The Classics Club Two Year Anniversary

Having been so focused on not missing my second birthday with The Classics Club, (original list here) I missed my blog’s second birthday on the 22nd March, so a belated anniversary to me. I will postpone a two year round up post until the Easter holidays when I hopefully have a bit more time to reflect on my reading in general. It has now been two years since I joined up for The Classics Club and I can’t say my reading is going tremendously well, but I’m getting there.

In my first year I read the following books.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Major of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
1984 by George Orwell
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

However in my second year I perhaps haven’t been as good at sticking to the reading schedule and reading as much as I could have done to ensure I keep on track. I have reread a book from last year (Pride and Prejudice) as I have been teaching that this term, so I think that counts as a half at least. So throughout the second year I have read:

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
The Old Curiousity Shop by Charles Dickens – Classics Club Spin
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H.Lawrence – Classics Club Readathon
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings by J.R.R.Tolkien – started for Classics Club Readathon
Howards End by E.M.Forester

I am pleased that four of these books have been linked to Classics Club Events and it is clear to be that these types of events do spur me on in my reading, so I am grateful to everyone who helps organise them.

Most Anticipated:

Lord of the Rings

Most Beautifully Written:

Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but them I love Hardy so I’m bias

Most Disappointing:

None of them, I enjoyed them all, although at a push it would be Mansfield park as I didn’t like Fanny Price.

Most Surprising (In A Good Way!):

Lord of the Rings as I have attempted to read it before and not enjoyed it.

Most Memorable Character/s:

Tom Bombadil in LOTR
Alec D’Urberville for sheet evilness in Tess

Most Recommended-to-Others:

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Ambitions for 2013/2014:

Keep going with my list and ensure I take part in more events run by The Classics Club to help me focus on my reading and my list in particular. I would also like to have more time to read more blogs and see how their reading is going.

So after two years I have read 15 of the 50 books I originally set out to read, let’s hope I pick up the pace next year…but if I don’t at least I’m enjoying it still!

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Regeneration

When I was applying for my PGCE I did some voluntary work experience at a local school, focusing on A Level teaching in particular and the AS students were focusing on a World War One unit, looking at various literature written during or at least set in the era. The novel they were reading was Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road. This is the final book in the Regeneration Trilogy and although I hadn’t read the first two books I read it anyway. A year or so later I picked up a copy of Regeneration at a charity shop and it languished on my shelves for a good 24 months before I finally put it on my TBR Pile 2014 and got round to reading it this month.

Regeneration focuses on Craiglockhart Hospital in Scotland and the work of Dr Rivers, a psychiatrist working with men who have been wounded and thus traumatised by their experiences in the trenches. It is 1917 and among his patients are the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who has been sent to Craiglockhart after his anti war protest letter to Parliament and Wilfred Owen, who has yet to publish any of his poems and hero worships Sassoon. Although these characters are based on real life they are interwoven with fictional characters and a fictional narrative, making this a novel that merges both genres and explores the impact of the war in numerous interesting ways. Through Barker’s novel we learn about a variety of war time experiences that had a profound effect on those who lived through them, as well as the types of treatment used to ‘cure’ these men of their illnesses and thus ensure they return to the front and to fight for their country as quickly as possible.

I really feel as though my reading has taken a back seat in the past few months, especially as I am finding it difficult to have a work/life balance at times. Despite feeling as though I have taken forever to read this book (and 250 pages is hardly an epic read) I thoroughly enjoyed Regeneration. Those who know me or read my blog regularly will know that I have a keen interest in the First World War, most specifically the image of the soldier hero and how men coped with the horrific conditions they were faced with throughout the course of these four years. I loved how Barker mixed reality and fiction and explored some of the different mental effects the war had and the treatments used to ‘cure’ these. I was particularly interested/horrified at the use of electric shocks to cure mutism. One incident focused on the doctor refusing to let a patient leave the room until he could speak properly again; it is incredible to think how far treatments and understanding has come since then.

As I was reading I did highlight several quotation that struck me; I won’t share all of them, but I will include a few favourites.

‘They’d been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness. Men who broke down, or cried, or admitted to feeling fear, were sissies, weaklings, failures. Not men.’ Rivers is contemplating the work he does and I feel it sums up how men thought and were viewed at the time. There was only one acceptable form of manliness and if you didn’t adhere to it you clearly weren’t a man. You can imagine how this ideal had a profound effect on the men of the era and their decision as to whether or not they should fight for their country. What would society think if they didn’t? An idea that links to ‘the war had promised so much in the way of ‘manly’ activity had actually delivered ‘feminine’ passivity.’

Way back when I was choosing a topic for my MA dissertation I toyed with the idea of focusing on shell shock and the treatment of those suffering from physical and mental injuries after the war. As I was researching the topic I came across the notion that society essentially ignored these men after the war and that little was done to support them, which is why they resorted to begging in the streets. There were some hospitals specifically for war injuries, however these were few and far between. But of course the country didn’t need a constant reminder of the sacrifice a whole generation of men had made for them and this is clear when one of the characters leaves a hospital via the back exit and comes across a group of men horrifically mutilated ‘they’d been pushed out here to get sun, but not right outside, and not at the front of the hospital where their mutilations might have been seen by passers-by.’ What a horrible feeling to know that you have given your all for your country only to be hidden away where no one can see you.

Overall I really enjoyed reading Regeneration and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in this period of history. I do want to read the next book in the trilogy and reread the last, but I feel it may be a while as I have an awful lot of books on the shelf.

Regeneration has contributed towards three challenges:
TBR Pile 2014
Reading the Twentieth Century
Filling in the Gaps (which I am rubbish at remembering to do)
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February Round Up

How on earth is it the first of March already?

I actually cannot believe February is over. And perhaps what I can’t believe more is that I only finished ONE book in the whole of the month! How on earth did that happen?

The only book I finished in February was a Persephone Book, Patience by John Coates. Luckily it is a book on my TBR Pile 2014 so I am glad that I am on track for that as I am aiming to read one book a month and I am currently on 2/12, plus my substitute, so really that’s 3.

So I clearly haven’t been doing much reading – although I am currently rereading Pride and Prejudice as I am teaching it this term- so what have I been doing? Thankfully it hasn’t all been work, work, work, although it certainly feels like that sometimes. February half term sped by and now seems so long ago, but I did manage to go on a trip to London. Mum and I stayed in a lovely boutique hotel in Bloomsbury, which was fabulous and not far from Persephone Books, so of course I added a few more titles to my pile and mum bought her first Persephone too! Whilst in London we went to see Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap; I gave mum tickets as a Christmas present and I am pleased to say that we both enjoyed it so much and, as always with Christie, I didn’t guess who dunnit!

Something else very exciting happened in February. After much deliberation and countless trips to pet shops I am pleased to introduce Rupert (named after a character from a Jilly Cooper novel of course!)

He is so cute and provides a big distractions from work and everything else. He is a house bunny and is currently hopping around the living roo/ chewing my antique bureau, so I think that is my hint to stop writing and play!