Oh dear, I started reading The House of the Seven Gables and it is soooo boring. Someone was even murdered within the first few pages and it is still sooo boring. Forgive me, Nathaniel. Can anyone encourage me? Leave a comment if you’ve read it and have something encouraging to say.
Speaking of American lit, I just recently cracked open Walden and it was such a blast from the past. That book is from my high school dropout/homeschool days. Those days still feel so firey to me, thinking back. I still feel that way about a lot of things but overall things are different. Having similar emotions for a real, live husband is … life-changing. Compared to my feelings for Samuel, everything else seems so shallow, or muted, or silly. Not enough to make me drop all those things entirely, it’s just that what is most valuable to me is very obvious. I could give up those things. But to give up Samuel would be impossible. People, if you find someone to love, marry them, and love them! Spend your life with them! It makes life so wonderful.
Music I heard with you was more than music
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
-Conrad Aiken
*sigh* Now I am feeling all romantic and wistful.
If you have not seen “A Room with a View” please see it. It is now one of my top….three favorite films of all time. Incedentally it has quite a bit of (male) nudity in it, but it is not at all a sexual situation or anything offensive, in my opinion. In fact, it is one of the happiest, most charming moments in the film. Anyway. It is a beautiful film and the characters are so wonderful, the kind you can think about forever and see parts of them in you and your friends….George is probably my favorite character, or maybe his father.
“My father says there’s only one perfect view, that of the sky over our heads!”
Incidentally, Thoreau is mentioned a couple times in the movie, and that’s why I thought of it.
It is a very romantic movie 
And the costumes are to die for. I think they won an award of some kind….
(Un?)fortunately I’ve never read The House of the Seven Gables, but I’ve always struggled with The Scarlet Letter, which multiple classes throughout my life have required. So maybe it’s a Hawthorne problem? At least for me.
You should try reading A Room With A View, by E.M. Forster; I haven’t read it in a while, but I remember liking it as much as the movie.
Funny, Anthony is reading “The House of the Seven Gables” right now for some reason. He reads a lot, though.
The background is Firenze! I vaguely remember hearing about this movie, or maybe I saw a preview for it once. Is it out in the theatres or on DVD? Not having television makes me so out of the loop when it comes to recent American releases.
Hawthorne is like a long wall covered with decorative Colonial carving. Walk slow and watch it change slow. There is never a hurry reading Hawthorne. When you have ended and look back, you will feel something burn in you but not remember when it began to — like a long summer’s nap ended with a stirring dream forgotten.