It really is a "study of provincial life," as the subtitle says; very rich, with multiple strands of plot illuminating each other.

Oh, Middlemarch is wonderful. Reading it was such a wonderful surprise, because it does start out slowly enough to make you think "Am I really going to read 1000+ pages of this?" but the worldbuilding is so well-done that it just pulls you in.

The class I read it for was in, of all things, the economics department (I think was some kind of interdepartmental thing with the history people -- it was a while ago), and we were given a week to read it. I think the prof was figuring that, not being English majors, everyone was just going to get the Cliff Notes version anyway, so why not give us just enough time to read that? It made for very sparse discussion.

Yup. Though when I said this yesterday, I was told that I wasn't challenging myself. Which is hard to quantify unless you know what I *am* reading, not what I'm *not* reading.

Enh, Steph, I'm sorry that you got that response because it's frustrating. I have strong opinions (that are backed with literacy research!) about such ideas as being told you need to challenge yourself when you are reading and the effect it has on people who read, but since the conversation is obviously making an effort to move away from that, I'll sit on my hands.

Oh, Middlemarch is wonderful.

Cool. I love Silas Marner, so I've been wanting to read that one for a while.

(And I think I saw someone use a male pronoun in regards to George Eliot, which is in fact a psuedonym for a woman named Mary Ann Evans.)

Hey, at least it's short.

This food is terrible!

I know, and such tiny portions!

But if three or four people loudly and repeatedly state their resentment about how they were forced fed Great Books it's very dissuading.

Dude, if someone forcefed me Fluff I'd be very resentful. Do you think that the anti-intellectuals would be justified in feeling dissuaded by my railing to that effect?

It seems most simply to me that if this is honestly not where you can get your crit on, get it somewhere else. I can't imagine how what the "intellectuals" could not raise hackles. So I'm surprised that you're surprised people got all up in arms. It seems a pretty simple reading of your text, but it's possible my anti-intellectualism is getting in my way.

also 2 years ago when I refuse to read The Brothers Karamahmahmah

We had read The Brothers K by David James Duncan 6 months earlier. It was an emotionally rough time for me and was a dark and cold time in NYC (like 40 days of rain or some shit). I read like 3 pages and knew I would emotionally snap if I had to continue, so I begged off.

But, in that instance, the reason I'm reading is part of the social act of reading and not reading for personal pleasure.

Well that's the thing isn't it? I do my discussions elsewhere and on one book I read a month, not on everything.

I liked Ethan Frome well enough. It certainly got its point across, and the irony of the resolution is bitter and twisted.

It's also quite a change from Wharton's other work, which is all set in a very different class and social structure. Although I suppose the class issues and concern with money are a common thread.

is it OK to repeatedly kick Ethan in the kidneys, at least?

Yes, that is a legitimate response; double, if you come from New England.

To start Dickens, start short. So, 900-page Bleak House, although I love love love it, is probably not a starter, with the complex plots and subplots and craziness (although it involves spontaneous human combustion!). Hard Times is short & efficient, but its ends 50 pages after it ought. Great Expectations, also short, also a dissatisfying ending. A Tale of Two Cities, probably the most ludicrous of these 3 short novels, but I think the most satisfying and the most fun.

I think the reason I have failed with Middlemarch is that it doesn't have a single protagonist. I have a great deal of trouble keepign track when there's more than one protagonist in a novel that long/complex -- to handle Bleak House, I had to read chapters out loud, and keep notes. And even now, I've forgotten about 80% of the characters' names, and why so-and-so is murdered, and what the point was of Crazy Chancery Lady. But Esther Summerson stays in my mind!

As I said yesterday, I do read a lot of Da Classix. But even reading 100% classics, I'd never get around to all of them at the rate I read. So there's going to be picking and choosing, and it's kind of obnox to slag one for not reading, say Joyce, when one is busy reading, say, Dickens. Unless one wants to get into a Great Authors Deathmatch, which hey sounds kind of fun.

I would be, in theory, interested in a Buffista book club, and would be willing to read almost anything that was available in libraries.

However, given that in the last year I have read about 4 books, due to having way too much of a life to have time to read except during 10-minute bus rides, I doubt I could keep up. There's a reason I read for pleasure (and pleasure for me lately has been Verlyn Klinkenborg, Billy Collins, Laura Hillenbrand) and things that are "easy" and episodic. It's hard to focus on a bus when you know you have 10 minutes.

MaryAnn Evans.

I liked Middlemarch from the start, and am puzzled that Nutty made it through Daniel Deronda, which drags more and ... well, Daniel Deronda makes me love George Eliot for trying so earnestly to get beyond the prejudices of her time. It does not make me love Daniel Deronda, who gets larded with all the deadly appurtances of a Role Model, and one for a historical movement with which I have personal issues, besides. If only he'd been allowed to be human, like Gwendolen, or Gwendolen's bastard of a husband, the book would have worked much better.

--And one of the reasons I don't think the thread is as conducive to in-depth discussion of books as other threads are to shows is timing and depth and familiarity; which is to say that I haven't read Middlemarch as many times or as recently as I've watched Buffy episodes, so anything I can say is going to be vaguer and less substantiated by textual backup.

But things I particularly liked about MM were the so-hated omniscient voice, and the way the text of the book would actually sometimes subtly argue against it (the "author", I think, was much more dismissive of poor Rosamond than the book itself was); the use of science as a metaphor to structure the book; the thorough, deep constrast of people and relationships.

And I also like it in retrospect because of the way A.S. Byatt uses it as a model -- you can see the difference between The Shadow of the Sun, where Byatt was clearly influenced by Elizabeth Bowen, and the Potter Quartet, after she'd discovered Eliot. I love Bowen; but Eliot works much better for Byatt. She needs the structure and the science the permission to write cohesive social theories or characters who try to formulate them.