prairiegirl
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Posts posted by prairiegirl
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My mom had heart surgery on Fri. (she is doing very well) so I am heading out this week to help out. I will be having a long day of travel plus I am going without children so I will have oodles of time for reading. I have a bunch of books that I will be bringing with me. I will be bringing along Goldfinch by Donna Tartt to read while I am waiting for my connecting flight. I also have the new Flavia book, ' Her Husband's Secret' by Liane Moriarty, and ' A Tale for the Time Being' by Ruth Ozeki. I went to the books store today and bought 'Boy, Snow, Bird' by Helen Oyeyemi and 'Dinner' by Herman Koch. so I am ready for a few weeks of fluff reading. I am also bringing some more heavier reads just to balance it all out.
I will be gone for two weeks. I don't know if I will be able to get on my parent's laptop or not so I may be quiet for awhile.
Oh, I am reading The Circle by Dave Eggers right now. I have to read 200 pages by tomorrow as its due on Tues. I am really liking this book so I am hoping that I can polish it off in time.
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My dd and I watched the Canada Reads debate on TV this week. I thought I would leave a link if anyone is interested in checking it out. Canada Reads is a week-long literary debate to promote reading, as well as Canadian literature. I think these yearly debates have been taking place for the last 12 years. I have only been aware of them for the past 3. This year the debates were very intense. There are 5 books championed by 5 people. These books do not just have to be recent books, either, there have been classics on the lists of years past as well. This year's books were:
Cockroach by Rawi Hawge
Annabel by Kathleen Winters
The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyen
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
The Orenda was this year's winner.
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Anyone read Josephine Tey's, 'Daughter of Time'? Dh seems to think I would enjoy it.
I liked it but I found it confusing. I read it about 3 years ago and I would like to read it again to see if I could straighten things out in my mind.
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AMDG
Ach. . . Alas, it seems that I can either read or write about reading but not both.
I haven't been very faithful about logging in but I wanted to pop in before I log of for lent.
I'm positively LOVING reading the Great Books and am up to Plato. I am about half way through The Republic.
I live it so far and find it so meaningful in so many ways. Socrates is able to speak about my own goals/reasons for homeschooling and ed philosophies than I ever could.
Hated Thucidides. Loved Herodotus.
See y all after lent.
Just popping in quick to say that my kids and I are tackling the Great Books this year and we are, surprisingly, enjoying them--all of us. We are reading Herodotus now and, oh! I am loving it. I love all of the little stories he tells along the way.
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Fan girl here watching the Oscars right now. Anyone else watching?
I like watching award shows but not the Oscars. I find them pretty boring. I did watch a bit of the Red Carpet show but turned it off when the announcer called Julia Roberts, Jessica Roberts. We watched Amazing Race instead.
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My dh and I have been separated for 5 months now. Neither one of us wants a divorce but we both know that things cannot go on the way that they have been. We were married later in life, therefore the biological clock was bonging. We had our first child two weeks before our first wedding anniversary. Be the time we had our fourth anniversary, we had three children. I can see now that I was in a fog until my third child turned 5. By that time we were firmly entrenched in the ruts of bad habits. We also never had time to really get to know each other.
We are using the separation to do just that--to get to know each other. We are dating each other--going out to dinner, going to the movies, spending time together at his place--just us. It has been a positive experience for both of us. I am seeing little changes in him that give me hope. I am praying that he is able to see changes in me as well.
I'm not sure how this is going to all play out but, for now, I am encouraged at how things are going.
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So far this year I have been reading nothing but fluff--some of it was well-written fluff but fluff nonetheless. My brain has been mush for the last 5 months and I just couldn't handle anything that required more than mush. I just needed to fall into other people's stories. I think that I just may be coming to the end of 'an all fluff' period. I am feeling little twinges to tackle some things that lean more to the spiritual and academic side of life. Whew! I am relieved by that.
I finished reading 'This is the Story of a Happy Marriage' by Ann Patchett--a memoir displayed through a collection of essays. I quite enjoyed it. I think I may even go as far as to say that I enjoy Patchett's non-fiction writing more than her fiction writing.
My dh took the kids yesterday for a sleepover. For almost 24 hours, I found myself in absolute quiet. I used that time for reading, just reading. I started and finished 'Perfect' by Rachel Joyce (the author of 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.') As with Harold, this story will stay with me long after I closed the book. There were characterizations that I didn't like but the story itself endeared itself to me.
I am now reading The Circle by Dave Eggers and Wonderstruck by Margaret Feinberg (of which I refer to as a 'God book.')
What I read in February:
The Interestings by Meg Wollitzer
Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo (read aloud)
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
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Here are our plans, so far, for next year's Gr. 8:
Math: MUS Algebra
Latin: I think we are going to attempt Henle--at least that is what I am thinking at the moment.
Writing: Jensen's Format Writing and WWS I
Grammar: Our Mother Tongue
History, Literature, Geography: Medieval Era--TOG 2, AO Yr. 7
Science: Apologia Physical Science
Logic: I'm not sure about this yet--have to give it more thought.
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I just returned from spending a peaceful two hours at a large library while the dc's played chess in a meeting room. It dawned on me during the drive home that I can't remember the last time I just browsed at the library. I generally just present myself at the desk and pick up our holds, maybe pick up a couple predetermined topicwise books off the shelves. Do the rest of you still browse and get to enjoy your library trips or do you pick up and go?
We have 2 libraries that we frequent. The one library, well, it doesn't have much in it to browse so it is just a 'go in and pick up' kind of library. The other one is where I do all of my browsing. We go there about twice a month just to browse.
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Some notes:
The Circle is a provocative (perhaps prescient?) look at our lives online. Many have criticized the writing style (its lack of character development, its plot-driven nature, in particular), but I understood it as a reflection of the often shallow and run-on nature of online "connectedness." It's this generation's 1984, I think. Has anyone else read it?
We read The Two Gentlemen of Verona in anticipation of seeing a Shakespeare Project of Chicago reading. It was a reread for me: I last visited the play with my oldest more than a decade ago. And, yes, it was as if time were folding in upon itself as I watched the production with my husband and daughters this past weekend. When my son and I attended in the fall of 2003, his sisters were so young; Mr. M-mv took them to the park while we were at the play. And now they are completing their high school studies. And they have their driver licenses. And he is gone...
The experience was the definition of bitterly sweet and sweetly bitter.
I have The Circle lying on my nightstand, waiting for me to finish Ann Patchett's This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. I have read the criticisms of The Circle and was a bit wary on starting it but after reading your thoughts on it I am eager to get started.
And regarding The Two Gentlemen of Verona-- I have tears in my eyes as I send :grouphug: to you.
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The ones I re-read as an adult because I liked them as a teen have held up pretty well, I think ... and I don't think it's just nostalgia. I think I've understood more of the mystery and enjoyed the romance as much. You should choose one you remember liking and give it a try; they're quick reads and will pad your totals if nothing else ;)
If you haven't read Howatch since being a teen, try out her later series work; it's fantastic! Hey, Jane in NC, another Howatch reader :) (I found Susan Howatch because she was on the shelf below Victoria Holt in the high school library; the titles drew me like a moth to flame: Penmarric, Cashelmara ...)
I read a lot of garbage when I was a teen, things that I should never have read so I am glad to see that Whitney might not be in the garbage category. The teen years were oh-so-long ago so I don't really remember the content of the books very well. I think that I will peruse the library catalogue and see if I can find some of her books.
This talk about Susan Howatch, etc., puts me in mind of MM Kaye's The Far Pavilions and Elizabeth Goudge's Green Dolphin Street - not gothics, but romantic novels st in exotic places I read when young. I turned my ancient edition of Green Dolphin Street over to my daughter, but she is disinterested... sigh...
I have never read Elizabeth Goudge. I always hear such good things about her books that she is on my 'author to read' list.
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I read lots of Phyllis Whitney (she got a little too new-agey for me toward the end of her career) and Victoria Holt when I was in high school. I don't know about some of these other authors.
They are different from, say, Georgette Heyer's mystery Why Shoot a Butler? because there's no mystical, supernatural-old haunted (but not ghosts!) element to that.
For me, they're fluffy fluff ;)
I was a big fan of both Phyllis Whitney and Victoria Holt when I was a teen. I often wonder if I would enjoy them now.
I think I also read Susan Howatch as well.
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Robin, I am sending you good thoughts of healing. Hope you feel better quick.
I am still in the midst of This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett, still enjoying it. My oldest dd and I are reading A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley. I am enjoying Flavia even more in reading it with someone else. My youngest dd and I are reading Wildwood by Colin Meloy. We just started this book but already a baby has been carried off by a bunch of crows. That is just plain bizarre! It is very cold here today, a good day for reading so I am hoping to read more with dd to find out just what happened to that baby.
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Oh, Eaglei, :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug: Praying hard!
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My kids are 14, 13 and 11.
I get up at 5:30 a.m. My ds gets up around 7 and the girls get up at 8:00.
We start school as soon as the girls get up at 8. While they eat breakfast, I read the books for Morning Time.
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Good to know. Ann Patchett is 50/50 for me -- loved Bel Canto, didn't like another of hers that I read (The Patron Saint of Liars). Haven't ventured further in her works to see which side she will fall on.... LOL.
This is how I feel about Patchett as well. I loved Bel Canto but I didn't really like State of Wonders. I felt like she was trying too hard with that one. So far, her non-fiction seems to be more consistent but I am only on the second essay. :laugh:
I saw the movie of The Remains of the Day when it first came out. I hadn't read the book so it was just an okay movie for me. I just ordered it from the library because I want to see it now that I have read the book.
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Hey everybody! I have been late to the party due to a sick computer. Everything is working now but I feel like I have missed a big chunk of my week. I don't have time to respond to all that I would like to so I will just say:
Stacia, I always have a huge pile of books to read from the library. We have a small town library and they don't have the kinds of books that I read so I always have to ILL loan my books. It never fails that all of the books come in and the same time. Hence, the huge pile. My pile now is not that big as I weeded out some of the ones that I didn't feel like reading at this time. Here is what is on my pile now:
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
Perfect by Rachel Joyce
Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The Circle by Dave Eggers
What Women Fear by Angie Smith
I have ordered 24 books through ILL and am waiting for them to make their way to me. I also have 58 books on my 'waiting to be ordered' list.'
Shukriyya, I have been meaning to tell you that I always enjoy reading your posts. They have a certain zen quality to them that always calms me down.
I read The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (I think that is how you spell it.) I loved it! I wonder if he had Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in mind when he wrote it because they were perfectly characterized in the book.
I started to read 'Half-Blood Blues' by Esi Edugyan but just wasn't in the right frame of mind to continue on. It was beautifully written and I do want to read it but not just now. I am now reading 'This is the Story of a Happy Marriage' by Ann Patchett. This is a collection of essays, so far I am enjoying them and her writing immensely.
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Eaglei, I am so sorry that this is happening. My thoughts, prayers and :grouphug: are with you.
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Well lookie here...Anyone read this? It actually looks pretty intriguing and the excerpt I read was like something from an entirely different writer than that of 'Eat, Pray and Love'. The reviews aren't too bad either.
I read it a few weeks ago. I don't know if it means anything seeing that you and I don't like the same kind of books :laugh: but I liked the book. There were some weird parts to it but I did think it was well written but I thought Eat, Pray, Love was well-written so take this with a grain of salt.
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:lol:
(Pssst. I loved Eat, Pray, Love. :leaving: )
:laugh:
So did I. In fact, I am re-reading it again right now. She does gloss over the divorce (and I agree with Stacia, she does this because that is not the focus of the book, it is what brought the book about) but I can now see little glimpses of the pain that she was in. It is very slight--a sentence here, a few words there--but I can see her pain quite clearly this time through.
Great list! :thumbup1:
A couple that I'm thinking of (that I've never read):
The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
My Ideal Bookshelf by Thessaly La Force (recommended by some BaWers...)
I forgot My Ideal Bookshelf. I loved seeing the books that people picked as the ones important in their lives. As a result of that book, my kids and I each picked the books that were important to us and have them displayed on the book shelf in the living room. The collection is fluid because the list changes as time goes on.
With all the talk last week about a "Flavia" character, I decided to give Alan Bradley a go and started The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Fun read so far.
And if the quote below from the book has been shared before, well, I'll just have to share it again because I love it. :001_smile:
"...it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No...eight days a week."
I am glad that you are enjoying Flavia. My dd and I are reading A Red Herring Without Mustard together as a read aloud. This is to placate me while I wait for the recent Flavia book to come in for me at the library.
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Any other books-about-books that you can recommend? :bigear: I looooove books about books.
Sure, my two favourites are by Pat Conroy (I think it is called My Reading Life) and Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch
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Time indeed does alter perspective.
It has been decades since I have opened Jane Eyre, a novel that I did not dislike but one that I do not remember with fondness. Early on in the book we see Jane punished for improper behavior. John Reed, Jane's cousin, has struck Jane violently for which the orphan is sequestered to a cold dark room. Apparently those given "Christian charity" are suppose to be grateful for all gifts received including violent blows. Jane experiences a fright in her isolation and cries out, drawing attention to others in the household including her cruel aunt who notes:
My fourteen year old self would have been surprised that there are parenting books out there that advocate "child training" via extreme means. I suspect my younger self viewed this as caricature.
Back to Jane Eyre: An interesting theme religious theme is being woven into the storyline. Did my fourteen year old self recognize Bronte's reaction to an extreme form of evangelical Protestantism of the time? Of course not. I attended an all girls Catholic high school and did not know what an evangelical was. Fascinating stuff.
After plunging into the novel, I went back to skim through parts of the introduction. My Shakespeare professor in undergrad admonished us to skip introductions in order not to bias our viewpoint going into a work. Something about Jane Eyre's personal reckoning over religious belief required clarification--something I don't quite have yet but patience! Maybe I will have greater insight after finishing the book. But in the introduction I found something that seems to fit into last week's discussion on feminist novels. Jane Eyre was first published in 1847. Eight years later (1855), Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine saw Jane Eyre as dangerous and linked the novel to revolutionaries on the Continent.
Surely I never understood such rabble rousing when I first read this book!
Is this an argument for not reading classics when being too young to understand? Of course not. Arguments can be made for cultural literacy in general, I suppose, but I suspect that some fourteen year olds who read Jane Eyre suddenly recognize that the choices for a young female orphan one hundred and sixty years ago were very limited indeed, that attending school was a privilege as much as it was painful torture to be underfed for the sake of economy and character development. Good literature should reach readers on many levels. If my fourteen year old self was not reached, it is not Bronte's problem: it is mine. My loss, really.
Thank you for this, Jane. Your words have caused me to think. I did not like Jane Eyre when I read it but I first read it when I was 41. I was far from the teen years so I cannot blame it on that but I was young as far as reading was concerned. Up until that time I had been reading only pure fluff, Jane Eyre was my first taste of a classic. it was a whole different world than what I was used to. Since then, my literary tastes have changed drastically so maybe I need to retry Jane. Maybe I will like it now that I am bigger. :laugh:
I finished Cloud Atlas, which I thought was neat. I enjoyed reading through time in both style and content. I liked the detailed connections between the stories. I thought that many times Mitchell spelled things out too plainly.
I have Cloud Atlas on my TBR pile. I keep hearing good things about it so I might have to put it to the top of the pile.
Abandoned by the Roadside ::
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
I am sorry that you did not like Harold. This was one of my top reads for last year. Someone said last week that the reason why some books stay with us is that it reflects things that are going on in our lives at that time. I think this is why Harold struck so deep within me. At the time that I read his story my dh and I had been separated for 2 months. I felt at the time that I was on a pilgrimage as well, trying to figure things out. Harold gave me hope, that maybe things would work out for me as they did for Harold and his wife.
I am still reading Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill. This is a book about books and reading. I have read better books that fall into this genre but there were bits and pieces that I enjoyed. It is interesting to read of her take on some of the books that she has read and their authors.
Next up is One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson
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We have a lot on the go, reading-wise.
--with my oldest, A Red Herring Without Mustard
--with my ds and youngest dd, The Wandering of Odysseus
--with my youngest, Flora and Ulysses
--family read aloud: The Odyssey, The Twelfth Night
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Loose tea as opposed to bags, my dear. A proper tea is loose. (I guess this means you are not a loose woman!)
I became a loose woman this past year. I cannot possibly imagine using teabags any more.
Eliana, my thoughts and love are with you and your dd. :grouphug: :grouphug:
Book a Week in 2014 - BW11
in The Chat Board
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I've read The Alchemist but it was just so-so for me but I didn't like Poisonwood bible either so you might just like it. :laugh: