Spinning Into Summer with number 6: Classics Club Spin

The number for this round of the Classics Club Spin was 6. That means a book from the "Gimme Gimme!" group for me and it is Villette by Charlotte Brontë. I am waiting for great things from this one. I also noticed that at least two other clubbers got the same book, so wohoo! 

 

Spinning Into Summer - the Classics Spin #2

Folks running The Classics Club thought it's a good idea to take out the top-hat again - and I wholeheartedly agree! Check more information on the Spin event from the web site.

 

During the last spin, I got to read "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis, which was a decent enough book tackling some really interesting moral dilemmas, which pretty much fit also into the nowadays' world.

 

This time I decided to add a random to the random - and I picked my 20 books with the help of Random.org. I then took the same categories I used last time to divide the books around. I added one book myself - "Moll Flanders" by Daniel Defoe, as there is 18th century literature event coming up in June.

 

Category 1: "Gimme Gimme Gimme!"

 

1. E. M. Forster "Howard's End"

2. Emilé Zola "Nana"

3. Michael Cunningham "The Hours" (Random.org chose that one even twice so I think it's only fair if it gets chosen :p)

4. Thomas Hardy "Jude the Obscure"

5. Arthur Conan Doyle - something from the Complete Sherlock collection (either a novella or a set of stories), since I refuse to read the whole Complete book at once.

6. Charlotte Brontë “Villette”

7. Daphne du Maurier "Rebecca"

 

Category 2: "Nooo! Have mercy!"

 

8. Charles Dickens "Bleak House"

9. Herman Melville "Moby Dick"

10. Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged"

11. Marcel Proust "Swann's Way"

12. Günter Grass "The Tin Drum"

Category 3: "Mh?"

 

13. Elizabeth Gaskell "The Life of Charlotte Brontë"

14. Ralph Ellison "Invisible Man"

15. Jerome K. Jerome "Three Men in a Boat"

16. John Irving "The World According to Garp"

17. Daniel Defoe "Moll Flanders"

 

Category 4: "Been there, done that..."

 

18. Toni Morrisson "Beloved"

19. Patrick Süskind "The Perfume"

20. Mark Twain "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"

 

Random.org was really generous, picking proportionally the most books for "Gimme!" category (although "No Mercy!" could have maybe used fewer - those five books spook me out merely by looking at their titles). If anyone has encouraging words about books 8. - 12., I'd be very grateful to read them :)

And now to wait for the top-hat results :)

C_Club #5 - "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis (Classics Spin)

The medical profession can have but one desire: to destroy the medical profession.

/p. 180/

 

I got to read "Arrowsmith" as a result of the Classics Spin event. The magical number 14 out of 20. It doesn't seem to be that widely read classics, so I hadn't seen any reviews, nor did I know much about Sinclair Lewis. And that was a good thing, as expectations can be a really, really bad thing more often than not.

 

From the back of the book:

 

Arrowsmith, the most widely read of Sinclair Lewis's novels, is the incisive portrait of a man passionately devoted to science. As a bright, curious boy in a small Midwestern town, Martin Arrowsmith spends his free time in old Doc Vickerson's office avidly devouring medical texts. Destined to become a physician and a researcher, he discovers that societal forces of ignorance, greed, and corruption can be as life-threatening as the plague.

 

Part satire, part morality tale, Lewis's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel illuminates the mystery and power of science while giving enduring life to a singular American hero's struggle for integrity and intellectual freedom in a small-minded world.

 

Boy, does Lewis have a sharp tongue pencil! There is a lot he dislikes, and he makes sure to put it out there. I was expecting some kind of a mad scientist tale, but it was not that. Martin is, to an extent, selfish, but he doesn't destroy lives. Quite the contrary. Sure, he is a very flawed character, but that only makes the story feel more realistic. And there is no "perfect" character in the book; all of them get slapped by Lewis more or less.

 

At first I did not like Martin Arrowsmith. He seemed to have no backspine. There were parts in the beginning where he seemed to be unable to make any decision when it came to choosing between two girls, so he ended up with an absolutely hilarious solution, summoning both girls to the lunch with him, admitting having been seeing them both and then decides to stay with the one who doesn't slap him or doesn't leave the table. It was a highly entertaining scene.

 

This story is timeless in the sense that the problems and dilemmas described in 1925 are pretty much the same in nowadays' world. When it comes to science - do you keep pursuing the Ultimate Medical Truth through the form of research, or do you sell out and work for people who want fast results, money and fame? Is acting like an everyday physician in a small settlement, curing people's pneumonias, broken legs and hypochondriac cases, really something that leads to new discoveries that mean something to humankind? Sure, we need doctors,  but if you have the talent and drive to spend sleepless nights and make a really big discovery that could change medicine for centuries to come, then such people maybe should focus on research instead.

 

The character that Lewis mocks the most is a doctor called Pickerbaugh. He is a man with political ambitions, and his daily work in the town consists mostly of mingling with the citizens, promoting health and sanitation through his VERY BAD verses, organising themed weeks such as a Write to Mother Week, an Eat More Corn Week, a Go to Church Week, Three Cigars a Day Week (?), Better the Babies Week, Banish the Booze Week, et cetera. Needless to say, Dr Pickerbaugh is highly popular among the townsfolk. Hilarious character but I'm not sure I'd want him to be my doctor.

 

One of the more tragic characters is Martin's wife Leora. We don't get to know much of her inside because although Martin needs her, he doesn't spend that much time at home or thinking about her and so the image the reader gets is that Leora has no life of her own, all she does is look after Martin's needs, sit with him hours and hours of nights in laboratories while he works, and never complains. She is an interesting character, although obviously criticised by Lewis for not having her own will and ways.

 

There are plenty more amusing and kind of over-the-top characters in the novel - I really enjoyed Lewis's take on the whole armada of different doctors, researchers, directors and families.

 

Lewis himself seemed to be an eccentric type as well. I already wrote here how he refused to accept the Pulitzer Prize, and that grew my respect for him; however, from the introduction of my "Arrowsmith" edition (written by Sally E. Parry) I read the following lines Lewis sent to his publisher Alfred Harcourt:

 

I hope they do award me the Pulitzer prize on Arrowsmith - but you know, don't you, that ever since the Main Street burglary, I have planned that if they ever did award it to me, I would refuse it, with a polite but firm letter which I shall let the press have, and which ought to make it impossible for any one ever to accept the novel prize (not the play or history prize) thereafter without acknowledging themselves as willing to sell out.

 

Arrogant much? :D Yea, that artsy folk sure can be eccentric.

 

I am totally happy I read this novel, I am pretty sure I will also read some of his other works like "Main Street" and "Babbit".

Classics Club Spin - #14

Classics Club Spin number was taken out of the top hat a few days ago and it was 14 - which means that based on the list I made for the event, I have to read "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis by April the 1st.

 

The book came from "Mh?" category, meaning I have little to zero knowledge about this novel. I have deliberately avoided reading anything related to it and all I know so far is that it has to do with medicine and science, which sounds exciting. I also know that in 1926, Sinclair was awarded Pulitzer Prize for this novel, which he refused to accept saying that all prizes are dangerous and because he did not believe his novel to be what the Pulitzer Prize symbolises (full letter from Lewis to the Pulitzer Prize Committee can be found here).

 

So, all in all I am quite happy with the choice right now and for over long time, I feel it is good to approach a novel I know nothing of beforehand. I don't even have a copy yet, so first I have to hunt the book down.

 

And, also good that I don't have to read "War and Peace" yet afterall :)

 

 

 

 

 

Spinning around - The Classics Spin!

The Classics Club has come up with some random fun - The Classics Spin. We have to list 20 titles from our still unread list of the classics (which is super easy for me since I only started this month and have read one book out of a hundred); come next Monday, a mystery person is going to pull a random number from 1 to 20 out of the top hat and people will have to finish their book under that number by the Fool's Day, 1st of April.

 

I've just created four sub-categories for this event and each of them consists of five books. I (think) I only added one mega-chunkster - "War and Peace", but otherwise trying to be realistic regarding the given time frame. Also, March is the month for the reading of Modernists, so that could possibly create some conflict of interest, depending on what number will be pulled...

 

But, without further ado, behold my list of random books:

 

Category 1: "Gimme Gimme Gimme!"

1. Ray Bradbury ”Something Wicked This Way Comes”

2. Umberto Eco “The Name of the Rose”

3. F. Scott Fitzgerald “Tender Is the Night”

4. Bram Stoker “Dracula”

5. Jane Austen “Mansfield Park”


Category 2: "Noooo! Have mercy!"

6. Charles Dickens “Bleak House”

7. Frank Herbert “Dune”

8. Jules Verne “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”

9. Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”

10. Leo Tolstoy “War and Peace

 
Category 3: "Mh?"

11. Willa Cather “My Antonia”

12. Kate Chopin “The Awakening”

13. Ralph Ellison “Invisible Man”

14. Sinclair Lewis “Arrowsmith”

15. Yevgeny Zamyatin “We”


Category 4: "Oops... Did it again... Yadda yadda."

16. Gabriel Garcia Marquez “One Hundred Years of Solitude”

17. Milan Kundera “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”

18. William Shakespeare “Hamlet”

19. Patrick Süskind “The Perfume”

20. Fyodor Dostoyevski “Idiot”