Howards End- Finished

I really liked this book and I think that I may have to read some more of E. M. Foster. It has all the goodies that make a book worth reading, intrigue, social clashes, layers of personalities. The main characters as I said the day before are the Schlegel's and the Wilcoxes, with a Mr. Bates thrown in to turn up the volume. The Schlegel's and the Wilcoxes do not get along due to two things: the first is the impetuous flirtation that had the Schlegel's Aunt Juley jumping on a train to stop an engagement that had already run its course. The second is the fact that Mrs. Wilcox left Margaret Schlegel her home when she died. Now though the men and daughter in this family do not want Howards End, because they dislike the Schlegel family they do not tell her this and say it is the whim of a sick woman. The Schlegel family consists of two woman and a brother, who really does not play apart in this book, except to sit back and refuse to get involved. The Wilcoxes consist of the father, two sons and a daughter. Both the families feel superior to each other. Where does Mr. Bates come in, he is thrown in around the 6th chapter, he meets the Schlegel girls at a concert that he has spent considerable money to go to. His umbrella is stolen by Helen Schlegel and he goes with Margaret to retrieve it, realizes he is outclassed and leaves in distress. We learn he is in a miserable relationship, wants to improve himself by reading and reciting passages. He is a clerk and somehow ends up ruining his life completely after meeting with the girls once to clear up the matter of his wife. A carefully woven story that takes us into social conflicts of the time, snobbery, woman's rights, rising fear of England and Germany having a war, and the life of English people and the changes with time. There is even a woman's reading club, so might be fun to discuss this book at a book club. Highly recommended Oh I did read the introduction and I am glad I waited until I finished the book because it would not have nearly been as fun, if I had known all that was going to happen before reading it.

1/2 through HOWARDS END

I am currently at the 1/2 way point in HOWARDS END. Howards End is a place that is owned by the Wilcox's, well actually it was the dowry for Mrs. Wilcox. The main characters so far are the Schlegel's, Margaret the oldest who had to take over the family after her mother died in childbirth with the youngest brother Tibby. The middle child is Helen. There father also dies leaving them in charge of the house that they rent and the upbringing of each other. I think that there is a part where you get the feeling that Tibby may possibly be gay. A quote is made by his sister, when they are arguing about the feminine feeling in the house she says that Tibby is a man, just the other half of a man. MArgaret also accuses the sister of making the place more masculine by smoking cigarettes. It is a very funny book, in my opinion. It was first published in 1910, which makes the comments about Germany and England very interesting, especially since is so close to the beginning of WWI. The Schlegel's are part German, father, and English, mom. There all these comments about the Germans being boorish and that is why the father left. There are also mentions of hostilities rising between the two countries. So in between the banter about social justice and life in England you get a good picture of what the times are like through this book. Howards End is near a town called Hilton and a quick trip from London, because when Helen at the beginning writes a quick note to Margaret that she is engaged, her aunt jumps on the train and heads that way. Also in the time it takes her to get on the train and arrive, Helen has sent another telegram telling them it was a mistake and Margaret has time to respond while the aunt is still on the train. More later.

Howard's End and misc. stuff

My next book of the Reading the 100 is HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster, first published in 1910. The edition I am reading was published by Alfred A. Knopf, in an edition called Everyman's Library. There is an introduction by Alfred Kazin. I will not read the introduction until after I read the book, so that I will not be swayed by any commentary. The book has 359 pages without counting the introduction, but it has wide margins and is no bigger than a paperback. So I feel that this is going to be read by this coming weekend. Also I love the quote at the front page before the title page, I usually call this the front piece but I am not sure if this is a quote associated with the book or the Everyman's Library. Here it is: EVERYMAN, I WILL GO WITH THEE, AND BE THY GUIDE, IN THY MOST NEED, TO GO BY THY SIDE Okay so I went online and found that this is the quote by the EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY people. I like it, maybe I should start trying to collect their books, the originals. I am also will be starting WINTERS TALE and SNOW CHILD this week. I think that there is a new challenge for book reading but this is how many books do you think you will read in 2014, I am going to make an estimate of 75. So far I have read 7 books in 2014: THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN'S BAG by Alan Bradley THE ORCHID HOUSE by Lucinda Riley STILL LIFE by Louise Penny ORPHAN TRAIN by Christina Baker Kline GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon MONUMENTS MEN by Robert M Edsel LABOR DAY by Joyce Maynard 75 should be easy since I have 9 books for my book club, though I did read one already, the 42 of the 100, 10 for the movie challenge and my personal reading should get me to that magical 75 number. I will keep you posted on that as well, 68 more books to read this year. For the movie challenge I am a little behind, since I wanted to finish GRAVITY'S RAINBOW and MONUMENTS MEN, two large books I put off reading WINTER'S TALE, so I missed the movie coming out deadline, and as mentioned before decided since I was not going to see the movie I did not read VAMPIRE ACADEMY. I may miss another movie deadline but then I should be good for all the others. A LONG WAY DOWN comes out this week and I do not have that book. All the other books I have either read or the movie does not come out until after May. Three cheers to snow, reading and writing.

Finished: The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter

THE MONUMENTS MEN by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter is a book that required lots of research as it seems this was not something that either the service or the men themselves promoted. There were several books at the time but the dedication is lost to us now, except for maybe this book. I am not happy with the people who wrote the movie, but my husband said because they changed the book, that is why they had to change the names of the men. So the movie has some parts of the book in it's scenes, but it misses some key elements. In the movie we have a team that was started by personal invitation, he goes to each character and invites them on this mission. They all work together with some going off by themselves, but they still seemed to form a cohesive group. In the book this is not what happens, they do not even meet each other except towards the end and then that is just a few of them. At the end the book, you find that the main character Stout does not even like to talk about his time over in Germany. So yes artifacts were recovered and yes there are still artifacts unrecovered, and yes two men died in their attempt to find artifacts. But it is not the movie version. If you love history and if you have always wondered about what happened to the art, treasures taken from other countries and from the Jewish population, then read the book. But is you want the drama only the movies can give, but in my thoughts didn't, then see the movie.

The Monuments Men, Vampire Academy

This is the extra book I was reading for those with movies coming out. I started to read the book, but the movie came out before I could finish it. I am still in the process of reading, but went to the movie just to see how it would play out. I was a little upset, they have changed all the characters names, the beginning is nothing like the book and I can only imagine the rest of the differences. I kept thinking did I make a mistake on the names of the Monuments Men, but no they just changes James Rorimer to James Granger, Rose Valland is Claire. So basically, from the first half of the book to the first half of the movie, there is nothing alike, except the names of some of the places and paintings. Very confusing, I was hoping to see a representation of art and places, and I think that they did that to some extent, but the events and people names are just off. As For Vampire Academy, another book in the list of 16 to read before going to the movie, I failed miserably with this book. I had to take it back to the library, because it is popular with the younger crowd and sis not finish it. It was not difficult to read, but definitely young adult/teen. I probably will not see the movie, in fact I may have missed it. If that is the case it was short lived. My next book is HOWARDS END, by E.M. Foster (one of the 100), and WINTER'S TALE by Mark Helprin, (one of the 16, which is currently in the theater.) I have finished a book club pick and will be starting another for March. The book club book I finished is called ORPHAN TRAIN and will be discussed tonight, so I am waiting to review it after the meeting. Heads up, I really enjoyed it. The March book club book is called SNOW CHILD. Happy Reading

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW finished yeah

As you know I love to read and I will read just about anything, but if I was an editor of this book I would have probably asked for a minimize the book. About the author Thomas Pynchon: He was born in 1937 and educated at Cornell University. He was in the US Navy and worked at Boeing Aircraft Corporation. First Novel published in 1963 and he is still writing his latest novel according to Wikipedia is called BLEEDING EDGE and was published Sept. 17, 2013. It is only 496 pages. He is hard to find, likes his privacy. These are notations I have found in Wikipedia. GRAVITY'S RAINBOW was written and published in 1973 I have to say that this book made me look up facts, were these cities real, was this kind of psychic and psychological thing done during WWII. I am not that familiar with specifics of WWII except what I have read or what is always mentioned, D-Day, certain battles, the key players, the holocaust, etc. Gravity is the actual name one of the woman characters has, it is actually I believe what she calls herself. But does this book relate to that, in the later chapters we get all these color connections, but does the title relate to that. The main focus of the book is a rocket, who is the rocket, there are times that it seems that actual people are the components of the rockets. There is a character who I have mentioned in previous blogs whose name is SLOTHROP, he is being monitored because he is somehow linked to the rocket hits sexually. But later in the book, I get the feeling that he is actually, made up of robotic parts, that he is only part human. That he has been altered, in the last chapters (if you can say chapters), this character is talked about being taken apart and placed in different locations. This is also what is happening to the last rocket in the program. So I see a parallel between the two. The Rocket seems to be mentioned both sexually and scientifically. Many references are made to the rocket by the men in the book. So if I was sitting in my literature class during college we would look at the symbolism of the Rocket and sexuality. It seems when rockets go up the male anatomy goes up as well, when rockets are not working neither is the male counterpart. There is a lot of overt sexuality in this book, maybe too much to my liking. It somehow distracts me from what I want to know, is Slothrop a rocket or part of a rocket? The book takes us on a journey that seems to be Slothrop based, but is also about various other concepts. The espionage, conspiracy, Hitler, psychological warfare, mathematics, mechanics, sex, race for the power of the Rocket, psychic phenomenon, and a myriad of other things that have to do with WWII and its aftermath. This Journey starts with WWII but has references to JFK later in the book. So it is about time and how key players during that time continue into the future with a dismembered Slothrop and rocket. The places are real Peenemunde is actually where rockets were produced during WWII. Swinemunde was close by and according to Wikipedia the USAAF, did bombing raids and the refuges on this island were killed, about 5000 to 23,000. I have no way to verify this. Anyway, it made me look up other things especially about the divisions sited in the book, the psychological and psychic aspect of this time period. I knew that in Germany that there were medical and other weird experiments done on mostly Jewish populations but also on other Prisoners of War. But the US and Russians also did some forms of experimentation, mostly in the area of psychological warfare. However, I also found during my very brief research that after WWII, the Russians also were experimenting with Psychic connections after they heard that this was being studied by others. They tried this with people on land trying to communicate with submarines. I believe this book should be read and analyzed but I do not have the time I would like to take to figure it out. It took me forever to read it. I could have done without the sex scenes. Thomas Pynchon is very descriptive, and I do not mean just the sex scenes. You could be taken to these places, this is a very visual book. I think that if the type had been bigger this would be a thousand page book, but my eyes would not have suffered so much at the small print. So why the title: The rainbow is and arch, gravity pulls things down, physics shows us the arc projectiles, so the rocket would follow the arc of this rainbow being pulled down by gravity. Or the gravity of the war pulling us down from the sunny rainbows of color to the dull, drab realities of war. The END.

Almost finished

I am almost finished with GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, and I have finally figured out that if the author had put in all the demeaning sex acts in full detail, it may have at least been 200 pages lighter. I thought Slothrop might have some aha moments in the throes of sex, but only every once and awhile. So by skipping these sequences things are going a tad bit faster.