nomadreader

The backstory: Anthony Trollope is one of my father's favorite authors, and when I heard the December theme for the Classics Circuit was Trollope, I found the perfect excuse to finally read one of his novels. Yes, I picked the shortest one, but it's also the first in a series, and I'm fascinated to tales of clergy in the British countryside. The basics: I'll let Modern Library treat you to a synopsis: "The first of Trollope's popular Barsetshire novels, set in the fictional cathedral town of Barchester, The Warden  centers on the honorably cleric Septimus Harding, one of Trollope's most memorable characters. When Harding is accused of mismanaging church funds, his predicament lays bare the complexities of the Victorian world and of nineteenth-century provincial life." My thoughts: For a book with only 209 pages, the reading experience was quite varied for me. There were times I adored Trollope's language: Mr. Harding had fully made up his min...

The backstory: I've been having a wonderful year reading more deliberately in terms of reading award-winning literature, but I haven't followed through on my goal of reading the classics. When I heard about the Meiji-era Japanese Classics tour, I decided to sign up. With the choice to pick anything written in Japan between 1868 and 1912, I chose Natsume Soseki's The Tower of London: Tales of Victorian London. My thoughts: The edition I read, which was translated by Damien Flanagan opens with a lengthy introduction and biography of Soseki. I found it incredibly helpful, as I knew very little about him in general or where this work fell in his chronology. While I probably would have enjoyed this work without the background knowledge, I wouldn't have understood nearly as much of it without Flanagan's introduction. Soseki was one of three writers hand-picked by the Japanese government to spend two years in England. Soseki was not excited to go to London, and had t...