Tress
-
Posts
2,329 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by Tress
-
-
Thank you, Kareni! That sounds like a book I will enjoy. I'm putting it on my birthday wishlist, high on my wishlist :).Those of you who like any of the following
~ books about books
~ short stories
~ writing
might enjoy the book I just finished -- Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live by Peter Orner. It was eminently readable; it's a book that might be read and deliberated over or read more speedily. I enjoyed it.
"A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in Criticism
“Stories, both my own and those I’ve taken to heart, make up whoever it is that I’ve become,†Peter Orner writes in this collection of essays about reading, writing, and living. Orner reads—and writes—everywhere he finds himself: a hospital cafeteria, a coffee shop in Albania, or a crowded bus in Haiti. The result is “a book of unlearned meditations that stumbles into memoir.†Among the many writers Orner addresses are Isaac Babel and Zora Neale Hurston, both of whom told their truths and were silenced; Franz Kafka, who professed loneliness but craved connection; Robert Walser, who spent the last twenty-three years of his life in a Swiss insane asylum, “working†at being crazy; and Juan Rulfo, who practiced the difficult art of silence. Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, Yasunari Kawabata, Saul Bellow, Mavis Gallant, John Edgar Wideman, William Trevor, and Václav Havel make appearances, as well as the poet Herbert Morris—about whom almost nothing is known.
An elegy for an eccentric late father, and the end of a marriage, Am I Alone Here? is also a celebration of the possibility of renewal. At once personal and panoramic, this book will inspire readers to return to the essential stories of their own lives."
Regards,
Kareni
-
14
-
-
I find the discussions of synesthesia and mental pictures interesting, because my mind is almost 100% verbal. I think in words, not pictures. I remember skimming quickly through passages of description when I was a book-devouring child, because I found them boring. I don't picture what I read at all. If I think of a person I know well -- someone from my family, for example -- I can have a tiny glimpse of a picture of them fly through my mind, like a ghostly memory, but it doesn't last. I can't hold a picture in my head like a photograph. If I wanted to write a descriptive passage of fiction, I could do it, but it would help to look at something similar while writing, instead of trying to imagine something from scratch.
I didn't realize that I was so unusual in my lack of visualization until recently. I suspect that if I were evaluated, I would have a visual-spatial disability. I have real trouble with directions and get lost easily. I hated geometry and calculus. I am a natural speller when writing but do significantly worse when spelling aloud, because I don't visualize the words. Other than that, I don't think my lack of visualization has hampered me in any way, but it does interest me that others think so differently.
I could have written your first paragraph, I never, ever visualise what I read, but your second paragraph......I have excellent directional skills and am very good in geometry and calculus. So apparently those things are not connected, at least not for me.
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."
What a great description! And for a change, it is availabe to readers outside the US for a low price too! Bought it! Thanks!
-
17
-
-
I'm so sorry, Sadie :grouphug: :grouphug: I really hope this will only be a temporary setback.Finding it difficult to read just using the library. I guess our library isn't very good. I might splash out and buy a cheer up book, as I've just found out I will have to withdraw from my Masters due to a sudden and unexpected drop in our income, and I feel pretty devastated about the crushing of a long term plan for financial well being once I finish homeschooling ds 13.
-
15
-
-
I am aghast at both my ignorance and reality. And at the risk of down playing the horrors of the Nazis and the holocaust in my opinion how the English (well pretty much all whites in every western country) treated minorities and handicapped people is not that much better than the Nazis opinion and treatment. The English may not have pointed the gun and pulled the trigger but they certainly did nothing to protect and help anyone they deemed "not fully human." It is sickening, and the fact that we have not even come that far from such attitudes is enraging.
Now that I am aware of the not so rosy side of the children's evacuation I will make sure my children know about it.
I had a similar revelation after reading 'Oorlog en terpetijn', which Loesje recently mentioned. The way the Belgians and French transported German and Jewish civilians and refugees, with the exact same cattle wagons as the Nazis, the way the Belgians and French detained the German and Jewish civilians and refugees, in the exact same sort of camps with no sanitation, very little food and armed guard and barbed wire, where they died by the hundreds. In the Netherlands we have all grown up with the same images of those horrible, horrible nazis....those cattle wagons...and of course it was horrible, but apparently.....this was how every nation transported minorities :blink: . Someone forgot something during my history lessons....
(To be fair to my history teachers, they did teach about Dutch colaboration etc during WW2, so it wasn't all rose coloured.)
-
15
-
-
The Nick Adams stories were published as a collection posthumously but you might have better luck finding a volume of the complete short stories of Hemingway. (Or almost complete. :D ) The Nick Adams stories should be contained within. Google can lead you to a list of titles.
Thank you! I can get 'The First Forty-Nine Stories' through ILL, that's a good start.
-
9
-
-
Hemingway wrote that he was influenced by Turgenev, particularly A Sportsmen's Notebook. I think there is a parallel between that book and Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. Also, Hemingway titled one of his short stories "Fathers and Sons" after the Turgenev novel.
I am not a Gibson reader but my husband is. One day he asked to borrow my collected short stories of Hemingway because he had read an article somewhere in which Gibson called them a major influence on his writing. That is all I know about that.
Achebe was appalled by the attention given to Heart of Darkness. His novel Things Fall Apart can be read as a reaction to Conrad--certainly a critical commentary on colonialism. After reading those two works, watch Apocalypse Now. It paints Conrad's story against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.
Thank you, Jane! I have read Fathers and Sons, but it seems that there isn't a copy of the Nick Adams stories to be found in any library around here....so that will have to wait. I like Gibson and I liked the Old Man and the Sea, so I would really like to explore this connection one day.
Only after reading Things Fall Apart I read it was meant as a reaction to Conrad. It might have been better to read Conrad first then, I don't know. I'm reasonably certain that I own Heart of Darkness, but I can't find it..... I'll make a note to watch Apocalypse Now.
Thanks!
-
11
-
-
I finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell! So wonderful!
I think I'm going to have a book hangover for a couple of days......my other books, Erasmus' The Praise of Folly, Herodotus' Histories, Justin Martyr's First Apology...are just not having the same appeal. I wonder why? :lol:
-
17
-
-
Hemingway tipped his hat to Turgenev. Science fiction writer William Gibson gives the nod to Papa Hemingway. In retrospect, I should have probably done some sort of Turgenev => Hemingway => Gibson assignment back in the homeschool days but there were always too many books to read. Instead we did Conrad/Achebe/Apocalypse Now analysis among other things.
Oh, oh, wait, not so quick! Jane, could you please spell this out some more for me? Both Turgenev to Hemingway to Gibson and Conrad to Achebe to Apocalypse Now? I have read some books by Turgenev and Hemingway and Gibson, but would never have made any connection. I recently read three books by Achebe, but have never read anything by Conrad or seen Apocalypse Now.
-
16
-
-
I am reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
I loved Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Wonderful book! :)
It's one I read because someone here recommended it.
I'm reading it, too, and enjoying it very much! It started slow, but now it's wonderful! :thumbup:
-
12
-
-
Brown's biography of Augustine is quite good. I still remember it after reading it 25 years ago.
That's an edorsement! I'm looking forward to it.
-
16
-
-
I read more than 200 books last year, but I rejected over 100.
I'm in awe :lol: . After several discussions here, I'm much better at abandoning books than I used to be. Last year, I abandoned 10 (TEN!) books, I'm so proud of myself. I even made a list! :D
I am also still working on City of God (that will be a 15 week study group endeavor).
That's the study group on Twitter, right? I'm still wondering how people have study groups on Twitter. All in 140 characters?
City of God is on my list this year, but I want to read Peter Brown's Augustine biography first.
-
21
-
-
I can tell I am going to have to just go at my pace and do my thing in this BAW endeavor. I am a person who tends to get hyper focused on a goal I have set, and I realize reading is an enjoyable activity for me. I don't want to feel panicked or a sense of dread if I don't read a book a week. I already get the tiniest bit disappointed if I don't my 250 steps/hour, so I don't need to add anything else to my, "Damn it, I didn't meet that goal" list.
Wise decision! It's not a race nor a competition. Reading is fun.
And yeah, that aweful, internal 'I didn't meet that goal'-list...we need to get that as short as possible, like....non-existant. And only keep fun lists, if at all. (Says the woman with a mile long 'I didn't meet that goal-list', so I know exactly what you mean :closedeyes: .)
-
21
-
-
1.)Re: Haruki Murakami -- I am an incredible wimp about sad and scary images in books. I really don't like to cry, be sad or depressed. I more or less burned Kite Runner after the first few pages despite everyone's urging to "just keep reading, it gets better" and I truly and legitimately wish someone would have redacted the bit about killing babies from The Brothers Karamazov because it gave me nightmares for two years (as an adult and mother). Beth dying in Little Women is about my maximum. Maybe The Notebook if I know it is going to make me cry in advanced. So the question is, is he an author I should try?
Difficult to say. I've only read two books by Murakami, Kafka on the Shore and now Norwegian Wood, and I'm not a particularly sensitive reader. However, Kafka on the Shore had a very disturbing, nausea inducing scene, that I really wish I could unread. So I'm guessing, that's not a book for you. I was tense the whole time I was reading Norwegian Wood, for nothing it turns out, so now I'm feeling silly :glare: . Suicide is mentioned several time, but I didn't find it a depressing book.
It's probably better if some of the Murakami fans answer your question.
-
15
-
-
I'll always keep the first edition, because it was written when there were almost no homeschool curricula available, which is comparable to the situation now in the Netherlands. I sold the second edition recently and would have sold the third edition, except I highlighted all through it. I'm definitely going to keep the fourth edition, love the way it is organized and updated! :wub:
-
4
-
-
It's not my preferred genre either but I read Lessing's entire Canopus in Argos: Archives series and surprised myself by absolutely loving it. Looking over the GR reviews is an eye-opener. I'm amazed by how many people disliked this, found it plodding, dull, too dense...wow, I was enthralled by its brilliance, its vision, its creative muscle.
After your enthousiastic reviews a couple of years back, I read the first book (that was the only one I could get) and I liked it very much! :thumbup1: The others are on my TBR list, too bad I'll have to buy them.
-
12
-
-
Nothing's in alphabetical order (neither author nor title).
We have a similar 'system', I've vented about it here before. After trying to locate some biographies and finding Stephen Hawking at 'H', Albert Einstein at 'A' and Madam Curie at 'Scientists', I no longer try to locate books myself, I just put books on hold.
-
13
-
-
My local library just got rid of the Dewey decimal system. I don't know where anything is located... Subjects are still grouped together, but now it's harder to find books because the categories are so big.
I'm so sorry for you (and your librarians). My local library did that a couple of years ago, it has been :banghead: .
-
12
-
-
Can I suggest an interesting, but out-there outer space book? Catherynne Valente's Radiance is an alt-reality, sci-fi, mystery that bounces between Mars, the Moon, Neptune, Pluto, and Venus with silent pictures, time shifts, religious cults, and space whales. I read it early last year and loved the bizarre setting and Valente's voice.
That sounds amazing and......even more amazing.....the library one town over has a copy (this almost NEVER happens with BaW recommendations) :hurray:-------> on my Bingo card. Thank you.
-
13
-
-
I'd like to participate, but with an adjustment-I've come a long way towards regaining my lost German this past year (after 10 years' disuse), and want to start doing some of my reading in German. But I read so, so much slower in German than in English, I thought my goal would be either just a chapter in German or a whole book in English, per week. This week: chapter 1 of Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen.
Sounds like a GREAT goal! Cheering you on. :hurray:
-
10
-
-
Is that all 😠My library allows 30 holds per card so thats me and three kids equals ...well currently I have over 100 holds 😂. To be fair we start our new school year in January so I'm stocking up the school books for the term...but there is plenty in there ...not meant for kids. lol
I Am So Jealous! :blush5: We can only put 10 books on each card and only 5 holds.
After *extensive begging* I now have two library cards for each of my girls (so 8 library cards total), which makes it a bit easier. I want to move to America, that Overdrive you all are talking about sounds divine.
-
13
-
-
Thank you for mentioning this list!! Wonderful.
Ok you guys, I'll give Kafka on the Shore a try. No promises I'll actually complete it, but I'll give it a chance.
I've no doubt that Rose can handle it, but I'm still a bit traumatized by Kafka on the Shore :ack2: . I'm halfway through Norwegian Wood and I'm still tense. Can I relax now? I can handle weirdness, I don't have a problem with weirdness, I like South-American magical realism, I just do not want to lose my lunch.
-
15
-
-
Another theme is retellings of ancient myths; books on that list include Orpheus: 50 New Myths, The Penelopiad, Lavinia, and The Minotaur takes a Cigarette Break. The Iliad is one of my favorite books of all time, and I love the character of Achilles, so my first book of the year is The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. She is a classical scholar as well as a brilliant writer and I absolutely loved this book. The writing is so beautiful, and the story is told in the first person, present tense, by Patroclus. I borrowed this from the library, but I love it so much I plan to buy a copy so I can revisit it many times.
Thank you for mentioning Song of Achilles! I hadn't heard of it, but I loooooove retellings of ancient myths and anything Homeric. This looks great!
-
13
-
-
Assuming you are functioning fine and you are not propping yourself up with massive doses of caffeine.....I would let your body do it's thing. If 6 hours are enough, than that's enough. (I wish it was enough for me, I really need at least 8 hours.)
-
1
-
-
Is there any way to adjust this on old books you have already marked as read? I'm not figuring out how to do this...
If you click on a book you have read, in the middle of the page there is a section 'my review', click on 'edit review' (bottom right). Then below the block 'What did you think', click on 'more details' and 'Number of times I've read this book' appears. HTH.
-
11
-
Book a Week 2017 - BW5: festive february
in The Chat Board
Posted
Interesting! I saw Americanah, in Dutch translation, in my library. I didn't pick it up, because I want to read it in English. I always try to read books written in English in English and not in translation, but your description makes that even more urgent. Although....it might be cool to see how they managed to do it. If....they managed to do it at all.
OTOH, if you are recommending the audio.....the English version might be too difficult for me altogether, hmmmm. What to do, what to do.