birdienl | Entries tagged with middlemarch watch-along

We have a winner! The Middlemarch watch-along giveaway was won by:

Karalynn aka

Karalynn, congratulations with winning My life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead. I hope you enjoy reading it, I know I did!

For all the other people who entered: thanks for your participation and... better luck next time!

At the beginning of this Middlemarch watch-along I promised you a giveaway when we finished and here it is! But first a little wrap-up: I had a lot of fun with this watch-along. It was really nice to rewatch this great BBC series together with you. I really got renewed appreciation for the story and the adaption. Thanks everyone who commented with opinions and wise words! I hope you enjoyed the watch-along as well. Maybe it inspired you to go read the book Middlemarch or try out some other works or adaptations by George Eliot.

The watch-along inspired me to do another one: in September I plan to host a Far from the Madding Crowd watch-along. I hope you'll all join in and watch this wonderful Thomas Hardy adaptation with me!

On to the giveaway: I'm giving away a copy of the wonderful book (and isn't the cover pretty?) My life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead.

'Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, regarded by many as the greatest English novel. After gaining admission to Oxford, and moving to the United States to become a journalist, through several love affairs, then marriage and family, Mead read and reread Middlemarch. The novel, which Virginia Woolf famously described as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people," offered Mead something that modern life and literature did not. In this wise and revealing work of biography, reporting, and memoir, Rebecca Mead leads us into the life that the book made for her, as well as the many lives the novel has led since it was written. Employing a structure that deftly mirrors that of the novel, My Life in Middlemarch takes the themes of Eliot's masterpiece--the complexity of love, the meaning of marriage, the foundations of morality, and the drama of aspiration and failure--and brings them into our world. Offering both a fascinating reading of Eliot's biography and an exploration of the way aspects of Mead's life uncannily echo that of Eliot herself, My Life in Middlemarch is for every ardent lover of literature who cares about why we read books, and how they read us.' Amazon

I can definitely recommend this book: it's wise and funny and every book lover will recognize much in it. Besides, you will learn about the live of George Eliot, many other Victorian authors and a lot about Victorian society in general.

The rules for the giveaway are as follows:
- The giveaway is open worldwide
- The winner can choose between a paper or an ebook version of My life in Middlemarch
- Please leave a current email address to the Rafflecopter widget so I can reach you when you win!
- If the winner does not respond to my email within a week, I will draw a new winner

The giveaway will be open from Saturday, July 5 until Friday, July 11 (GMT+1)

a Rafflecopter giveaway
(Unfortunately, the Rafflecopter widget does not embed here at LJ, but if you follow the link, you can enter just fine!)

We're nearing the end of our time in Middlemarch...
And Lydgate seems to be nearing the end of his wits as he fights once again with Rosie about their dire financial situation. Rosie has written to Tertius' rich uncle, but the letter they get back is less than friendly... To blow off steam, Lydgate goes to the pub where he gets quite drunk and is dangerously close to loosing a large sum of money. Luckily Fred, who seems to have matured quite a lot since the last episode, is able to steer Lydgate away from danger.

Have some roles been reversed or what?

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Here we are at the one-to-last episode of Middlemarch!

Last episode, we left Lydgate and Rosie in a very unhappy place and it doesn't get any better this episode. Lydgate tries to explain to Rosie they will have to live less luxurious, but Rosamund doesn't want to listen to him or help him. Meanwhile, she's visited by Ladislaw (who apparently is still hanging around Middlemarch). She airily talks about Casoubon's will and Dorothea's situation, without realizing Ladislaw knew nothing about this part of his relative's will. Ladislaw is mortified and when he meets Dorothea by accident, he tells her he will leave Middlemarch and never come back, because she is forbidden to him.

You're telling me whát?!

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When putting in the second dvd of my Middlemarch box to watch this episode I discovered that my series dóes have 7 episodes and not 6 as I thought. Well, that solves the problem of the different episode beginnings and ends between my version and the version of some of you commenters. So, just so you know, there will be two more watch-along posts coming!

Now, back to Middlemarch, where Mr. Brooke is trying to get votes for his election as local MP. He doesn't succeed so well however and is even bombarded with eggs. I felt quite sorry for him, after all, he's not a bad guy. Just incompetent.... Brooke seems to realize this himself as well and withdraws from the election and decides to live abroad for a while. He also sells his newspaper. This is bad news for Ladislaw, who works there as an editor and now has to go look for a new job.

I wonder what is taking the pizza-delivery guy so long

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This was a very Dorothea and Casoubon-heavy episode of Middlemarch.

The animosity between Ladislaw and Casoubon increases when Ladislaw accepts a job at Mr.Brooke's newspaper. Casoubon thinks a job as a newspaper editor will reflect badly on his status and tells Ladislaw he is not to visit them anymore, without telling Dorothea about it. Dorothea does not find out until she meets Ladislaw at her uncle's home. Ladislaw sees right through Dorothea's pretend happiness.

Oh dear, those 1830's hairstyles....

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Oh dear, almost two weeks have passed since I posted my previous Middlemarch episode recap. That was not what I'd planned! But there was a conference for work and then a busy weekend with lots of family visits and suddenly it's Wednesday again....

A lot has happened in Middlemarch as well since the last time. Dorothea and Casoubon have returned from their honeymoon and are welcomed home by Celia and Mr. Brooke. Celia has some exciting news, she and Sir James are engaged! Now I know a trip to Rome usually took longer in the 19th century than it would today, but still, that was one fast engagement! Seems to run in the family.

Well, that was fast!

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A little note before we start the second episode recap of the Middlemarch watch-along. Hamlette let me know that her first episode was longer than mine (75 vs 60 min), but that she had 6 episodes in total, similar to me. So it looks like there are content differences between my 'European' version and Hamlette's 'American' version. Is this the case for anyone else?
I will keep doing the episode recaps according to my dvd, but please let me know in the comments if you think I'm missing any scenes that you do have, I'm very curious where the differences are!

On to the episode! Where the previous episode was about getting to know all the characters, in this episode we are introduced to some of the main themes of Middlemarch: progress vs stagnation, old vs new.

Wait, if you don't know anything about art, then why did you praise MY work?

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Here we are, the first episode 'recap' of the Middlemarch watch-along. I hope you all enjoyed starting this period drama. I sure did! Even though it's a rewatch for me, the previous time I watched it was over 5 years ago, so I've forgotten a lot of the details.

In this first episode we meet the wide cast of characters whose lives we will follow. What arrested my attention was how we are thrown right in the middle of the lives of these people. No introductions, no voice-over, we get to know them as the story goes along. And quite a lot already happens in this first episode!

First, we meet dr Tertius Lydgate (Douglas Hodge), a young and ambitious physician who arrives new in Middlemarch and who hopes to do revolutionary work there. The building of a new hospital is in an advanced stage of planning and dr Lydgate discovers he will be a member of the board and will have to make some difficult decisions.

What was dr Lydgate actually doing in these scenes?

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Recently, I was reminded of the wonderful George Eliot novel Middlemarch twice. First, I read the book My life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead, a wonderful exploration by Mead about her favourite novel. Then, Miss Laurie from Old-Fashioned Charm posted a review about the 1994 adaptation of Middlemarch.

So, I couldn't deny it anymore, I really needed to either rewatch or reread Middlemarch! I chose a rewatch and I thought I'd share it with you all, with a watch-along.
How's it going to work? I will watch one episode every week and post my thoughts about it here. I'll also try and come up with some discussion questions. And, at the end of the watch-along, there will be a give-away!!

I hope you'll join in and watch or rewatch Middlemarch with me! I plan to post my first episode 'review' at the end of this week.