Middlemarch Is Really A Great English Novel

Middlemarch, by George Eliot, is a long novel of great scope. Unlike some novels that just seem to go on and on however, there is always a point to Eliot's writing, so the novel never feels slow. Every sentence and paragraph is necessary to the story. The reader is very aware that Eliot is a great writer, and has spent considerable effort to create a full portrait of an English village.

The full title of the English novel is Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. One can get a full view of this particular village through the interwoven stories of many characters. There are so many characters in the novel it can be easy to lose track. Eliot includes examples from all strata of society; the clergy, landed gentry, laborers, tradesmen. As if this were not enough, Eliot also uses her characters to introduce and discuss issues relevant to Victorian England. Religion, the Reform Laws and other political debates of the Victorian Age, marriage, and feminism all play a role in the novel.

Eliot is fabulous with creating portraits of particular types of people, especially upper class people, clergy, and women. The dialogue between her characters can sometimes be a bit clunky- Dorothea is so earnest and long-winded! Despite this I cannot help loving Dorothea- her story arc includes her struggles with her own idealism and expectations, her desire to do good, and her disappointments that she takes with grace.

The novel also has that sort of nostalgic vibe when later Victorians look upon early Victorian England; before the smothering industrialization, rapid connections brought about by railroads, and visible poverty. Victorians like to envision a time when the land was green, everyone enjoyed a bumpy carriage ride for a week to get from one part of England to another, and when all the poor people were tied to the land in a harsh tenant/landlord system and most upper class people did not need to see them.

There Are A Few Famous Chinese Historical Novels

Historical Tapestry has invited me to guest post with a discussion of historical novels set in China. This in response to my comment on Mary Tod's blog A Writer of History that I find historical fiction about China to be indifferently represented in forums devoted to the historical genre.

I assume the principle reason for this scarcity may be that we American readers are not so familiar with Asian history; in our schools Western history generally receives more emphasis – Athens rather the Warring States, Rome instead of the Han Dynasty, the Hanover monarchs and not the Manchu empire. So, the Far East is a longer reach.

Still, the reasons for reading Chinese historical novels are not unlike those for reading historicals set in the West or near East. The people invoked have similar troubles and triumphs, and the events evoked have similar storm and stress – but in different contexts often fascinating in their contrast. We gain some insight into people of another time, and perhaps into how our time came to be, by sharing in their drama. Adventure, war, hard times, love, understanding – they live in the pages of historical fiction about China just as they do in that about other places.

And what am I calling historical fiction? In addition to novels about events regarded as historical, events older than 50 years according to some forums, there are included here titles that, while not historical when published, are set in places that time has since changed enough to make them quite different now and, as such, have become chronicles of the vanished past.

There are original English-language novels about China, and Chinese-language novels widely available in translation. There are older books rarely heard of now, and more recent novels. And there are novels about Chinese-American experience (besides Amy Tan) I've left off the list because they are not quite historicals yet. Some of these are about earlier history and others are about more recent events.

Writing Your Own Online Novel

Because I'm throwing myself into the world of serial fiction for the next year or so, I've decided to start a new feature/topic for my non-fiction posts called Writing the Online Novel. Online writing is a different beast than what fiction writers are used to. For the most part, it's closer to journalism than to books. Books, and most fiction magazines, are immersive reading. They're designed to be read without distraction, for the reader to submerge his or her consciousness into the story.

Because of this immersion factor, the audience for a book is very conscious about its choices. They aren't just paying for the book, they're making a major time and attention commitment to it. They shop for books deliberately, looking for something special, which they will consume later, when they are ready to dive in and lose the world. The book must be worth that time and energy commitment. This makes them more attuned to genre and category and other boundaries.

The web, on the other hand, is more like a newspaper, lots of different things on any page, meant to be skimmed, full of everything from sports scores, to comics to commentary, along with the news and features, and ads. People approach newspapers and the web with a more "consume it now" mindset. No commitments involved at all. It's just skimming and browsing and killing time.

Which isn't to say that readers don't dip more deeply into some things, but that's not the point of screwing around on the internet. The point, more often then not, is to see what's going on. Right now. You skim through headlines and feeds and aggregators and social media, to see what catches your interest. You don't know what you're going to find.

And it doesn't always matter if you find much. You may feel completely satisfied with your experience just skimming the first paragraphs and summaries, and catching a few cartoons or LOLcats, or a video of an otter doing a back flip, or seeing the weather or sport scores.

So readers on the internet aren't looking for the same kind of exact experience they look for in a book. After all, we've already filtered out the bad stuff by sticking to things we like and trust: we subscribe to feeds, check out certain sites, follow friends and people we find interesting. And because of that, we can leave ourselves open to a wider range of experience than we do when we're shopping for books. We are less conscious of boundaries.

We have to make the same commitment to everything we write, whether the reader is just skimming or engaged in full-out commitment. It's the same time-consuming work, and burns up the same high level of brain energy. So we writers tend to see online fiction the same way we book fiction. It's just delivered differently.

I think we need to start looking at online fiction -- particularly online novels -- is a medium unto itself. It has its own audience, its own requirements, its own modes and problems. And even though serialized fiction, and newspapers and magazines have been around for centuries, this version of the form is new in a whole lot of different ways.

How E-books Have Changed The Way That College Students Study

E-books were once thought of as a nice way to read books for entertainment purposes, and not much else. In recent years, they have exploded onto the education scene, as many schools are using them almost exclusively. It's interesting to consider how e-books have changed the way that college students study.

In many college courses, students can get the books that they need a in e-book format instead of buying a printed copy. These books are becoming required reading in many classes across the country. In fact, almost 60 percent of students who bought e-books said that some of them were required course material.

With this method, students can simply download the book that they need onto an e-reader like an Amazon Kindle, and start reading it. Many different types of schools are using e-books for their classes. Graphic design schools, trade schools, nursing schools, and regular universities are all jumping on the e-book bandwagon.

One reason that a lot of schools are going to e-books for class is because they save a lot of paper. Without having to physically print up the books, a ton of paper can be saved. This creates a solid eco-friendly brand image for educational facilities.

Another big reason that students are turning to e-books is so that they can save money. When you have to buy a book, it is usually quite a bit cheaper in e-book form. In addition to being able to save money on the purchase of the e-book, you can also rent e-books. For example, Amazon makes it possible to rent textbooks for as little as one day or as long as you need to. This is a lot easier than having to rent the book from a local store or ship it back and forth to a rental company. You just pull up the book you need on an e-reader, and then send it back when you’re done.

Although e-books have started to catch on, they have not completely replaced regular textbooks just yet. Many students don’t yet own e-readers, which is a bit of an obstacle to being able to read e-books. You could always download an e-book and read it on a computer or on a smartphone, but it’s not as easy as reading it on an e-reader. As the prices of electronic readers come down, more students will start to get them, and e-books will become even more common in college.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Review

If you're looking for a good book to read—either for your own enjoyment or a book club suggestion—what's one of the first things you do? You can ask a friend. But word-of-mouth recommendations depend to a large extent on personal taste. If you want a more reliable gauge, you'll want to find book reviews.
Let's say you're at a bookstore and you're holding a book in your hand. Invariably, you turn to the back cover where you find excerpts of mainstream media reviews. They're glowing, of course— "Characters with heart!" "A non-stop page-turner!" "A major new voice in fiction!"

When looking for a good book review, look for one that turns a critical eye on a book's style and content. A genuine book review considers the following elements:
Characters—are main characters convincing? Do they have emotional and psychological complexity and act according to authentic motivation? Or are they flat and one-dimensional with little detail of their inner lives?
Plot—is the plot predictable or does it surprise, going where you least expect it? Are there interesting plot twists? Do events unfold organically, naturally? Or are they forced—leaving you feeling manipulated. Does the ending wrap up loose ends? Does it wrap up things too neatly, to the point of being pat or trite? Or does it leave issues unresolved, open to different interpretations?
Ideas—does the book offer an exploration of ideas—perhaps a moral or ethical problem, or the meaning of relationships (familial, romantic, or friendship-based)? Does it offer interesting insights or a fresh perspective?
Style—is the writing heavy handed,...uninspired with over-written or even cliched phrases . Or is the writing feel fresh, even inspired? Is the writing funny or witty?
Where do you find helpful reviews? The best, most in-depth are from major daily newspapers: the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune or Sun-Times, just to mention some. Look also in periodicals like Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Atlantic Monthly.
You can head to your public library and dig through past issues of newspapers and periodicals. Better yet, many libraries subscribe to online databases that carry the full texts of articles from the major papers and magazines.
You can also go online at home. But most newspapers and magazines require subscriptions to get into their archives, so you won't always have access to full articles—although sometimes you get lucky and find them on right on Google.
You can also go to customer reviews at the big online booksellers—Amazon and Barnes & Noble. But customer reviews tend to be all over the place and are highly idiocentric. They can be helpful but not always reliable.
The best bet is to find an online book site you can trust, a website with an index of titles, reading guides, and book reviews. Look especially for ones that carry complete reviews—not just blurbs—by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and especially Kirkus Reviews. Libraries subscribe to these review publications, so they tend to be forthright in their assessments of books—after all, it's what libraries pay them for.