B List: Charles Dickens--Barnaby Rudge............................623/634
C List: John Steinbeck--East of Eden..................................500/601
It's been a very busy summer, and not as much time to sit around reading as I might like. However, I will obviously be finished Barnaby Rudge and working on that report soon, and once that happens I can wrap up East of Eden too, a book which I have noted in past monthly reports that I am very fond of.
Tolstoy is always Tolstoy, naturally, though I thought that compared with other things I had read of his that The Cossacks during the beginning stages after the main character leaves Moscow and first settles in the Cossack territory was more like a conventional European novel of the 19th century, albeit a perfectly good one, but not as imbued with the special Tolstoy quality with his other books. However as the story progresses it is taking on more and more of that beautiful shape that comes from seeing and understanding the way people experience life in the most crucial instances of it (and small repetitive habits or instances of noticing can be crucial facets of experience, at least in literature and other art).
It's been a very hectic summer. Some changes are going on my house that have multiple rooms in a state of disarray. The children, while they have some activities, are not excessively busy, but there are just so many of them. It has been very hot as well, it has been in the mid-90s on several occasions, and living in an old house in the north we don't have air conditioning apart from window units in a couple of the bedrooms. No vacation or even very many outings. We've been to the Maine coast only once, on the fourth of July! It's a summer of reorganization.
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