Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery

This book continues Anne's story with her time at Redmond College. She slowly and unwittingly falls in love with Gilbert Blythe, makes new friends, and sets up housekeeping for the first time. While not exactly repetitive, this book,  I think, isn't doing quite so many interesting things with gender and fantasy as the first book.

Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery

This book tells of Anne's years teaching at the Avonlea school and helping Marilla save her eyesight and raise twins left on Marilla's hands by the death of her third cousin's wife. Anne's friendship with Gilbert Blythe grows stronger, and she keeps getting into memorable scrapes (such as selling her neighbor's cow, falling through the roof of a pantry, painting the town hall an ugly blue, and entertaining her favorite author on a cleaning day). Another fun addition to the series.

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

I really enjoyed re-reading this book. While Anne is a little over-the-top, I still really connected with her character. I was interested this time in the deft plotting of the book, which moves through six years with ease. I also was interested in Anne's friendship with Diana and her reactions to Gilbert Blythe. I'm looking forward to re-reading the rest of the books in the series.

The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

This book only convinced me more of Herman Melville's genius. Aside from "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby the Scrivener," these tales were new for me, but even the first two had new things to unfold (it's funny how crafting a reading of a text can put blinders on you to what else is going on in the text). Although the subjects and styles of the stories are all different, this time I was intrigued by the various manifestations of power and the way that power fosters both assumptions and blindness to situations. The stories also seemed to argue for an interconnectedness (if only by their juxtaposition of things otherwise quite far apart.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I reread this book for a summer school program I'm doing this week, and it has been such a pleasure to return. This time around, I really noticed the structure of the book. Melville does a really beautiful job lining the chapters up, so even in the parts where there's not a lot of action, the text progresses, and regresses, and moves in a really compelling way. I also noticed the humor this time around--there are parts that are downright *funny* that I hadn't appreciated before. I think there's also real character development in Ishmael--when he tells the Town-Ho's story, he projects outward to Lima, presumably after the voyage. When Ishmael starts his story, he has the hypos and is so anti-social as to try to sleep on a bench in the common area rather than share his bed with a stranger, and throughout his journey on the Pequod he seems isolated from both captain and crew (after Ahab convinces the crew to join him in the hunt for Moby Dick, Ishmael comments, after all is said and done, "I, Ishmael, was one of that crew..."--otherwise you'd never know it from his narration of these events). While Ishmael does bond with Queequeg, even this bond is limited (if not dropped entirely in the latter parts of the book--for a good reading see Geoffrey Sanborn's "Whence come you, Queequeg?"). But in Lima, Ishmael's sitting around telling stories with a bunch of friends, behavior we've never before seen him engaged in. I think this behavior indicates a change in Ishmael from the time he journeyed on the Pequod to the time he tells the Town-Ho's story at Lima: he has become more sociable. I also find myself much more sympathetic to Ahab as time goes on. Finally, as I have noticed before, this book is all about knowledge, epistemology, and writing. I'll definitely be coming back to this story as time goes on.

Island Beneath the Sea by Isabelle Allende

I enjoyed this book, set on Haiti and in New Orleans. The book tells the story of Zarité, an enslaved woman, who eventually persuades her master to free her after she saves his and his son's lives during the Haitian Revolution. In parts, it seems really engaged with its history (in a thematic way), whereas sometimes, I felt like the rich historical background was just so much window-dressing. I think in the long run, it's the former that prevails. I'd be very interested to read the book in Spanish, particularly because its settings are mostly Francophone.

Subversive Genealogies by Michael Paul Rogin

This monograph contends that Melville's fiction was profoundly influenced by his family life, but that it also subverts the genealogies of his family life. I found the readings of Pierre and Moby Dick and the American 1848 (which I think is the beginning of the critical turn that looks at the Mexican-American War as a key periodization of American history) particularly persuasive, and I thought the book provided a good introduction to some of Melville's fictions with which I am not familiar.