My books - Brave New World. 93/56

“Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor's of the mind.” 
Leonardo da Vinci




I mentioned I was reading Brave New World to oldest and middle a week or so ago. I referred to it as an utopian novel. Simultaneously they both chorused - it is a dystopian novel, not an utopian one.

I looked it up and according to Sparknotes: "either term, utopia or dystopia, could correctly be used to describe Brave New World"

u·to·pi·a (y-tp-) n. 1. a. often Utopia An ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects. b. A work of fiction describing a utopia. 2. An impractical, idealistic scheme for social and political reform.

dys·to·pi·a (ds-tp-) n. 1. An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror. 2. A work describing such a place or state: "dystopias such as Brave New World" (Times Literary Supplement).

We (oldest, middle and I) went on to talk about Lois Lowry's Giver Series: The Giver, Gathering Blue, The Messenger which also deal with dystopia societies; and we talked about 1984. (Youngest has read the Lowry books too, she just wasn't home when we were talking about them. Not sure if she has read 1984 yet.).



I then tried to think of other books of this type most of us (my house) have read.

I looked up Wikipedia's list of dystopian literature.

I saw several other familiar titles:
Ender's Game (youngest, oldest and I loved it, my long standing book group did not like it)

The Time Machine (oldest is now working his way through all Wells other books after he and I listened to this one)

Lord of the Flies (4 of the 5 of us have read and discussed it, youngest will read in high school one of these years)

Hunger Games (girls read them all, it cracks middle up that she read these as each was published and could not get any of her friends to read them THEN)

There are several other books on the dystopian link which are on my to read list  (Fahrenheit 451, Clockwork Orange) and I saw the movie Children of Men.

These types of novels are not always my favorite read (Ender's Game actually was) but they always make me think. I am always glad I read them, they expand me.


Brave New World would be a most excellent read for a college philosophy class. A zillion papers and endless discussion is available from all the many topics. This is one of those books where I wish I had been with the group when they read it a few years ago.

Middle took a 200 level philosophy class last year. And I think oldest actually has a philosophy/religion minor in his undergraduate work.

Neither kid has read Brave New World, but oldest owns a copy and now that I have been talking about it, he might move it further up his stack.


Wikipedia notes:

Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurology. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958) and with his final work, a novel titled Island (1962). In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.[1]

AF is After Ford (car maker) if you are wondering.

Here is the SparkNotes Context section discussing Huxley.


Once again the beginning spends a lot of time setting up the background/facts. And I  had to just stick with it as I have learned in other works. An actual plot does emerge. And I was interested in the story. (I had no idea where it was going, but others might.)

So an interesting, mind stretching, intellectual read.

My books - The Razor's Edge (86/56)

Wikipedia:
"The Razor’s Edge is a book by W. Somerset Maugham published in 1944. Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard," taken from a verse in the Katha-Upanishad."


I had to look up epigraph - Wikipedia explains:
"Not to be confused with epitaph."
"Not to be confused with epigram."
"Not to be confused with epithet."

"In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional context."



I also looked up Katha-Upanishad. Not sure what that all said exactly, I am just thinking: well, okay, it is a Buddhist/Hindu/Persian thing.



I have to admit I was nervous about reading this book. It was the title that threw me. I was a little cautious about what they might be doing with all those razors. The razor reference is purely the Buddhist/Hindu/Persian thing (above). There is no torture involved. I say that with a smile, because I was picturing POW camps and barbed wire from the title, and it is not at all that type of book.


Wikipedia continues: "Maugham begins by characterising his story as not really a novel but a thinly veiled true account. He includes himself as a minor character, a writer who drifts in and out of the lives of the major players."

That little paragraph sums up this book perfectly.

It is written from the viewpoint of a narrator who has intermittent contact with the rest of the loosely related characters over the span of many years. The narrator is himself an author.

I read The Razor's Edge shortly after reading The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Both of these books center around a group of interwoven characters. It was interesting to compare the styles.

I have had similar accidental reading themes when I happened on a few Black History month type books or I fell into several books about groups of boys in a short time span.



I enjoyed this book (The Razor's Edge) very much.

I had one thing I was expecting (the stock market crash and the great depression) but other than that, I was just sort of following along with the story of these people's lives with no idea where the story might go.

And the book does not dwell on the Great Depression, most of the story actually takes place in Europe. The Great Depression happens in the book too, but only as part of the plot line for the characters.

The audio version of this book was eleven hours. I was interested for the whole eleven hours. I was actually having "driveway moments" as I had to stop listening to go do other things. It held my attention well enough that I could have listened straight thru on a long drive. It was well written and entertaining.

From Maugham's observations of the main characters (assuming they were based on people he knew in real life), my guess is they would have been able to read his book and take his version of themselves in stride. I think they would have nodded graciously to his perceptions, whether or not they were flattering, and whether or not they agreed.



This is (about) the third book I have read where SparkNotes were not available. I hate that. I have come to really enjoy looking over the Context section in detail. Sometimes I use the Character Notes to see if I missed anything. Sometimes I look through the Themes, Motifs and Symbols section if I noticed reoccurrences, but did not fully understand them.

I almost always read SparkNotes after I am finished with the book. On books like this, with no SparkNotes available, I am not able to find a replacement, on line, for what SparkNotes adds to my process with each classic book. Especially for the titles that are from the list of books discussed in the past by my book groups, no discussion and no SparkNotes is a sad combination.

If you remember, I used SparkNotes for the first few chapters of Bleakhouse (to get me started). I really learned to just keep going with that book, which set me up for success with other books which start slowly or authors who feel they have to do a lot set up before they start the actual story.

The oldest and I were talking about all of this last week.

He was impressed I use SparkNotes.

I explained to him how if it is on my list, unless it is something like Sophie's Choice where it will sink me, I just push through to read the book. Except for Winesburg Ohio, I have been very glad I percervered with each book. Some of the harder books required a bit more thinking/work. But I have felt richer with each one. I really (appear to) need this intellectual outlet in my life.

And, funny as it sounds, this gives me a lot of conversation with my own kids and their friends. Titles come up and the kids will either have read the book or will have heard of the book or it will on their 'to read' list. Sometimes they will mention a related classic which is not on my list. The most recent example is One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Garcia Marquez.

 Wikipedia writes: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad, 1967), by Gabriel García Márquez, is a novel that tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia. The non-linear story is narrated via different time frames, a technique derived from the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (as in The Garden of Forking Paths). The widely acclaimed book, considered by many to be the author's masterpiece, was first published in Spanish in 1967, and subsequently has been translated into thirty-seven languages and has sold more than 20 million copies.[1][2] The magical realist style and thematic substance of One Hundred Years of Solitude established it as an important, representative novel of the literary Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s,[3] that was stylistically influenced by Modernism (European and North American), and the Cuban Vanguardia (Vanguard) literary movement.

I read this book in college and (actually) complained to the professor that of all the books out there, he had chosen this one. I was in the habit of reading fluff books (I think, looking back) and I am not sure I was mature enough in my reading for that book, even though I had read A LOT by the time I got to college.

One of middle's friends is reading 100 Years for high school this year. I think it was on her (lengthy) summer reading list. The conversation put it back in my mind and I have added to my list of books to suggest for my long standing group.

We will see how I do with it this time. I honestly don't remember anything other than complaining to my professor, who was too polite to suggest why I might not have thought it was worth our class time.

Part of my problem in reading One Hundred Years, long ago, is I probably was not experienced with translations. There is a difference between reading a book in its native language and reading one that has been translated (almost always by someone other than the author).

My books - A Separate Peace (79/56)

Wikipedia:
A Separate Peace (1959) is a novel by John Knowles. Based on his earlier short story "Phineas", it was Knowles' first published novel and became his best-known work.


Here is a bit of SparkNotes background on author Knowles
(does not give anything away about the plot):

"John Knowles was born in 1926 in Fairmont, West Virginia. He left home at fifteen to attend Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive boarding school located in New Hampshire. After graduating from Exeter in 1945, he spent eight months as an Air Force cadet before enrolling at Yale University, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1949.

"Over the next seven years, Knowles earned his living as a journalist and freelance writer, traveling in Europe and publishing a number of short stories. He befriended the noted playwright Thornton Wilder, a fellow Yale alumnus, who encouraged him in his vocation as a writer. In 1957, Knowles landed a job as an associate editor at Holiday magazine. Two years later, he published his first novel, A Separate Peace, to overwhelmingly favorable reviews; the commercial success of the book allowed him to devote himself to writing full-time. Since 1960, he has published eight other novels, including Peace Breaks Out, the companion volume to A Separate Peace, and a number of stories. None, however, has garnered the acclaim or audience that A Separate Peace has enjoyed and continues to enjoy today. Knowles has served as a writer-in-residence at Princeton University and at the University of North Carolina, and he continues to lecture widely."

Now irony of ironies, my husband spent a summer enrolled at Exeter. The book takes place during WWII and my husband was there in 1977, so there is no definite link there. If you are wondering, Exeter was coed by the time my husband was there. I think it admitted girls after 1971. My husband enjoyed Exeter very much. He lived and went to school in Iowa. I suspect that Exeter summer was his mother's way of impressing her friends and broadening my husband's horizons and emptying her house. His one year older brother went to Andover the same summer. The two older boys were off somewhere that summer too.  My husband remembers canoeing on the river. It was the first time he played tennis on clay courts (my husband was competitive tennis player at local level from age 6 or 7 until just a couple years ago). He remembers Zach B was his best friend. He remembers getting to see a tennis tournament (big names, Boston). He remembers the book store and the library, and having a great time and enjoying himself. In fact he almost went to high school there. He would have had to repeat his sophomore year in order to switch schools, so, he did not transfer.



I didn't know one thing about A Separate Peace, before I started. I just went where the book took me.

It was another book about boys (Lord of the Flies, The Chocolate War).

This book did not bother me as I have a good eye for catching foreshadowing. I was pretty sure I knew what was coming. It didn't come in the way I thought, but it did come. I did shed a couple tears over the characters, but not in a sinking way.

I thought this was a wonderful book.

My husband checked it out of the library and is listening to it now.

My books - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Wikipedia:

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and first published in Colliers Magazine on May 27, 1922. It was subsequently anthologized in his book, Tales of the Jazz Age, which is occasionally published as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories.

On CD, it was just under an hour long. Perfect length for getting me to and from exercise and through the grocery store on Tuesday.

I would like to note this might be one of the most unusual birth stories known to man and there is almost NO mention of Benjamin's mother in the story. The closest it gets is a 'we' or 'his parents' references early in the story.

It is a charming little story, in my opinion. I am not going to mention a thing about the plot on the off chance someone doesn't know and wants to read it.

If you are trying to remember - it was Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in the 2008 movie. It received thirteen Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Pitt, and Best Supporting Actress for Taraji P. Henson. It won three Oscars, for Best Art Direction, Best Makeup, and Best Visual Effects.

I am not sure I actually saw the movie, but had a vague memory there was a movie and Brad Pitt had played Benjamin. (Now that I think about it, I might be remembering Meet Joe Black).

My books - The Awakening (72/56 foot debacle)

Wikipedia writes:

"The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and the Southern Louisiana coast at the end of the nineteenth century, the plot centers around Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century South. It is one of the earliest American novels that focuses on women's issues without condescension. It is also widely seen as a landmark work of early feminism.

"The novel's blend of realistic narrative, incisive social commentary, and psychological complexity makes The Awakening a precursor of American modernism; it prefigures the works of American novelists such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway and echoes the works of contemporaries such as Edith Wharton and Henry James. It can also be considered among the first Southern works in a tradition that would culminate with the modern masterpieces of Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and Tennessee Williams."

This book was 5 audio hours, so a very quick read.

This is a book which might have bothered me a few years ago, but didn't bother the current me.

I realized where the story was going about 3/4 of the way through the book. So the ending did not come as a huge surprise, I was ready for it.

My books - The Turn of the Screw

Wikipedia writes:

"The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is a ghost story."

This is another title where I messed up. No, I didn't think there was a discussion group on this one. I was in my car without my book list and just randomly picked something on my iPod. I thought the only things on my iPod were on my To Read List (on my side bar). Evidently not. I was well into it before I was home again to check the list, so I finished. Yes, I did clean up my iPod.

By today's standards, this was not a scary book. But I have to say I am glad I was not home alone for the week and it was not dark when I read it. I would have been scared of windows. . .

The title sounded so familiar to me, I thought I had read it in school. But as I listened, it was all new to me, so it just must be a famous title.

I liked this book. It was a very quick read (it is a novella/4 audio hours). I listened to the whole thing on one day. It was a fun book to read that way (in daylight).



Here is a portion of the Context Section from SparkNotes. The rest of the section gives away the plot, I have only copied the 'safe' section here:

"Henry James (1843–1916), whose mastery of the psychological novel markedly influenced twentieth-century literature, was born in New York City. His father, Henry James, Sr., was an unconventional thinker who had inherited considerable wealth. James, Sr., became a follower of Swedenborgian mysticism, a belief system devoted to the study of philosophy, theology, and spiritualism, and socialized with such eminent writers as Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Washington Irving, and William Makepeace Thackeray. James’s older brother, William James, profoundly influenced the emerging science of psychology through his Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). He also distinguished himself as an exponent of a brand of philosophical pragmatism he named “radical empiricism,” the idea that beliefs do not work because they are true but are true because they work.

"The James children were educated in a variety of schools and with private tutors, in what James later called “small vague spasms” of schooling augmented by his father’s extensive library. In 1855 the James family began a three-year tour of Geneva, London, and Paris, an experience that probably influenced James’s later preference for Europe over his native land. After a year at Harvard Law School, he began writing short stories and book reviews. He continued to travel widely from a base in England, where he chose to settle. He became a British subject in 1915, a year before his death at the age of seventy-three. By the time James died, he had written more than a hundred short stories and novellas, as well as literary and dramatic criticism, plays, travel essays, book reviews, and twenty novels, including The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904).

"Although James had many friends and acquaintances, he maintained a certain reserve toward most people. An “obscure hurt,” as James later described a mysterious early injury he suffered in connection with a stable fire, haunted him throughout his life. He never married, and the absence of any known romantic attachments has led some critics to speculate that he was a repressed or closeted homosexual. Others attribute the reason for James’s lifelong celibacy to the early death of his beloved cousin Mary “Minny” Temple, the model for several of his heroines.

"James wrote The Turn of the Screw in 1897, at a low point in his life. In 1895 he had suffered a tremendous personal and professional blow when his play Guy Domville was booed off the London stage. Deeply wounded, James retreated from London and took refuge in Sussex, eventually taking a long-term lease on a rambling mansion called Lamb House. Shortly thereafter, he began writing The Turn of the Screw, one of several works from this period that revolve around large, rambling houses.

"Like many writers and intellectuals of the time, James was fascinated by “spiritual phenomena,” a field that was taken very seriously and was the subject of much “scientific” inquiry. The field remained popular even after the unmasking of the Fox sisters, whose claims of being able to communicate with the spirit world had started the craze for spiritualism in the 1840s. Henry James, Sr., and William James were both members of the Society for Psychical Research, and William served as its president from 1894 to 1896."

My books - The Stranger

Wikipedia writes:

"The Stranger or The Outsider (L’Étranger) is a novel by Albert Camus published in 1942. Its theme and outlook are often cited as exemplars of existentialism, though Camus did not consider himself an existentialist; in fact, its content explores various philosophical schools of thought, including (most prominently and specifically) absurdism, as well as determinism, nihilism, naturalism, and stoicism."

The book is NOT written as a straight out philosophy book. There is an actual story.

This book was originally written in French. I read/listened to the American translation by Mathew Ward. It was read by Jonathon Davis on my audio version. I think it was Jonathon who said he read the English/Great Britain translation while in school.

There is a note from Mathew Ward at the end of the book explaining his American translation is more literal than the English translation of the book. He said the difference would have been subtle, but there are differences between translations.


Wikipedia  went on to write:

"Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".[4] He was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rudyard Kipling, and the first African-born writer to receive the award.[5] He is the shortest-lived of any Nobel literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award."

This was a very odd little book (3 1/2 hours on audio) which generated a huge amount of discussion at my book review group. My husband listened to it the day of the group and attended with me.

One of the first things we talked about was the fact that it was translated had an impact on how the book came across to us. I described it as "Dick and Jane" primer style writing. Very simple, short sentences. We all kept wondering if it sounded that way in French or if it was beautiful in that language. 

Camus describes the book as absurd. And much of what happens in the book IS absurd. Not in a three stooges kind of way, but in a way that goes against what we think of as normal behavior.

I am not going to get into the plot of the book, because there is no way of writing about it, without giving it all away.

All of us (book review group) said this was one of those books which really made us think. And as I mentioned, it generated a lot of discussion. As I think about the members of the group, there is only one who would have read the book even if it was not assigned, because he is a philosophy grad student kind of guy. But all of the rest of us were glad it had been assigned, because we felt it stretched us.

My books - The Picture of Dorian Gray (65/56 foot debacle)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), sometimes referred to as The Portrait of Dorian Gray, is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde.

SparkNotes:

"Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College in Dublin and at Magdalen College, Oxford, and settled in London, where he married Constance Lloyd in 1884. In the literary world of Victorian London, Wilde fell in with an artistic crowd that included W. B. Yeats, the great Irish poet, and Lillie Langtry, mistress to the Prince of Wales. A great conversationalist and a famous wit, Wilde began by publishing mediocre poetry but soon achieved widespread fame for his comic plays. The first, Vera; or, The Nihilists, was published in 1880. Wilde followed this work with Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and his most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Although these plays relied upon relatively simple and familiar plots, they rose well above convention with their brilliant dialogue and biting satire.

"Wilde published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, before he reached the height of his fame. The first edition appeared in the summer of 1890 in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. It was criticized as scandalous and immoral. Disappointed with its reception, Wilde revised the novel in 1891, adding a preface and six new chapters. The Preface (as Wilde calls it) anticipates some of the criticism that might be leveled at the novel and answers critics who charge The Picture of Dorian Gray with being an immoral tale. It also succinctly sets forth the tenets of Wilde’s philosophy of art. Devoted to a school of thought and a mode of sensibility known as aestheticism, Wilde believed that art possesses an intrinsic value—that it is beautiful and therefore has worth, and thus needs serve no other purpose, be it moral or political. This attitude was revolutionary in Victorian England, where popular belief held that art was not only a function of morality but also a means of enforcing it. In the Preface, Wilde also cautioned readers against finding meanings “beneath the surface” of art. Part gothic novel, part comedy of manners, part treatise on the relationship between art and morality, The Picture of Dorian Gray continues to present its readers with a puzzle to sort out. There is as likely to be as much disagreement over its meaning now as there was among its Victorian audience, but, as Wilde notes near the end of the Preface, “Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.”

"In 1891, the same year that the second edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray was published, Wilde began a homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, an aspiring but rather untalented poet. The affair caused a good deal of scandal, and Douglas’s father, the marquess of Queensberry, eventually criticized it publicly. When Wilde sued the marquess for libel, he himself was convicted under English sodomy laws for acts of “gross indecency.” In 1895, Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor, during which time he wrote a long, heartbreaking letter to Lord Alfred titled De Profundis (Latin for “Out of the Depths”). After his release, Wilde left England and divided his time between France and Italy, living in poverty. He never published under his own name again, but, in 1898, he did publish under a pseudonym The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a lengthy poem about a prisoner’s feelings toward another prisoner about to be executed. Wilde died in Paris on November 30, 1900, having converted to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed."

I have so many things to say about this book.


I just happened to read it after another book, Madame Bovary, which was also considered immoral in its time.

im·mor·al (-môrl, -mr-) adj.
Contrary to established moral principles.

a·mor·al (-môrl, -mr-) adj.
1. Not admitting of moral distinctions or judgments; neither moral nor immoral.
2. Lacking moral sensibility; not caring about right and wrong.

For some reason, as I read, The Picture of Dorian Gray, kept reminding me of The Tell Tale Heart (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe. It has been a very long time since I read any Poe, but I popped over to SparkNotes to read a bit about Poe and a summary of The Tell Tale Heart, and I could see why it came to mind.


If you have a very good memory for my minutia, you might recall The Picture of Dorian Gray was one of the books read by my long standing book group last summer (I was an active member).

mi·nu·ti·a (m-nsh-, -sh, -ny-)
n. pl. mi·nu·ti·ae (-sh-)
A small or trivial detail: "the minutiae of experimental and mathematical procedure" (Frederick Turner).

And you might also recall it is one of middle's favorite books.

Last summer I tried to read Dorian and I thought I could not stick with/finish it.

I did not go to last (2011) summer's book discussion (I don't go if I have not read the book).

And this was painful for me. I do not have a lot of things I attend, and I really enjoy this group. I missed not going for the Dorian month.

I also missed the month before (Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky) because I had read the book long ago, didn't want to reread it, but didn't remember enough to discuss it. This was pretty stupid of me. I should have read SparkNotes to refresh my brain and gone.


Two months I missed, and really missed, because I sort of did not have it together.


Reading Bleak House last November (2011)  matured me considerably.

If you recall, the first two chapters of Bleak House made little sense to me. The time line jumped around and I felt like I needed a big diagram to keep track of the characters.

This was Dickens trying to set the story.

When I got to the third chapter of Bleak, the story unfolded and I loved it all the way to the end.

If I had not kept pushing and finished Bleak, I would (probably) never have gone on to read two other Dicken's books Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. Both of those titles were much easier reading than Bleak (or maybe I just got used to Dickens' style). I seriously love Dickens.

The leader of the long standing group wanted to include a Dickens' book on this year's reading list. I talked him out of it (because we were just reading Bleak House as we were making the list).

Now, I would like to suggest we read one Dickens each year until we have finished all his major titles. I think that is what he was saying, but I didn't hear him.


The first couple chapters of Dorian also set the story. The author gives the history of the characters and explains about The Portrait. All of that is necessary. And once all is set, the book turns into an actual story.

I didn't understand this (patience I suppose, maturity I am sure) and just did not stick with Dorian long enough. On my second reading, I still didn't love those first few chapters, but I understand why they were written the way they were, after finishing the book.

I am not quite sure why this book (Dorian) is one of middle's favorites. I note there are very few books she doesn't like. And I think she read Dorian with one of her favorite, high school, English teachers. It might be, if I pay attention, that any time I mention a title, she tells me it was one of her favorites.

Yes, Dorian was a good read. It had a very clear message. And I am gaining a lot by reading the books and then reading the context section from SparkNotes.

I read SparkNotes after I finish the book.

I miss not getting to discuss every book I read.

So, for the ones not related to a group, reading SparkNotes and then posting about it, sort of fills that hole and completes the cycle for me.

And I am glad I have matured up in my reading.

I think I have matured a lot in the past year, in many ways.

My books - Madame Bovary (day 56/56 foot debacle)

Wikipedia writes:

"Madame Bovary (1856) is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered by many critics to be a masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was a notorious perfectionist and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ("the right word"). When it was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, the novel was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors. The resulting trial, held in January 1857, made the story notorious. After Flaubert's acquittal on 7 February 1857, Madame Bovary became a bestseller when it was published as a single volume in April 1857. Flaubert's masterpiece is now considered a seminal work of Realism and one of the most influential novels ever written. In fact, the notable, British-American critic, James Wood writes in How Fiction Works, "Flaubert established for good or ill, what most readers think of as modern realist narration, and his influence is almost too familiar to be visible".[1]"

SparkNotes: ". . .Though admired by his French contemporaries, Flaubert was deeply hurt by the moral outrage Madame Bovary provoked at its publication in 1857. The novel depicted extramarital sex in what were, for the time, graphic terms, and Flaubert and his publisher were put on trial for violation of public morals. They were acquitted, but the experience intensified Flaubert’s hatred of middle-class morality.

 The hatred of middle-class values is strongly apparent in Madame Bovary. In Flaubert’s lifetime, France was caught in the throes of immense social upheaval. The Revolution of 1789 and the imperial reign of Napoleon were recent memories, and the collapse of the aristocracy was paralleled by the rise of a new middle class—or bourgeoisie—made up of merchants and capitalists with commercial, rather than inherited, fortunes. As a member of the educated elite, Flaubert found the moral conservatism, rough manners, and unsophisticated taste of this new class appalling. He attacked the merchant class in novels such as Madame Bovary, the story of a woman imprisoned by her middle-class surroundings, and in another novel, Sentimental Education.

 In addition to criticizing the middle class, Flaubert’s novel also reacted against romanticism. Romantic writers, who were popular in France between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, wrote emotional, subjective novels that stressed feeling at the expense of facts and reason. When Flaubert began writing, a new school called realism had started challenging romantic idealism with books that focused on the harsh realities of life. This school included other French writers such as Stendhal and Honorè Balzac, as well as English writers like George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. Unlike his contemporaries, however, Flaubert recognized a strong streak of romanticism in himself. In Madame Bovary, romanticism is present, but Flaubert always treats it with irony. Flaubert allows himself a few romantic moments but recognizes their flaws.

 Though it was his first novel, Madame Bovary is Flaubert’s most accomplished and admired work. In many ways, the novel provides the blueprint for the genre of the modern novel. For example, Flaubert was a pioneering stylist, matching the style of his prose to the action of his story in a remarkable new way. Where other realist novels of the mid-nineteenth century used detached, objective narration, Flaubert’s prose conveys the mood of his characters. When Emma is bored and restless, the prose plods dully; when she experiences sensual pleasure, it moves rapturously and swiftly. We frequently see this technique of communicating mood through language in novels today."

I read this book in error/by accident.

It was not on my to read list from either of my classic book groups.

I got an email notification (last week) of a meeting of another/new to me book group listing Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert for their next meeting. I was excited to think I might have found another group reading classic books, at least occasionally, and started reading Madame Bovary immediately. When I looked up more information on the group, thinking the meeting was this week, I discovered the notification listed the book for last month's meeting. I had missed the discussion on Madame Bovary.

This book was a bit like reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) by Thomas Hardy. Remember middle forewarned me - "it is a t-r-a-g-e-d-y". It was interesting Hardy was actually mentioned in the SparkNotes (above).

The two books ended in similar ways. However one book had characters interested in doing better for the next generation, and one did not.

I did like Madame Bovary. I am not sure it would be listed as most people's favorite book, but it made me think in a lot of ways.

I enjoyed it a heck of a lot more when I thought I was going to get to discuss it. I was down to the last chapter when I realized the error.


PS - there are actually 3 Madame Bovary's. The first is the Doctor's mother. The second is the Doctor's first wife. The third is his second wife. The book is about this third Madame Bovary.

Books: The Time Machine

Wikipedia wrote:

 "The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 and later adapted into two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. It indirectly inspired many more works of fiction in many media. This story is generally credited with the popularisation of the concept of time travel using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle. This work is an early example of the Dying Earth sub-genre."

Sparknotes wrote:

"Herbert George Wells was born in 1866 in London. He attended Bromley Academy, a private day school. After attending the Normal School of Science in South Kensington, he became a science teacher. At the Normal School, he studied under Thomas Henry Huxley, a famous advocate of the scientific theory of evolution. Several early versions of The Time Machine were published in the early 1890s, but the completed novella did not appear until 1895, when Wells was 34 years old. It was the first tale of time travel, and it is considered one of the forerunners of the science fiction genre. The Time Machine's literary influences are numerous. Most obvious is Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, written a century earlier. The Time Machine is a fusion of tales from fantastic lands, commentary on current British social questions, and an introduction to cutting-edge scientific theories. Wells went on to publish more works of science fiction, including The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He also published comic works of fiction such as The History of Mr. Polly (1910) and An Outline of History (1920)."

The oldest and I listened to The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells on the way home from the east coast. It was short (4 CD's / 4 hours). We both enjoyed it very much. We both like science fiction. The book is easily understood and entertaining.

The thing about a long car trip is one can listen to a book in one straight shot and really get absorbed in the story. If I am not overly fatigued, give me a good story and I can drive/ride a very long way. It makes all the difference in my perception of time.

We had seen the The Time Machine 2002 feature film. That version was not (at all) a strict adherence to the book, but does capture the essence of the book (in my opinion). The film version made the two future humanoid races more easily identifiable. And added a Star Trek twist to the story by talking about what happens when people mess with the time line.

More Time Travel Thoughts, Star Trek style:
Temporal paradox

Books: Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

Sparknotes wrote:

"David Herbert Lawrence was born in 1885 in Nottinghamshire, England where his father was a miner. His experience growing up in a coal-mining family provided much of the inspiration for Sons and Lovers. Lawrence had many affairs with women in his life, including a longstanding relationship with Jessie Chambers (on whom the character of Miriam is based), an engagement to Louie Burrows, and an eventual elopement to Germany with Frieda Weekley. Sons and Lovers was written in 1913, and contains many autobiographical details. Many of Lawrence’s novels were very controversial because of their frank treatment of sex, and both The Rainbow and Lady Chatterley’s Lover were banned during his lifetime. This controversial treatment of sex is evident as well in Sons and Lovers; Lawrence’s fear of negative public opinion may have been one reason for his vague use of language and the obscure treatment of sex in the novel."

Sons and Lovers (1913) by D.H. Lawrence was on the list of titles previously read by my long standing book group. I mentioned at our last meeting I was in the midst of it (Sons and Lovers) and the moderator asked how I liked it. I said I was enjoying it very much. He said when the group originally read it, there was only one person (a man who no longer attends) who liked it. I was sort of surprised.

It might be a bit like the woman who got tired of reading how Robinson Crusoe was scrounging for food and making plans endlessly (to her, I loved it). Except with Sons and Lovers it might have been they got tired of the mundane bits of mining family life. Or they got very tired of the sons and their lovers and the sons relationships to their mother.

I did enjoy it. Every bit of it in fact. It was about 17 hours on CD. I had purchased it from Audible.com and downloaded it to my iPod. I started it the week before we headed to the coast and then finished it on our drive east (the night with no power).

There is a preview option for all books on Audible. You can listen and compare the various readers to see how you like their voices. It is all about voice and pace and accent. I like a book from outside the USA to be read in a voice with an accent from that area. There are some books where I prefer a neutral voice (no distinct accent). And I am very careful about the pace. I do not like a reader who rushes. 

It struck me the mom in the story had married a boy friend instead of a husband (Anna Quindlen). And then when she didn't have a husband (still married, but he is sort of an unfortunate fixture), she connected at an emotional level with two of her sons (in place of husband). Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the third son, who was most like his father and adored his father is barely mentioned in the book.

I also understood the importance of young men only dating women they would like to marry, women they would like to raise their children. And I understand how easily people get stuck with each other if they date too long.

I didn't know the book was autobiographical until I read the Sparknotes. I tend not to read anything about the titles I read until after I have finished the book. No one at my house had read this book. Sometimes if the kids have read something, they will give me a heads up (like Tess of the d'Urbervilles where middle told me it was a t-r-a-g-e-d-y and I should remember that all the way through to the end).

I thought Sons and Lovers was a good read. Now that I am finished, I will find out why the book group people didn't like it. It might be that it was a very low attendance meeting and he was giving me a false impression.

New Restaurant - this is the one with the salt and sugar in the water (day 35/56 foot debacle)

“Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.” 
Bertrand Russell





Husband and the oldest like Sushi.

I will not look nor try.

I like fish. But, I like cooked fish.



Last Saturday, girls were out with friends, husband/oldest/I went to their favorite Sushi restaurant.

The plan was for oldest to run in and see if there would be something (prepared the way I like it) for me to eat. If not, we would go on to reliable salad place.

Oldest ran in restaurant and checked and came back out to tell me they would grill me a piece of chicken and steam veggies for me. No sauce, no oil, no butter, no salt.

When the waitress came to the table she had been told that I was special order kind of gal. I explained what I wanted. She went back to kitchen with order and then came back to table.

She said she had been working there a long time and did not know (before that minute) that the restaurant "steams" veggies in salt/sugar water. From what she said, I think the steaming process involves immersion.


I am NOT the slightest bit embarrassed when I order. I do not feel I am the one who is out of line. I think society, in how they prepare food, is out of line. And I am used to dealing with restaurants, where if they have it in the kitchen, will accommodate me. If they want my continued business, they will be happy to do so.


So I asked it is was possible for them to steam with plain water or dry pan fry/grill veggies/chicken for me.

The kitchen decided they had 'clean' broccoli, chicken, mushrooms. And they had a pan they could use. Waitress asked if that was okay. It was.




Oldest asked if that interchange was upsetting. He asked if I was embarrassed or upset by it. 


I said no - it was just the learning curve. Now the waitress knows. Now the kitchen knows. Now I know how to communicate/order there. 



And my mantra of -
'No sauce, no oil, no butter, no salt, just the actual food, on a dry grill or pan' just had  'no sugar' added to the list. 




Husband was dumb founded by the whole thing. He asked WHY would a restaurant cook vegetables in SUGAR? I said - because all they care about is getting people to come back to them. So they are doing whatever they have to do to make their food taste 'special'. 


It is no different than the packaged food companies doing all they can to make their product taste like a party in the mouth so people buy more, More, MORE. 




We have to look out for our own health and our own waist line. No one in the food industry is going to do it for us. 




One of the restaurants with the highest amount of processed, I have seen, in almost every dish on the menu,  is a vegetarian restaurant in town. And it is a restaurant where I will NOT eat. 




At my (beloved) food coop, I have to be just as cautious about processed food as any grocery store. 


I am SOOOOOOOOOO not fooled by things that have a 'healthy' or 'organic' type word on the package. If it comes in a package, I need to be ubber careful in reading the label. If it has multiple ingredients, I have to be very diligent. 


If it is cooked by someone else, I have to be just as careful. 

Books: Tale of Two Cities (day 31/56 foot debacle)

I have to admit, I didn't even know what the two cities were (London and Paris) when I started this book. I did not know one thing about the book other than it was written by Dickens.


Here is a brief summary by Wikipedia:

"A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature.[2] The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. . . . The 45-chapter novel was published in 31 weekly installments in Dickens' new literary periodical titled All the Year Round. From April 1859 to November 1859, Dickens also republished the chapters as eight monthly sections in green covers. Dickens' previous novels had appeared only as monthly installments. The first weekly installment of A Tale of Two Cities ran in the first issue of All the Year Round on 30 April 1859. The last ran thirty weeks later, on 26 November.[1]"

So, this is the story in the time of the Bastille and the guillotine and 'let them eat cake', not necessarily in that order. I did not know this when I started. I figured it out very quickly. So from the time frame/topic I knew not to expect skipping through daisies and gumdrops. But even though the story is sad in a lot of ways, the book did not drag me down with the subject matter. I am not sure which of his books has some orphan begging for more gruel (?), but I might be brave enough to tackle that one later.

I knew after my other Dickens' books (Bleak House and then Great Expectations) that these books were written as installments. It helps me to keep that in mind as I listen.

Bleak House still seems like it had a LOT of characters. Great Expectations had very few characters. A Tale of Two Cities was somewhere in the middle. I did not feel like I needed to diagram them all out to keep track. I understood who everyone was, perfectly, as I read.

Someone in blog land (leave me another note please) mentioned there was a LOT of symbolism in A Tale of Two Cities. And yes, there sure was. I am not sure I could write a paper on the symbolism used in the book without some major research of the French Revolution, but I understood enough to know what was going on all the time. I did not get lost.  I followed along in a very relaxed way. I am going to read through Spark Notes, now that I am done, to see in more detail what all the red caps and knitting meant.


I loved this book. 

I am a Dickens girl and never knew it.




The University of South Florida (USF Lit2Go) has a variety of classic audio books available for free download on iTunes. I believe there might also be a separate site with free downloads for MP3's. I believe there might also be readable/book format downloads available (I do not know what system, I just know that first time I downloaded, the youngest realized the reason I could not get them on my very old iPod was because they were text and not audio).

A Tale of Two Cities was the first USF Lit2Go book where I downloaded from USF thru iTunes (audio successful the second time around) and then listened to the whole thing on my iPod moving between the car and the house. I LOVE this. I do not loose my place. I am not trying to move between iPod in the house and CD's in the car (I listened to 3/4 of Huck Finn on CD and then finished on iPod).

My husband was cautious over the quality of the reader's voice when I started this very long, free audio  book. I think he had visions that college kids had read the books for extra credit or something. I do not know where they get their readers. I don't know if they are professional or local volunteers. The reader of this book had a mature voice and was an excellent reader. He did not try to imitate different caricatures of the voices/personalities. He simply read the book clearly, but with emotion. And I was perfectly okay with that.

One thing I thought would annoy me, but I learned to love, is at the start and end of each chapter, the reader identified himself and the chapter in the book. So he would say something like: "Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, BOOK THE SECOND: THE GOLDEN THREAD, CHAPTER 5: THE JACKAL read by _________ for University of South Florida Lit2Go".

First two chapters, listening to the identification at the beginning and end of each chapter, I wondered if I should have
1.  taken the time to download the CD's from the library (10 CD's, 14 hours of listening)
2. used my credits to download this book from Audible.com


By chapter 3, I loved the identification.

First, I could keep track of where I was in the story's action/plot. Second, if I pushed the wrong button on my iPod, I knew where I was in the iPod tracks. I found this identification to be a very nice pause between chapters.

I am not sure, when I used to read (text/bound) books, that I paid much attention at all to the chapter titles. I think I rushed headlong into the next section of the story.

I  hardly ever listen to the radio any more, but when I used to listen to NPR, they paused between stories so I knew where one stopped and the other started. When I listened to contemporary radio stations, they flew from one topic to the next and I was never sure where the line was.

With USF Lit2Go, I liked having each stage of the story separated, clarified. The identification pause was very yoga like, centering; it became a zen thing.

Books/CD - Old Man and the Sea

I read Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway on the way to middle's college this past week. On 3 CD's, it was almost exactly 3 hours long. It was on the list of books previously read by my longer standing book review group. I am slowly working my way through that list while keeping up with the reading for two classic books groups which meet monthly.


Here is general information you might enjoy from Wikipedia:

"The Old Man and the Sea is a novel[2] written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.[3] The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954."

My husband remembered reading this book long ago (maybe for school) and his only memory was it was very slow moving.

Honestly, slow moving sounded like a positive to me this week. It was a very relaxing listen.

When we read Robinson Crusoe for one of my classic book review groups. I remember one lady, who did not like it, complained it was just endless talk about Robinson's days - gathering food, planning, etc. The style of this book made me think of that comment. Lady probably did not like Old Man in the Sea, when the group read it several years ago, either. I enjoyed both these books very much.



I have figured out how to handle the mechanics of my summer audio books. My winter listening was all in the car listening to CD's. Now I am in my car sometimes, but will also be listening, out of the car on my iPod. This creates issues switching back and forth between my iPod (out of car) and CD's (in car). I now am 100% listening on my iPod so I am always in the correct place in the story, because youngest realized I have an AUX port in my car which allows me to plug in my iPod and listen through the car speakers.

 The port was deep inside a storage box on the lower part of my dash (under the heating/cooling settings and the radio). Youngest was looking for an additional power port for her computer (we have the adapter so can plug adapter in car and then handles regular electrical plug (like you would plug in the wall) for power) and found AUX port.

This AUX port requires a special cord, but is easy to use.

When I was in buying AUX cord for my iPod is when I discovered new Apple lap tops were available and we went back to middle's college to buy hers. The new Apple operating system updates will then be a download later this summer. Yes, we have been supporting Apple well this summer. I bought my iPad from them earlier this month.

Graduation Open House Painted Letters (day 14/56 foot debacle)

Newest letters:

Original Post:

This is a 9" wooden letter from a craft supply store. There is a pre-cut hole for hanging on the back. The letters came sanded and primed with a coat of white paint. They were $3 regularly and on sale 50% off when we bought them.

We bought letters for each of middle's closest friends.

I bought 4 extra (random letters) so if we forgot anyone, I could exchange the extra letters for correct letters at the sale price.

Middle is painting these as graduation gifts for her friends.

She paints the background with a brush and then uses paint in a bottle with a pointed lid/dispenser to create the Henna style. She paints about one a day when she can. She is distributing them at each special friend graduation open house (which started last weekend and continue for the whole month of June). These special friends also get a card and a copy of the cap toss picture. Some (less special) friends only get a card and a cap toss picture.

Here are more pictures for you. Yes, she does a most excellent job. These letter are little pieces of art. As soon as I saw them in the store, I could visualize what middle would be able to do with each of them. She has had a very good time. At the very end, there are pictures of the types of paint she used. And they had to be wrapped in wax paper, regular paper or tissue paper sticks to the paint, even after they are very dry.

pictures as gifts

A good snapshot stops a moment from running away. 
Eudora Welty 




 I am not going to post the pictures here as they are full of other people's kids.

We have a wonderful shot of youngest's whole, 8th grade, graduating class after the luncheon last week.

And we have a fabulous shot of middle's, whole, high school class tossing their caps after high school graduation on Friday night.

Both pictures are very unique and not something most families would have.

I have always been good about having extra prints made when other people's kids are in our pictures and then giving the prints to the families. I have been doing this for 16 years. In the times when I was not having pictures developed on a timely basis and had things printed years later, I still passed on belated pictures to families. 

We have over a dozen envelopes, with pictures and a note, going out in today's mail to youngest's closest 8th grade friends. A copy of the really great group shot, in addition to other candid shots including the kid, are stuffed in each envelope. Some envelopes only contain 2 pictures, other envelopes have half a dozen, but each friend is receiving something.

We have a stack of the high school cap toss pictures sitting by the back door. As middle attends graduation open houses, she is giving each friend a card and a copy of the picture. The picture, in my opinion, will be truly cherished. It is a great shot of the kids. (We sat on the end of a row on the far outside edge of the facility at graduation, when the kids were just about to dismiss, my husband went scooting up the aisle/unseen and was outside waiting for the kids to emerge. He was standing there camera ready and was able to get a series of 4 pics as they gathered and tossed. One of the toss pictures is priceless.)

I probably mentioned this in 2008: A mom was gathering pictures for 8th grade class video when middle graduated. The mom called me and said - I have photos here from over 80 families and there is NO comparison between the quality of your family pictures and everyone else's pictures. Your family shots are so much better, what are you doing differently?

I said (at that time) my husband was still taking pictures with an old fashioned 35mm camera. I said my husband took dance pictures for a photography studio as a part time job in college. He has that kind of eye and is most excellent. Middle also has that kind of eye and takes great shots. We only get good pictures developed. Now that we have good quality digital (not the digital that first came out), and can check on scene, the quality of our pictures has improved even more.

And we have always had our pictures developed by a photography place. So we go to a store whose only business is photography. They are most excellent. They have a small studio and will take family portraits and passport pictures also, but the vast majority of their business is developing pictures.

I started out taking in rolls of film. Now I download camera into our computer, a full copy is saved on hard drive and a second copy is saved on back up hard drive. And then I upload pictures into the website for the store and order my pictures on line. I use the slow download option so the quality is as high as possible. So, every one of our pictures are stored in three places. We get a discount on all pictures printed by buying a membership. The membership normally pays for itself with the first order.

All this month, with a million things going on, I walked in the door from each event and downloaded/uploaded pictures immediately. I also ordered the pictures immediately. This week I ordered pictures nearly every day. The pictures  have all been picked up from the store and all of them/100% of them are either in a photo album, in an envelope ready to be mailed, or are the stack of cap pictures sitting by the backdoor.

If I had waited until the end of the week,
1. I would have had a lot of pictures to download/upload/order/sort. And
2. it is possible someone might have hit the wrong button on the camera and deleted pictures (middle who is very good with camera settings had this happen when she was in Poland and lost 2 days worth of really great pictures, pains her to this day, because the other kids' photos were not of the same quality).
3. it would have been hanging over my head and making me feel behind about things. I could do this photo work even with my broken foot!

Kids are able to post pictures on their Facebook pages on a very timely basis. The cap toss picture was up before middle went to bed graduation night.

I still give kids' friends hard copy prints even though things are posted on Facebook. There is nothing like having a picture, in your hand, in my opinion.



PS - there was a professional photography at oldest's and middle's graduations. I ordered a download of their pictures instead of ordering actual prints.This is the first time I knew to do this. It started because the photographer for the oldest only had wallets and then 5x7's as their smallest print size. Our photo albums all use 4x6. After emailing back and forth with a non-helpful customer service rep, a helpful customer service rep said - do you realize you can order a download and then have any size you like printed locally? No, I did not know that. I had clicked directly on the Order Prints option and had been solely focused on lack of size options. So, when the on-line order opened up for middle's graduation, as soon as I verified that only wallets and 5x7's were available (different photographer but same options), then I looked for download option. Yes, I paid between $35-40 for each download, but now I have them.

Alphabetical by author (books read in past by long standing book group)

Adams, Richard:
Watership Down (1972)

Anderson, Sherwood:
Winesburg Ohio (1919) 

Austen, Jane:
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Bradbury, Ray:
Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Bronte, Charlotte:
Jane Eyre (1847)

Bronte, Emilee:
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Buck, Pearl:
The Good Earth (1931)

Burgess, Anthony:
Clockwork Orange (1962)

Camus, Albert:
The Stranger (1942)

Card, Orson Scott:
Ender’s Game (1985)

Carroll, Lewis:
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Through the Looking Glass (1871)

Cather, Willa:
My Antonia (1918)
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de:
Don Quixote (1605 and 1615)

Chopin, Kate:
The Awakening (1899)

Christie, Agatha:
Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

Conrad, Joseph:
Heart of Darkness (1902)

Cormier, Robert:
The Chocolate War: A Novel (1974)

Crane, Stephen:
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

Craven, Margaret:
I Heard the Owl Call my Name (1960)

Defoe, Daniel:
Robinson Crusoe (1719)

Dickens, Charles:
Bleak House (1852-1853)
Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Great Expectations (1860-1861)

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor:
Crime and Punishment (1866)
Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880)

Doyle, Arthur Conan:
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-1902)

Dreiser, Theodore:
An American Tragedy (1925)

Ellison, Ralph:
Invisible Man (1952)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott:
This Side of Paradise (1920)
The Great Gatsby (1925)
Tender is the Night (1934)

Forster, E.M.:
A Room With a View (1908)
Howards End (1910)
A Passage to India (1924)

Frank, Anne:
The Diary of a Young Girl (1947)

Golding, William:
Lord of the Flies (1954)

Hammett, Dashiell:
Maltese Falcon (1940)

Hardy, Thomas:
Tess of D’Urbervilles (1891)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel:
The Scarlet Letter (1850)

Heller, Joseph:
Catch-22 (1961)

Hemingway, Ernest:
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Hesse, Hermann:
Siddhartha (1922)

Hurston, Zora Neal:
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Huxley, Aldous:
Brave New World (1931)

Kerouac, Jack:
On the Road (1957)

Kesey, Ken:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)

Knowles, John:
A Separate Peace (1959)

Lawrence, D.H.:
Sons and Lovers (1913)
Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

Lee, Harper:
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)

Lewis, Sinclair:
Main Street (1920)
Babbitt (1922)
Arrowsmith (1925)

London, Jack:
The Call of the Wild (1903)
Sea Wolf (1904)

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia:
Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

Maugham, Somerset:
Of Human Bondage (1915)
The Razor’s Edge (1944)

Maurier, Daphne Du:
Rebecca (1938)

McCullers, Carson:
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
The Member of the Wedding (1946)

Mellville, Herman:
Moby Dick (1851)

Morrison, Toni:
Beloved (1987)

Nabokov, Vladimir:
Lolita (1955)

Orczy, Baroness Emmuska:
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)

Orwell, George:
Animal Farm (1945)
1984 (1949)

Paton, Alan:
Cry the Beloved Country (1948)

Salinger, J.D.:
Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Scott, Sir Wallace:
Ivanhoe (1819)

Shelley, Mary:
Frankenstein (1818)

Sinclair, Upton:
The Jungle(1906)

Solzhenitsyn:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

Spark,Muriel:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

Steinbeck, John:
Red Pony (1937)
Of Mice and Men (1937)
Grapes of Wrath (1939)
East of Eden (1952)

Stevenson, Robert Louis:
Treasure Island (1883)
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Stowe, Harriet Beecher:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

Styron, William:
Sophie’s Choice (1979)

Swift, Jonathon:
Gullivers Travels (1735)

Twain, Mark:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)

Vonnegut, Kurt:
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Walker, Alice:
The Color Purple (1982)

Waugh, Evelyn:
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Wells, H.G.:
Time Machine (1895)

Wharton, Edith:
Ethan Frome (1911)
The Age of Innocence (1920)

Wilde, Oscar:
The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891)

Wilder, Thorton:
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

Wolfe, Thomas:
Look Homeward Angel (1929)

Wright, Richard:
Native Son (1940)

Books - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Member of the Wedding and Of Mice and Men

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain. I mentioned this briefly but wanted to get it recorded. I am not sure I had read this book. My husband and two older kids all read it for school. It was the assignment for my newer reading group and also on the long time reading groups already read list. So reading it last week was a double bonus: got to scratch it off my long list and got to discuss it. Most everyone at the reading group had read it in the past. Some did not like it the first time around and still did not like it. Others loved it the first time around (mostly men) and what they liked the first time around (Tom Sawyer at the end) they saw as nonsense the second time around. I saw Tom as budding sociopath myself. I liked this book until Tom entered it. The whole book felt like a series of short stories interwoven. The group facilitator said it was written over many years, with many stops and starts, and I believe it. This was another book that bothered a lot of the group participants in this group the same way that Uncle Tom's Cabin bothered several women (strongly) in the other group. The talked about the use of the N word in particular. I asked how many times the word appeared in the book and the facilitator said he had read it was over 200. I would have guessed over a dozen. I was not offended by the word, I just saw it for the product of the time and place that I think it was. We talked about the fact that word was replaced by the word 'slave' in some areas so the book was allowed to be read in school. I can understand both sides of that controversy. I think it depends a lot on the area. Some places it is disrespectful, other places it is a historical lesson. Glad I read it, enjoyed it much more than Uncle Tom. 


The Member of the Wedding (1946) by Carson McCullers. I may have read this book long ago. I could not remember any parts of it specifically, but it seemed vaguely familiar***. It was a quick book and very easy reading. A simple little story but lots of depth to it (in my opinion). I enjoyed it. It was a breath of fresh air, while the story wasn't particularly 'happy', it felt relaxing. I went onto read another book by Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and mentioned bits about The Member of the Wedding in that review.


Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck. A very short book, considered a novella. I didn't have to read a summary to know it was a tragedy. I knew from the first few pages that no good was going to come out of the circumstances. It was like Tess of the d'Urbervilles, I read looking at each situation and thinking: this isn't going to turn out well for anyone. There were even dogs in it (a subject that is hard for me). Once upon a time this book would have added to my not good week. But this time, it sort of helped me prioritize. The book was fictional. It was it and I was me. And one has to prioritize and not let circumstances fall into even very minor  tragedy nor expound on each other.


***I never kept a book list until now. I wish I had. My girls both keep one.