Little Nyssa
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Posts posted by Little Nyssa
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I've been reading Ngaio Marsh's Artists in Crime... but could not get into it. This happened with one other of hers that I read recently. The story just did not draw me; the characters were not engaging, and I found myself skipping to the end... and once there, I did not believe the mechanism for how the murder happened. It's too bad since I wanted to give her another chance.
I've also been reading Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. I hesitated to read it for years. As soon as I read "he was his own dawn" I liked it and wanted to read more. Now more than half-way through, I can't understand whether I think he is extremely deep and meaningful, or whether I think he is shallow and pretentious. ? It's a puzzle. I'm familiar with a middle eastern or Lebanese style, but this is not quite the same. Will keep reading to the end.
Also have been reading Madwoman in the Attic- what a splendid book! So much research. I am so impressed, even though I don't always agree with their conclusions. I've been inspired to read or re-read many of the works they examine: on rereading The Yellow Wallpaper, I was surprised to find that writing would have been the cure for the woman's insanity: it was her being prevented from writing that made things worse; as a teen/young adult I was influenced by Sylvia Plath to think that writing & insanity necessarily feed off each other- so rereading the Yellow Wallpaper with this new understanding was very healing!
Was inspired by the same book to reread Ursula Le Guin's short story The New Atlantis- so different from when I read it as a teen! The scene of the girl playing viola, the friends discussing the solar generator, the references to a 1984-type society... really very nicely done. But there are these fantastical interludes which just seem childish to me... not up to Le Guin's usual standards.
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??? I would seriously consider not letting her go there ever again, even if she wanted to.
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Mommyoffive, I've been checking around online and I can't see any actual fares that are that cheap... would you mind sharing the site where you are finding them? Thanks!
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Doesn't look artisan, to me. :)
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Robin, so glad all is normal now.
I enjoyed Mrs Pollifax.
Re Thanksgiving- there's been a lot of talk about difficult conversations this year & how to deal with them, at the table, with relatives who want to talk politics, or whatever... Here's one historical note about a way of dealing with a table discussion that doesn't interest you... the poet Brodsky had a Russian muse, a girl that he never forgot, and he was always writing poetry about her/about Russia even after many years in exile... her name was Marina. Once in Russia she was bored at a dull dinner, so she livened things up by setting the curtains on fire! that's one way of changing the subject!
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Maybe approach the school about having some lesson/workshop on better use of social media? I don't know if I'd approach individual parents, especially when this is all second-hand news.
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I'm not an expert, but I've heard that if the chickens are fed vegetarian feed only, it's not their natural diet, so they will look for protein- and get it by attacking each other.
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1. Help! How did I miss this?Elspeth Huxleywrote a mystery?
2. I like Wodehouse... I've never heard of Blackadder but I looked it up and it doesn't seem at all the same kind of thing- can anyone explain?
Thanks!!
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This is an interesting conversation.
Because of it, I asked my DC if they would ever leave school to go to a demonstration with other kids. I expected this conversation to lead to me saying, demonstrations can get out of hand... people need to be careful... it may not be a place for kids... we need to be very careful... But I did not get to say any of these clever things --which I had judged I would probably need to say, based on our family history and the mischief I got up to in my young days!
DC said they would not do it. They said they think school is important and fun.
I was relieved on the one hand, but on the other hand I was a little surprised.
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Rereading Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm- it's like Anne of Green Gables, in that you have an imaginative child living with dull, strict adults, she has a best friend who is dull, and she wants to be a writer... set in Maine... I've read this book many times, starting in childhood, and until I read it out to DD, I never realized how FUNNY it is: DD has been laughing out loud!
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Let us know! :)
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My feeling is... it's possible too worry too much about legal liability. Plus you likely have homeowners insurance? I'd let her stay, unless she is destructive.
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Violet, I like Fanny Burney very much.
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An ex wrote about me in a volume of poetry- very hurtful, and had the gall to give me a copy and signed it, Love. After I saw the first page I tore it up and threw it in the mud. Then I picked it up and tore it again. Then I threw it out.
Tear the thing up. Anyone who does bother to read it will know what to think, knowing her. ((Hugs))
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Chrysalis, I've enjoyed the New Yorker, but I am on hiatus from it right now- every so often I get fed up with its political/cultural worldview- I always go back to it, because to my mind it's the most intelligent literary magazine out there, but there it is: if you don't happen to be from the same world, it can be a bit wearing. Also, of course it depends on your own family, but I would not recommend it for someone who is a young teen- there can be violence, nudity, S&M references, etc... and some of the non-fiction investigative articles can be quite disturbing. They investigate things that really need to be paid attention to, and something done about-- journalism at its best-- but they can be painful to read about. For example, they broke the story of Abu Ghraib. But you can read a lot of it online at their website and see for yourself what you think. (I also have to say that I have a personal relative who writes for them- she is a genius!)
On the recommendation of some of you, I've been reading The Madwoman in the Attic, and googling so many authors & stories they mention. This book is a fantastic and very erudite explication of SO MANY works of literature, from a feminist point of view. I do not always agree with their interpretations, but they definitely have made me think. (For example, I thought I understood Austen very well and could not learn anything more about her!) About how stories define women and how women/men authors use story to define things/themselves/the other sex. Tremendously compelling work.
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Now that we're talking about poetry, I'm going to be brave enough to post a link to a poem I like very much... I found it online when I was looking for something else.
http://citylore.org//wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Georgia_Poetry_21st-century.pdf
On page 4 the poem I love is "Lucky Love" by Giorgi Lobjanidze- the alternate pages are in Georgian and in English, so scroll down to see the whole thing. I love his description of Nefertiti making the house 'into a gallery' and specially the idea that love changes geography: 'the Nile river flows into the Mtqvari' (the main river flowing through Georgia's capital city). Hope you enjoy it.
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About comfort reading... I read that after WWI soldiers were given Jane Austen books to read.
In That Hideous Strength, after her escape, Jane asks for Mansfield Park and The Princess and Curdle.
As for me, I like to read All the President's Men & other Watergate material.
Hugs to Sadie.
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Finished The Secret Garden as a read aloud with DD. Connections with other books:
1. Colin's eyes: his mother's eyes :: Harry Potter's eyes: his mother's eyes
2. The robin in Secret Garden and the robin from Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe! As the children are following a robin through the snowy forest, Peter says, "A robin? Those are good birds in all the books I ever read." Robins who lead the way.
:)
Tried reading Little Lord Fauntleroy by the same author, but am finding it very slow... DD will not like it for a readaloud, for sure. I'll look at Rackety Packety Family instead.
Reading more Auden. I like these lines:
"All the literati keep/an imaginary friend"
And I've found a lot of his poems that I really like, so thank you again to those who recommended.
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Thank you to everyone who recommended poems by Auden! I just read those particular ones and liked them very much. I got a different volume of his poetry: his best selected poems. The first volume I had tried was his poems from the 1920s, which I did not really take to. I like better his things from the 1930s and 40s.
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I absolutely can't stand the movie. Even 5 minutes of it. And I was a child when it came out.
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Many years ago, I read an autobiography by Agatha Christie. I loved it, and found it fascinating. But when I tried to find a copy later, I could only find a short version that was not so interesting. I just looked it up, so maybe it's been republished--only I don't know if it is An Autobiography or not. It was long like that, so maybe I will have to take my chances.
Another autobiography I loved was Patricia St. John's. I love her books, and this was as good or better than they were.
So...I don't guess this is really answering the OP, is it? lol
I've read that autobiography and thought it very good. Hope you find it.
Daphne Du Maurier-- Rebecca is wonderful, but i've never been able to get into anything else of hers.
Alexander McCall Smith-- I love his Botswana series and his Scotland series (plural)- at first I would run out to buy them right away... then I waited for the paperback... then I got them used... now I get them from the library. Still good, just somehow much lighter and not so compelling.
Ursula Le Guin stayed strong- when I saw The Telling, I disliked it so much that I was worried, but subsequently I still enjoyed her stuff...
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I've been rereading The Secret Garden with my daughter. It's such a terrific book, but one sad thing struck me that never did before-- perhaps because I've been recently reading L.M.Montgomery's journals and a biography of her and there was much sad information on her & her husband's overuse of sleeping medications-- there was a reference to the nurse asking Colin if he took his bromide. I realized that they must have been giving Colin a lot of medications to calm him down and make him sleep-- it must have been a horrifying existence for the child, which is not gone into in great detail, as it is really a children's book... his horrible fears plus the isolation plus drugs... thus his awakening to the garden and to normal human life is also his release from the nightmarish existence of bromides, and who knows? Perhaps veronal, morphine, etc. :( This would be why, when Mary shows up, he thinks she is just another phantasm of a nightmare.
Still making my way slowly through Andre Brink's excellent book Writing in a State of Siege (about being a white South African writer with a conscience, under apartheid). I tried his fiction, starting with Phillida, the only volume our library has, but it was not that good... I'll be trying another though.
Tried reading Auden... could not get into it: too wordy. I will try him again, but with a volume of just his very best selected poems. I don't want to give him up, because Alexander McCall Smith is so fond of him! Does anyone have any favorites of his?
:)
Nyssa
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But people put up the crosses and memorials BECAUSE they want their loved one to be remembered. I'd say you are doing exactly right.
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If anyone is interested in reading any of the actual literature makers suggested for the prize this year, you could do worse than Ngugi wa Thiong'o.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/sep/09/featuresreviews.guardianreview21
Also working with an oral tradition :)
I've been reading him lately & learned a lot from him.
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Book a Week 2016 - BW 49: Delectable December
in The Chat Board
Posted
To quote Mom-ninja: "we lost the respect we once had for staying home. Once it became a choice to stay home or work outside the home it was viewed a waste of a woman's mind and talent to stay home. I was born in the height of the change, and I was taught nothing of taking care of a home or family. I was taught that if I didn't have a career I was wasting my life. I was taught that cooking, sewing, and caring for kids was beneath me and that I could do more "valuable" things. Because of this I knew nothing when I moved out on my own. I couldn't cook. I still can't sew or knit. I believed that a career was the only worthwhile goal. This caused a lot of struggle for me."
I absolutely agree with this. It was just the same for me.