Book Fever

It appears I have ignited a small fire in my husband for reading. After reading Sh*t My Father Says I encouraged him to read a similarly funny book, You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up. Unfortunately, he isn’t as enchanted with this witty book about marital un-bliss as he was with the aforementioned Sh*t, but is reading it none the less.

I just finished Mansfield Park by Jane Austen for my book club and needless to say it was a difficult read. Not only was the language obtrusive, but the lack of a strong female character made it very difficult for me to want to keep reading. Fortunately, I jumped ahead and read the end which made me more eager to finish the book. Yet in spite of jumping ahead I was still surprised by the ending because by skipping to the end I missed out why it ended the way it did. Does that make sense? In a nutshell Fanny marries her cousin Edmund (which is what I read when I jumped to the end), but what I failed to read was why she married Edmund and not Henry Crawford.  Incidentally, by jumping to the end I became very unhappy with Fanny for marrying Edmund and not Henry when he seemed to be so smitten and changed by her. However, when I finally got to the “end” and read the part before the part about her marrying Edmund I learned she didn’t want to marry Henry because he ran off with her married cousin Maria (to fornicate). Gasp! In the end I was glad she married her steadfast lifelong friend (and cousin) Edmund to live happily ever after.

As a general rule I don’t care for books with “happily ever after” because it usually involves some helpless woman who needs to be rescued by the big strong smart man, which is why I am so happy our next book is Joan of Arc by Mark Twain.  I did not know Mark Twain wrote about anything other than life on the Mississippi River but apparently he was very fascinated by the life of Joan of Arc. He researched her story for twelve years while he lived in France.  I don’t know much about her other than she kicked some serious butt in her day, was regarded as a leader of her people and did not have a “happily ever after” since she died at age 15. I have no doubt she was squelched out in her prime by a big strong smart man.