Tale of Two Cities Update #3

(This is a part of the Tale of Two Cities  readalong that is hosted by An Armchair by the Sea!)

I actually finished The Tale of Two Cities on Monday, and haven't gotten around to writing about it until now.

Overall, I really did like the book. It was a fantastic story, full of suspense and twists, and ultimately every question was answered by the last page.
I don't know how Dickens did it, but every single one of the many story lines and mysteries ended up connected somehow to the main plot, and neatly tied up eventually.
Goodness, it was fantastic!

My favorite part - by far - was Madame Defarge's face off with Miss Pross. This scene is so serious, so threatening, and results in death - and yet, somehow, it has a certain tiny hint of comedy. Neither woman understands the other, each one insults the other in her own tongue:

"You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer," said Miss Pross, in her breathing. "Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman...."

"Woman imbecile and pig-like!" said Madame Defarge, frowning. "I take no answer from you..."

:-)

Carton! He finally found a purpose, and committed the ultimate sacrifice. My heart went out to him.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."

He, to me, is more of a hero than Darnay. Yes, Darnay is great and all, but Carton is the one who goes through the spectacular change through the course of the book. (Note: Lucie never does. She's rather flat, it seems to me.) And Carton goes through his plan with such a calm demeanor, never flinching or hesitating (at least not outwardly). He is quite the unexpected hero, in my opinion.

Oh well, this post is rather short, but that sums it up. Tale of Two Cities was a great read, and I'm glad to add another Dickens book to my completed-books list alongside Great Expectations!

~Sophia

Oh and if you're interested, here are my first three posts from the readalong:
The Difficulty of Dickens (intro post)
Update #1
Update #2

Tale of Two Cities Update #2

(This is a part of the Tale of Two Cities  readalong that is hosted by An Armchair by the Sea!)

So I finished Book II on Thursday and decided not to read ahead this time... (I actually started on Emma, but I'm trying to not let the two books get confused in my head. So far, it's working!)

Book II was definitely more full of action than Book I, and the way this is going, it seems that Book III will be the most exciting.

What surprised me the most (and it really shouldn't have, considering the way things were going) is that no true Hero manifested himself. Darnay - whom I expected to take this position - is definitely Heroic, but there are so many deep, well-formed Characters that somehow a Main Character is really difficult to name.
As I said, I really should have realized this. Dickens creates such utterly stupendous characters that each have their own story, and Tale of Two Cities is less of one long story as is is five or six smaller ones. Really, it's more like a history than a fictional novel. (But a really interesting history.) No one Main Character is a little awkward for me, but it's not too bad. I just think of every character as a Main Character - because, really, they are all well enough developed to be.

The stuff going on in London generally seems to make more sense to me than the stuff in Paris.
My biggest questions:
1. All the Jacques confuse me. Why the heck is everyone named Jacques? Is it just a symbol for The Revolutionary? (I suppose this sort of clears up the mysterious Jacques who murdered the Marquis. It was one of the revolutionaries, I guess...)

2. Also, who is Monseigneur? Is it a real person? Or is it just a personification of the spirit of the anti-revolution monarchy?

I really feel like looking these up on Sparknotes or something - but I'm going to save that for when I finish the book. If I still don't have an answer.

I'm also interested in the echoes of footsteps that Lucie hears. It seems to be a reference to her past life - France - and the footsteps are the footsteps of mobs of revolutionaries.

My final thought at the end of Book II was: "Oh Darnay, please, don't do anything stupid. Above all, don't get yourself killed!"

Oh, and regarding my question last time ("What's up with Jerry Cruncher?"). Well, now we know! He's a "resurrection man" - digging up dead bodies (and doing something - very profitable, clearly - with them).

Until next week - and the final update!

~Sophia

Tale of Two Cities Update #1

(This is a part of the Tale of Two Cities  readalong that is hosted by An Armchair by the Sea!)

So I thought that getting through a third of the book in four days was going to be tough, but it was actually really quick reading and surprisingly, I'm a good 5 chapters ahead! Woot!

So far, Tale of Two Cities is pretty interesting. I adore Dicken's penchant for writing quirky characters. For example, my favorite is Madame Defarge who just sits there knitting, knitting, knitting. She's just begging to be made a pivotal plot point - but even if that doesn't happen, kudos to Dicken's for making an interesting side character.

With Dickens, what I was afraid of was long digressions. These don't happen as often as in Bleak House or Old Curiosity Shop (which, as you may remember, were my two failed attempts at Dickens), and aren't nearly as long. Though there definitely were a few lengthy descriptions, I feel as though I've read enough lengthy classic literature to at least be slightly used to them, and they did seem to move the story forward and give us a better picture of the surroundings.

It was in Book II that the action really started, though. It's five years later, and we have a situation that reminds me of Les Miserables - just a bit. A father, who was a prisoner for many years, now finally a respectable gentleman; and his daughter, the star of his life - young, beautiful, and delicate.
The first few chapters of Book II involve the trial of Charles Darnay. This was slightly confusing to me, but I got the gist of it in the end. Charles Darnay seems to be becoming Our Hero, with Lucie Manette filling the role of Heroine.  I'm willing to like Darnay, so I hope he turns out a nice Character.

I'm trying to figure out some of the connections here (though I'm sure it will all be revealed by the end of the book), and I just keep being amazed at Dicken's layers of story lines. There's the trial in England, and Darnay's secret, which is somehow connected to France and the Marquis (who was murdered by the mysterious "Jacques" - thus creating another mystery), and we don't really know Doctor Manette's backstory, which involves both France and England... I'm eagerly awaiting finding out how they are all connected.

And what's up with Jerry Cruncher? That fellow seems pretty awesome. I like his Character. :-)

Tale of Two Cities is much better that I could have hoped, and I am looking forward to reading some more!

~Sophia

NaNo's Done - Real Life Resumes!

So about an hour an a half ago I validated my NaNovel!

My complete stats page

The story isn't done - there are a few more chapters to go before my characters reach their happily ever after - but it felt good to print out that winner's certificate.

Now that that's over...

• I will be writing more! (Crazy me.) I've loved how good it feels to have a wordcount every day, so I am setting a personal goal. 500 words daily! I feel this is achievable and only takes about a half hour of my day. Not bad. 

• I will be catching up on Downton Abbey before the new season begins. For the last month, my mother and sister have been binge watching while I was holed away upstairs writing, so I'm WAY behind them now. I'm already planning to watch them during winter break with my grandma.

• I will post rather often here - at least more often than I've done for the last month! I have some legit posts planned for the next week - none of this update stuff.

• I will be going to bed at a reasonable time.

• I will be waking up at a reasonable time.

• I will be reading TWO BOOKS AT ONCE! What is this madness! As you may know, I never ever read more than one book at a time. But this Jane Austen marathon is taking longer than I expected, and I'm also signed up for a Tale of Two Cities readalong for December. Austen and Dickens at the same time! Fun stuff. We'll see how this goes and how I end up managing it.

Did you do NaNoWriMo? What are you planning to do now that it's over?

Or, if you didn't do NaNoWriMo - do you read more than one book at a time? HOW DO YOU DO IT? :-)

Happy Last Day of November!

~Sophia

The Difficulty of Dickens

On Monday I signed up for a Tale of Two Cities readalong in December with Bex at An Armchair by the Sea.

I read (or tried to read) my first Dickens book when I was about ten years old. I was obsessed with Eleanor Roosevelt at the time, and when I discovered her favorite book was The Old Curiosity Shop, I just had to read it.
I tried. I really tried. I gave it a good, concentrated effort. I had never given up on a book before - I've always been one of those people who need to finish what they start. But my mother, after hearing my complaints at yet another digression on "some random virtue," (as I consistently described it), gave me some sage advice: "You're reading this book for pleasure. If it doesn't give you pleasure to read it, you don't have to finish it."
I thought this over, and decided that yes, it was time to give it up. (Not forever, necessarily. Just for the time being.)

A few years later, I read Great Expectations. My reaction - to the plot, to the characters, to the splendid writing - can best be described in this way:

Waa!!

(In a good way, if you're wondering.)

I had to read it a half a year later for school, again, but I didn't mind. It's a spectacular book.

I think I've actually read it three or four times by now.

About a year or two later, I saw a preview to BBC's Bleak House. I, who am a staunch supporter of reading the book before seeing any sort of adaptation of it, got Bleak House from the library the next day.

Bleak House was better than Curiosity Shop. Much, much better. But the fact that Dickens was writing for serialization created natural digressions to take up column space. Good in a newspaper column. Not so much in a novel.

I eventually gave up on that one, too, though not as abruptly as with Curiosity Shop. I just sort of stopped picking it up when I needed something to read, and it quietly faded out of my life.

(By the way, I did see the BBC show. And it was awesome and now I'm considering possibly reading Bleak House  again soon.)

So this readalong is just the thing to get me out of my Dickens rut. I've been sort of avoiding him since the Bleak House adventure, but now may be the time to return.

I really, really hope I can finish Tale of Two Cities. Deep in my heart I hate not finishing books, and I've only ever done this with three (the two aforementioned Dickens', as well as Conan Doyle's The White Company, which is on my Classics Club list).

If you want to join me, you can link up to the original post at An Armchair by the Sea.

~Sophia

Update: Here are my three posts on Tale of Two Cities.
Post The First
Post The Second
Post The Third

Mondegreens!

Weird Literary Terms Part 2

What is a Mondegreen? I'm sure you all have experienced it at one time or another.
Wikipedia defines it as:

...the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. It most commonly is applied to a line in a poem or a lyric in a song.

For example - "Gladly the cross I'd bear..." becomes, "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear."
And - "There's a bad moon on the rise," becomes, "There's a bathroom on the right."

I did some research and discovered the etymology and origin of this interesting word. Apparently, Sylvia Wright, an American writer of the 1950's, wrote an essay titled: The Death of Lady Mondegreen. In this essay, she writes:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

Turns out, this poem is the 17th century ballad, "The Bonny Earl O'Moray," and the line is actually, "And laid him on the green." Further in the essay, Wright decides:

The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original.

I realized that I had some of these gems in my own experience - which, as you will soon see, prove my "classic" education and literary nerdiness.

Firstly, when I was about twelve-ish, I heard the song Dynamite. I thought it had a reference to an Italian astronomer in it. When I learned the real lyrics, I was quite disappointed.

The actual words are:

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes, singing eh-oh, gotta let go.....

 My version:

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes, singing eh-oh, Galileo.....

Isn't that so much better? :-) In fact, it's so much better that I've decided to write a parody.

I cast my eyes up to the stars sometimes, singing eh-oh, Galileo...

Maybe not.

Anyway, I have another one, and a little more recent. A certain song which everyone was singing last year made me wonder what sort of dance moves a lawyer would have - and why this song considered them so... sexy.

The song is Moves Like Jagger.

"Who is this Jagger, anyway?" I ask my friends.
They all look at me, horrified.
"Mick Jagger. You don't know who Mick Jagger is!?"
I change the subject.

But no, I didn't know who Mick Jagger was. (I do now, by the way.)

The closest thing to a Jagger that I knew was Mr. Jaggers from Dickens' Great Expectations. He's a lawyer. And he seems rather stiff - he definitely has no impressive "moves."


Or maybe he does, as these old engravings reveal:



He looks like he's disco dancing in that one! And what about this:



Though I am rather curious to know who that other guy is, looking under Mr. Jaggers's coattails.
(I haven't read Great Expectations in a while. If you can elucidate this picture, please do so.)

So there you go - you see how shielded my childhood was.

Though personally, I would prefer Mr. Jaggers to Mick anyday.

~Sophia