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Dec 17, 2009

Stephanie rated it:

I'm thoroughly embarrassed to admit that this book was first recommended to me by my stalker. Subsequently, I avoided MIDDLEMARCH like the plague, because it became associated with this creepy guy who thought the fastest way to my heart was to stare at me, follow me home, and leave obscene messages on my voice mail.

Flash forward 2 years, when I'm purusing yet another of my favorite tomes, THE BOOK OF LISTS. I'm intrigued to see that the one book that consistently turns up on the " More...

9 comments like (96 people liked it)

Aug 21, 2010

Elizabeth rated it:

Oh, my constant companion, the time has come for us to part. How shall I bear it? What will this estrangement do to me? George, please, tell me how can I go on?

I am feeling a little melodramatic. It may be that George Eliot has been my constant companion for two months and now that we are done, I am not sure, really, how to get back my old reading life. Middlemarch is that good, and that bad. I read this book everywhere: five states, four airports, trains, taxis, at home, in hotels, More...

42 comments like (57 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Siobhan rated it:

Best. Goddamned. Book. Ever.

Seriously, this shit's bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. 750 pages in, and you're still being surprised. It's 800 pages long and EVERY SINGLE PAGE ADVANCES THE PLOT. You cannot believe it until you read it.

This is a writer's book. By which I mean, and I say this with love, that if you write, but you do not love Middlemarch with everything that's in you, then stop writing. Yesterday.

4 comments like (55 people liked it)

Oct 10, 2011

Alex rated it:

Middlemarch is a towering achievement. It's tough to find words strong enough to describe it; I mean, I just finished Madame Bovary and called it "perfect," so where do I go from there? Middlemarch is almost three times as long and it's still perfect; that's more impressive. But Anna Karenina is pretty close to perfect too, so here's the best I can do:

George Eliot is better than Tolstoy.

Tolstoy is a realistic writer: his characters are real, complicated people w More...

21 comments like (15 people liked it)

Jul 11, 2008

Martine rated it:

Widely regarded as the quintessential Victorian novel, Middlemarch is a superb study of life among the upper and upper middle classes of a fictional rural community in 1830s England. It takes 900 pages to draw its conclusions, but they're 900 pages of some of the richest realist writing nineteenth-century literature has to offer, full of insights into society, human nature, what to do in life when one can't quite make one's dreams come true, and how to make a marriage work. I've seen it describe More...

7 comments like (31 people liked it)

Oct 10, 2007

Phil rated it:

When I finished reading this book, I wrote in the front of it that 'This is the most rewarding book you will ever read' and left it on a bookshelf in Fiji, dreaming that someone would go through the effort of reading the whole thing based only on my comment. I doubt anyone's picked it up since then; Fiji is a strange and frightening place.

I spake the truth, though. It strikes me that most of those who've read Middlemarch these days are hapless souls who resent it as the mammoth task More...

1 comment like (20 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2009

Sandybanks rated it:

" We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time..."

Delusions, self-induced or otherwise, form the central theme that runs through Middlemarch. Dorothea Brooke, thirsting for knowledge and a meaningful occupation, deludes herself that she would gain those things by marrying Casaubon, a cold, obsessive scholar more than twice her age. Casaubon himself is mired in self-delusion about his life-long research, which Dorothea soon finds More...

31 comments like (21 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Rachel rated it:

Middlemarch may look like 1000 pages of repressed English people who won't do exciting things, but in fact, it's a thrill ride (if the ride were called "Class Consciousness and How it Will Kill Your Love Life and Your Business"). This book has more action than all three Pirates movies. George Eliot was not messing around.

2 comments like (9 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2011

Christopher rated it:

I have just finished reading Middlemarch, and this pretty much completes my reading of George Eliot's major works. Middlemarch truly is quite the sublime novel from start to finish. At first blush one has this sense of simply being immersed in a rather quiet and pastoral story, but there's really very much more going on here as one turns the pages.It is a story of rural England during the period of great reforms in politics, religion, agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, and even transportati More...

3 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 07, 2010

Manny rated it:

Since it's still Stalker Week here on Goodreads, I decided to create a new shelf, which I've called older-men-younger-women. I hope that's neutral enough that I won't get flagged. My criterion is simple: a relationship between a man and a much younger woman needs to play an important part in the story.

Well, as I was saying to Meredith, I knew ahead of time that Twilight and Lolita would be there. I trust we've already absorbed all the lessons that can usefully be drawn from these boo More...

15 comments like (18 people liked it)

Jul 16, 2011

El rated it:

This is the book that I would answer if I were hypothetically asked what book could have single-handedly become the reason that my relationship would ever fall apart. More so than Infinite Jest or Proust, other examples of books that have consumed or are consuming my life in one way or another. I didn't realize I had a reading problem until I realized that my boyfriend was unpacking around me; literally unpacking boxes right from under my feet - while I sat there and turned the pages. Or when More...

13 comments like (11 people liked it)

Nov 22, 2010

Dawn rated it:

Henry James said "Middlemarch is a treasure-house of details, but it is an indifferent whole." And while I had a blast reading this and want to duke it out with him, I can't exactly remark on the whole of it without, well, indifference. There's no great coming-together or falling-apart here. It's a testament to the incremental. Characters with big plans end up either total failures or adjusting their ambitions to the tenor of their littler surroundings. Reminds me of another M-town I w More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 19, 2009

Daniel rated it:

How does one review "Middlemarch?" Is doing so different than reviewing life itself? Both are a succession of births, deaths, marriages, debts accrued, debts paid, careers made, careers finished, love affairs begun, love affairs ended, love affairs left unconsummated, dreams fulfilled, dreams destroyed, and dreams deferred. As in life, many of the people encountered in "Middlemarch" are unlikable, and even the ones who are likable have myriad flaws. "Middlemarch" is More...

35 comments like (21 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Mala rated it:

From this book, I learned that I'm not fit to hold a pencil.

1 comment like (14 people liked it)

Jun 26, 2009

julieta rated it:

I have to confess my weakness for small towns in a story. Small town mentality, attitudes, interest in your neighbours private lives and all that happens when you know everything about your neighbours and they know about you, your parents, grandparents and etceteras. I grew up in a small city, I wouldn’t call it a town, (2 million people), but, the attitude was always unmistakably small towner in every way.

So this weakness of mine has a cause. And when I came to start middlemarch, i More...

4 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jun 04, 2008

Akemi rated it:

My other favorite (along with Emma) from my 19th Century British Novel class. The writing is just amazing. Throughout my reading of the book, I just marveled at how perfectly Eliot phrases everything. The only parts that I disliked were her ramblings on medicine- possibly because it's outdated science, possibly because it seemed like she was just showing off her own knowledge for no apparent reason. Although at one point in the novel, she point-blank says that everything she wrote had a purpose More...

3 comments like (6 people liked it)

Nov 15, 2010

Skylar rated it:

Having been slightly bored by Silas Marner, I was not expecting much gratification from this massive tome. But I had heard good things about Middlemarch from others, so I steeled myself and dug in. I was quite figuratively blown-away by the quality of writing. It is not just that Eliot is an excellent satirist, but that she makes penetrating psychological insights and crafts very well-developed, imminently human characters, who are sympathetic despite their faults. She also exhibits a brilli More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

May 23, 2007

Kelly rated it:

I would not have read this if it were not for a class I took last spring. I will admit that. It had always intimidated me. Large size and dense, winding prose will tend to do that to one.

However. It did have some things to say, and on the scale of feminine writing of the time period, it just towers over anything else in its seriousness. The problem, of course, is that most of the subject matter it tackles- marriages, love, children, the various problems of country life (though there More...

0 comments like (14 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

rachel rated it:

This is one of my two all-time favourite books (the other is Lolita). I could gush about it for hours. George Eliot is so delightfully snotty, observant, and sensitive. Every time I read it (uh, I think this is my 6th time through) I notice something new, sympathize with a new character, catch a new allusion, etc.
I think the best thing about the book is the complete picture Eliot paints of each of her characters' personalities. There are no heroes or badguys, and even the most sympathe More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 07, 2008

Gerrit rated it:

One of the best novels out there; If you want to know how to write a good book, take a serious look at Eliot's masterpiece. She has an amazing ability to do two things:

1) the characters drive the plot, not the other way around (Rowling?). Everything that happens in the book is a direct result of a BELIEVABLE action by one or several of the characters, considering their individual personalities and quirks. The novel progresses because the characters force it to.

2) somehow More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 25, 2011

Stacie marked it as to-read

I got a little over halfway through...it was OK, but I just couldn't keep my mind from wandering when I read it. I put it down one day and picked up another book and can't bring myself to pick it back up. One day, I will read it from cover to cover. But, with a little help from my friends I have made the executive decision to just quit - there really are more books in the world to read that won't make me feel like I am doing something I should be doing rather than something I want to be doing. T More...

7 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 18, 2010

Gail rated it:

Why oh why did I put this off for so very long? A great, great book with living characters, inticate and almost soap-operish plotting, and some great zingers strung along the way. A most marvelous read. A very minor off tick for the overuse of the words "ardent", "ardour" and variations thereof.

Probably the best Victorian novel.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 14, 2009

Miranda rated it:

My third attempt at getting through Middlemarch finally proved to be successful and discovering George Eliot’s delightfully sardonic and deeply psychological writing was a revelation. While I now have a frame of reference for the Dorothea Brooke allusions I come across occasionally, it was the character of Rosamond Lydgate, nee Vincy, that intrigued me the most. Not written as a likable character, and certainly one that would have been despised by Eliot’s contemporary readers, to a revisionist f More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jun 13, 2010

Faith-Anne rated it:

Beautiful novel with some of the most engaging characters I've ever encountered. This is George Eliot at her finest!

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 13, 2007

David rated it:

Like Casaubon, I'm searching for a Key to All Mythologies. I'll let you know how it turns out.

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 28, 2008

Charlaralotte rated it:

This book is da bomb.

5 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 03, 2011

Maia rated it:

*Gasps. Shrieks. Attempts to escape but cannot.*

That's me, floundering around in the Pit of Eternal Tedium, otherwise known as George Eliot's Middlemarch. It was assigned to my English class, or I would have escaped the Pit much earlier, with considerably less damage to my brain cells caused by trying to understand what the heck was supposed to be happening. This is without a doubt one of the dullest books I have ever read. (Since I have read "Robinson Crusoe", this is sayi More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

I have to say, despite the random ramblings about proto-Zionism, I liked Daniel Duronda better.

Nearly everything in this story is driven by marriage. People making terrible decisions about who to marry, people twisting their lives around to try to get someone to marry them, people twisting other people's lives to prevent them from marrying someone, past unwise marriages destroying people's lives for generations. It's fascinating, as sexism drives a lot of these shitty decisions and t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 28, 2010

Brinda rated it:

"It is better to fail than to succeed, if the aim has been noble in the one case, and mean in the other. Our full sympathies remain with the aspirants in their failures -- even because of their failures -- not with the lower natures in their placid ruminant life." -- from a review of Middlemarch in Edinburgh magazine.

The above statement would provoke and spark fiery debate were it to be said even now. HBut it was said in the 1870s. The very idea of ambition failed to be rea More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 29, 2011

Danelle rated it:

My edition of Middlemarch is 810 pages of insight on human relations that is as accurate in this day and age as it was when it was written.

Middlemarch is a fictious rural community. The story is set in the mid-1800's. The characters - and there are more than a few - are memorable, realistic, and thoroughly scrutinized under Eliot's narrative. You see every fault of each character, but also that one redeeming thing that makes you not want to totally give up on them. There's a yo More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

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