Today is a special day! It is Valentine’s Day, but there is another reason why today is so special to me. For Christmas my husband surprised me with tickets to see Celtic Woman. I know it doesn’t sound very fun to many people. But this wonderful singing group from Ireland gave me such inspiration for my novel, Flight. The enchanting music would transport me to the magical place I dreamed of called Draichota, which is where part of my story takes place. So today’s post will be brief, because I have to get ready for my date tonight! http://www.celticwoman.com/
I am going to post two of the summaries that I have done for the poll. Hope these get you to start reading one of these wonderful classics!
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
This novel paints the perfect portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess. Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. Daisy’s cousin Nick Carraway narrates Gatsby’s rise to glory and his eventful fall from grace.
Jay Gatsby is a self-made millionaire who embodies obsessions of money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. Gatsby has built an illegal empire to win the love of Daisy Buchanan. He buys a mansion across from Daisy's address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold tragically and the characters are inevitably led on a collision course that exposes the hypocrisy of the rich and the falsity of an undeserving love.
This novel is about the American Dream, and how pursuing that dream for all the wrong reasons will ultimately lead to destruction. It is all woven together by a beautiful love story, danger, suspense, tales of true devotion and friendship, and a wonderful, thought-provoking commentary on American society in the aftermath of World War I, a time of excess and confusion. It is a classic tale that provides vibrancy and texture to a bygone era.
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice is one of the most cherished love stories of all time, told through an intelligent comedy of manners played out in early 19th-century English society. We are shown a world in which men held virtually all the power and women were required to negotiate minefields of social status, respectability, wealth and love in order to marry both to their own liking and to the advantage of their family.
The struggle for love is largely seen through the eyes of second daughter Elizabeth, who possesses a razor-sharp wit and rich sense of humor—and who finds herself hindered by her own eccentric mother, her sister Jane's hopeless love for the wealthy Mr. Bingley, and her sister Lydia's penchant for scandal . . . not to mention the high-born, formidable, and outrageously proud Mr. Darcy, who seems determined to trump her every card. But the game of love proves more surprising than either Elizabeth or Mr. Darcy can imagine, and sometimes a seemingly weak hand proves a winning one when all cards are on the table.
Pride and Prejudice suggests that true love is a force separate from society and that even in the most difficult of circumstances, love will conquer all.
I just took a quick listen to some of Celtic Woman's music, and I'll definitely be listening to them when I write. Their voices are amazing!
ReplyDeleteThe only book from your poll I haven't read is Wuthering Heights, but it was hard to pick among the rest! I had to go with Pride and Prejudice. I still have my paperback copy from college, full of notes and dog-eared pages. It's falling apart, but I love it too much to replace it (even though that fancy new edition from Penguin Classics is pretty awesome...)
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