50 Books to Read Before You Die

words to inspire before you expire

Tag: Nature

January 28, 2019 /

“The peace of Manderley. The quietude and the grace. Whoever lived within its walls, whatever trouble there was and strife, however much uneasiness and pain, no matter what tears were shed, what sorrows born, the peace of Manderley could not be broken or the loveliness destroyed. The flowers that died would bloom again another year, the same birds build their nests, the same trees blossom. That old quiet moss smell would linger in the air, and bees would come, and crickets, and herons build their nests in the deep dark woods. The butterflies would dance their merry jig across the lawns, and spiders spin foggy webs, and small startled rabbits who had no business to come trespassing poke their faces through the crowded shrubs. There would be lilac, and honeysuckle still, and the white magnolia buds unfolding slow and tight beneath the dining-room window. No one would ever hurt Manderley. It would lie always in its hollow like an enchanted thing, guarded by the woods, safe, secure, while the sea broke and ran and came again in the little shingle bays below.”

—from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

October 22, 2018 /

“At first he thought the war could be fought and concluded swiftly in a traditional way. Then he watched the machine gunners pouring bullets into the lines of advancing German infantry as though there was no longer any value accorded to a mere human life. He saw half his platoon die under the shells of the enemy’s opening bombardment. He grew used to the sight and smell of torn human flesh. He watched the men harden to the mechanical slaughter. There seemed to him a great breach of nature which no one had the power to stop.”

—from Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

October 15, 2018 /

“None of these men would admit that what they saw and what they did were beyond the boundaries of human behavior. You would not believe, Jack thought, that the fellow with his cap pushed back, joking with his friend at the window of the butcher’s shop, had seen his other mate dying in a shell-hole, gas frothing in his lungs. No one told; and Jack too joined the unspoken conspiracy that all was well, that no natural order had been violated.”

—from Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

October 8, 2018 /

“At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearthstone cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.”

—from Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Missing From the List: The Awakening

April 12, 2018 /

Welcome back class.

My impression is that most people don’t know what The Awakening by Kate Chopin is—I definitely didn’t when I read it for the first time for a college class. It’s a novella, 39 short chapters, focusing on a woman’s deterioration and transformation (a lot like The Bell Jar and Anna Karenina—probably why it didn’t make the list, since it made less of an impact than two other well-known and similar novels).

But The Awakening sets itself apart—what looks like the deterioration of a character may actually be a kind of empowerment. Where Anna Karenina depicts a woman who succumbs to her own loneliness, and The Bell Jar features a woman who attempting to conquer depression, The Awakening focuses on a woman who, above all, breaks free. To the other characters in her life, it looks like hysteria or psychosis. But there may be something more to her predicament.

Protagonist Edna Pontellier is a caged woman—a mother and wife living at the turn-of-the-century in New Orleans. Her cage is her husband, her children, even her own mind’s tiredness . . . she is asleep, in more ways than one. A series of small emotional prods begin to “wake her up” and clue her in to the nature of her life, which she realizes she doesn’t want. Her happiness has been set aside for the sake of who she is supposed to be, but it’s never a life she wanted.

A woman in Edna’s life named Adèle helps her realize her caged-ness, which upends life for Mr. Pontellier and their children. She begins to abandon them and all other “obligations.” But she isn’t searching for her own happiness anymore—that’s too cheap a thing to sacrifice a family for, even one she doesn’t want. Edna abandons the things that she’s supposed to be tethered to by Nature’s command. Societal restraints, emotional attachments, marital vows, human instinct . . . she eventually abandons all of these attachments, even her body’s attachment to life. For Edna, this is what it means to be awake: to break free of the cage Nature has put us in.

There’s no doubt that The Awakening is controversial. It seems to champion suicidal behavior in a way that even The Bell Jar couldn’t boast of. Edna’s decision to abandon her children is sorrowful at best, deplorable at worst. Even seeing Edna’s actions as a kind of awakening is controversial—her choices easily indicate a disturbed mind.

Author Kate Chopin

Chopin keeps it complicated. If we as readers are to really believe Edna’s motivations as a true awakening of self, we have to attribute some sense to her actions. But I wouldn’t say Chopin’s goal is to get us to sympathize with Edna’s frame of mind—I think that Chopin’s goal in writing The Awakening was to make us question our motives as human beings, and to question the characteristics humanity lends itself to, like parenthood, desire, loyalty, and even love. What if love is some kind of evolutionary imperative that keeps the species alive? Are we trapped in a cage, like Edna, because of our “obligation” to emotions like love, or concepts like humanity?

To make people ask questions like that is enough reason to put The Awakening on the list of 50 books to read before you die—as it should have been.

I’m still finishing up The Diary of Anne Frank. It’s a complete leap from The Awakening—I’m getting a little whiplash thinking about both at once. Chopin’s fictional story lets me question the flaws in human nature, but Anne Frank’s story will restore my faith in it, even with the stakes she faced.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts on her story next time.

Prof. Jeffrey

The Wind in the Willows

July 5, 2017 /

Hello again, class.

The Wind in the Willows is one of the most pleasant stories I’ve read in a long time. It’s short and entertaining, full of talking animals on crazy adventures, and never shallow enough to lose suspension of disbelief. More importantly, it’s a children’s story—easily what a parent would read to their children every night, which means unlike most novels on the 50-books list, this actually is something everyone should (and could) read.

The story follows four animal characters, who each live on or around a great river: the Mole, the Water Rat, the Toad, and the Badger. Their stories intersect mildly, as the Mole adventurously abandons his home or the Toad tries desperately to return to his own, and the characters gather together at the end to wrap up the plot. It’s funny and sweet.

Author Kenneth Grahame

I don’t think the story and characters would be all that special, though, if it wasn’t for Kenneth Grahame’s writing. He adapted the bedtime stories he would tell his son into this novel, and because of that, he made it meaningful. Grahame balanced the animal-instinct for adventure with the desire for the comforts of home; he harnessed the distinctions between creatures and embraced those differences; and he portrayed the simple elements of nature with the same depth and complexity as the world of humanity can be perceived—at least by a child. His care for this story made it beautiful, and that’s why it makes the list.

Everything seems to have a dream-like quality as well, and that’s no mistake—the word “dream” is used obnoxiously often. Apart from a few main story arcs, most of the chapters feel like individual short stories, jumping between random plot points like a dream would. The talking animals, the exciting adventures, the beautifully comforting language . . . The Wind in the Willows is a childhood dream brought to life.

I do still question it’s inclusion on the list. The excellent writing and the portrayal of a child’s fantasy dreamworld is already on the list—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll’s classic is also much more popular and more fantasy-heavy than The Wind in the Willows, so why include Grahame’s novel at all? If we needed another children’s fantasy, we could have also included The Hobbit or Peter Pan . . . why The Wind in the Willows?

I don’t have much of an answer. It’s not that The Wind in the Willows is bad, but there are plenty of books missing from this list. Any one of them could have replaced this one. In any case, this would only be a concern if we were ranking the books on this list, and since that’s not what the list is about, I encourage you all to give this story a go.

I’m reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird next—for my book #25! Halfway there! And there’s no better book to wrap up the first half of my blog with.

Until next time!

Prof. Jeffrey

June 30, 2017 /

“As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that he was an animal of tilled field and hedge-row, linked to the ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings, the cultivated garden-plot. For others the asperities, the stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their way, to last for a lifetime.”

—from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

March 17, 2017 /

“Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts . . . I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea, and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propensity of nature tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.”

—from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

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