Book # 85 - The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The copy of The Scarlet Letter that I read was the same one that I read way back in 10th grade... which was 23 years ago. Maybe because the text was so marked up and I had underlined everything that 16 year old me thought was important the whole book seemed kind of heavy handed. It didn't seem like a book anyone would read for amusement but rather something that would get assigned to a teenager to try and get them to critically examine a text. Still I enjoyed the book on some level but it wasn't as great as I remembered it.

My main problem with it is that the "plot" doesn't really have any forward movement and the main protagonist doesn't really do anything the entire book. As most people know, the book is about Hester Prynne, a woman found guilty of adultery in a Puritanical society, and forced to live with a large scarlet "A" on her clothes. The father of her child is the local minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, and instead of confessing that he is the father he decides to keep it hidden and to psychologically torture himself. It isn't until about eighty percent of the way through the book that the characters actually decide to do something about this situation... so for most of the book not much really happens. It also doesn't help that Dimmesdale is such a wuss that he is not the most likable character.  I'll have to give it a B+.


So for anyone keeping track... this blog is now exactly three years old and The Scarlet Letter was the 50th book from the list I've read.

My progress on each of the lists:
Best Novels 1-100: 50 read
Best Novels 101-200: 4 read
Best Mysteries 1-101: 18 read
Best Science Fiction 1-50: 16 read
Best Horror 1-50: 14 read


As for how I got copies of all the books:
52 were purchased as used books at either libraries or used book stores
39 were books either me or Lucinda previously owned
14 were purchased new
14 were given to me as gifts
11 were library books

7 were checked out from the LAPL as ebooks (my new favorite way to get books!)

2 were borrowed from someone
2 were free ebooks in the public domain
1 was a purchased book for the Kindle

And my updated rankings:

1. The Lord of the Rings 2. Dune 3. Les Misérables

4. Invisible Man

5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

6. Don Quixote

7. The Hobbit

8. A Farewell to Arms

9. The Trial

10. David Copperfield

11. Great Expectations

12. Harry Potter

13. The Stand

14. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

15. Pale Fire

16. The Handmaid's Tale

17. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

18. The Chronicles of Narnia

19. The Name of the Rose

20. The Great Gatsby

21. The Sound and the Fury

22. Frankenstein

23. Lord of the Flies

24. The Color Purple

25. Things Fall Apart

26. Wind in the Willows

27. Anne of Green Gables

28. Rebecca

29. Atonement

30. One Hundred Years of Solitude

31. Native Son

32. Anna Karenina

33. Sons and Lovers

34. War and Peace

35. A Passage to India

36. The Count of Monte Cristo

37. The Scarlet Letter

38. Winnie-the-Pooh

39. Emma

40. Charlotte's Web

41. Wuthering Heights

42. Remembrance of Things Past

43. Possession

44. His Dark Materials

45. Absalom, Absalom

46. The Ambassadors

47. To the Lighthouse

48. Mrs. Dalloway

49. Gone with the Wind

50. Atlas Shrugged