My books - The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway

Okay, I knew nothing at all about this book before I started.

(It is my fourth Hemingway, so I did know it was going to be a man's book of sorts.)

And honestly, if someone had said to me - it is about trout fishing, getting 'tight' (drunk), fighting, and the bullfights in Spain - I would have probably passed it by with nary a thought. Or at least moved it to the very bottom of my to read list.

I loved this book.

I loved every word of this book.

I am quite a Hemingway girl at this point.

I can't explain it, because the components of the book do not seem appealing when they are typed out like that - booze, fighting, fishing, bullfights. And I do not gravitate toward men nor their stories. But there you are, I loved it.

My first Hemingway (was my least favorite Hemingway, but still a very good book) was Farewell to Arms. I was going to say Farewell to Arms was an earlier book (1929) and he was just getting started, but it was actually written after The Sun Also Rises (1926). If you are trying to remember, my other Hemingway reads were For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1951).

The Sun Also Rises version I listened to was read by William Hurt (2006). He was most excellent. And I wondered if they chose him because of his The Big Chill (1983) character/Nick who was (character in The Sun Also Rises was too) impotent from a war injury. I caught that immediately. His voice and reading style were extremely well matched to the book.

It ended all too soon.


Here is the link to the SparkNotes Context section for this book. It does a good job of explaining the key points of Hemingway's life and when the books/Pulitzer/Nobel fit into this time frame.

One thing missing from the context section is his children. Hemingway was married four times. His three sons came from his first two marriages. The three granddaughters that we know (Joan, Margot, Mariel) all came from his oldest son, John, who married Byra. Here is a family tree that lists the other two sons and the rest of his grand kids.

My books - Pudd'nhead Wilson

On Puddn'head Wilson, Wikipedia notes:

"Pudd'nhead Wilson is a novel by Mark Twain. It was serialized in The Century Magazine (1893–4), before being published as a novel in 1894."

First, I would like to say Pudd'nhead Wilson was NOT a slave. I was surprised when I started the book. There are slaves in the story, but Wilson is not one of them.

Second, I would like to say that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn do not make any appearances. Nor does Jim. Totally different stories.

Third, the concept of being "sold down the river" presented itself in Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin and appeared in Pudd'nhead also. Slaves in the northern part of the southern states (in general) had much easier lives than the plantation slaves of the deep south. The fear of having oneself or family members sold to the deep south  is easily understood and a reoccurring theme. Puddn'head Wilson is a much lighter story than Uncle Tom's Cabin (absolutely no worries for me), but is considered to be one of Twain's darker stories.

Fourth, the first thing I looked up when I finished Pudd'nhead Wilson was fingerprints.



Fingerprints are part of the Pudd'nhead Wilson story. They are introduced very early in the story, I am giving nothing away. Understanding of fingerprints, shows Pudd'nhead Wilson to be scientifically based. We don't normally think of Twain's work as being scientifically leading.

There was a note at the end of the audible version of Pudd'nhead Wilson talking about fingerprints and Galton and Twain.

Galton's book came out just a year before Puddin'head was published.

On Galton and fingerprints, Wikipedia notes:

"In a Royal Institution paper in 1888 and three books (Finger Prints, 1892; Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints, 1893; and Fingerprint Directories, 1895)[30] Galton estimated the probability of two persons having the same fingerprint and studied the heritability and racial differences in fingerprints. He wrote about the technique (inadvertently sparking a controversy between Herschel and Faulds that was to last until 1917), identifying common pattern in fingerprints and devising a classification system that survives to this day.

"The method of identifying criminals by their fingerprints had been introduced in the 1860s by Sir William James Herschel in India, and their potential use in forensic work was first proposed by Dr Henry Faulds in 1880, but Galton was the first to place the study on a scientific footing, which assisted its acceptance by the courts (Bulmer 2003, p. 35). Galton pointed out that there were specific types of fingerprint patterns. He described and classified them into eight broad categories. 1: plain arch, 2: tented arch, 3: simple loop, 4: central pocket loop, 5: double loop, 6: lateral pocket loop, 7: plain whorl, and 8: accidental.[31]"

And while the fingerprint part of the story is in Twain's contemporary life (1893), Twain sets his stories in the time before the civil war (1861-1865).

A paragraph in SparkNotes Context section talks about Twain's story timelines:
"Curiously, his works are all set before the Civil War, in the years when Twain himself was a boy. Perhaps this is because he wanted to write about what he knew from his own childhood; or perhaps he set his works in the past because he sought not a description of the present but a look at its causes or alternatives--what could have been, had things been a little bit different."

The full SparkNotes Context Section is here and does not give away anything about the story.


I do not think of myself as a Twain girl, but I have to tell you I LOVED this story. I knew nothing about it before I started and no one at my house had read it. As I read, I was never sure where the story was going. I enjoyed the story-ness of it.

It was a very quick read at 7 CD's and just under 7 hours.

I started Pudd'nhead simply because it was on my to read list and was the right length. I try to time my book review group listens so I finish them just before the group meets (so it is fresh in my mind). I needed something short to fill in a space after one title and before I started an assigned reading.



As I read this book, I tried to remember a passage I read or heard quoted long ago. I have a feeling it might have been Oprah related. I think it was a letter written by a white northern woman commenting on seeing slave children who looked exactly like the children of the master. In other words, the slave children and the master's children were half brothers and sisters. I think the letter specifically talked about seeing the master's children sitting at the dinner table and the slave children waiting at table, and their faces looking exactly alike, and no one thinking anything of it. Ring any bells for anyone?



Oldest, youngest and I are Trekkies at heart. We do not dress up and go to conventions, but we love all the Star Trek movies and shows. All three of us have seen all of it, several times each. We have a special place in our heart for Twain, because his persona appears in a couple episodes of The Next Generation and it was very well done.

Art in a tiny box

Not only is Jennette very clever herself, 
she also finds clever things.

All things Gretchen

Gretchen's New Book has hit the shelves.

Here is Gretchen's Appearance Listing. If she happens to hit your city, I think she would be a fun speaker. If you attend one, please leave a note and let me know. 

My Books - The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 108/56

When I found The Big Read website, The Great Gatsby had an audio show.

But then when I went to paste in the link. I discovered I had never written about this book.

I think I read it in early 2011 before I was writing my regular reviews. I suspect I read it for my long standing book group and then attended the meeting where it was discussed. That was many books ago, but I remember the book and the story vividly. So it was easy to write this post today.




When I started reading this book, it was familiar. So I wondered it I had read it in school.

It is very odd, but I have no memory of the books I read FOR high school. No mental list. I can't even come up with one title. The only title I remember from college is 100 Years of Solitude, which I have mentioned before, and did not appreciate at the time.

If you are trying to remember the movie, "The Great Gatsby is a 1974 romantic drama film distributed by Newdon Productions and Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Jack Clayton and produced by David Merrick, from a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel of the same name."

Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby
Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan
Bruce Dern as Tom Buchanan
Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway
Karen Black as Myrtle Wilson
Scott Wilson as George Wilson
Lois Chiles as Jordan Baker
Edward Herrmann as Ewing Klipspringer
Howard Da Silva as Meyer Wolfsheim
Kathryn Leigh Scott as Catherine
Regina Baff as Miss Baedecker
Vincent Schiavelli as Thin Man
Roberts Blossom as Mr. Gatz
Beth Porter as Mrs. McKee
Patsy Kensit as Pammy Buchanan

About the novel, Wikipedia writes:

"The Great Gatsby is a novel by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book takes place from spring to autumn 1922, during a prosperous time in the United States known as the Roaring Twenties, which lasted from 1920 until the Wall Street Crash of 1929."

"Between 1920 and 1933, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, commonly known as Prohibition, completely banned the sale and manufacturing of all alcoholic beverages: distilled spirits, beer, and wine. The ban made millionaires out of bootleggers, who smuggled alcohol into the U.S.. The setting of the novel contributed greatly to its popularity following its early release, but the book did not receive widespread attention until after Fitzgerald's death in 1940, when republishings in 1945 and 1953 quickly found a wide readership. Today the book is widely regarded as a "Great American Novel" and a literary classic. The Modern Library named it the second best English-language novel of the 20th Century.[1]"

The Context section from SparkNotes writes:

"Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key, the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.

"Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him.

"Many of these events from Fitzgerald’s early life appear in his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick’s case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South.

"Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and throwing parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisy’s love. As the giddiness of the Roaring Twenties dissolved into the bleakness of the Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and Fitzgerald battled alcoholism, which hampered his writing. He published Tender Is the Night in 1934, and sold short stories to The Saturday Evening Post to support his lavish lifestyle. In 1937, he left for Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1940, while working on his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four.

"Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age.” Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up. Sprawling private parties managed to elude police notice, and “speakeasies”—secret clubs that sold liquor—thrived. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of the previous decade were turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the day.

"Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised."

The Great Gatsby is a very simple read in comparison to many classic books.

There is a definite plot line and the author jumps right in.  It is well written and easy to understand.

It is not my all time favorite book, but is a very good story. One that I think every (well read) American should probably have read. So, yes, I agree with it being listed on most of the 100 book lists.

I think it stands up well to the test of time and conveys the essence of an era.

I do not think any of my kids have read it. So, I am not sure it is still read in schools. I think once upon a time, it was.

In audio format, The Great Gatsby is 4 cd's at 4 3/4 hours, so an excellent book for a short trip or a long time in a waiting room.

If you are trying to think of the other title, by F. Scott Fitzgerald that I mentioned recently, it was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

My books - The Maltese Falcon. 107/56

This link takes you directly to The Big Read's radio show about the Maltese Falcon. It was most excellent discussion. I appreciated the book more fully after listing to the podcast (these podcasts are 1/2 hour and are extremely well done).  This book is not on SparkNotes, so finding it on The Big Read was a special treat.


I thought I had read The Maltese Falcon before, but after reading it this time, I am pretty sure I did not. I also do not think I ever saw the movie

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film directed by John Huston, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade; Mary Astor as his femme fatale client; Gladys George; Peter Lorre; and Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut. The film was Huston's directorial debut and was nominated for three Academy Awards. 

But I have a vague memory of seeing The Black Bird and really enjoying it (even though it got terrible reviews). It came out in 1975 and I would have been 14. I might have been a lot like middle, who never saw a movie she did not like, at that age.


Of the novel, The Maltese Falcon, Wikipedia writes:

"The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine Black Mask. The story has been adapted several times for the cinema. The main character, Sam Spade, appears only in this novel and in three lesser known short stories, yet is widely cited as the crystallizing figure in the development of the hard-boiled private detective genre – Raymond Chandler's character Philip Marlowe, for instance, was strongly influenced by Hammett's Spade. Spade was a departure from Hammett's nameless detective, The Continental Op. Sam Spade combined several features of previous detectives, most notably his cold detachment, keen eye for detail, and unflinching determination to achieve his own justice."

"In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Maltese Falcon 56th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century."

I expected to LOVE this book, because I like mysteries. Most of these books, I go in with no expectations at all. I usually do not know what the topic is and often nothing about the author. So, I suspect my expectations set me up a bit. As I mentioned above, I appreciated the book more after listening to the podcast.

I read this book for one of my discussion groups. And in the discussion we realized that those who read it with no expectations or even expecting to dislike it, really liked this book. Those of us who love mysteries, spy, detective type books and started in expecting to love it, were sort of disappointed.

So, low expectations liked it a lot, high expectations were sort of ambivalent in the end.

It was not a bad book, by any means, I enjoyed it. I agree it belongs on the 100 books lists because of its historical context. And the book/Sam Spade is referenced constantly in other works. When something is mentioned that often, it is nice to have read it and understand the significance.

The writing style is very different. I think I read somewhere that the pace is unusual for a modern reader (2000's). It is not difficult to understand, the style just sets it in the 1930's distinctly. So, maybe it was very modern and very American for the 1930's.

And even though I do not think I have ever seen the movie, I pictured Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre all the way through my listen.