In the past, old books have made me feel sophisticated, worldly, cultured. At this point in my project, I'm feeling at a loss for words. Sort of like the world isn't as bright. How about a quick recap...
To Kill a Mockingbird, while a great, heartwarming story with beautiful characters had themes of racism. I'm not against talking about the tough subjects in books but it's still a bit of a damper. Great story, well written novel, sort of makes you feel despair for human society. At the same time, I loved it for Scout's innocence and lovableness.
Wuthering Heights was supposedly a love story. It features Cathy and Heathcliff and their love which triumphs all, or so Bella says in Eclipse. Yeah, whatever. What I took from it was a terrible story, sans moral, driven by revenge and hate. Heathcliff does not do one nice thing in the novel and yet at the end you can't help feeling sorry for him. How can this be? He's a mean spirited monster whose only goal was to make everyone around him as miserable as he was. The best part of his existence was ***SPOILER ALERT*** when it ended. He was a freaking kidnapping manipulator. Jeez. Moving on.
Now we've got Lord of the Flies which I'm sure is an excellently written book but lacks the soft romantic charm I look for. I love witty, snappy dialogue be it Remy and Dexter from Sarah Dessen's This Lullaby or Elizabeth Bennet's snippy reply to a comment of Mr. Collins. LotF, starring a group of marooned pre-pubescent boys, is seriously lacking this. I'll get over it.
I'm starting to wonder, though, if this story is written to tell a story or to express a point. It all seems rather deep so far and while the characters are interesting enough I'm not too invested. And so I think that this is one of those lesson books and I'm sure it has some good story but the obvious themes can be distracting.
Oh well, we'll see.
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