Next week, the U.S. will be observing Thanksgiving. This is why weekly memes, like the I Heart Characters! Meme I’m participating in today, are using a theme of thankfulness. I’m thankful for Billina from Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Ozma of Oz is the third book in the Oz series. Billina is a… Continue reading I’m Thankful for Billina Because….
Spanish artist Pablo Auladell set out to adapt John Milton’s Paradise Lost into this graphic novel. A few days after Satan’s Fall, he awakens in Hell and rallies his troops to come up with a new plan to attack God. Meanwhile, Adam and Eve are starting their lives together in the Garden of Eden. In this adaptation, we see a condensed and beautiful version of Paradise Lost, even if the characters are relatively flat.
We just finished reading Fantine: Book Four, a.k.a. “Entrusting Sometimes Means Giving Away,” last Thursday for the Les Mis Readalong. It was pretty short, which makes it easier for me to take the time to reflect on it as a whole. It has made me think about how it relates to what we read… Continue reading Entrusting Sometimes Means Giving Away: Connecting the Thenadiers to the beginning of Les Mis
When I read a title like Les Misérables, I assume most of the focus on this book will be about miserable people or miserable conditions. Even though I entered this knowing the first section would be about “An Upright Man,” I did not expect these chapters to make me feel warm toward any character in… Continue reading Two Weeks into the #LesMisReadalong: An Upright Man
This is an old topic from Pages Unbound Reviews’ Classic Remarks. Because I spent this whole Summer semester reading and discussing Paradise Lost by John Milton, I can finally answer the question. Let me preface this with that I was mad that the epic didn’t end with Satan. I think the story is more about him… Continue reading Do you think Satan from Paradise Lost is at all a sympathetic character?
I’m posting another set of mini-reviews. This time I am using the theme of American Realism, which was the class that I read Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills and Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson in. There were other stories, novels, essays and nonfiction books we read in the class, but I am using these two books… Continue reading Mini Reviews: American Realism Edition
I love reading a great villain, and that is what you get with Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. He is actually the hero of the epic because this is mostly his story. Milton’s twelve book epic focuses on the fall of angels and man, and it shows us humanized characters that seem beyond that in theology.
After the president and Congress were executed, a religious group took over what was left of the United States, renaming it the Republic of Gilead. Women are forbidden from reading and must wear the (conservative) dress that signifies their class. They no longer own property and must travel in pairs or with assigned Guardians. The only value in a woman is her ovaries. Handmaids exist only to bear children for their assigned Commanders and their barren Wives. Offred, the narrator of this tale, is a Handmaid who has grown used to the system but is disgruntled with it.
Carrie Meeber, a young woman from Wisconsin, moves to Chicago in the 19th Century in hopes of finding work and becoming successful in whatever she does. When she finally gets to her sister’s, she has trouble finding and keeping work as an inexperienced worker. She meets a dandy traveling salesman on the train who helps her find her way in Chicago—for a price. What ensues is materialism, love affairs, and a fight for survival. Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser, is a critique on capitalism and a spectacle of power and industry.
A Bostonian woman, the unnamed narrator, moves to Dunnet, Maine, a small coastal town. Mrs. Almira Todd, her landlord, keeps her company and invites her into the town and its history. The narrator rents a schoolhouse so she can focus on writing her novel and interviews some major figures in the town. Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed First introduces a small town in Maine from the outsider’s perspective in chapters that are like short stories.
Cat on the Bookshelf 