Tag Archives: readalong

February 28, 2013 · 8:00 pm

Vanity Fair Readalong: The first half.

vanity fair readalong

I am SO excited to finally talk about this book! Thanks again to Trish & Melissa for hosting :-)

fainting, swooning woman

I’m surprised by how much I’m loving Vanity Fair! It was one of those classics that I wanted to read eventually, but it’s kind of long and I thought it might be boring or too hard to read. Turns out it’s actually extremely entertaining! Who woulda thought.

Oh, and right, if you haven’t read Vanity Fair before and you’re not doing the readalong there will be spoilers here for the first half!!! So avert your eyes. You’ve been warned.

To make sure that I was keeping up with the readalong and to motivate myself, I decided to read it in sections – when Vanity Fair was printed, it was originally a couple of chapters at a time in a monthly magazine thingy. So I printed out the sections as they were published back in the day, and I’ve been reading one section a day (so about 3 to 4 chapters). There were actually a couple of days when I wanted to read past that section, but made myself wait until the next day.

vanity fair sections

The sections of Vanity Fair as they were first printed.

So, thoughts!

  • I really love the sarcastic, mean, and sometimes silly tone of Vanity Fair. I love that the author is constantly talking directly to the reader about these characters and happenings as if it’s all on a stage.
  • Yeah, I really like Becky Sharp. Is she calculating, selfish, and mean? Yup! But that’s what makes her such a fun character! And I like that she’s looking out for herself, even if she’s kind of a sociopath about doing it. She’s poor, and was picked on at that school because she was poor, and I totally get her wanting to get ahead. At least she’s not whiny…
  • like Amelia. Amelia suuuuuucccks. I just do not like that timid and fragile kind of girl that’s prone to crying all the time. Have some backbone, woman! And for no good reason other than they were matched at birth, she’s totally hung up on…
  • George Osborne, who I HATE. He is such an ASS! But I think he’s going to be one of those characters that I love to hate. Lighting your cigar with love letters from your lady is such a douche move, but it’s also SO crappy that you almost kind of can’t believe it. It was a total “Oh-no-he-didn’t!” moment. But it looks like we won’t have to deal with him anymore, so yay.
  • Awwwww Dobbin! I liked Dobbin right away, when he was defending himself as a kid. And now he’s the sweet guy who (for some reason) is in love with Amelia and is literally doing all he can to make her happy. And she treats him like garbage. I’m wondering though… Dobbin seems like a “hero”, and this novel isn’t supposed to have a hero, so will he do something horrible later?
  • I didn’t like Rawdon at first… but now I kind of do. It’s endearing how much he kind of adores Becky right now. He’s not a horrible guy.
mustachios

But why is he so obsessed with his mustachios???

 

  • Little things like that are what are making me love this book. There’s so much humor and wit and edge and I just love it all so far.
  • Sooo… Mrs. Bute is horrible. I liked old Matilda Crawley at first, but now I don’t cause she’s a big ol’ hypocrite. All “oh rank and titles aren’t important!” and then she goes and disowns Rawdon for marrying Becky? Lame.
  • Things started to drag a little bit around the war stuff, don’t you think? War talk in books almost always makes my eyes glaze over.
  • Aaaand now the young Pitt Crawley and his boring little wife are the ones inheriting all of Matilda Crawley’s fortune! Wonder what Becky and Rawdon are gonna do now… And oh yeah, Becky had a baby. I wonder how that’s gonna go. She doesn’t seem like the mother type.
  • Oh, I would totally be ALL about Thackeray and declare him one of my favorite classic authors… except for how racist he seems. Yeah yeah, I know it was common for the times, but I don’t like it. His descriptions of Sambo and Miss Swartz are really horrible. I tried looking up more about him online, and things seem to point to his being racist… It seems like there’s not a whole lot of biographies about him though, so finding info is hard. This might keep me from reading his other books after Vanity Fair though.

 

Okay, I think those are the majority of my thoughts! What do you guys think so far?

~Sarah

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February 16, 2013 · 12:26 pm

Vanity Fair Readalong

I may end up regretting this because with work, my birthday, and my oral surgery all coming up in the next 2 weeks I’m a tad busy, but I’m joining another readalong!

Vanity Fair is on my Classics Club list, and a readalong JUST started for it! It’s one of those big classics that intimidates me a little, so I think reading it as part of a readalong is a perfect idea.

Trish (Love Laughter and a Touch of Insanity) and Melissa (Avid Reader’s Musings) are hosting a Vanity Fair readalong, February 15th through March 15th. I’m a day late in signing up, I hope no one minds!

There will be a mid-way post on March 1st (Chapters 1 through 34), and then a wrap-up post when the readalong ends on March 15th. And there’s going to be chatting on Twitter as well, with the hashtag #YoureSoVain, which cracks me up.

I THINK I should be able to keep up with this, if I just read about 4 chapters a day then I should be able to read the first half by March 1st. Well, actually I need to read them before March 1st, because that’s the day I’m getting all my wisdom teeth removed and I’m pretty sure I’ll be too groggy and whatnot to do much that day.

Anyways, if you want to join in at the last second like me, click here and check it out!

I’m excited!

~Sarah

 

 

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January 25, 2013 · 8:26 am

Harry Potter Readalong – book 2, why you so slow?

dobby gif

Hooray! Dobby is back in our lives!

dobby gif

I found a lot of good Dobby gifs…

This post might be short-ish, and I might not be able to come commenting a lot today, because I’m at home and the laptop is really messed up. Expect to see more of me tomorrow, where I can be online all day at work. We REALLY need to get this laptop fixed…

Anyways, so the first half of Chamber of Secrets! Some stuff is obviously happening, but I feel like it took FOR-EV-ER to get to the whole “I hear voices” thing. Dobby shows up, generally being loud and hard to deal with, but oh so sweet. In this book we get to see Mr. Malfoy be a little hard on Draco, which I LOVED. Partly because Draco’s a douche and deserves it, and partly because Mr. Malfoy is being hard on him about doing lousy in school, and well you know my whole “don’t baby the children” thing. So yay Mr. Malfoy! You suck, but I enjoyed that! Ron and Harry stupidly (but ever so coolly) fly the Weasley’s car. Lockhart is around… *shakes head* that man is ridiculous. I love Ron’s little jab “Lockhart’ll sign anything if it stands still long enough.” Ron, you are the best. They’re starting to make the Polyjuice Potion, which we know means fun to come. And Harry’s friends think he’s going crazy because he’s hearing voices.

harry potter gif

 

I really like Chamber of Secrets because even though it’s still kid-ish, we start to see more of the grown-up themes come through, mainly the wizard racism. We saw in the first book that there are some wizards who think full-blooded wizards are better than Muggle-born, and Malfoy really brings that more to light here with the term “mudblood”. The story of Hogwarts formation and Slytherin’s eventual departure shows just how fierce of an issue that really was. And Dobby shows that other magical creatures, the “dregs of the magical world” were horribly treated when Voldemort was in power and that some still are. ALSO, we see a little bit of the class/money issue when we see how the Weasleys really are broke, but their life is awesome and happy. Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy duke it out over that “money isn’t what makes a wizard great” thing. I’m STILL impressed at how Rowling sneaks these issues into the book to show children how unjust it all is, without it overpowering the story itself.

 

clapping gif

Sooo um yeah. That’s about all of my articulate thoughts. So much cool stuff happens in the beginning of this book, but I kind of forgot because I was waiting around for the voices to start and that whole Chamber of Secrets ball to get rolling.

~Sarah

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October 30, 2012 · 4:00 am

The Grapes of WTF (readalong post #4!)

Oh man, it’s the end of Laura’s readalong! Which makes me sad, because I love our little gang and the hilariousness and gifs and with this book, the awesome semi-political discussions.

So, the book ended with Rosasharn breastfeeding a dying man. That was the LAST PARAGRAPH.

Didn’t see that comin.

I totally get the whole message behind this – no matter what you should always help people, blah blah blah. But one – gross. And two – you have no other food, and this man is like at death’s door. You can’t feed him, so really by trying to save him, you’re just dragging out his starvation. What the hell. And what a messed up way to end the whole book, Steinbeck.

Anyways, on to my usual chapter recaps…

Chapter 26: Ma tells the men to man the hell up and think of something, because while the camp is nice and all, they’re about to starve because there’s no work. And while the men listen to her, Pa gets all asshole-y and says he should beat her for thinking she’s head of the family and taking the man’s place. To which Ma is like

Al is dying to go off on his own and get a job as a mechanic somewhere, and the family won’t let him, which sucks. He’s the only one of them with a skill that’s actually useful and he has the chance to get a good job somewhere, but they’re all “No we need you to drive the car.” which is kind of selfish. He could have made some money to help out the family. So, they find a really crappy peach farm to work on, but it’s heavily protected with armed guards, which means OF COURSE T.J. goes looking for trouble. He sneaks out, finds Casy and learns that Casy’s been leading strikes against the farm owners for paying low wages, and Casy promptly gets his head bashed in by the patrolmen (which was actually pretty sad, because I kind of liked Casy). T.J. snaps and kills yet again, gets his face busted up, and runs back to the family. Now they all have to leave just to protect his stupid ass.

Chapter 27: Cotton-picking is great, except just like everything else once the farm is overrun with workers and it all gets picked, you have no more work.

Chapter 28: The Joads are doing okay, living in a boxcar and picking cotton and actually making a little bit of money – enough to eat regularly and to save. Ma kind of annoys the bejeezus out of me in this chapter, which is disappointing since she was so awesome throughout the rest of the book. Ruthie (she’s so annoying, I’m actually disappointed she didn’t get written off somehow) gets into a fight with another girl and BLABS ABOUT TOM HIDING BECAUSE HE KILLED A MAN. After Ma expressly told her and Winfield to never tell anybody. And Ma is all “No, I won’t beat her, it’s not her fault.”

So, it seems we know why Tom has no self-control when it comes to his temper. Because apparently if you screw up in a fit of anger and kill a guard or blab the family’s secrets around, it’s not your fault. Come on Ma! You should’ve beaten her ass so that she would learn to shut her mouth and control her anger. So, Ma is awesome when it comes to standing up to Pa, but sucks when it comes to disciplining her kids after they royally fuck up.

Anyways, Ma gives Tom $7 of the family’s money to run away. The Joads worry about what they’ll do when there’s no more cotton to pick. Al gets engaged to a girl, and this upsets Rosasharn so much that she insists on helping to pick cotton, and then promptly gets herself sick.

Chapter 29: There’s rain. Once again, Steinbeck is kind of angry at all the California people for not being more charitable when Mother Nature strikes. When a group of migrants flood an area, there will ALWAYS be sickness, starvation, theft, mistrust, anger, etc because these people show up with nothing and there’s not enough work for them. You can’t be pissed at California because they’re not willing to feed and give land to the random 200,000+ people that suddenly showed up in their area. It’s not their fault either.

Chapter 30: The rain is coming down hard and ends up flooding the boxcar camp, and Rosasharn goes into an early labor. The baby is born dead, which was sad but I also feel like it was for the best, because Rosasharn was convinced her baby was going to grow up terrible and messed up. And let’s face it, they’re not in any condition to care for a newborn right now. Al stays with his fiancee and her family, and the Joads decide they need to get to higher ground. They find a barn on top of the hill, which is where the starving guy and his son are, and voila. We know what happens then.

Sooooo… I don’t know how I feel about the book overall! I didn’t hate it – I would have hated it if I had been bored to tears. But I don’t feel like things got that sad, and I feel like that was where Steinbeck kind of failed – while he’s a good writer and obviously can write beautifully, he let his politics kind of take over the show and it overshadowed the family, which kept me from really connecting with most of them. I guess I just need to like my characters more in order to feel badly for the things that happened to them… but some of it was kind of brought on by themselves, too. I’m disappointed that we’ll never know what actually happened to Connie. Actually, because of the INSANELY screwed up way that Steinbeck ended the book, we don’t know what ever happened to any of them  – for all I know, the Joads are still shivering in that barn and trying to figure out their next move. Ma was BY FAR the best character, even if she did disappoint me in the end.

If nothing else, I actually enjoyed the book because it gave me LOTS to talk about. Lots of fun conversations with both the honeyman and fellow bloggers. And like I said, I liked Steinbeck’s writing – it was so awesome in the first section. But then he kind of forgot about things like character development and plot and said “Fuck it, I’m just gonna rant about how unfair Californians/farm owners/cops/businessmen/tractors are.”

I’m going to write a non-spoiler-y review later, for the people who didn’t readalong with us. But overall, yay! And if anyone wants to host an East of Eden readalong, I will TOTALLY sign up for that.

~Sarah

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October 29, 2012 · 5:00 am

Coraline readalong! Post #2

So, the end of the book! Here’s my thoughts…

The other mother got even creepier, especially with the hand thing at the end. *Shudders* Coraline was a totally brave little girl, and she rocks for outsmarting the other mother. But even though she was scared and everything, the one I felt the most bad for was the cat! Poor thing was TERRIFIED of the other mother (although I did laugh out loud when she threw him at her). That cat was awesome.

Overall, this was a fun, weird, twisted book. Although the skeptical part of me is doubtful about her plan to trap that hand… what if it gets out? I think she should have tried to smash it, but I guess since she’s a little girl that might have been a little too gory. But still. I fully believe in the double-tap – you don’t want a baddie suddenly coming after you when you think it’s safe.

As for the movie… ehh. The book was great, and I’ll totally re-read it sometime. But I thought the movie wasn’t done quite as well – movie Coraline was kind of a brat. And it kind of dragged up until the end, when the other mother started getting all scary. And Wybie was a really random addition… I mean he was a sweet kid, but he totally didn’t need to be there.

Anyways, this was a fun book to read this month! Thanks Jenn for hosting the readalong :-)

 

~Sarah

 

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October 23, 2012 · 4:00 am

The Wrath of the Grapes! (readalong post #3)

Woo-hoo, week 3 of the readalong! I feel like not a whole lot happened in this section, but let’s see.

Chapter 19: Basically a long angry rant about big farms taking over, and how much it sucks for all the people that have come to California expecting awesomeness, but are now getting harassed and going hungry. I liked this quote a lot:

“They could not resist, because they wanted nothing in the world as ferociously as the Americans wanted land.”

That one quote basically sums up all of white imperialism.

Chapter 20: Lots of action in this chapter… T.J. is unable to understand human speech, such as when people tell him that there’s no work for them in California. It’s like is brain literally cannot process the idea of too many people, not enough work.

Seems like it.

Connie decides, hey, maybe I should have stayed home and taken one of those $3 tractor jobs (duh) and runs off to who knows where. Ma is super awesome and feeds some kids, though she was using up her own family’s resources. Some big-time farmer and cop show up to start trouble, and Casy SAVES THE DAY by knocking out the cop and getting himself arrested. Good job, preacher. Uncle John is a selfish brat who uses up precious money to go attempt to drink himself to death, and personally I think they should have left him. Aaaand the Joads hit the road right before the camp gets burned up.

Chapter 21: Steinbeck hints at more “a revolution is coming”-ness.

Chapter 22: The Joads find a government relief camp and settle down there for a bit. So yay for them for catching a break, even though work is still hard to find. They’re just happy they’re with people like them, and it restores their dignity a bit. There’s a group of super-religious crazy nuts who think that everything is the devil, and one of them (Mrs. Sandry I think her name was?) keeps trying to start trouble. Rosasharn is annoying, and Ma keeps telling her to man the eff up.

Chapter 23: A kind of boring chapter about all the different ways in which the camp people amuse themselves in their down time.

Chapter 24: The camp successfully prevents a planned riot breaking out, which would have allowed the local cops to come in and try to shut it down. So hooray for them! Seriously, these cops and locals are assholes. But then some of the men get together and talk about arming themselves and starting meetings… which on the one hand – good for you for trying to defend yourself, but on the other hand – this will only escalate the fears that you’re trying to start a revolt.

Chapter 25: So small farmers produce so much good food that they can’t afford to harvest it all and it goes bad, or gets destroyed so that the poor people can’t have it. (Don’t understand this… if the wages are driven down because there are so many men looking for work, why can’t the small farmers afford to hire more guys? Or is it the price of the food that’s gone down because they produced so much? I’m kind of confused by this.) And you know, Steinbeck is all angry about the whole thing, of course.

My thoughts…

Yay, no one died this time around! Things are still going relatively alright for the Joads.

I think I’m having a hard time sympathizing with the Joads and the people migrating to California. Maybe partly because it’s now 80 years later and hey! things worked out pretty well. (I’m also having trouble focusing on the actual story, partly because things for the Joads are moving pretty slow and partly because Steinbeck is all like “LOOK! LOOOOOK at my politics and opinions! RISE UP PEOPLE.”

Also, I looked into the time period and the whole “Dust Bowl” phenomenon that caused all these farmers to head West, and I feel like Steinbeck’s anger is a bit misplaced. Part of the reason these dust storms happened were just environmental (droughts), and partly it was because of farmers not knowing how to rotate their crops to keep the soil healthy. So, the farmers then went and borrowed money from the banks, but that only put them further in debt because they used the same methods and year after year their crops sucked, so eventually the bank took their land. I get being mad at the bank about this, but from the sounds of just how bad the whole Dust Bowl thing was – they probably would have had to leave anyways. They just weren’t producing enough food, and the environment there was completely screwed up. They would have starved either way. (I also learned that FDR kind of helped fix all this by setting up funding to teach farmers how to farm without screwing up the soil, and by having a shit ton of trees planted to help break the wind and keep the dirt in place. So good for him.)

I get that industry and machines becoming the norm was really tough on most of the farmers, and that sucks. But I don’t think it makes those things inherently evil either. In fact, considering the huge population boom around that time (U.S. population alone went from 106 million to 132 million between 1920 and 1940), the industrialization of farming was kind of a necessity. And here we are, 80 years later and hardly anyone in this country goes hungry – at least not from lack of available food. And for the poorest of the poor, there are soup kitchens, food banks, food stamps, etc. Sure the food now is all full of hormones and chemicals, but at least everyone’s eating. And this trend is still growing, actually – of course it is, because there are 7 BILLION damn people on the planet.

ANYYYYWAYSSS… that was a lot longer than I intended. But as for the actual story – so the Joads numbers have dwindled yet again, but still not necessarily a bad thing. Apparently Steinbeck is one of those authors who won’t risk your emotions by killing off the characters you actually really like. And thank goodness, cause I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to Ma! I’m glad that they’re kind of chilling in the camp and able to rest a bit, and hopefully it leads to them finding some sort of permanent work. Who knows, maybe Connie will ride up like a knight in shining armor and be like “OH I found the best job ever I’m here to save you all.”

We’ll see.

~Sarah

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October 2, 2012 · 9:22 am

Grapes and Wrath and stuff

 

Hey ya’ll! So, time for this The Grapes of Wrath readalong thing that Laura is hosting!

 

Right, so… I don’t know much bout Steinbeck. I’ve only read one book by him ever, Of Mice and Men. And in all honesty… it kind of sucked. I was a bit bored, and it was one of those “…why is this a classic?” reactions. And that was only like 100 pages, and it felt like it took forever.

Apparently The Grapes of Wrath, or GoW for short (which is also how I abbreviate the video game God of War, which makes me laugh a bit) is about some Oklahoma family being forced to move west towards Cali during the Depression. Let me be blunt – I’m not expecting to enjoy this book. I’m half-expecting it to bore me to tears, which would suck. But I love these little readalongs, and it makes me happy to say that I’ve read a classic that I haven’t before, so here I am!

I’m hoping for one of two things to happen here – I’m obviously hoping that I end up absolutely loving it and being all surprised by how good it is. If that doesn’t happen, I’m hoping that it sucks a lot and I really hate it, because it’s always fun to talk about books that are just insanely bad. We all know how much fun it was for me to make fun of Norwegian Wood and Murakami’s love of ears and pervert-y ways.

What Laura has to say about Steinbeck leaves me optimistic - that he was all political and leaned toward the left and stuff. Maybe this’ll make me a Steinbeck fan after all.

 

The one I’m reading, cause it’s what my library had. I think its pretty though.

So, is anyone as apprehensive as I am?

~Sarah

 

 

 

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August 23, 2012 · 2:40 pm

The Moonstone Readalong! The third section.

 

So! The third installment of Alice’s awesome The Moonstone readalong. Sorry this is late guys, I kind of forgot to read it in time, lol. And then I was all busy and yeah, time escaped me. Well, I JUST finished reading this section and my only thoughts are “Wait… what?”

The person Rachel is protecting is Franklin, but he claims to not remember ever having even been in her room, let alone taking possession of the diamond?

Ok, so let’s back up. Miss Clack’s ridiculousness of a narrative ended, which was by turns exasperating and hilarious. I kind of thought that Godfrey was about to propose to her near the end of that, but nope. And Mr. Bruff’s narrative kind of shows us that Godfrey was a jerk and only after Rachel’s inheritance. Why do I not see these things coming? I mean I thought that he was kind of a weirdo and maybe a womanizer, but I think part of me wanted to like him because Betteredge liked him. Silly me.

Franklin’s dad dies (this is like a Disney movie with all the parental figures being absent or dropping dead) and it turns how he’s mega rich now. So he comes back to England and is all upset cause Rachel STILL won’t see him, so he goes to Betteredge & they FINALLY read Rosanna’s letter and find out that she hid HIS nightgown with the paint stain. WTF? (And I kind of liked Rosanna in her letter, in which she’s all “Psssshhhh, Rachel is not as hot as ya’ll think.”)  And then he figures it’s all a big misunderstanding so he makes Rachel see him and she says SHE SAW HIM TAKE THE DIAMOND WITH HER OWN EYES.

Except that if this were actually the case, then I highly doubt that Franklin would have started all these narratives by wanting everyone to write down their experiences related to these diamond shenanigans. But since Franklin is a guy, and short, and she says she saw his face… how could she possibly be wrong there?

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON. Although I still suspect that Rachel’s mother played a part in this somehow. And I miss Betteredge.

I’m off to read & comment on all the posts I missed yesterday. You guys are probably noticing things and guessing at stuff correctly.

~Sarah

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August 15, 2012 · 11:32 am

The Moonstone Readalong! The second section.

Alrighty, week 2 of this book of awesome AKA The Moonstone.

So, stuff is happening, yes? It appears that Rosanna McMorbid tossed herself into the Shivering Sands and I can’t say that I’m disappointed about it. But not before she sent out some incriminating letters apparently, and I can’t wait till we get to see what that note that Limping Lucy has in her possession says. Meanwhile, Rachel and her momma are looking more and more guilty, yay! Although now that Lady Verinder has kicked the bucket, I guess even if she was the one who stole the diamond it won’t matter too much.

Betteredge was not quite as awesome in this section, which was sad. He was a bit of a drama queen:

“- and began to wonder, for the first time in my life, when it would please God to take me.”

and his jerky little paragraph about how men are superior creatures to women wasn’t as funny as some of his previous kinda-misogynistic lines. And he insists that Rachel is innocent, even though Cuff TOTALLY SCHOOLED HIS ASS with his three predictions.

Aaaaaand then enter Miss Clack! Well isn’t she a basket full of uber-religious crazyness! And she brings the lady-hatin’ on full force. Miss Clack makes me wonder if Wilkie intended a lot of satire / sarcasm in this book – like all the women-bashing and over-the-top religion in Miss C is exactly the opposite of how Wilkie feels - or so I desperately hope. While I get that she was so wacky and insane that it was kinda humorous, I spent most of her part rolling my eyes. I mean, come on…

“Oh, my young friends and fellow sinners! be aware of presuming to exercise your poor carnal reason. Oh, be morally tidy! Let your faith be as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless, and both ready to put on at a moment’s notice!”

I cannot wait to exclaim to someone “Oh, be morally tidy!”. Although they won’t get the joke, but it’ll be funny to me. Overall though, she just induced a lot of “…wow” and “geez” and “ohmygod she’s nuts” written in the margins.

I did kind of like how Miss Clack totally busted that lawyer with his own argument against Godfrey.

BOOM! Lawyered.

 Even though she’s coming from a hostile crazy place, I totally agree with her that Rachel likely played a part in the theft of the diamond. There! I’ve declared my guess. And I’ll probably be wrong in the end, but oh well. Especially since everyone keeps going on about how “true” and “honest” Rachel is…

Oh yeah and apparently Godfrey & Rachel are engaged! Don’t see that lasting… possibly because Rachel’s mom just died. Anyone else think that was kind of suspicious? Like she was fine this whole time, and all of the sudden some doctor tells her she’s sick and gives her medicine to take, and then she croaks. Maybe the medicine was poison? Hmmmmmmmmm? OH and who is this “respectable gentleman” that’s walking around with the Indian dudes? I have a hunch that maybe it’s Mr. Murthwaite, cause we haven’t seen him since the beginning of the book and it seemed at first like he was going to play a major part. And what happened between Rachel & Franklin to make him skip the country? And what is Wilkie REALLY trying to say with all this madness?

I JUST HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.

~Sarah

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August 8, 2012 · 6:00 am

The Moonstone Readalong! The first section.

 

YAY for the first section of Alice’s The Moonstone Readalong!

SO! This section is narrated by Betteredge, who I cannot help but picture as Carson:

And Betteredge is pretty hilarious, especially when you imagine him with Carson’s voice. That being said, Betteredge introduces us to various other characters such as the suspicious Indian trio walking around, the servant with a sketchy past Rosanna Spearman, his daughter Penelope, and Mr. Franklin & Godfrey, both of who wish to marry Rachel. He tells us his account of how the moonstone came into Rachel’s possession, how it went missing, how Superintendent Seegrave was an incompetent douche, and how Cuff is a weird little man but also kind of awesome.

Well, you know what all happened, you read it.

I know that we’re only 1/4 into the book now but I’m loving it. I can totally see why this was so popular back in the day and why it pretty much invented the mystery/detective genre. Maybe it’s just because I NEVER see what’s coming, but I have no clue who took the diamond. And I’m totally all wrapped up in the mystery and intrigue and it’s SO HARD not to read ahead. So far no obviously awesome female characters have been made known, but that may change later. But basically I’m all wrapped up in my love for Betteredge because he says hilarious things like:

“Selina, being a single woman, made me pay so much a week for her board and services. Selina, being my wife, couldn’t charge for her board and would have to give me her services for nothing.” (Oh come on tell me that doesn’t sound risqué.)

and

“Study your wife closely, for the next four-and-twenty hours. If your good lady doesn’t exhibit something in the shape of a contradiction in that time, Heaven help you! – you have married a monster.”

and he goes on a big rant about the boredom of rich folk, and dude loves Robinson Crusoe like it’s his JOB, and he speaks plainly about his fondness for female figures, and makes fun of Mr. Franklin for being practically schizophrenic. I really like Betteredge and I’ll be sad when his narrative is over. I don’t like Rosanna much, cause she’s weird and morbid as all crap. I don’t have a solid opinion yet of Mr. Franklin or Godfrey, except that I assume that Godfrey is some sort of womanizer, because why else would he be all into these female charity thingys? And I don’t like Rachel’s mom, cause she’s kind of annoying and I half-suspect her of stealing the diamond… but then again I half-suspect that of everyone.

Oh and I like Cuff! He’s kind of an oddball, but he shut Seegrave DOWN! And with style. It reminded me of  Paul Smecker and that stupid cop in The Boondock Saints. Even his little humming thing reminded me of Smecker listening to his classical cd while investigating the crime scene in the alleyway. Plus he’s sensitive to the servants being people too and not instantly trying to pin the blame on them, which is nice.

 Totally loving Wilkie Collins so far. I went to the library today to see what other books of his they had and was severely disappointed to see that they only have The Moonstone and The Woman in White. If I’m still really digging him after the readalong is over, I may have to do a bit of online Wilkie-shopping.

~Sarah

If Gabby likes to cuddle with it then it MUST be awesome.

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