A literary journey through great books.
If you are following this blog, this is the INCORRECT ONE!
I have two blogs attached to one account and I’ve noticed I have few ppl as followers from ENGL 1100 on this much older blog.
Also, I think some of you are following BOTH blogs as well.
The one I created for the ENGL 1100 class is prosesroses2kpu.wordpress.com (see the 2kpu part?). Please unfollow this blog and follow the other one.
Okay, it’s actually two affairs but I plead ignorance for the first one! There’s also a quick summary of classic books I’ve read in high school at the end of this post.
My earliest encounter with a classic was Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. Black Beauty was a children’s classic first published in 1877. I think my grade five teacher had some obsession with horse fiction because we preceded to read two more of which I don’t remember. Thanks to her, I, too started reading horse fiction for a while such as the Heartland series by Lauren Brooke but I digress. I had no idea what a classic was in grade five, let alone that Black Beauty was one of them. I don’t remember reading it in class but I remember the dramatic points of the plot and watching the movie which was a pretty faithful adaptation of it. I do remember loving the book and even now I still feel a nostalgia for it.
My first adult classic was, of course, forced upon me by my (grade nine) English teacher. But we didn’t read Pride and Prejudice, Catcher in the Rye or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, no, we read Frankenstein.
Frankenstein.
By Mary Shelley.
Buddha, save me!
I’m starting my blog with the Brontë sisters, as I’m a romantic first and foremost when I browse through books.
But which sister? I decided on Anne Brontë (aka Acton Bell) as she is the least well-known of her sisters and her books aren’t mentioned a lot in mainstream. I searched for Agnes Grey (as it was Anne’s first book) through my public library database and got zilch, but I did find The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which is more well-known than the former.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall synopsis: Mr. Gilbert Markham and his neighbours welcome a mysterious new tenant as she settles into the desolate mansion, Wildfell Hall. Mrs. Helen Graham guards herself closely and yet, has become the object of gossip among the society. Gilbert discovers her past as he gets to know Helen and falls in love.
Chapters one to sixteen comprise of “part one” and are letters from Mr. Markham to Mr. Halford, a brother-in-law. Chapters seventeen to forty-four are Helen’s private diary entries, which are “part two.” Chapters forty-five to fifty-three go back to Mr. Markham and are “part three.”
Not bothering to read the summary and the title the only clue, I came to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall with no expectations of the plot. I will admit, I felt a little dread because I thought it was going to be dull and dark but by chapter two, it became apparent I was going to love this book.
And I do LOVE this book!
Proses' Roses: A Book Blog 