My Ántonia

"My Antonia" is part of my [reading required list from High School] which comprises 48 books in total. It’s the first book of the list I read officially, starting the countdown. This novel is the last of the Great Plains Trilogy."My Antonia" is a beautiful novel celebrating the gift of everlasting friendship. The main character, Jim Burden, shares his childhood upbringing with his grandparents in Nebraska, at the beginning of the 20th Century. There he meets, the Shimerdas, a Bohemian immigrant family. Jim became best friends with their daughter, Antonia.Jim’s account is special because we witness his genuine and compassionate approach to the European immigrants and his attachment to the land. Through the description of his surroundings, we witness how Jim identifies wholeheartedly to the country lifestyle. How much it contributes to his well being:"I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep."Cather, Willa (2012-03-12). My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 12). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.One of my favorite description of the land marked a definite moment when he encounters Antonia and her family, later on in life, thus embellishing this experience. For an instant, it reminded me of the famous scene of Gone with the Wind where Scarlett stand on top of the mountain and promised to never go hungry in her life."For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there."Cather, Willa (2012-03-12). My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 152). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.Apart from this friendship admiration, Jim describes the prejudices of the community towards the European immigrants. The well known, established American families were repulsive in letting their son marry one of these girls. They were stained with bad reputation and were called “Hired Girls”."What did it matter? All foreigners were ignorant people who could n’t speak English. There was not a man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence or cultivation, much less the personal distinction, of Ántonia’s father. Yet people saw no difference between her and the three Marys; they were all Bohemians, all “hired girls.”"Cather, Willa (2012-03-12). My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 98). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.I think this was one of the major impediment on Jim and Antonia relationship. Thus contributing to never surpass the status of friendship. We feel Jim’s nostalgia, all along, for what could’ve been. One feels Jim’s regret, sadness and loneliness. Thus, accepting his fate by holding on to their everlasting friendship."I’d have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister — anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me.”"Cather, Willa (2012-03-12). My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 152). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.Having read this novel, I must admit that I may not have appreciated its beauty back in High School. I think I would have found it boring and slow paced. Now that I am more patient and open-minded, I was able to enjoy the storyline and the beautiful narration of the prairie lifestyle. It’s weird to say this but I am glad I read it at this moment and not before. I listened to the audio companion narrated by Jeff Cummings. I was not impressed. It was ok.[Message of the novel:]"Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again."Cather, Willa (2012-03-12). My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 155). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.Great Plains Trilogy:1. "Oh Pioneers!"2. "The Song of the Lark"3. "My Antonia"

I watched a you tube video on the author of this book and her stories sounded like the kind of stories i like. I've lived in Wyoming, Colorado and Iowa and have gone though Nebraska hundreds of times. I'm always curious about the history of a place and this book is a snapshot of the early history of southern Nebraska. It was also a story of lifelong friendship. I liked the Story very much.

This is not a review of the literary merits of "My Antonia". If you're here you either know the book or you know it's a classic and have decided to fill in a little reading gap by checking it out. For what it's worth, that's how I ended up here and I was delighted to finally acquaint myself with this remarkable work. This is a review regarding the readability of the free version.But to business. I found and read the Kindle freebie public domain edition of this book. It has been available here on Amazon for many years. I read the download on a Kindle Touch.The book is well formatted and presents well on the Kindle. The native font is fine, but all the Kindle options - font selection, font size, line spacing, and margins - work properly. The book has a sloppy Table of Contents, although it is active. The Kindle "Go To" function is a better choice for navigation. The edition is bare bones. There are no notes or annotations, and no editor foreword or supplementary material. This is a bare bones transcription of the text. This copy avoids the dreaded error where a letter, (usually "f" or "t" for some reason), has been omitted everywhere in the text. The text here is clean. There are no odd page breaks, no paragraphing problems, no garbled sentences, and no other format issues.Bottom line - this is an excellent choice for browsing or experimenting and a nice freebie find.

Bought for my 14yr old child to read at school

One day in the late 19th century, two children arrive separately in Nebraska on the same train. Jim Burden is a ten-year-old boy, recently orphaned and coming to the prairie land to live with his grandparents. Ántonia Shimerda is a couple of years older, immigrating to America from Bohemia with her family. Although from different backgrounds and traditions, the children become friends, learning about the land and wildlife of their new home together as they explore it with some of the other children in the farming neighbourhood. Over the years their friendship will gradually fade as Jim goes off to university and later to live in New York, but he always remembers Ántonia, and now in middle-age has set out to write down his memories of her.To start, I’ll explain why for me it only rates as four stars – simply put, it has no plot, which unfortunately is one of the things most likely to make me grumpy about a book. Instead it is a description of the short-lived era of pioneering, a wonderful depiction of the land and people’s relationship with it before it was fully tamed, a foundational story of the creation of America, and a coming-of-age tale of Jim, primarily, but also of Ántonia and of the frontier itself.The writing is excellent, especially in the descriptions of the various settings. The vastness of the landscape, the strength and courage of the pioneers, the rapid development of towns and social order are all portrayed brilliantly, leaving a lasting impression on the reader’s mind – for this reader, more lasting than the lives of our major protagonists, I must admit, who largely felt as if they existed to tie together a rather disparate set of episodes illustrating facets of the frontier life. Ántonia herself disappears completely for large parts of the book and her story is often told at a distance, by some third party telling Jim the latest gossip about her. The introduction in my Oxford World’s Classics edition suggests a long-running debate between people who think the book is fundamentally Ántonia’s story, or Jim’s. I fall into the latter category – for me, this is very definitely Jim’s story, and through him largely Cather’s own. But mostly it feels like a part of America’s story, or of its myth-making of itself as a ‘nation of immigrants’ – that is not to denigrate the myth or to suggest it is untrue, simply to say that all nations form myths from their own history which reflect and influence how they feel about themselves and how they act as a society. And I feel this foundational myth-creation aspect may be why the book has earned its place in the hearts of so many Americans, and as a well-deserved American classic.

I eagerly bought this book, written in 1918, as it is considered by many to be Willa Cather’s masterpiece.Having read it, I don’t feel any closer to greatness.The story is told by the orphan – Jim Burden - who travels to Black Hawk in Nebraska to live with his grandparents, where he meets Antonia Shimerda and her family who have had a much longer journey from Bohemia. Living on neighbouring farms they become childhood friends and Jim is asked by Antonia’s mother to teach her two daughters English.The girls’ father never really wanted to move from his native Bohemia, preferring to spend time with his friends, playing his violin. For him the ‘American Dream’ ends in suicide. Jim’s grandparents move to the edge of Black Hawk where he studies and eventually becomes a lawyer on the East Coast.Antonia’s life has been hard – both working the land and various positions of domestic drudgery. Eventually – after being duped by a fraudster – she marries and has a large family who Jim meets many years later and resolves to remain close to.Almost immediately, the isolation of farmsteads on the prairie and the harsh conditions in which such pioneering families had to survive are paramount, as is the poverty and the ever-present mindfulness of the riches of others close at hand. The descriptive prose is lovely until it becomes so much more wallpaper, waiting patiently to witness some action in the room.Antonia is a tragic figure in many ways. She works extraordinarily hard her whole life and never really gets ahead. Her mother is arrogant and difficult; her father dies; she is abused by seemingly everyone and we are supposed to believe that she ultimately finds salvation in her family, back out there on the prairie. I’m not sure I believe it.Antonia and Jim remain friends though their different paths through life cause them to live world’s apart until they cross once more. I got a sense of strong friendship between the two but never really love – certainly not the desperation of unrequited love. I didn’t really feel strongly about either of them and, once the interest in and admiration of their will to survive faded, so did my interest in the book.I enjoyed the first part of the book and absolutely loved the last chapter. When I’d finished it, I just felt there was so much I had missed in between. In terms of character building and plot development it seemed to meander like a small stream along the floor of a largely forgettable valley: much less grand canyon as great hype

Willa Cather’s novel is primarily a tale of the American North-West in the early 20th century. It tells of the hardships of bitter winters as wagon trains carrying immigrant farmers, their families and belongings across the seemingly endless miles of the high plains. It is above all a tribute to human endurance and perseverance that is beautifully told in a straightforward and direct writing style.The only thing that made reading the novel a little tedious was the constant barrage of explanatory notes, with several on almost every page. Although some were useful and indeed interesting, many were superfluous and could have been omitted.

This particular edition of Cather's excellent novel has a hugely comprehensive and lengthy introduction as well as notes for the text. Read the book before you read the introduction as otherwise you can get a big bogged down with names and places that mean nothing. The story revolves around 2 principal characters and is told in the first person (Jim Burden) who grows up with the Antonia of the title. Although the teller of the tale is a man the story seems rather to be written as a woman might write it and, of course, it is not a modern novel so ideas and attitudes have changed enormously. The descriptions of life in Nebraska at that time are incredibly real and you can just imagine yourself in amongst the red grass of the prairie and sensing the hardships of that life. The characters all ring true as well. Definitely worth reading. A good one for a book club.

My Antonia is classic American historical fiction set in Nebraska in the 1880s.It is told by Jim Burden, who met Antonia when they were both children. Jim was going to Black Hawk to live with his grandparents, while Antonia came with her family from Bohemia. Living close to each other, they quickly became friends.This story tells of harsh pioneering times, when people spread across America in search of a better future. They tamed the land, withstood the seasons and the hardships that Mother Nature threw at them and many thrived. Antonia took to life on the land with ease, doing the work of men for many years. Her friendship with Jim drifted at times, especially when he left to study and become a lawyer, but, years later, they renewed their acquaintance.I enjoy stories of early settlers and their strengths against adversity; I find them both humbling and motivating. This story involves a range of immigrants and their stories were all interesting; each worked hard for themselves and the future of their families. It makes me wonder how much the next generation and the ones after that really appreciated the hardships of their forefathers.First published in 1918, this is a snapshot of a long past era. Even during the telling of this story change happened and progress marched confidently forward. Ideal for anyone, like me, who enjoys dipping back in history and losing themselves for a few hours of reading.