It's So Classic Blog Party Tag

Olivia tagged me with this a few weeks ago and busy as we've been lately I forgot it was one of those with a deadline. Eeek! But now here we are. (Aren't ya proud of me? ;)) And I really wish I had time to hunt down some fantastically funny memes to sprinkle throughout and have you all in stitches, but (in the interest of being properly grown-up, etc.) I really can't. My kitchen and laundry room are calling. So you'll have to use your own vivid imaginations on that front. :D

*Ok, rolls up sleeves and enough with the self aggrandizing fanfare.*

The It's So Classic Tag:

Rules:

1. Link your post to Rebellious Writing (www.rebelliouswriting.com)
2. Answer the questions
3. Tag at least 5 bloggers.

~ What is one classic that hasn’t been made into a movie yet, but really needs to?

The Blue Castle by Montgomery does spring to mind, but I'm trying to keep my selections here to Weightier Great Book-ish tomes (otherwise we run the risk of wandering into the territory of Chesterton, Wodehouse, C.S. Lewis, Montgomery, Alcott, and the like, which'd easily fill up every answer here *coughs*).

The other option I can think of is Mansfield Park. I'd really like to see a newer version that actually gets it. But again, that might not count since it has been done a couple times.

Hmmm... This one kind of rides the fence as far as being an absolute classic, but maybe The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott?

~What draws you to classics?

The deep thoughts and rich metaphors. The enduring-ness.

~What is an underrated classic?

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. (At least the first book, which I've read at least three times in this edition.) LOVE IT. <3 

~What is one classic that you didn’t expect to love, but ended up loving anyway?

Maybe The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte.

~What is your most favorite and least favorite classics?

Favorites: far and away, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, Heart of Darkness by Josef Conrad, and North and South by Gaskell. (Jane Austen aside, that is.)

As for least favorite: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. It's rich and powerful and horribly, heart wrenchingly awful and sad. I'm glad I read it, but don't really ever want to read it again. (At least, unless I was teaching it or something.)

~What is your favorite character from a classic? Or if that is too hard, one is your favorite classic character trope (e.g. strong and silent, quiet sidekick, etc.)

Haha. Yes, definitely too hard. According to the dictionary, 'trope' is officially a "figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression." So I'll say the self-sacrificing hero. And not in a flowery way, but the very real brink-of-death sense. And that's true for both book and film. Gets. me. every. time.

~What’s a popular classic that you felt wasn’t actually that great?

This is more that I've never been able to really get into some of them (except for The Old Man and the Sea), so it's not that they're bad, it's just that I find Hemingway... difficult. Most of it's the wordiness, but I also ran across an article a while ago pointing out that he doesn't really have a sense of humor, which was a really interesting point. Not that everything has to be hilariously funny (witness my actual top favorites above), but it has to do with a deep running... balance, I guess you could say. A laughter at the edge of tears. That sort of thing. And of course, I could be completely misjudging him on that. It is true that I can vividly remember every bit that I have read of his. Persevering in the reading has just been a challenge.

Oh, and while I find her life story fascinating and absolutely love her thoughts on the discipline of writing and storytelling itself (and have had various friends who raved about her writing) I've had the hardest time getting into Flannery O'Connor.  

~Who is your favorite classic author?

Ummm, ok this one's kinda impossible to choose, honestly. But, trying to think purely of the writing styles, probably Jane Austen, Josef Conrad, or Elizabeth Gaskell. (Again, that's if we're not counting Chesterton, Wodehouse, Tolkien, Lewis, Montgomery, Alcott, Milne, Snedeker, de Angeli, etc etc etc............)

~In your opinion, what makes a classic a classic?

At the risk of sounding high falutin, it's larger than the sum of it's parts, transcending the time it was written, hitting on enduring themes... Often with a fresh tone or unexpected viewpoint. You get the idea.

~Relating to newer books, what attributes does a book need to have in order to be worthy of the title “classic”?

Well, in short, it has to stick. But I'd apply the same criteria listed for the last question. 

Quick note: focusing on the two ends of the spectrum, I realized I left off quite a few that I've enjoyed and definitely still count as favorites to varying degrees and/or impacted me -- like Jane Eyre, Far from the Madding Crowd, David Copperfield (& Co), The Divine Comedy, a number of George Eliot's books, and I, Claudius (which was really interesting, also somewhat crazy and odd, and should come with somewhat hefty adult level reading proviso stickers, IMHO).

But such is the nature of list making and different titles are highlighted at different times. :)

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And... since I'm kinda just getting back into the blogosphere I'm not sure I know five bloggers to tag who are still active (or haven't already done it) + I'm doing this at the end of the challenge and all that, so I'll skip that part, but if you'd like to just go for it feel free! :) Here's a link to a clean copy of the questions. I'd love to see your answers!

Book Review // The Read-Aloud Family by Sarah Mackenzie

This book is SO good. At first, for some ridiculous and (somewhat) unknown reason, I was dreading it’d be tedious and/or some sort of guilt trip, but I needn’t have worried. Once I started I gobbled it up in about two days (while camping in NV’s Black Rock Desert ;)). It’s straight up encouraging and inspiring and do-able. Everyone should read it and it’s definitely one every parent particularly should have stashed on their shelf. Or even better, out somewhere where it’s getting dog-eared and tripped over and referenced often.

The scope of the book covers various statistical points (on the importance of reading aloud and story in the life of a child both as regards education and development, etc.), but even more, it’s on shaping hearts and minds, building family bonds, shared history, and loyalty, and engendering a wide-awake, sprawling, deep vision of the world. Also (and especially helpful) lots of friendly, relaxed, down-to-earth, excellently unpreachy, from-the-trenches tips and ideas for how to actually go about it in a busy household. I don’t want to give away too many of the meaty bits or her excellent points, but here are a few gems:

“Fiction and nonfiction stories provide children of all ages an opportunity to experience what it feels like to be overwhelmed, struggle, fight, overcome, and emerge a hero. …When we read aloud, we give our kids practice living as heroes. Practice dealing with life-and-death situations, practice living with virtue, practice failing at virtue. As the characters in our favorite books struggle through hardship, we struggle with them. We consider whether we would be as brave, as bold, as fully human as our favorite heroes. And then we grasp—on a deeper, more meaningful level—the story we are living ourselves as well as the kind of character we will become as that story unfolds.”

“When I read a story with my children… the fog lifts, and I remember. I look up. I see it—that I am only one small part of a great, big, glorious world, and that the Maker of it exists—and has existed—always. That we are all part of His plan. That we have been invited to seek and follow Him, no matter what the situation. The book becomes a set of supercharged binoculars, helping us to see beyond our normal capacity.

“A story does this on its own without our having to say a word about it. Forget the whiteboard. Forget the didactic lesson. Forget the teaching points or the comprehension worksheets. When we’re telling our children the story of Jesus healing Jairus’s daughter, of curing the lepers, of raising Lazarus from the dead, we don’t need to wrap up the story with a trite explanation about how God is powerful, good, or merciful. We don’t have to add anything at all, because there it is—truth bubbling up out of the story. It is the story. When God pours down manna from the heavens, a child doesn’t need to be told that he will provide what we need right when we need it and not a moment before. We simply read the story, and our children feel the truth of it in their bones. This happens with true stories that are literal accounts (such as stories within the Gospels, or historical narratives), as well as true stories that aren’t meant to be literal at all (such as a myth or fairy tale).”

Plus, she’s got a plethora of tingly quotes tucked all throughout. Like this nugget:

“Fairy tales say that apples are golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found out they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.” G.K. Chesterton.

Or this one:

“When she was hardly more than a girl, Miss Minnie had gone away to a teacher’s college and prepared herself to teach by learning many cunning methods that she never afterward used. For Miss Minnie loved children and she loved books, and she taught merely by introducing the one to the other.” Wendell Berry, Watch with Me

Good, eh? Now off ye go to check it out and be sure to let me know what you think! ;)

Baby!!! (And a few other important notes...)

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I have no idea how long it's been since I was last here (no wait, let me see... it was Natalie's birthday, so that makes it almost a full four months!), but I wanted to pop on quickly and let you all know our beautiful baby girl arrived safely! I have yet to decide how many details I'll be sharing on the blog, but she's healthy and happy and every ounce of her is pure sweetness. <3 <3 <3 We're so thankful for God's goodness!

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Now I'm curled on the couch with Baby on top of me and my laptop balanced on my knee. A blissful existence really. ;) I have all sorts of exciting goals before Christmas, but one of them is to finish up the Adventure of Reading Challenge, including the wrap-up posts, etc., so you can be watching out for that (very hopefully).

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Speaking of Christmas, I'm getting rather crazy excited this year. I can't wait for the lights and fresh tree needles and decorating my house and hot mulled cider and mailing all my parcels... the list goes on. I thought of a good Christmas blog post this morning too, so I'm hoping that develops as beautifully as the initial flash of inspiration.

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Finally, I can't remember where I first ran across this, but finding it on my computer this afternoon gave me the final nudge to draft this post (and also made me realize again how much I need to read Orthodoxy):

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
---G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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I hope you're all having a lovely Wednesday! What do you think of the Chesterton quote?

12 Month Classics Challenge 2016

For 2016, Lois is hosting a wonderfully fun, manageable, and flexible Classics Challenge and I'm hopping along for the ride. :) If you're interested in joining as well, you can check out her details post here.

She kindly says rereads are valid and I’ve tried to balance my choices fairly evenly. Idealistically, it would be fun, too, to be able to do a review for each title, but we shall see about that when the time comes. (Incidentally, I also have some other titles I'll be working on, so keep an eye on my sidebar for those.)

And now...

My Choices for The 12 Month Classics Challenge 2016

January: A classic you've always wanted to read

Shakespeare's Hamlet

February: A classic you've always dreaded reading

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

March: A classic you've been recommended

The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas

April: A classic you've seen the movie/miniseries/TV show of

Laura by Vera Caspary (a reread)

May: An American classic

The Chosen by Chaim Potok (another reread)

June: A British classic

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton :)

July: A European classic (non-British)

Under Western Eyes by Josef Conrad

August: A modern classic (up to your interpretation)

Sam the Sudden by P.G. Wodehouse (this and May's selection are slightly interchangeable)

September: A children's classic

Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne (a reread)

October: A classic by a female author

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (most definitely a reread... time #4, perhaps? :))

November: A classic by a male author

No Name by Wilkie Collins

December: A classic written under a pseudonym

Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott (Yes, he wrote his novels under a pseudonym! This one’s also a particularly overdue reread, but -- depending on what’s going on at the time -- I may end up switching it out for an Austen or an Agatha Christie.)

This should be fun. I’m looking forward to it!

(And... *drumroll* our next post will be the Grand Party Reveal! :D Yay!!! VERY exciting... ;D)

Tell me! Are you joining any reading challenges this year?