TSS I'm dreaming of...

...a white Christmas, of course, and a lot of good books under my tree! Christmas is just around the corner, and I finished my shopping just in time to avoid the frenzy. As always, I'm buying books for my family. It was easy this year since they finally spoke up and expressed their wishes so I didn't have to guess and hope they'd like it. As for my friends...I'm so excited about this! Starting with next weekend, they will be arriving one by one. The six of us best friends study in four different towns. On the 19th, a legendary rock-band from our hometown is having a concert back home. I'm buying tickets for my friends, and I can't wait for us to get together for the god old times. We'll be playing numerous parties of pool and sip beer since we're not so much into clubs and catch up for everything we missed since July.

Today is St. Nicholas day, a prelude to Christmas for kids. There are several legends about this saint. According to one of them, a bishop in the 14th century has helped three poor girls who couldn't get married because they didn't have a dowry, so he left money in their shoes while they were sleeping. Hence the tradition that children polish their shoes and put them in the windows. If they were good, the get presents. He is also the protector of seamen and children. I didn't put my shoes in the window, but St. Nicholas still thought of me. I love you, mom, for telling him which shirt I was wishing for! This was the first year my Little Hobbit could enjoy this. He got himself a whole new set of tractors and other farming tools, and of course, lots of Ben 10 figures...

It's that time of the year when everyone is signing up for new contests and recapitulating old ones. I still have one or two books to finish for the Fall Into Reading challenge, and The Global Classic challenge runs until June, so there's plenty of time to read the remaining four books. There are so many great challenges around the blogosphere, but I'll have to keep it simple. I have lots of books that just need to be read if I plan to major in English Literature (the list, for now, has some 200 books). I found the Richard Yates Reading Challenge at Sasha's blog. Since three out of ten required books are on the list, it's not much of a sacrifice.My official post is coming on Tuesday.

This was a very bad reading week for me. I read some Poe and started Revolutionary Road. I have so much to do for college and can't steal any more time than I already do. I did the review for Cleopatra's Daughter. I loved the book so much. Right now, there are seven books on my night stand;three for my bachelor's dissertation (Herta Mueller, who won the Nobel for literature this year) and few other for literature classes. In fact, I'm writing this instead of studying for a Word Formation revision test.

I'm preparing some author interviews in the next few weeks so stay tuned!

Now I'm really off to do some serious work. I wish everyone a nice Sunday (mine has only few hours left) and an interesting week!

TSS My fictious life

I'm so glad this week is over. The last two weeks have been a nightmare. Life got too difficult to deal with and what did I do? I ran away and hid in books and writing. While this is great news for this blog, it's not all that good for my real life. Those things I couldn't ignore crushed me to pieces. I felt miserable. The last thing I felt like was writing reviews. If they had been written in this state of apathy, I would have hated everything and everyone. But...it's over, everything is not fine, but endurable and life goes on.

This week I posted two reviews for my Global Classic Challenge, The Age of Innocence and Wuthering Heights. I don't know what I'll be reading next for this challenge, have to check the libraries. Speaking of which...last week I went to renew my membership in the town library in Osijek, and they had the Open Door days. I got an annual membership for free. Another good news is that they expanded the Foreign Languages department. There are tons of new(er) books in English and German. Hallelujah, God has heard my prayers.

I'll be reading Cleopatra's Daughter this week, since I forgot it in Osijek and didn't read a single page since Wednesday. The first two chapters I read were great and I can't wait to get back to it.
Since I keep traveling to and fro and the two-and-half hour bus drive is terribly boring, I always have a book with me. I try to pick books that are easy to read and not so voluminous so I can read them in two rides. This week's 'bus-book' was John Grisham's Bleachers. It was my first Grisham and I liked it, though I have no clue about football(in Europe it's all about soccer). It's about the influence of one man, the football coach, on the lives of his high-school players. It was quite nostalgic and made me think about those people who influenced my life, people whose approval you seek even long after they are gone. The review will be posted next week, probably Thursday.

I'm finally writing something more than random scribblings in my notebooks. That is, I still write in notebooks, but more often and in larger quantities. I miss the days when I could sit at my computer for hours, just typing and typing. Now I can't afford that luxury, only small treats.

I found a great blogger yesterday, or better to say, she found me. StephanieD blogs at the Misfit Salon. She says in her blog descriptions she would "invite artists, writers, poets, musicians, intellectuals, all manner of interesting people with provocative thoughts. And we would sit by a fire if it was cold outside or out in a terraced garden overlooking a lake if it was warm. We would dine on rich feasts, have chocolate cakes with good, strong coffee, maybe sip absinthe, all the while discussing the wondrous, troubling, moving, or beautiful things we had read or seen, heard or thought of....".
Now, if that's not a great invitation to visit her...I think I'd pass the absinthe, but I'd like to be there. Please, make sure to check out this great blog. I started to read one post and stayed there much longer than just one. She is also running a cool contest for an autographed first edition of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlet. Click here to enter. Ends 11/30.

What did you read this week? What are you looking forward to in the next seven days?

Happy Sunday!

Global Classic Challenge Review #2

Wuthering Heights

by 

Emily Brontë

I bought this book in July ( the same Penguin edition you see here). Everyone who reads my posts knows I started it the day I got it, read to page 120 and stopped reading. Why? Not because it was boring or bad; I simply wasn't in the right mood for a novel like Wuthering Heights. On several occasions, I tried to get back to it and failed each time until I hit the nail on the head, signed up for this challenge and pledged myself to do a book report on this for one of my English classes. So, now I finally read it.  
That day has arrived.

Wuthering Heights is Emily's only novel, and I'm yet to read Charlotte's Jane Eyre. The beginning of W.H. is promising; the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw appears to a new tenant who learns about the tragic love between her and Heathcliff. It's the middle part of this novel that's very slow, sagging and, dare I say, dreary. It seems almost as if Emily is reluctant about putting an end to the story. Lots of importance is put upon the raw and uninviting landscape of Yorkshire moors and the cold, tyrannical and careless upbringing of Catherine, Hindley and Heathcliff. Considering these factors, it's no wonder they grow up to be the people they are; Catherine is a selfish, capricious and moody diva, Heathcliff is a rude, savage, cruel, vengeful brute and Hindley a bitter, power-craving and  jealous brat.

I couldn't but draw comparisons between W.H. and Twilight (convenient these days). Ever since the Twilight-ish edition appeared, I read very opposed opinions on W.H. Mostly people are disappointed with W.H. if Twilight was the only reason they picked up W.H. Seriously, why doesn't that surprise me?

Personally, I don't see why W.H. was so significant for New Moon since the characters are as different as chalk and cheese. The relationships between Catherine and Heathcliff and Bella and Edward have nothing in common.

Second, there is a scene in Eclipse which struck me particularly similar to a scene in W.H., the scene in the tent when Edward/Heathcliff tells Linton/Jacob he would never harm him because it would hurt Catherine/Bella. 
Here is my favorite quote (yes, that's the one)

"I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought of living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the world woud turn a mighty stranger; I should not seem a part of it." Catherine, p79

To sum up; Wuthering Heights is a demanding book, not one to chose if you're only seeking a pass-time occupation. I wasn't too impressed neither with the story, the romance nor the characters. It does end with a happy end, but not for Catherine and Heathcliff, and if you ask me, they didn't even deserve it. 

What left me in awe was Emily's amazing ability to perfectly catch the atmosphere of hatred, despair, desire, regret and revenge. She brings the worst out of her characters, pushes them to their limits only to make the rise again out of their own ashes and prove there is after all a hint of humanity in them--no matter how silent.
I often wondered, while reading this book, what would happen if Catherine and Heathcliff did end up together? Would they be happy, or would they enormous egos collide until they became the end of each other?

What do you think?

Global Classic Challenge Review #1

 The Age of Innocence

by

Edith Wharton

I'm always cautious when it comes to reading classics. Sometimes the expectations are too high, sometimes you approach them with a pinch of prejudice and miss the magic of the book by constantly waiting for the dreary part to kick in. But Sandy did an amazing job when she compiled the list for this challenge. I never read anything by Edith Wharton, though House of Mirth is very high on my TBR list, and now it's launched straight to the top.

The Age of Innocence is one of those books everybody has heard about, but few have actually read it.It was a bit slow to start, to get used to Edith's style and the society she is writing about. But very soon I found myself dreading to find out what happens next.
The late-nineteenth century New York society is just as it sounds to be--stiff, conservative and heavily snobbish. So are the characters when you first meet them; Archer Newland is a young attorney who seems to be bored by his life, but doesn't do much to change it. His lovely fiance, May Welland is a naive porcelain doll, too well-trained to even realize the shallowness of her life. But everything changes when her cousine Countess Ellen Olenska arrives to the town. A fresh-divorced, beautiful woman of free spirit and a huge appetite for life and love shakes the foundations of the society and raises many an eyebrow with her unrestrained spirit. She moves Archer out of his apathy and makes him reexamine his plan for his future. Is a boring, but cozy life with his obedient wife all he has to look forward to? Would he be happier with Ellen, cruising the world and soaking in all its miracles and possibilities?
And most important, is he strong enough to go against the rules for love?

Wharton's writing is superb. I just loved her subtle irony towards the stiff society and the portraying of her characters. They are everything but flat, prone to surprise you with their depth and strength. No wonder Edith Wharton won a Pulitzer for this book in 1921.

May is a character I have mixed feelings about, or as old people here would say--she neither stinks nor smells. Is she really so naive to be worth of pitying her? Or is she smart/desperate/heartless to use the pregnancy trick to keep her husband? I don't know.
Ellen is a strong woman who just wants to live her life, but also wants to be accepted and loved. I felt sorry for her; in her time and age, it was clearly impossible.
Archer...he is a character who surprised me most, though I was so angry he didn't follow his heart. In the end, I believe it couldn't have turned out any other way, and that's the tragic part in his and Ellen's love story.

Here are several quotes I wrote down in my reading journal.

• "It is you who are telling me; you're opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them..." A. Newland, p 48

• "The real loneliness is living among all these kind of people who only ask one to pretend." Ellen Olenska, p50

•  "Each time you happen to me over and over again..." A. Newland, p185

• "(...) because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is so burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than an hour or two every now and then; with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this,with all other vision in my mind, just quietly trusting to it to come true..."             A. Newland, p187

I love the last one best. I cited it to one of my college friends and it convinced her to borrow it from the library immediately.

I hope I convinced you too, if you haven't already, to read this book, because I truly enjoyed it.

A new challenge!

Sandy from Just...one more page is hosting her very own Global Classic Challenge! I think it's a great one and I'm definitely participating. Here's what Sandy says about it:

I have just created my very first challenge! The theme is classic literature from different countries. I think a lot of readers get intimidated when it comes to classic literature because the books are often voluminous. Well, fear not, my friends! This is a small-scaled challenge since I only picked 6 books. At the end of the challenge I intend to do a giveaway. The readers who finish and submit reviews for all 6 books before the deadline will receive a little surprise in the mail. Are you interested yet? 

Name: Global Classic Challenge

Theme: Reading 6 classic books from different countries, with each book representing one country

Requirement: Read and review all listed books before June 30, 2010   

Here is the list:

Age of the Innocence by Edith Wharton [United States]-my review here 

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez [Columbia]

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte [England]

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk [Turkey]
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky [Russia]
Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada [Germany]

If you're interested, pop over to Just...one more page and leave a comment. I'm lucky to have found one that will give me the nudge to finally finish Wuthering Heights!