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Summary: Read it, it's good :)
Review: I was forced to read this book for a class and I have to say that it was better than I expected. It goes into great detail with outstanding descriptions using color and descriptive words. There are definitely points in the book where you'll get bored, but don't all books have those points? There is great interaction between characters and it is so easy to picture the characters which makes the book that much more beautiful and interesting.
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Summary: They banned Catcher but not this?
Review: I consider myself a thoughtful and well read person and I happen to be a fan of many great classics...but this was ridiculous. I had to read this for my Advanced Placement English class, and I found it more dull than Chaucer (and that is being nice). People criticize Hemingway for being overly masculine, but this piece is overly feminine. This novel, in fact, was the first book I actually dreaded reading for school. My suggestion, only buy this book if you are interested in reading 200+ pages of pure mush.
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Summary: My Heart's on the Prairie
Review: I grew up on the prairie and this book just completes a prairie experience. Wow! I loved the way Ms. Cather writes about the sunsets, the grasses, the crops. This book lacks the extreme hardships of another of my prairie favorites, Giants in the Earth, but it does have a true-to-life feel of the northern plains. All I can say is "wow!"
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Summary: another great book by Willa Cather
Review: My Antonia is a very well-written love story. Jim Burden is sent to live with his grandparents in Nebraska when he's ten. On the farm next to his family's is a Bohemian family. He befriends the Bohemian girl, Antonia. This book tells the tales of their adventures together through Jim's eyes. His enjoyable childhood with his best friend. Then, the weekly dances with Antonia in the town's dance hall. His years of college, and how their friendship grows a part. The last chapter is their reunion. Antonia with her huge family and life on a farm. And Jim, a successful lawyer. The best of friends once more. Jim and Antonia are both very loveable chracters and easy to relate to. A great portrayal of the life of a pioneer in Nebraska. An adventure that's fun to read. This book will make you laugh and cry. But most of all, you'll wish for a friendship as great as Jim and Antonia's.
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Summary: It is a very beautiful novel set in a breathtaking nature..
Review: These critics agree that "My Antonia" is the best novel we have ever read compared to the other romance novels. It is a very beautiful novel set in a breathtaking nature. "The low sky was like a sheet of metal; the blonde cornfields had faded out into ghostliness at last; the little pond was frozen under its stiff willow bushes. Big white flakes where whirling over everything and disappearing in the red grass." (Pg 54) Willa Cather includes imagery all throughout her novel. She has an enormous amount of imagery and has a very alternate style of writing. Not only did i feel like i was right there on the farm and in the town; but, i felt what the characters felt. I was delighted and satisfied when i was finished reading the book.
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Summary: My Antonia
Review: It is a very well writen book. I think anybody of any age should read it
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Summary: If you read a finer book please tell me.
Review: I read My Antonia in High School (NFHS 10 years ago) and I have been searching for a finer book ever since. To begin with, I love the pacing Cather uses; Antonia is epic in scope. Additionaly, I have never found a better narrator in literature. Jim combines the superficial characteristics of a man, with the sensitivity of a feminine soul. This provides the balance necessary for the theme of unrequited love between Jim and Antonia. To clarify, the romantic theme is not the typical Romeo and Juliet romance. Indeed, the relationship between them is much more powerful and more satisfying. The tone of this novel draws the reader in immediately, expressed in the beautiful prose that Cather is so capable of. I have read good novels by great writers (Dillard, Maclean)that never manage to match the sense of place and time in My Antonia. It should be noted that these authors (including Cather herself) often imitated the style of My Antonia with some success. Bottom line: if you are a John Grisham devotee, you might consider something else. If you are in the mood to search the deep things of the soul with literature of classic stature, give My Antonia a chance.
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Summary: Hmmmm...
Review: Okay, can we stop ripping on teens here? We're not all as shallow as you adults may think. To tell you the truth I haven't finished the book yet (I'm close) and I really think it started out slowly, just kind of plodding along..but once Jim got into town and what not, it gets better. So, even though you may complain about HAVING to read it at first, just stick through it and it will get better. If you still don't like it? Oh well, that doesn't make you a horrible person. Have fun.
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Summary: Nostalgia, Beauty, and Friendship
Review: In MY ANTONIA Willa Cather does an extraordinary job of showing a true struggle with the weight of the personal nostalgic impulse. Jim Burden is unfulfilled in his life as a New York husband and lawyer, a predicament that his many travels near the Nebraska he grew up in do not alleviate. His most powerful memories center around the Bohemian immigrant girl Antonia. The story is really about their relationship rather than either individual: Cather's depiction of Jim's friendship with Antonia as a child, a young adult, and then a man shows how both Jim and the novel reconcile and transcend the combination of place, time and fortune. Written primarily from Jim's perspective, the story helps him regain a vital measure of the fulfillment he has lost in the over twenty years he spends away from his roots. It's hard to go home again, and often we don't when we should, but Cather reminds us that home is not strictly a matter of geography: the people we carry in our hearts mean more to us than any street address ever can.Cather's pen paints vivid and detailed pictures of the landscape and complex, well-rounded characters to people it. I could not finish this book when it was assigned for summer reading in high school; it didn't grip me. Reading it twelve years later, with my childhood gone and a dozen years more life experience and memories, I found it not only gripping, but stirring and beautiful.
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Summary: Hello?
Review: If you're some kid who gets stuck reading this and decide to find out what others think of it to see whether or not you should spend time on it, then I say read it. I remeber being in college and having this assigned and thinking that it would be some packaged femal flick only fit for the Lifetime channel. How wrong I was. The characters alone are worth the read, as is the plot. Don't be surprised if you can't put it down. I couldn't.
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