. I especially enjoyed spending time with Walter Hartright, his love interest Laura Firlie and her spinster sister Marian Holcombe. And of course the mysterious woman in white, Anne Catherick. I liked all the twists and turns the story took and the writing was elegant yet very simple and direct too. It made me more interested in reading other novels by Wilkie Collins. Collins is a favorite among many readers I know who are fans of classic literature. I think The Woman in White would be great to recommend to someone who is not familiar with the classics and wants to tackle a longer read that will capture their imagination.

I plan to read this again and to allow myself more time to read big chunks of it rather than it little snippets. It really took away from the experience. When I do read it again, I want to do a more thorough review!

Classics Project Book #3: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
9780061120084
Harper Perennial

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those mid-Twentieth Century classics that everyone reads in school. But somehow this classic has eluded me for years.

There were three English teachers in my high school and two of them were teaching To Kill a Mockingbird as part of their curriculum for Junior year. I had the third teacher. She was wonderful and while I don't remember her name I will never forget the novels she had us read. They planted the seed of a lifelong love of books in me. She also allowed us to pick our own classics for one term and that freedom to chose what I wanted to read was quite liberating. It was only a few years later that I decided to become an English major even with my long history of poor reading comprehension.

That disability was brought to light while reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I often times found myself confused and had to re-read sections. I couldn't quite tell if we were listening to Scout as an adult narrate her past or if it was Scout in the present. Or a combination of both. I've always had difficulty reading fiction and was hoping it would not have been so noticeable when I read this classic.

Despite my difficulties, I thoroughly enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird. Stories set in the South are some of my favorites. There is something about the culture matched with sweltering heat and isolation that produces amazing stories. As a child of 1980s Cartoons, I often found myself trying to get rid of the Jem TV show theme song every time I encountered the same name in the text. I felt like I wanted to get closer to the characters but they were held at a distance to me. Atticus is a character I would love to learn more about but he will just always be an enigma to me. I love how sensitive this book is to prejudice and racism and I'm sure it made a historic impact on the civil rights movement when the book was published in 1961 and the movie released the following year.

This book deals with some heavy issues and I feel that the young character of Scout provides a good entry way into the story for young folks which makes it perfect reading for school curriculums. If the novel had been from an adult point of view, I don't think high school students would have been able to identify with the characters or develop an interest in the plot as they would with a much younger character. Overall I am very glad I took the opportunity to finally read this book after so many years. Now on to the movie!

Disclaimer: I got a copy of this book from Harper Perennial for hosting a giveaway for the 50th anniversary of the movie on my film blog.

On Reading Moby Dick and Moby Dick Big Read

I've been struggling with reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I was never assigned the novel in High School or even as an English Major in Undergrad and Grad school. And I never had any interest. But since my good friend Mark is currently working on a project of which Moby Dick is significantly influential, so I decided to give it a go and added it to my Classics Club Challenge list.

I'm currently on chapter 58 and I'm struggling. There are 136 chapters and I am not quite far enough into the text to power through. I'm languishing. I asked my friend Mark for help. He told me that the book is very flawed and is in need of editing which it didn't receive before it was published. It's disjointed, there are chapters that can be taken out and it was not how Melville intended it to be. Knowing that helps a bit.

Blogger Jill from A Room of One's Own [Update: blog is now defunct] posted about a new online event called Moby Dick Big Read. It started a couple days ago. Each day they post an audio clip of one full chapter being read by a different actor or narrator. They also post some relevant art material. It's such a genius idea! I would have to wait until 11/12 in order to get to the point where I'm at in the book to start the project. I might wait until they get to chapter 50 instead of chapter 58 because the last few chapters I read of Moby Dick didn't quite sink in. Or I might start even earlier! Who knows. The project would be complete by January of 2013. I wanted to finish Moby Dick by the end of this month but I don't think this is the kind of book to be rushed.

Are you going to participate in Moby Dick Big Read?

Classics Project Book #2 - Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

“You got de keys to de kingdom.” – Tea Cakes

What brought me to Their Eyes Were Watching God were two amazingly intelligent and talented women who shared a devotion to the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston. In an interview with Dr. Brown on African American Legends , they discuss how they came to write the middle-grade novel about Hurston’s childhood. Something interesting they talk about in the interview is Zora’s history with Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville was a primarily black town, inhabited and governed by African-Americans. That’s virtually unheard of during the early 20th Century. Hurston grew up in a community of equals and according to one of the authors interviewed “coming from that context in which there was black autonomy, [Hurston] never had this sense of black inferiority... inside of herself she carried that kingdom.” I thought this was really interesting. Also, the authors enthusiasm for Zora Neale Hurston was infectious and I knew I just had to try one of Hurston’s books.

I guess it's been quite a long time since I have done serious analysis of literature and when I came to Their Eyes Were Watching God I was a bit rusty. What threw me off perhaps was the dialect in the dialogue spoken by the different characters. It took some getting used to. I'm never one to turn down a linguistic challenge so for the first few chapters I read the dialogue out loud until I became used to it. However, it did slow down my reading overall and this book took a lot longer than I would have liked. The beautiful poetic language at the beginning of each chapter was something I longed more for as I continued to read. Perhaps there is another Hurston novel, not so heavy on the dialogue with more of the poetic prose that I could read?

What I enjoyed about the novel was the intimacy with the characters. We are right in Southern Florida, traveling alongside the main character Janie as she moves from husband to husband and town to town. I felt like I was right there with the characters, fully immersed in their world.

However, I lost any sense of theme and I never got the bigger picture. I appreciate the afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. at the end of the Harper Perennial edition. He states at one point that Janie was an object with her first two husbands and only found her own personal identity and became a subject when she married her third husband Tea Cake. I guess I could see this if I really compare all three husbands. Tea Cake adores Janie in a way that her other two husbands didn't. I am not sure what the feminist or anti-feminist message is here. Janie was held back from knowing her true self because of her relationships with men? Or Janie needed a man in order to become her true self?

Personally, I could relate to the book because of my own romantic relationship with my soon-to-be Husband. Like Janie, I discovered that relationships are never what we want them to be and they are a lot harder to maintain than we expect. Janie enters her last relationship at an advanced age and with some good life experience under her belt. This allows her to be more clear-minded when making the decision to be with Tea Cake. I met my fiance when I was in my late '20s and by that point I had already lived on my own, had finished my education (including post-graduate) and already had an established career. I was in a much better position to make a big life decision at this point than I would have been several years earlier.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is not a new favorite but it hasn't put me off reading another work by Zora Neale Hurston in the future.

Classics Project Book #1: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

This is part of The Classics Club Challenge.

Let me preface this review by saying that I never had any interest in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz until Audible came out with their new A-List collection. I watched this clip of Anne Hathaway narrating the book and was instantly sold. I love the voices she gave the characters and I’m a sucker for a good narrator. The narrator really makes or breaks an audio book and no matter how good a book is, a terrible narrator will ruin it for anybody. When I signed up for Audible, I used my very first credit on Anne Hathaway’s narration of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

Before I read/listened to the book, I had a sour history with The Wizard of Oz (1939) the movie. I found the movie quite bizarre in ways that I didn’t like. To me the colors, the costumes and everything about it was just plain garrish and weird. Very unappealing. I also don’t do very well with speculative or fantastical fiction of any sort. But there are exceptions and this book is definitely an exception.

In the documentary These Amazing Shadows (2011)  , there is some discussion about The Wizard of Oz. The documentary focuses on the National Film Registry which The Wizard of Oz happens to be part of. Director John Waters, one of the many talking heads in the documentary, said that he always wondered why Dorothy wanted to leave the Land of Oz to go back to boring old Kansas. If it were up to him, he would stay in Oz! That’s a really good point. Why did Dorothy want to go back to Kansas?

At the beginning of the book, there is a very somber portrait painted of Dorothy’s Aunt Em, whose sparkle has left her, and Uncle Henry, who never laughed. And a cyclone has just swept through her town carrying Dorothy and her little dog Toto and their whole house off the foundation and into the skies. Doesn’t sound like a great situation to me.

Even the Scarecrow says “I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas.”

Dorothy’s response: “That is because you have no brains... No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”

Ahh! There is the crux. Good ole dust bowl America. Land of the free, home of the brave. All those exotic lands far away are savage in comparison to the civilized and orderly America. Poor little Dorothy has been brain washed to believe that Western culture (specifically America and even more specifically Kansas) is better than all the “others”. And that’s what everything non-Kansas, non-America is. It’s the “other”.

Dorothy’s penchant for wanting to go home to boring old Kansas didn’t ruin the book for me. In fact, I enjoyed it immensely. Reading the book I could picture characters much differently than portrayed in the movie. Dorothy was much younger in my mind and the Scarecrow, Lion and Tin Man/Woodman were less humanoid. I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that Dorothy’s shoes were silver not red and the red was only added in the movie to take advantage of Technicolor as they would pop more on screen. They also became very iconic in a way that perhaps silver shoes could not. In my opinion, I like the silver shoes much better possibly because they are so different from what people identify with the story.

Another thing I noticed is that the plot of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is very reminiscent of a video or computer game. For example, Dorothy acquires the golden cap which she can use 3 times to summon the winged monkeys to come to her rescue. The secret to destroying the Wicked Witch of the West was to dump a bucket of water on her. The lion has to kill the large spider in the forest to become king of the beasts as well as to advance to the next level, err I mean to move forward in their journey. The plot contains lots of obstacles and knowledge is required in order to advance. Reading the book reminded me of the 1990s Sierra game series King’s Quest which I played as a teenager. I wonder how much stories like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz influenced gaming.

Overall, this book was immensely enjoyable. I adored the language, the characterizations, the mythology, the structure of the plot and how delightful and fun yet thrilling it is to read a fantasy book like this.

The Classics Club Challenge - 50 Classics in 5 Years

The Classics Club is an event/challenge hosted by Jill of the book blog A Room of One's Own [Update: Jill took down her blog and The Classics Club is now handled by other people]. I loved reading the classics as a teen and in college but as an adult I haven't devoted as much time to catching up with my personal library of unread classics as well as exploring some new-to-me classics and re-discovering some old favorites. Jill's challenge is to read 50+ classics within the next 5 years. I thought that was a doable goal so I decided to jump on board.

Below are my 50 classics. Most of them I haven't read but I threw in a few of my very favorite classics that I want to re-read. I left some slots open just in case I discover any classics that I hadn't thought of before.

I'll be updating this list with links to my reviews. Are there any classics not on this list that you think I should read?

1) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
2) I, Claudius by Robert Graves
3) The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
4) The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe
5) The Monk by Matthew Lewis
6) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (re-read)
7) Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen (re-read)
8) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
9) Les Miserables by Hugo Victor
10) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
11) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
12) A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
13) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
14) The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
15) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
16) Don Quixote by Cervantes
17) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
18) Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
19) The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson
20) The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges
21) Flatland by Edwin Abbott
22) The Warden by Anthony Trollope
23) Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (re-read)
24) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
25) The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
26) The Golden Bowl by Jenry James
27) Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
28) The Decameron by Giovanni Boccacio
29) Summer by Edith Wharton
30) The Mabinogion by Anonymous
31) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
32) The American by Henry James
33) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
34) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
35) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
36) The Republic by Plato
37) Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
38) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
39) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
40) Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo (re-read)
41) The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
42) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
43) The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
44) The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
45) Like Water For Chocolate/Como Agua Para Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
46) House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
47) The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Expurey
48) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
49) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
50) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll