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Gertie MacDowell Locked account

undauntedgirl@books.boxpleats.com

Joined 1 year, 3 months ago

A rather moody enigma with a plethora of fascinating interests.

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2025 Reading Goal

55% complete! Gertie MacDowell has read 10 of 18 books.

William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair (Paperback, 2015, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press)) 4 stars

No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the …

At last, I learn who Becky Sharp is.

4 stars

This book took a while to get into but in a good way (ultimately). We're thrown a couple of characters in Amelia, Rebecca, et al and I found myself not getting much in the way of interest until more things started happening and the character traits started to emerge. I'll admit, Becky Sharp is (as you might expect) the least ambiguous of the lot, but it took to near the end to finally figure out Amelia and the very end before it finally twigged that every character is a part of the 'vanity fair'; nobody lies outside of it, or even escapes!

Some people don't seem to like the back and forth nature of the story, but I found it helped break things up. So when I was just getting tired of reading about Emmy's banal woes, things switched to the tumultuous Becky and her escapades. Thackery's narrator helped with …

Edith Wharton: The custom of the country (2006, Penguin Books) 4 stars

Edith Wharton's satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century …

Lifestyles of the wannabe rich and famous

4 stars

This was an interesting book from the standpoint of social conventions in upper crust society at the turn of the 20th century. Undine Spragg is very much the antihero leaving a trail of destruction in her wake as she crawls up the social ladder marriage by marriage. One wonders whether Meghan Markle should have read it before becoming entangled in the British royal family given the subject matter.

It's a bit hard to relate to so much of the novel partly because it's over a hundred years old, but also because I am not of the New York elite and therefore unfamiliar, even baffled by some of the social aspects of the story. Having to have your mother respond first before you can seems bizarre and so when Undine breaks some of these rules, it is difficult to appreciate the effect it should have on the reader.

One of the …

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell: North and south (1995, Penguin) 4 stars

When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted …

Still relevant two centuries later

4 stars

I liked this book even if I did not, per se, 'enjoy' it. Charles Dickens was correct to demand the title be 'North and South' because to have called it simply 'Margaret Hale' would be a disservice to the story, and the reader. By far. it's the themes of the story that rise above the characters in it. Conflicts between the urban and rural, rich and poor, male and female, and indeed, north and south provide the overarching sky under which things take place and without which, the story would not stand out amongst its contemporaries.

I cannot say that I liked the characters in 'North and South' as much as I did Gaskell's other work, 'Cranford', but their various interactions gave the story a much needed conflict and friction.

It's perhaps hard from the 21st century vantage to appreciate the dramatic crisis of faith Mr. Hale undergoes that gets …

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar (2005) 4 stars

The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia …

Sadly Plath's only novel.

4 stars

Content warning Obvious topics related to mental health and death

James Joyce: Finnegans wake (Paperback, 1999, Penguin Books) 5 stars

Follows a man's thoughts and dreams during a single night. It is also a book …

My new favourite book

No rating

I started Finnegans Wake knowing only a few things. Namely that it was not a traditional novel, that it was incredibly difficult to read, and that it confounded many (if not all) who did. I certainly agree that it is not a traditional novel, and that is clear from page 1! I do not agree that it is difficult to read, or that it is particularly confounding. It is, however, difficult to comprehend, and that's by design.

What struck me almost straight away is that this is Joyce having fun with language. Puns and double meanings abound. An early one describes a drink as a 'foamous ale', i.e. 'famous ale' but throwing in the common description of ale as 'foamy' or 'foaming' into the same phrase. I very quickly realised that there was going to be a lot of this in the book and I was not proved wrong! Every …