Book a Week 2017 - BW33: Happy Birthday Alfred Corn

[Robin M]

Happy Sunday and welcome to week 33 in our 2017 adventurous prime reading year. Greetings to all our readers and those following our progress. Mister Linky is available weekly on 52 Books in 52 Weeks  to share a link to your book reviews.

 

 

Happy birthday to American poet, Alfred Corn, who will be 74 on August 14th.

 

 

 

 

 

Fire: The People  

 

 

Toplight hammered down by shadowless noon, 

A palindrome of midnight, retrograde 

From last month’s solstice in smoke and flame, 

In molten glares from chrome or glass. I feel 

Fever from the cars I pass, delirium 

Trembling out from the radiators. 

The dog-day romance seems to be physical, 

As young free lances come into their own, 

Sunbrowned, imperial in few clothes, 

Heat-struck adulthood a subject to youth 

And fitful as traffic, the mind pure jumble 

But for that secret overriding voice 

Advising and persuading at each crossroads; 

The struggle toward freedom to forge a day. 

 

Smoke; flame; oiled, gray-brown air. 

Jackhammers and first gear on the avenues; 

Stuntmen driving taxicabs; patient, blue, 

Hippo aggressiveness of a bus, nudging 

Aside the sedans. And the peculiar 

Fascination of a row of workshops— 

The dark interiors with skylight sunstripes; 

A figure walking in slow motion among 

Pistons; rough justice of a die cutter; 

A helmeted diver, wielding acetylene, 

Crouched over some work of sunken treasure 

That sparkles gold at a probe from his torch . . . . 

Seismic shocks interrupt this dream—a stampede 

Of transports flat out to make the light, 

Mack truck, Diamond Reo, a nameless tanker, 

IT International, a Seatrain destined 

For the Port Authority docks—one more 

Corrugated block to pile on the rest, 

Red, green, gray, and blue, waiting for a ship 

In the Grancolombiana line . . . . 

The seagoing city radiates invisibly 

Over the world, a documentary sublime. 

 

Lunch hour, even the foods are fast, potluck 

In the melting pot: the Italian girl 

With a carton of chicken; Puerto Rican folding 

A pizza; the black woman with an egg roll; 

A crop-headed secretary in round, 

Metal spectacles eats plain yogurt (she’s 

Already mantis thin) and devours glamour 

Mags . . . . Our crowd scene, a moving fresco: 

But is it really there? The adversary 

Today is named Random. How capture all this 

Without being taken captive in turn, 

Install it as something more than backdrop, 

As a necessity, not a sundry? 

Suppose just an awareness of the way 

Living details might be felt as vision 

Is vision, full, all there ever was—this 

Instant palindromic noon, the joined hands 

Of the clock, end and beginning . . . . Surely 

The first to consider imagining stars 

Constellations had already done as much, 

Just by making some brilliant connections; 

Mind crowned itself in a round of leaps from point 

To point across the empty stage of night . . . . 

 

* * * * * 

 

Now as a pigeon banks, descends, hovers, 

And drops on asphalt with back-thrust wings, 

Comes a desire to be lifted in the balance, 

Rise to some highest point and then be met 

By a fierce new light haloing lashes shatter 

Into spears of aurora, naked eye become 

Prismatic at last and given to see in kind 

All the transformed inhabitants forever go 

About their errands, on a new scale: the rainbow 

Is the emblem for this moment filtering through 

The body’s meshwork nerves, and a heartbeat impulse 

All around puts troops of feet in step with music, 

Persistent, availing, that disregards the frayed 

Years, vagaries, downfall among trash, accident, 

Loss; or because it knows these rushes upward 

On something like heartbreak into the only sky, 

Air aspirant with fractioned voices, feverfew 

Of the sensed illusion, higher ground, progressions 

Sounded in the spheres—so each step takes them further, 

Sceptered, into daytime, saluting the outcome. 

There is a fire that surpasses the known burning, 

Its phoenix center a couple that must be there, 

Blast furnace, dynamo, engendering a city, 

Phosphor spines that bend and meet to weld, to fuse 

As a divining rod—sluicings, spillway, braid, 

Chorded basses that set myriad threads afire, 

Newborn limbs and reach of the proven tendon now 

Let go into empowered brilliance, rayed showers, 

The garden regained. In this light the place appears: 

Hands that rise or fall, muted gestures of welcome 

And good-bye, face that turns and comes forward to claim 

A smile latent in the afternoon air, vague crowds 

Falling down streets without character toward 

An offered covenant—love that gives them each a name. 

 

 

 

To learn more about Alfred Corn, check out this interview with Jorge Rodriguez-Miralles in 2013 as well as Huff Post Interview about World War I poets and Pif Magazine's interview with Derek Alger.

 

 

 

*****************************************************************

 

War and Peace:  Read Volume two – Part Five

 

Chat about what stood out for you, thoughts on storyline, setting, characters and motives as well as favorite quotes prior to this week’s reading.

 

 

**************************** 

 

Story of Western Science:  Chapter 28

 

**************************

 

 

What are you reading this week?

 

 

Link to Week 32

[Robin M]

Completed Louise Penny's Nature of the Beast which leaves me with X in Sardonyx to complete.  Up next Jeff VandeMeers Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance

[Jane in NC]

BaWer Penguin recently gave me a copy of a delightful summertime read, Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury.  Not a memoir but a fictional tale of a perfect summer at age 12 with all of the magical things that happen at that age in the summer.  It is sweet without being syrupy, a tale that everyone I think could relate to in some fashion. 

 

Here is a passage I particularly like.  Some of the boys start visiting an elderly gentleman in town whom they call a Time Machine.

 

 

"He talks, you listen.  And the more he talks the more he gets you to peering around and noticing things. He tells you you're riding on a very special train, by gosh, and sure enough, it's true.  He's been down the track and knows.  And now here we come, you and me, along the same track, but further on, and so much looking and snuffing and handling things to do, you need old Colonel Freeleigh to shove and say look alive so you remember every second!  Every darn thing there is to remember!  So when kids come around when you're real old, you can do for them what the colonel once did for you.  That's they way it is, Tom, I go to spend a lot of time visiting him and listening so I can go far-traveling with him as often as he can."

 

From W&P, Part Four.  The hunt was a little much for me but I loved the episode at the house of the uncle ("right you are!") Did you notice that the diminutive terms of endearment also apply to favorite hunting dogs?

 

Moving on now to a book that Stacia recommended a while ago but only recently acquired by my library system: The Story of My Teeth.  An interesting tale and also an interesting presentation--lots going on beyond words in the book.

 

And hats off to Robin for introducing me to a new poet, Alfred Corn.

[Chrysalis Academy]

I haven't been getting much reading done.  Well, that's not true, I've clocked about 16 hours the last 4 days reading about Lyme disease, which is now on the table, equivocally, for Shannon.  But books, not so much. I started and abandoned Do Not Become Alarmed - why on *earth* did I think that would be a good idea????  I've also given up on Samuel R. Delaney for now, I just can't get hooked on any of his books that I've tried.

 

I'm listening to Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy for the Borgia square. It's interesting, but I'd never have the patience to read it, and probably wouldn't even persist listening if it weren't for Bingo. It has the virtue of relying on documentary evidence - letters, journals, etc. rather than on salacious tales or gossip or traditional nasty-Borgia stories, but that makes it a little tedious as well.

 

Just started reading Alif the Unseen, Octavia's Brood, and Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen.

 

ETA: I just finished The Distant Marvels, an absolutely lovely novel in which an old Cuban woman tells her life story, growing up during the revolution. Parts of it are hard to read but the writing is just beautiful and the story is ultimately one filled with love and hope.

 

". . . proving what I already know - that there can be no safe place, no body that does not grow ill at last, no escape from death or absolute shelter from storms. But that love, in its full measure, is a kind of swirling tempest, too, and in its eye, there is stillness and comfort and peace."

 

Which brings me to my 6th Bingo Row:

 

27.Free Space – I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life – Ed Young
Unicorns! – Too Like the Lightning – Ada Palmer
"Night" in the title – Night of the Iguana – Tennessee Williams

Cuba – The Distant Marvels – Chantel Acevedo

Free Space – The 8-Hour Diet – David Zinczenko

 

Edited August 13, 2017 by Chrysalis Academy

[Loesje22000]

I finished:

 

Origin of Species of C. Darwin as graphic novel by Heller

Darwin, Wallace and others written by van Reeuwijk but in conversation with Redmond O'Hanlon and some Dutch biologists / biographers of scientists

Mr. Churchills secretary.

 

The last one was the most fun to read :)

But the middle one was very interesting and I liked the conversational style, knowing O'Hanlon from TV it was good that book was written like he would talking. Very passionated and with great love.

 

Evolution, Big Bang etc. is an educational gap in my knowledge, so I try to get a better insight before homeschooling dd in these topics. :o

[Loesje22000]

@ W&P:

 

I wonder how an 'archbishops' bas' sounds :)

[Lady Florida.]

I finished Donna Leon's Death at La Fenice and I believe I've found a new police procedural series. I figured out a big reveal about the victim's death at around 60% in, but there was still much more to learn about the why and the who.
 
 

From W&P, Part Four.  The hunt was a little much for me but I loved the episode at the house of the uncle ("right you are!") Did you notice that the diminutive terms of endearment also apply to favorite hunting dogs?

I finished Volume II last week and am in Volume III now, but yes to all of the above. I had to push through the hunt (had to the first time too) and make myself read it without judgment. I too noticed the pet names of their favorite pets. I mentioned recently in another thread that I have always had pet names for my pets so that didn't surprise me. :)

 

 

:grouphug: Rose, for Shannon

 

 

I made slow progress in Under the Banner of Heaven only because I was more interested in the fiction books I was reading. I'm sure I'll get back to it this week. 

 

I've been thinking about how I want to count Kristin Lavransdatter. There are really three full length books, each well over 300 pages. Goodreads doesn't list them separately in audio book version because they only seem to be available as an anthology in audio books. I'll probably just list the three books as print versions. 

[JennW in SoCal]

It's been a month since I last inflicted my War and Peace playlist on you all. I'm about 450 pages past the wolf hunt scene and have no idea where the rest of you are, so I am going to limit myself today to a short snippet that was playing through my head during that wolf hunt.  It is far too obvious a selection, but it is wonderful music by one of my favorite composers.

 

 

Sergei Prokofiev also wrote an opera based on War and Peace, but I'll save that for another week. In the mean time here is a short essay about Peter and Wolf

 

No reading news to share as things have been busy and I can't quite sit long enough to focus!

[Narrow Gate Academy]

It's been about a month since I last checked in. The garden produce is almost done. My sister and her kids have come and gone. My oldest is set up to start at the community college on the 21st, and I'm ready to restart school with the remaining three. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep up with the thread again. Here's what I've been reading.

 

Books Finished

📚Blood Cross by Hunter - Second Jane Yellowrock book 5 stars

📚Curious Minds by Evanovich - An eccentric billionaire and his back representative try to start a massive gold heist. This was for my financial bingo square. 5 stars

📚Killing Floor - First in Child's Jack Reacher series. A little gory with stop and go plot pacing, but entertaining enough to continue the series. 4 stars

📚Infinity's Embrace by Carven - Dark Warriors series 6, Ashrael, a mind bound assassin finds freedom with the help of Noa, a telepathically enhanced human. 5 stars

📚Mercy Blade by Hunter - Jane Yellowrock provides security for the vampire's meeting with the feline shapeshifters while trying to deal with a werewolf pack intent on killing the vampires. 4 stars

📚Brilliant Starlight - final installment in Garden's Dark Warriors series, The empire is fallen and General Akkadian is providing support to maintain stability while the new government is created. Then Abby's nanobots go haywire and start feeding off of her. Only by returning to the lab where he was created can Tarak save her. 4 stars

📚Die Trying by Child - Jack Reacher finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and is kidnapped by extremists targeting an FBI agent. Much better than book 1 - 5 stars

📚Of Ice and Snow by Argyle - The fourth son of a clan chief teams up with a raider to save his people from hers. 4 stars

📚Tripwire by Child - When a PI searching for him ends up dead, Jack Reacher heads to New York to discover who is looking for him. He ends up at the home of his now dead former CO and promises his daughter protection while he finishes her father's final project - 4 stars

📚The Lightning Thief by Riordan - I'be been reading so many new books that I decided to re-read the original Percy Jackson series in ebook format while I catch up on library books 5 stars

📚Ghost of a Chance by Yasmine Galenorn - Cozy mystery that gives me a Y for my A to Z author challenge. Single psychic mom tries to help a murdered ghost find justice. 3 stars

📚The Hunt for Red October by Clancy - My July birthstone challenge book, 4 stars

📚Speaking From Among the Bones by Bradley - another Flavia mystery on audiobook, 4 stars

 

Long Term Reads

ðŸ¢ESV Bible - A little behind, currently reading Isaiah

🢠The History of the Ancient World - no progress in July, hoping to restart this week

 

On Deck for This Week

📚Anansi Boys by Gaiman - next fiction book

📚Sea of Monsters by Riordan - ebook reread

[Onceuponatime]

I'm currently reading The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin and loving it. It is much better than Zevin's Elsewhere. The story revolves around the life of a bookstore owner. It is mostly charming, a little funny, and a little bittersweet. I hope the end is not sad.

 

Guess what? I have an interview on Friday for a small weekend job, in a small library, as an assistant librarian!

[Negin]

I haven't been getting much reading done.  Well, that's not true, I've clocked about 16 hours the last 4 days reading about Lyme disease, which is now on the table, equivocally, for Shannon. 

:grouphug: , sorry to hear that Rose. 

 

Guess what? I have an interview on Friday for a small weekend job, in a small library, as an assistant librarian!

Best of luck! 

[Negin]

I read In a Sunburned Country - 4 Stars - Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors. I love his wit and humor. Although I don’t think I’ll ever visit Australia, because this was written by him, I found it fascinating and oftentimes ever so funny. He has a real knack for intertwining all sorts of interesting facts about a place into his stories.

 

Some parts that I thought worth sharing:

“I had read in the paper that Australians are the biggest gamblers on the planet—one of the more arresting statistics I saw was that the country has less than 1 percent of the world’s population but more than 20 percent of its slot machines—and that between them they spend A$11 billion ($7.3 billion) a year, or A$2,000 per person, on various games of chance. But I had seen nothing to suggest such risky gusto until I stepped inside the World of Entertainment. It was vast and dazzling and immensely well appointed. The club movement in Australia is huge. In New South Wales alone, clubs employ 65,000 people, more than any other industry. This is huge business and it is nearly all based on a type of slot machine popularly called pokies.â€

 

“I had gone no more than a dozen feet when I was joined by a fly—smaller and blacker than a housefly. It buzzed around in front of my face and tried to settle on my upper lip. I swatted it away, but it returned at once, always to the same spot. A moment later it was joined by another that wished to go up my nose. It also would not go away. Within a minute or so I had perhaps twenty of these active spots all around my head and I was swiftly sinking into the state of abject wretchedness that comes with a prolonged encounter with the Australian fly. Flies are of course always irksome, but the Australian variety distinguishes itself with its very particular persistence. If an Australian fly wants to be up your nose or in your ear, there is no discouraging him. Flick at him as you will and each time he will jump out of range and come straight back. It is simply not possible to deter him. Somewhere on an exposed portion of your body is a spot, about the size of a shirt button, that the fly wants to lick and tickle and turn delirious circles upon. It isn’t simply their persistence, but the things they go for.â€

 

“[Australia] is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. ... If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place.â€

 

and The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper - 4 Stars - I was pleasantly surprised by this charming and heartwarming story. If you like books like “A Man Called Ove†or “Major Pettigrew’s Last Standâ€, you may enjoy this one also. 

 

and The Modern Rapunzel - 3 Stars - This was an okay read. If you’re concerned about hair loss, and most women will be at some point in their lives, there are some helpful tips. Many of them I knew already. Some are new to me and I’m willing to try. Others seem a little bit far-fetched. Many of her tips are her opinions about overall health and are not specifically about hair loss in and of itself, hence why I’m not rating it higher than 3 stars. 

 

   

 

Shakespeare and Company Bookstore again. The view from the window looks out to the Notre Dame Cathedral. 

 

 

MY RATING SYSTEM

5 Stars

Fantastic, couldn't put it down

4 Stars

Really Good

3 Stars

Enjoyable

2 Stars

Just Okay – nothing to write home about

1 Star

Rubbish – waste of my money and time. Few books make it to this level, since I usually give up on them if they’re that bad.

[mumto2]

Onceuponatime, Good luck at the interview! :)

 

Rose, :grouphug: to you and your dd. I hope you are on your way to a clear diagnosis.

 

Negin, I love the light in that picture. I think it's my favourite so far. I also enjoyed Arthur Pepper far more than I expected to.

 

Kathy, I am really looking forward to reading the Donna Leon now! It sounds like something I will enjoy.

 

I have checked out the next Louise Penny audio book (number 8) in the series. I am so enjoying these. I went ahead and put a hold on the just released book in this series. The list is long so I should be ready fof it when it arrives!

 

I have been reading Down a Dark Road during my journeys today. It's the latest in the Kate Burkeholder series set among the Amish. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31450759-down-a-dark-road?from_search=true. So far it's good.

 

Thank you for the kind thoughts about my shoulder. I think it must have been a soft tissue injury which is doing much better. Slightly uncomfortable but I am now able to ride in a car and walk without the motion hurting. I even did a small bit of quilting yesterday. :) Today was a big celebration picnic for a friend which has been on our calendar all summer. It was held about 100 miles away and I was really upset because I didn't want to miss it. I (we) just got home and had a wonderful time.

[Just Robyn]

It's been about a month since I last checked in. 

 

That makes me feel a little better about my three weeks, so thank you.

 

Guess what? I have an interview on Friday for a small weekend job, in a small library, as an assistant librarian!

 

Awesome, and good luck!

 

I haven't been getting much reading done.  Well, that's not true, I've clocked about 16 hours the last 4 days reading about Lyme disease, which is now on the table, equivocally, for Shannon. 

 

:grouphug: 

 

Love the Shakespeare & Co. picture, Negin!

 

Books:

 

Finished three more ebooks on writing

 

Million Dollar Productivity

Million Dollar Professionalism

Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing

 

The books in this series (including the third one) are all written by authors who have made at least a million dollars from their writing. The first one was mainly motivational and the second one common sense, maybe not a bad use of time or money if you get them cheap, in a bundle, like I did. The last one was great, and though it might seem like two or three dollars too much money for such a short book ($6 - not a lot of money, just, ya know, books three times longer are the same price), it can be hard to find writing books that don't just repeat each other, so I think it's worth it. 

 

The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera - 

 

AAAAHHH! My family is really on my case. We're going to get ice cream to reward ourselves for cleaning out the basement. I'll come back!

[Ali in OR]

Nothing finished this week either. I am keeping up with W&P, and like others I had difficulty with the hunt scene. But I loved the Christmas festivities and the sledges on the snow at night. I have not progressed any further in Rogue River Journal as it is dd's summer reading and she has finally had time to start it. She takes it to work with her, so I don't have much opportunity with it right now. So I picked up youngest's other summer read, Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea I believe, and I'm enjoying that one much more than dd did. I will probably not be able to get to Evicted and will need to put it on hold again (there's one more summer reading book I haven't started--The Refuge, I think).

 

We're getting closer to school starting with soccer tryouts being the excitement of this week. Older dd will finish her summer internship and present her work at the end of the week. Eclipse excitement will be ramping up too. Probably still not much reading time this week.

[-M-]

 

Hello, BaWers!

 

When my younger daughter and I embarked on our plan to (re)read The Odyssey before she returns to campus later this month, we agreed to tackle five or six of the epic’s books per week. We soon became so engrossed, however, that we finished weeks ahead of our schedule. We read the much-admired Fagles translation, and it was fine. An ardent Stephen Mitchell fan, I would have preferred his translation, but it is, inexplicably, unavailable in audiobook. I read the Fagles translation to the accompaniment of none other than Sir Ian McKellen, yet I pined for Alfred Molina reading Mitchell.

 

Here are my commonplace book entries:

 

Book Seven
I’m just a mortal man.
Whom do you know most saddled down with sorrow?
They are the ones I’d equal, grief for grief.
And I could tell a tale of still more hardship,
all I’ve suffered, thanks to the gods’ will.
But despite my misery, let me finish dinner.
The belly’s a shameless dog, there’s nothing worse.
Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget —
destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,
sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding,
‘Eat, drink!’ It blots out all the memory
of my pain, commanding, ‘Fill me up!’

 

Book Eight
With a dark glance
wily Odysseus shot back, “Indecent talk, my friend.
You, you’re a reckless fool – I see that. So,
the gods don’t hand out all their gifts at once,
not build and brains and flowing speech to all….â€

 

Book Eighteen
[N]otorious for his belly, a ravenous, bottomless pit
for food and drink….

 

Book Twenty
So surrender to sleep at last. What a misery,
keeping watch through the night, wide awake –
you’ll soon come up from under all your troubles.

 

It’s wildly optimistic of us, but now we are hoping to read The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne) before she leaves. Also filed under “W†(for “Wildly Optimisticâ€) is the copy of Persuasion in the haphazard stack pictured above. Last month, when a flurry of news items appeared about the Jane Austen bicentenary, I determined that it would be the Austen novel I would most enjoy revisiting.

 

RE: War and Peace: I have already finished the reading for both this week and next. Here are commonplace book entries for Weeks 6 through 9:

 

Book Two, Part Three, Chapter 7
At that meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of men’s minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself identically to two persons.

 

Book Two, Part Five, Chapter 1
It was too dreadful to be under the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned himself to any distraction in order to forget them. He frequented every kind of society, drank much, bought pictures, engaged in building, and above all – read.

He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home, while his valets were still taking off his things, he picked up a book and began to read.

 

Book Two, Part Five, Chapter 9
She could not follow the opera nor even listen to the music, she saw only the painted cardboard and the queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke, and sang so strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what it was all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused at them. She looked at the faces of the audience, seeking in them the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she herself experienced, but they all seemed attentive to what was happening on the stage, and expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. ‘I suppose it has to be like this!’ she thought.

 

Book Three, Part One, Chapter 1
There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.

 

I have made progress in the “Shakespeare in a Year†project, too. Last weekend, I reread As You Like It and Twelfth Night. How fascinating to encounter Rosalind and Viola again, one right after the other.

 

From Act II, Scene 7, of As You Like It:

 

Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.

 

Yesterday, I finished Troilus and Cressida, which, like Titus Andronicus, was new to me. Unlike Titus, though, Troilus was a chore to read. An uneven, clunky play, it provided little readerly joy beyond the unanticipated tie-in to the discussions we’ve been having about The Iliad and The Odyssey.

 

I have not yet decided when and where to squeeze Sir Thomas More into my schedule, nor have I decided what to do about Hamlet, a play I’ve read and seen more (many more) than a few times. Earlier in the project, I chose Howard Jacobson’s Shylock Is My Name over rereading The Merchant of Venice, and I am considering a similar substitution for Hamlet. The novel Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (A. J. Hartley and David Hewson) is the chief contender, although… I wonder if I could count Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson). Hmmm….

 

Other bookish bits: I have already mentioned our Moby Dick reread. Perhaps if I begin posting my commonplace book entries, those of you who have maintained a “No way!†stance on the the White Whale may be persuaded to try it. *smile* The Broken Ladder is my follow-up to Dream Hoarders, which I wrote about in my last BaW post, and the other books in the image above are either recently acquired or awaiting reshelving.

 

Edited August 13, 2017 by Melissa M

[Lori D.]

Just about 30 pages to go in the 900+ page Sunne in Splendor, so I'll report on that once I finish.

 

Missed a few weeks of reporting in. One reason was vacation -- yea! I also use vacation travels as an online fast time, and really feel refreshed after a break both from the usual home life grind AND the frantic need to get on WTM board and see what's going on. ;) Much as I love you all. :)

 

The other great thing about vacation is filling my suitcase with books and getting to read, in spite of having some full days of travel and sightseeing. We were gone 8 days, and I got through 3.5 books while away, and finished that 4th book yesterday:

 

Jim the Boy (Tony Early)

Adult novel, but could easily work as a YA book or as a family read-aloud.

 

Far and away my favorite of the four. It is one of Early's first novels, and he came out of the gate like a pro. Lovely, gentle writing. Depression-era coming of age story following an 11-year-old boy raised by his widowed mother and her 3 older brothers in rural North Carolina.

 

 

The Perilous Gard (Elizabeth Marie Pope)

YA Historical Fiction.

 

How on earth did I miss reading this one back in childhood, or at least when we were homeschooling?!? First published in 1974, with super-strong writing, and a very interesting premise of a 16th century Elizabethan teen lady-in-waiting discovers an ancient "Fairy Folk" realm -- and they are called "perilous" for a reason, as they are more closely allied with the ancient Druidic or Celtic sacrifice practices than the "sweet little fairies living in flowers" type of Fairy Folk. ;)

 

 

House of the Scorpion (Nancy Farmer)

YA dystopia.

 

Man, I have a love-hate relationship with Farmer's writing. She is SO creative -- what I loved about this book was her creation of a very new, unique, dystopian world ("Opium", the future country as a corridor between the US and Mexico and the opium producing capital and distribution center for the world). I really enjoyed how the book takes *several* serious left turns that I didn't expect or see coming, so it continued to surprise (in a good way) with extreme creativity throughout. And it's esp. interesting to read the author's note at the end of the book on what her inspirations were for this world.

 

HOWEVER... What I hate is her very mediocre to below adequate writing style. Aarrrghhh! Some pretty brutal events in this book, so even though it's YA, you might want to preview. (Although, the low writing quality sort of takes out the emotion/horror of the events, so I guess that's a positive aspect about the less than stellar writing... ?? ;) )

 

 

Mistress of the Art of Death (Ariana Franklin -- pen name of Diana Norman)

First of 4 mysteries about the Medieval female forensics medical examiner Adelia Aguilar.

 

Ug. I really debated about even confessing to reading this one. It was a real roller-coaster of reactions for me throughout. The initial chapters were VERY off-putting to me, with a very strong feminist negative view of men (they are all r*pists, or only think about their male parts and s*x, and men see women only as inferior).   :angry:  :ack2: Being married to a wonderful man and having 2 wonderful adult sons REALLY makes me hate that stereotype. The novel does lighten up a bit on that front, but there is still an overall tone (done in a 20th century way and not a Medieval way) that Christian men are largely patriarchal and oppressive to women, while the Jewish and Saracen male characters are more sympathetic toward women.

 

Also difficult to reconcile to at first was the extremely modern CSI coroner examinations mixed into a very meticulously researched and very believable 12th century England. One of the reviews on the back of the book says "CSI meets The Canterbury Tales" -- which is an extremely astute review in short. There is also a lot of the earthiness and realness of characters in the book, similar to Chaucer's characters in The Canterbury Tales. So starting along about chapter 6-8, once I set aside the unbelievability of the modern mindsets and medical practices overlayed onto a Medieval setting, I really got in to the solving of the mystery and the solid writing that did a terrific job of picturing the historical times/setting.

 

However... the last quarter of the book veers straight into some hard R-rated descriptions of the psychotic/deranged killer's torture/killings of the victims (some women, but mostly young children, which is particularly upsetting), plus some s*x scenes that push the novel into Romance novel territory. Disappointed sigh...

 

 

In short, I highly recommend Jim the Boy and The Perilous Gard, give a more tentative recommendation to House of the Scorpion, and I will let others decide for themselves whether or not Mistress of the Art of Death is a novel they want to embark upon -- for myself, I will not be continuing with the series.

 

Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited August 13, 2017 by Lori D.

[Mothersweets]

Haven't finished anything this week but started a couple more books- Death Note - a manga my 16yo has been at me to read and a new novel about the Lizzie Borden murders. 

 

I haven't done any reading on War and Peace so I need to do some catching up!

 

[Lori D.]

Haven't finished anything this week but started a couple more books- Death Note - a manga my 16yo has been at me to read ...

 

Death Note was my first exposure to an anime TV series, courtesy of DSs. :) I've since watched quite a few anime series with DSs, and enjoyed them all. I had forgotten that Death Note (and most anime) starts off as manga.

 

If you would like a lighter manga when you finish Death Note, look for One Punch Man. I've read one of the manga, and we've watched both seasons of the anime. It had us all rotflol.  :laugh:

[LauraBeth475]

I'm reading Fareed Zakaria's In Defense of a Liberal Education, which is a nice back to homeschool read, if not yet earth-shattering. Next I'm going to read The Shallows and Everything Bad is Good for You roughly together, and see who argues it best.

 

I read James S.A. Corey's Expanse series a few weeks ago in a major binge, so I'm recharging the fiction energy,

[Chrysalis Academy]

I read a whole book today! Another Brooklyn, by Jacqueline Woodson. Four brown girls growing up in 1970s Brooklyn. It was lovely.

[Penguin]

BaWer Penguin recently gave me a copy of a delightful summertime read, Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury.  Not a memoir but a fictional tale of a perfect summer at age 12 with all of the magical things that happen at that age in the summer.  It is sweet without being syrupy, a tale that everyone I think could relate to in some fashion. 

 

Here is a passage I particularly like.  Some of the boys start visiting an elderly gentleman in town whom they call a Time Machine.

 

 

From W&P, Part Four.  The hunt was a little much for me but I loved the episode at the house of the uncle ("right you are!") Did you notice that the diminutive terms of endearment also apply to favorite hunting dogs?

 

Moving on now to a book that Stacia recommended a while ago but only recently acquired by my library system: The Story of My Teeth.  An interesting tale and also an interesting presentation--lots going on beyond words in the book.

 

And hats off to Robin for introducing me to a new poet, Alfred Corn.

Glad you liked Dandelion Wine, Jane :)

[Ethel Mertz]

I came back to this thread to read War and Peace with you ladies, but then my mother got diagnosed with cancer.

 

She is 79yo, the cancer has spread all through her body with no options to treat.

I have been taking care of her (and my dad) since then. My mother stopped eating last week and barely drinks anymore.

Yesterday the doctor started (at my mother's request) sedation for part of the day and the whole night.

 

I don't have the time or energy to join you here on this thread, although I'm still reading W&P.

 

I'll be back when things calm down again.

Thinking of you and yours.  :grouphug:

 

 

 

Other bookish bits: I have already mentioned our Moby Dick reread. Perhaps if I begin posting my commonplace book entries, those of you who have maintained a “No way!” stance on the the White Whale may be persuaded to try it. *smile* The Broken Ladder is my follow-up to Dream Hoarders, which I wrote about in my last BaW post, and the other books in the image above are either recently acquired or awaiting reshelving.

 

 

Please post your commonplace book entries on Moby Dick! I'm trying to decide whether to have DS read it.

 

Also, I am trying to decide between The Iliad and The Odyssey. If you had to choose one, which would it be?

 

In terms of my reading: I finished Clyde Edgerton's Walking Across Egypt. Lovely book with laugh-out-loud moments.

 

I'm behind in my W&P reading, my LOTR reading, and SWB's Ancient History book - which I have to finish in the next couple of weeks so I can start with her Middle Ages book with DS. I've also got to finish Other People We Married by Emma Straub for my IRL book club meeting on Wednesday.

 

In other news, I've packed two boxes of books and need to pack more. Closing date on our house is Sept. 14th and move-in date is probably sometime in December.

 

Kareni - thinking of you and your Mom.  :grouphug:

 

Rose - DS was just diagnosed with Lyme this summer as well. We don't know when he got bit by the tick.

 

Amy - sending good smells your way in the midst of your eggs-in-the-carpet crisis.

 

Nan-in-Massachusetts - loved the postcard!

[Ethel Mertz]

Thank you all for the birthday wishes! I had an excellent day that involved bookstores and now I have even more books to pack!

 

 

[Penguin]

Tress, I just saw the post about your mom. I am so very sorry . :grouphug:  :grouphug:

[ErinE]

Y'all, I'm just not feeling the bookish love. It's been a struggle on my end as I want to read a book that I'm immersed in, that I love, that I can come here and gush about. Maybe it's life getting me down, but I feel like I'm forcing myself to slog through books. Maybe it's the time of year.

 

Update on the egg situation: the carpet doesn't smell as bad after multiple passes with the steam cleaner. I think with a few more cleanings, it'll be tolerable and we won't have to replace it right away. 

 

Books read last week:

• The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku. Nonfiction - Science. A theoretical physicist summarizes current brain research and possible future enhancements. It was an interesting listen though not really any new information.
• The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton. Fantasy - Greek Gods. The mortal incarnation of Apollo seeks retribution for wrongs committed against a woman he loved. Like The Just City, the most interesting character with the most conflict, a mortal sibling of demi-gods, did not have a point of view. I think I'm done with the series.
• Forensic History: Crimes, Frauds, and Scandals by Elizabeth Murray. Nonfiction - Forensic Science. A Great Courses offering, it's an overview of how investigators solve various crimes. I wasn't sure I could finish these lectures as they start with a summary of some extremely brutal murders, especially those committed against women and children. The professor goes into detail about the condition of the victims and the crimes committed against them. She eventually moves away from horrific deaths and looks at fraud, espionage, and kidnapping which I found the particularly interesting. The first part though was pretty harrowing to hear. Recommended if you like police procedurals or crime thrillers, but with a heavy content warning.
• The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. Space Opera. The new ruler of a space empire discovers the portals linking her territories are collapsing. The first three books in the Old Man's War series still rank as some of my favorite space opera, but this book fell short. Interesting premise, but too much exposition, too much backstory, not enough character development.

Still working my way through While Christs and His Saints Slept. I'll catch up on War and Peace once school starts.

Edited August 14, 2017 by ErinE

[Matryoshka]

Finished four books last week and one yesterday afternoon and since I haven't posted yet I'll add it...

 

85. Del amor y otros demonios/Of Love and Other Demons (ebook) - You know how some books make you want to visit the place they're set?  García Márquez' books seem to do the opposite to me.  Something about the atmosphere in these novels always seems oppressive.  The book on Colombian cartels made the place seem more inviting...  Anyway, went in with low expectations and actually liked it much more than I thought I might. For my magic realism square. 3 stars.

 

86. Into the Wild: Warriors #1.  Meh.  But made dd so happy.  I got a lot of the books you all recommended out of the library and am considering some kind of barter where I'll read another Warriors for each book she reads...  we'll see if even that works.  For the book your younger dd recommends square. 2 stars.

 

87. Northanger Abbey (audiobook) - How had I never read this before?  So enjoyable.  For my Gothic square. 5 stars.

 

88. Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum / The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum - Fake News in the 1970's.  Tabloids make stuff up and ruin a young woman's life.  Told dryly (as a disinterested third party analyzing the case) but with some dry wit mixed in.  For 'set in the 1970's' square.  3.5 stars

 

89. Shah of Shahs - Short, engagingly told, thoughtful portrait of the Iranian revolution by a Polish journalist.  Did he really say he'd personally witnessed twenty-seven revolutions in the third world?  Well, he did say 'seen' - maybe he meant in his lifetime?  Either way. I really had no idea how brutally the Shah ran the country; I knew he was supported by the Americans and that he wasn't popular, but the ubiquity of the secret police (Savak) - I'd heard of atrocities after the revolution, but didn't realize what had been going on before.  The author does not think what came out of it was any better.  An interesting quote:

 

A despot may go away, but no dictatorship comes to a complete end with his departure.  A dictatorship depends for its existence on the ignorance of the mob; that's why all dictators take such pains to cultivate that ignorance. It requires generations to change such a state of affairs ... Before this can happen, however, those who have brought down a dictator often act, in spite of themselves, like his heirs, perpetuating the attitudes and thought patterns of the epoch they themselves have destroyed. This happens so involuntarily and subconsciously that they burst into righteous ire if anyone points it out to them.

 

How this happens (reminds me of many of the communist revolutions as well...)

 

Everyone had opposed the Shah and wanted to remove him, but everyone had imagined the future differently.  Some thought the country would become the sort of democracy they knew from their stays in France and Switzerland.  But these were exactly the people who lost first in the battle that began once the Shah was gone. ... They found themselves in a paradoxical situation: A democracy cannot be imposed by force, the majority must favor it, yet the majority wanted ... an Islamic republic. ... The proponents of the republic  ... began fighting among themselves as well.  In this struggle the conservative hardliners gradually gained the upper hand over the enlightened and open ones.

 

Anyway, I think I'd like to read his book on the downfall of Haile Selassie. Thanks to whoever recommended this to me!  For my Middle East square and also for August birthstone (because Sardonyx originally found in Iran).

 

Currently reading:

 

- Ocean at the End of the Lane (audiobook) - yes, I am enjoying this much more than American Gods (well, that's a low bar ;) ), and I'm also enjoying it read aloud by Gaiman.

 

- Endurance: Shakleton's Incredible Voyage (ebook) - I was fascinated by a book about this I read with my kids when we hit this part of history, so I thought this would be an interesting read for my Antarctic square.  Quite engaging so far.  I can never believe he managed to get every single person on this doomed expedition home safely.

 

- W&P: All caught up!  I've read (and watched on BBC shows) so many fox hunts by the British aristocrats, but I didn't know the Russians hunted wolves the same way!  I liked the Uncle and the Christmas story.

 

Coming up:

 

Next ebook will be whatever comes off hold first: Golem and the Jinni or Let the Great World Spin.  Next audio book I might revive the abandoned You're Never Weird on the Internet because I need a 'book written by blogger'.  Or might try a Jeeves for 'make 'em laugh'. I've got a book called El murmullo de las abejas / The Murmur of the Bees coming from the library for my next Spanish book.  I don't think it's been translated into English yet?  It's written by a Mexican author.  This is for my 'author same age as I am' square.  Wee Free Men is also coming in with a dual purpose - going to try it on dd again, but I'm also going to read it for my 'elves, sprites or other impish creatures' square

 

Edited August 14, 2017 by Matryoshka

[Guest]

I finished 5 books last week - and the three best ones were also the heaviest and grimmest:

 

Have Black Lives Ever Mattered: This powerful collection of short essays was painful to read, but important.  Much of it was familiar to me (I'm involved in an organization started by a black friend whose brother was killed by the Seattle police last year), but none of it felt redundant. One of the hardest things for me was unrelated to the content - this author has been imprisoned for 36 years based on a trial condemned by Amnesty International (and others).  My brother's early activism included an info campaign about Mumia (who was then on death row, his death sentence was overturned in 2011) and his case and Leonard Peltier's were much discussed in my home.  Since I am struggling now with the hard truth that the causes I've fought for since my early teens haven't made the kind of lasting progress I'd hoped for, thinking about this case is especially poignant for me.  I don't feel any of my efforts have been wasted, and they have had some impact, but I had hoped for so much more and as I worried about my visibly Jewish husband and teens at the anti-Nazi counter rally yesterday, I grieved the areas where progress I had thought secured by the generation before mine has been lost.

 

A Mother's Reckoning: I read Cullen's Columbine the other year, but this book, written by one of the shooter's mother, focuses on her process of reconciling the child she thought she knew with the evil he committed.  And her warnings about mental health issues and how easily they can be missed in our teens was a chilling one.

 

Les Blancs: Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun is a classic of American theater, but her other work is not well known at all.  This one is much more uncomfortable, and messier than RitS, but quite powerful.  If you only read one work of hers, I'd still recommend the classic, but this is worth experiencing as well.

 

Murder Fantastical: I was diverted by the excerpts posted here last week and picked it up a local library.  The mystery itself was (mostly) obvious, but the voice was delightful and I plan to read some more. (Though what I really want are more Hilary Tamar books...)

 

Rise and Shine: I didn't go into this expecting great literature, I wanted an easy read with a feel-good, slightly tear-jerking tone... and I got that.  ...but I couldn't get past the insane privilege of some of the characters.  ...and disappearing to a friend's remote island hideaway for months because a marriage has failed.. and spending the time "thinking" and swimming just made me a little ill.  ...and comparing it to Sue Klebold, who had to stagger through real life as best she could (and even she had the money to work part-time and the support structure to get through better than many of us)  was particularly striking. 

[Jane in NC]

I finished 5 books last week - and the three best ones were also the heaviest and grimmest:

 

Have Black Lives Ever Mattered: This powerful collection of short essays was painful to read, but important.  Much of it was familiar to me (I'm involved in an organization started by a black friend whose brother was killed by the Seattle police last year), but none of it felt redundant. One of the hardest things for me was unrelated to the content - this author has been imprisoned for 36 years based on a trial condemned by Amnesty International (and others).  My brother's early activism included an info campaign about Mumia (who was then on death row, his death sentence was overturned in 2011) and his case and Leonard Peltier's were much discussed in my home.  Since I am struggling now with the hard truth that the causes I've fought for since my early teens haven't made the kind of lasting progress I'd hoped for, thinking about this case is especially poignant for me.  I don't feel any of my efforts have been wasted, and they have had some impact, but I had hoped for so much more and as I worried about my visibly Jewish husband and teens at the anti-Nazi counter rally yesterday, I grieved the areas where progress I had thought secured by the generation before mine has been lost.

 

A Mother's Reckoning: I read Cullen's Columbine the other year, but this book, written by one of the shooter's mother, focuses on her process of reconciling the child she thought she knew with the evil he committed.  And her warnings about mental health issues and how easily they can be missed in our teens was a chilling one.

 

Les Blancs: Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun is a classic of American theater, but her other work is not well known at all.  This one is much more uncomfortable, and messier than RitS, but quite powerful.  If you only read one work of hers, I'd still recommend the classic, but this is worth experiencing as well.

 

Murder Fantastical: I was diverted by the excerpts posted here last week and picked it up a local library.  The mystery itself was (mostly) obvious, but the voice was delightful and I plan to read some more. (Though what I really want are more Hilary Tamar books...)

 

Rise and Shine: I didn't go into this expecting great literature, I wanted an easy read with a feel-good, slightly tear-jerking tone... and I got that.  ...but I couldn't get past the insane privilege of some of the characters.  ...and disappearing to a friend's remote island hideaway for months because a marriage has failed.. and spending the time "thinking" and swimming just made me a little ill.  ...and comparing it to Sue Klebold, who had to stagger through real life as best she could (and even she had the money to work part-time and the support structure to get through better than many of us)  was particularly striking. 

 

Les Blancs has been on my reading list for over a year, this after reading A Raisin in the Sun.  Thanks for the reminder.

 

Speaking of classics...we recently saw a production of the 1950's drama Twelve Angry Men, a play that really wears well despite its age.  Sure, today the deliberation room would be air conditioned but the hot tempers and the emotional stereotypes of "those people" continue to ring true--as well as the need for people to stop and listen to rational arguments. This play was standard reading when I was in high school.  Glad to see that it hasn't been forgotten.  (Cute note:  In the audience the night we saw the play was an 80+ year old couple celebrating their 60th anniversary with a night out.  The director introduced them and they were given a loud round of applause.)

 

 

[Matryoshka]

BaWer Penguin recently gave me a copy of a delightful summertime read, Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury.  Not a memoir but a fictional tale of a perfect summer at age 12 with all of the magical things that happen at that age in the summer.  It is sweet without being syrupy, a tale that everyone I think could relate to in some fashion. 

 

....  Moving on now to a book that Stacia recommended a while ago but only recently acquired by my library system: The Story of My Teeth.  An interesting tale and also an interesting presentation--lots going on beyond words in the book.

 

Dandelion Wine and Story of My Teeth are both on my TR list.  The former, along with Something Wicked This Way Comes, I think I'm going to try in audio, as I think I've tried to read both in the past and not finished.  I love Bradbury's writing generally, though, so I think a good narrator might be just the thing.

 

I'll be interested in what you think about Story of My Teeth.  I've been having a hard time finding a copy in the original Spanish.  Most other Spanish language books I can find inexpensive/used or even through the library.  That one's been hovering at $20 plus shipping.  I might be able to overcome that price if it's a great read. :)

 

 

And hats off to Robin for introducing me to a new poet, Alfred Corn.

 

 

 

I'd never heard of him either.  I liked the poems.  I like many poems but I have a hard time sitting down and reading poetry.  One or two poems at a time is all I can usually manage.  They require thinking and reflecting.

[Guest]

 

I have made progress in the “Shakespeare in a Year†project, too. Last weekend, I reread As You Like It and Twelfth Night. How fascinating to encounter Rosalind and Viola again, one right after the other.

[snip]

I have not yet decided when and where to squeeze Sir Thomas More into my schedule, nor have I decided what to do about Hamlet, a play I’ve read and seen more (many more) than a few times. Earlier in the project, I chose Howard Jacobson’s Shylock Is My Name over rereading The Merchant of Venice, and I am considering a similar substitution for Hamlet. The novel Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (A. J. Hartley and David Hewson) is the chief contender, although… I wonder if I could count Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson). Hmmm….

 

 

I love hearing about your Shakespeare in a Year project!  I did something similar a few years ago - I spent one year rereading the canonical plays + ones many consider should be added and the next reading Shakespearean apocrypha (I used this volume from the RSC.  I had read all the canonical works many times over many years (and seen all of them, some many times, others only once), but reading them all in one year was a beautiful experience.  Reading the apocrypha was fascinating.  I'd read Edward III a number of years before and gotten chills reading some lines and some scenes.  The scholarly analysis was nifty, but the visceral recognition was much more powerful. (And, on a visceral level, I still reject Two Noble Kinsmen - in my head it is not Shakespeare.)

 

On my bedside shelf (a birthday gift from my mother) is a book you might find interesting: Brutus and other Heroines

 

Also waiting to be read is another candidate for a Hamlet substitute: Dead Fathers Club.  ...though I have to say, I found reading the plays I know by heart, or close thereto, to be valuable in that year, it gave me insights and connections I hadn't found before.  Ymmv,  :)

 

 

 

The Perilous Gard (Elizabeth Marie Pope)

YA Historical Fiction.

 

How on earth did I miss reading this one back in childhood, or at least when we were homeschooling?!? First published in 1974, with super-strong writing, and a very interesting premise of a 16th century Elizabethan teen lady-in-waiting discovers an ancient "Fairy Folk" realm -- and they are called "perilous" for a reason, as they are more closely allied with the ancient Druidic or Celtic sacrifice practices than the "sweet little fairies living in flowers" type of Fairy Folk. ;)

 

*happy squeeing*

I loved this book as a kid and was so happy it held up well to rereading as an adult. 

She only has one other book Sherwood Ring, which is delightful, but not of the same caliber (though I loved it as a young person, still enjoy rereading it, and it is muchly loved by many of my kids.)

 

 

Also, I am trying to decide between The Iliad and The Odyssey. If you had to choose one, which would it be?

 

Personally, I would pick the Iliad every time.  (And use either my beloved Lattimore translation or the equally amazing recent translation by Peter Green. Many other popular translation leave Homer behind and are closer to a retelling than a translation - which can be delightful, but isn't the same thing.)

 

Two neat books to accompany a reading of the Iliad: Iliad and War, which includes an amazing essay Simone Weil and Homeric Moments by the incomparable Eva Brann.

 

 

 

 

• The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton. Fantasy - Greek Gods. The mortal incarnation of Apollo seeks retribution for wrongs committed against a woman he loved. Like The Just City, the most interesting character with the most conflict, a mortal sibling of demi-gods, did not have a point of view. I think I'm done with the series.

 

How interesting!  For me Arete was the heart of the book and the character you found most interesting barely registered for me - further proof that each reading experience is uniquely individual.   This is one of those books I can't be impartial about.  The pursuit of excellence, the weight given to what one reads and the mindfulness about choices... the ways Arete has been shaped by what she has read and studied and the centering of the reality of ideas and ideals, felt like things pulled from by deepest being and brought to life - with a whole lot of other things, but it was those parts which lit me up.  It isn't a comfort read like Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, which is similarly linked to my deepest self, but it isn't something I can see objectively.   ...which makes hearing other people's experiences of it so fascinating.

[Mothersweets]

Death Note was my first exposure to an anime TV series, courtesy of DSs. :) I've since watched quite a few anime series with DSs, and enjoyed them all. I had forgotten that Death Note (and most anime) starts off as manga.

 

If you would like a lighter manga when you finish Death Note, look for One Punch Man. I've read one of the manga, and we've watched both seasons of the anime. It had us all rotflol.  :laugh:

 

Thanks -I'll be sure to look for it! My 18yo has watched the first season and she thinks I'll like it, too :)

 

I've also watched Erased and Noragami and Yona of the Dawn. My favorite so far has been Erased (I've watched it twice!). I think the stories are so interesting and they have a fairy tale feel to them (well, maybe not Erased, but the other ones). Have you seen any of these?

[Guest]

Les Blancs has been on my reading list for over a year, this after reading A Raisin in the Sun.  Thanks for the reminder.

 

Speaking of classics...we recently saw a production of the 1950's drama Twelve Angry Men, a play that really wears well despite its age.  Sure, today the deliberation room would be air conditioned but the hot tempers and the emotional stereotypes of "those people" continue to ring true--as well as the need for people to stop and listen to rational arguments. This play was standard reading when I was in high school.  Glad to see that it hasn't been forgotten.  (Cute note:  In the audience the night we saw the play was an 80+ year old couple celebrating their 60th anniversary with a night out.  The director introduced them and they were given a loud round of applause.)

 

 

 

I have an edition which includes her other minor plays: Les Blancs: The Last Collected Plays.  I intend to read the others at some point, but don't feel ready yet. 

 

Also on the stacks is To be Young, Gifted, and Black which is marketed as Hansberry's autobiography, but was compiled from her private papers by her ex-husband, which feels a little weird. (But that could just be echoes of Sylvia Plath's situation in my head.)

 

[Guest]

 

Eliana, it is a joy to have you back here. I can't say if I've even read one version of Medea (maybe I have read one?) and here you are having read so many that this doesn't even cut it into your top ten versions. :lol:  I love it! Your reading is awesome & I love that you have the depth & knowledge to even be able to delineate this info & share it with us. I truly am in awe at your reading & am so happy you share your prolific lists & insights with us. Thank you. :grouphug: :)

 

I love you, darling.  Thank you.  

 

...the Medea this is weird.  It isn't a favorite of mine, the way Antigone is, but it has so much intensity and goes so counter to all of my instincts... and yet seeing her boxed in and betrayed gets to me every single time.. but... oh, but, she *kills her own babies*.  I can't fathom.

 

...though not in all the retellings.  Christa Wolf's Medea, for example, shows us Medea from several viewpoints and, like her Cassandra, draws on history and myth to provide a very different version of the story. 

 

Maxwell Anderson's Wingless Victory comes the closest to making it make sense... but I still find myself poking at it from time to time.

[Guest]

 

 

I ordered Just Mercy, which has quite a wait at the local library. I admit I'm nervous to read it, though, based on your experience. Still, it sounds very important so I'm in.

 

The hardest parts about Just Mercy are

 - The crushing injustices - learning about the individuals and seeing them struggling against overwhelming injustice is really hard to take.

 - The truth that those injustices are being perpetrated within and often by our criminal justice system - and the ensuing cognitive dissonance as someone who grew up believe the courts and the justice system were indeed a source of justice, messy and imperfect, but real and significant.

 

The New Jim Crow gave me the latter, but didn't get be drawn into individual stories the same way.  NJC is, imho, the better, more significant book, but this complemented it well for me.  (Though I don't think I could have read them back to back)

 

 

 

I finished Heinrich Böll's The Lost Honor of Katherina Blum which remains as relevant today as when it was published in 1974, two years after Böll won the Nobel prize. It is a fast paced read which covers a week in the life of a woman destroyed by yellow journalism.

 

 

 

How claustrophobic and/or crushing is this? 

[Claustrophobic = (for me) books where characters are trapped, often in a slow-moving train wreck.]

 

This has been on my TBR list for a while, but I've been afraid to pick it up.

[Guest]

I've been on an Urusula LeGuin kick lately and so was pleased to read this essay from Tor about The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. I thought some of you might be interested.

 

You might like her essay collection Wave in the Mind - it might just have been the space I was in when I read it, but I loved it so much.

They span a range of topics and registers... here's a short, relatively slight, one that was exactly what I needed to read the beginning of last year...because I am, indeed, mud:

 

Being Taken for Granite

 

 

Sometimes I am taken for granite. Everybody is taken for granite sometimes but I am not in a mood for being fair to everybody. I am in a mood for being fair to me. I am taken for granite quite often, and this troubles and distresses me, because I am not granite. I am not sure what I am but I know it isn't granite. I have known some granite types, we all do: characters of stone, upright, immovable, unchangeable, opinions the general size shape and pliability of the Rocky Mountains, you have to quarry five years to chip out one little stony smile. That's fine, that's admirable, but it has nothing to do with me. Upright is fine, but downright is where I am, or downwrong. I am not granite and should not be taken for it. I am not flint or diamond or any of that great hard stuff. If I am stone, I am some kind of shoddy crumbly stuff like sandstone or serpentine, or maybe schist. Or not even stone but clay, or not even clay but mud. And I wish that those who take me for granite would once in a while treat me like mud.

 

Being mud is really different from being granite and should be treated differently. Mud lies around being wet and heavy and oozy and generative. Mud is underfoot. People make footprints in mud. As mud I accept feet. I accept weight. I try to be supportive, I like to be obliging. Those who take me for granite say this is not so but they haven't been looking where they put their feet. That's why the house is all dirty and tracked up.

 

Granite does not accept footprints. It refuses them. Granite makes pinnacles, and then people rope themselves together and put pins on their shoes and climb the pinnacles at great trouble, expense, and risk, and maybe they experience a great thrill, but the granite does not. Nothing whatever results and nothing whatever is changed.

 

Huge heavy things come and stand on granite and the granite just stays there and doesn't react and doesn't give way and doesn't adapt and doesn't oblige and when the huge heavy things walk away the granite is there just the same as it was before, just exactly the same, admirably. To change granite you have to blow it up. But when people walk on me you can see exactly where they put their feet, and when huge heavy things come and stand on me I yield and react and respond and give way and adapt and accept. No explosives are called for. No admiration is called for. I have my own nature and am true to it just as much as granite or even diamond is, but it is not a hard nature, or upstanding, or gemlike. You can't chip it. It's deeply impressionable. It's squashy.

 

Maybe the people who rope themselves together and the huge heavy things resent such adaptable and uncertain footing because it makes them feel insecure. Maybe they fear they might be sucked in and swallowed. But I am not interested in sucking and am not hungry. I am just mud. I yield. I do try to oblige. And so when the people and the huge heavy things walk away they are not changed, except their feet are muddy, but I am changed. I am still here and still mud, but all full of footprints and deep, deep holes and tracks and traces and changes. I have been changed. You change me. Do not take me for granite.

[Guest]

I've been doing that thing again, the thing where I have five books to read from each of two different library systems, plus a new book club book, plus the partway-in loss of interest on a few different books.

 

I am reading Strangers in Their Own Land on my kindle. It's good, but I'm getting frustrated with some of the people interviewed and I feel like I can't finish. I quit listening to The Snowball while exercising. I finished about 3/4, but it was due back and I just didn't care overly much. I'm still reading A Mind for Numbers, which I like very much, but I can't really plow through that book; the content needs to marinate every few days. I picked up Better Than Before from the library. This author really gets on my nerves. She acts like she thinks she some kind of genius for coming up with her "Four Strategies" of habit formation. She also name-drops and status-drops, which really bugs me. With that said, I do agree with what I have read. I am on vacation right now and brought that book with me. The book I'm really wild about right now, though, is a new book I had reserved at the library: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. It is a fascinating book about cooking,science. It is exactly my kind of thing: take something creative, but put rules in place to explain why it works. Heaven. I am reading it on the beach with my newly-acquired beautiful postcard. (Thank you so much, Nan!)

 

My IRL book club book for this month is called Tracks, about a woman's trek across the Australian Outback. It sounds interesting, but I haven't begun yet.

 

eTA: add tags

Edited August 14, 2017 by Quill

[Lori D.]

86. Into the Wild: Warriors #1.  Meh.  But made dd so happy.  I got a lot of the books you all recommended out of the library and am considering some kind of barter where I'll read another Warriors for each book she reads...  we'll see if even that works.  For the book your younger dd recommends square. 2 stars

 

That's a great idea! The Warriors series was what reluctant reader DS#2 really latched on to as his first series for enjoying solo reading, so I really won't complain about it too much. ;) I managed to pre-read the first 3 in the original series before I just could not make myself read any more. So you're braver than I am, Matryoshka, to make that offer!  :laugh:

 

 

87. Northanger Abbey (audiobook) - How had I never read this before?  So enjoyable.  For my Gothic square. 5 stars.

 

My favorite Austen so far! So light-hearted and funny!  :laugh:  I honestly think it's SUCH a good connector for teens that I would opt for Northanger Abbey or Pride and Prejudice for high school over Emma. :) The characters say things and act just like teens in high school, stressing about relationships and who likes who -- loved it! :)

 

 

- Endurance: Shakleton's Incredible Voyage (ebook) - I was fascinated by a book about this I read with my kids when we hit this part of history, so I thought this would be an interesting read for my Antarctic square.  Quite engaging so far.  I can never believe he managed to get every single person on this doomed expedition home safely.

 

We loved that book! DH and I also watched the NOVA episode years back. (That PBS link also has teacher guide materials, in case your family wants to extend the study. :) ) It truly was an incredible feat and force of his will that kept them all alive and got them ALL home again. Amazing!

 

 

Next ebook will be whatever comes off hold first: Golem and the Jinni...

 

Not a perfect book, but I did enjoy the very creative idea of the *characters* and the setting. Loved that it was a female golem (newly "born" creature of earth/clay) from Eastern Europe and a Middle Eastern djinn (ancient being of fire) who both are transported across water (Atlantic Ocean) -- not by their choice -- to turn-of-the-century New York/America. What a fantastic twist on the idea of all of the immigrants and Ellis Island at that time! :) Hope you will enjoy it. :)

 

 

Dandelion Wine and Story of My Teeth are both on my TR list.  The former, along with Something Wicked This Way Comes, I think I'm going to try in audio, as I think I've tried to read both in the past and not finished.  I love Bradbury's writing generally, though, so I think a good narrator might be just the thing.

 

LOVED doing Something Wicked This Way Comes 3 years back with my "Other Worlds" Lit. & Comp. co-op class. The students were really in to it! (But I think they are all scarred about carnivals now  :laugh: ). I've been meaning to get around to Dandelion Wine at some point...

Edited August 14, 2017 by Lori D.

[Lori D.]

[re: Perilous Gard] *happy squeeing*

I loved this book as a kid and was so happy it held up well to rereading as an adult. 

She only has one other book Sherwood Ring, which is delightful, but not of the same caliber (though I loved it as a young person, still enjoy rereading it, and it is muchly loved by many of my kids.)

 

:) Glad people don't mind seeing YA books in the reading reviews and reading logs on these threads! And I'll look for Sherwood Ring to enjoy, but not set my expectations as high. Thanks for the heads up. :)

[mumto2]

:) Glad people don't mind seeing YA books in the reading reviews and reading logs on these threads! And I'll look for Sherwood Ring to enjoy, but not set my expectations as high. Thanks for the heads up. :)

I loved Sherwood Ring when I read it with dc's when we were doing Sonlight as our curriculum. :) I need to look for her other book now.

[idnib]

I'm still working on Independent People and really enjoying it, although Jane was correct in saying I would learn more about sheep farming than I ever wished to know. Still, an excellent book so far; I am only about 15% of the way though, asI'm a slow reader and all my free time has been spent following the news and reading related articles.

 

 

Completed Louise Penny's Nature of the Beast which leaves me with X in Sardonyx to complete.  Up next Jeff VandeMeers Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance

 

 

I'd like to hear what you think about the Southern Reach trilogy when you're done. I read it a few years ago when the first book popped up on the Indiespensable subscription from Powells books. It's quite different from anything I had read before or since.

[Lady Florida.]

Things are finally starting to happen in Kristin Lavransdotter. It was pretty slow until now and spent a lot of time on her childhood. From everything I read it was worth sticking out and now I can see why.

[Jane in NC]

 

How claustrophobic and/or crushing is this? 

[Claustrophobic = (for me) books where characters are trapped, often in a slow-moving train wreck.]

 

This has been on my TBR list for a while, but I've been afraid to pick it up.

 

I suspect that you can handle Katharina.  The book begins by revealing the end result of Katharina's nightmare and then we are presented with the incidents leading up to this result.  The writing style imitates the sort of journalism that should have been followed, a very matter of fact telling of the tale with the occasional supposition related as such. Katharina's friends and family are not excluded.

 

Highly recommended from this reader.

 

 

[Guest]

I suspect that you can handle Katharina.  The book begins by revealing the end result of Katharina's nightmare and then we are presented with the incidents leading up to this result.  The writing style imitates the sort of journalism that should have been followed, a very matter of fact telling of the tale with the occasional supposition related as such. Katharina's friends and family are not excluded.

 

Highly recommended from this reader.

 

Thank you!  I will approach it with less trepidation.   (and thus probably much sooner!)

[Guest]

Okay, BaW aunties, any ideas what I could get my Warriors-loving dd to move on to?  Can't be Catwings, 'cause she's sixteen, not eight.  SIXTEEN.  She can drive.   :driving:

 

Btw, she is sooo happy that I read Warriors and is really bummed that I don't want to continue!  She's getting nostalgic about them and thinks she might want to re-read them.  I wouldn't mind that, maybe if she starts reading text again I could encourage her to read something else!  

 

Anything anyone can think of that she might like?  I asked her what she likes so much about Warriors, and she said "I like cats".  :glare:   But I think they have a reasonably fast pace and some suspense... I wonder if she'd like The Martian?  Stephen King (I've never even read any, but??)

 

That is challenging... and the added info that she doesn't like romance components makes it even more challenging.

 

McCaffrey's Dragonsong and Dragonsinger are the only Pern books I can think of without a romance element - and although they don't have cats, the fire lizards are very appealing pets....

 

Epic is a fast-moving fantasy novel with virtual reality as a key component.

 

Mars Evacuees (and its sequel) are a little young, but also fast-moving and sweet.

 

Sanderson's Alcatraz series is silly and fast moving - here's book one

 

George's Tuesdays in the Castle is (as I recall) romance free and there are several books in this middle-grade fantasy.

 

Andre Norton might appeal - very easy reading, often fast moving.  She even has a Star Kaat series (far from her best work, but might be appealing).  As a cat lover (and someone with an animal rights activist for a mother), I was moved by Norton's Iron Cage.

 

Nicholas Stuart Gray has some amusing books - including one with a cat! Grimbold's Other World

 

Animals are often characters in the own right in Elizabeth Goudge's children's books.  Some of them have romance in them, but Linnets and Valerians does not.  (The prose is better in this and the Gray than in the other books and thus might take a smidgen more effort, but these are younger books, so I think they'd be fine)

 

Diana Wynne Jones has many delightful J & YA fantasy novels - Power of Three and Charmed Life are two without a romance subplot and Dogsbody might appeal if pet-loving can transfer over (there are some well personified cats as well.)

 

Barbary by McIntyre has a space faring teen with her cat...

 

Beautiful Friendship by Weber has telepathic tree cats (if she likes Weber's writing style, she could move on to his (grown up) Honor Harrington space opera series.)

 

Another grown-up space opera series (without romance) is Mageworlds by Debra Doyle,  Here's the first book.

 

More challenging, but something I wholeheartedly recommend to everyone: Ann Leckie's Ancillary series: Ancillary Justice is the first one.

 

Bujold's Vorkosigan series is great space opera, but I'd asterisk this with a content warning.  (Let me know if you want specifics).  The first one is romance centered, but an alternate starting place for the series is the third book (in internal chronological order), so she could start with The Young Miles omnibus.  (The series veers back into romance with Komarr, which is a ways down the line, though I wouldn't recommend a 16 year old read Mirror Dance (book 9)

 

Scalzi's Redshirts is a fun Stark Trek riff.

 

Sherwood Smith has books that run the gamut from juvenile to adult, though most have a romance element.  Avoiding those, and starting on the youngest end of the range, you have the juvenile  Wren to the Rescue (and its sequels), further along you have Spy Princess and Lhind the Thief, all the YA books have a romance elements, often central, the least romance-y is Posse of Princesses, on the grown-up end, you have the 4 doorstopper book Inda series [Content warning on this one - much milder than the Bujold, but still not something every parent would want their teen reading.]

 

Goblin Emperor is lovely fantasy novel - with a young man thrust into an unexpected position and set of responsibilities who tries to work his way through the challenges and his own inadequacies with integrity and heart.

 

 

Circling back around and looking at younger books (and thinking of her fondness for Alice in Wonderland):

 

Pushcart War is silly and snarky and fun

The Magic Pudding is Australian and absurd

The Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander is far from his best work, but is enjoyable (and features a cat!)

Carbonel King of Cats is the first in a short series featuring the magical cat

Beyond the Pawpaw trees is sweet and whimsical

Minnie - a cat who has been turned into a human

 

Also younger, but more animal focused:

 

Appleblossom the Possum

The One and Only Ivan

Holdfast

House of the Star

Daughter of the Mountains

Rabbit Hill

Young Fredle

there are the Marguerite Henry horse books, which some of my younger teens have loved...and other animal books which are more realistic yet (Gentle Ben and Incident and Hawk Hill)

 

Still more younger books, these are less silly and not animal focused, but at least some of my teens have enjoyed:

 

Noel Streatfeild's books. Ballet Shoes is the easiest to find, but Dancing Shoes and Skating Shoes have been some of the most popular here

 

Searching for Shona (and other Margaret Anderson books - some are fantasy, others more historical)

 

Winged Watchman

 

Voyage Begun - Nancy Bond's String in the Harp is the award winner, but this is even better (her Another Shore is also amazing, but has a romance, it isn't the focus, but it is definitely there - mild content warning)

 

Secret Country series (there is a romance in the last book, though it is definitely not the focus) - this might only appeal to kids who liked to invent their own worlds and/or loved Shakespeare and ballads and poetry... I'm not sure... my sample set is heavily skewed.

 

Autumn Term by Antonia Forest - modern writing of a near-classic British school story. 

 

A YA by Cynthia Voigt (she wrote many, most without romance, this has always been our favorite) Izzy Willy Nilly

 

Pauline by Margaret Storey

 

 

I wouldn't think Stephen King - isn't that horror rather than suspense?

 

Might she like mysteries?  Perhaps some golden age ones?  Ngaio Marsh, Margerie Allingham, Dorothy Sayers?  Perhaps Josephine Tey?

 

More modern, but fairly gentle: Elizabeth Peters (though some of those have romances) - the Vicky Bliss series is the least intrusive in that regard, as I recall.

 

Perhaps some Grisham?  The Firm is suspenseful, but has a weird bit about the firm bugging houses, including intimacy between spouses...

I think the Street Lawyer and Runaway Jury are safer (but I haven't read them in a long time)  He has a kids' mystery series Theodore Boone, which I read the first couple of when one of my kids wanted pareve mysteries.  (It is rather 'meh', imho)

 

Not my cuppa, but Dashiel Hammet, perhaps?  The This Man or Maltese Falcon?

 

I loved the Hilary Tamar series, though I wouldn't call it suspenseful, the main delight is the voice: Thus was Adonis Murdered is the first

 

I don't think of the Martian as the same kind of fast-paced that the Warriors books are... it has a lot of excitement and suspense (and science!), but it doesn't have the same effortless to consume pacing. 

 

Hmm... I will keep mulling this over... do let us know if you think of more clues...

 

All of these (except the Theodore Boone) are on my shelves, so I can answer questions, share excerpts, or whatever might be helpful...

[Mothersweets]

Things are finally starting to happen in Kristin Lavransdotter. It was pretty slow until now and spent a lot of time on her childhood. From everything I read it was worth sticking out and now I can see why.

 

Kristin Lavransdatter is one of my all time favorite books. I'm so glad to hear you are liking it now!

[Lori D.]

Okay, BaW aunties, any ideas what I could get my Warriors-loving dd to move on to?

...I asked her what she likes so much about Warriors, and she said "I like cats"...

 

DS who loved the Warriors series really enjoyed Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon and sequels -- alternate Napoleonic Wars with dragons and dragon-riders. A very small amount of intimacy between a few human characters just occasionally.

 

What about Seraphina by Rachel Hartman? A dragon adventure.

 

A fast fun adventure read is Scott Westerfeld's steam-punk alternative WW1 trilogy: Leviathan, Behemoth, Goliath. There are some great dirigibles that are half-organic, as they are part whale. Plus some bats that are used in a fun way -- so some animals in there.

 

For cats:

 

- Tad William's YA book Tailchaser's Song?

- Gabriel King's 2-book YA series The Wild Road and The Golden Cat?

- If mystery is an acceptable genre, there's the The Cat Who... series by Lillian Jackson Braun.

- Born Free by Joy Adamson? Non-fiction; raising and releasing an orphaned lion cub (big cat  ;) ).

- Maybe Life of Pi by Yann Martel? A mystical/survival story of a teen on a stranded on a lifeboat -- with a tiger.

 

Andre Norton has numerous fantasy worlds involving cats, cat-like creatures/beings, and/or animal-human bonds:

- Noble Warrior series

- Fur Magic

- The Jargoon Pard

- Iron Breed (2-book series of The Iron Cage and Breed to Come)

- Mark of the Cat/Year of the Rat (2-book series in a single volume)

- Catseye

- The Beast Master

- The Zero Stone 

 

And don't forget her short story volumes Catfantastic (volumes I, II, III, IV, V), with all the short stories involving cats in some way. Norton must have loved cats -- even her historical fiction work of Shadow Hawk, set in ancient Egypt, has a main character who has a hunting leopard. ;)

 

 

While these are for gr. 4-7 and very short, when DS was enjoying the Warriors series, he also thoroughly enjoyed:

- Varjak Paw and the sequel Outlaw Varjak Paw by SF Said

- Tiger's Apprentice series by Laurence Yep: Tiger's Apprentice, Tiger's Blood, and Tiger Magic

Edited August 15, 2017 by Lori D.

[Stacia]

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[Stacia]

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[Stacia]

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Edited November 2, 2017 by Stacia