40-Week Reading Goals Update (2023)
2023 Reading Goals: Progress!
1. Finish Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: DONE!
2. Read Tartuffe by Molière (a play): DONE!
3. Candide by Voltaire (a satirical novella): DONE!
4. The French Revolution by Hilaire Belloc: DONE!
5. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: DONE!
6. Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts: DONE!
7. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: read 35/117 chapters
8. Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: DONE!
9. An anthology of French poetry: DONE!
10. Pensées by Blaise Pascal: read the introduction by T.S. Eliot
11. The First Discourse by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: DONE!
Lafayetteby Harlow Giles Unger:DONE!From Mother and Daughter: an anthology of the writings of Madeleine and Catherine des Roches: I read thirteen more of Madeleine des Roches’s poems
Other (Non-French) Things I Read:
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - sublime
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald - a children’s classic that I still can’t decide if I really like it. Not all of the characters are equally well written. Curdie and his mother are great, but Princess Irene is sometimes flat and sometimes well-rounded, and sometimes just the Victorian child who is too precious to words.
Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers - a confusing murder mystery. Props to her, I didn’t figure it out beforehand.
It Had to Be You by Jill Churchill - a so-so 1930s historical-fiction murder mystery that takes place half an hour from my home in the Hudson Valley.
Talking as Fast as I Can and Have I Told You This Already? by Lauren Graham - my husband and I are slowly working our way through Gilmore Girls, so it was fun to read “Lorelai’s” memoirs.
I began War and Peace with my husband. My aforementioned book club will be reading Anna Karenina in January, and while I’m very excited, I mentioned one night that I was sad because I’d always hoped War and Peace would be my first full-length Russian novel - plus, now that I know my Napoleonic Wars, I will really understand what’s going on! He very sweetly suggested we start reading War and Peace together, right then and there. I’ve rarely been more in love with him than I was at that moment. We can only manage a couple of chapters a week, and there are 360 chapters, so we won’t finish it for a long time. Anna Karenina will be the first Russian novel I finish, but I will at least have started War and Peace first.
A selection of what I read with my kids: The Last Battle, Nothing Like a Puffin, Horton Hatches the Egg, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck, Bedtime for Miyuki, Farmhouse
Bible: Genesis, Psalms, Job, Matthew
Journal-Style Reflections
The Count of Monte Cristo
I considered dropping this from my goals for this year. Am I really up to another thousand-page novel with dozens of characters and different timelines?
Um, yes, I am. I was hooked on this story from the first chapter. I'm about 250 pages in now. Just like Victor Hugo, Dumas enjoys changing the narrator completely every fifty pages or so, but it always pays off, at least so far.
Pensées
I usually skip publisher’s introductions to classic works of literature, but I make an exception when they’re written by T.S. Eliot, as was the case here. For example:
“It is a commonplace that some forms of illness are extremely favourable, not only to religious illumination, but to artistic and literary composition. A piece of writing meditated, apparently without progress, for months or years, may suddenly take shape and word; and in this state long passages may be produced which require little or no retouch. I have no good word to say for the cultivation of automatic writing as the model of literary composition; I doubt whether these moments can be cultivated by the writer; but he to whom this happens assuredly has the sensation of being a vehicle rather than a maker. No masterpiece can be produced whole by such means; but neither does even the higher form of religious inspiration suffice for the religious life; even the most exalted mystic must return to the world, and use his reason to employ the results of his experience in daily life. You may call it communion with the Divine, or you may call it a temporary crystallisation of the mind. Until science can teach us to reproduce such phenomena at will, science cannot claim to have explained them; and they can be judged only by their fruits.”
Madeleine des Roches’s poems
Madeleine des Roches often turned to her poetry when she was at her lowest, and the selection I read this time included the death of a best friend and her husband. Here are some of my favorite lines.
“Sonnet 8”
Someone with better luck will say of my complaining,
My painful sighs, and my groaning:
This woman never had anything but disquiet;
One finds only unpleasantness written on her chart.
Is she telling the truth, or is this a made-up lie?
Are her sad words mere rhetorical exercise?
The loss of rest causes me torment
A hundred and a hundred thousand times more than I complain of
My reason is troubled by lack of sleep,
My words are faltering, my memory is injured,
Fear turns my brain into mush.
My keen mind grows dim,
And of my former self I am left with nothing except
That I prefer writing to spinning.
from “Sonnet 20”
But to disdain all traditions,
In no way to moderate one’s imperfections,
To drag after oneself the besotted multitude,
Are the plans of these wily preachers,
Who have, in the name of Virtue, disguised
Ambition, error, and ingratitude.
“Sonnet 35”
O Lord God! Elevate my thoughts,
Make it so that I may embrace in great devotion
Your painful and holy passion,
Sure payment for the law that was transgressed.
To you, my God, my prayer is addressed:
Lord, help my imperfection,
Deliver me from this affliction,
Which has from Heaven lowered me to earth.
Engrave upon my heart your just truth,
Guide my steps on the path of equity,
Kind Lord in whom alone I trust.
I wish to offer on your holy altar,
O living God, my immortal spirit,
Which, dead in me, in you is given life.
from “Sonnet 36”
Alas! Where is your graceful young self now,
And your noble spirit more beautiful than beauty itself?
Where your gentle demeanor, your sweet acquaintance?
You were given them by Heaven, and they have returned there.
from “Epitaph for Master Francoic Eboissard, Lord of La Villee, Her Husband”
My body is not alone beneath this frigid grave:
The heart of my companion there rests with mine.
Our friendship will never forsake her spirit;
Death cannot break such a bond.
O God, whose virtue, cloistered in Heaven,
Cloisters Heaven itself, may it be your will that my better half
Do well in all her actions,
Forever honoring our holy friendship.
Next Steps
Read six sections of Pensées.
Read fifty more chapters of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Read at least five more poems from the des Roches.
Read Frankenstein for my book club.