Classic's Club Spin #2: I am Ready

Time for the second spin? All right, I took 2 or 3 books off the list because I've finished it. Haha. But now here they are, the 20 books I would enrol in this Russian Roulette.

1. Pushkin - Eugine Onegin
2. Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
3. Spencer - Faerie Queen
4. Queen – The Chinese Orange Mystery
5. Conrad - Secret Agent
6. Sabatini - Captain Blood
7. Dickens - Tale of Two Cities
8. Sabatini - Scaramouche
9. Shakespeare – Lucrece
10. Verne - 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
11. Wilde - Importance of Being Earnest
12. James - Portrait of A Lady
13. Dickens - Christmas Carol
14. Dumas Jr. - Camille
15. Shakespeare - Sonnets
16. Voltaire - Candide
17. Doyle - The White Company
18. Sheridan - School for Scandal
19. Dumas - Man in the Iron Mask
20. Austen - Pride and Prejudice

See you again next Monday. 

Weekend Quote #41

Three weeks without any quote! Why, I'm at failure as a host. Such thing must not happen again. Hopefully. So here's this week's.

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”

From Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Beautiful thing to say, isn't it? Yes, of course, but not in its context.

It was spoken after Gatsby's death, by a friend of his. In his life, many people claimed to be his friends. Many overexploited is generosity and felt no shame at all about it. They took their advantage of him and gossiped about him behind his back. Those people were just like parasites around him.

Then he died, and nobody seemed to care about what he was truly like, or who he was truly, or anything about him. It's just so sad. They didn't even bother to attend his funeral.

Out of context, however, the quote sounds really good. We have the opportunity to love people and let them know that we love them only while they are alive. Let's show our loved ones 'friendship' while we can. We don't know what will happen tomorrow, and we don't want to regret having missed an opportunity to truly love somebody.

That's the quote for this week. Share yours!

LRP May Meme: Music

If music be the food of love, play on. - William Shakespeare

Music. It is one of the most beautiful expressions that humanity can develop during its existence. Shakespeare, being a writer, wrote some lyrics as well, to be played during his play. Another quote of him says that 'a man that has no music in himself' is not to be trusted.

But this month we're talking about music in greater scale. We will talk about any music. Anything. Any melody you can think about when you read this month's tragedy. It could be Prokoviev's Romeo and Juliet, Verdi's Otello, or other other classical music. It could even be modern. If Hamlet reminds you of Kelly Clarkson's If No One will Listen or Josh Groban's Let Me Fall (the song is so suicidal, by the way), you can put it in the meme as well.

Don't forget to give a youtube/soundcloud link as well (when possible). It's fun to share some music with the rest of the participants, isn't it?

The Great Gatsby: “Frailty, Thy Name is Woman”, No, Man Too

I didn't expect the story to be like this. I expected it to be nicely boring just like This Side of Paradise, just a story of everyday life with occasional thrill in it. I expected it to be neither sad nor happy, neither exciting nor tedious, and the book is anything else but that.

The Great Gatsby is a story of a great rich person named Gatsby – quite obvious there. He loved to make parties for other people, and those people flocked to his house, invited or uninvited, had fun, and left. He seemed to be popular without having a friend, rich without having happiness, and busy without having a purpose. So much reason to pity him.

On the other side of the story there were the Bucchanans – man and wife. The man had a mistress, and the wife secretly loved Gatsby. They, Gatsby and Daisy (the wife's name), had a past, but that's just all. The woman married another, and Gatsby still loved her all the same. But, hey, she was already married.

Another part of the story now. Nick, Gatsby neighbour, liked Daisy's friend, Jordan. For some time, she liked him too. But Nick was far wiser than that to let his heart carried away by such a capricious woman. 

I think the strength of this novel is in the characters. They are so human (and I hate that). No hero, no good man, no innocent lady. They're just people. I read the pages and muttered, "Human being!" in disappointment. That's how it is. 

I cannot write how the story ends. I just can't. To be honest, my eyes are still wet because I cried reading it. (I finished reading it less than five minutes ago.) What I want to say is 'I should have known'. Truly, because I heard that Leonardo diCaprio will play in the upcoming film, I should have known it'd be tragic.

And instead I thought it would be boring. How stupid is that?

Let’s Read Plays: Check-In #2

Check-in! Yay! This is one of the most interesting reading events I'm participating in this year, although I must confess that I have been more than busy lately, with a lot of things distracting my mind (among which Shakespeare, my thesis, and my own capricious self are the main reasons). So, while idly (which I should not be) waiting in the library, being sad and romantic after watching Giselle on YouTube, I decide to write the check-in. (I know, I haven't written a check-in for my own event, but whatever.)

How have your Let’s Read Plays been during these six months, still exciting, or a bit boring? Did you read all the monthly themes, or did you miss several ones?

AMAZING! I have always loved Shakespeare, so it becomes more like an entertainment than a burden to me. I LOVE reading those plays. I read all the monthly themes, luckily in time. I even managed to read 2 tragedies in the first month of the challenge. And it's still as exciting as ever. I expect to read more in months to come.

What has been your favorite, or your failure (if any)?

JC is a re-read, and Richard III is too dark. I'd say Antony and Cleopatra is my favourite tragedy this far, and LLL wins the comedy category.


Which play are you expecting the most in the next six months?

Othello. I must read it one day anyway, so why not now? I am also curious about Wilde, since I've never touched any of his plays yet. I still don't know about the "free months." Maybe Sheridan's School for Scandal or Shaw's Pygmalion, or both.


Have you been participated in Let’s Read Plays memes? Are you excited to participate more in the future?

Yeah! I must admit that the history stuff quite drained my brain, but the rest were quite enjoyable. I didn't participate in the costume theme (shame on me), but I try my best not to miss anything anymore. As for the Character Thursday, of course I enjoy it. What's more amazing than fangilring or ranting about a character you love or hate? But it's hard for me to do it each month. I am not good at describing people, I guess.

So, there. Hope you enjoy the event as much as I do. :D

Narrative Poem Reading Challenge Check-In #1

The first check-in for our challenge. Feel free to write anything you feel relevant with NPRC and share your progress. Don't worry, even if you haven't finished anything, we want to encourage ourselves to keep reading. Yay! Here are some questions which might help (but not mandatory):

• Have you enjoyed any narrative poem this year? Which one?
• How's your progress through the challenge?
• Do you have any plan to read any narrative poem in the near future? 

I leave a linky here, so please comment or make a check-in post and put it in the linky. Have fun~

The Maltese Falcon: Smart Guy and Pretty Liar

I read this book while waiting decades for my academic transcript. The book is not so long after all, and I finished it before the transcript finished processing anyway, so, I had to spend tedious hours afterwards. But that's not the point.

Let's talk about the story. Two detectives, Spade and Archer, were asked by a lady to tail a man named Thursby. Archer followed the man as told, while Spade took care of the office. But before they got any explanation, information, or any of the sort, Archer was killed, Thursby was too, and Spade became a suspect.

Spade, partly for his partner, partly for his pride as a detective, and partly because the money that he would get, investigated the matter by himself, dodging the police using his influence and reputation in the city. He then knew that the people involved in the tragedy were after a bigger fish – the Maltese Falcon – a little bird statuette worth a fortune.

With his genius brain he got into the circle and tried to win at the game. But the lady who first got him into this was worse than anyone could imagine.

This is my first time reading anything by Hammett, and anything like this too. I like it and I don't like it. I like the story. It's amusing, original, and interesting. But I'm not a fan of the writing style. I feel like it's flat, unemotional, not thrilling or exciting. It's like watching a spy film with people tailing people for minutes on screen.

The book deserves its place in classic detective stories. Unlike some detective stories which focus on killing and tricks and so make the story sounds silly and purposeless, this story rings true. People commit crime for a purpose, not for hobby (except for a psychopath, of course). The detective, Spade, is also so human. He's not a hero I expect, but a man fit for his profession. Although I can't agree, I understand why some people think that it's the best detective story in the world.