Clarissa Group Read: January Update

This month we embarked on a yearlong project to read Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. The epistolary novel, published in 1748 and purported to be one of the longest novels in the English language, contains 537 letters written over the course of a year. The goal is to read the letters around their corresponding dates and discuss our progress at the end of each month. Terri and I will alternate monthly hosting duties.

Visit Tip of the Iceberg to leave your link and find collected January posts.

Plot summary:
There are six letters written in January - all between Clarissa Harlowe and her dearest friend, Anna Howe. The first correspondence, initiated by Miss Howe, expresses concern for her friend over a recent incident that has wreaked havoc within the Harlowe family and incited public discussion. Miss Howe asks for a complete account of events from her friend's perspective. Clarissa obliges with a series of five letters.

Mr. Lovelace is presented to the Harlowe family as a suitor for Arabella, the elder daughter, but appears to show no real interest in her. He even takes her "consenting negative" as a final rebuff. Within a couple of weeks, his attention shifts to Clarissa. While Mr. Harlowe does nothing to discourage the match, Clarissa's older brother, James, arrives from Scotland and voices an intense dislike of Lovelace. He holds a grudge dating back to school days and has threatened to disown Clarissa if she marries Lovelace. Meanwhile, rumors of Lovelace's "faulty morals" abound. Clarissa claims she will not allow a relationship to divide her family.

Tensions escalate until James and Lovelace end up in a sword fight, with James sustaining a nonfatal injury. He will recover fully, but cannot rest until Clarissa is safely married. James bullies his father into discouraging Lovelace's advances. It is decided to send Clarissa to Miss Howe for a visit.

A Quote: 
from Clarissa's final letter to Miss Howe:

"Will you engage, my dear, that the hated man shall not come near your house? - but what an inconsistence is this, when they consent to my going, thinking his visits here no otherwise to be avoided! But if he does come I charge you never leave us alone together."

Thoughts and Impressions:
Although I'm still getting used to the language, Clarissa is much more readable than I expected. Starting with just six letters in the first month has been a nice way to ease into our project. The stage is now set... I'm anxious to see where things go from here.

Can Lovelace really be as bad as James thinks? And what about Clarissa? Will she abide by her family's wishes, or do I sense a streak of independence... and possibly deception?

The most important development this month was on a personal level. After reading these first six letters, it became obvious that my huge paperback poses a problem. Not only is it cumbersome, but the print is very small. To top it all off, I realized the pages are yellowing.

I took my Christmas gift certificates to Barnes & Noble and purchased a NOOK Simple Touch. I can't wait to read February's letters now!

The Sunday Salon: TBR Double Dare Strike Out, New NOOK, and Zelda Update

Not one strike, but three. Twenty-nine days ago, I took up James' dare to read from my shelves for three months. Today, I admit defeat.

Strike #1:  My library hold of The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright arrived. The plan was to read a few pages, send it back, and check it out again after the dare. I read the whole book.

Strike #2:  The Odds by Stewart O'Nan, pre-ordered months ago, appeared in my mailbox. I will start reading it this afternoon.

Strike #3:  I bought a NOOK Simple Touch and downloaded Clarissa for our group read (not technically a strike since the book is already on my shelf). Then, at Sandy's suggestion, I impulsively downloaded a sample of 11/22/63 by Stephen King... it's only a matter of time before I click 'buy now'.

So much for the TBR Double Dare. But, early dropout status notwithstanding, I will still continue to read from my shelves as much as possible.

The new NOOK:
On the plus side, I love my NOOK Simple Touch! It's very lightweight and easy on the eyes. I'll never try to read a book on my iPad again. Just looking at the pink case makes me happy, but will I need a 'wardrobe' of them?  Kate Spade has some very attractive, albeit pricey, offerings.

I've had great fun exploring the Girlebooks link Audrey sent. Lady Audley's Secret  by Mary Elizabeth Braddon was my 'practice download' and there are several others that caught my eye, including Selected Stories by Katherine Mansfield.

Are there any other websites I need to know about? Or NOOK tips in general?

Zelda update:
Zelda is not happy wearing the dreaded Elizabethan collar, but her paw is finally beginning to heal. This week she started to put a little weight on it... very tentatively, of course, but a good sign. The vet has prescribed another two weeks of antibiotics and we'll reassess the collar in another week. It looks like Zelda is going to make it!

I finally decided to visit the doctor this week, too. Antibiotics are helping some with the sinus infection and bronchitis, but the killer cough lingers. It looks like another day on the couch for me - reading, blogging, and drinking tea.  Are you up to anything exciting today?

Author Birthday: W. Somerset Maugham

Yes, I know today is Virginia Woolf's birthday and she will no doubt receive the greater amount of attention, but W. Somerset Maugham  was also born on this date.

*photo credit

From today's Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of W. Somerset Maugham (books by this author), born in Paris (1874). His father was in Paris as a lawyer for the British Embassy. When Maugham was eight years old, his mother died from tuberculosis. His father died of cancer two years later. The boy was sent back to England into the care of a cold and distant uncle, a vicar. Maugham was miserable at his school. He said later: "I wasn't even likeable as a boy. I was withdrawn and unhappy, and rejected most overtures of sympathy over my stuttering and shyness." Maugham became a doctor and practiced in the London slums. He was particularly moved by the women he encountered in the hospital, where he delivered babies; and he was shocked by his fellow doctors' callous approach to the poor." He wrote: "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief; I saw the dark lines that despair drew on a face; I saw courage and steadfastness. I saw faith shine in the eyes of those who trusted in what I could only think was an illusion and I saw the gallantry that made a man greet the prognosis of death with an ironic joke because he was too proud to let those about him see the terror of his soul." 

When he was 23, he published his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, about a working-class 18-year-old named Liza who has an affair with a 40-year-old married man named Jim, a father of nine. Jim's wife beats up Liza, who is pregnant, and who miscarries, and dies. The novel was a big success, and Maugham made enough money to quit medicine and become a full-time writer. For many years, he made his living as a playwright, but eventually he became one of the most popular novelists in Britain. His novels include Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Cakes and Ale (1930), and The Razor's Edge (1944).

Somerset Maugham said, "To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life."

Maugham's The Painted Veil was the first book I reviewed on this blog back in 2008. It was also one of my favorite books that year. I've read a few of his short stories and have Of Human Bondage waiting on the shelf. Have you read Somerset Maugham?

Tuesday Intro: The Forgotten Waltz

"I met him in my sister's garden in Enniskerry. That is where I saw him first. There was nothing fated about it, though I add in the late summer light and the view. I put him at the bottom of my sister's garden, in the afternoon, at the moment the day begins to turn. Half five maybe. It is half past five on a Wicklow summer Sunday when I see Sean for the first time. There he is, where the end of my sister's garden becomes uncertain. He is about to turn around - but he doesn't know this yet. He is looking at the view and I am looking at him. The sun is low and lovely. He is standing where the hillside begins its slow run down to the coast, and the light is at his back, and it is just that time of day when all the colours come into their own."

The Forgotten Waltz
by Anne Enright

I picked this book up on Friday intending to read just a page or two, but was entranced by Enright's writing and ended up at page fifty before realizing I'd actually decided to start the book. Does the first paragraph appeal to you?

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

"The Geranium" by Flannery O'Connor

*image credit

 "Old Dudley folded into the chair he was gradually molding to his own shape and looked out the window fifteen feet away into another window framed by blackened red brick. He was waiting for the geranium. They put it out every morning about ten and they took it in at five-thirty. Mrs. Carson back home had a geranium in her window. There were plenty of geraniums at home, better-looking geraniums. Ours are sho nuff geraniums, Old Dudley thought, not any er this pale pink business with green, paper bows."

From these opening lines, it's easy to surmise Old Dudley isn't very happy in New York City.  He agreed, in "a moment of weakness", to leave his home in a southern boarding house and move into the apartment his daughter shares with her family.

"The apartment was too tight. There was no place to be where there wasn't somebody else. The kitchen opened into the bathroom and the bathroom opened into everything else and you were always where you started from. At home there was upstairs and the basement and the river and downtown..."

Now Old Dudley is lonely, isolated, and intimidated by the city. He resents the relaxed racial attitudes of the north and struggles with the fact that black people live in the same building as his daughter. The geranium's appearance on the windowsill each morning is the single constant in his life... until one day when it is no longer there. The ending is very moving.

Why has it taken me so long to discover Flannery O'Connor? I recently purchased The Complete Stories and my first inclination was to turn to "A Good Man is Hard to Find", but I decided to start at the beginning instead. "The Geranium" was Flannery O'Connor's first published story. It appeared in Accent: A Quarterly of New Literature in 1946 and was written as part of her six story Masters thesis project. Reading these stories in order will allow me to watch this great talent unfold. I really enjoyed "The Geranium"- you can read it here.

Short Story Monday is hosted by John Mutford at The Book Mine Set.

Vacation Reading: Two Mini-Reviews

Ragtime
by E.L. Doctorow

Ragtime, winner of the 1975 National Book Critics Circle Award, intermingles historical figures with fictional characters to capture the mood and spirit of New York City in the early years of the twentieth century.

The novel opens as Harry Houdini crashes his car into a telephone pole outside a home in New Rochelle. The family invites him in,  and the line between fact and fiction begins to blur. Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Emma Goldman, Evelyn Nesbit, and even Sigmund Freud wander in and out of the story. They cross paths with our fictional family, a Ragtime musician from Harlem, and a poor immigrant desperately trying to protect his young daughter.

The novel was quick reading and entertaining, but the neither the writing nor plot really stood out for me. I ended up leaving it in our rented condo for a future vacationer. My book club's reaction was mixed, too. Eight of us read the book, but only three would recommend it to a friend.

My rating:

Where Angels Fear To Tread
by E.M. Forster

Forster's first novel deals with his signature themes of class, manners, and the collision of cultures.

Plot Summary (from amazon):
 When a young English widow takes off on the grand tour and along the way marries a penniless Italian, her in-laws are not amused. That the marriage should fail and poor Lilia die tragically are only to be expected. But that Lilia should have had a baby -- and that the baby should be raised as an Italian! -- are matters requiring immediate correction by Philip Herriton, his dour sister Harriet, and their well-meaning friend Miss Abbott.

I've read several of Forster's novels and especially enjoyed Howards End and A Room With A View. When Thomas mentioned that reading this novel in the sun would enhance the experience, I decided to bring it to Florida (there is no sun in central New York this time of year!)  Of course, he was right. Reading about the lush Italian countryside while soaking up the sun myself was sublime. Maybe not quite as polished as his later novels, but definitely recommended for any E.M. Forster fan.

My rating:

Tuesday Intro: Every Last One

"This is my life: The alarm goes off at five-thirty with the murmuring of a public-radio announcer, telling me that there has been a coup in Chad, a tornado in Texas. My husband stirs briefly next to me, turns over, blinks, and falls back to sleep for another hour. My robe lies at the foot of the bed, printed cotton in the summer, tufted chenille for the cold. The coffeemaker comes on in the kitchen below as I leave the bathroom, go downstairs in bare feet, pause to put away the boots left splayed in the downstairs back hallway and to lift the newspaper from the back step. The umber quarry tiles in the kitchen were a bad choice; they are always cold. I let the dog out of her kennel and put a cup of kibble in her bowl. I hate the early mornings, the suspended animation of the world outside, the veil of black and then the oppressive gray of the horizon along the hills outside the French doors. But it is the only time I can rest without sleeping, think without deciding, speak and hear my own voice. It is the only time I can be alone. Slightly less than an hour each weekday when no one makes demands."

Every Last One 
by Anna Quindlen

I read the first half of this book on our flight home last Saturday, but haven't been able to pick it up since. The characters are all very real, and somehow familiar, to me. From reading reviews, I know something very horrible and violent will occur soon, possibly within pages of my stopping point, and I will need to read the rest of the book in a single sitting - with plenty of tissues nearby.  That will hopefully happen later today or tomorrow.

On a totally unrelated note... Why are UK covers always so much more appealing than their US counterparts? I would much rather be reading this edition.

Tuesday Intros is hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea.