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2022 Challenges and Multi-Year Reading Projects

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“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”
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  • 20 Books of Summer
  • The Marne, Edith Wharton (1918)
  • The Poor Little Rich Girl, Eleanor Gates (1912) Classics Club Spin #29
  • April 2022 Wrap-Up
  • The Horse and His Boy, CS Lewis (1954) #Narniathon21

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So, I am thinking of participating in #20booksofsummer and I just looked at this stack and I'm SO intimidated 😳 Where do I even start?!! I am going to reread Mansfield Park in August. It's my least favorite of Austen's books, but many people find a lot to like, so I am going to give it another try. Edith Wharton had been living in France for many years when WWI began. Like many in Europe, Wharton was frustrated and angry at America’s reluctance to enter the war and The Marne was written in response. The main character, Troy Belknap, is her voice against this hesitation, a call to save what she has come to love. This is a very emotional Wharton that I have not seen before. Through Troy, whose yearly visits to France with his parents, has  given him a love for the country, there is something very personal that Wharton brings to this story. This is a tough little read. Published in 1912 and considered a children’s classic I am hard pressed to understand why anyone would give or read this to a child. A common enough trope-the rich child who has all the material comforts, except attention from her parents and no agency over daily life-yet, the book is one long horror story of psychological abuse and emotional neglect of this precocious, compassionate 7 year-old girl. It's an overcast Sunday, but not cold. And I just found out my wifi reaches into the patio. I could spend all day outside and now I can do more out here! For a series of books written for children CS Lewis sure doesn’t sugar-coat childhood. He tackles bullying, the separation of families by war, the betrayal of siblings against each other and in this one child slavery, physical abuse and forced marriage, just to name a few. In The Horse and His Boy, there is less magic and playfulness and more realism. Lewis is telling a different kind of Pot Luck (1882) or Pot Bouille is the 10th in Emile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart cycle, although it works fine as a stand-alone novel. The narrative is fast paced with a large cast of characters. The action takes place in late 19th century Paris mainly in a newly constructed apartment building. Thoughts on Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck. These are the books I want to read this month. But I am a slow reader and several of these are for challenges or readalongs due at the end of the month.

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