BONNIEJUNE keeps on readin'

Better late than never. It is still 2014.

1. The House of Seven Gables
2. A Little Princess
3. Rest and be Thankful
4. The Pilgrim's Progress
5. Indescretions of Archie
6. Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Saw There
7. Denslow's Humpty Dumpty
8. The Rocket Book
9. Cinderella
10. A Apple Pie
11. The Book Thief
12. The Woman in White
13. The Mill on the Floss
14. 44 Scotland Street
15. A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs
16. Castle Dor
17. The Lost World
18. The Three Musketeers
19. The Tempest
20. I Capture the Castle
21. The Prince and the Pauper
22. Great Expectations
23. The Invisible Man
24. Anne of Windy Poplars
25. The Virginian
26 The Scapegoat
27 Jo's Boys
28. Anne's House of Dreams
29. Pray for a Brave Heart
30. Pay Dirt
31. Murder She Meowed
32. A Free Man of Color
33. Breathing Lessons
34 The Rosary
35. Endangered Species
36. The Turquoise Mask
37. The Chinese Parrot
38. Vanity Fair
39. O Pioneers!
40. Alexander's Bridge
41. The Shepherd of the Hills
42. Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass
43. The Haunted Hotel
44. The Speed of Dark
45. The Handmaid's Tale
46. Lord of the Flies
47. Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled
48. My Antonia
49. Black Beauty
50. The Book of Ruth
51. Life on the Mississippi
52. Main Street
53. Five Children and It
54 The Two Gentlemen of Verona
55. The Bootlegger's Daughter
56 The Story of the Trapp Family Singers
57 Little Black Sambo

The House of Seven Gables It was nice reading a classic that I knew nothing about. Usually I already know this story from a film. I thought the characters (both living and dead) were interesting and true to life. The story is a bit scanty but the atmosphere is wonderful. The author works in a lot of essays about human nature but at least they were fairly interesting. There is an opera inspired by the novel that I plan to download. I think it should work well.
I have read more books but I have to get caught up.

Welcome! Nice start. It's one of my favorite classics.

I agree - what a great book to start with! Welcome to the group!

Hi thanks for dropping by.
I read A Little Princess recently. I found it interesting that while Sara is an incredibly good child who works very hard on her character, she's not really nice. She doesn't exactly have social skills. She wants to be a benefactress. She has no need for friends. In the last 20 years parents seem to have it reversed. They seem to put the emphasis on their children being able to make friends. I certainly applaud the message that we are all gods children and should not be bullied or ill treated. But Sara really does look down on everybody just with pity instead of contempt. I mean she's not really interested in any of her companions nor does she find anything to admire about them.

Rest and be Thankful is not about spies like most of her novels. I found it a bit up-and-down. Some of the episodes were interesting but overall it could've used more plot. Basically a group of aspiring writers spend a month in Wyoming. I like the two women that were the main characters but the minor characters could've used some more development. I wanted to know what the writers were writing. It was too simplistic in thinking everyone in Wyoming was happy and wonderful and everyone from New York was unhappy and bad. It did make me question my willingness to accept her generalizations about good guys and bad guys in her spy novels though.
I only have one Helen MacInnes novel left that I haven't read.

The Pilgrims Progress it was on the list entitled Classics you should read but probably haven't. I think that sums up why I read this book. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed part one but my expectations were low. I think part two shows that lame sequels are nothing new in the world. In part two Christian's wife Christiana makes her journey to the celestial city. It is a bit of a Cook's tour compared to Christian's battles. I don't know if it wasn't acceptable for women to do battle even allegorically with doubt and despondency or he was trying to say that now there are wonderful guides i.e. preachers to help people on their way. It's nice to know what the little women were talking about.

Indiscretions of Archie was great fun. He gets into a continuous series of scrapes but he's usually trying to help other people and I can see the logic in what he's doing usually. Maybe that says something about me. I like the fact that he saw combat in World War I. It is realistic for who he is and it adds some depth to the character. I also like that some of his ideas work out, some of them don't. It makes it less predictable. Mark Nelson does a good job as narrator for Librivox.

Through the Looking Glass is simply magical. He really captures how dreams work.

Denslow's Humpty Dumpty is a charming antique picture book from the Library of Congress website.

The Rocket Book is another LOC antique book. I am reading some other very long books in my defense of counting these picture books.

Cinderella seems to be cowering even at the Ball. Rossini's Cinderella had more spunk. I just saw it at the local opera company. Which inspired my interest in Victorian Cindarella.

A Apple Pie has pretty Kate Greenaway illustrations.

>14 BonnieJune54: Oh, I love Greenaway's illustrations! I'll have to look for that one.

http://www.read.gov/books/index.html#kids
I found it on the this website for the Library of Congress.
One of the reviews for the book said that the illustrations were bad. I actually thought that was kind of funny. It was as if they were predicting Kate Greenaway had no future as a illustrator. Everyone has a right to their opinion and there are classics that I don't like either. But I wish they would've explained that they didn't like the pastel colors or the old-fashioned clothes or whatever it was. I have loved that style of illustration since my childhood visits to my Grandmother's house.

Thanks for the link!
It's funny how different opinions can be on these things. There are a few illustrators and children's books authors whom I just don't like at all, but who are *very* popular. Taste is a funny thing, eh?

The Book Thief I basically decided to read something where the author is still alive and lots of other people have read the book. The plan was to read it before I saw the film but that didn't work out. The novel had built-in spoilers anyway. I wonder if that was meant to soften things for the YA readers. I enjoyed it especially the parts about Max.

The Woman in White had it's moments. My favorite characters were Count Fosco, the uncle and Marian. They were quite original. I can see how the plot would work well if distilled into a film or stage show but the novel is too long and had too many dry spells. Laura and the aunt aren't developed characters. I needed to know more about Laura's father and her relationship with him for things to make sense. Walter's trip overseas could've been used to add more variety to the novel. The romance didn't work at all.

I could tell why The Mill on the Floss is considered a great novel. All of the parts aren't great but they do fit together perfectly. The Woman in White had some great parts but the whole was pretty lumpy. It was a long trudge to get through the first half of the novel, but when I got to the second half I really understood the characters and their relationships and how the children they had been could have turned into the adults they were. Everyone's actions made sense psychologically. I knew nothing of the story before I read the novel. If I had known the ending at the beginning I think I would've just found it depressing. A great novel.

44 Scotland Street was a painless slice of life novel. Not much happens and most of the characters are fairly dull. I'm just not interested in very ordinary people doing very ordinary things. It's the same reason I don't like chitchat. It was originally a daily serial in an Edinburg newspaper. Understandably you were expected to know all the local politicians and the local neighborhoods and suburbs. The names meant nothing to me. I listened to an audiobook which made it impractical to look up the names. There's a great deal about Scottish artists. I didn't recognize the names so I had no idea what the paintings looked like. I have since googled Jack Vitriano. I didn't do well visualizing the dropdead gorgeous guy either. They constantly talked about his En Bross hair with the cloves smelling gel and he had an irritating personality. In my vision he had a great body but a snarky expression and funny, smelly hair. The best character is five years old.

A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs is a very good mystery. Her characters are well written in this series. The detective and his son both solve mysteries and the son grows up so there's a nice change in the character and the relationship. Both a new and old mystery are solved. Cornwall and it's people are presented wonderfully.

Castle Dor was started by Arthur Quiller-Couch and finished by Daphne du Maurier. Set in Cornwall, characters are reliving the Tristan and Isolde legend. The setting is very interesting but I never bought into the grand passion. The Isolde counterpart just seems a very ordinary pretty but annoying girl.

The Lost World was a ripping yarn. It was much better than the film I recently saw from the 60s. The characters while exaggerated were great fun and all distinctive. There was an nice mix of adventure and humor. I even learned something about Iguanadons.

I usually love classic adventure tales. The Three Musketeers has its moments but is probably better in its film versions. They reminded me of a street gang. The main reason they go around fighting all the time is because it's fun and cool and they're good at it. They kill people because D'Artagnon is dissed for being lousy at tennis. Milady is a truly wonderful
villainess. It has some very funny scenes. I love the funny looking yellow horse and D'Artagnon's flight from Milady's house. Maybe a better translation would've made the farce work better. The politics weren't intricate enough to be interesting or simple enough to be inspiring. Maurice Leloir illustrations are lovely.

The Tempest is meant to be seen performed not read. The prose is lovely and now I know what people are referring to. We definitely need to find a version to watch.

I loved I Capture the Castle. I loved visiting the little world she created and I didn't care whether such a family living as they did could have ever really existed. Genteel poverty was never so funny but with realistic touches such as not having enough to eat. There were wonderfully quirky original characters. I could see how they got into their predicament by just continuing to do what they have always done. Rose in this novel and Maggie in The Mill on the Floss were two interesting versions of young ladies trapped in their families.

The Prince and the Pauper is another classic that I had seen film versions of but didn't remember ever reading. I thought it had a great atmosphere of what life in Tudor England was like on all different social levels. I particularly like the prince's adventures around the country that are usually left out on the film versions. Miles Hendon, a down-on-his-luck nobleman who befriends the Prince is a very likable character.

Who knew Great Expectations had funny parts? The film versions that I have seen have always been very grim with little happening and the characters not changing. I thoroughly enjoyed the actual novel. There is humor, some likable characters, and a little action. Pip matures and changes his perspective about things.

The Invisible Man was more of a horror story than I was expecting. I was listening to an audio book while walking at night. It got a little scary. It was a bit refreshing that it didn't have the cliché of the well-meaning scientist who degenerated into a madman. He seemed to be a whiny disorganized sociopath from day one.

Anne of Windy Poplars is the fourth book in the Anne of Green Gables series. It's one of those books where you are having a pleasant visit with an old friend. I didn't buy her feud with the Pringles ending with no hard feelings but I liked the rest of her little interaction's with their new neighbors.

I really loved The Virginian. I tried the library thing "what should you borrow" page from one of the TBSL members to get this book idea. I hadn't read a Western in years but it definitely suited what I like to read. It is vintage with some action, some romance and a nice sense of time and place. I thought the characters were developed and their actions made sense for the era that they lived in. I don't remember a western movie being concerned with what easterners thought of the westerners .

I liked The Scapegoat so much that I kept on reading even though the pages were falling out of my 1950s paperback as I was reading. It is one of those novels where look-alike strangers swap places. John who was despairing of going through life as a spectator rather than a participant finds himself dropped smack into a very messy life. I always like seeing the character adapt to a new situation with the psychological tools they developed from their old situation. It's the same reason I like amateur spies and amateur detectives. At least on their first time out. In The Scapegoat I really never knew what was going to happen next or how it was going to end. In this one you pretty much stick to the one character instead of going back-and-forth like you do in The Prince and the Pauper.

Anne's House of Dreams is the next in the Anne Shirley series. She is now a newlywed living in a somewhat isolated seaside cottage. I liked the change of having her deal with only a small number of people. Usually there are so many characters coming in for one episode and then leaving. As sweet as it is I still think there's a basic reality of human nature in it.

Jo's Boys is the last of the Little Women series. I didn't care much for it and I really loved the rest of the Alcott books that I have read. Each chapter seemed to be like reading a Sunday school lesson. A small vignette would be included to illustrate what that chapter's sermon was about but it seemed like the sermon took up most of the space. And I didn't even have a class to discuss it with. I admit it would've helped if I had remembered more from Little Men. I suppose this is what the successful author's public was asking her for. They wanted to find out what happened to the March family and the other characters and for her to provide wise counsel to young people. A few interesting things happen but they are brushed over too quickly and in too little detail. It's strange to think that someone who wrote crazy Gothic stuff at the beginning of her career wound up writing such incredibly tame stuff. I have to try one of her thrillers sometime.

>35 BonnieJune54: I didn't care for that one at all, either. So, so sappy sweet.

>36 scaifea: Whoops sorry I'm not paying attention to my own thread. I plan to read Out of Africa soon because of all the praise on your thread.

Pray for a Brave Heart It could've flowed a little better. The Swiss setting was interesting and there were some unique characters. The mood is kind of bleak and Helen MacInnes makes it very clear that she does not think the Western world is worrying enough about communists. Okay but not her best.

Pay Dirt Silly cat mystery. The animals that are helping to solve the mystery talk to each other and the rest of the animals of the neighborhood. This series even has illustrations for added cuteness. I thought the murderer was really obvious in this one though. Considering there must've been a dozen sleuths of some species or another, either amateur or professional or just Dr.Watsons trying to solve the crime you would think one of them would hit on it.

Murder She Meowed More detective work from the corgi and the cats. I guessed this one too but it was really just the character's personality so I'm not sure that that counts. It is a series set in a small town that follows the rules for mystery writing which I have decided doesn't leave you with a whole lot of viable suspects. I thought the world of steeplechase racing was interesting and we even got to go on a brief field trip out of town.

A Free Man of Color This was a great historical mystery. It takes place in 1830s New Orleans. I realized that I have always thought Americans were pretty free to roam around what would become the continental United States but this wasn't true of New Orleans prior to the Louisiana purchase. Americans could use the port facilities but that was all. The residents are very French and include many white refugees from the newly independent Haiti. The large numbers of newly arrived Americans are looked on as ill mannered barbarian invaders. The French attitude toward the free people of color was more benign . This was especially true if they were of mixed race. I thought it was interesting that after maybe 100 years of labeling people either black or white we now recognize biracial people again. Ben goes through every part of this intricate society to solve the murder and keep himself from being hanged for it. It was a fascinating look at the city at that time and the mystery is good as well.

Breathing Lessons is the fourth novel by Anne
Tyler that I have read. Despite the fact that it won the Pulitzer Prize, I like the other three much better. What I liked about the other ones was all the quirkiness of her characters and their situations. She tries to control that for the most part in this one and make everybody incredibly ordinary. I have been trapped in a car riding with a bickering middle-aged couple before and it never occurred to me to think " Gee I wish this could go on for hours". Unfortunately that's what I got listening to the audiobook of Breathing Lessons. I have never been married or had kids so I didn't relate to the couple.
I found Maggie,the main character, to be irritating she was neither likable nor interesting to me. She lies all the time but is upset that people don't believe what she says. She seems fundamentally flawed as a mother. She never had any interest in turning her children into happy productive adults. She just wants them to love her. She doesn't seem to like her parents, her siblings, her husband or her daughter. She has always just wanted to please her son. I hope the rest of her books stick to the personalities that I like.

The Rosary was the number one bestseller from 1910. At one point I tried to collect a top bestseller by a different female author for every year. This is one of those that I finally read. I'm not pretty so I always like a romance with a plain heroine. Love's path took a lot of unexpected twist and turns in this one.

Endangered Species is part of a mystery series about a park ranger. This one is set in Cumberland Island Georgia. There is a very interesting bunch of characters and the mystery was good as well. I think the setting was less interesting than some of the others in the series just because I live on a southern beach. You got a love the opening part about sea turtles.

The Turquoise Mask is a gothic mystery from the 70's. Amanda left New Mexico as a small child after her mother's death. She returns to meet the latin side of her family and piece together her past. The characters are interesting if eccentric and of course they are menacing. The setting is described well. The male-female relationships are in a bumpy transition into a more equal basis.

The Chinese Parrot is the second in the Charlie Chan mystery series. The very convoluted mystery is set in the California desert. I wanted more Charlie and I wanted to be back in Hawaii. He did what he could with the setting. We have everything from silent moviemakers to land developers. So-so.

Vanity Fair I listened to the Librivox recording of this classic off and on while driving for months. I probably enjoyed it more that way than if I had just tried to plow through the book in a shorter period of time. I have an illustrated edition from the 50s. The frontispiece shows the author as a puppetmaster manipulating his marionette characters. I think that image and the fact that I had recently read The Pilgrim's Progress got me in the right mood for the novel. The characters are meant to be stereotypes of various moral defects and not likable. Some even have silly allegorical names. Dobbs manages to slip in as a nice guy. There is a great deal of sermonizing from the author but I excepted it. Becky Sharp is one of the great wicked women of literature. I like the fact that the author doesn't consider simpering, dutiful Ameiia a good role model either.

O Pioneers! was a wonderful book. The language is pure poetry. I really got a sense of what the life of a pioneer in Nebraska was like. My family is from Kansas so I think I related to it more than other places. I didn't realize how few of the pioneers actually had farming experience. It was just their one chance in the world to own land. Cather doesn't support the belief that all the 19th century immigrants from Europe immediately learned English and dumped their native language. Alexandra's attitude toward Emil and Marie's death was hard to take at first but when I thought about it it was consistent with her being a good farmer. A good farmer has to constantly face disasters with their crops and livestock dying. They don't dwell on the dead and the past. They do the best they can with the living. She didn't have much sexual passion in her either so she didn't really relate to what they had been feeling. I also felt that her own marriage plans were the ultimate feminist ideal. She was as free as a man to choose a partner that suited her as a companion and not worry about his ability as a breadwinner.
My edition is from World's Best Reading and has lovely illustrations by Mark Weakley.

Alexander's Bridge is the first novel by Willa Cather. She was imitating Henry James to some extent. I am very happy that she found her own voice in the prairie trilogy novels. All of the characters in this one just seemed very stiff and unrealistic.

The Shepherd of the Hills is from 1907. The characters aren't very realistic. They seem to be pillars of good or evil. The out of wedlock child is doomed to be abnormal by his parents sin and his mother's remorse. The strong and handsome people also have the strongest character. The story and the Ozarks setting are a bit interesting. My edition has photo's from the Branson stage production.

I read a little nonfiction with Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass. There's no real story line to the book but I enjoyed it very much. Basically someone with a way for words told me about her life in a time and place that I found very interesting. Her description of the Africans on her farm was really thought-provoking. She definitely acknowledged them as real people and important but from a culture entirely different from her background. I feel like I got an important piece of understanding the history of Africa and its relationship to the West.

The Haunted Hotel was pretty good as a mystery. But the characters aren't very well developed. I picked it out because it's a Victorian mystery set in Venice but Venice is not really seen much. They basically just stay in the hotel with the creepy goings-on.

"When she puts down the phone and looks at me, her face has that look. I don’t know what most people would call it, but I call it the I AM REAL look. It means she is real and she has answers and I am someone less, not completely real." Yep,Lou I know that look.
I enjoyed The Speed of Dark very much. I'm not as autistic as Lou, but I certainly related to many,many things about how he perceives the world. After I had finished the novel, I read the reader's guide in the back of my copy. I was a bit shocked actually to read that they assumed the reader would first see Lou as a completely alien being and only gradually recognize things that they had in common. My pet peeve was the autistic people referring to non-autistics as normal among themselves. I have been in support groups and I have never heard that. I just don't think any group refers to people different from them as the normal ones.
Except as a joke. I didn't care much for the ending.

The Handmaid's Tale is sort of current in that dystopia
is in now. The main character is a very ordinary woman living in this screwed up place. There is not a lot of plot but I think that contributes to the sense you have of how incredibly limited and controlled this woman is. I got frustrated with not knowing what's going on but so was she. She didn't have access to any information either.

I think I appreciated Lord of the Flies much more now than I would have if I had had to read it in high school.I think I would've found it gross and the bullying of Piggy too close to home then. I thought it was a fascinating look at how people interrelate in a group and how people become leaders either of a small group or in politics.

I said goodbye to Mrs. Pollifax with Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled, The last of the series. She is off on a mission to Syria. Her adventures are always fun and the Middle East is particularly interesting.

I think I was actually assigned My Antonia in high school but I confess I was terrible about actually reading them. It is just a fascinating look at people trying to find their way in the new land. I loved all the peripheral stories and characters.

. The Time Machine worked very well for me on different levels. It was exciting as an adventure as he tried to solve his problems. The philosophy was good if a little long in trying to figure out how the world had ended up like that. I even like the touch of romance.

I enjoyed Black Beauty very much. I was a little surprised because sometimes I find animal stories pretty boring. I like classic children's books so I decided I should give this one a try. The horse tells his story and really sounds a bit human like. It moved along well and I just found it fascinating to see the world of the Victorian horses.

I bought The Story of the Trapp Family Singers because I love musicals and it is the basis of "The Sound of Music". It was interesting. While I think Maria was a good person I also think she would of been a bit annoying to be around. She comes across as a know-it-all and too controlling. It is nice to have another book off my shelves that has been there forever.

Life on the Mississippi is a rambling sort of nonfictional book by the former riverboat pilot. It was at its best when he was writing about things he knew firsthand that were very related to the river such as his experience being a riverboat pilot. Sometimes he went off onto curmudgeonly rants like the fact that he really hated Sir Walter Scott as an author. Mark Twain believed Scott was responsible for the American Civil War. Ivanhoe was what made the South decide to hide out from the industrial age and play Squier on the Manor. There are some funny bits but sometimes I was thinking "Oh, he is making that up.

The Book of Ruth is what you expect from a Oprah book club selection. It is a depressing and/or hopeful story of a downtrodden woman. I don't like the main character which seems to make the difference between loving or hating these books. I loved The Rapture of Canaan. Ruth is a bit of a bully and I didn't see any reasoning behind any of her decisions. The only pattern I could see in her thinking was that if she thought you were underprivileged like her she was happy to let you stomp on her however you wanted too but if she thought you were privileged she would hate you if she didn't think you were totally catering to her.

I am very slowly making my way through Shakespeare. The Two Gentlemen of Verona was fairly fun. Lots of lords and ladies run around Italy and get their love lives into a gigantic muddle. A woman dresses as a man and they act on some other crazy ideas and then they all live happily ever after with the appropriate people the end.

The Five Children and It is a classic children's book. I love Nesbit's children particularly the way they relate to their siblings. The fantasy part didn't work as well for me.

Main Street had its moments. I loved the doctor performing surgery on the kitchen table and Carol's party where she got all the stodgy people in town to act totally silly and have fun. Carol wants to change everything in the small town that she has moved to after her marriage but unfortunately she is totally thin skinned. She hops from one project to another. The book is good in scenes where both men and women are present because I think Sinclair Lewis knew what he was talking about then. But what women were doing while their husbands were at work just seems to have been a mystery to him. That part is neither realistic or over-the-top enough to be funny except for some great satire of a literary meeting. He says no one walks anymore because they all have cars which may have been true about the men but if all the women in town had learned to drive by 1913 they were hardly as backward as he constantly tells us.

I started a new mystery series with The Bootlegger's Daughter. It is set in North Carolina and has great atmosphere. It has lots of interesting characters and an old mystery as well as new mysteries.

I had to buy Little Black Sambo because I recognized the illustrations from a book my grandma had in my childhood. I can understand people being offended by the illustrations and the title. But it's a cute little story and the tiger was what got my attention in the illustrations. But yeah if you were dealing with daily racism I can see wanting to burn it.