When I attended the One Day University back in May, the book lecture session suggested that one step out of the comfort zone and read a classic (if that isn't your norm). So I bought a doorstopper of a book - Middlemarch by George Eliot - and (gasp) I am enjoying it.
Now, I can't recommend it because it is daunting and it is actually easy to put down. Since end of May, I've also read my usual magazines, and a few other books (plus the graphic novel Snowpiercer).
However, in the proper frame of mind, this slice of life from the late 1800s is amusing. Many of the manners and mores in the town of Middlemarch are quite applicable today or not. The question of a proper marriage and what that entails. Women swooning at times, and men assuming women are not capable of scholarly thought. If you consider the times, the book is a social history lesson.
This is not a book to peruse or gloss over. I will read a chapter and wish at times for a dictionary. The language is rich and dense and mindboggling in structure. But there's scandal, heartbreak, love, and yearning.
p. 776 She had never felt anything like this triumphant power of indignation in the struggle of her married life, in which there had always been a quickly subduing pang, and she took it as a sign of new strength.
July is a good month to stretch the mind while sitting on the patio. Just don't drop Middlemarch on your bare foot.
Sometimes it's tough to read through a book where you have to reach for a dictionary all the time. I guess that's how you expand your mind, though.
ReplyDeleteActually for me, Mid-March sounds like a better time for this Middlemarch....I usually have on more substantial shoes. My 1965 Websters will be handy...it should fit the era perfectly. I sure is lacking by todays standards. Doesn't have definition of BLOG or COMPUTER and defines WIRELESS as having no wires...Ha! I have wireless wires galore behind my computer! LOL!!!
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