Mark's comments (member since Aug 26, 2009)

Mark's comments from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die group.

I've finally finished the book and just read everyone's comments. I loved the book (FrankH comes closest to describing my feelings), and for the first 2/3rds thought it would be one of my favorite books of all time. I even didn't mind Rachel; I thought she seemed lifted right out of Faulkner (think Jason in the Sound and the Fury), and certainly the multiple narrator method was Faulknerian. I especially loved the details of African life, and being able to speculate about the meaning of the numerous symbols in the story (e.g.,"mother may I", Methuselah's liberation).

My love for the book was mitigated in the last third. As the characters go on with their lives and try to figure out the meaning of their time as missionaries and of Ruth May's death, Kingsolver uses that as an excuse to explain to us what it all meant. This is the first book I've ever read where the epilogue takes up 150 pages. She should have left well enough alone, but so much of this novel is so brilliant that I can easily forigve her.

Although I enjoyed this book, I have to wonder if it would be on the 1001 list if it hadn't been made into such a great movie. Since I actually put the book down for a week, one thing that was helpful was the book's wikipedia page, which helped me track the characters and episodes. I highly recommend it as a refresher course after having read the entire book.

I do like the style of linked short stories, and I have to put in a plug for the great Vietnam War novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, which pulls it off even better than Trainspotting.

My main gripe with Trainspotting is that while most of the stories were interesting, I never felt like the characters were fully realized. Also, although many of the characters, especially Rent Boy, were highly intelligent people, I could in no way identify with them. Because their way of thinking was so alien to me, I always felt safe and never felt that I could sink as low as these characters. Other chronicles of addiction have made me feel less comfortable, because I could imagine it happening to me.

I thought that Dorothea perceives Ladislaw as a flake when she first meets him, although there are hints of physical attraction. She clearly doesn't see him as husband material.

The main reason I'm posting is that I'm curious as to how many people are reading these books. I count comments by 10 unique goodreads members. Are there any lurkers out there? If so, I think most of us would like to hear that you're reading with us even if you don't want to contribute to the general discussion. So give us a quick comment on this thread if you're out there.

Kristi wrote: "I just read the section on the coming of the railroad.  Pretty interesting that the people were so against it because of what it would do to the land.  If they could see what we've done since then!  "

Remember that Middlemarch was written as a historical novel, so Eliot knew how important the railroad became to the British economy.  One of Eliot's themes is the resistance to progress that is part of human nature, whether due to fear or vested interests.

I was on business travel with some light duties watching over a 24 hour / day experiment and managed to finish this novel in six days.  What an intense experience! Here's a few thoughts; if I touched on everything I had an opinion on this post would be so long no one would read it.

I'm most fascinated by the way one can read a novel like this in two ways.  One the one hand, we can be intrigued by how it gives us a window into a different time, with entirely different rules about relationships between classes and the sexes.  However, what I found most interesting is how little human society and psychology changes over time.  Think of Lydgate's attempts to instigate sensible medical reforms.  While some of the resistance may be due to Lydgate's arrogance, most of the opposition is from those with a financial interest in perpetuating the current system.  Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

There's been quite a bit of discussion about Mr. Brooke and Casaubon.  Mr. Brooke is evidence that attention deficit disorder is not peculiar to our time or our society. I found that Casaubon reveals himself to be a pretty wearisome and pathetic character by the end of his stay in the novel. Dorothea at first believes that he is doing great work, but that as a woman she simply isn't educated enough to comprehend it. As she digs deeper, she begins to realize that there simply is no there there, and that is the reason for Casaubon's resistance to letting anyone in on what he's doing. Am I the only one who saw a bit of the Ramsay's (from To the Lighthouse) in the Causabon's? I'd like to hear what Silver thinks about Casaubon once she or he gets to the end. I have to confess that I was also wondering about what sort of sexuality was in this relationship, but I couldn't even get an oblique hint from Eliot's descriptions (On the other hand I got the distinct impression that it wasn't all bad between Lydgate and Rosamond). I"m sure Eliot would have been interested in writing about sexuality if she had been writing in a less restricitive era.

Although this work clearly deserves its reputation as a GREAT NOVEL, there were times that I thought Eliot was pandering to audience expectations about what a novel should include. (This is usually my complaint about movies). While the blackmail plot gave the author a chance to ruminate on one of my favorite themes of the novel (the insincerity of our professed motives, even those we profess to ourselves), the villain seemed just a little too one-dimensional after having so many fully realized characters. Also the Garth family is so romanticized and perfect that I am skeptical of the author's own belief in them.

I'm about to watch the 1994 BBC mini-series. Anyone seen it?

Voters note that Smiley's People is the third volume of a trilogy (that probably should be read in order in order to avoid spoilers for previous volumes).

I just joined this group and To the Lighthouse (TTL) is the first book I've read with the group. I'm impressed with how successful your algorithm is at choosing good books, while simultaneously making it impossible to get into a rut.

I was mesmerized by TTL and finished it within 24 hours of picking it up. I found the style difficult but rewarding; it seemed like I needed to reread about 20% of the paragraphs just to get what was going on, and I frequently lost track of whom the pronouns were referring to. I did like getting inside all of these characters, particularly at the dinner party scene (Chapter 17 referred to in message 24), which is a deliberately virtuoso display of writing talent.

There are quit a few posts asking about Lily's role. She seems like a stand-in for the author. The description of her efforts to get it right could easily describe the process involved in writing TTL.
The last two sentences of the novel are both the character Lily thinking about the painting,and the author's relief at having completed the novel: "It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision".

Mara asks about why Mrs. Ramsay is so depressed. I think it's the limited Victorian vision of her role as wife and mother. From Woolf's perspective, it would be more surprising to find such a character that wasn't depressed. Paradoxically, Mrs. Ramsay seems eager to thrust that role on virtually every young woman who enters her sphere.

I don't know what the lighthouse symbolizes, but the trip to the lighthouse took on two meanings for me. The first is an attempt to make things right, given the role the trip played in the first section of the book. Mr. Ramsay's attitude about the trip in Section 1 encapsulated much of the ill will between himself and his family (specifically Mrs. Ramsay and James). When Mr. Ramsay finally makes the trip in section 3, his manner is so authoritarian and aloof, showing that even when he is trying to do something right he is a rather pathetic character. The second aspect of the trip is the distancing from the island, and the necessity of imagining the details of the island when they can no longer be visually discerned. To me, this was an obvious symbol of the time separating Section 3 and Section 1, and the role of the author or painter in trying to bridge that gap.

There is so much going on in this book, I feel like I've only touched on a few points. I'm looking forward to hearing what more readers think.

The entire Ghost Road trilogy is about the same length as Middlemarch, and looks like it could be an easier read. I was planning on reading the whole thing, since I also saw reviews that strongly advised reading it in order.

It also looks like reading I will enjoy.