Middlemarch by George Eliot

3 words: lyrical, character-focused, absorbing

Middlemarch. I still can’t believe how much I love this book. And as the weeks go by, I continue to ponder it and feel enriched by having read it.

Part of me wishes I’d read it earlier in life, because one of the things I hear over and over is that readers who return to this book find themselves observing the characters differently as their own circumstances and life experiences change. I love that this book is bountiful enough to offer that kind of reading. I’ll have to begin my re-reading experience closer to midlife… and I’m OK with that. But it would’ve been more rewarding to have had a younger person’s take on it.

Here are the aspects I loved most…

The characters

While Dorothea Brooke could be considered the main character, the other characters — so beautifully drawn, so complex and vivid, so imperfectly human — are vitally important to every aspect of the story.

Eliot lovingly crafted not only a rich and nuanced story, but also a cast of individuals who are realistic enough that I feel like I could carry on a conversation with them. I feel like we go way back.

And the characters and the situations they face are real and painful and joyful and strange and uncomfortable and comforting and loving and harsh.

There are young people doing foolish things, and older people, too. And young couples figuring out the world and older couples who are happy. And others who are not. And the small details of their interactions make them abundantly real. I feel like this book could be read as profiles of four married couples. I didn’t expect the wisdom that emerges from the way the people of this book relate to one another. But it’s the greatest gift this book gave me.

The narrator

Another surprise: the narrative voice was fascinating. An omniscient narrator comments on the actions and secret motivations of the characters, and the warm wisdom of that voice was comforting and delightful and unexpected. It seemed a very modern way of telling the story.

The language

Classics can kinda scare me, because dense prose can be tiresome. But this book wasn’t scary and wasn’t hard to read. It wasn’t dense or burdensome. While Eliot is fond of the Very Long Sentence (some of them went on for a full paragraph), she knows how to string together words in a very pleasing way. I found that I needed to slow down my reading a bit and just enjoy the words. The reading wasn’t difficult, but it wasn’t fast. It felt like a comfortable stroll through a beautiful garden — not hurried, and so much to claim one’s attention and to delight.

Now I want more

I found myself wanting to talk with readers who are set just like me, and ask them to give me another classic that’s this wise and warm and absorbing and delightful.

Give this book a whirl if you like… a big, absorbing story; classics; reading about a village; nuanced character portraits so detailed you’d recognize the characters if you met them; fiction that inspires the reader to examine her own life

So, my fellow readers… what classic novel is your favorite, and why should it be my next big read?

Today we conclude our tour of the Unruly Library with the little bookcase from my childhood nursery.

My mom must’ve known she had a little reader on the way, because she made sure there was a bookcase by my bed from the very beginning. (And she read aloud to me in the womb, which we both have always believed contributed enormously to how I turned out.)

Because it feels right, my children’s books—the ones that have survived year after year of librarian-like weeding cycles—are shelved in my childhood bookcase.

Here’s a list of the authors who dominate my childhood bookshelves, listed in the order in which I read them…

• Beverly Cleary
• Lois Lowry
• Louise Fitzhugh
• Madeleine L’Engle
• Gordon Korman
• Paula Danziger
• Jean Webster

And then we have a handful of mass market paperbacks from my high school years, when I read everything by Richard Bach and Catherine Marshall.

But my favorite book on the shelf is the most re-read book of my entire life: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. I finally bought a hardcover, because my paperback literally fell apart.

This bookcase just makes me happy.

What are the most-loved books of your childhood?

Today’s home library tour brings us to the reading room… which houses the lovely barrister bookcase.

I super-duper despise dusting, and besides looking all serious and historical and quaint, this puppy keeps the books from getting dusty.

The only thing I don’t adore is that each shelf is a different height, which leads to some very un-librarian-like blending of genres based solely on the size of the books. I get a little twitchy if I think about it too long. (There’s fiction on these shelves, people! Interspersed with nonfiction! Chaos reigns!!)

Despite the weirdness of the blend, there are four distinct collections on this bookcase. Let’s have a look.

Women’s Lives

I seriously adore a good autobiography or memoir by a woman who’s done remarkable things. And biographies of these women — they’re right up there, too. And sometimes I favor a perfectly told tale of everyday life. Here’s where the books about suffragists and spies and princesses are shelved.

Self-Improvement

We already know I can’t resist a solid self-improvement book. And here we have so many of my favorites…

Civil War

When I was in college and library school, my pleasure reading consisted of epic biographies of Civil War generals and lengthy, in-depth books about a single day of a single battle. I was truly a barrel of laughs. (My mom wanted to buy me clothes for Christmas, but I was committed to keeping that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain biography at the top of my wish list. Best mom ever? I’m quite sure: Yes.) Since that phase of my reading life preceded the blog years, there’s little evidence of it here. But it’s part of me.

The Titanic

This one goes all the way back to high school, when I first read A Night to Remember by Walter Lord. And then I was down that rabbit hole for years. During my Titanic reading phase, I lived in a 1903 house, and it delighted my mind (and haunted my nighttime thoughts) that people living in my house would’ve read about the event in the newspaper. In my current 1871 house, same thing. (Life goal: always live in a place that was built before the sinking of the Titanic)

Next week: we head into my reading past… Children’s books are up next.

So readers… What were the topics of reading phases you remember fondly?