Pretty Posies

The soft fragrance of posies are wafting in through the open windows. I am all smiles. I love the approach of spring. The chill of winter is finally gone(at least for today) and the sunshine is lovely. Here are a few of the flowers I planted up today.

Happy planting!

Review: Moll Flanders

Moll Flanders
by Daniel Defoe

A masterful gold digger, conniver, and survivor, Moll exploits her formidable
talents to evade poverty.

That is the concise summary from 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. It is written in the style of an autobiography that Moll pens as a penitent reflecting back on her life of mischief and crime. While she appears sorry for her life she also seems to enjoy the telling of it just a touch.

A master of plain prose, powerful narrative, and realistic detail, Daniel Defoe
is regarded by many as the first true novelist.

To you or I the writing may seem normal or ordinary but in it's own time this plain text was very new. It was unusual to write as one speaks. This is exactly the feel of the book. You can imagine Ms. Flanders sitting in your living room, sipping tea, telling you about her life.

I did feel the detail was sometimes a bit too much. And by the end of the book I was getting pretty bored. It took me three nights to finish the last 50 pages because I kept falling asleep. By today's standards it was mild. The details led you to know what was going on without giving any explicit information. Overall, not a bad read but not a candidate for a reread. I shall have to read Robinson Crusoe sometime soon.

P.S. This was #3 from my list for the Winter Classics Challenge.

Must I?

I've borrowed this from the library and thought it would be fun to see how many books I'd read. I very quickly realized I hadn't even heard of a great many of these titles. Here's what I did learn about myself:

Books I've Read-48

Books I Own-105

Books I've Heard Of-197

Some of the titles I knew as movies but didn't realize they were books first(duh). And I found out I know virtually nothing of books from the twentieth century. Judging by some of the descriptions this is not an entirely bad thing. Plenty of these books don't sound like I need to bother. I think I shall stick to my Victorian Era and kiddie lit.

I am considering purchasing the 1001 Books book to have as a reference. It gives a description of all 1001 books. Not all the descriptions include a plot summary. There is also info. about the author and the technique that made the book great. Some of the descriptions were a little wordy(too intellectual) for me but overall it gave lots of useful information. And of the 48 books I have read, I only found one small error in a summary.

In case you'd like to browse the titles for yourself, you can find the list here.