The 306 Greatest Books #71 - Middlemarch

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Middlemarch by George Eliot. This book can be found on the Sybervision, Norwegian, BBC, Zane's Top 10, and My Book Lists.

I rather enjoyed Middlemarch. It started off slow, but as the book went on it picked up its pace rather well. Although the book was the longest I have yet read on this list, about 900 pages, the plot was simple enough that it was easy to follow throughout the entire book. Middlemarch is a town in England where the book follows the lives of the families living there, mainly two different families and their daughters. The book also delves into a lot of conflicts including doctors versus faith, modern medicine versus traditional medicine, and similar subjects. When I started reading the book I had a brief period where I needed to get used to the language being used but it didn't take me very long and afterwards I could easily understand what was going on. I can easily recommend this book as a great story with good lessons, if you are willing to take the time to read it.

The 306 Greatest Books #60 - Silas Marner

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Silas Marner by George Eliot. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

Silas Marner is the type of book that you might want to sit back, on a nice summer evening with, and read while relaxing. For the first half of the book I felt no pulling force that often makes you want to keep on reading once you get into the book and I just read it at my leisure. But around the halfway point I hit the draw and I finished the second half of the book in two days. This is a very sweet book about a man who got screwed early in life becoming a recluse, and then he got screwed again when he had his only reason for living stolen from him. Both of these happened within the first half of the book. The second half deals with what does a person like this do when presented with an orphaned child. The book is very well written and flows smoothly but I feel it lacks that special something to place it on the 100 greatest list. So I am not going to put it on my personal greatest books list, although I do think people should read it.