"Winesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson: A Review

Do you ever get the feeling that you read badly? I get this feeling often- when someone disparages my favorite books, or when I read a novel and my reaction is the opposite of the general reaction of—well--everyone else on the planet. This is exactly what happened with Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. All the reviews and commentary I'm reading suggest that this is an existentialist book focusing on the hopelessness of life. I must not have read the same book because it struck me as one of the most hopeful things I've read this year.

It's not really a novel so much as a collection of short stories about a small Midwestern town. The stories circle around George Willard, the sort-of main character. As the stories progress, they focus more and more on Willard and his process of realizing he is a man, deciding how to love a woman or if he even wants to, and wrestling with his longing to leave his small town and make it big. Anderson makes George's story the story of all of us. It's not just about leaving a small town and making something of yourself, it's about the worthiness of that endeavor.

Do we have to leave what we knew and have new experiences to say that we've lived? Don't you just take yourself with you, and therefore take your demons with you, wherever you go? It's certainly not a treatise about staying in small town America, but Anderson does question the desire to flee the places where we came to know ourselves- or at least became aware that there was something worth knowing. He points to that moment, the moment when we realize we desire and wonder for what and why, as the moment we grow up.

By the end of the novel, I wanted to start over as a child and experience that moment all over again. I wanted to be George Willard, boarding a train to start a new adventure that may or may not turn out right- but who cares? It's the intention and need to experience that is important. Then again, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I am still George Willard, and we all are. We're all making decisions to have an adventure or not have one, every day. The process of coming of age never really ends.

Five stars out of your mom.

P.S.- You can really see Anderson's influence on Hemingway and Steinbeck. It's sort of shocking that he's not more well known. Or maybe he is and I've been living under a literary rock? Anyway, Anderson's a great starting point for anyone embarking on a journey through American lit.

Who has read these? Anyone?

I LOVE the face I'm making at the beginning. Also, I apparently disembodied myself while making this video. I am actually a talking head. Proceed.

What does it mmeeeaaannnn??!

Apparently, Stephenie Meyer wrote another book recently, based off some character in the Twilight series. The book is called Bree Tanner and has sold over one million copies since its release three weeks ago.

Please excuse me while I go bang my head into something hard. While I'm doing that, someone please explain this to me. Do people who read this stuff really think it's good? As in, well written? As in, worth the paper its printed upon? Why is crap writing such a money maker? When did popular culture equal mediocrity? Bleh sob bleh thesearenotrhetorical.

And don't give me the "it's just fun relaxing beachy read" line, people! ONE MILLION copies! There are not one million fun relaxy people on the beach right now! I want answers. Should I write my senator?

Happier post coming tonight.

"Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" and "Seymour: An Introduction" by J.D. Salinger: A Review. Also, Where the Hell I've Been

Whew, that was a long title. I'm done typing not. Goodnight.

Just kidding. Ok, first of all, where the hell I've been: New York City. I was visiting a friend of mine for a week, seeing a breath-takingly, sickeningly good production of Our Town (goseeitrightnow) and spending hours in The Strand, which is my new favorite place. The rare book floor is my version of heaven. Not real heaven, but a Lovely Bones, What Dreams May Come pseudo-heaven where I get everything I want. This must include the pretzel vender outside. Anyway, that's where I've been.

While in Manhattan, I finished reading Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger. I thought it only appropriate, considering the Glass family (the subject of the stories) live in the city. As many of you know, I recently re-read The Catcher in the Rye and wasn't a big fan of Holden. I love love love the rest of Salinger's work that I've read, and this collection of two novellas was the last that I hadn't consumed. And it's amazing.

Both stories concern the Glass family. If you've read Nine Stories or Franny and Zooey then you're familiar with the characters. It's basically a large family of child geniuses and spiritual savants. The focus is on Seymour, the most intelligent and poetical of the family, as told by Buddy, a writer and English professor. The first story is about Seymour's wedding day, and the second consists of Buddy describing his older brother in a diary-like fashion.

They're both beautiful. Beautiful in that painful, poignant way some prose is beautiful. In that way that makes you want to stand on street corners, waving the book around yelling "this is what life is like!" Seymour's language is the opposite of Holden's, so don't let anyone tell you Holden's small vocabulary is a sign that Salinger is a poor writer. It's intentional- and that's what I so love about Salinger's works, including these two stories. You can almost feel him sitting at a keyboard thinking, ok, how do I put all my soul and all the beautiful and awful things about life into this book right now. Read it, read it, read it.

Five stars out of your mom.

Also, I'm not kidding about going to see Our Town. Buy tickets.

"The ABC Murders" by Agatha Christie: A Review of a Classic of Genre Fiction

I like Agatha Christie's books on days when I don't want to think. I mistakenly read this novel on a day that my brain was functioning properly, to my detriment. I know Christie doesn't make any grand claims about being high brow literary fiction, but since she's a classic in this genre, I think she's worth some lit crit.

For one thing, the obvious plagiarism of the Sherlock Holmes/Watson model through Poirot/Hastings is off-putting. I know Christie tries to defend herself in this book by having Poirot deride his sidekick for expecting Holmes-ian attention to detail. But like most criminals, Christie's unprovoked denial of guilt is, in reality, an admission of guilt. Her novels are unoriginal and formulaic. Worst of all, they are poorly written. The mechanism of having Poirot wrap up the case at the end through pages-long monologues is a cheap trick that actually reminds me of John Galt's speech in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. When an author can't successfully tie up a plot or suggest a theme herself, she makes some character give a speech.

The ABC Murders is unique to Christie's work in that it involves a serial killer, which none of her other books do. Poirot uses more psychology than Holmes does, but his character doesn't feel any different. Just as Conan Doyle gave Holmes little character foibles to keep the reader's interest (cocaine addiction, slovenliness, the pipe), Christie gives Poirot a vain attention to his hair graying and a habit of using particular French phrases. Her inability to create her own interesting characters was distracting enough to keep me from caring "whodunit".

I know I'll get flack for hoisting on genre fiction the same expectations I do upon literary fiction; but really, bad writing is bad writing. Formulaic prose for the purpose of income is a little insulting, by its very nature, to the prose of people who write out of a creative need. I say this with Rainer Maria Rilke's quote from Letters To a Young Poet in mind:

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write."

I don't think Christie would have died. I think she would have probably gardened, or bought a new hat. Maybe seen a movie. I will, however, continue to read her novels as a literary palette cleanse when my brain needs a break from Very Smart Books.

Two stars out of your mom.

What do you think? Should genre fiction be put under the same lens of scrutiny as literary fiction?

Hop in the water's fine. Hop-along Cassidy.

Welcome to this week's book hop, hosted by Crazy For Books. If this is your first time, welcome to Dead White Guys! We discuss all things literary and review classics snarkily and without reverence. Hence..irreverent. Anywoot, have a seat. Eat a cookie. Tell me your life story.

Or, if you don't have that sort of time, just tell me your favorite classic. It'll give me an idea of what to read next. Not that my TBR pile isn't taller than me- because it is. I just have to make it taller. It's an obsession. What are you staring at? And don't limit yourself- classics can include modern classics. I won't get into definitions now because that's another post in the making. What's your favorite (undefined) classic, hoppers?

"A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" by Mark Twain: A Review

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court starts off as a 19th century man's Monty Python, and there's no lacking of humor here. But then Senor Mark there lost his mind and takes the tale down some really violent paths, totally losing his audience (re: me) in the process. What starts off as something akin to a quest for a laden swallow ends like a Tarantino movie. But without the cool soundtrack. Or Uma Thurman.

Basically, the story is as follows: Man gets conked on head. Man is therefore transported to Camelot. Man is almost burned at stake for funny clothes. Man uses modern knowledge to save himself, improve the civilization, and spend 300 pages having silly adventures with knights and whatnot. Man then pisses off the Catholics, kills 30,000 people really ickily, rolls in some dead bodies, (SPOILER) dies.

Ok, Mark Twain hated Sir Walter Scott and the whole Ivanhoe genre. He blamed that whole chivalrous propaganda for the South's gallant and fool-hardy stance in the Civil War. A quote from Twain's work Life on the Mississippi:

"It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major or a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them. [...] Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war."


So it's safe to say that Connecticut Yankee is Twain's response to, and criticism of, the worship of Medieval chivalry and knightly do-gooding and not bathing. And the book is truly smart about that. He even avoids making it too much of an allegory by admitting faults in his main character, who represents progress and science and Republican government and education and fairies and ice cream. But the last fifty pages are just a jackhammer for his point. Killing the whole race of knights in England by stringing them along electric fences to roast in their armor?

Thanks for the subtlety, Mark, old-buddy-old-pal. You almost had me. Almost. There's also the matter of the language in the novel. I'm not gonna lie- I can't stand reading dialect. That's one of the reasons I have such shudder-tastic memories of Huck Finn. I really didn't know what was going on half the time. In Connecticut Yankee, half the characters use this high-falutin' Medieval language, and it's like trying to read Chaucer, without the bragging rights. Twain does do something smart here, in pointing out that these people birthed Germanic English, and tried to get all their thoughts into one sentence. Which is great, very smart, nicely done, bravo. But I still don't like it.


Three stars out of your mom. Would give more if the ending didn't suck the big one.

Coming to A Cynic Near You

I wanted to take a second to tell you about my upcoming read. It's Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court . Why so cynical about it, you may ask? The answer is thus: I really, really, (I have too much education to repeat it again but I'm gonna) REALLY don't like Mark Twain.

But he's so funny! And sarcastic! And right up your alley! I hear you proclaim.

Yeah. We'll see. I'm basing this totally on one reading of Huck Finn, which I perused at the age of thirteen. Just the time to read about a galavanting young boy who likes to pull hair braids! Bad news bears, was that idea. At any rate, I've held on to my savage dislike of all things Twain as stubbornly as a person who decided at 13 that she didn't like bananas, and won't eat one more than ten years later despite the obvious possibility that things may have changed. I'm not talking about myself here. Ok, I am, but they're so MUSHY.

So the Husband convinced me to try again with this one. He claims (I'm quoting here) that it's full of "whimsical whimsy". I love me some whimsy! He also likes to point out that he reads whatever I recommend to him because it's important to me and compromise blah blah marriage blah blah give and take bleh. Geh. So I'm off to see the whimsy. Wish me luck.

"The Pickwick Papers" by Charles Dickens: A Review

Thank you, Jesus. I'm done with The Pickwick Papers, which is quite possibly the most trying book I've ever read this week. It just bloody never ends, and in its never-endingness, whatever point Dickens was trying to make is totally lost. Matter of fact, I don't think he was trying to make a point at all- I think he was trying to make a buck.

Pickwick was his first book, as I've mentioned. It was serialized, like most of his novels. The difference is, he seems to have run out of material for each and every serialized section. Instead of moving the plot forward or saying anything at all interesting, he has random characters tell random ghost/moralizing/icky stories for many pages. Dickens was looking for filler- and if there's one FRICKIN thing Dickens DOES NOT NEED, it's filler.

I didn't hate the characters. Mr. Pickwick and company are quite entertaining, and rather endearing in their own ways. Sam Weller, Pickwick's sidekick in a weird Don Quixote/Sancho Panza kind of way, is funny with a capital FUNNY. But, characters that make you laugh every now and again in over 750 pages isn't enough to make me love you. Therefore, here are five things I propose to do with my copy of the book to show my distaste:

1. Rip out the pages and make them individual paper airplanes, then rain them down on the downtown area.

2. Rip out the pages and make them my new all-natural cat litter.

3. Rip out the pages and make a paper-mache bird, kindergarden style, and paint it red like my bleeding, bleeding heart.

4. Rip out the pages and use them to mummify something funny, like a lamp-post. Because that makes about as much disconnected sense as this effing novel.

5. Rip out the pages and use them in some twisted seance ritual to resurrect Dickens, and tell him that I love him and how could he do this to me I feel so betrayed and how the high have fallen and boo hoo hoo.

Did I mention I wanna rip out the pages?

One star out of your mom.

In other news, they (someone..who did this?) MADE IT INTO A CARTOON! Has anyone seen this before? 

Book Blogger Appreciation Week: I appreciate..ME!

Since we're so awesome here at Dead White Guys, we are nominating ourselves for Best Literary Fiction blog and also Best New Book Blog for Book Blogger Appreciation Week. I feel like this needs no explanation- it would be like discussing the magnificence of the Mona Lisa. Just. Not. Necessary.

Here are the posts I am submitting for both Best Literary Fiction blog and Best New Book Blog:

1. A review of East of Eden by John Steinbeck
2. A review of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. A review of Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

4. A review (rant against) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

5. A review of The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

If you're a book blogger and think you're worth your salt, head on over and nominate yourself for sumpin'. Cause there's nothing we like more here at DWG than self-aggrandizement.

In My Mailbox: It Puts the Lotion in the Basket

Books make me feel pretty. I don't take off their covers and try to wear them, but having them all around puts me in a sort of Nabokovian aesthetic bliss. It is calming. If they don't cooperate, they get the hose.

ANYWAY- this week's In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren. It's a weekly roundup of your purchases/thrift store finds/gifts/whatever- book acquisitions. All three of my books for this week came from Bookmooch. For those of you who don't know, Bookmooch is a fantastic swap site. You get points for adding books you want to get rid of, you get points for marking books as received, and you get points when someone mooches from you. I've mooched (no joke) over 100 books.

This week I got: G.K Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, Agatha Christie's ABC Murders: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Agatha Christie Collection), and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (Oxford World's Classics). The first is is described as "The most thrilling book I have ever read" by Kingsley Amis, a renowned modern author I haven't read because..well..he sounds like a prig in interviews. But he is DEAD, so I guess I should add him to my list of DWG to be read.

I'm also at the halfway point of The Pickwick Papers. It is picking up, and I should be done in a few days. At that point, I'm banking on SOMEONE wreathing my neck with roses, Kentucky Derby style. Or at least buying me cheesecake. You hear that, HUBBY? Does he even read this thing?

Did you guys get any new books worth mentioning this week?

Bunny Hop. Sock Hop. Hop-in-stance.

Welcome to this week's Book Hop, hosted by Crazy For Books. For those of you stopping by for the first time, here are a few rules and general things to know:

1. Don't get offended by the sarcasm/silliness/irreverence. It's in the name of the blog. That's how we roll. If you do get offended, eat a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. You'll feel better. PROMISE.

2. Here at DWG, we hate YA/paranormal romance/chicky lit. I mean, we hate it. Like, seventh circle of hell hate it. Like, if I could inflict horrible, tortuous punishment on evil-doers worldwide, I would make them read Twilight as a way to turn their brain to putty. Like, sometimes we end friendships over it. (Kidding)(Sorta)(Ok, no, really, I'm kidding)(Shut up, they'll think we're weak!)(You shut up. You're so nuts)(Fine.)(FINE).

3. Please comment- we like conversation. It gives us someone else to talk to other than the cats. And the husband, who gets very bored of exclamations about Dickensian politics and the snobbery of the book reviewing business. He just. Doesn't. Care. Gah- people with lives outside...what ARE they thinking.

The Pickwick Papers- first 10 chapters

Ok. I just. Ok. WHAT THE HELL. This book is taking me fo-ev-ah. I have a theory, and it's based on a scandal.

The Pickwick Papers is the first of Dicken's works, so I'm not entirely surprised that I'm not loving it. He simply isn't mature enough at this point to write the amazing stuff he would later in life. He was brought on to the project by Robert Seymour, an illustrator. Seymour wanted to draw funny pictures (see above) and have Dickens write comic sketches around them. Dickens, being the...Dickensian fellow that he was, turned the tables and had Seymour eventually drawing pictures based on his sketches. Then Seymour killed himself. (?!).

So the first few chapters are the ones influenced by Robert Seymour, and they're just..they're just God awful. Never have more characters run around frenetically doing everything they possible can in one sentence except nothing ever happens e-gads. I have, apparently, just reached the point in the tale where Seymour killed himself and you can tell there's a marked difference in the tone, pace, and characterization in the tales. For all Dickens claimed Seymour had no power over the stories he was writing, I have to claim that he was full of ca-cah.

I'm not gonna say I'm glad anyone killed him/herself, but I am gonna say that I'm glad the book is changing because ohmanitsucked I just can't read anymore of that bloody mess I just eja;oid;ij;kasdfo;ij

We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog post to alert you that Jane is now collapsed on the floor, foaming at the mouth in agitation. She will return to sanity once her husband comes home and makes her dinner. And maybe does the dishes. We'll see. She might milk this.

? stars out of your mom so far because she isn't sane enough to make a decision yet.

Ugh Is This Idiotic?

How many of you use Librivox.org. It's a free audio book site that gathers volunteers to do recordings of books in the public domain. Great thing is: it's free. Did I mention it's free? Yay. There's that. The bad thing is, as I experienced both in my listening to Moby Dick and North and South is that there are sooo many accents, some of which are pretty undecipherable to this Virginia lass. Also, each volunteer has different reading ability, sound quality, etc. It's actually hard work to listen to these recordings. One woman in North and South had a heavy accent, a lisp (why would you volunteer to do an audi- whatever.) AND was running her clothes washer in the background. I didn't skip the chapter out of stubbornness, but I don't know what happened. For 45 MINUTES.

But I don't want to pay 8$ to listen to someone read Pride and Prejudice professionally. So. I was thinking- I could read them. I've volunteered for Librivox before to read Anna Karenina, and got a lot of compliments. I don't have a thick accent (not even a southern one)/screaming children/speech impediment. I could record them, put them up here, and sell them for like $2.

Is this stupid? Would people buy the recordings? It's like Librivox, except you pay a few bucks to have a consistent, easy to understand reader with good sound quality. Who doesn't suck. And classics make great audio books because they're so much less boring that way. Not that I think they're boring in general, but some people do. What do you guys think?

Can't Get Much Deader.

Ok. I know most of you will not be interested in this because- well- it's totally nerdy. BUT it's also totally awesome. Yale University has posted a series of lectures from Professor John Rogers on the subject of English poet John Milton, of Paradise Lost fame. In fact, it's his whole Milton course. And it's free!

He actually calls Milton the "stalwart Dead White Male poet" more than once in the first lecture, so I thought I should let you guys know. We have a stalwart! What's a stalwart? Sounds like an STD.

Anyway, check it out if you're into Milton. I'm re-reading PL right now, along with The Pickwick Papers, mostly because the latter is boring me to tears. Effing Mr. Tupman. Also because I'm co-moderating a group read and discussion of the work on Good Reads. Come on over and join the stalwart fun here! We literally started this morning, so it's not too late to come over and be bossed around by me via the web!

Here's the linky link to the lectures: http://academicearth.org/courses/milton

It's Cuz I'm Gangsta.

So I got an award..? It's versatile. Or I'm versatile. I don't really think that's true- I'm fairly rigid, as evidenced by the nature of this blog. But, as any self-aggrandizing being would, I'll take any praise I can get! This award comes to me via 100 Books, 100 Journeys- great blog. Funny! Smart! About books! Those are basically my requirements for reading. So here are the rules about getting the award-

1. Thank the person who gave it to you- Thanks! You're wicked awesome!

2. Share seven things about yourself.

3. Pass the award to 15 other bloggers.

The seVen Deadly things mwa haha:

1. I have two cats- Aeon, named for Aeon Flux, and Finnegan, after the wake. I haven't actually read Finnegan's Wake, either. But, the cat is an orange tabby, so I wanted something Irish sounding.

2. I had an accident with a circular saw during high school drama set construction that resulted in my almostnotquite death, left me with 63 stitches, and gave me an EXCELLENT opportunity to tell my principal to f--- herself as I was being loaded into the ambulance.

3. I only this week realized I can drive with the AC on and the windows down because there's no thermostat in my car!

4. I was married at 19 to the only person on the planet cool enough to deal with my whimsy and psychosis.

5. I like to stay sober at parties, ask drunk people deep questions, and contemplate taping them and posting them anonymously on Youtube. I could start a whole channel.

6. I make allowances for the silly behavior of people I consider creative, but not other people. Other people need to straighten up and FLY RIGHT!

7. I'm a member of an unofficial club of people who Work From Home at my local Starbucks. Everyday, we gather. We work. We chat. It's like my own water cooler, but..caffeinated.

OK! I don't read 15 other book blogs, so here are a few for you. And by a few I mean two:

1. Stack of Spines

2. Our Year in Books

How to Pick What to Read Next/ What Should I Read Next/ BBLLEEHH

The above title is what goes through my head when I'm standing in front of my bookshelves, sad and alone, debating on what to read next. I figured you guys must go through the same anguish and trauma on a fairly regular basis, so I thought I would share with you the saner ways in which I pick my next tome. And by sane, I mean batshit crazy. I don't use any of these methods consistently, or in any order. Feel free to judge. Ahem:

1. By Shelf: I go through all my bookshelves and turn down the books I haven't read yet so their spine doesn't show. Then I count how many turned down books are on each shelf. When I figure out which shelf has the most unread books, I pick the fattest book from that shelf to read OR I pick the middle book in any group of three.

2. By Rotation: I don't actually maintain any rotation, but I like to think so. Therefore, I will pick a rotation, figure out what category I last read, and move on to the next. Some rotations I follow are: Unread, re-read, un-read. OR classic-modern-non-fiction. OR new author I've never read- old author I've read before but a work I've never read.

3. By Author: I will use my Goodreads catalogue, which lists all the books I own and separates them into read and un-read, to find out which author I own the most un-read books from. I will then read one of his/her works. Right now, it's Dickens (hence my recent selection of The Pickwick Papers), Steinbeck, and Lois Lowry (excuse me, WTF?).

4. By Date: I will again refer to Goodreads for this one. The un-read section of the catalogue also lists the date you added the book, so you can see which books have been on your TBR list the longest. I'll read the one that's been on there the longest. Ok, The Odyssey has been on there the longest and I won't actually read that, so I guess I read the one that's second.

What about you guys? Any quirky book selection methods? Is anyone out there an odd combination of overly organized and crazy sloppy?

Hoptastic. Hopperific. Hopalicious.

Welcome to this week's Book Hop, hosted by Crazy for Books. What's the point, you might ask? Reading book blogs! Because that's what readers do when they're not reading. If this were the 18th century, we would secretly write bad poetry and talk about trashy novels with our pen pals. But now we have The Technology.

Welcome to Dead White Guys, where nothing is literarily sacred! Let the mocking commence!

I'm FAMOUS!

Or maybe I coerced Page Turners to do an interview of me because I think the world will find me just that fascinating. Either way, read it! She makes some interesting comments at the end of it about books as escapism, though I don't necessarily agree. As I state. In the interview. Linky-link is above!

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Remember that time someone blatantly ripped off Pride and Prejudice, but made Lizzie more annoying and moved the setting to a factory town? I DO! Because it's called North and South, and I just read it er listened to it on the way to and from Florida this weekend. Let's recount the ways this book rips off Jane Austen unabashedly, but with 400 extra pages:

1. The two love interests have bunches of pride. And prejudice. And Elizabeth Gaskell just up and says that. She also says “languid” about every five seconds, even when it's inappropriate (how can you languidly sob? That doesn't make any sense). Margaret languidly regarded Mr. Thornton. Margaret languidly mourns her dead (insert SPOILER ALERT MAJOR MAJOR PPPLLLEEHHH) mother, father, godfather, goldfish. Ok, she doesn't mourn a goldfish, but if she did, she would do it LANGUIDLY.

2. Margaret and Mr. Thornton aka Mr. And Miss. Love Interests have interesting money issues, wherein he is rich and she is poor, but she would never think of marrying him for his money because he is COLD and UNFEELING and VEXING.

3. There's this interesting little scene in the drawing room- where no one ever actually draws- where Mr. Thornton pours out his COLD UNFEELING VEXATIOUS heart to Margaret, telling her of his undying love even though she's a cold hearted snake (look into her eyes, uh oh, she's been telling lies) and SHE goes on to tell him that she wouldn't marry him above any other poor nasty dirty man in the whole town so there! Huh. That sounds familiar. He even says he loves her against his better judgement. Also, I just made a Janet Jackson reference. You must therefore love me.

Anyway, I was really expecting more from this book like oh originality. And a likable heroine. For rizzle, Margaret Hale, despite what the book jackets of the world will tell you, is the most annoying and snobby person I've ever read. She's a cross between Emma and Scarlett O'Hara, except not funny, exciting, strong, or redeemable. Half way through the book she's still all yeah Mr. Thornton's hot business but I don't lliiikkkeee him because he's a traaaddeessmmaaannn even though I'm some poor wench from the country and have no place to judge a titmouse. She also is a big fan of manipulating all the men in her life to do what she wants, which usually involves putting themselves in bodily danger, and then feeling oh so vexed about it. She spends most of the book feeling vexed. I wanted to vex her in the face.

Finally, the ending- after you've invested 530 pages, or 18 hours of listening, is wrapped up in one page. ONE PAGE. Margaret (spoiler) inheritsalotofmoney and then admitsshelovesThornton and he hugsherandsayshernameabunch and THE END thanks for coming folks, pick up your jackets at the door. It's not even a tidy bow, it's like duct tape and spit.

BUT! The rest of the book that doesn't involve the main character is awesome. It's about the clash between the working class and the manufacturing owners in Northern England. Great social commentary and religious commentary. Very smart. Gaskell should stick to being a smart woman with political opinions, and quit trying to be Austen. But she's dead and I can't tell her that, so...yeah.

Two stars out of your mom- and only because of the good bits.