false 32 293 222 true 5639015 read 2 true 5281004 currently-reading 69 true 5280996 to-read 20 false 6156751 poetry 20 false 6540866 wishlist 15 false 8592240 victorians-tbr 9 false 6165012 the-classics 5 false 6165056 modern-classics 4 false 6165060 historical-fiction 3 false 6165326 war 2 false 6829725 studying 1 false 6384441 epistolary 1 false 6165119 oriental 1 false 7183089 unfinished-must-try-again 1 false 6829732 textbooks 0 false 5518919 re-reading 0 false 7183090 unfinished-don-t-bother-trying-agai http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/189276-scrabble Ally made a comment in the Chicks On Lit group:

garnets ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/243706-january-voting-is-open Ally made a comment in the Chicks On Lit group:

in case it helps anyone decide - Far From the Madding Crowd is a hot-bed of under the radar sexual imagery and allusion - we're doing a bit of Freudian analysis on it on my course in the new year. should make it interesting!!!

Ally ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/242042-far-from-the-madding-crowd-thomas-hardy Ally made a comment in the Victorians! group:

I'm starting it in January....can't wait!

Ally ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/217711-general-chit-chat-and-information-part-2 Ally made a comment in the Victorians! group:

Far From the Madding Crowd is a short read so you may be able gto do it in 2 weeks - and you can have fun trying to spot the underlying sexual references found by our good friend Freud! - kind of like a literary puzzle!
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/225589-victorian-word-of-the-day Ally made a comment in the Victorians! group:

...interesting - its amazing what you do in your head to older words and games and things - for all my life so far I thought bagatelle was like an early pin-ball machine ithout the springs and played with marbles on a wooden board with pins nailed in to guide (or thwart) the marbles to the holes! - never realised it was played with a cue! - Thanks!

Ally ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/60398328 to: Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon (World's Classics) by Jane Austen
bookshelves: the-classics
This is my favourite of Austen's novels but it's not as straightforward as it appears on first reading...its very demanding of the reader and too many people miss the intelligence behind it and see only the naive silliness of a herione who lives in the world of the Gothic Romance's she's reading rather than the real world.

I love the characterisation in this novel - General Tilney is cast by the heroine Catherine as the perfect Gothic villain, Isabella Thorpe is an arch maipulator and represents all that is vulgar and improper about Bath Society & Henry Tilney is an educator who helps the heroine grow and learn about the world around her without allowing her lose her innocence or spoiling her endearing straightforwardness.

Almost all of the plot is pretty much taken from Samuel Richardson's Camilla and other aspects of the story mirror the works of Ann radcliffe, Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth - the density of these literary allusions offers the knowing reader a kind of game or puzzle and invites the reader to spot the connections. This adds weight to the messages Austen is trying to get across about attitudes to reading and fiction in general & explains the full extent of the humour employed.

Austen is also able to make sharp observations about the materialist comodity culture in Bath that relies on 'objects' and displays of wealth to denote a person's worth in the early days of capitalism. Fashionableness itself is parodied and this sets up the eventual moral of the story when Catherine chooses a small community existance at a parsonage over overt display's of wealth and status that she might have had at Northanger Abbey. - Its this element of the novel that acts as a timely reminder of what we ought to value in life and makes the book remarkably current as well as perfect deptiction of 18th Century Bath.

In my opinion, Northanger Abbey should not be read in isolation but as part of a wider serious debate about fiction. Also - this novel is far more politically and socially aware than any of the other novels Austen wrote. A purely superficial reading of this book does not do it justice and I think this may be part of the reason why so many people dislike Northanger Abbey when they read it for the first time. Their expectations are high from the best loved of Austen's works (Pride and Prejudice or Emma for example). This is nothing like Austen's other works and should be taken on its on merits. I'd beg anyone who disliked this novel to give it another go! - Its fabulous!

Ally





]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78204542 Treasure Island (Oxford World's Classics) by Robert Louis Stevenson
bookshelves: to-read, victorians-tbr, wishlist
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78203926 The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oxford World's Classics) by Oscar Wilde
bookshelves: to-read, victorians-tbr, wishlist
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78203531 The Jungle Books (Oxford World's Classics) by Rudyard Kipling
bookshelves: to-read, victorians-tbr, wishlist
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78202737 A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books (Oxford World's Classics) by Charles Dickens
bookshelves: the-classics, to-read, victorians-tbr, wishlist
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