This is the resolution I’m doing the best on. My goal was to read one classic novel a month. So far since I started in … November? December?….I’ve read:
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope
Some of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
and now I’m reading
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
As far as resolutions go, yay me on this one. Though I recommend, when setting a resolution, to select one you would be passionate about pursuing. How am I doing on weight loss? Well I haven’t gotten bigger. So, yay me there too right?
Right?!
Reading this now because…well honestly…it was already downloaded on my phone. My options were The Christmas Carol, Villette, and The Red and the Black. I chose it randomly and because, maybe, my friend is reading it.. I can’t remember if this is the one she’s reading. (I have a tiny baby in my house and am lucky to remember anything at all) If pastelninja is reading this too, maybe we’ll do a double review.
On to the book: Like Tom Sawyer, turns out Scarlet Pimpernel is the first of a larger series. Who knew?! It’s on my list of books to read because I’d heard it was good, because I like the musical, and because it seemed fun. Only after having started it did I realize that it was a series.
These are the other books:
The Scarlet Pimpernel
I Will Repay
The Elusive Pimpernel
Eldorado
Lord Tony’s Wife
The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel
The First Sir Percy
The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel
Sir Percy Hits Back
Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel Looks At the World
The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel
Sir Percy Leads the Band
Mam’zelle Guillotine
Who flipping knew? I might have made another choice for my next book seeing as how I’m in the middle of two classic series right now and haven’t finished either since I can’t remember to download the sequels into my audible app. (see above regarding tiny baby) If I like it though, and if you can get the audio books, I’ll probably read and review the whole series. You can definitely get the sequel; this much I know.
I also didn’t realize that the series started in the 1900s either. I mean the writing of it, not the setting obviously. The Scarlet Pimpernel is about the events of the French Revolution, so you know that happened…earlier.
I kinda thought it was written around the time of Wuthering Heights or what not. Especially, with the whole aristocrat thing going on. I mean…how many post-Victorian aristocrats can you think of outside of the British royal family? That dude Grace Kelly married is what I can come up with. She did marry a prince right? Someone like that.
Is the book historically accurate? I don’t really care. I doubt it hugely. Maybe there are a few accurate facts surrounded by the adventure. That’s how I prefer my history. Full of lies. 🙂 The French Revolution, btw, happened in the later 1700s. After the American Revolution actually. There’s two facts I pulled right out of my head.
That’s right out of my head. Though Google is always a more likely to be an accurate choice than my noggin.
Anyhoo, I really, really like it so far. It’s FUN. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE books written in the early 1900s. Is it because they aren’t taking themselves seriously? Or is it because after about a 100 years only the good ones crop up? I don’t really know. But I mean, I LOVE Georgette Heyer who wrote starting in the teens. And I love the Bulldog series (of which I’m on book 4), and I love Edgar Rice Burroughs. But obviously, there’s this fact too. When you name your character Bulldog or have him raised by apes, you’re writing for the FUN of it. And those books are FUN because they aren’t taking themselves seriously. Just more fun to read than say…Virginia Woolf.
As for the Baroness. Her first name is Emma, which I’ve always liked. 🙂
She was a prolific writer.
She posed with big fat jewels for her photo:
She really was an aristocrat.
She became stupidly rich by writing. Maybe one of my favorite facts about writers ever, regardless of the writer. I’m looking at you Stephen King, James Patterson, and JK Rowling.
Oh and Stephenie Meyer.
You get the picture.
I’m super excited about her. I’m loving this book, and she was sooo prolific. Prolific dead writers mean you don’t have to wait for the sequel (I’m looking at you Laini Taylor.) And she wrote my some of my favorites–old school mysteries. Tee-freaking-hee! I’ve read nearly every Georgette Heyer there is, and since she’s dead…I need to find her soul sister. Is Baroness Orczy it? Probably not, Georgette is more in the line of Jane Austen than Bulldog, but hey, I’m eclectic in my reading.
~Amanda
Amanda A. Allen 