My books - The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway

Okay, I knew nothing at all about this book before I started.

(It is my fourth Hemingway, so I did know it was going to be a man's book of sorts.)

And honestly, if someone had said to me - it is about trout fishing, getting 'tight' (drunk), fighting, and the bullfights in Spain - I would have probably passed it by with nary a thought. Or at least moved it to the very bottom of my to read list.

I loved this book.

I loved every word of this book.

I am quite a Hemingway girl at this point.

I can't explain it, because the components of the book do not seem appealing when they are typed out like that - booze, fighting, fishing, bullfights. And I do not gravitate toward men nor their stories. But there you are, I loved it.

My first Hemingway (was my least favorite Hemingway, but still a very good book) was Farewell to Arms. I was going to say Farewell to Arms was an earlier book (1929) and he was just getting started, but it was actually written after The Sun Also Rises (1926). If you are trying to remember, my other Hemingway reads were For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1951).

The Sun Also Rises version I listened to was read by William Hurt (2006). He was most excellent. And I wondered if they chose him because of his The Big Chill (1983) character/Nick who was (character in The Sun Also Rises was too) impotent from a war injury. I caught that immediately. His voice and reading style were extremely well matched to the book.

It ended all too soon.


Here is the link to the SparkNotes Context section for this book. It does a good job of explaining the key points of Hemingway's life and when the books/Pulitzer/Nobel fit into this time frame.

One thing missing from the context section is his children. Hemingway was married four times. His three sons came from his first two marriages. The three granddaughters that we know (Joan, Margot, Mariel) all came from his oldest son, John, who married Byra. Here is a family tree that lists the other two sons and the rest of his grand kids.

My books - Pudd'nhead Wilson

On Puddn'head Wilson, Wikipedia notes:

"Pudd'nhead Wilson is a novel by Mark Twain. It was serialized in The Century Magazine (1893–4), before being published as a novel in 1894."

First, I would like to say Pudd'nhead Wilson was NOT a slave. I was surprised when I started the book. There are slaves in the story, but Wilson is not one of them.

Second, I would like to say that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn do not make any appearances. Nor does Jim. Totally different stories.

Third, the concept of being "sold down the river" presented itself in Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin and appeared in Pudd'nhead also. Slaves in the northern part of the southern states (in general) had much easier lives than the plantation slaves of the deep south. The fear of having oneself or family members sold to the deep south  is easily understood and a reoccurring theme. Puddn'head Wilson is a much lighter story than Uncle Tom's Cabin (absolutely no worries for me), but is considered to be one of Twain's darker stories.

Fourth, the first thing I looked up when I finished Pudd'nhead Wilson was fingerprints.



Fingerprints are part of the Pudd'nhead Wilson story. They are introduced very early in the story, I am giving nothing away. Understanding of fingerprints, shows Pudd'nhead Wilson to be scientifically based. We don't normally think of Twain's work as being scientifically leading.

There was a note at the end of the audible version of Pudd'nhead Wilson talking about fingerprints and Galton and Twain.

Galton's book came out just a year before Puddin'head was published.

On Galton and fingerprints, Wikipedia notes:

"In a Royal Institution paper in 1888 and three books (Finger Prints, 1892; Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints, 1893; and Fingerprint Directories, 1895)[30] Galton estimated the probability of two persons having the same fingerprint and studied the heritability and racial differences in fingerprints. He wrote about the technique (inadvertently sparking a controversy between Herschel and Faulds that was to last until 1917), identifying common pattern in fingerprints and devising a classification system that survives to this day.

"The method of identifying criminals by their fingerprints had been introduced in the 1860s by Sir William James Herschel in India, and their potential use in forensic work was first proposed by Dr Henry Faulds in 1880, but Galton was the first to place the study on a scientific footing, which assisted its acceptance by the courts (Bulmer 2003, p. 35). Galton pointed out that there were specific types of fingerprint patterns. He described and classified them into eight broad categories. 1: plain arch, 2: tented arch, 3: simple loop, 4: central pocket loop, 5: double loop, 6: lateral pocket loop, 7: plain whorl, and 8: accidental.[31]"

And while the fingerprint part of the story is in Twain's contemporary life (1893), Twain sets his stories in the time before the civil war (1861-1865).

A paragraph in SparkNotes Context section talks about Twain's story timelines:
"Curiously, his works are all set before the Civil War, in the years when Twain himself was a boy. Perhaps this is because he wanted to write about what he knew from his own childhood; or perhaps he set his works in the past because he sought not a description of the present but a look at its causes or alternatives--what could have been, had things been a little bit different."

The full SparkNotes Context Section is here and does not give away anything about the story.


I do not think of myself as a Twain girl, but I have to tell you I LOVED this story. I knew nothing about it before I started and no one at my house had read it. As I read, I was never sure where the story was going. I enjoyed the story-ness of it.

It was a very quick read at 7 CD's and just under 7 hours.

I started Pudd'nhead simply because it was on my to read list and was the right length. I try to time my book review group listens so I finish them just before the group meets (so it is fresh in my mind). I needed something short to fill in a space after one title and before I started an assigned reading.



As I read this book, I tried to remember a passage I read or heard quoted long ago. I have a feeling it might have been Oprah related. I think it was a letter written by a white northern woman commenting on seeing slave children who looked exactly like the children of the master. In other words, the slave children and the master's children were half brothers and sisters. I think the letter specifically talked about seeing the master's children sitting at the dinner table and the slave children waiting at table, and their faces looking exactly alike, and no one thinking anything of it. Ring any bells for anyone?



Oldest, youngest and I are Trekkies at heart. We do not dress up and go to conventions, but we love all the Star Trek movies and shows. All three of us have seen all of it, several times each. We have a special place in our heart for Twain, because his persona appears in a couple episodes of The Next Generation and it was very well done.

Art in a tiny box

Not only is Jennette very clever herself, 
she also finds clever things.

All things Gretchen

Gretchen's New Book has hit the shelves.

Here is Gretchen's Appearance Listing. If she happens to hit your city, I think she would be a fun speaker. If you attend one, please leave a note and let me know. 

My Books - The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 108/56

When I found The Big Read website, The Great Gatsby had an audio show.

But then when I went to paste in the link. I discovered I had never written about this book.

I think I read it in early 2011 before I was writing my regular reviews. I suspect I read it for my long standing book group and then attended the meeting where it was discussed. That was many books ago, but I remember the book and the story vividly. So it was easy to write this post today.




When I started reading this book, it was familiar. So I wondered it I had read it in school.

It is very odd, but I have no memory of the books I read FOR high school. No mental list. I can't even come up with one title. The only title I remember from college is 100 Years of Solitude, which I have mentioned before, and did not appreciate at the time.

If you are trying to remember the movie, "The Great Gatsby is a 1974 romantic drama film distributed by Newdon Productions and Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Jack Clayton and produced by David Merrick, from a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel of the same name."

Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby
Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan
Bruce Dern as Tom Buchanan
Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway
Karen Black as Myrtle Wilson
Scott Wilson as George Wilson
Lois Chiles as Jordan Baker
Edward Herrmann as Ewing Klipspringer
Howard Da Silva as Meyer Wolfsheim
Kathryn Leigh Scott as Catherine
Regina Baff as Miss Baedecker
Vincent Schiavelli as Thin Man
Roberts Blossom as Mr. Gatz
Beth Porter as Mrs. McKee
Patsy Kensit as Pammy Buchanan

About the novel, Wikipedia writes:

"The Great Gatsby is a novel by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book takes place from spring to autumn 1922, during a prosperous time in the United States known as the Roaring Twenties, which lasted from 1920 until the Wall Street Crash of 1929."

"Between 1920 and 1933, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, commonly known as Prohibition, completely banned the sale and manufacturing of all alcoholic beverages: distilled spirits, beer, and wine. The ban made millionaires out of bootleggers, who smuggled alcohol into the U.S.. The setting of the novel contributed greatly to its popularity following its early release, but the book did not receive widespread attention until after Fitzgerald's death in 1940, when republishings in 1945 and 1953 quickly found a wide readership. Today the book is widely regarded as a "Great American Novel" and a literary classic. The Modern Library named it the second best English-language novel of the 20th Century.[1]"

The Context section from SparkNotes writes:

"Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key, the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.

"Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him.

"Many of these events from Fitzgerald’s early life appear in his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick’s case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South.

"Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and throwing parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisy’s love. As the giddiness of the Roaring Twenties dissolved into the bleakness of the Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and Fitzgerald battled alcoholism, which hampered his writing. He published Tender Is the Night in 1934, and sold short stories to The Saturday Evening Post to support his lavish lifestyle. In 1937, he left for Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1940, while working on his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four.

"Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age.” Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up. Sprawling private parties managed to elude police notice, and “speakeasies”—secret clubs that sold liquor—thrived. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of the previous decade were turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the day.

"Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised."

The Great Gatsby is a very simple read in comparison to many classic books.

There is a definite plot line and the author jumps right in.  It is well written and easy to understand.

It is not my all time favorite book, but is a very good story. One that I think every (well read) American should probably have read. So, yes, I agree with it being listed on most of the 100 book lists.

I think it stands up well to the test of time and conveys the essence of an era.

I do not think any of my kids have read it. So, I am not sure it is still read in schools. I think once upon a time, it was.

In audio format, The Great Gatsby is 4 cd's at 4 3/4 hours, so an excellent book for a short trip or a long time in a waiting room.

If you are trying to think of the other title, by F. Scott Fitzgerald that I mentioned recently, it was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

My books - The Maltese Falcon. 107/56

This link takes you directly to The Big Read's radio show about the Maltese Falcon. It was most excellent discussion. I appreciated the book more fully after listing to the podcast (these podcasts are 1/2 hour and are extremely well done).  This book is not on SparkNotes, so finding it on The Big Read was a special treat.


I thought I had read The Maltese Falcon before, but after reading it this time, I am pretty sure I did not. I also do not think I ever saw the movie

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film directed by John Huston, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade; Mary Astor as his femme fatale client; Gladys George; Peter Lorre; and Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut. The film was Huston's directorial debut and was nominated for three Academy Awards. 

But I have a vague memory of seeing The Black Bird and really enjoying it (even though it got terrible reviews). It came out in 1975 and I would have been 14. I might have been a lot like middle, who never saw a movie she did not like, at that age.


Of the novel, The Maltese Falcon, Wikipedia writes:

"The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine Black Mask. The story has been adapted several times for the cinema. The main character, Sam Spade, appears only in this novel and in three lesser known short stories, yet is widely cited as the crystallizing figure in the development of the hard-boiled private detective genre – Raymond Chandler's character Philip Marlowe, for instance, was strongly influenced by Hammett's Spade. Spade was a departure from Hammett's nameless detective, The Continental Op. Sam Spade combined several features of previous detectives, most notably his cold detachment, keen eye for detail, and unflinching determination to achieve his own justice."

"In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Maltese Falcon 56th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century."

I expected to LOVE this book, because I like mysteries. Most of these books, I go in with no expectations at all. I usually do not know what the topic is and often nothing about the author. So, I suspect my expectations set me up a bit. As I mentioned above, I appreciated the book more after listening to the podcast.

I read this book for one of my discussion groups. And in the discussion we realized that those who read it with no expectations or even expecting to dislike it, really liked this book. Those of us who love mysteries, spy, detective type books and started in expecting to love it, were sort of disappointed.

So, low expectations liked it a lot, high expectations were sort of ambivalent in the end.

It was not a bad book, by any means, I enjoyed it. I agree it belongs on the 100 books lists because of its historical context. And the book/Sam Spade is referenced constantly in other works. When something is mentioned that often, it is nice to have read it and understand the significance.

The writing style is very different. I think I read somewhere that the pace is unusual for a modern reader (2000's). It is not difficult to understand, the style just sets it in the 1930's distinctly. So, maybe it was very modern and very American for the 1930's.

And even though I do not think I have ever seen the movie, I pictured Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre all the way through my listen.

My books - Gulliver's Travels 100/56

Wikipedia notes:
"Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a novel by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift (also known as Dean Swift[1]) that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature.

 "The book became popular as soon as it was (fully) published (John Gay wrote in a 1726 letter to Swift that "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery"[2]); since then, it has never been out of print."




Yes, I knew who Gulliver was and knew of the Lilliputians, but I had not read the book and have never seen more than a clip of a movie.

As I was getting ready to start the book, I had a moment's pause if this was a book I should have read to my kids. (Like did I miss the boat?) So, I started the book with that viewpoint. I thought it was a family story and I wondered - should I have read it to the kids?

My kids LOVED The Borrowers Series. I am sure that is why I wondered about Gulliver. I read (out loud) the whole Borrowers set twice, once when the oldest was little and once when the youngest was little. I suspect middle probably listened both times, but only remembers the second time. 

I honestly was not totally impressed with the first part of Gulliver (Lilliputians).

As I was reading, I thought - this is going to be a l-o-n-g book.

So,  I was very (pleasantly) surprised to discover there was a next section. I stopped and consulted Wikipedia and learned Gulliver actually has four sections:

The parts of Gulliver's Travels are
Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput
4 May 1699 — 13 April 1702
Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag
20 June 1702 — 3 June 1706
Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan
5 August 1706 — 16 April 1710
Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
7 September 1710 – 2 July 1715

I did not know about all these parts before I started. I thought the whole book was Lilliputians. As soon as it flipped over to section two, I was happier. The story flowed better for me from that point forward.

So, I liked the second section of the book much better, but found parts a little odd.

Gulliver straddling the nipple of a very large naked woman when he was Lilliputian small for example.

In current day reading, I thought - eeew. And actually in the book, Gulliver thought eeew too.

So, at this point in my reading, I wondered -  would that have been haha funny in its day or what - ? Is this a kids' book or an adult book?

There are parts like that here and there. The whole book is definitely not constantly like that. Those tiny sections made me think it was actually an adult book and not meant to be read to children. And when the book was made into family movies in modern time, those bits were excluded (I assume, as I said, I never actually saw the movies).

And in addition to the naked lady/nipple kind of stuff, there were sections where it was sort of a lecture and not a story.

And those raised questions for me too - what am I actually reading?



Luckily, there was a SparkNotes file for Gulliver. I stopped and referenced it half way through the second section of Gulliver.

From what SparkNotes included in the Context Section, there were even more of these types of references (naked lady/nipple) in the original version of Gulliver's Travels which have been edited out of the book in newer editions through the years.

And as for the lecture type sections, I understood better after reading the file.

Here are the SparkNotes passages I found most interesting:

"Gulliver’s Travels was a controversial work when it was first published in 1726. In fact, it was not until almost ten years after its first printing that the book appeared with the entire text that Swift had originally intended it to have. Ever since, editors have excised many of the passages, particularly the more caustic ones dealing with bodily functions. Even without those passages, however, Gulliver’s Travels serves as a biting satire, and Swift ensures that it is both humorous and critical, constantly attacking British and European society through its descriptions of imaginary countries. . . Gulliver’s Travels is about a specific set of political conflicts, but if it were nothing more than that it would long ago have been forgotten. The staying power of the work comes from its depiction of the human condition and its often despairing, but occasionally hopeful, sketch of the possibilities for humanity to rein in its baser instincts."

Here is the whole SparkNotes Context Section.

So, with all that in mind, what did I think of this book?

Honestly, over all, not my favorite.

But there were many sections I genuinely liked a great deal.

I think a huge part of my problem is I was expecting another Borrowers.

And it is so not (for me).

I am glad I read it, because the book is so widely know and referenced.

I am very glad I read SparkNotes when I did, so I at least understood the context of what I was reading.

I wouldn't read it again (myself) and certainly would not read it to kids.

For kids, it is better to just see the movie. Youngest says she loved the movie and the horses were her favorite.


I think a college philosophy/history/literature class including Gulliver would be most interesting.

I am sure there is a huge amount of historical and social context that went (totally) over my head. But as I read, I did not have the sense I didn't understand. I understood the story. I understood the lecture type sections. I am just saying the context/history behind/nuance probably went over my head.

On CD this book was 10 discs/12 hours. So, a fairly quick read (that is a 2-4 day book for me depending on my schedule).


And if you have children in your life, read them the whole Borrowers Series (in order) because it is most wonderful and will help them develop more sophisticated reading palates.


PS -
Youngest (and middle I think) have seen the (Gulliver) movie. My husband thought he had read the book, but when I questioned him about the odd stuff, he did not remember any of that, so maybe he just saw the movie. So I did have a chance to sort of discuss the book as I listened.

What everyone is reading is common conversation at our house. We talk about everyone's books. On the books I am reading, where some of my family have already read them, they are all very good at asking - where are you now? Or what has happened so far? and then only talking about the previous part of the book without giving away upcoming sections.



PPS -
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. If you remember, I loved that book. When I was finished with Gulliver, one of the first things I did was look to see when Crusoe was published. Answer - They are within ten years of each other. While I loved all of Crusoe and merely liked parts of Gulliver, I could see a similarity in the words and style. I did not find either book difficult (1700's language) to understand. I also listened to the first half of Don Quixote (1600's).  I had to teach myself to sit with it, but once I learned how to listen, I enjoyed that book very much. (And yes I am still kicking myself over missing great discussion on Gilgamesh and Beowulf earlier in the month because I was such a weenie over it.).

My books - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. 95/56

Here is the link to The Big Read's Audio Comments on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.


Wikipedia wrote:

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut 1940 novel by American author Carson McCullers. Written in Charlotte, North Carolina, in houses on Central Avenue and East Boulevard,[1][2] it is about a deaf man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the US state of Georgia. It created a literary sensation on publication, enjoying a meteoric rise to the top of the bestseller lists in 1940 and was the first in a string of works by McCullers to give voice to the rejected, forgotten, mistreated and oppressed. The novel was chosen as a selection for Oprah's Book Club in 2004. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter seventeenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.[3]

If you are trying to remember, the other book, I read earlier in the year, by Carson McCullers, was Member of the Wedding.


First I would like to say that Carson loves female characters with male sounding names. Carson's own first name is Lula. Yes, if I had been name Lula, I would go by Carson also. I think Carson is a great name.

The main character in Member of the Wedding is known by different names.
SparkNotes wrote: "In each of the three parts of the novella, she goes by three different names: first Frankie, then F. Jasmine, and then Frances."

To be honest, when reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, I kept waiting to find out what Mick's real name was and the book never said. (if you are curious, Mick's siblings are named Hazel, Bill, Etta, George and Ralph. Ironically, I have an uncle named Ralph who goes by Mick.)

The family's last name is Kelly. Her father is Wilber Kelly. I am not sure we ever hear her mom's first name.

So, with the assumption they are English/Irish, this is a list of possible Irish "M" names:
Mekenzie, Mackenze, Macenzie, McKinzie, Mackensi, Mackensie, Makenzie, Makensie, Mackenna, Mackynze, Mackinsey, Mackenzy, M'Kenzie, McKenzie, Mackenzi Mackenzia, Mackenzey, Mykenzie, Mackenzee

I would have guessed a nick name of MACK instead of MICK, but there you are. And maybe Mack is not short for a "M" name at all. If anyone has a better guess or has read an interview by Carson, please share.

Member of the Wedding , that I read previously, is a simple story (I think it is actually a novella) focused on the main Character Frankie.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter has a wide number of characters, with the story focusing on five. There are not so many characters as to make one feel like they have to keep a list. And the story moves between all of them with a steady pace.

"This book is planned according to a definite and balanced design. The form is contrapuntal throughout. Like a voice in a fugue each one of the main characters is an entirety in himself--but his personality takes on a new richness when contrasted and woven in with the other characters in the book."--Carson McCullers



I had seen a note somewhere that this was not a fairy tale kind of book, so I read it with my feelings girded, and my expectations accurate for the characters.

I am not sure I would go so far as to call The Heart is a Lonely Hunter a tragedy. As I read it was just more like the way things were in the Deep South in 1938-1939 if you were the wrong color, lived on the wrong side of the tracks, or had a disability.

SparkNotes said "Southern realism; coming-of-age novel".  I would agree with that with an emphasis on REALISM (for the downtrodden).

The Irish side of my family were potato famine immigrants. The Swedish side of my family was sort of an indentured servant and a sailor. My parents both grew up poor. My mother's mother had a 6th grade education. It wasn't until my parents' generation that the kids consistently had a high school diploma and most went to college. 

So,  I didn't read this book as sad, even though sad things happen, I read it as just the way things were.

In audible format, this book was 11 cd's and 12.5 hours.

This was a very rich book.

I truly loved every word.

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.