books I've read

Anne Hawn's books

Who Moved My Cheese?
If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans
Scientific Secrets for Self-Control
Just One Damned Thing After Another
The Vanishing
Exercises in Knitting
The Good Dream
The Very Best of Edgar Allan Poe
The Chosen
BT-Kids' Knits
Talking God
The Professor
The Christmas Files
The Finisher
Home Decor for 18-Inch Dolls: Create 10 Room Settings with Furniture and 15 Outfits with Accessories
Dracula and Other Stories
A New Song
Christy
All Quiet on the Western Front
File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents


Anne Hawn Smith's favorite books »

I'm reading 150 Books

2019 Reading Challenge
2019 Reading Challenge 19614 members
<b>Are you ready to set your 2019 reading goal?</b> This is a supportive, fun group of people looking for people just like you. Track your annual reading goal here with us, and we have challenges, group reads, and other fun ways to help keep you on pace. There will never be a specific number of books to read here or pressure to read more than you can commit to. Your goal is five? Great! You think you want to read 200? Very cool! We won't kick you out for not participating regularly, but we'll love it if you do. Join us!

Books we've read

The Help
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The Night Circus
The Golden Compass
11/22/63
The Little Lady Agency
Catch-22
The Good Father
A Discovery of Witches
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Fahrenheit 451
Frankenstein
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
A Christmas Carol
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
The Color Purple
Matched
Cloud Atlas
The Princess Bride
The Catcher in the Rye


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Thursday, January 08, 2015

The Professor

The ProfessorThe Professor by Charlotte Brontë
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book.  It wasn't as good as Jane Eyre .  The characters were not developed as well.  I also had a problem with the numerous long passages in French which I don't speak, and which, were made even harder when listened to on an audiobook.

The book starts out well as we see William Crimsworth, the Professor, long before he is a professor.  He goes to work for his much older, industrialist brother who seems to despise him.  He leaves and makes his way to Brussels where eventually becomes a teacher (which the Flemish call "Professor.)  He starts out fairly well, but then there is intrigue between William, the head of a girls school, and the head of the boys school William works for.  That part seemed very weak to me as the characters of the two women involved seem to change their natures radically without much precipitating reason.

I also felt like the end of the book was problematic.  There was an explanation of what happened to the main character's industrialist brother, but not a resolution.  The book has a secondary theme of industrial reform, as in Dickens, but it is never developed.  There is a "they lived happily ever after" feeling about the book, but it falls flat.



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