Middlemarch by George Elliott

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

"Pride and Prejudice" wasn't the first romance novel written, but it was at the beginning of the genre. Why is P&P still being avidly read, while most of its contemporaries have fallen into the dustbin of history? Having read none of the others, I can only offer my uninformed opinion. My guess is that Austen just had the knack of connecting with human emotion. Things that don't go out of style. Her characters are throughly human and frail, but also charming. That makes for longevity!

I truly enjoyed the book, and was very impressed by Austen's gifts. I don't think I need go into many details, since I'm probably one of the few people in the English speaking world who hadn't read it before now. If you've not read it, give it a whirl. It's light, funny, clever and satisfying.

I wonder how the book would be received if it were written today--in a contemporary style, of course. I fear it would be lumped into genre fiction and be just another light romance novel. Our need to categorize all forms of entertainment haven't done us any good, IMO. P&P is considered literary fiction, but I'm fairly confident that wouldn't be so if it were written now. I'm not sure how I'd categorize fiction if I were in charge of the world, but I think I'd like to have quality matter more than genre.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

This summer I embarked on a plan to make up for the massive deficiencies of my literary education. I was a double major in political science and finance in college and somehow got a degree without reading one significant literary work.

In retrospect, it was a mistake to major in finance, but my employer paid for business courses and I love to save a buck or ten thousand. I should have majored in liberal arts and gotten an overview of all of the disciplines.

In high school I know I read Dickens and Dostoyevsky, and Salinger, but that was about it. Given my high school, I'm surprised we had to read anything.

After college I got into history, biography and science. I rarely read a piece of fiction, and when I did it was something popular, like Kurt Vonnegut. Nothing wrong with that, but I've spent the last X number of years nodding when someone speaks of "War and Peace" or "Pride and Prejudice."

I started reading fiction again around 20 years ago. I've pretty much stuck with current fiction, wedging in a book when I wasn't writing one. But summer is a great time for me to read, so I decided to make a dent in the pile of unread great books. I started with "Anna Karenina," mostly because I so enjoyed "War and Peace" last summer.

I'm officially a Tolstoy fan, since I liked Anna just a bit less than "War and Peace." Strangely, the war story in the latter really held me spellbound. I found that strange since I'm not normally a fan of action and adventure. But Tolstoy's war was more about how war changes people and their notions. Much better than outlandish tales of bravery and derring-do...at least for me.

Even though it wasn't of the scale of "War and Peace," "Anna Karenina" was a lovely book. Anyone who thinks it would be charming to live in those days should read this book to see how stultifying it could be to live in such tight social strictures. If I were in that society I wouldn't be able to see most of my friends!

Tolstoy really had the gift, as I'm sure one or two others have noted. He could take a long period of fairly ordinary life and give it real drama. Not sure how he did it, but I've like to have a little of his skill.

"Anna Karenina" is about a woman who has her head turned by a charming young man. The thing I liked about the book is that you never really get into Anna's head. At the end I didn't know if she was open to overtures or was even looking for one. I could also never tell how much she loved her husband or his replacement. She was an enigma, and having that mystery is, I think, one of the things has kept this book at the top of the "great books" list for so long. Most readers, whether they know it or not, like to have to work a bit to figure things out for themselves. You clearly have to do that with Anna. Every other character is presented more transparently, but Tolstoy held back on Anna, with great effect.

It's clearly a tragedy, but there are hundreds of pages of insight into the quotidian lives of the upper class of late 19th Century Russia.

One thing I've been surprised by is how accessible these great books are. Because they're so big I assumed they'd be really dense and difficult. Not in the least. Anyone who likes a good story and deep character development would enjoy this as well as "War and Peace." Since you can get either of them from Kindle on your PC for free or 99 cents, it's the best bargain in town. That's a lot of pages for the dough!

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

I've had a few days of writer's block, so I decided to read a real book instead of the huge numbers of RSS feeds I subscribe to. I like to read to help stoke my creative fire, and I usually choose literary fiction. I like to read something that challenges me and makes me consider the ways good writers structure their books.

The problem with this is that it can be darned depressing when I realize how good these folks are and how much I'd have to improve to even plagiarize properly from them .

Middlesex reminded me a bit of Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow. Both books try to look at critical times in US history through fictional families. Both are very well done. But Middlesex is a more intimate book, and one that spoke to me more emotionally.

The book tells of a Greek-American family, their immigration to the US in the 1920s, their slow assimilation to Detroit, their eventual love of America and the fate of their daughter, Calliope. Calliope was born with a mutation on one gene, an abnormality that we learn goes back many generations, but manifests itself in Calliope's intersexed body. She doesn't realize she's different until close to puberty, when the signals of her male genotype become too obvious to ignore.

It's the way her parents handle the situation that I found most touching. Books like this let me imagine how hard it must be to make choices for your kids that can have lasting effects for all of you. The book is also a nice reminder that you can be a very good parent and still make mistakes that might reverberate for many years.

If I make it sound like a depressing novel I'd like to make it clear that it's not. Calliope is the narrator, and through her voice we have a lot of empathy for the whole crew. There's hardly a bad guy in the group, even though some of them made bad choices. But the narrator has affection for her whole family, so we do too.

Eugenides understands young women so well I have a hard time believing he isn't one. He has a wonderful gift for getting into the heads of all of his characters and making each of them distinct. I'm still thinking about the family he created and wishing I could hear just a few more pages about them. There's nothing he left out...no holes that need to be filled. I just loved being with them and would like more time.

Bonk by Mary Roach

I've read all of Roach's single-word titled books, and she just keeps getting better. This one is about the science of sex. It would be hard to go wrong with this, as it merges two of my favorite topics.

Roach has a delightful sense of humor, and she's very diligent in her research. She traveled to a number of unexpected places during the writing of the book, including a mostly wasted trip to Egypt. Not really a country you'd expect to have pioneering sex research going on, and you'd be right. One determined guy was trying to prove a theory but the government frightened his subjects into not speaking with Roach. Nonetheless, that folly gives you an idea of how hard she works to find people on the margins who might add something to the body of research.

I learned a lot from the book; including a further confirmation of my belief that most of us try to make sex and sexual response seem simple. It can be, of course, but it can also be very difficult to fix certain sexual problems. The whole system is incredibly complex, and those of us who have systems that work reliably should be very, very grateful for them.

The final chapter was my favorite, and it surprised me a little. I won't reveal what she found, but I recommend you read the book and discover it for yourself. Don't let the science part intimidate you. It's science-light, and you'll understand it even if you didn't do well in biology.

Home by Marilynne Robinson

This companion to "Gilead" took me a while to get into. But once I hit my stride I was obsessed. The book centers on two of the characters of "Gilead," and takes place simultaneously. If you've read "Gilead" you will definitely want to check this one out. If you haven't--you should!

The Sealed Letter by Emma Donaghue

I must admit I don't know what's in the sealed letter. I got through the first 50 pages, then decided this was the day I was going to follow through with my recent decision to stop at 50 if I wasn't enthralled. To be honest, there are too many books out there to spend a day reading something that doesn't really grab me.

I was surprised I didn't like this one. Donaghue can usually be counted on to present a well-researched, fact-based tale that transports the reader to the time of the action. But this time it felt like she was saying, "look how much I know about Victorian England." Not that there's anything wrong with knowing a lot about anything. But her facts weren't integral to the story and that left me cold.

Donaghue can tend to write more like an academic than a novelist, and this one seemed devoid of emotion. But her writing is crisp and clear and her facts are always presented well. So you might like this if you crave Victorian tales even when they're on the dry side.