Continuing along with Sheri Tepper's, Beauty, and not loving it. It's sci-fi which is not a genre I spend much time with. This is for a GR challenge, read a sci-fi retelling of a fairy tale. I like the fairy tale part but not the sci-fi part which is proving to be a dystopian horror show. Not what I want in my awareness at this particular time nor any time actually. But it's moved back to fairy tale time so I'll continue with it and see how I go. The World's Wife seems well and lost. Calls to the library and another call to the grocery store have yielded nothing nor has a thorough search of the house and car. The library said I could buy the book myself and give it to them which would save me some money as well as allowing me to read it. So that's what I'll do. So many books to read...

Argh, I've misplaced The World's Wife, a library book. Have looked high and low in the house, the car and called the last store I was in while I had the pile of library books with me. I have a bad feeling it got left somewhere else. I was very much enjoying it, too. Tempted to buy it, read it and then give it to the library in place of the one I lost since I'm going to have to pay up anyway.

I'm reading two books concurrently. Beauty is proving to be an interesting sic-fi retelling of Sleeping Beauty. So far I'm enjoying it. Again, not something I'd gravitate towards but am surprising myself. From the GR page, Drawing on the wellspring of much-loved, well-remembered fairy tales, Tepper delivers a thought-provoking and finely crafted novel that thoroughly involves the reader in the life of one of the most captivating heroines in modern fantasy -- Beauty. On her sixteenth birthday Beauty is seemingly able to sidestep her aunt's curse. Instead she is transported to the future. Here begin her adventures as she travels magically back and forth in time to visit places both imaginary and real. Finally she comes to understand what has been her special gift to humanity all along. For in Beauty, there is beauty. And in beauty, magic. Without our enchanted places, humanity is no more than an upstart ape. And this, we realize, is why Beauty must be saved, both in the fantastical world of Tepper's novel and in the actual world in which we live. Also just started The World's Wife and loving it.

And we must watch out for the 'wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,'

Downloading it didn't help but I was at the library today with my kindle and the librarian there, though she'd never heard of this happening before, was able to fix it by pressing the 'go to' button and instead of going to the very beginning as I'd been doing she went to title page and that did the trick. Strange but it's fixed now.

Yes! For me the experience of beauty through visual means--color, symmetry, pattern and so forth is somatic. I can literally feel my body relaxing, sinking into something that feels like refuge.

Anyone ever have this happen? On my kindle the cover displays as the correct book but the download is another book entirely? This just happened through overdrive with my kindle. I began reading and thinking, this is def not the kind of book I'd choose and it doesn't match the descriptions plus it showed me at 97% of the way through after just beginning. I checked out the sample on Amazon and sure enough the book I received as a download is an entirely different book. I've contacted my library to let them know but I"m wondering if this has occurred for anyone else?

...thus setting a precedent with grammatical damnation.

I'm highly visual, and still have trouble with directions and get lost easily. I did love geometry though, excelled in it even. I didn't realize there were differences until I was leading a group visualization at a teaching event last year. Later my dh, not a visual person, came up to me and said it was difficult for him to formulate the imagery in his mind. We talked about this and I realized, listening to him, that this is more common than I was aware of. I've been so visually-attuned all my life that I thought this was the norm. In book-related news, A Pomegranate and the Maiden is available as a kindle book for .99 on Amazon. As you can imagine from its title it focuses on the Demeter-Persephone myth but presented as "a multi-faceted re-telling of the story of Demeter and Persephone as told in Homer’s Hymn to Demeter. The many characters speak directly to the reader, presenting multiple perspectives of the same event. Among the voices we hear is that of the mother grieving for her lost child, the daughter struggling for independence, the father who tramples on a mother’s rights, and the lover who resorts to nefarious means to win his beloved. Each perspective is deeply rooted in the character’s psychology and gender. Woven within their narratives are stories familiar to readers of Greek mythology."

So sorry to hear, Sadie :grouphug:

Hmm, did you get it a little while ago? I think the US version just came out recently though the overseas one has been out and available for a good while. The US version is what's available on Amazon currently.

I'll admit to buying this book just for the cover, the European cover that is. I noticed there was a difference and sourced one in England that cost about the same price as the US version and very little ship. I have yet to start it but I love seeing the artwork on the cover :lol:

Not synesthesia but how about trypophobia? Anyone suffer from that? I couldn't explain my fascination/disgust/shudder reactions to barnacles. Then I came across a name for it when someone posted a picture of lots of roasted garlic. Blech, blech, blech...not the taste but the look if the tops are cut off and all you see are...barnacle-like shapes. Strange but true. I had to avert my eyes when I googled trypophobia for a link to share with you all. The pictures of all those lotus roots, sponges and so forth....aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh :willy_nilly: :willy_nilly: :willy_nilly: :willy_nilly: :willy_nilly: :willy_nilly:

But I imagine you've dared to eat a peach, rolled your trousers (white flannel or not) and walked along the beach. And with your proximity to the water I suspect you may have even hear the mermaids singing each to each, whether you felt they were singing to you or not ;) I'm subscribed to that BBC podcast series, In Our Time, and downloaded The Four Quartets entry to listen to awhile ago. I have yet to do so, thank you for reminding me. I'm venturing beyond my usual for my next read with either Uprooted or Beauty. Both of these veer into the realm of fantasy which has never been a genre I've explored in much depth. The GR challenge is encouraging me to widen my reading lens. As far as roots, I grew up in Canada. I moved to the US about 20 years ago. My initial impression was one of largesse. Everything was bigger here, cereal boxes, grocery stores, voices, personalities. I've only been back to Canada twice in the past 20 years and it felt so different. I remember looking at it through the eyes of an outsider, which was a peculiar feeling.

Ooh, good one :thumbup:

Great! Looking forward to your review :D

This looks wonderful, mumto2. Your link didn't work for me but I found it on GR and Amazon and read the sample. Writing is very good, story is intriguing. Onto the tbr list it's gone. ETA Darn, I see that it's not to be released until June. Oh well, it's not like I don't have a whole host of other books to keep me busy between now and then ;)

You're in for a treat. Apparently all of India would 'shut down' each week the episode came on, banks, shops, and the like all quiet for the hour of the show. The Palace of Illusions is the Mahabharat told from Draupadi's pov which makes for a different take on things. Very well done!

Finished The Caliph's House earlier today. It never really took off for me and I found it difficult to connect with the narrator but it held my interest enough to see it through to the end. Not sure what I'm going to read next. I've got a few possibilities mainly in the myth/fantasy realm. Still listening to The Palace of Illusions and thoroughly enjoying it. Ds and I are listening together. He knows the stories of the Mahabharata inside and out having grown up with his father reading William Buck's translation of them to him, then reading the Amar Chitra Katha graphic books and then watching it, , on youtube. He says the author sticks to the story and he's really enjoying it.

Our library is pretty fab. Right now they're having their yearly 'forgiveness period' where you can bring back all your overdue backs without being fined. Pretty spectacular :thumbup: Of course I had just paid off a bunch of fines the week previous not knowing they were going to offer this. But the money goes to a fab 'cause', right, literacy and books for all :D Night Circus is def worth it. IIRC it does speed up in the latter half of the book and the ending is satisfying. It was in my top ten the year I read it. Ds, too, and his reads are often plot-driven though he has just informed me he also enjoys a leisurely pace if the book is well-written, and with this one he said 'the descriptions of the circus were so beautiful' that he didn't mind that it moved more slowly. In that vein, ds, who is participating with us via mama, wants his tally listed for the BaW group. Five books read so far, Speaker for the Dead, Harpist in the Wind, Heir to Sea and Fire, The Reader and Xenocide.

Wow, Stacia, that must have taken such a long time to type. Thank you for sharing it and for the effort and time that went into it :hurray: And VC, tears and cheers both for you, perhaps :rolleyes:

Moving along with The Caliph's House. I can't decide whether I like it or not. The premise centers around a man and his family arriving in Morocco from England to fulfill his dream of living in a country far more unpredictable and exotic than England. Inspired by his childhood summers spent in the mountains of Morocco he moves forward with his vision taking his family with him. The house they buy is in complete disrepair and his wife is only three weeks postpartum when they arrive to no mod-cons, no beds, or working anything in a rather shady part of Casablanca. This is where I get tripped up. There is no mention of his wife's travails with a three-week old and a five year-old and I can only imagine how vulnerable her body still is in that state. As I've continued to read I realize that this is a story about him and his experiences, and that his wife and children are minor details for the purposes of the book. I'm not as caught up in the story as I anticipated but I'll continue with it till I finish. In other areas, has anyone read Watch the North Wind Rise by Robert Graves? It looks like it might be a good story and that combined with his erudition gives it the potential to go on my tbr list.

Re cover art, it's a definite factor in my initial interest in a book. I appreciate good cover art and gravitate towards it but often find the book is not what I'm interested in. Inversely, a well-written book overrides boring cover art every time.

This thread continues to speed along at a punishing pace. I finished Fudoki this morning. I enjoyed the premise of this book, a cat who becomes a woman but retains her cat instincts, inner felinity and full memory of her cat-self. It made for an interesting perspective. It was rather a little too battle-heavy for me towards the end though. It finished somewhat ambiguously and left me with questions rather than completions which I liked and which felt in line with the overall themes of the book. The Caliph's House is next and the book Jane linked in honor of Malanka is really drawing me but it's brandly new, so no library copies and rather $ in-store. Branching out of my usual with some of the GR challenges and as such I'm on the waiting list for Rebel of the Sands. So many books... In the audio realm I'm listening the The Palace of Illusions. Fabulous!! Narrator is brilliant. Love, love, love.