Book Kaleidoscope: My Top Five Most Favorite Books & Farewell 2012!

And here we are…on the last day of this year. 2012 has been my most important year in term of reading. This year (on March) I joined The Classics Club and it really helps me to delve deeper into classics works. In fact, most of my readings of this year were dominated by classics, most of my blog posts were in this blog (Fanda Classiclit). For 2013 I’m planning to start reading books from 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list; the works will be slightly mixed between classics and non classics.

After discussing my Top Five Book Boy Friends and Top Five Best Book Covers of books I've read on 2012, now the Book Kaleidoscope will rewind the most important aspect in reading: the book itself. 

Speaking of my readings of 2012 (I have read around 37 books), I have found a lot of great books and/or authors that for years I have only seen the title/the name, but now I am proud to say that I have read several of them. It’s been difficult to rank only five of my favorites, but I finally came to this composition…

5. Beloved

This was one of the strongest books I’ve ever read in my life, depicted a black woman’s struggle to protect her children. Beloved was quite difficult to read, as the story flowed forward and backward without clear signs, and only after reading few chapters I could be more familiar with it. And this book is not a nice reading too, although it makes us deeply touched. Therefore, fifth place is fair enough for Beloved.

4. Twenty Years After

Not known as much as The Three Musketeers, this second sequel is much better than the first. As its title, Twenty Years After was a reunion of the four friends when they were older and wiser. This is one of the books which I fully enjoyed the reading, every page of it, even every word.

3. L’Assommoir

I remember that I was shocked after finishing this book. Unlike any other books I have read, this one is very honest—extremely honest. Then I just knew what ‘naturalism’ in literature meant, that I instantly fell in love with Zola! I think my first strong impression of this book that makes L’Assommoir becomes one of my favorite books of all time, at least until now.

2. Great Expectations

Great Expectations is almost perfect as a reading companion. Dickens has been famous for writing entertaining tales, that although his wordings are often tedious, we can’t help to keep reading to know what will happen next to our favorite characters. I enjoyed every word of this book, and rewarded also with the moral value of this bildungsroman.

1. Germinal

Have I mentioned that I’m a big fan of Emile Zola? Well, it’s not surprising then, that I granted the most exclusive place in this Book Kaleidoscope to Germinal. Sharp as it always is, Germinal also offers variety of amusements in the story—romances, fights of the poor against the have, and a bigger hope that the oppressed could get a better future. I always like stories about hope! And that makes Germinal to be…

FANDA'S MOST FAVORITE
BOOK OF 2012!

And this post would also be my last post to close this remarkable year of 2012. Thank you for all of you who has been joining me in this 2012 Book Kaleidoscope yearly meme. I had actually created it to amuse myself, and I'm so surprised that there were a lot of you who'd joined in. It had been wonderful because I could find new blogs and new books (although I'd never read them, but at least I know about them), and I'll positively host another Book Kaleidoscope for next year.

I would like also to thank all my followers, most of you followed me around this year. I hope you'd been enjoying my posts. I'm sorry if I could not return all your visits and comments, as I must keep the balance between reading, posts writing, events hosting, and blog walking. I wish I could be interacting with you more often next year. Meanwhile.....I wish you a Happy New Year of 2013! ...and I just can't wait for starting  reading my 2013 piles of books!

Book Kaleidoscope: My Top Five Best Book Covers

This is the second category of the 2012 Book Kaleidoscope, the rewinding of bookish aspects of books we have read during this 2012. After a little #fangirling in the 1^st category: Top Five Book Boy Friends yesterday, now we are switching to artistic aspects of a book: Covers! Here I rank my five most favorite books covers that I had read for 2012…

5. The Great Gatsby

I have posted about this particular The Great Gatsby cover for a classics challenge, and I don’t know why, this post became quite popular with 598 pageviews (when I wrote this post). This is a translated version of The Great Gatsby, and I like it even before I read the book. I like the overall color tone: beige, and the classy nuances. I’ll quote what I’ve written for this cover:

There are three persons, two men and one woman are standing in the middle of a party took place in a mansion. That was my first impression of this cover, and it turned out to match the book theme. The luxury party and the snob expression of those three persons could reflect the moral decadency of the “Jazz Age”. It seems that the woman (Daisy) is torn between the two men. She perhaps will choose the man in the front (Gatsby I presume), but she is somehow still attached to the man behind (Tom I presume), who is staring at her sharply, afraid of losing her.

Aesthetically I love the cover, it can reflect the theme of the book, but I think it still could not reflect the whole story. I could not even guess which one is Gatsby from the two gentlemen in the illustration.

4. Nobody’s Boy

This one is translated version of Nobody’s Boy from one of the biggest publishers in Indonesia. I like the old parchment color for the cover background, the illustration is nice too. Remi was pictured as a tiny and helpless boy, patting the dogs’ heads he loved—and the dogs loved him too. In the background, there was Signor Vitalis with the monkey on his shoulder, illustrated as if they were looking at Remi from a far before they both vanished. The illustration reflected the story very well.

3. Lord of The Flies

Red is my favorite color, so when I saw this new edition of Lord of the Flies in one of The Book Depository’s hourly sales, I just grabbed it without further consideration :) I liked the cover from the beginning, and after I read it, I loved it more. Firstly, the red color represented the fighting spirit of the characters. The illustration of the primitives fit with the story’s theme, and the bright colors (in leaves, animals) represented youthfulness. All in all, the cover tells the whole story of this book, about how youths could become savages, and how they fight against it. And the cover fits well with young adult readers.

2. The Color Purple

Not only because there were purple flowers in the cover that makes The Color Purple’s cover one of my favorites, I loved it because the cover reflected the story and the emotional aspects of the story. I have written about it here, let me just quote it now.

I think this certain cover speaks a lot about the book. First, there is a portrait of a black woman’s bare legs, standing at the porch (leaning on a pillar from rotten woods). The lack of shoes and the body language of the woman already brought the sense of poverty and powerless. The grayish color of the portrait only added a sense of hopelessness (and reflected the non-existence of women in the world) to the scene. However, there are also three purple flowers, as if from the helpless ground the flowers had grown to bring a new brighter and more colorful scene to the world (and to women in particular). The purple flowers represent the new hope of happiness that awaits Celie at the end of her long waiting.

1. Beloved

From the moment I held this book, I have been intrigued by the black woman’s picture. At first I thought the woman was so black that her face was almost disappeared. However at second sight, I began to realize that the half right of her face was completely transparent, as if half of her face dissolved to the red background of the cover (it’s a brilliant idea to choose red as part of the background so that the transparency effect became more distinct). And that was not intended to be just an effect (the transparency), or otherwise her hat and clothes would be transparent as well. It’s not until after I have finished reading Beloved—and it’s a very powerful book too—that I realized how clever the illustrator was in designing the cover. I could not say as much as I like without revealing the whole story, but I think that “Beloved” was exactly as what this cover is reflecting, mysterious, dark and made you think whether everything was real or was it as what you’ve been thinking. Genius design of a cover!

And….that makes Beloved…

Fanda’s Most Favorite Book Cover
of 2012!

*Put your post in the linky at Book Kaleidoscope Master Post*

*We still have one final post of the Top Five Most Favorite Books on December 31^st! (see the details in the Master Post)*

Sethe in Beloved

Sethe was the main character in Toni Morrison’s Beloved; a strong woman with deep passionate love for her children. Being a slave, Sethe had suffered a lot of tortures and dehumanizing acts from the white people. Although she had almost never experienced love, she poured her two daughters her affections as much as she could. From her we could learn that God made us to love; that loving was a gift from Him, and has become our natural instinct. We could choose to love or not, no matter how much we experienced or lacked of it.

Sethe could endure what she had suffered in the past, I think, by shutting closely the worst part in her memory, and devotedly pour down her love to her children. For eighteen years she could live by herself quite well that way, although she did not many friends, and neighbors had been avoided her. She could even open her heart for another man—Paul D. Unfortunately when the past began to haunt her once again, her guilt and regret came back and destroy her solemn soul. From her condition, I realized that although it was better sometime to shut down our worst memory—the easiest way to continue life—it is a dangerous way, because once the memory or even the exact danger was approaching the second time, we could be dragged to a worst condition. Maybe the best way is to make peace with ourselves, especially if we have now someone who loves us, understanding and supportive.

Oprah Winfrey as Sethe

What I admire from Sethe was how she held firm her principles. When the whites ‘stole’ her milk—which was supposed to be for her babies—she became so enraged, it seemed almost absurd. But I can understand how she must have felt. It’s not a matter of the milk (or anything else), it’s the idea that somebody had seized something very precious—something that marked her love to her children—that she could not accept. To love is every human’s right, and nobody could seize that from us, at least I think that’s how Sethe must have felt; moreover after the whites had seized everything else from her.

So great her past suffer, and so great her love for her children, Sethe could not think and act logically; all in her mind was that her children must never experienced what she had. Well, I know what she had done was wrong, but still I could not blame her. Love has never been logical, has it? Sethe could endure her past because she was willing to open her heart for love; for loving others and for being loved by others.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

This is a bitter, powerful, yet beautiful novel about slavery in the South of America around the end of Civil War, or in the Reconstruction era. Beloved portrayed a devotional love of a mother towards her children which—when the worst, unthinkable terrifying situation was approaching—lead her to kill her daughter. Wait, do you mean she really killed her own daughter? How can you call that love? What kind of love is that—killing your own child? I know, before getting into the whole story, you will call it insanity, but wait until you finish it, you will understand why I could not condemn Sethe for committing such a cruel thing to her beloved daughter—whom she later did name Beloved.

Sethe had been through a lot of hard times during her slavery. Throughout the novel Morrison took us to see how white people had ill treated their slaves. Not only they tortured their slaves and took away their freedom, Beloved distinctly pictured how they dehumanized the slaves; so much that the slaves were even scared to love; that their definition of freedom was as simple as to be able to love and to have desires.

“To get to a place where you could love anything you chose—not to need permission for desire—well, now, that was freedom.”

The situation of Baby Suggs, when she was freed by her son, is more than sufficient to reflect what the slaves lost their entire lives. Baby Suggs and few of other characters in this book was fortunate to at last had freedom. But what about them who had lived their entire lives as slaves? And once they were free at last, how would they leave the dark past behind and take steps to the future?

And what Sethe must have endured here was so great—and I won’t write it down here explicitly, it was something you need to feel yourself—that she was determined to not let her children through the same path, ever. Morrison takes us to judge Sethe’s choice through other central characters—but mostly through Beloved, the victim.

Beloved is not an easy reading. Morrison takes us back and forth almost without any particular notice; through each character’s memory and point of view, the whole story is slowly and painfully revealed. It’s a bit strange and confusing at first, but you will get more familiar after few chapters.

I have read somewhere on the internet that Morrison based the story on a true account of a slave mother killing her children rather than having them be returned to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act, so that they wouldn’t suffer being killed in another way. I don’t know whether it’s accurate or not, but one thing is sure: there is no greater thing in the universe, than love. Sethe killed her daughter not because she didn’t love her, but because she had never felt any kind of love most of her own life; and now—when she was finally able to love after so much sufferings—she would never give anybody a chance to take her children and let them suffer as she had.

Ah….I have tried so hard to picture my feeling through this review, but I guess I can never tell you how powerful this book had affected me and made me re-shape my definition of love. I will only close this review with an emotional dialog that will reflect the desperation and powerlessness of the slaves….

“Tell me something, Stamp,” Paul D’s eyes were rheumy.
“Tell me this one thing. How much is a nigger supposed to take? Tell me. How much?”
“All he can, said Stamp Paid. “All he can.”
“Why? Why? Why? Why? WHY?”

:(

Five stars for Beloved. And special thanks to Nishita, whose review made me want to read this book, and to Joon Ann and Listra who were reading this book with me...

-----

Toni Morrison is an American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon and Beloved (won Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988).

Born as Chloe Adelia Wofford in February 18, 1931 from a work class family, Morrison grew up as a fervent reader; Austen and Tolstoy were among her reading list. She married a Harold Morrison in 1958, but divorced in 1964. She wrote a short story about a girl who longed to have blue eyes, and the story later on developed into her first novel: The Bluest Eye (1970), which she wrote while raising two children and teaching at Howard University.

Beloved (1987) was her fourth novel and brought her to success. Not only Pulitzer, it also won American Book Award. In May 2006 The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novel published in the previous twenty-five years. In 1993 Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her citation reads: Toni Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." She is currently the last American to have been awarded the honor. In addition to her novels, Morrison has also co-written books for children with her younger son, Slade Morrison. Toni Morrison is currently a member of the editorial board of The Nation magazine.

[all from Wikipedia]

Beloved - A Classics Challenge October: Chapter Musing

October prompt for A Classics Challenge is….

Chapter Musing

Jot down some notes about the chapter you've just read or one that struck you the most. It can be as simple as a few words you learned, some quotes, a summary, or your thoughts and impressions.

This time I’ll pick a powerful novel by Toni Morrison: Beloved. This is a dark chronicle about slavery, and the particular passage I choose is from Chapter 15 (p. 140 – 141). Baby Suggs was a black old woman slave who has been freed by her son. This passage reflected how she felt on the day of her freedom, after having been a slave for sixty years!

“The sadness was at her center, the desolated center where the self that was no self made its home. Sad as it was that she did not know where her children were buried or what they looked like if alive, fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was alike."

 "Could she sing? (was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me, would she like me?” ~ p.140

Hope by George Frederic Watts, 
an oil on canvas, 1885

“She didn’t know what she looked like and was not curious. But suddenly she saw her hands and thought with a clarity as simple as it was dazzling, “These hands belong to me. These my hands.” Next she felt a knocking in her chest and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat. Had it been there all along? She felt like a fool and began to laugh out loud.” ~ p.141

I was kind of struck by this passage. It will never have occurred to me that when ones were born as slaves, they could never possess anything in their life. Everything belonged to their masters, and everything they could get, they got from the masters, even their names. The masters used to split families, and sold children to separate buyers to cut any relationship of the slaves. They never knew who they were in this world, they just did not have the root and probably have never existed, if nobody bought them freedom. They would never know many things about their qualities, and…well…there were so many things they would never experienced, although they had never done anything wrong.

It’s really a tragedy when innocent people were dehumanized by others; when they did not permitted to have even themselves as a human. Reading about how Baby Suggs was surprised to realize that her hands now belonged to her, that her heart was pounding to give herself a life was...well, that was a powerful image, really!

And I just realized something, which one is better for them: living their whole lives as slaves, or like Baby Suggs, could experience freedom at last? But after they have been enslaved for all their lives, could they manage to survive in the world alone (if they had been separated from the families)? That would be awful… :(

Weekend Quote 9: Beloved

Beloved is one powerful book about slavery that I’m currently reading; it depicted the sorrowful life of black men and women in the rural Ohio, sometime after Civil War. This week I picked two quotes from Baby Suggs (an old woman ex-slave who had been freed by her son) which showed a similarity in idea…

“There was no bad luck in the world but white people. They don’t know when to stop.” 

“Everything depends on knowing how much. Good is knowing when to stop.”

I think the quote has spoken for itself. Men did have the bad side along with his good side, but in the case of slavery in this story, the white people’s brutality had been way too much. It’s not just cruel, they had been dehumanizing their brothers, just because they came from different race and culture.

This Weekend Quote is hosted by Half-Filled Attic. Feel free to join. You can: 

• Give the context of the quote
• Give your opinion whether you agree or disagree with it
• Share your experience related to the quote
• Share similar quotes you remember
• Or anything else. Just have fun with the quote.

Reading Beloved in October

I know that October would be a busy month for most of you, especially the Classics Club members. There are a lot of read-alongs: my Gone With The Wind Read Along will be stretched to 7^th November, then there is o (delaisse)’s Gothic reading event, Jenna’s Harry Potter Read Along, Adam’s LGBT Reading Event, Tien’s Les Miserables Read Along (boy….how busy we are!). And yet, after posting my September’s meme which highlighted Nishita’s review for Beloved (Tony Morrison), Joon Ann and Listra commented on my post that they were also struck by the review and decided to add it in their Classics Club list. At the same time, I was looking for book to be read along with my few Indonesian Bloggers on October. The theme is authors who won Nobel Prizes, so it would be perfect time to read Beloved.

I then contacted Joon Ann and Listra, who were both happy to read Beloved together with me. So, this will be a kind of informal read along, no host, no event, no deadline, no pressure! (I’m still hosting GWTW Read Along, and preparing the yearlong plays reading event for November). If you are interested to read Beloved together with us, be pleased to join, it will be just a fun reading through the month. So…anyone? Just leave a comment here, so we know who will come along…:)