My Summer Reading Plans

A TBR full of classics to revisit!

I would invite you to go get yourself a cup of tea or coffee preparatory to today’s new blog and vlog, but if your present weather is anything like my present weather, then a bowl of ice cream or a nice icy glass of lemon water would be more appropriate! I’ve been trying to use my hammock and garden table and chairs for reading as much as possible before the mosquitos make being outdoors more of a hassle. My summer to-be-read list is somewhat ambitious; I’m hoping to make it a summer of classics. 👍 Here’s a smattering of the books I’ve been making progress in so far…

The Lost Lady by Will Cather

When I was planning this classics TBR video, I thought maybe I should think of a few words to say about classics - not so much why they’re important, just how they’re utterly magical - and then Willa Cather provided me with this excellent summation…

“He did not think of these books as something invented to beguile the idle hour, but as living creatures, caught in the very behavior of living - surprised behind their misleading severity of form and phrase. He was eavesdropping upon the past, being let into the great world that had plunged and glittered and sumptuously sinned long before little Western towns were even dreamed of. Those rapt evenings beside the lamp gave him a long perspective, influenced his conception of the people about him, made him know just what he wished his own relations with these people to be.”

“Eavesdropping on the past” - that’s it exactly! I think of classics as time travel. You get to have a one-on-one conversation with great minds from the past, and you also become part of a conversation that stretches across the generations, across the continents, joining all the other readers who have also been impacted by that classic.

A Lost Lady was an impromptu used bookstore purchase, and in the first chapters I was wondering if I’d wasted my $3, but I’m happy to say the writing and the intricacy of the characters and their relationships won me over.

The Aeneid by Virgil

“When summer had just begun, Anchises gave word to hoist sail to the winds of destiny. Weeping, I drew away from our old country, our quiet harbors, and the coastal plain where Troy had been: I took to the open sea, borne outward into exile with my people, my son, my hearth gods, and the greater gods.”

It shouldn’t be too surprising to find The Aeneid on my summer reading list, considering I spent last summer (and the latter half of the year) traveling with Virgil - and Dante - through The Divine Comedy. Virgil lived in ancient Roman times and died before Christ was born, but Dante respected his dedication to his faith and to the divine. It’s easy to see Virgil’s sense of the importance of reverence in The Aeneid. The tale follows Aeneas, a Trojan prince, and his devotion to the gods is constantly invoked and described; the Greeks, on the other hand, are seen desecrating holy places as they ransack Troy. Book II, “How They Took the City,” is a very evocative and thrilling description of the aftermath of the classic wooden horse gambit. The story of Troy is so epic and enduring; I’m excited to revisit it through Virgil’s eyes this summer!

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

“The elements, of whom your swords are tempered, may as well wound the loud winds, or with bemocked-at stabs kill the still-closing waters, as diminish one dowle that’s in my plume.”

Hopefully it will be a Shakespearian summer as well as a classical summer! It was great to be in the habit of reading a Shakespeare play every month last year; I’d like to get back into the swing of it with some of the more popular plays this year. It really is hard to match Shakespeare’s language; it’s poetic and deep and melodic, then quick-paced and witty, then high-flown and romantic, then contemptuous and peremptory, like Ariel’s speech above. It’s wonderful to immerse yourself in the flow of it.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I’ve been spending some June hours reading in my garden while Mrs. Dalloway whisks me away to a June day in London! There’s such a beautiful rhythm to Virginia Woolf’s writing once you catch the hang of it. Thoughts and descriptions that seem disparate on the surface somehow follow each other naturally, smoothly, inevitably in her lyrical, stream-of-consciousness style. Here are a few of the passages I’ve marked, extracted as best I can manage from the novel’s very loose sentence structure (semi-colons seem to be to Virginia Woolf what dashes were to Emily Dickinson, lol)

“…Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.”

“Away and away the aeroplane shot, till it was nothing but a bright spark; an aspiration; a concentration; a symbol…”

“Lucy shared as she meant her to her disappointment (but not the pang); felt the concord between them; took the hint…gilded her own future with calm…”

I’m going to start “gilding my future with calm,” I like that! I’m sure I will be collecting many more beautiful quotations to share throughout the summer, and there will be lots more fun reading updates in next Friday’s June Reading Vlog so stay tuned. 😊 Happy Summer Reading, friends!