Book a Week in 2014 - BW15

[Guest]

Here's a sobering article on internet surfing and skimming and its effects on sustained reading. My reading time has definitely declined in the last decade as the internet has so heavily entered into my life. But BaW group is certainly impacting my reading for the better :hurray:

I have really been experiencing this the last month or so. The first few months of the year I was reading a ton and when I started getting on the computer a lot to start researching curriculum for next year, I noticed a huge shift in my reading and activity level in general and I still haven't quite bounced back. This line in the article totally struck me:

 

"The brain is the innocent bystander in this new world. It just reflects how we live."

 

Very convicting!!! Often I tend to blame my brain - I'm not smart enough, it is too hard, I'm getting older...but what I'm experiencing is a result, not a cause.

 

Thanks for sharing that!

[Mothersweets]

Josephine Tey is one of the pseudonyms adopted by Scottish author Elizabeth Mackintosh.  She is best known for her mysteries featuring Inspector Grant. Interestingly The Franchise Affair, which I just finished, features the Inspector in a minor role. Taking the detective lead is a small town lawyer. What is perhaps even more interesting is that there is no murder in this book although there is a mystery. Two women are charged with kidnapping.  It is one thing to get them off the hook; it is another for justice to be served.

 

This 1948 novel is a good read. And a clean cut one too for those of you who would prefer not to have conversations peppered with rude language.  No body--no blood. 

 

I think Josephine Tey is a fabulous writer. Here is a nice article from the Guardian making a case for her rediscovery.

 

 

ETA:  my new vocabulary word from The Franchise Affair is oleograph.  A character in the novel uses this word to describe a rather gaudy woman of poor taste.  An oleograph is a type of lithographic print with texture that resembles an oil painting. 

 

My favorite Josephine Tey book (so far) is Brat Farrar - great read!

 

[shukriyya]

I've got 'The Daughter of Time' on my tbr list. Both the one Jane referenced and yours, Laura, look intriguing as well.

[mumto2]

My favorite Josephine Tey book (so far) is Brat Farrar - great read!

 

Daughter of Time is waiting for me in my stack.  I almost started it this afternoon instead of the next Iain Pears which was closer to the top literally.  Brat Farrar sounds really good,  I am going to try and put a request in for it.

 

I've got 'The Daughter of Time' on my tbr list. Both the one Jane referenced and yours, Laura, look intriguing as well.

[Robin M]

I finally read Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn which takes place in medieval Japan and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's one of those that I'll probably want to read again later and savor it a bit more. So another series to enjoy and just had to download the next book in the series Grass for His Pillow. 

 

Quote this morning which made me think of y'all of course.

"There are people one meets in books or in life whom one does not merely observe, meet, or know. A deep resonance of one's entire being is immediately set up with the entire being of the other--heart speaks to heart in the wholeness of the language of music; true friendship is a kind of singing." --THOMAS MERTON,

 

 

[JadeOrchidSong]

I am slow this week. I am only 1/5 into Flames of Rome and haven't started My Several Worlds yet. I will finish Flames of Rome next week. I've been doing more reading than last year so far, so that is enough improvement.

[Robin M]

Here's a sobering article on internet surfing and skimming and its effects on sustained reading. My reading time has definitely declined in the last decade as the internet has so heavily entered into my life. But BaW group is certainly impacting my reading for the better :hurray:

 

Oh yeah, definitely.  A couple years back when I found my self perusing the internet, letting it replace my reading time and finding myself really dissatisfied, and feeling like had accomplished nothing, realized had to make a change.  With ebooks, it's a bit harder to resist the temptation to read a chapter, then hop online, but working on that.  I discovered my reading day (and other things I need to accomplish) is ruined if I hop on the internet first thing in the morning.  So try to avoid my laptop until the afternoon during the weekdays.    I do have a tendency to read really fast so have to work at slowing down, savoring, rather than just consuming.  Noticed if I'm really stressed, read a lot more ebooks and zoom through them.   When I really ready to relax and slow down, then the heavy books come out and I'll read for two or three hours at a time.    The psychology of reading - an interest subject to learn about.  What we read, when and why?  :001_smile:   So glad our group has had a positive impact. Always makes me happy to hear.

[LaMere Academy]

Currently reading Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, it's good so far!

 

It's my 46th book of 2014

[Maus]

16. "The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches" by Alan Bradley. Hmm. Like previous posters have said, it does have a tying up all the loose ends sort of finality to it. Liked it anyway.

15. "I Am Not Sick I Don't Need Help!" by Xavier Amador, Ph.D.
14. "How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare" by Ken Ludwig.
13. "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
12. "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein.
11. "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card.
10. "With Healing in His Wings" ed. by Camille Fronk Olson & Thomas A. Wayment (LDS).
9. "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" by J.K. Rowling.
8. "The Good Knight" by Sarah Woodbury.
7. "Speaking From Among the Bones" by Alan Bradley.
6. "The Continuous Conversion" by Brad Wilcox (LDS).
5. "The Continuous Atonement" by Brad Wilcox (LDS).
4. "Finding Hope" by S. Michael Wilcox (LDS).
3. "When Your Prayers Seem Unanswered" by S. Michael Wilcox (LDS).
2. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling. (Read-aloud)
1. "The Peacegiver: How Christ Offers to Heal Our Hearts and Homes" by James L. Ferrell (LDS).

It was a tough year for us last year (steadily worsening mental health issues in DH and DS), and it doesn't look to be over yet, so at least for the beginning of the year, I'll be reading not so much for intellectual challenge or entertainment, but more for, um, I don't know, emotional and spiritual recentering. I don't know what else to call it. Also for information needed to understand what's going on. I don't plan to sum up what I'm reading for a while, just list the title and author, and since many will probably be by authors from my faith (LDS), I'll put that in parenthesis when it applies as well.

[Mothersweets]

Daughter of Time is very good, too. It really makes all the recent hubub over finding Richard III's body extra-fascinating!

[Onceuponatime]

I discovered Josephine Tey a couple of years ago and read everything I could find by her in the space of a few months. Now I am jealous that others are reading her for the first time. I especially liked Daughter of Time.

 

I just finished Thou Art That a collection of works by Joseph Campbell on religious metaphor. It turned out to be very appropriate for the season and most of what he said resonated deeply with me. "..our actual ultimate tool is in our common humanity, not in our personal geneology."

[Jane in NC]

I discovered Josephine Tey a couple of years ago and read everything I could find by her in the space of a few months. Now I am jealous that others are reading her for the first time. I especially liked Daughter of Time.

 

 

In my case, I read Josephine Tey so long ago, I don't remember all of the plot lines other than Daughter of Time!

 

[Stacia]

The family & I finally got to see The Monuments Men movie today. (It's at the discount theater now.)

 

Thought it was pretty great, but I also loved the book. I think that considering how long the book is, they did a very good job of staying fairly true to the main points/people in the book.

 

Even though nobody else in my family read the book (dh & two teens), they all really enjoyed it too.

 

Thumbs up from us.

 

We also recommended it to my in-laws, who were children in Belgium during WWII. I think they will enjoy the story, as well as seeing both Ghent & Brugge featured in the story.

 

http://youtu.be/eP3iicS-vuM

 

To read more about the real Monuments men & women: http://www.monumentsmen.com/

[Stacia]

Am now starting:

 

Zanesville by Kris Saknussemm

WHO IS ELIJAH CLEARFATHER?

 

Futuristic bioweapon or good old-fashioned messiah? Reincarnated ex-porn star or mutant information-age revolutionary? The man who awakens in New York City’s Central Park with no memory of his identity and the enigmatic message FATHER FORGIVE THEM F carved into the flesh of his back may be all of these things and more.

 

Taken in (and then expelled) by a group of freedom fighters battling the soul-deadening Vitessa Cultporation, Clearfather is a stranger in an even stranger land. Following tantalizing clues that point to the gnomic Stinky Wiggler, and pursued by murderous Vitessa agents, Clearfather embarks on a surreal odyssey of self-discovery across an America that resembles a vast amusement park designed by some unholy trinity of Walt Disney, Hunter S. Thompson, and Hieronymus Bosch.

 

Accompanying Clearfather is an unforgettable cast of characters–including Aretha Nightingale, an ex-football-playing drag queen; Dooley Duck and Ubba Dubba, hologram cartoon characters sprung outrageously to life; and the ethereally beautiful Kokomo, whose past is as much a mystery as Clearfather’s own.

 

By turns hilarious and deeply moving, a savage, fiercely intelligent satire that is also a page-turning adventure and a transcendent love story, Zanesville marks the arrival of a brilliant new voice in fiction.

Also, from Booklist:

*Starred Review* This sweeping, satirical first novel envisions a not-so-distant future America in which earthquakes and holy wars have wreaked havoc on the national psyche, and the people are either reclusive and superrich or damaged victims of misguided technologies. Into this schizophrenic landscape steps Elijah Clearfather, a mysterious, super-mentally-gifted amnesiac who can bring his enemies to their knees simply by chanting tongue twisters. Found by a clandestine community of rebel hackers living in Central Park, Clearfather bears a striking resemblance to a former porn-star-turned-cult-leader executed, Waco-style, by the FBI. Possessing the ability to infiltrate and unhinge the minds of those around him, Clearfather is ultimately deemed too dangerous for community membership and is ceremoniously packed onto a Greyhound bus with a makeover and a map leading him back through his haunted past. Thus Clearfather is launched on a madcap journey that involves errant 3-D-advertising icon Dooley Duck; an unlikely friendship with a wealthy adolescent drug addict and Warhol, a mutant bull mastiff; and the love of Kokomo, an enigmatic girl whose past may be as mysterious as his own. Part picaresque, part brilliantly inventive black comedy, Zanesville is one of the most creative, edgy, and entertaining novels sf has spawned in a decade.

[Negin]

Loesje, I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on To Kill a Mockingbird. It's such an American (Southern) classic, but I'm very curious as to how it will seem for someone outside the US & from a non-US historical background.

I loved it when we read it for English Lit here in Grenada. I was 15 at the time and as you know, I don't have a US background (I was 19 when I first entered the U.S). To Kill a Mockingbird was a favorite amongst most of our class. I'm sure it helped that our English Lit teacher was American. 

[Rosie_0801]

I just finished reading 'The Sowers' by Henry Seton Merriman, which I enjoyed very much. Weren't we talking recently about the richness of older books? This was first published in 1896 and when I read the first page all I could think was "how many WORDS there are in here!" 

[Robin M]

Link  to week 16 - please continue conversation in new thread