My progress with reading Of Human Bondage has been slow as well. I'm on chapter 50, which according to my Kindle means I'm 37% of the way through. At first the plot seems to be part Jane Eyre and part Pip from Great Expectations: a child becomes an orphan who is then raised by uncaring relatives who then send him/her/it to a boarding school where life is atrocious. However, that is where the similarities end. It's a great story and I'm enjoying the journey.

Progress So Far

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My progress on reading Of Human Bondage is not great although I love the book. I've been sidetracked by websites about how to blog so it is related. The goofy code at the top of this post something you have to do to "claim" your blog so that you can submit it to another site to increase readership. Wish me luck!

The Reed Sisters' Magnificent Book Quest

I've been a major slacker on the blog so I decided to recruit my sister Heather to help me out. We've decided to start a book project based on the Modern Library's list of the best 100 novels.
"Why the Modern Library list?" you ask.
"Why the hell not?" we reply.

The modern library actually has two best novel lists; the editor's list and the reader's list. The Reed Sisters cut a bunch of junk books out of the reader's list then combined the leftovers with the editor list. We will use a random number generator to pick each book and once we've finished reading we'll blog about the book together. For those of you who knew us when we were kids -- do not be alarmed. Heather and I have learned to work together without hurting each other.

We've just started the first novel, OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham (no Heather, this is NOT a dating manual).

If anyone wants to play along, the next few books in order are:

LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome is the story of a young man by the name of...you guessed it, Ethan Frome. Poor Ethan is married to a much older harpy who constantly suffers from “the sickness” and pretty much makes life miserable for the poor fellow. Only Ethan doesn’t really realize how miserable he is until his wife’s cousin Mattie, who moved in to help take care of Zeena, is about to be sent away. Ethan and Mattie realize they are in love and do not want to live without each other. Unfortunately Ethan cannot afford to move away and support two wives at once. So of course the reasonable thing to do is to take a wild sled ride. If you want to know how the sled ride ends, you’ll have to read the book. I will say this about the ending, Thomas Hardy would have been proud.

Ethan Frome is one of several books I’ll be reading with my friend Karen in preparation for my vacation in Boston. We are reading books that take in New England and then visiting the areas where they were located. So more information on Ethan will be posted at some point next month. If I’m lucky, I’ll even get a look at the sled.

Now I Need Prozac

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Good grief! Did Thomas Hardy write anything with a happy ending? It’s not that I think that every story has to end well, but for crying out loud Tom, let someone live a happy life. I love Hardy's writing and have read quite a few of his works, but every single one so far has been a tragedy. Reading Tess really hacked me off because there were several points in the story where I thought things were going to work out, but then they didn't after all.

Here is a short synopsis of me reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

*Don’t be so hard on yourself Tess, it wasn’t your fault
*Don’t blame Tess, it wasn’t her fault.
*Stay away from him Tess! He's a player and he'll... oops, too late.
*Why are they mad at Tess? It was their fault she went there. And after all, you were hoping she’d get involved with a rich relation.
*Oh damn, that really sucks.
*Huzzah! Tess is going to get a chance to start over and I just know she’ll be happy this time.
*Excellent, a nice boy who isn’t pretentious.
*No Tess – don’t tell him about …. Crap, too late.
*Jeez, nice double standards ya big jerk!
*Stay away from him Tess! A leopard never changes his spots.
*It’s about time you fool – now run after Tess before it’s too late.
*Damn, too late.

For once, all three animals are in agreement. They found Tess so depressing that they are boycotting this review and any further readings of anything by Thomas Hardy.