Book a Week in 2013 - week forty three

[Lady Florida.]

What does she say about Frankenstein? :) I've finished Dracula, and I really liked it, but I got a bit spooked in the middle with the whole inmate of the asylum part. I'm trying to decide if I will start reading Frankenstein this week or next week, because my dh is out of town this week. Yes, I'm easily spooked  :blush: .

 

 

I can't answer about what you can skip for your class, but I found Frankenstein and Dracula to be very different. Dracula is spooky, Frankenstein is not. Frankenstein is more of a psychological study (not psychological thriller) imo. 

[Mom-ninja.]

 Maybe I should break out my scary read on the Kindle--Hound of the Baskervilles--haven't started yet.

I love that one. Probably my favorite Holms.

 

 

I'm reading Thirteen Days as my October spooky read. Cause, really, is there anything scarier than the thought of how close we were to nuclear war?

[Paisley Hedgehog]

. 

 

[mumto2]

 

What does she say about Frankenstein? :) I've finished Dracula, and I really liked it, but I got a bit spooked in the middle with the whole inmate of the asylum part. I'm trying to decide if I will start reading Frankenstein this week or next week, because my dh is out of town this week. Yes, I'm easily spooked  :blush: .

She hasn't started Frankenstein yet. I will let you know when she does. I agree with Floridamom, I think it will be more psychological too fwiw. The part in the asylum was scary and I have read it before.

[Tress]

She hasn't started Frankenstein yet. I will let you know when she does. I agree with Floridamom, I think it will be more psychological too fwiw. The part in the asylum was scary and I have read it before.

Good to hear that you found it spooky too.

 

Funny, I hadn't noticed that my copy of Dracula contained several appendices, so at the end of the book I thought there were still a lot of pages left and I was expecting several plot turns when suddenly....poef...the count was dead :D.

 

After hearing from you and Floridamom that Frankenstein isn't spooky, I'm going to start it tomorrow. I can always make it my daytime book, while reading Henrietta Lacks in the evening.

Thanks!

[Robin M]

I read the House of the Mosque before.

From a Historian point of view the book would probably be lacking, it is written like a story, and it reads like a story.

It is not very detailed in facts.

But I liked the book very much, because this one tells how the ayatollahs got important in Persia, so it explains how Iran got it's current structure.

 

I can't promise I read a book per week, because not everything I read is (or will be) translated in English, but it is a good thread to improve my English I think.

Happy you dropped in.  Hope to hear more about your reads for the rest of the year and hope you decided to join us in the coming year.

 

My favorite Holmes, too!  I (re)read the novel back in May, then viewed the 1939 film version starring Basil Rathbone for my October Spooky Watching.  Love, love, love old b&w horror movies !

 

Hey, so I know this is a reading thread, but does anyone care to share their favorite scary movies??   :bigear:

 

Our favorite scary movies are more from the 50's and 60's - Godzilla and all the other type monster movies.  Them (huge mutant ants), Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc.  Scary but not bloody and gross.

[6packofun]

OK, Wool readers I need advice!  Should I read the Shift trilogy or whatever it's called BEFORE reading Dust or could I read Dust after Wool and do Shift later?

 

For the book thread:  I am now reading The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen.  Interesting premise so far.

 

Reading some theology type stuff as well.  Trying to find a copy of Salvation and Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach by Kenneth Keathley.  Molinism seems to describe my view fairly well.

[6packofun]

 

Reading "Heartless" by Gail Carriger. It is very good for being the forth in a series....

 

 

 

I really enjoyed the Parasol Protectorate series!  :)  Love that name.  lol

[Kareni]

I've been reading voraciously the last couple of days.

 

If you like romance, chocolate, and Paris, you'll probably enjoy these two books that I read by Laura Florand from her Amour et Chocolat series.  Note: these are not G rated.

 

The Chocolate Rose

 

The Chocolate Touch

 

I also read Snapped by Laura Griffin which is a romantic suspense novel.  It's part of a series but can stand alone.

 

"On a sweltering summer afternoon, Sophie Barrett walks into a nightmare. A sniper has opened fire on a college campus. When the carnage is over, three people—plus the shooter—are dead and dozens more are injured. Sophie escapes virtually unscathed. Yet as details emerge from the investigation, she becomes convinced that this wasn’t the random, senseless act it appeared to be. No one wants to believe her—not the cops, not her colleagues at the Delphi Center crime lab, and definitely not Jonah Macon, the homicide detective who’s already saved her life once.

Jonah has all kinds of reasons for hoping Sophie is mistaken. Involving himself with a key witness could derail an already messy investigation, not to mention jeopardize his career. But Sophie is as determined and fearless as she is sexy. If he can’t resist her, he can at least swear to protect her. Because if Sophie is right, she’s made herself the target of a killer without a conscience. And the real terror is only just beginning. . ."

 

Regards,

Kareni

[Mom-ninja.]

 

 

Hey, so I know this is a reading thread, but does anyone care to share their favorite scary movies??   :bigear:

Oh! Hitchcock movies. Talk about goose bumps.

 

Also, Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace. Comedy and Spooky.

[Just Robyn]

Last week I finished

 

Carmilla - Entertaining, but the ending was disappointing, imo.

 

Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity - Nothing special, but light, bloggy and motivational.

 

My stacked book poetry:

 

 

Uggh.If that's not visible I'll have to try again later.

[Jane in NC]

Re the bolded, textiles and pottery are areas of great ignorance for me, where might I start?

 

Also, I started Purge, but have set it aside.  Did you end up trying it?  The writing is gripping, and I had trouble putting the book down, but when we went back to key trauma moments for the younger character, it was far too graphic for me to take... I want so much to keep reading, but do not want to encounter more explicit descriptions of that variety.  ...but I keep finding myself thinking, 'maybe that was the worst of it, and I could read on without risk...'  [if anyone else is as wimpy as I am, do not, I repeat *do not* read the excerpt in the review Jane linked, or the Kindle sample... really.  I barely restrained myself from spending grocery money on a book I knew I would probably not be able to read, but was hooked on... ]

 

My favorite source for reading about textile related crafts ("women's work" in old fashioned parlance) is Piecework magazine.  Your library may have copies.  Some (like the annual lace issue) you may want to skip but the annual literary issue is great fun.  I am obviously interested in the immigrant experience.  Piecework often has stories of Old World traditions that have been kept alive quietly by those retiring women who kept food on the family table via knitting, embroidery, or lacework.

 

I have no suggested sources for pottery.  My knowledge comes from studio work and lurking in museums.  I was obsessed with glaze making for a while but much of this was hands on.  I suspect there are many dry academic sources on the topic but I don't know of a compelling read for the armchair enthusiast.

 

No, I have not looked at Purge. It was not on the shelf of the library I frequent and with my recent surgery I did not want to place any requests for books from other libraries.  It remains on my library list to be read in the weeks ahead.

[Jane in NC]

Speaking of mind-blowing contrasts... while immersed in Neruda, I read another Vonnegut: Mother Night.  This was a little more the Vonnegut I remembered, but not nearly as dire.  It is an incredibly disturbing book (and, for those of us who don't tend to find black humor about serious subjects very funny even more so).  Our narrator was an American married to a German during WWII and a significant figure Nazi propaganda, he wrote, designed, and broadcast horrific Nazi propaganda... but, he was also an American undercover agent of sorts.  Although Vonnegut in his introduction says the moral of the story is "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." the message that dinned in my ears was the power of story, of narratives, that the stories we tell shape reality... not just our perception of reality, but through that perception, through the choices we make, those stories shape our world.

I can't say I enjoyed or liked this book, but it is an important, unsettling work, and, Stacia, I join you in puzzlement that Vonnegut is not better recognized or more widely taught.

 

Moving abruptly from the perspective of the home-front and the observer to intense first person experiences: A Train in Winter.... oh, my.  For me, the hardest part of this book wasn't the time in Birkenau or Ravensbruck, harrowing though those were (and an eery counterpoint to the YA Rose under Fire I read last week), no, it was the beginning and end, where we get to see the damning extent of French collaboration (in many cases that word seems far too kind), but to also see the horrific price tag for those who did more than not collaborate, for the awe inspiring few who risked, and in most cases, lost, so much.  Could I do that?  Could I send my children away so I could distribute anti-nazi pamphlets, so that when I was captured, at least they'd already be taken care of?  And then, after the end, would even these amazing women have done what they did if they'd realized that even the tiny fraction of them who survived, had lost everything, even if they came back to a living husband and child(ren)?  That even those who had survived physically would feel, to such an extent, that they had died in Auschwitz? ...because each little piece seems so small... and when honors were given out after the war, it was to the guys who'd picked up weapons, not the women who put up posters, ran printing presses, smuggled folks over the demarcation line into Vichy... because each of those individual acts seems so small... but, dear G-d, if more folks had had that insane, incredible courage and conviction, the Holocaust couldn't have happened.  Okay.  I'm crying too much to keep typing. 

 

Vonnegut is my library bag but I have yet to revisit these works that I have not read for decades.

 

A Train in Winter may be just the ticket for this reader who wants never to forget.  Thank you.

 

[Jane in NC]

My contributions to the stacked book poetry:

 

 

My 1945 copy of Gertrude Stein's Book Wars I have Seen looks like it has been through the wars!  I was concerned that the title would not be legible so I had an alternate stack:

 

 

And a proposed menu for our next book gathering:

 

 

What fun!

[Stacia]

Just finished The Dracula Tape by Fred Saberhagen. As I'm a Dracula fan, I quite enjoyed this twist on Stoker's Dracula tale, told from the viewpoint of Dracula himself. There are fairly big portions that are quotes from Stoker's work, followed by a differing response in Dracula's voice. Any weak points in Stoker's work have been fully exploited here in presenting Dracula's view. Of course, Dracula saves a special dislike for Van Helsing; Dracula considers him both a quack & a religious nut. Some of Dracula's descriptions of Van Helsing had me :smilielol5: , such as...

 

 

...the old maestro of obfuscation...

 

and

 

 

The vision of Van Helsing as a vampire is one before which my imagination balks; this is doubtless only a shortcoming on my part; he may have been well fitted for the role, since as we have seen he had already the power, by means of speech, to cast his victims into a stupor.

 

A fun October read, especially if you are team Dracula.

 

(If you want the 'good guys', i.e., humans, to win, you'd better stick to Stoker's Dracula. ;) )

 

 

[Stacia]

What does she say about Frankenstein? :) I've finished Dracula, and I really liked it, but I got a bit spooked in the middle with the whole inmate of the asylum part. I'm trying to decide if I will start reading Frankenstein this week or next week, because my dh is out of town this week. Yes, I'm easily spooked :blush: .

 

Echoing the others who have said that Frankenstein is not as scary as you think it will be. It's more of a tragedy, imo, than horror. One book that really helped me appreciate the true tragedy of Frankenstein is a biography of Mary Shelley, The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein.

 

when suddenly....poef...the count was dead :D.

That's what you think. ;) (He's not dead in the book I just finished, lol.)

The Chocolate Rose

 

The Chocolate Touch

Seems like a timely mention since I'm sitting here eating Belgian chocolates. (My in-laws just got back from a trip to Belgium. :D )

[SorrelZG]

I agree with Frankenstein being a tragedy rather than a horror. Granted, if such a creature walked up on me I imagine I would experience horror. I'm still given to occasions of reflecting on that thought in light of the insight into the creature's experience and inner turmoil.

[Stacia]

What a fabulous, enticing description! *sigh* I am adding it to my teetering stacks to join Bulgakov's A Country Doctor's Notebook (a gift from my amazing mother-in-law earlier this year, it keeps getting preempted by these other things...)

Aren't mils great? (I know mine is.)

A Tale for the Time Being looks fascinating! Both the content, and the structure of the narrative.

I'm getting ready to skim this one again (as I already read it earlier this year) -- my book club is reading it for our next meeting. I loved it when I read it; fyi, it was shortlisted for this year's Booker prize (but did not win). I found it touching, fun, heart-rending, & wonderful. Definitely recommended.

Okay, here are the ones I've been meaning to read (some of them rather dreadfully oop):

 

 

Selected Letters and Journals - Byron

 

The Letters of Mary W. Shelley - there are 3 volumes here's the first one (I don't know that I will read all of them, and there is a selected letters: here's the Amazon listing, but the 3 volume set is what I have on hand...

 

The Clairmont Correspondence

 

The Journals of Claire Clairmont [Claire was Mary's step-sister and the mother of Byron's child Allegra; I remember Sherwood Smith describing her as the original stalker groupie... it was in a neat article of hers about the writing of Frankenstein, I'll have to see if I can find it,]

 

With Shelley in Italy

Oh, thank you! Will have to look for some of those. Most of my knowledge about them comes from the Mary Shelley bio I read a few years ago, The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein.

 

I'm loving the quotes you've posted from Black Swan, so much so that I have to keep reminding myself that it isn't *about* books, and that this is not a rabbit trail I want to follow now, really. (and hurrah! for the book finds!)

 

...not only are we all unique in our choices, none of us can ever begin to get close to reading all the books worth reading. The order, the content, and the process are, and imho should be, intensely personal, and I think the image of a journey is a powerful one.. because our next steps are shaped by the ones we took before, and our experience of each new place/book is also shaped by what we've seen/felt/lived/processed from the ones before. There is no ideal journey and, heretical though it sounds, no canon of essential literature that could or should be applied to individuals.

 

...

 

Oh, Jenn! This is fabulous! Thank you!! (and how exciting to hear that poetry is feeling at least a little less daunting!)

 

And, oh yes, about the idea of only being able to say certain things in a specific language! Borges is fascinating and delightful... and I must gather my courage and venture into his short stories again some day... perhaps next year could be a year of stretching my comfort zones a little more...

 

 

Re: Importance of Being Earnest: Yes, plays count! Isn't Wilde fun! Yes, the modern movie is very different, but it is, honestly, also such great fun - you can tell the actors had a blast doing it, and it has, despite its modern folks in period dress thing, a lot of the heart of the play, imho. (I'd say the same of An Ideal Husband, only, in that case, I'd almost argue that the film is better than its source material... ymmv) The older one is also fun, but the casting does not match how I see many of the characters

Yes, yes, & yes. (Just busy doing as I was reading your post.)

Speaking of mind-blowing contrasts... while immersed in Neruda, I read another Vonnegut: Mother Night. This was a little more the Vonnegut I remembered, but not nearly as dire. It is an incredibly disturbing book (and, for those of us who don't tend to find black humor about serious subjects very funny even more so). Our narrator was an American married to a German during WWII and a significant figure Nazi propaganda, he wrote, designed, and broadcast horrific Nazi propaganda... but, he was also an American undercover agent of sorts. Although Vonnegut in his introduction says the moral of the story is "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." the message that dinned in my ears was the power of story, of narratives, that the stories we tell shape reality... not just our perception of reality, but through that perception, through the choices we make, those stories shape our world.

 

I can't say I enjoyed or liked this book, but it is an important, unsettling work, and, Stacia, I join you in puzzlement that Vonnegut is not better recognized or more widely taught.

I'm going to have to revisit some Vonnegut myself very soon. I really do adore most of his writing.

Carmilla - Entertaining, but the ending was disappointing, imo.

Still have this one on my to-read pile...

And a proposed menu for our next book gathering:

 

What fun!

Looking forward to dinner at your house, Jane! :thumbup1:

[Violet Crown]

Kenneth Grahame *essays*! Oh, how fabulous! What is the title (or better yet, do you have a link?), a 2 second scan didn't turn up any obvious suspects...

 

 

It seems I was mistaken, but I plead inculpable ignorance. What I took to be a collection of essays, or rather autobiographical vignettes of Grahame's childhood, I learn from Wikipedia to be a collection of short stories told in the first person. The book is Dream Days; and I seem to have a second edition, printed in 1899, without any introductory material to warn me that the reminiscences are fictional. How embarrassing.

 

All else has been put aside however for a quick re-read of Richard II, mentioned here only recently, as Middle Girl today began listening to her abridged Richard II on cd. I'd forgotten how whiney Richard is. Just abdicate already. Anyhow I've made her up a notecard with a family tree so she can sort out which royal relative is murdering, banishing, despoiling, or deposing which.

[Stacia]

Yesterday I finished Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Quite a read! I'm still not sure what it was about. Very much like Faust set in the context of Soviet Russia, where the Devil cashes in on fashionable literary atheism, petty corruption, and the cynical measures to which the housing shortage drives people. There's a Walpurgisnacht scene in which the participants end up bored and exhausted instead of excitedly debauched; Hell as modern bureaucracy.

-----------------

 

Glad to know I wasn't the only one at some of the novel. I adored it, though, even if I didn't entirely comprehend it.

 

The moon cookie recipe is then given in the book, something that I will copy before passing this book along to someone else.

 

I like that story. Let us know how the moon cookies taste! (Are you going to leave some anonymously on someone's doorstep? St. Nicholas' Day is not too far off, really....)

 

And, I'll be looking forward to your review of the Polish book from Archipelago too.

 

I read A Tale for the Time Being which someone here recommended a month or two ago and enjoyed that--especially when the young Japanese protagonist was speaking. Her diary is found by a woman who lives on an island off Canada--found the chapters concerning her a little less interesting, but still found the book worth reading overall.

 

I enjoyed Nao's sections more than Ruth's too. Loved it overall.

 

I love stumbling upon literary connections including the odd little connections to conversations from this thread.  I discovered, while reading a wikipedia article on Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym, that the author Paul Theroux writes in The Old Patagonian Express about reading aloud a few chapters of Pym to Jorge Luis Borges!  Borges who has been a topic of conversation among a few of you this year.  I pulled out my copy of Theroux's book and found the chapter that describes the several evenings they spent together with Theroux reading aloud mostly poetry -- much of it by Kipling --  and Borges interjecting with "beautiful!  You can't say that in Spanish!"  The poetry makes me think of Eliana and the comment about "you can't say that in Spanish"  is a line that has stuck with me for years, though I had forgotten the source.  I've been wondering, while reading The Shadow of the Wind, just what the original Spanish is like (the English translation is just lovely) when I had in my mind "you can't say that in Spanish!"  I realize now, in rereading this chapter that Borges was referring to the ease we have in English creating rich by spare poetic lines by creating compounds such as "world-weary flesh".  He didn't mean Spanish was incapable of being descriptive!

 

I thought, too, that you ladies would enjoy this description of Borges' library:

 

"The books were a mixed lot.  One corner was mostly, Everyman editions, the classics in English translation -- Homer, Dante, Virgil. There were shelves of poetry in no particular order -- Tennyson and e e cummings, Byron, Poe, Wordsworth and Hardy.  There were reference books, Harvey's English Literature, The Oxford Book of Quotations, various dictionaries ...  and an old leather bound encyclopedia.  They were not fine editions; the spines were worn, the cloth had faded; but they had the look of having been read.  They were well thumbed, they sprouted paper page markers.  Reading alters the appearance of a book.  Once it has been read it never looks the same again, and people leave an individual imprint on a book they have read.  One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours."  

 

This chapter is near the end of Theroux's book.  It isn't quite worth the slog through the rest of the book to get there -- I prefer some of his other travel books instead -- but it is a terrific chapter.  I'm inspired to finally read some Borges and my reluctance to read poetry for pleasure has been weakened a bit more!

 

:hurray:  Love your whole post, Jenn.

 

 this week I pulled out a book I started a long time ago but never finished - Killing Fields, Living Fields, "an unfinished portrait of the Cambodian church". It's been rough at times and I stopped reading for a while. I had just reached 1975 (during the Khmer Rouge) and had been reading about people reaching the point of such desperation so as to be cannibalizing family members while, in another book I was reading called No Regrets (the homeschooling biography by Swann) I had also reached 1975 and the author was sharing in such vivid detail her beautiful, warm memories of family tradition and specific celebrations. The stark contrast of events happening on opposite sides of the globe in the same year just shook something in my soul and I had not picked up either book since - not intentionally, just that the I got stuck on that reality and had not been able to bring myself to pass on by it.

 

:grouphug:  I totally get what you're saying. I think I'd have a very hard time reconciling those images too & then 'passing' on by....

 

I read the House of the Mosque before.

From a Historian point of view the book would probably be lacking, it is written like a story, and it reads like a story.

It is not very detailed in facts.

But I liked the book very much, because this one tells how the ayatollahs got important in Persia, so it explains how Iran got it's current structure.

 

I can't promise I read a book per week, because not everything I read is (or will be) translated in English, but it is a good thread to improve my English I think.

 

:seeya: 

 

There is a lot on my shelf calling my name including recent Kindle deals of Visit Sunny Chernobyl and Eiger Dreams (Jon Krakauer). 

 

I think you will enjoy Visit Sunny Chernobyl. And, Eiger Dreams sounds great too.

[Stacia]

Yesterday I finished Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Quite a read! I'm still not sure what it was about. Very much like Faust set in the context of Soviet Russia, where the Devil cashes in on fashionable literary atheism, petty corruption, and the cynical measures to which the housing shortage drives people.

Ah-ha. I figured Bulgakov's devil had to make this list...

 

The Devil's 10 Best Appearances in Literature

http://flavorwire.com/420804/the-devils-10-best-appearances-in-literature/view-all/

[Tress]

Echoing the others who have said that Frankenstein is not as scary as you think it will be. It's more of a tragedy, imo, than horror. One book that really helped me appreciate the true tragedy of Frankenstein is a biography of Mary Shelley, The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein.

 

 

That's what you think. ;)  (He's not dead in the book I just finished, lol.)

 

Okay, okay, okay, I bought the Dracula Tapes and the biography of Mary Shelley (both secondhand). But now you have to stop! :D

 

 

[mumto2]

Hi, this is dd posting the books I have read since last time.

76. The Screwtape Letters by C S Lewis

77. Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear

78. Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod

79. The Winter Garden Mystery by Carola Dunn

80. Stormbringers by Philippa Gregory

81. Requiem for a Mezzo by Carola Dunn

82. Theidore Boone: The Activist by John Grisham

83. The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

84. Unhappily Ever After by Eric Hobbs

85. The Fellowship of the Ring by J R R Tolkien

86. The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

87. Antigone by Sophocles

88. Medea by Euripides

89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

90. Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

91. Alice by Joseph Delaney

92. Grimm's Household Stories by Jacob Grimm

93. The Acharnians by Aristophanes

94. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

95. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

[Paisley Hedgehog]

. 

 

[Mom-ninja.]

I don't think he was numb.. quiet, contained.. resigned.   Perhaps muted? 

 

"something he knew he had missed: the flower of life.  But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn first prize in a lottery"

 

 

Also in that last chapter as he thinks about how much the world has changed: "what was left of the little world he had grown up in, and whose standards had bent and bound him? "

 

 

...but I think he had a truer happiness that he would have had if Ellen had gone along with his impulse.  Even though he lives to see the standards of his world change, he makes peace, I think, with the boundaries his time and place had imposed... to have torn away from them would have caused much pain and distress.. His tragedy is that he comes to see the artificial demarcations for what they are without being selfish enough to follow his own desires regardless of the consequences to others.  ...though he certainly came close, at least momentarily... and once he saw more clearly, he became a bit of an observer, even of his own life.

 

And, again in the last chapter: " He had done little in public life; he would always be by nature a contemplative and a dilettante; but he had had high things to contemplate, great things to delight in; and one great man's friendship to be his strength and pride."

 

It's funny, when I read this as a teen, and again in my early twenties, I found it enormously frustrating and stultifying... but when I reread it at the beginning of this year, I appreciated it so much more... perhaps it is easier at 40 to hear that few of us win the lottery of excitement and high meaning, and most of us live lives of quiet satisfactions, of compromise, and a measure of accommodation with the cards we've been dealt. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On that premise, I guess A Train in Winter would qualify for me.... [about the 230 French women involved in, or suspected of involvement in, the Resistance, shipped to Nazi concentration camps, though the camps weren't the scariest part of it, imho]

I feel the same way about The Age of Innocence. I came away from the book feeling contentment for the reasons you wrote.

 

 

 

I put A Train in Winter on my wish list. I'm thinking this will be a good book for my kids when they are older. So many people say "Why didn't people just rise against the Nazis? How could they let it happen?" without really thinking about what it's truly like when faced with such deadly and horrific oppression.

[Lady Florida.]

I don't think he was numb.. quiet, contained.. resigned.   Perhaps muted? 

 

 

 

Also in that last chapter as he thinks about how much the world has changed: "what was left of the little world he had grown up in, and whose standards had bent and bound him? "

 

 

 

 

I feel the same way about The Age of Innocence. I came away from the book feeling contentment for the reasons you wrote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love how people can read the same book and see things so differently. We all bring our own experiences to the story. I think you're right Eliana, in calling Newland resigned or muted. Numb probably wasn't the right term, but I couldn't think of another. What saddened me was that he couldn't make the choice in the beginning (before he and May married - I don't think he should have left May once they married). I left that one quote in there because I think he was glad his children wouldn't have to live by the stilted rules of his generation.

 

I also think Ellen  and May deserve more kudos than Newland. Ellen made courageous choices, first in leaving her abusive husband, then in making sure Newland stayed with May. May wasn't so clueless after all. Touche to her for telling Ellen about the baby.The women made the choices. Newland merely accepted and lived with the choices made for him by both women. 

 

 

I much prefer the new world of Ellen than the old world of May. In my world, Ellen would have been able to divorce her husband without society shunning her and her entire family. And that's where my statement about all of us bringing our own experiences comes into play. I was a cradle Catholic whose parents divorced in 1963. In 1963 Catholics simply didn't divorce. We were pariahs because of it. Never mind that both of my parents and my brother and I were better off (and happier) than if they'd stayed together out of social and religious convention. They divorced. That's all that counted. And we weren't even "society" people. Solid blue collar society can be just as cruel.

[Lady Florida.]

 

Re: Importance of Being Earnest:  Yes, plays count!  Isn't Wilde fun!  Yes, the modern movie is very different, but it is, honestly, also such great fun - you can tell the actors had a blast doing it, and it has, despite its modern folks in period dress thing, a lot of the heart of the play, imho.  

 

 I just love that play! I enjoy both seeing it and reading it. I didn't know there was a movie with Colin Firth. My library has it. Must check it out. 

 

I make ds see the plays at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater as part of his English class. He usually groans and grumbles, though he often ends up liking the play anyway (Sense and Sensibility would be the exception :)). Anyway, he really enjoyed The Importance of Being Earnest. It's his favorite among the non-Shakespeare plays we've seen there.

 

What a fabulous, enticing description!  *sigh* I am adding it to my teetering stacks to join Bulgakov's A Country Doctor's Notebook (a gift from my amazing mother-in-law earlier this year, it keeps getting preempted by these other things...)

 

 

 

 

Aren't mils great? (I know mine is.)

 

 

 

 

Mine gave me her knitting needles, yarn, and other knitting supplies. Sadly, the reason she gave them to me was that her eyesight was failing and she could no longer knit, but I'm glad she chose me to receive them.

[Mothersweets]

I just finished reading a GREAT ya book!

 

Wonder by R.J. Palacio.

 

from Goodreads:

 

August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He's about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances?

R. J. Palacio has written a spare, warm, uplifting story that will have readers laughing one minute and wiping away tears the next. With wonderfully realistic family interactions (flawed, but loving), lively school scenes, and short chapters, Wonder is accessible to readers of all levels.(less)

 

I think someone on here had read it last year maybe? I saw the book at my local wallyworld yesterday and it kind of rang a bell. Thumbed through a few pages and thought it might be good and I am so glad I bought it! Definitely a book to share. My 14yo called dibs on it after me, the 15yo wants it next, then my 25yo wants if after him. I love it when I find a book that be shared by (almost) the entire family. :)

[Mothersweets]

I finished listening to The Age of Innocence yesterday. So, Newland Archer. I still haven't figured out if he ended up having a happy life or not. Not unhappy I guess, but he apparently just accepted that numb was okay, and probably even normal for his lot.

 

 

 

 

I've been listening to this, too! I just listened to the wedding chapter. Are you listening via CraftLit?  I love Heather Ordover - she's fantastic!

[Lady Florida.]

I've been listening to this, too! I just listened to the wedding chapter. Are you listening via CraftLit?  I love Heather Ordover - she's fantastic!

 

Mine is a free audible.com version, narrated by Mary Sarah (who I've never heard of).

[Stacia]

.

[Stacia]

I started a delightful little book this morning:

 

Sweet Dreams by Michael Frayn

 

The link I give mentions a comparison to Vonnegut, which is funny because at one point when reading Sweet Dreams, I thought of Vonnegut. It is & is not like Vonnegut. It has the same simplicity of style & ease of reading while discussing & dissecting bigger issues. It's satirical. But, whereas I'd say that Vonnegut was a realist looking at the world with a satirical & sometimes cynical eye, I'd say this book (so far) is ultimately a happy book, an optimist's book. Will probably finish this clever book by tonight.

 

A comment from a blog post at http://whatihavegottenupto-thebookspy.blogspot.com/2013/08/michael-frayn-prediction.html :

‘Sweet Dreams’ takes the idea of a heaven that designs and creates the whole by human beings, a satire of working in an office, so when the main character tries to have a revolution for an alternative life things start to get complicated, especially when the unassuming God turns up. It’s a playful novel with big ideas. It’s what I love, knockabout comedies that satirises human beings and the world they live in.

[Stacia]

.

[mumto2]

I really enjoyed the Parasol Protectorate series!  :)  Love that name.  lol

I just finished "Heartless" and it was soooo good. Much better then the second and third in the series. I absolutely adored the baby. Much better then most books with unusual supernatural births. I have the next one ready to go! :)

 

Our move is back on track! We have been entertaining the pub patrons next door. We are literally moving from one side of the pub to the other so carrying most things down the street. We have made many new friends this week, some rather odd encounters. ;)

[Ali in OR]

Finished The Hound of the Baskervilles. Great read!

 

Also picked up Dracula at the library yesterday after all of the vampire talk around here. Figure I have a little more than a week for more spooky reading.

[Onceuponatime]

Only half way through The Black Swan but I am determined to finish it before I start anything else. I am learning so much. The author is quite challenging yet amusing. Every so often he will say something like "Renaissance, shmenaissance" to show his contempt for sloppy logic. The literary references have dried up for now. He's got another book out. It's going on my to read list.

[JennW in SoCal]

For those of you reading Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series, here is a short video about a new exhibit at the Maritime Museum in London that is on the British Navy and Lord Nelson.

 

And if any of you need an excuse to visit the San Diego area (aside from getting to enjoy my charming company), the HMS Surprise from the Master and Commander movie is at our maritime museum. I haven't toured this one yet, but with our glorious weather I may just drag my dh down there this week.   I'm currently on the 4th of the series, The Mauritius Command.

[Robin M]

:lol:  :lol:

 

 

Love Hitchcock!  I had never seen any of those 1950's atomic-era scary movies until last year when ds and I watched Creature from Black Lagoon and The Blob.  Youngest ds likes all the Godzilla movies but I've never been able to get past the poor English overdubs where  actors' mouths don't match their words.  That drives me crazy!

 

The fun part of the Godzilla movies is watching Japanese version with closed captioning turned on, then watching the american version with closed captioning on.  What they say and what is captioned is hilarious. 

 

Forgot all about Hitchcock - love his movies. 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of which - is anyone going to watch the new tv series Dracula which starts on Friday

[Robin M]

nm

[BigMamaBird]

My latest read was Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.  I have never really read or studied much about Czechosovakia so it was a very new point of view to me.  It wasn't a book I'm rushing out to buy or read again, but it was very interesting and kept me turning the pages.  I would have liked to have drop kicked a few of the characters at different times though.  I did enjoy it.

 

 

1 - All The King's Men â€“ Robert Penn Warren                                                            27 - Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

2 - A Stranger in a Strange Land â€“ Robert Heinlein                                                   28 - Selected Short Stories - William Faulkner
3 - A Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood                                                                  29 - 100 Years of Solitude -  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4 - Catcher in the Rye â€“ J.D. Salinger                                                                      30 - Dune - Frank Herbert
5 - Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury                                                                           31 - Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
6 - The Grapes of Wrath â€“ John Steinbeck                                                                32 - One Day in the Life o Ivan Desinovich -  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
7 – Murder on the Orient Express â€“ Agatha Christie                                                  33 - Beloved - Toni Morrison
8 – The Illustrated Man â€“ Ray Bradbury                                                                   34 - Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
9 – The Great Gatsby â€“ F. Scott Fitzgerald                                                                35 - Dimanche - Irene Nemirovsky
10 – The Hiding Place â€“ Corrie Ten Boom                                                                36 - Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis 
11 – The Square Foot Garden â€“ Mel Bartholomew                                                     37 - Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger 
12 - Catch-22- Joseph Heller                                                                                    38 - A Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
13 - Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad                                                                    39 -  Sister Carrie - Theodore Drieser
14 - Partners in Crime - Agatha Christie                                                                   40 -  The Trial - Franz Kafka
15 - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams                                            41 - The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
16 -O, Pioneers!- Willa Cather                                                                                 42 - Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
17 - Miss Marple - The Complete Short Story Collection - Agatha Christie
18 - Ringworld - Larry Niven
19 - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce
20 - Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
21 - To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
22 - Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
23 - The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
24 - The War of the Worlds- H.G Wells
25 - The Girl with the Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier 

26 - The Golden Ball and Other Stories - Agatha Christie

[mlbuchina]

Here are my contributions to the book poems.   :D

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Robin M]

Diving into Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son

 

Every city has its secrets. But none as terrible as this. He is Deucalion, a tattooed man of mysterious origin, a sleight-of-reality artist who has traveled the centuries with a secret worse than death. He arrives in New Orleans as a serial killer stalks the streets, a killer who carefully selects his victims for the humanity that is missing in himself. Deucalion’s path will lead him to cool, tough police detective Carson O’Connor and her devoted partner, Michael Maddison, who are tracking the slayer but will soon discover signs of something far more terrifying: an entire race of killers who are much more–and less–than human and, deadliest of all, their deranged, near-immortal maker: Victor Helios–once known as Frankenstein.

 

 

[Stacia]

Speaking of which - is anyone going to watch the new tv series Dracula which starts on Friday

 

I rarely watch tv, so I didn't even know this existed. May have to check it out (but I'm kind of chicken, so maybe not). LOL.

 

Diving into Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son

 

That sounds scary, but perfect for October. Can't wait to see what you think of it!

[mumto2]

Love both Hitchcock and Godzilla. I really hate the Friday the 13th type. They are way too upsetting for me! Someone else will have to try the Dracula show for me first, I loved Moonlight but the pictures in the ad look at bit intense.

 

 

 

The fun part of the Godzilla movies is watching Japanese version with closed captioning turned on, then watching the american version with closed captioning on.  What they say and what is captioned is hilarious. 

 

Forgot all about Hitchcock - love his movies. 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of which - is anyone going to watch the new tv series Dracula which starts on Friday

[mumto2]

I finished "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" and I have to say an incredible amount of the book made it into the TV series -- all out of order and different seasons but much more of it was there then I imagined could be. I just spent 6 weeks learning about remediation of the same work into different art forms with ds for Coursera -- the Lord of the Rings class. This book made an interesting and completely different :lol: example for me since I have watched the episodes covered by the book. I normally don't like comparing books to shows/movies. That was what I liked best with Dexter, maybe because I read the book after???

 

Floridamom -- If you didn't enjoy the show I don't think you would care for the book. Too much the same. Imo

[Onceuponatime]

I love Hitchcock movies and own quite a few. I enjoy the subtle creepery. Except Psycho, I refuse to watch Psycho.

[Jane in NC]

Vertigo is one of my favorite movies but it is not horror--it is suspense.  Same for North by Northwest or Rear Window.  As I think about it, I really like a number of Hitchcock films, just not Psycho or The Birds.  Some psychological thrillers just go too far for me....

 

I don't do blood and gore.  The world is too scary--I don't need chain saw murderers or ghouls in masks. I can't even read Stephen King!

 

Maybe this is part of the reason that I am such a humbug about Halloween.  I am happy to pass out candy and carve a pumpkin but everyone can have the rest of it.  Day of the Dead celebrations, on the other hand, I understand.  I sent College Boy some Mexican punched tissue paper skulls to hang in the Classics Suite where he lives for some seasonal color. Here is a nice Day of the Day activity sheet if you have younger ones at home.

[Paisley Hedgehog]

. 

 

[Onceuponatime]

Another quote from the Black Swan because it pretty much describes the way I have been many times:

 

" Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say 'I don't know.' He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion."

 

Then the author goes on to talk about how he wishes the world were run by people like this!   :coolgleamA:

 

Fat chance. We don't want to run the world, we just want to get through life without any major malfunctions.

[Mom-ninja.]

Stacia, you are the book pusher. I just ordered The Dracula Tape from paperback swap. Also, please stop posting about books that are not easily available. Now I have to track down Sweet Dreams, and it's not on paperback swap. I don't need this stress! :tongue_smilie: