Chapter Fifty-Three: Pride and Prejudice

It's been a while since I last read Pride and Prejudice, which is to this day the only of Jane Austen's books that I've read.  Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed rereading this tale of thwarted, unrequited, and finally vindicated love.  It's clear why this novel remains a classic even now, two hundred and one years after it was first published.  The characters are all lovable or so silly and easy and fun to dislike that one can hardly help wanting to read about what happens to them.  Elizabeth Bennet is, of course, the star of the show.  She spunky and willing to speak her mind, she insists on marrying for love in an age where that was often not the priority, and she is even willing to recognize her own mistakes and change her point of view!  If you haven't read this classic, read it, and if you have, re-read it!

Chapter Fifty-Two: Sparrow in the Keep

Sparrow in the Keep, by Jean Ann Hudson, is the fun and interesting story of Sparrow, a young woman raised by her parents in the wilderness, and her encounters with the court of Count Gustav of Wilker, a medieval-esque land.  Sparrow is an excellent main character: she is unique because of her upbringing and her extraordinary abilities of observation and communication, the latter bordering on telepathy with both humans and animals.  However, the various dramas of courtly life anchor the story almost as much as Sparrow does, and Hudson successfully manages a sizable cast of court and village characters without letting the reader become confused about their identities, relationships, or motives.  This is a fun tale well worth the read!

Chapter Fifty-One: Anne of Green Gables

I love these books!  Anne of Green Gables is the first in this delightful series of eight and the best known of them, and I really enjoyed all of them.  I haven't read any of them in a while, and it was so much fun to re-read them (and I think read number 8 and maybe 7 for the first time).  Anne is a delightful and spunky heroine, and when the focus shifts from her to her children in the last three books of the series, they prove to be more interesting than I thought they would be, although I can never love them quite as much as I love Anne.  Additionally, Prince Edward Island, Canada, provides a glorious setting for these books: pastoral, idyllic, charming.  I often laughed aloud while reading these books (sometimes I was laughing at the floweriness of the prose, I'll admit, rather than at the events of the story), which to me is the mark of a good read.

Chapter Fifty: Amphigorey

This is a fun and strange collection of works by Edward Gorey, who illustrates his own writing, some of which is poetry and some of which is prose. (Amphigory, by the way, means a meaningless or nonsensical piece of writing, especially one intended as a parody, so the title, Amphigorey (punning on his surname) is quite apt.)  Gorey is a strange fellow, judging by his works, some of which have plots and some of which are intriguingly non-linear.  His illustrations have a Victorian or Edwardian style to them, which definitely adds to the creepiness of stories.  His work is quite unique, and it is well worth checking out if you want something wacky.

Chapter Forty-Nine: Brothers of the Head

This is quite possibly the strangest book I have ever read.  The edition I read includes illustrations by Ian Pollock to add to the story by Brian Aldiss, which tells the tale of conjoined twins from an isolated English hamlet who are sold into the pop music industry by their widowed father.  Thrust into fame, they meet and fall in love with a woman, learn the ropes of fronting a rock band, and they become more competitive than ever.  This is not a particularly happy story, beginning, middle, or end, but it is certainly compelling.  To add to the strangeness and intrigue, the brothers have a third head, which is dormant, attached to one shoulder.  But the third head doesn't stay dormant forever...  Only read this story if you want a truly strange experience.

Chapter Forty-Eight: The Wild Things

This book by Dave Eggers, an expansion of Maurice Sendak's classic picture book "Where the Wild Things Are" is very strange.  The edition I had happened to be covered in faux fur with a slit cut around painted human eyes...   The content of this book might be stranger than its furry cover, although in fairness the content of the storybook is pretty bizarre, too.  Eggers stays fairly faithful to his model, although of course in expanding a very short picture book into a full-length novel, he added a lot of details that were only hinted at in the storybook or that were not there at all.  Most of these details fit with my ideas about and impressions of Sendak's story, although I was rather disappointed in the ending of The Wild Things.  Without giving it away, all I'll say is that, while it remains fairly faithful to the original in terms of plot, I thought the feeling of the novel's ending was vastly different from the feeling of the storybook's ending, and I know which one I prefer.  Still, if you like "Where the Wild Things Are," it's definitely worth your while to read The Wild Things, if for nothing else than to compare the two and get a fresh perspective on what is considered a childhood classic (whatever that even means).

Chapter Forty-Seven: Abarat (Books 1-3)

This series by Clive Barker is one of the most original stories I've read.  He creates such a rich world in Abarat, populated by scores of strange entities and set in fantastic realms as it is.  It is essential to read the editions that include his amazing, brilliant full-color illustrations.  They add so much to the text and also really are helpful in visualizing some of what he's describing, especially the stuff that's more far-out.  These books--two more are planned--are basically adventure and coming-of-age stories, but their premise is so original--the Abarat is another world, composed of islands, each of which is an hour, confusing traditional ideas about where and when--that these books seem very fresh.  I also love the heroine, Candy Quackenbush.  She's flawed and spunky and down-to-earth and has the right balance of ordinary and extraordinary.  If you want a good fantasy and adventure series, I highly recommend these books (Abarat, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War, and Abarat: Absolute Midnight).  I myself am eagerly awaiting the publication of books four and five.