Today's Featured Book:
Sister Carrie
by Theodore Dreiser
Genre: Fiction
Published: 1900
Page Count: 464 pages
Summary:
When Carrie Meeber runs away to Chicago, she has nothing to rely on but her beauty and a fierce determination to improve her life. She escapes work in a factory by becoming the mistress of first one man and then a more successful one but ultimately leaves them behind for success and fame on the stage in New York.
Long hailed as one of the best novels of the twentieth century, Sister Carrie provides a panoramic view of the dynamic and relentless forces that still drive city life and American culture.
When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.
Theodore Dreiser. Sister Carrie, p. 1. Kindle Edition.
Carrie looked over the large bill of fare which the waiter handed her without really considering it. She was very hungry, and the things she saw there awakened her desires, but the high prices held her attention. "Half broiled spring chicken—seventy-five. Sirloin steak with mushrooms—one twenty-five." She had dimly heard of these things, but it seemed strange to be called to order from the list.
Theodore Dreiser. Sister Carrie, p. 56. Kindle Edition.
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I brought three books set in Chicago along with me on my recent trip to visit my son and his wife. I think I have brought Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser along with me fifty times, and I've yet to read the whole things. This time I'm determined to finish.
The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.
If you could recommend one overlooked book, what would it be and why? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee-Addicted Writer
I'd recommend Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell. It's the story of a woman who is a homemaker of the 1940s, and each chapter is a page or so long, each one like a little Zen story.
