What I’m Reading: Tatiana and Alexander

The Bronze Horseman series is killing me. It’s literally killing me. And I still have one more book to go. Paullina Simons has given us two perfectly nice characters and then puts them through seven thousand terrible experiences, dangles their happiness in front of us ever so briefly, and then snatches it away again ten pages later. Reading it is an incredibly emotional experience. Have tissues handy. I stayed up last night until almost two in the morning because I just could not leave Tatiana and Shura in the condition Simons had put them in. I needed some sort of closure.

This book is a lot different from The Bronze Horseman. It doesn’t move forward through time quite like the first book in the series. Instead we spend a lot of time in Alexander’s past. We learn a lot more about his history and his life before he met Tatiana at that bus stop in Leningrad, which I definitely liked. But meanwhile he’s in charge of a penal battalion, which is a battalion of prisoners who are always at the front lines. They’re ill-equipped  and undersized, but Alexander is determined that he’s not going to die in the war. He’s going to make it home to Tatiana no matter what.

Meanwhile Tatiana is in New York. She’s living on Ellis Island and taking care of her young son. She’s making friends, and everyone is encouraging her to move on with her life. Then Tatiana finds Alexander’s Hero of the Soviet Union medal in her bag, and suddenly she’s not so sure that her husband is dead after all.

If it’s even possible, this book is even darker than the first book in the series. We’ve left behind frozen, starving, blockaded Leningrad and instead travel back and forth from busy war-time New York to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. The reader gets a front row view of exactly how little the Soviet Union cared about its soldiers during WWII. It was absolutely horrifying. If you surrendered to the Nazis, your family’s rations were taken away so that they would starve to death, and you were probably put to death when the USSR got you back. It was terrible. There was so little regard for human life, and I had absolutely no idea. That was definitely something they never talked about in all of my history classes.

The moral of this trilogy better be the ever used “true love conquers all,” because if Alexander and Tatiana are not together and happy by the end of the third book, I’m going to be furious. That’s going to be days of my life that I won’t be able to get back. It’s going to be like Cold Mountain all over again. (Which I’m fairly certain is my least favorite move of all time. Seriously. Hours of torture and Jude Law and Nicole Kidman still don’t get to be together.) I enjoyed the book, but if these poor people do not get a happy ending, I might throw all three in a lake. I just don’t understand how Paullina Simons can torture her characters like this. It’s probably very true to real life and what actually happened to people from the Soviet Union, but my goodness. I’m giving this book a 5 out of 7, because I don’t think it was quite as good as the first. Simons experiments with some weird shifts in point of view that I don’t think always work and were definitely not in the first book. I’m not sure if saying that I liked it is the appropriate phrase, but I was moved by it. I couldn’t put it down for three days. That has to count for something.

What I’m Reading: My Top 5 Favorite Classic Romances

It might be the day after Valentine’s, but love is still in the air and on the shelves of our grocery stores. So, I thought I would do a post on my favorite classic romances. Not that there’s anything wrong with the plethora of romance novels written today. I just like the classic love stories that don’t involve the ripping of bodices and billionaires deflowering their virgin brides better. It’s so much more romantic when you fall in love with someone whom you’ve barely even touched for the sake of propriety. So, without further ado: My Top 5 Classic Romances.

5. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

I fell in love with this story after watching the mini series and just had to read the book. Margaret Hale, a former minister’s daughter, is forced to leave her home in southern England to move to a factory town in the north, Milton. Margaret hates Milton and industrialization. She also hates Mr. John Thornton, a mill owner. As the novel progresses though, Margaret’s views slowly start to change and she comes to see both Milton and Mr. Thornton in a different light. I love this story for so many reasons. In part because Richard Armitage makes a very dashing Mr. Thornton in the BBC miniseries which I highly recommend. But I also love it for the realistic trials Margaret and Mr. Thornton must go through before they can finally be together. It makes the end all the more satisfying.

4. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 

The classic story of Cathy and Heathcliff is so tragic it’s impossible not to love. They have everything they want within their grasps and a misunderstanding drives Heathcliff away to seek his fortune. When he returns, both of their prides prevent them from admitting their mistakes and finally getting to be together. Instead they absolutely torment each other until Cathy dies after giving birth to a baby girl. The ending of the story is not your typical happy one, but the tragedy of it all is what makes it so incredible. You have a love/hate relationship with all of the characters as they all have love/hate relationships with each other

3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

No list of classic romances would be complete without a mention of Mr. Darcy. Jane Austen is my all time favorite author and P&P is probably one of the most well-known love stories of all time. It’s your classic “boy says something stupid and potentially ruins his chances with girl forever but eventually she falls in love with him” story and is still super popular almost 200 years after it was originally published. Jane Austen probably had no idea that she was setting the bar for men everywhere when she created one of the most beloved literary heroes of all time, but girls (including me) are still swooning over him to this day. 

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre is probably the most romantic story of all time. Everyone loves a story where the poor and plain working class girl meets someone decidedly above her station in life and he falls madly in love with her anyway. It’s pretty much every girl’s dream. Jane loves Mr. Rochester so much she can hear his soul crying out for her at the end. I cry every time. They overcome so many obstacles to be together, including an insane wife and a persistent suitor, but true love conquers all in the end, and poor Jane finally gets all of the happiness she’s always deserved.

1. Persuasion by Jane Austen

Persuasion is my all time favorite book ever. It’s one of Jane Austen’s shortest novels, but for me it’s the most poignant and realistic. Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth met and fell in love when they were both very young, and Anne was persuaded by her friends and family that  it would be better for her to let him go and make a name for himself. They part broken-hearted and are reunited years later. They try to act like there was nothing between them, but slowly they are drawn together again proving that true love has no time limit. I completely freaked out the first time I read it when Captain Wentworth gave Anne the letter that said that he still loved her. To me, the story is the epitome of true love. It’s loving long past all hope of ever being together. 

So, that’s my top 5 favorite classic romances. Does anyone else have a favorite that I missed?