The Night Circus

 

The circus arrives without warning.

When The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, was released last year, I knew I had to read it.
It sounded like a delicious read.
Yes, delicious.

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When Celia is little, her father, Prospero the Enchanter, offers her as his champion in a duel of sorts against another magician. Of course, Celia doesn't know this, but Prospero teaches her how to control her intense magical powers all the same. He is not the kindest of fathers; in fact he is rather cruel to his only daughter.
The other magician, known only as Mr. A. H---, adopts a boy from an orphanage to be his champion. The boy, who takes the name of Marco, is shut up indoors for years, with only books as his companions. He learns the arts of illusion just as well as Celia, only in a different manner.
Eventually, the two of them, Marco knowing that Celia exists only as his opponent, but Celia not knowing, become involved with a great endeavour of entertainment that becomes known as Le Cirque de Reveurs, or The Circus of Dreams. Of course, only Celia and Marco have truly magical powers, but the circus-goers are only too willing to see it all as fantastic feats of illusion.
While the years go on, Celia and Marco gradually fall in love.
Their duel can only end when one of them dies.

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The descriptions on the book jacket promise a lot more action than you really get in the book.
A lot.
I can't emphasize this enough, because I know many readers were disappointed.
I, however, was not.

Honestly, I wish I'd written this book.
The descriptions of the completely black and white circus are gorgeous, almost Gothic.
Erin Morgenstern's prose is wonderful.
She crafts a story that jumps around in time, but always stays completely centered on the one thing that holds all the timelines together -- the circus.
Of course, the story being set at the height of the Victorian Era was a selling point for me.

Maybe the plot isn't the strongest I've ever read.
But I don't think that matters, because this is a book about a place of dreams.
Dreams jump around, they sometimes don't make sense, and sometimes they are insistently strong.
Morgenstern's storytelling and masterfully lavish descriptions of everything are incredible.

Sometimes the point is in the storytelling.
I, for one, wish I could visit Le Cirque de Reveurs and never leave.

[summer reading list 2012]

Greetings, fellow book lovers!
I am taking a break from my regularly scheduled programming to give you my projected summer reading list for Summer 2012.
I say projected because as every reader knows, it's entirely too easy to be distracted from a book...by another book.
Anyway, I have dubbed this my Summer of Classics (and other books I own).
Why?
Because now that I have been out of school for a year, I am going to truly put my Bachelor's Degree in English to good use!
And because I have a myriad of book on my Kindle that are just begging to be read.
And because the top two shelves of my living room bookshelf are full of some incredibly beautiful books (some vintage and/or first editions) that have been calling my name for a long time now.

Of course, this is going to be difficult for me.
Not because I don't want to read the classics and other old books.
But because this basically prohibits me from making trips to the library for books.
I'll still allow myself to check out movies.
But not books.
An entire summer not checking out library books?
After working at a library for the past four (five?) summers...this will be challenging.
But I own so many good books.
That's why I am making myself do this. 

Before I begin reading all my old books, however, I have two newer books to read and review.
I have been waiting to read these for awhile now.
One is The Fault in Our Stars; the other Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
And then I shall continue to read Vanity Fair, which I started in...January.... (To be fair, it's on my Kindle, and when I went to the library, I completely forgot I was reading it. Oops. Such an excellent story, though!)

So, without further ado, I present my projected reading list for summer 2012.
(I'm not going to number this list because I'm sure I won't read them in the order I list them.)

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Summer of Classics (and other books I own) 2012

• Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (This is a re-read; may wait till closer to December.)
• House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
• Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
• Anthony Adverse, by Hervey Allen
• Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• From the Earth to the Moon, by Jules Verne
• Now or Never or, The Adventures of Bobby Bright, by Oliver Optic
• Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
• The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
• Quo Vadis: a narrative of the time of Nero, by Henryk Sienkiewicz
• Ulysses, by James Joyce (Okay, this is more wishful thinking, because I have tried reading this before and just couldn't get into it....but I am so willing to try again!)
• The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan
• Utopia, by Thomas More
• History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding
• Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte
• Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
• The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe

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There you have it.
Perhaps a rather long list, since most of the above are very long books.
But just because I don't make it through my planned reads doesn't mean I can't read them later!
And I'm sure I will end up reading a few newer books somewhere during the summer.
It's just what I do.
Not to mention I still have that nonfiction book (The German Genius) I keep forgetting about.

If anyone has any suggestions to add to my reading list, please comment!