bookheaven | Entries tagged with classics

Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1)

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I was the age this is targeted at, I wasn't into reading this sort of thing so for decades, I can honestly say that I thought nothing much about Anne other than seeing friends in plays based on the story. I got this version from the home on Prince Edward Island where they sell it with Montgomery's signature stamped in. Figured it was a cute souvenir but now, reading it, I'm surprised at how much I actually liked it. I was also surprised at how contemporary it feels (carriages and gender roles aside and that bit of time period not surprising bit of anti-Italian hate from Marilla)

Basic plot, Matthew and Marilla, unmarried siblings, are getting older and less able to work on their farm so they want to adopt a boy to help. They're sent Anne by mistake and if Marilla had had her way, she would have been instantly sent back. Matthew has taken a shine to the chatterbox Anne and she stays. Naturally the siblings come to love her and can't imagine life without her.

It takes place over three years from 12 to 15 when she was expected to go to work or school. Anne is an expert in getting into trouble but everyone ends up loving her and it doesn't really cause any lasting harm. In a way, Anne is a bit of a Mary Sue in that respect.

Anne bonds to the girl next door, Diane, and ends up in a competitive relationship with Gilbert, the boy who once teased her about her red hair. Anne cane hold a grudge like no one else. in Avonlea, Anne blossoms and goes from a weak student to one of the best in class. It was fun to watch her grow. Would I read the rest of the series? Maybe.

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Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot, #15)

Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes, since we so often see Christie's work adapted to movies and tv shows we forget the time period when she wrote these was a deeply racist one. The movie/tv shows edit this out but when you read the book it tends to slap you in the face and you aren't expecting it. The anti-Italian sentiment in the first chapters made me set this aside (for years if I'm honest) and I only picked up again for a reading challenge.

Mr. Shaitana is an Italian man with theatrical presence, sort of a Mephistophelian presentation. He tells Poirot about a party he plans to host, a bridge game with four sleuths in one room and four potential murderers who got away with their crimes in the other and how he was going to one up Poirot and expose their crimes. Oddly enough everyone agrees to this (but only Poirot is in on that secrete I think, but maybe the other sleuths too)

So on the crime solving side we have Poirot, Inspector Battle of Scotland Yard, Secret Service Agent Colonel Race, mystery author Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, and on the potential murderer side there are Dr. Roberts, Mrs. Lorrimer, Major Despard, and Miss Anne Meredith. Shaitana sits out the game and by the end, he is dead with a dagger to the heart.

The sleuths all agree to pool their resources and help each other solve this crime, even allowing the amateur Ariadne to play along because she might be more trustworthy in the eyes of the other two women. In fact I loved that both Mrs. Lorrimer and Oliver are very capable women in no need of a man to help them (Anne less so but her friend Rhoda is a 'modern woman' in the parlance of the times and a fun character)

So we drop in to each detective's point of view (not so much Race's) and we follow along as they try to find the killer. Shaitana's reason to be dead seems almost as much to do with being a swarthy, shifty Italian (you know how they are with women, wink wink, nod nod) as it is the fact someone fears being exposed as a murderer.

Was Shaitana right? Did Dr Roberts kill a patient? Did Despard murder a man in the Amazon? Did Lorrimer take out her husband? Did meek little Anne kill a few along the way? All interesting questions and Christie keeps you bouncing back and forth between the four. All had good reasons to jab a knife into Shaitana's heart.

All and in all a good mystery with plenty of fun twists (and oh the other bits of racism which at the end of the day were only a few lines, dark skinned people were seen as untrustworthy by some of the characters (Africans and Indian) and oddly there's a line about of course he's not a killer, he's white, strange for anyone to believe/say that especially since almost all of Christie's killers are).

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The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories by Henry James

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read a lot of historic horror and SFF so the antiquated language in this isn't a bother to me. However, I can say two things about The Turn of the Screw in particular, 1. It's a seminal work in gothic horror spawning countless adaptations in film/tv/etc and the inspiration for even more stories 2. If I hadn't known the premise of the story I'm not sure I would have gotten it from the work.

This was a muddled and worse, boring, slog with an ending that doesn't pay off. The narrator is a young woman taking on the role of governess to two young children with an absent uncle (as their parental figure), Flora and her older brother Miles who was expelled from his boarding school for reasons neither the governess nor the housekeeper Mrs. Gorse know.

The children and our narrator are seeing things, people in the shadows, one of which is Peter Quint, their uncle's valet. Only problem is he's dead. Is he back to take the children? Is the governess and the kids seeing things? Does anyone actually care?

James overwrites everything. He's known for it. His sentences meander and are packed with extraneous garbage because why settle for only one way to describe things. The real mystery is why didn't she try harder to contact the uncle (she gives a letter about the kids TO the kids to post I mean why?)

Glad I read the source work but it was painful.

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The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was surprised to see how modern this felt. I've seen multiple movies without knowing which book they were drawing from (as this is a series) . I might have gone higher on the rating except for two things, the time period related misogyny (granted at the time of publication in 1905 this would have been a feminist text as this is Marguerite Blakeney's tale much more than the titular pimpernel) and I could have lived with the 'cleverist woman in France/England turning into a 'child' when needed. I was thinking hey we're doing pretty well on time period related racism (mostly because it's all White aristocrats) and then in the end starting with a chapter called The Jew it slams headlong into anti-semitism. More on that later.

So it's 1792 and Madame Guillotine is taking heads off left and right. Anyone with money is primed to be headless and anyone even thinking about disobeying the Republic can go too (including NOT catching the Scarlet Pimpernel). So SP has become a bogeyman to the Republic. He's been sneaking French Aristos out to England to safety.

Marguerite is now living in England in safety with her husband Percy while her brother is still in France. Armand and Marguerite were in favor of the Republic (as they were not aristos) until it started going too far. Armand is helping SP out and Marguerite has a bit of a guilty conscience because she accidentally betrayed a friend's father leading to his death. She tries to make the best of it having armor in the form of friendship with the Prince of Wales.

She and Percy have fallen out over this however and the man who adored her has gone ice cold just weeks after their marriage when this comes to light. Naturally with Armand in France helping out the SP and Chauvelin, one of the higher ups who can't wait to guillotine the people he feels deserves it, leverages Marguerite, use her position to sniff out the SP or her brother's head rolls.

She complies until she realizes who SP is and now she's trapped so she goes to France to save both SP and Armand and....goes from this level of brave to a total twit in time to get captured and needs SP to rescue her too. Eye roll (it had been doing SO well too for a 120 year old book until then).

And I'm back to the anti-semitism and it is BAD. Literally SP's entire plan to get out of the trap Chauvelin has laid depends on the fact that all the French hate Jews and he's going to use that against him (ouch). Sure enough our villain Chauvelin is totally an anti-semite and we get all the worst negative stereotypes about Jews (especially how greasy and gross they appear and how they can't resist a bargain).

So I enjoyed this up until the last handful of chapters when the heroine goes stupid and all of France hates Jews. Sigh.

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I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'll be honest, I gave this one star because I respect it's history. Let me give you MY history with this book. I tried reading it in high school some 40 years ago because my only friends were other SF nerds. I noped out and pretending to read it. This time I was going to do it....and wished I hadn't. It was every bit as dull to me as it had been when I was 15.

But I DO respect the history of it. These stories appeared once a year over the span of a decade from 1940-1950 and for that time period, they had to have been something else. They are iconic. Even if you haven't read them, if you know anything about SF and robots you know Asimov's three laws of robotics. It also gives us a female character of some power, a robot psychologist Susan Calvin who is a repeating character (as are the two sad sacks, Donovan and Powell and a few others).

Yes, Asmiov never did well with women (but again look at the time period here, he was doing okay for then) and yes Susan is probably where the woman scientist who is drab, unable to dress well or wear make up correctly comes from but she wasn't entirely awful.

The robot would could read minds? Yeah that was awful.

The decade gives us robots who can barely talk to those who can hide among humans as the stories move through the years. It gives us mining on Mercury and world politics and colonization of other planets. It also gives us a lot of people doing nothing but talking...and talking...and talking some more. These are tremendously static stories that even the tension feels flat.

If you're a SF fan, should you read them? Maybe. It's going to be a YMMV anthology more so than many others might be. At least I made it through it once (full disclosure, I DNFed some of the stories mid way and moved on they were so dull)

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A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What can you say? We all know this story but this is the first time I've read it. I have finally found the holy grail of movie adaptations: it follows the book! Friends in the biz have always said novellas/short stories are the easiest thing to adapt and this proves it. Most shows I've seen (George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart) are nearly word for word. How refreshing.

I was also thinking for its time, it made very good points, ones that would have people screaming about nowadays. Giving to the poor? Helping others? We've always needed those reminders which is in a way a shame but Dickens crafted a way of showing why having a giving heart is so important and will continue to do so long after me.

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