Currently Reading...

Something peculiar happened in the middle of December: I began reading again, for fun. I think I've already finished more books than I did over the course of my four years as an undergrad. So I thought I'd keep track of what I'm currently reading, as well as what I'd like to read next (to be addressed in a future post).

1. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens

I actually bought this book when I was 13, and pretentious, and had just finished Great Expectations. Didn't actually make my first attempt at reading it, though, until early 2006, a year after reading and loving Bleak House in my "The Novel and Social Reform" class. I didn't make it past the first two chapters then, but I was finishing up junior year at the time. I started over again yesterday and have read the first four chapters, so it's too soon to have formed much of an opinion yet (though Dickens' sense of humor is very much present, which is a plus). One way in which this won't quite measure up to Bleak House is in the absence of a first-person narrative; Esther's chapters were what I really adored about that book, because she was such a psychologically complex character. She's perceived by others as happy and obedient because of her outward behavior, but she has to remind herself, almost obsessively, of this fact. More importantly, she's possibly the most perceptive character in the novel; at least, she has a better understanding of the needs and desires of characters like Richard Carstone than they have of themselves. This is why I can't stand Masterpiece Theatre's highly-acclaimed adaptation; Lady Dedlock becomes the most dominant character, while Esther's inner-ness, if that makes any sense, is utterly stripped away. One of the most pivotal sections in the book -- Esther's illness, and the revealing dreams and hallucinations that accompany it -- is reduced to a brief side-story about a now-minor character.

Oh, yes, but anyway, OMF seems promising. I caught the miniseries of it several years ago, but don't recall it well enough for it to become a potential source of consternation!

2. Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination - Peter Ackroyd

This is my non-fiction read of the moment, and is another book that's been sitting on the shelf for awhile (though in this case, only a year-and-a-half). It's a little difficult to describe; basically, through a series of brief chapters, organized by linguistic period or subject (i.e. "Old English," "Middle English," but also topics like "Solitaries and recusants" and "Women and silence"), Ackroyd considers thematic patterns that recur throughout English literature, art, and music from its earliest, Celtic origins to at least the twentieth century. I've been very much an Anglophile since 7th grade (10 years now!), so this book is fascinating to me. Also, the dust jacket art is so pretty; I purchased it at this fantastic independent bookstore, which, for some reason, was carrying the British-published Chatto & Windus edition. Images from old portraits and needlework and psalter illustrations...gorgeous.

3. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

This one's a reread; I first read it over a year ago in my "Jane Austen: Film and Fiction" class. I'm actually not a huge JA person; this and Northanger Abbey are the only two I really, genuinely enjoyed (also like her Juvenilia, which is insane and absurd and lots of fun), and my affection for NA might have something to do with the fact that our final assignment for the class was to write a proposal for a screen adaptation of it. That was fun, though I, um, did end up writing the whole thing in eight straight hours, pausing only to eat dinner and watch the ABC Family Everwood rerun, to make sure I emailed it to the class's two professors on-time. But, Mansfield Park's charms were entirely its own, independent of any creative writing assignments. Honestly, my favorite thing about this book is the very same thing that turn many off of it: the character of Fanny Price. Fanny is one of those observant, introverted and introspective, and morally-concerned types whom I tend to adore and relate to entirely too much. I also, sadly, relate entirely too much to passages like these (page numbers are based on the Oxford World's Classics edition):

"[...] she seized the scrap of paper on which Edmund had begun writing to her, as a treasure beyond all her hopes [...] It was the only thing approaching to a letter which she had ever received from him; she might never receive another; it was impossible that she ever should receive another so perfectly gratifying in the occasion and the style. Two lines more prized had never fallen from the pen of the most distinguished author---never more completely blessed the researches of the fondest biographer. [...] To her, the hand-writing itself, independent of any thing it may convey, is a blessedness. Never were such characters cut by any other human being, as Edmund's commonest hand-writing gave!" (207-8)

"As she walked slowly up stairs she thought of yesterday; it had been about the same hour that she had returned from the Parsonage, and found Edmund in the east room. --'Suppose I were to find him there again to-day!' said she to herself in a fond indulgence of fancy." (209-10)

So Mansfield Park has a lot of resonance, even if its major details -- sent to live with wealthy, corrupt relatives; in love with first cousin while being pursued by shady neighbor -- bear no resemblance at all to anything I've actually experienced.