2021 - What classics are you reading?

CharlasGeeks who love the Classics

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2021 - What classics are you reading?

1Cecrow
Ene 31, 2021, 4:26 pm

Recently finished The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, which is a classic of its genre. Now I'm trying more Zola, La Bete Humaine.

2lyzard
Ene 31, 2021, 5:38 pm

For anyone who may be interested, there is a group read of Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm this month; all welcome!

The thread is here.

3MissWatson
Feb 1, 2021, 4:27 am

>2 lyzard: Oh, thanks!

4kac522
Feb 2, 2021, 2:54 am

In January I read:
The Tempest, Shakespeare
Tales from Shakespeare, Charles & Mary Lamb
Little Lord Fauntleroy, Frances Hodgson Burnett
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (1948--before I was born, so a classic to me!)

Currently listening (off and on) to Little Dorrit, Dickens. Plans for February include Murder on the Orient Express (Christie), Where Angels Fear to Tread (Forster) and Olive by Victorian novelist Dinah Craik

5MccMichaelR
Editado: Feb 20, 2021, 8:51 am

Finished Balzac's Lost Illusions in January of '21,
Finished The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding and also Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens in February of '21.

6MissWatson
Feb 19, 2021, 6:01 am

I have finished Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm. Not as good as others, his intention was to expose the iniquities of the English justice system and plotting and characterisation suffered for it.

7bumblesby
Editado: Mar 2, 2021, 4:53 pm

In January, I finished Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.
In February, I finished Don Quioxte by Servantes.
I am currently reading The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens :)

8Cecrow
Mar 2, 2021, 6:11 pm

Haven't read Leroux's Phantom, but his Mystery of the Yellow Room wasn't bad.

Loved your other two, esp their humor.

9rocketjk
Mar 10, 2021, 2:16 pm

I finished The Zelmenyaners: A Family Saga by Moyshe Kulbak. Considered a classic of Yiddish literature, the novel tells the story in comedic yet very affecting style, of an extended Jewish family in 1920s and 1930s Minsk trying to maintain their way of life in the face of increasing pressure from the ever strengthening Communist forces in government and society.

10MccMichaelR
Editado: Abr 5, 2021, 7:07 pm

Finished (29-March-2021) )The Histories by Herodotus, 727 pages. Difficult and fascinating.

11kac522
Abr 5, 2021, 11:54 pm

Classics finished in February:
--Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie (1934)
--Where Angels Fear to Tread, E. M. Forster (1905)
--The 39 Steps, John Buchan (1915)

Classics finished in March:
--Olive, Dinah Mulock Craik (1850)
--Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens (1857), audiobook read by Simon Vance

Classics planned for April:
--Miss Mackenzie, Anthony Trollope (1865)--currently reading
--My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin (1901)
--Adam Bede, George Eliot (1859) (re-read)

12ironjaw
Abr 6, 2021, 10:37 am

>10 MccMichaelR:

Which version/edition. I’ve hears good things about the Landmark series though have picked it up

13lyzard
Editado: Abr 6, 2021, 5:19 pm

For anyone who may be interested, this month we are having the first in a series of group reads examining Margaret Oliphant's 'Chronicles of Carlingford'.

The series begins with three short works: we will be reading the short stories, The Executor and The Rector, this month, and the novella, The Doctor's Family, in May.

The discussion is being conducted through the Virago group, but everyone is welcome. :)

The thread is here.

14MccMichaelR
Abr 6, 2021, 9:54 pm

>12 ironjaw: I had two different translations of Herodotus' work:
1) A copy that I'd purchased decades (!) ago: publisher Alfred A. Knoff, tagged as a book in their 'Everyman Series'. Translator George Rawlinson
2) A copy in e-book form (in 2 volumes) from the gutenberg.org website - don't have that one near me now, yet it was quite good also.

15ironjaw
Abr 7, 2021, 2:10 am

>14 MccMichaelR: thanks. I never knew that you could get eBooks from Gutenberg

16sundancer
Abr 16, 2021, 5:31 pm

Knowing God by J. I. Packer!

17MccMichaelR
Abr 26, 2021, 6:34 am

Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac, Finished (4-25-21)

18maisiedotes
mayo 17, 2021, 9:01 pm

I just finished Trollope's The Warden and am moving on to Barchester Towers. I enjoyed the many allusions in The Warden, even though I probably didn't know half of them!

I'm watching the 1982 BBC series to "fill in the pictures."

19Cecrow
mayo 17, 2021, 9:47 pm

Reading my way through the hundred tales of The Decameron, as related by a group of people isolating themselves during a pandemic. Seemed appropriate.

20rocketjk
mayo 20, 2021, 2:05 pm

I finished Up from Slavery the famous memoir by Booker T. Washington. On the national stage, Washington was one of the most famous African Americans of his time. As the title tells us, he was born enslaved on a Virginia plantation in 1858 or 1859 (he wasn't sure of the exact date or even year). Through force of will and an impressive work ethic, Washington earned his way into the Hammond Institute, a progressive school of both basic and higher learning for freedmen and their descendants. At age 25, he was recommended for and accepted the post of leader/principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (later Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University). When he got to Alabama to take over the school, it turned out there was no school and he had to build it from scratch. The story of this process constituted, for me, the most compelling section of the narrative. Afterwards, Washington's success building the Tuskegee Institute, and his impressive abilities as an orator, brought him an ever growing fame, both nationally and, eventually, internationally. I'm afraid Up from Slavery bogged down for me toward the end, as Washington begins relating the places he went to, the audiences he spoke to and the accolades he received. I can understand why these would have been important to him to include, perhaps to exemplify the ways in which it was possible for a Black man to attain such status and success, but it all became repetitive and impersonal for me. Nevertheless, this is an important book to read for anyone wishing to gain an overall understanding of Black history in America, although his ideas about race relations are somewhat controversial now. (He believed that Blacks as a group needed to gain practical skills and other individual success before working toward social equality, despite, and seemingly ignoring, the fact that White society as a whole was expressly intent upon violently supressing any such advances.) Overall, Washington is a person to admire.

21Bibliophilus
Editado: mayo 20, 2021, 3:08 pm

I'm reading Anna Karenina aloud to my wife. She's not a big reader, and I'm not much of a cook, so I read to her while she's cooking. We'll usually watch a movie version or two when we finish the book.

22nx74defiant
mayo 28, 2021, 5:38 pm

Anne of the Island The sequels are not as enjoyable as the first book. Anne's head in the sky attitude can get a little annoying in an adult.

23Cecrow
Editado: mayo 30, 2021, 1:39 pm

>22 nx74defiant:, I felt the same, none of the sequels measured up. The third book wound up some aspects well enough that I called it quits after that.

24MissWatson
mayo 31, 2021, 5:27 am

I have finished a classic from Belgium, Der Flachsacker, which turned out to be a little gem.

25Jimbookbuff1963
Jun 7, 2021, 9:25 am

Good morning!

I'm Jim, new to LibraryThing (having joined June 5, 2021), a 57-year-old married man living in New Jersey who works as a customer service representative for the US government in Philadelphia.

The last classic I actually finished was Dance Night (1930) by American author Dawn Powell (1895-1965), from a Library of America hardcover omnibus, Novels, 1930-1942.

26rocketjk
Jun 7, 2021, 10:36 am

>25 Jimbookbuff1963: Welcome to LibraryThing! My wife just finished Dawn Powell's Wicked Pavilion and loved it.

27Cecrow
Editado: Jun 7, 2021, 3:15 pm

>25 Jimbookbuff1963:, I think this is the Dance Night you meant to link to.

28kac522
Jun 7, 2021, 4:28 pm

Classics finished in April:

Miss Mackenzie, Anthony Trollope (1865)
My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin (1901)
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, (1813) audiobook read by Emilia Fox
Adam Bede, George Eliot (1859)

Classics finished in May: (many of these are "modern"-- early 20th c--classics):

The Touchstone, Edith Wharton (1900)
Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther, Elizabeth von Arnim (1907)
A Room with a View, E. M. Forster (1908)
Jenny, Sigrid Undset (1911); translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally;
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson (1919)
The Crowded Street, Winifred Holtby (1924)
William, E. H. Young (1925)
Death in the Air, Agatha Christie (1935)
The Doctor's Family and Other Stories, Margaret Oliphant (1861)
Silas Marner, George Eliot, (1861), audiobook read by Margaret Hilton

Currently reading in June:

Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens (1865), audiobook read by Simon Vance
The Belton Estate, Anthony Trollope (1865)

29Jimbookbuff1963
Jun 8, 2021, 2:34 pm

>27 Cecrow: Cecrow: How did I link to the wrong book?

30Jimbookbuff1963
Jun 8, 2021, 2:35 pm

>26 rocketjk: Thank you for the welcome, rocketjk!

31rocketjk
Jun 13, 2021, 2:59 pm

I finished The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. This classic set of essays, first published in 1903 during the full savagery of Jim Crow America, is W.E.B Du Bois' heartfelt and detailed description of race relations, particularly in the South, and the plight of African Americans trying to attain some level of dignity and prosperity in the face harsh and determined resistance from white America. Du Bois refers to racism as the Veil behind which African Americans must live, a veil which serves to hide the true nature of Black culture and aspirations from the racist white America. The essays cover history and cultural, relgious and economic conditions and the nature source of racism itself. Du Bois also provides two essays that sketch the lives of individuals whose talents and potential are crushed under the weight of mindless Jim Crow hatred. Du Bois was a wonderful writer, and although my previous reading had already revealed to me most of the conditions and history he describes, reading Du Bois' heartfelt explanations and accounts, written from the heart from the midst of those particular dark days (which is not to say that the dark days have relented even today) was a moving experience for me.

32Cecrow
Editado: Jun 13, 2021, 10:14 pm

>29 Jimbookbuff1963:, the square brackets will trigger the link, but sometimes there's multiple works with the same title and the AI picks the wrong one. The link it creates appears to the right while you're editing your message. If it doesn't seem to be the right author, select the "Others" link to view other options that the AI found, then you can choose the correct one.

33MccMichaelR
Jun 14, 2021, 7:36 am

Finished Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866 original publication date)

34Tess_W
Jun 26, 2021, 8:38 am

Finished Sing Down the Moon by Scott O'Dell, which is a YA classic about the forced migration of the Navajo from their tribal lands to Ft. Sumner in Arizona. A good read, regardless of age. (1970 pub. date)

35Tess_W
Jun 26, 2021, 9:24 am

Finished The Theban Plays by Sophocles. Antigone is my all-time favorite ancient play, but the Oedipus plays were also excellent. Written: About 400 BC

36MissWatson
Jul 8, 2021, 7:23 am

I have finally read Alice's adventures in wonderland and Through the looking-glass for the first time and find that I'm not much into that kind of nonsense.

37kac522
Jul 8, 2021, 10:45 am

>36 MissWatson: Right, there are a few good lines, but otherwise I'm not into it much, either, even with the back-story of the relationship between Alice and Carroll.

I read The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (1906) and I did enjoy it, although the children are a little too good. I know I would have loved it if I had read it in my childhood. Watched the movie, too, from 1970 and it was quite true to the book.

38maisiedotes
Editado: Jul 9, 2021, 9:02 am

>36 MissWatson: >37 kac522: When I read Through the Looking-Glass, I wondered if I was missing something!

I've just reread To Kill a Mockingbird for the tenth-ish time. I recently met a teacher who has taught the book 18 times. He just left his school and the parents begged him to teach Mockingbird as a summer camp so that the younger siblings wouldn't miss the experience. What a commendation!

39MissWatson
Jul 9, 2021, 3:29 am

>37 kac522: Yes, some good lines but they don't make up for the rest. E. Nesbit is on the TBR somewhere. I've got The enchanted castle.
>38 maisiedotes: Im relived to find I'm not alone.

40CoffeeCan
Jul 9, 2021, 3:58 am

Este usuario ha sido eliminado por spam.

41MissWatson
Jul 14, 2021, 6:29 am

And now I have finished The struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson which I enjoyed very much. Advertising hasn't changed that much since Trollope's day, I find.

42dypaloh
Jul 14, 2021, 6:00 pm

Read Emile Zola’s Germinal. It reminded me of my years as a roofer except that the coal miners go underground and roofers are stationed above ground; the miners work in dark enclosed spaces while roofers work in sunlit open spaces (mostly); and earth sometimes falls onto miners but with roofers, well, they sometimes fall off onto earth (as I had occasion to prove). But for both groups the job is strenuous, dirty, and hazardous.

I read the Penguin edition. Its editor questions Zola’s attributing sexual promiscuity to so many people in the miners’ village (he claims such behavior “is not attested in any contemporary accounts of mining communities”). Something to know if you give it a go.

43MissWatson
Jul 17, 2021, 8:17 am

I have finished Edith Wharton's Summer and loved it.

44kac522
Jul 17, 2021, 12:06 pm

>43 MissWatson: Yes, that's a good one. I'm reading Elizabeth von Arnim's The Solitary Summer and can hardly restrain myself from reading it all in one gulp.

45thorold
Jul 17, 2021, 2:24 pm

>42 dypaloh: For roofers, you should read L’assommoir!

46dypaloh
Jul 18, 2021, 1:09 pm

>45 thorold: Good suggestion! I’m guessing with a title like that a light-hearted comic romp won’t be on the slate.

47booksaplenty1949
Jul 18, 2021, 1:22 pm

>46 dypaloh: Zola’s Au bonheur des dames (The Ladies’ Paradise) is about the rise of a Parisian department store and definitely a lot more upbeat than Germinal and L’assommoir, although things get tough for the Mom n’ Pop stores in the shadow of the cathedral of commerce. But a wonderful opportunity for Zola to display his descriptive gifts. I just finished it, with keen enjoyment.

48thorold
Jul 18, 2021, 1:50 pm

>45 thorold: There is a certain amount of romping in L'Assommoir, including a glorious working-class wedding-party, but it's not an optimistic book. And being a roofer in a Zola novel is not a career with prospects...

Agree with >47 booksaplenty1949: — it's Au bonheur des dames or Le ventre de Paris if you want to enjoy Zola going over the top on description without too much pain and squalor.

49booksaplenty1949
Jul 18, 2021, 7:24 pm

>48 thorold: Yes, at wedding reception in L’assommoir, as a former professor of mine once put it, they’re doing everything but rubbing it in their hair. But they end badly. Au bonheur des dames, by contrast, has the shoe fitting Cinderella perfectly.

50dypaloh
Jul 19, 2021, 12:55 pm

>48 thorold: >49 booksaplenty1949: I have to get to that wedding reception.

51maisiedotes
Jul 20, 2021, 1:52 pm

I am halfway through a re-reading of Huck Finn. It is simultaneously sidesplitting and saddening.

52PatNC18
Jul 24, 2021, 8:54 am

The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. I am not enjoying it, but soldiering through.

53booksaplenty1949
Jul 24, 2021, 12:52 pm

>52 PatNC18: My experience exactly. Was able to get reference when a friend recently pointed out the bridge over the Charles River which is the scene of a key episode, so not wasted effort. But a challenging read.

54booksaplenty1949
Jul 24, 2021, 1:20 pm

Have been reading works associated with the Harlem Renaissance as a follow-up to Jervis Anderson’s book This Was Harlem. Am now well into James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, which is a step above the works I have previously read, interesting though they have been.

55rocketjk
Jul 25, 2021, 12:57 pm

Speaking of the Harlem Renaissance . . . I finished Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I'm sorry it took me so long to finally read this beautiful, sad, poetic novel. Janie Crawford is a young Black woman coming of age in Jim Crow Florida. Throughout the story, Hurston weaves the poetry of dialect and mythology, and the power of the natural world: a power of beauty and inspiration as well as the power for disruption and death. Also, in this novel, Hurston epitomizes the writer's rule for "showing" rather than "telling." We mostly see Hurston's Black characters living in essentially all-Black communities. Whites are mostly an unseen menace, appearing only occasionally to assert dominance. Also, only a few times in the novel does Hurston use the word "poverty." But the conditions the characters are living in are shown in the paper-thin walls of their homes and the circumscribed limits of their aspirations. A good day picking beans is a great day of work, with no loftier goals seemingly to be imagined. The one character who does evince such drive raises himself only within his own community, and in succeeding creates for himself mostly a fresh corner of loneliness. This is, for me, an inspirational story of a woman who retains her faith in herself and grows into her own power despite disappointment and hardship. One might see Janie, perhaps, as also representing the power and soul of the Black community that has fostered her in the face of poverty and repression.

56booksaplenty1949
Jul 25, 2021, 1:45 pm

>55 rocketjk: A very interesting book. As you say, “integration” apparently not even on the author’s horizon. As you may recall, Hurston is famous for having written a letter to the editor opposing Brown v Board.

57rocketjk
Editado: Jul 26, 2021, 12:08 pm

>56 booksaplenty1949: "As you say, “integration” apparently not even on the author’s horizon."

For the record, that's not really what I said. What I said was that the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937, accurately portrays a culture in which integration didn't exist and in which segregation was enforced at the point of a gun and, though she doesn't portray it, at the end of a rope but that she specifically presents to those factors only occasionally. A novel picturing an integrated society in rural Florida in the mid-1930s would have been pretty much a fantasy, I suspect.

Whether or not Hurston had integration "on her horizon" at that point is unknown to me, as I haven't read any bibliographal information about her. In August 1955, when the letter you mention was written, what she calls for is "Growth from within. Ethical and cultural desegregation." Whether there is an important philosophical differentiation to be discerned between the words "integration" and "desegregation" I leave to folks more knowledgeable on the topic than I am, although an author of such skill and discernment as Hurston seems likely to have had a specific reason for using the one and not the other.

"As you may recall, Hurston is famous for having written a letter to the editor opposing Brown v Board."

Certainly Hurston, as I assume you are aware, is famous for being a novelist, a folkorist and an anthopologist. The letter to the editor (of the Orlando Sentinal) that you reference is linked here:
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-the-orlando-senti...

I am not 100% sure of my ground, but I believe that at the time there was some strong debate among African American intellectuals and leaders as to whether forced integration was the proper path. As she states her position at the beginning of the letter:

"The whole matter revolves around the self-respect of my people. How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me near them?"

But, yes, this being the first time I've read (or known of, so thanks for bringing it to my attention!) that letter, its contents are more than a little surprising to me. She is more or less taking a states rights position, deploring "government by fiat," and also says that since Black schools in Florida are good and getting better, there's no need to force white schools to accept Black students. I wonder how much agreement she had for that position among Black leaders in Florida, and across the rest of the South.

58booksaplenty1949
Jul 26, 2021, 7:27 pm

>57 rocketjk: Brown v Board brought together NAACP class action lawsuits launched in four states. Overturning Plessy v Ferguson had been a carefully planned campaign for decades.

59booksaplenty1949
Jul 26, 2021, 7:39 pm

Mary Arnold, aka the novelist Mrs Humphry Ward, founded the Anti-Suffrage League in 1908 to oppose votes for women. It had lots of women members. Doesn’t mean its arguments had any merit.

60rocketjk
Jul 26, 2021, 9:39 pm

>58 booksaplenty1949: & >59 booksaplenty1949: Well, yes, to both posts. But I'm not sure what points you're making.

61booksaplenty1949
Jul 26, 2021, 9:44 pm

>60 rocketjk: I guess I thought you felt Hurston had a valid point, or was speaking for a significant number of thoughtful Black contemporaries.

62rocketjk
Editado: Jul 27, 2021, 5:36 pm

>61 booksaplenty1949: Well, I do think she had a valid point. The problem is what to make of the conclusion she came to based on that point. (I know, semantics, right?) Hurston was warning about the potential harms inherent in trusting the schooling of Black children to an education system being run by people who were for the most part at best disinterested in their success and at the worst, and not infrequently, downright hostile to them. Given that she had spent her life studying and writing about African American culture, which had developed an artistic, intellectual and philosophical richness in the face of intense and determined oppression by whites, it's not a wonder that she would be suspicious of attempts to mandate cultural change through the courts and rob that culture further, as she saw it, of its independence. (Again, in her letter she calls for ""Growth from within. Ethical and cultural desegregation.") I do see it as a point worth making, a danger worth confronting, though I don't agree with her conclusion that Brown vs. Board was therefore a mistake.

As for whether or not she was speaking for a significant number of Black contemporaries, I'm fine with respecting (and holding) minority opinions (I'd guess that you are, too), so, given Hurston's stature, I wouldn't reject what she had to say out of hand even if she were the only person I knew of who held those ideas. And, of course, we know that W.E.B. Dubois had written this in 1935:

“I am no fool; and I know that race prejudice in the United States today is such that most Negroes cannot receive proper education in white institutions. . . a separate Negro school, where children are treated like human beings, trained by teachers of their own race, who know what it means to be black in the year of salvation 1935, is infinitely better than making our boys and girls doormats to be spit and trampled upon and lied to by ignorance social climbers, whose sole claim to superiority is ability to kick ‘n-----s’ when they are down.” (DuBois, “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?” 1935)

Perhaps more to the point, though, in an article entitled "The Troubled History of American Education after the Brown Decision" by historian Sonya Ramsey, we find this: "Although Houston died in 1950, Thurgood Marshall took up his strategy to end segregation. This massive undertaking was not without criticism as some prominent black leaders thought that the NAACP should sue for equity for black schools instead." (emphasis mine) We'd need to do more research to find out who those leaders were and how large their numbers were, since Ramsey doesn't say. Regardless, it's an interesting and comprehensive article, found here: http://www.processhistory.org/american-education-after-brown/

Of course, there is plenty of evidence that the long-term results of Brown vs. Board of Education have not turned out as well for Black children as had been hoped, to put it mildly.* Still, it's extremely difficult for me to imagine that America today would be better off had that court decision not come to pass.

* Here, for the record, is one report that chronicles, with lots of research, many of those factors. At the beginning, the authors of the report in fact express support and appreciation for many of the points Hurston made in that letter, though they conclude that the underlying problem has not been school integration, itself, but the racism and classism sewn into American culture. (The Dubois quote provided above can be found here, too.):
http://grdg526.pbworks.com/f/Teachers%2BCollege%2BRecord%2B2005%2BFine.pdf

And this article, published in 2014 by the Economic Policy Institute, is a bit more straightforward (and shorter!) about the successes and disappointments of Brown: https://www.epi.org/publication/brown-at-60-why-have-we-been-so-disappointed-wha...

All the best.

63booksaplenty1949
Jul 29, 2021, 1:26 pm

>62 rocketjk: I think the basis of the decision in Brown v Board is that “separate” can never be “equal” if the basis of the separation is a legal prohibition. The underlying message, as was demonstrated with the famous doll experiment, is that the group which is legally excluded is inferior, a message which becomes internalised by those who are excluded. There is a rich literature on the “self-hating Jew” which looks at this same phenomenon. Not that I am labelling Hurston as self-hating, but she does seem to miss the deeper implication of the legal decision.

64rocketjk
Editado: Jul 29, 2021, 2:43 pm

>63 booksaplenty1949: "but she does seem to miss the deeper implication of the legal decision."

Yes, I agree with you here, 100%, as I meant to be clear in my post above. And she did not foresee that the decision would be a first crack in the wall of segregation that would help spark a broader Civil Rights movement, but I don't feel personally that she can be faulted for not being a fortune teller in that regard.

She was coming from a perspective of Black pride, rather than self hate, of course, when she wrote:

"It is well known that I have no sympathy nor respect for the `tragedy of color’ school of thought among us, whose fountain-head is the pressure group concerned in this court ruling. I can see no tragedy in being too dark to be invited to a white school social affair. The Supreme Court would have pleased me more if they had concerned themselves about enforcing the compulsory education provisions for Negroes in the South as is done for white children. The next 10 years would be better spent in appointing truant officers and looking after conditions in the homes from which the children come. Use to the limit what we already have."

I think also she realized that you can be in the same classroom with someone and still be excluded. Metaphorically speaking, in other words, all the dolls were still going to be white, even in integrated classrooms, and she thought that the only place Black children were going to get Black dolls would be in a school run by Black educators. We know now that, post-Brown, there was hardly any real movement toward integrating previously segregated public schools until LBJ tied integration to Federal funding in the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s. That's "the next 10 years" of Hurston's letter!

But obviously, we're also aware that the determination to overturn "separate but equal" did not stem from a "'tragedy of color' school of thought." Also, it was one thing for a group of Supreme Court justices to rule on "separate but equal" and then go on home, but another kettle of fish entirely for the Federal government to make a commitment to "looking after conditions in the homes from which the children come." The former was "art of the possible." The latter was clearly not on any government's agenda, Federal or state.

Hurston was looking at the conditions on the ground in front of her after a lifetime of close examination of the real-time harms of Jim Crow, the dramatic antagonisms of white society toward Blacks and the idea of Black progress, and what she saw as the advantages and promise of Black self-determination and self-sufficiency. Personally, I give her a pass on her lack of global legal perspective, especially, again, in light of the fact that at least some modern Black educators/academics now appreciate where she was coming from (see the opening comments in the pbworks.com link in my post above) and that even in her time, she was not alone in her perspective (as per the Ramsey quote above: "{S}ome prominent black leaders thought that the NAACP should sue for equity for black schools instead.")

You and I are in complete agreement that "Separate but Equal" had to go, and that Hurston missed important reasons why that was so. But the bottom line regarding Hurston in all this, for me, is that her legacy does not stem from, nor is it tarnished by, that one letter to the Sentinel.

Sorry for being so wordy. I find these questions really interesting and appreciate your patience!

Cheers!

65kac522
Editado: Jul 29, 2021, 5:03 pm

...tip-toes in to list some books...

For Jane Austen July, I've read:

Northanger Abbey: an annotated edition
Persuasion
Lady Susan
and plan to watch a movie of each, and maybe fit in a re-watch of Pride & Prejudice (1995, of course).

66booksaplenty1949
Jul 29, 2021, 5:37 pm

>64 rocketjk: It wasn’t that black children wanted black dolls but were given white dolls. It’s that they wanted white dolls, because white dolls are better. The implication was that no amount of financial investment in a quality parallel education system for black people would overcome the effect of the underlying message that “we don’t want our children in the same room with black children.” Of course I’m not blaming Hurston for not being ahead of her time in her thinking. That’s given to the very few. As an undergraduate I accepted the fact that the impressive social and athletic building at the centre of the campus donated by a prominent local family was only accessible to men, despite the fact that I was paying the same fees to attend the university. The minimum wage for men was also higher at the time than that for women. “Such is life,” was my deep analysis of the subject, as I recall.

67Cecrow
Editado: Jul 29, 2021, 9:49 pm

>65 kac522:, we may have to storm the castle to take back this topic!

Nice job with Austen, I'm still trying to complete Dickens and then she's next.

68rocketjk
Jul 30, 2021, 12:56 am

>67 Cecrow: "we may have to storm the castle to take back this topic! "

Nope! It's all yours! No need to scale the walls. The drawbridge is down and the gates thrown open. :)

69Tess_W
Ago 5, 2021, 4:27 am

Finished two Scott novels, Guy Mannering and Waverly. Now that I see what he is all about, I'm done!

70booksaplenty1949
Ago 5, 2021, 11:28 am

Finished novel #8 in High Hood’s twelve volume series The New Age. Not yet a classic, but I highly recommend. In any event, since much of the action of Property and Value takes place in Venice where main character is playing the ghost of Albertine in a movie called Marcel in Venice, about Proust’s narrator’s trip to Venice after Albertine’s death, I decided to reread Albertine Disparue, aka La Fugitive/The Sweet Cheat Gone. It’s been a while since I had the experience of being dumped but in the first fifty pages Proust brings back every cringe-worthy, self-contradictory moment. Think he’s off to Venice now so hoping somewhat happier memories will be evoked.

71MissWatson
Ago 6, 2021, 3:57 am

Finished a re-read of Northanger Abbey and enjoyed every minute of it.

72Cecrow
Editado: Ago 6, 2021, 6:32 pm

>69 Tess_W:, hmm. I just bought a spiffy new copy of Waverly for my TBR shelf, and now my sails have gone slack.

>70 booksaplenty1949:, Albertine dies!!! Gah. Wait, it's okay. I don't know who that is.

73booksaplenty1949
Ago 6, 2021, 6:39 pm

>72 Cecrow: Cecrow: Sorry, should have issued Spoiler Alert. Still worth reading Proust, though.

74Cecrow
Ago 7, 2021, 7:31 am

>73 booksaplenty1949:, already started, in the interest of the fast-paced drama.

75booksaplenty1949
Ago 7, 2021, 4:13 pm

76Tess_W
Ago 19, 2021, 1:06 am

Just finished Wuthering Heights. Healthclifffffffffffffff!

77Cecrow
Ago 19, 2021, 8:14 am

Read The Mabinogian, Welsh mythology. Think I prefer Greek or Norse.

78Tess_W
Ago 20, 2021, 11:21 am

>57 rocketjk: Fast forward 60 years ...Malcom X, hailed as a civil rights leader, takes a stance against integration and favors separatism. He insists that in the process of integration that African-Americans will lose their identity. In fact, The Nation of Islam advocates racial separation as the only way out from oppression. That being said, they do advocate for full civil rights and non-discrimination.

79rocketjk
Editado: Ago 20, 2021, 1:35 pm

>78 Tess_W: Hi, Tess! I read the Autobiography of Malcolm X decades ago, and definitely need a refresher course on the particulars of his philosophy. Given what African-Americans were experiencing both in the rural and urban south and the urban north in America, at the very least I can see where he was coming from.

Not long ago I read Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. Despite the propaganda against them, they were firmly not separatist in philosophy. Essentially, their philosophy was the Blacks needed to unify as a people, not to separate from the rest of American society, but to create clear strategies and to be able to bargain with the white American establishment from a position of unity and strength. Looked at that way, their platform seems pragmatic and far-seeing to me. Anyway, I highly recommend that book.

80booksaplenty1949
Ago 20, 2021, 4:15 pm

>78 Tess_W: Malcolm X came to reject his earlier separatist views as he moved away from the Nation of Islam to mainstream Islam. The diverse crowd he witnessed when he made the Haj to Mecca had a dramatic impact on his thinking. There is speculation that his rejection of the Nation of Islam position on this and other questions was behind his assassination.

81lyzard
Editado: Ago 26, 2021, 7:25 pm

For those who might be interested, there will be a group read of Margaret Oliphant's Salem Chapel next month, through the Virago group.

There is also a plan for a 75ers group read of Anthony Trollope's Rachel Ray, possibly before the end of the year, but we haven't nailed that down as yet.

All welcome!

82booksaplenty1949
Ago 26, 2021, 10:29 pm

>65 kac522: How’d the movie part go? I generally find that the better the book, the worse the movie, but Sense and Sensibility (the one with Hugh Grant) was surprisingly successful, IMHO. Can also highly recommend The Bostonians, based on the Henry James novel. But they are exceptions.

83kac522
Ago 27, 2021, 1:05 am

>82 booksaplenty1949: They were all re-watches, actually, and enjoyed them all, especially the 1995 Persuasion. I had forgotten how wonderful the music was in that film. And I also tracked down the piano sheet music (Beethoven) to a scene in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle). It's affectionately called "The Look" scene--at Pemberley when Georgiana is playing the piano and Elizabeth goes over to help turn pages, while Darcy gives her a long gaze.

My favorite Sense and Sensibility film is with Hattie Morahan, David Morrissey and Dan Stevens. The Ang Lee/Emma Thompson/Hugh Grant film is very cinematic, but I have a hard time imagining Emma Thompson as 19 or whatever age Eleanor is supposed to be. Plus I'm a sucker for Dan Stevens in anything.

I recently watched I Capture the Castle (2003) for the first time. Lots of people are unimpressed with that film, but I thought the portrayal of Cassandra was very close to how I envisioned Cassandra in the book, even if the rest of the film is uneven.

84lyzard
Sep 3, 2021, 10:11 pm

The thread is up for the group read of Margaret Oliphant's Salem Chapel - here.

All welcome!

85booksaplenty1949
Sep 9, 2021, 11:15 am

(Re)reading David Copperfield at the moment. I gather Freud gave his then-fiancée a copy of the novel as a gift, and I am not surprised. The opening ten chapters are full of the solipsistic thoughts and apparently irrelevant observed details from one’s past that one normally has to pay someone to listen to. Not that Dickens doesn’t make them worth reading, but I can see why he didn’t attempt to keep this approach up for the remaining 600 pages. Reading this pursuant to QD Leavis’s interesting, if basically misguided, chapter on it in Dickens the Novelist.

86Cecrow
Sep 9, 2021, 11:20 am

Funny, I thought DC's opening is fantastic, it's the middle portion when DC is practically offstage that made me yawn.

87kac522
Editado: Sep 9, 2021, 1:25 pm

>86 Cecrow: Agreed. I thought the child's viewpoint was well-done; I loved all the irrelevant observations and details of his childhood. It's the adult part that is boring to me, especially insufferable Dear Dora. Also, I feel that in the adult section we don't learn all that much about David himself--he reveals very little about his own feelings, until near the end, when he (sort of) acknowledges his incompatible marriage and wrestles with his realizations about Steerforth.

88booksaplenty1949
Editado: Sep 9, 2021, 3:52 pm

>87 kac522: Have read a number of blogs/scholarly articles looking at narrator’s relationship with Steerforth as an unresolved gay crush that accounts for much of his subsequent passivity. That seems a stretch, but clearly Dickens’ own parents show up in a number of guises in his novels—-sometimes endearing, sometimes culpably oblivious to anyone's needs but their own—-and of course Dickens’ own marriage was a failure for which he took no responsibility.

89Tess_W
Sep 28, 2021, 1:03 am

>80 booksaplenty1949: Thank you for that update.....I have not kept current with X.

I just completed The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth. I was discussing this with another LT'er and it is probably more of a classic in Europe than in the U.S.

90Cecrow
Sep 29, 2021, 9:46 am

>89 Tess_W:, maybe so but I've got my eye on it; that and The Leopard by Lampedusa, which have become somehow paired in my mind.

91Tess_W
Oct 2, 2021, 9:06 pm

I just completed Beauty and the Beast by Gabrielle Suzanne de Barbot Villenueve, the original. This was much more convoluted that I had thought it would be, with all the main characters not really who they had thought they had been for their entire life. Nevertheless, a little better than average read. 153 pages 3.5 stars I can't seem to bring up the correct touchstone, sorry!

92-pilgrim-
Editado: Oct 3, 2021, 4:29 am

I am reading The Song of Roland. It is my first read from the classics for quite a while and I am enjoying getting into a very different mindset.

93kac522
Oct 3, 2021, 12:51 pm

I just finished Jane Eyre and am listening to Cranford. My print edition of Cranford includes two other Gaskell stories: "Mr Harrison's Confessions" and "My Lady Ludlow." I read Mr Harrison last night, which is about a new doctor coming to a small town from London, and the pros and cons of small-town life. Very funny.

94Tess_W
Oct 3, 2021, 7:30 pm

I finished a book of poetry Poems by William Cullen Bryant. Contained his famous "To a Waterfowl." My fav was "March."

95Tess_W
Oct 7, 2021, 4:37 am

I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. I read this because it was a "classic", although I'm unsure why. This was a story of an "unconventional" teacher of impressionable girls ages 10-14ish at a junior school in Scotland. To be honest, I did not like the character of Miss Brodie. If found her to be cruel and crude. She blatantly and unabashedly picked favorites and ridiculed others. As to the writing, the narrative was exceedingly choppy switching from reminiscences to daydreams to current dialogue to future scenes at lightning speed. Not a fan of the story or the writing. Good thing it was not a long book or I would have abandoned it. 144 pages 2.5 stars

96Tess_W
Oct 29, 2021, 3:19 pm

Finished Romola by George Eliot. Did not like it near as well as Adam Bede, Daniel Deronda, or The Mill on the Floss. It was an effort to plug through Romola because of its excessive dense prose.

97librorumamans
Oct 31, 2021, 9:07 pm

>96 Tess_W:

I read The Mill on the Floss as a teenager. Is my recollection of its being unrelievedly bleak an accurate one?

98Tess_W
Nov 2, 2021, 12:55 am

>97 librorumamans: Probably! However, I think it would not be as bleak now as when you were a teen. I would classify it as realistic for the time and place.

99Tess_W
Nov 2, 2021, 12:56 am

Currently reading (almost finished) Village Diary by Miss Read. Book 2 in the Village School series.

100kac522
Editado: Nov 2, 2021, 1:26 am

In October I read the following classics:

--The Claverings, Anthony Trollope, 1867--one of the better stand-alone Trollope novels
--Reuben Sachs, Amy Levy, 1889--a novel of London Jewish life, in response (of sorts) to George Eliot's Daniel Deronda
--The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens, 1870--Dickens last novel, unfinished
--Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier, 1938--the classic thriller
--Desperate Remedies, Thomas Hardy, 1871--Hardy's first published novel, in the "sensation" style
--London Crimes, Charles Dickens, publ 1849-1851--collection of detective pieces from Dickens' periodical Household Words
--Gothic Tales, Elizabeth Gaskell, publ 1851-1861--short stories and 2 novellas with mystery and supernatural elements

and a "modern" classic:
--84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff, 1970--letters between an American book buyer and a London bookseller, exchanged over 20 years' time (audiobook)

101Tess_W
Nov 3, 2021, 7:29 am

Just finished A Separate Peace by John Knowles. This was a coming of age story set during 1941-1942. The war is in the background, but not a front and center part of the story. It is the story of two friends and their struggles in a New England boarding school. While slow moving, it is yet profound and poignant. 228 pages 3.5 stars

102booksaplenty1949
Nov 4, 2021, 8:43 am

Reading Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice as a follow-up to my rereading of Albertine disparu, in which Proust’s narrator is finally able to make a trip to Venice to follow up on his interest in Ruskin’s work. Proust and Ruskin seem a very odd couple; Ruskin is so confidently moralistic, his architectural and artistic judgements largely based on social theories rather than aesthetic principles. And a prose style which is a kind of definition of “Victorian.” What attracted Proust to him?

103Cecrow
Editado: Nov 4, 2021, 6:18 pm

>101 Tess_W:, read that one recently and my primary thought was how tame the story is for using it in schools these days. Where's the drinking, driving, drugs, bullying, assault, sexism, racism ... ? They seemed like a bunch of innocents compared to kids these days. But then, I thought, can you imagine a more innocent bunch suddenly thrust into war? That gave it the power.

>102 booksaplenty1949:, lagging well behind you, in my tour he's still trailing after Gilberte.

104Tess_W
Editado: Nov 5, 2021, 8:29 am

>103 Cecrow:, It may be innocent in some ways, but the "friend" did cause a crippling injury and perhaps subsequent death of his best friend. Still a touch of a modern theme, but I think you are correct, modern students would not like this book.

Just completed Peter Pan, The Red Pony, and Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

105rocketjk
Nov 25, 2021, 11:36 am

I finished Swann’s Way, which was a mixed reading experience for me. I do plan on gradually working my way through the whole series, though.

106Cecrow
Editado: Nov 26, 2021, 9:59 pm

>105 rocketjk:, I'm on the second, Within a Budding Grove, and preferring it over the first. Teenage angst stirs up more for me than childhood memories do.

107rocketjk
Nov 26, 2021, 10:41 pm

>106 Cecrow: Good to know. Thanks!

108Tess_W
Dic 3, 2021, 10:40 pm

I finished The Once and Future King by TH White. Okay if you like Arthurian Britain and legends.

109kac522
Dic 4, 2021, 1:36 am

In November I read the following classics and modern classics:

--Murder in Mesopotamia, Agatha Christie (1936); in a rare disappointing Christie, I found the solution very unconvincing.

--Passing, Nella Larsen (1929); race, marriage, class all packed into a small tense novella; highly recommended.

--Nina Balatka, Anthony Trollope (1867); set in Prague, the story of the love between two young people of different faiths. A rare non-English setting for Trollope.

--Now in November, Josephine Johnson (1934); Pulitzer prize-winner for fiction in 1935; tells the story of a family farm in an unnamed place in the American heartland, during the Depression and Dust Bowl years. This is a sad and desperate little book, but is brilliantly written and relays the harsh reality about farming life during the Depression years.

110L.Bloom
Dic 13, 2021, 9:08 am

The Fitzgerald translation of The Aeneid. My first time reading Virgil, delightful!

111nx74defiant
Dic 21, 2021, 5:14 pm

I read Madame Bovary and enjoyed it.

112Majel-Susan
Dic 25, 2021, 7:08 pm

Reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

113L.Bloom
Dic 25, 2021, 9:05 pm

The Mandelbaum translation of The Metamorphoses

114Cecrow
Dic 30, 2021, 2:38 pm

>112 Majel-Susan:, a recently discovered favourite of mine, hope you like it.

115booksaplenty1949
Dic 30, 2021, 10:45 pm

>109 kac522: Have you seen the movie version of Passing which came out recently? Highly recommend.

116kac522
Dic 31, 2021, 1:57 am

>115 booksaplenty1949: No, I have not. I read it for my RL (via Zoom) book club, and a couple people in the group saw the film, and felt it didn't do the book justice. So I'm on the fence about watching the movie.

117booksaplenty1949
Dic 31, 2021, 5:03 pm

>116 kac522: Well, chacun à son gout, naturally, but I thought the movie was powerful in its own right and also very faithful to the book—-in keeping the ending ambiguous, for example. Some elements of the book, such as the social distance Irene maintains with her black kitchen help, while Clare socialises with Zulena as an equal, were more evident to me in a visual medium. I also enjoyed the portrayal of Carl van Vechten.

118Majel-Susan
Ene 1, 2022, 7:29 pm

>114 Cecrow: A bit depressing, but very interesting and I did enjoy it!

119kac522
Editado: Ene 1, 2022, 10:30 pm

I finished up the year with these classics:

The Country Child, Alison Uttley, 1931; a year on a Derbyshire farm in the late 19th century.
An Unsocial Socialist, G. B. Shaw, 1884; Shaw's 5th (and last) novel.
Dumb Witness, Agatha Christie, 1937

I re-read:
Pride and Prejudice, Austen; new audiobook narration by Juliet Stevenson
Rachel Ray, Anthony Trollope
A Christmas Carol, Dickens, 1843; read the story and listened to the audiobook, narrated by Jim Dale

120krosero
Ene 2, 2022, 8:37 pm

My favorites reads of 2021 had a classic or two among them:

1. The New Testament, the recent translation by David Bentley Hart

2. Notre Dame de Paris

4. Huckleberry Finn

5. Anna Karenina

7. The Long Winter

8. Little Women

All first-time reads.

http://textflight.blog/2021/12/25/favorite-books-of-2021-and-2020/

121varielle
Ene 5, 2022, 3:19 pm

>115 booksaplenty1949: Henry Louis Gates featured the director of Passing on last night’s episode of Finding Your Roots.