I'm Currently Reading...The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (Part 4)

Okay, I'm going to highlight the main events that happened in the last 3 books:

Book Five: Wheat and Tares: - Maggie starts meeting Philip in the woods, without anyone knowing.
-  Tom finds out about Maggie seeing Philip (surprise surprise), and Maggie swears she'll never see him again without Tom's permission
- Tom pays of his father's debt.
- Mr. Tulliver beats up Mr. Wakem and, after Maggie stops him, Mr. Tulliver becomes sick again and dies.

Book Six: The Great Temptation: - A few years later, Maggie comes to stay with cousin Lucy and meets Stephen Guest, Lucy's boyfriend.
- Maggie asks Tom for permission to see Philip, who will be coming to Lucy's house.
- Philip is still in love with Maggie, and Lucky knows it.  She automatically wants Maggie and Philip to be together, and is doing all she can to settle the dispute between the Wakems and Tullivers.
-  Maggie and Stephen, however, are falling in love.  Stephen convinces Maggie to elope with him.  But Maggie, though she knows now everyone will be angry with her, changes her mind about marrying Stephen and goes home.


Book Seven: The Final Rescue: - Maggie returns to the mill, and Tom has this to say:

"Tom did not hear the gate; he was just then close upon the roaring dam; but he presently turned, and lifting up his eyes, saw the figure whose worn look and loneliness seemed to him a confirmation of his worst conjectures. He paused, trembling and white with disgust and indignation.

I'm Currently Reading...The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (Part 3)

  Book Three: The Downfall: The Tulliver family really starts going downhill in Book 3.  Tom and Maggie argue with their aunts and uncles for not giving them much help in their time of needed.  Maggie gets angry with Tom for seemingly taking their mother's side against their father - Maggie feels her mother is being petty about her furniture and other items being sold instead of worrying about Mr. Tulliver.  However, Mr. Tulliver begins to slowly recover. 

Tom also finds that Latin and other things he's learned while at school are not very useful for a job where he must make a good amount of money.  Their father tells Tom to sign him name in the bible for what Maggie feels is wicked:


  "Tom entered with his usual saddened evening face, but his eyes fell immediately on the open Bible and the inkstand, and he glanced with a look of anxious surprise at his father, who was saying,–

  "Come, come, you're late; I want you."

  "Is there anything the matter, father?" said Tom.

  "You sit down, all of you," said Mr. Tulliver, peremptorily.

  "And, Tom, sit down here; I've got something for you to write i' the Bible."

I'm Currently Reading...The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (Part 2)

  Book Two: School-Time: Tom is at Mr. Stelling's school, and isn't enjoying it too much.  He's struggling with Latin and, although he won't admit it, misses Maggie.  I think this is because he feels smarter than her and she's always impressed with him - things that just aren't happening at school.
Back at the Mill, Mr. Tulliver's going at it with Pivart, who is apparently infringing upon the rights of the Tulliver's water supply because of irrigation.  I'm a little unsure about this whole dispute, but the main point is that Wakem (Pivart's lawyer) is thought to be a crook by Mr. Tulliver.  Tom finds out that Wakem's son Philip is coming to school with him and feels a loyalty to his own father against him.  Philip is deformed with a hunchback from an accident at birth and Tom for some reason is suspicious of Philip because of this as well.  The boys don't have the best of a relationship because of these prejudices.  However, Philip is very kind to Tom when Tom hurts his foot, and Maggie, who was visiting at the time, was very grateful to Philip for this.  I sense a budding romance between these two. ;)  Tom and Philip go back to being somewhat enemies though after Tom's foot heals.

  Tom and Maggie don't realize how good their lives have been until Tom's last day of school when he is 17 and Maggie is 13 (approximately - I've noticed that is seems like their ages tend to keep changing because at one point Tom is said to be 15).  Maggie tells him their Father has lost the lawsuit - and has lost the Mill, too.  He has also fallen off his horse and lost his senses, only occasionally recognizing Maggie.  Tom and Maggie set off for home.

  The books seems like it's moving kinda slowly by this point.  It's a bit repetitive (Maggie gets in trouble, Tom is too proud, Tom can't get  along with Philip, Maggie tries to be good to everyone, rinse and repeat).  However, I'm much further ahead in the book since I've written this review, and it seems like it has finally picked up some speed.

Picture from Wikipedia.

I'm Currently Reading...The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (Part 1)

 This is the version I'm reading.

Currently reading: The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Reason: I really liked Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, and I’d like to study what else she’s written.

  Book One: Boy and Girl: The story begins by describing the Floss, and then Dorlcote Mill, the main scene for the whole story.  I didn’t really consider (for some reason) that George Eliot wrote a lot of provincial novels like this one, but she did - like Adam Bede and Silas Marner.  In my head her literature was more like Charles Dickens or William Makepeace Thackeray and although her later stories that I read were more like that, her writing is much more soft and easy to understand than I thought.  This story, so far, reminds me of Little Women where it has foreshadowing and hefty descriptions of things, but contains a lot of dialogue for most of the book.  

  At the beginning we’re introduced to Mr. And Mrs. Tulliver, who have decided to send Tom (a young lad of 13)  to study at a different school.  Maggie, a high spirited young girl of 9 years old, has missed her brother terribly, and they are very close.  One thing I’ve noticed when reading it is that it seems like Tom does things to purposely get Maggie upset, and then Maggie gets in trouble.  Maggie though is VERY dramatic and impulsive (I mean, she cuts off all of her own hair when her family is talking about how pretty her cousin Lucy’s hair is).  I find them kind of irritating as children, so I hope they get better as they get older.  

    Anyway, Maggie and Tom have lots of adventures while he is home from school, including Maggie’s escape to the Gypsies down the road when Tom is paying more attention to  Lucy and not her.  That was pretty hilarious.  I’m expecting something really bad to happen to one of them in the upcoming chapters.  It’s like Eliot is just hinting at something, enough for you pick up on it but not clearly enough to know what it is.

  This is going to take me awhile to finish I think, even though it is only 500 some pages, because I'm working on a craft swap project on the American Girl Playthings Board, as well as practicing the piano and getting ready for my first year of college (YIKES).

George Eliot books and piano and that review I haven't written lately

  Firstly, I would like to say I want books for my birthday.  Good, old fashioned, books full of paper.  But I don't know which ones to get exactly...see, I like the thoughts of getting The Mill On the Floss.  Yet I have that book on hold at the library for me, and once I've read a book I don't tend to re-read it that often.  So I don't know if I really need it.  I think I am going to get Adam Bede by George Eliot, because it sounds really interesting to me.

  Oh my gosh, Penguin Classics books just make me drool.  Aren't they perfect?  They always have a wonderful cover and so much extra information inside about the book you're reading.  Anyway, I'm also possibly going to get a biography about George Eliot because I think I'd like to study her in more detail.  I'm also going to get another piano book, because I realized there is a companion book to the Masterwork Classics one, which is pretty detailed and necessary (for me).  I got a little confused about my piano books after I posted about it yesterday, because I wasn't sure how many songs I was supposed to learn a week, and how fast I was supposed to move through level 5.  But I think I pretty much have it figured out now.  I also plan on writing some reviews on the songs I'm learning, and tell you alllll about it. :D

  I have also not forgotten the review I've been writing for Barnaby Rudge!   I've been more busy with music and photography this week that I've only really had extra time to read Barnaby Rudge, not write a review about it.  In all honesty if I had not been kinda lazy, I could have written some of it but I didn't and here we are.  So the next part will be posted soon, don't you worry about it. ;)

Day 3: A favorite book + a photo challenge!

A favorite book of mine is Middlemarch by George Eliot.

   I first read this book when I was 13 (I think).  I fell in love with the characters, the quaint story, and the thrill of reading and understanding such a long book.  Soon I'm going to re-read Middlemarch because I'm sure I missed some of the symbolism (and I specifically remember not paying attention to certain parts I thought were boring at the time).  Plus, I'm older and will probably be able to relate to some of the characters better.  You know, that feeling you get when you read something that's just so true and relevant in your life.  Yeah, I'm hoping for that. :)

Also, I wanted to show my entry for the:

Here it is below!