Note: Copy-pasted from Word. Any formatting issues are not my fault, they are Blogger's.
8. A Simple Soul, Gustave Flaubert
Story time: my uncle is obsessed with electronics, so when I got into his alma mater, he was so proud that the most logical thing to do in his mind was to buy me a Kindle! So this novelette has the honor of being the first thing I read off my Kindle. All classics are free (!), so reading books just got a whole lot more convenient.
Flaubert has the honor of being one of my favorite (classics) authors. I found a beautiful old copy of Madame Bovary at the local library, hardbound and everything, last year, and it was a great read, though very sad. No surprise, A Simple Soul is also extremely depressing. It follows the life of a servant named Felicitee who, for most of her life, serves a widow with one son and one daughter. She pours her life into successively loving one being after another: first a young man, then her patroness’s daughter and son, then her own nephew, then a parrot. One after another, these beings die and leave her behind. Throughout, she keeps a love of God in her heart, but even he seems to desert her at the end, when she is left to die a pauper, deaf, blinded—agonizingly slowly. Yeah, I know, SPOILERS. The story’s really not about the plot, though, as Felicitee’s life is not very interesting and verges on the pathetic; it’s more about the meaninglessness of always living your life for others and never for yourself.
I much preferred Madame Bovary because…well, it had more plot. I liked this short piece, and it’s very self-contained, but I’d recommend Madame Bovary as a more interesting read.
9. The Professor, Charlotte Bronte
Remember for later: this was another book I read on my Kindle.
I love Jane Eyre. It’s my favorite (classic) book ever, and I want to watch the new movie! As in, REALLY badly!!! Anyway, The Professor, in my opinion, is not as good as Jane Eyre. This can’t be helped, as this was the novel Charlotte was working on when she died, so it’s not really complete; it shows, too, as the story kind of gets bogged down in preaching at some points, and it carries on too far past the wedding (SPOILER :P) at the end. It also has some annoying bits that would definitely not be considered PC today. For example, the narrator occasionally implies that only Protestants can be good and moral, and that anyone who is Catholic is sly and deceitful and sinful and all that. Um, yeah....
But what is the book about? Essentially, it follows a man named William Crimsworth, who after leaving college breaks his connections with his condescending richer relatives (class conflict commentary FTW) and makes up his mind to make his own way in the world, first turning to his long-lost brother to give him a start in trade. Obviously, given the title, that doesn’t work out, but he manages to get a position teaching at a school in Brussels, where he becomes a professor (essentially, a teacher of Latin and English). There, we follow his path towards becoming successful by hard work, both financially and in love.
If you look at it in the way you would a first draft, then it’s an amazing book; every plot twist is brilliant, and if you’re like me, you find yourself wholeheartedly shipping the main couple by the end. I would recommend if you read this and don’t know French, though, that you not get the Kindle free version, and that you not get a crappy edition without notes. It was assumed at the time that educated people all knew French, so when William gets to Brussels, basically every few lines, Charlotte will randomly switch to people talking in French in the book WITH NO TRANSLATION PROVIDED. You seriously don’t want to end up chained to Google Translate while reading like I was. -_-
Otherwise, I quite enjoyed The Professor, though not as much as I expected to. I do still recommend it.
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