More Blogging with the Classics!

Dracula, by Bram Stoker.

Maeve writes:
For my independent reading book this quarter, I am reading Dracula, by Bram Stoker. I am enjoying it immensely. I am not very far into the book yet, but I hope to progress much further in the next weeks.
The novel so far has been narrated by the main character, Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, in the form of his journal. The story begins with Harker’s traveling to Transylvania, where he plans to meet with the count, Dracula, who owns a large castle there and presides over the surrounding land. Harker meets very peculiar behavior when he tells the locals where he is going. They keep crossing their chest and making a sign to ward off the evil eye. He can make neither heads nor tails of this strange behavior, but accepts a rosary with a cross from the woman who owns the inn where he is staying. He thinks nothing of it at the time, but is later very glad to have it. After a terrifying carriage ride involving wolves and strange blue fires in the night, he arrives at the Count’s castle. Dracula has all the makings of your classic vampire. Red lips with protruding fangs, pale skin – the whole shebang. At the time, Harker thinks this is just peculiar and rather likes the Count. However, as time progresses, Harker begins to get suspicious. For one thing, the Count never dines with him and always leaves come morning. Harker begins living a nocturnal lifestyle, as night is the only time he can talk to the Count. As he is there on the business of selling the Count a house in the English countryside, this is necessary.
After Harker has a startling series of adventures involving forbidden rooms in the castle and seeing the Count crawl like a spider down the castle wall, returning with a large bag (containing a child which is shortly after killed), he begins to get seriously alarmed. He writes that he is a prisoner, and that the Count plans to kill him (which, from all points, seems to be the case). The Count realizes that Harker is getting suspicious and locks him in his room for long periods of time and takes away almost everything he owns.
When Harker discovers that where the Count really goes during the day is down to the castle basement and into a coffin where he sleeps until the night comes again, he plans his escape. After a group of men come and take the coffin away (after Harker has a near brush with the Count involving a shovel), Harker decides to scale the castle wall with some gold in his pockets and strikes out for home. His journal entry ends with a farewell to his beloved Mina.

James Joyce

Meaghan writes:
For my independent classic reading book this last quarter, I chose to read Dubliners, by James Joyce. James Joyce was an Irish novelist, who was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882. Both of his parents studied literature when James was growing up. Joyce expressed his great use of language in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegan’s Wake (1939). Throughout writing all three novels, he expressed his great use of allusions, word play, history, and puns. He published Dubliners in 1914 right after attending Belvedere College in Dublin. James Joyce died on January 14, 1941.
The novel, Dubliners, consists of fourteen short stories, with the addition of an introduction and a preface. This book is very unique, and so far has kept my interest. I am not too far in the book now, I am about to start my fourth short story. The climax comes quick in the short stories, and at the end of each one, I am constantly finding myself wanting to read more. Like I said, Dubliners is a very unique selection consisting of short stories. I have never read anything like any one of the stories. There are loads of characters for every short story. For example, in my favorite so far called The Sisters, I was introduced to Nannie, Eliza, Father O’Rourke, Miss Flynn, Auntie, and Rev. James Flynn. It is hard to keep track of what each character does, but at the end they all come to a conclusion.
I am looking forward to continue reading Dubliners. It will be interesting to see if my personal favorite short story The Sisters will fluctuate and possibly I might have a new favorite short story once I am finished.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Kristina writes:

This term I am reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. The story takes
place in England at a house called Wuthering Heights and at Thrushcross Grange,
during the early 1800s. So far in the story I have met Heathcliff, Mr. Earnshaw,
Zillah, Lockwood, Joseph, Mrs. Heathcliff, and Hareton. Heathcliff is the main
character of the story. Lockwood is the tenant that is supposed to be staying at a
house called Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff brings him to go introduce his to his
family. Lockwood gets into a fight with Mrs. Heathcliff and Joseph and runs out of
the house. Dogs attack Lockwood and Zillah the housekeeper tells him stay at the
house because the weather is bad and he is hurt. Lockwood is not supposed to
make noise when he is in the house because Heathcliff doesn't know that he is
there. In the room he is staying in he sees books written by Catherine and reads
them. He then soon falls asleep and has a nightmare. Heathcliff wakes up because
he hears him. The story is supposed to be the love between Catherine, Mr.
Earnshaw's daughter and Heathcliff. Catherine has not been introduced in the story
yet. This story has some very difficult language. The plot seems very interesting
though, and I can't wait to read more of the story.

Tobias Wolff

Tim writes:


The book I chose to read in This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff. He was born on June 19, 1945 in Birmingham, Alabama. The novel is a memoir about his life as he was growing up as a boy just before his teenage years. He grew up with his mother who he was very close to whom always seemed unsettled and was constantly on the move and his abusive step-father. Tobias moved out of Florida with his mother, Rosemary to go north to get away from the step-father and to get rich mining for uranium since Rosemary did not have a lot of money. As a pre-teen, Wolff was always getting in trouble from writing on the bathroom, to throwing eggs at nice cars, to opening up car doors, turning the emergency brakes off and watching them roll down hills hitting other cars on the way.
Wolf attended Stanford University in California in 1977. Before that, he served as a lieutenant in the army from 1964-1968 during the Vietnam War. When he got into writing, he wrote a few short stories including Back in the World and A Night in Question. One novel he wrote was The Barracks Thief. In addition to writing all these, he got several awards including the National Endowment fellowship award and the Henry award.
I’m looking forward to reading this memoir especially because it is about a boy only a few years younger then me. I will probably be able to connect to him in many ways. I have already started reading it and I found that it is very easy I think because of the fact that it is about a boy instead of an adult.

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Kayla writes:


So far, in The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, I have met the Tulliver family. The Tulliver family consists of Mr. Tulliver, Mrs. Tulliver, Tom, and Maggie. The family lives near a river, and they own Dorlcote Mill. Mr. Tulliver declares to his wife that he wants to send his son Tom to get a good education after he comes home from his previous school. His daughter Maggie never wants her hair curled and is always running around acting like a boy. She loves her brother Tom a lot and cannot wait until he comes home so she can be with him. When Tom comes home Easter is coming up and the dreadful aunts and uncles are coming.

E.M Forster

Erica writes:
The classic I am reading is A Room with a View by E.M Forster. Edward Morgan Forster was born in England in 1879. Unfortunately his father died around the time that he was born so he had to be raised by his mother, who was irresponsible. When Forster got older he eventually went to King’s College in Cambridge. Shortly after he graduated from King’s college he became a writer. He began by writing mostly about “changing social conditions after the decline of the Victorianism”. His writing did begin to differ later on. Some novels he wrote are “Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and The Longest Journey (1907), followed by the comic novel A Room With a View (1908)”. Forster later died in 1970.
I have started reading the novel A Room with a View. It begins with a British woman named Lucy staying in Florence with Miss. Charlotte Bartlett. They were supposed to have the front room of where they were staying but they did not and instead got a room without a view, until Mr. Emerson traded rooms with them because he is a kind man. The novel then gets into how Lucy witnesses a murder. Seeing this occur she suddenly faints in George Emerson’s arms. Overall even though I am not to far into the novel it is still pretty good and look forward to reading more.

http://www.gradesaver.com/author/e-forster/

Thomas Hardy

Talis writes:
My classic for this term is Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.
I was recommended this book by Aimee, who said it was a pretty good
read. Thomas Hardy is an English author and lived during the time from
1840-1928. He was mainly a poet and wrote a lot about romance and his
interest in the supernatural. His poems were first published in the
1850’s and his first novels were published soon after. Hardy was
married to Emma Gilfford; and she helped inspire his best writing. His
most famous novels included Under the Greenwood Tree, A pair of Blue
Eyes, and Far from the Madding Crowd.
In my novel so far I have been introduced to the main character
Gabriel and his love at first sight Bathsheba. He sees her one day
having troubles with her wagon and then the next at her aunt’s house.
Gabriel uses every chance he can to see her, but she is not very fond
of him. Finally, Gabriel goes down to ask her aunt for Bathsheba’s
hand, but is rejected. Bathsheba comes running after him to say it is
not because there is another man but because she is not in love with
him. Gabriel tries to convince her with having a good life since he
owns a pretty big farm and could make a lot of money; but still she
refuses. Gabriel finally gives up hope on marrying her.

Isabel Allende

Hannah writes:
Isabel Allende was born in Lima, Peru on August 2, 1942 and grew up to be a Chilean-American novelist. As a child, she went to private school and she was home-schooled for a little while. She really liked to read Shakespeare’s works. In 1962 she married Miguel Frias in Chile. With Miguel, she had a daughter, Paula, and a son, Nicholas. Early in her career, she worked as a journalist. She was also the author of many books, as well as a teacher at many colleges in the United States and in Europe. For a short time, she also worked as a playwright. Throughout the years, she has won many awards for her writings. Isabel wrote The House of the Spirits, or La Casa de los Espiritus in 1982. This book made her an instant best selling author and it was a hit throughout the whole world. This novel received the Best Novel of the Year award in Chile, as well as the Panorama Literario award. Her inspiration for writing this novel came from the fact that her 99-year -old grandfather was dying, and she wrote him a letter, which was published into this book. Out of all her books, she is most well known for writing this one. Her books have been translated into 27 languages all over the world. She is still alive and well and lives in San Rafael, California with her husband Willie Gordon.

Thomas Hardy

Sasha writes:

Thomas Hardy, the author of more than ten classic novels was born on June 2, 1840, to Thomas and Jemina Hardy. He was born in Higher Bockhampton in Dorset. His home played a big role in the setting he created for many of his novels.
Hardy was the eldest of four children, but was a small and sickly child. Because of this, Hardy spent much of his childhood indoors, reading.
His earliest writings were not novels, but rather poems. He tried several times throughout his early adulthood to get his poems published, but was rejected every time. Then, after working as an architect for eleven years he wrote his first novel The Poor Man and the Lady. This novel and his next novel were unsuccessful and he continued to work as an architect until 1870, when he met Emma Lavinia Gifford, who later became his wife.
After meeting Gifford he began to write again, this time more successfully. By 1874 his writing had become successful enough that he could stop being an architect and support himself and Gifford, who he married that same year.
His wife died in 1912 after they had spent many years together, living peacefully and traveling around the world together. He continued to write, and in 1914 was remarried to Florence Emily Dugdale. They were married until he died on January 11, 1928. His ashes were put inside Westminster abby, and a collection of his poems entitled Winter Words was published after his death.

Works Cited
Ross, David. "Thomas Hardy." Britain Express. 2000. 14 May 2009 .

"Thomas Hardy biography." Notable Biographies. 14 May 2009 .

Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez

Araz writes:

Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez was born on March 6,1928,in Aracataca, a town near Northern Colombia. He is a Colombian short-story teller, screenwriter, and journalist. He is best known for his novel, 100 Years of Solitude (1967), and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). In 1982 he was awarded the Noble Prize of Literature. He married Mercedes Barcha in 1958, and a year later they had their first son, Rodrigo Garcia. In 1961,the family traveled by Greyhound bus throughout southern United States and eventually settled down in Mexico City. His novel a 100 Years of Solitude was widely populated and led to Garcia’s Romulo Gallegos Prize in 1972. In 1999 Garcia Marquez was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. Chemotherapy provided by a hospital in Los Angeles proved to be successful and the illness went into remission. In June 1967 over 8000 copies of 100 Years of Solitude had been sold out. His novels are now translated internationally.

Alexandre Dumas

Parisa writes:
Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas was a French writer best known for writing adventurous novels like The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. He was born in Villers-Cotterêts, northeast of Paris, on July 24, 1802, to an impoverished family that had once been reasonably well off and was descended from nobility. His father had been a general in Napoleon’s army but died in 1806. Alexandre Dumas grew up loving books and listening to his mother’s heroic war stories about his father. Although the two were poor they still had aristocratic connections left by the distinguished General Dumas, and when Alexandre was 20 years old he got a job in Paris working in the Palais Royal. He started writing articles for magazines and then plays for theatre. In the years to come he wrote several very popular plays, and made enough money to become a full time writer, leaving his job at the Palais Royal. He became enormously successful when he started writing novels. He became very wealthy however had the unfortunate predilection to spend more than he had.
Dumas’ paternal grandparents were a French nobleman and a Haitian slave, so he was of mixed race, a fact which affected him all his life. He once responded to an insult with "My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends." In 2002 French President Chirac had Dumas’ body moved to a more prestigious burial site, the Panthéon of Paris, a mausoleum where many French heroes rest, and acknowledged in a speech that racism had existed, and that Dumas should now be honored as the great writer he was. His coffin was carried in a procession by men costumed as the three Musketeers, in a televised ceremony.
The books of Alexandre Dumas are action-packed, vivid stories which naturally lend themselves to becoming movies, and in fact more than 200 movies have been made of Dumas’ books. I enjoyed the Count of Monte Cristo tremendously, it’s my new favorite book, and I plan to read The Three Musketeers next. Also I cannot help but notice that the third movie in the series of The Pirates of the Caribbean seems to have stolen the idea of escaping prison by taking the place of a dead man from the Count of Monte Cristo.

Kurt Vonnegut

Nick writes:

Cats Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut writes extraordinarily well in his novel, Cat's
Cradle. The way he writes however is in a way that tells more of
ideas rather than a story. The main character is looking back on
the events. He relates everything to this idea of Bokonism. Of
course, there is a plot. The idea of the novel is to tell how
this man's path leads him to believing in Bokonism. He is
planning to write a novel on the life of Dr. Hoenikker the father
of the atom bomb. In the process he meets his family, and
discovers a lot about his life. Dr. Hoenikker was a brilliant man
and at one point designed a product with the capability to
destroy the earth. The product, called ice nine is split between
his three kids. The main character believes the kids are all part
of his Karass. A Karass is a Bokonist term for team. Throughout
the novel, the Bokonist ideas show up repeatedly. For example, at
one point the main character lets a man live at his house because
he had nowhere else to go. The man killed the main characters
cat, and destroyed the house but looking back it was a good thing
because it led him into the right direction toward becoming a
Bokonist. So far I have actually discovered a lot about the
family too. The doctor had three kids. Newt is a midget, very
smart and otherwise a surprisingly normal person. Angela lived
her entire life after sixteen years old looking after the doctor.
She has no friends and nowhere to turn after the doctor passes
away. Lastly, Frank is an extremely talented sculptor with a lot
of talent. Unfortunately, he got mixed up in some illegal people.
Frank fled to an island where a dictator keeps him alive only to
be his right hand man. The island, San Lorenzo I Imagine will
later on have more importance to the novel. As I read on, I
imagine I will continue to uncover more about the father of the
atom bomb, his three kids, ice nine, and how it all relates to
these Bokonist ideals.

Gustave Flaubert

Mairian writes:
I am reading Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. He was born on December 12, 1821 in Rouen. He wrote Madame Bovary in 1856. He also wrote several other novels including La Tentation, Salammbo, L’Education Sentimentale, Trois Contes and others. He sometimes writes stories that have something to do with events in his life or his surroundings. He died on May 8, 1880 because of a stroke at Croisset.
So far in the novel there is a character named Charles and he is a doctor. He got married to a woman named Heloise who didn’t love him much and she was very bossy. She was years older than him and a wealthy widow. One day he got called to a house in the country to fix a man’s broken leg (his name is Roault) and he starts liking the man’s daughter, Emma. He kept visiting the family, too often and Heloise got suspicious and made him promise never to go there again. He promised but soon he found out that Heloise’s lawyer had taken all her money and she lied about the money before the wedding. Charles’s family got angry and a week later Heloise died from shock. Charles started becoming good friends with Roualt and he got remarried to Emma. Emma talked to him about how she didn’t like the country but Charles seemed to be more interested in her beauty. After the wedding Charles took Emma home and she tried to improve her new home. She feels that she isn’t really in love and that it doesn’t seem like it did in the Romance novels that she read.

A Book To Choose

Katherine writes:
On deciding which book to pick as my fourth term classic, I
couldn't seem to make up my mind. I had asked several classmates
about their last term reads, all giving me yes or no approvals of
their selections, but none that truly stood out until the last
person I interrogated. I asked him, "Did you like your book?"
He paused seemed to think of the right thing to say, and caught
off guard, avoiding to answer with a yes or no, he replied with,
"Yeah I guess, if you are a seventeen year old girl." Now, he
failed to acknowledge whether or not he liked the book, however
his response intrigued me to look further into it. The book, In
Country, by Bobbie Ann Mason, is about Sam, a small-town Kentucky
girl, who lives with her Vietnam War Veteran Uncle. When my
classmate first answered with "if you are a seventeen year old
girl," I thought he was saying if you are a teenage girl like
yourself, you might like it, but also because he did not want to
admit that he liked a book based of an audience of "seventeen
year old girls," with a yes answer.
I'm glad, rather than playing it safe and merely choosing the
"Yes" categorized books, I went with the mysterious choice. I
have just started the book, but I am enticed by the story, which
is about Sam's interest of her secretive Uncle's past, her
struggle to get information about her father, who was killed in
Vietnam, and her coming of age in Hopewell, a small Southern
town. I also am very interested in History and war scenes so I am
excited to read further and find out more about Sam and her
Uncle's story.

Aldous Huxley

Currently my classic novel I am reading for class is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Hurley was born in Godalming, Surrey on July 26, 1894 and he died in Los Angeles on November 22, 1963. Huxley was boor into an upper-class family and was initially surrounded by writing basically from birth because hi father, Leonard Huxley, was a biographer, editor and poet. Huxley lived a hard life starting from the young age of fourteen. At the age of sixteen he was suffered from keratitis punctata, and for about eighteen months he was totally blind.
Huxley attended two colleges in his life. The first was Eton College, Berkshire which he attended from 1908-1913. The second college he attended was Balliol College, Oxford from 1913-1915, here he received his B.A in English in 1916. Huxley did not always want to be a write and a master of English though, at first he wanted to be a scientist, but he was not able to pursue this dream, and switched his career of to study English.
In the novel, Brave New World Huxley’s writing can be seen as complex and hard to read, but if you start to get the idea of the story then I think the reader would have enough determination to get through it, because so far it is a very intriguing story. For some it the novel may not be as interesting to read if one of your favorite genres is science fiction, which mine is, which is what makes the story so enjoyable to me.\
So far I am on chapter five of sixteen. The setting of the first chapter is Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and the World State’s motto “COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY” is hung before the main entrance of the building (which I am sure is to have some significance later on in the novel). The scene takes place in a laboratory, and Huxley gives the impression that this place is dark, dank and secluded, but very busy.
The first character the reader is introduced to is the Director. I don’t want to be too specific for those of you who may want to read this, but the first impression you get about this character is that they are power hungry and determined about whatever project they take on, and do not want any obstacles to overcome them. What the Director is doing when he is introduced is showing new students around the facility. He explains what they do here at the Hatchery, which is to reproduce humans no longer by natural sexual reproduction, but by artificially producing/developing them in test tubes, bringing true meaning in this book to test-tube babies. The Director goes into further detail about the process, and about the experiments done to the embryo’s, which all of this is called “Bokanovsky Process”. It is believed that this will further stabilize society and help civilization develop.
The next character the reader is introduced to is Mr. Foster, a worker at the Hatchery that is very enthusiastic and knowledgeable of his job and the whole Bokanovsky Process.
Later the Director shows the students around the Nurseries. I do not want to give too much away so I can avoid spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that so those who will later read this can find out about this place. In the World State the idea of loving nature and purity of all things has been abolished by those who work in places like the Hatchery (there are many places all over the world like this, producing billions of artificially produced humans a year).
I think I will stop here, so I can make sure as to not give away too many ideas of and events that occur in Brave New World.

Joseph Conrad

Greg writes:
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was born in Poland as the son of Apollo
Korzeniowski, a Polish playwright and nobleman. His father was well respected in his hometown of Berdychiv (then, it was spelled Berdyczów) mainly for his abilities as a translator of the works of very notable literary geniuses – Dickens, Shakespeare, and Hugo, just to name a few. A life of literature clearly ran in the family!
Conrad became an orphan in 1869, when his father died four years after Conrad’s mother had died of tuberculosis. As a result of these tragic events, the young Conrad spent the rest of his childhood with his uncle in Kraców. Despite having known his father for a relatively short amount of time, his influence spanned Conrad’s entire lifetime; Koreniowski, being a translator, always had the house filled with books in other languages lying around, and a curious Conrad loved to pick them up and read. As a result, Conrad learned three languages – Polish, French, and a bit of English – before his parents’ death, which would prove to be quite useful in his later years, when he developed a love of writing.
At age 16, Conrad began his life at sea. As a seaman, Conrad traveled to all sorts of exotic parts of the world – Australia, Borneo, and the Congo just to name a few. Conrad always found himself writing about his surroundings as a sort of escape. Many voyages out to sea later, Conrad had decided that his true passion was not at sea, but rather with paper and ink. At age 36, Conrad decided to live a more relaxed life at his home in England, and began writing “Heart of Darkness”, a novel that was loosely based on his experiences at sea. Conrad became a well-renowned author in his days, and remains to be one, long after his death at age 66.