Yoby's comments (member since Dec 30, 2008)

Yoby's comments from the Constant Reader group.

I am trying to write more than I read, and to read in areas that are more along the lines of what I am writing to understand how to do it, though all writers say that how you do it is just to thrash it out and do it. But I've missed some great discussions on some of my favorites. You guys make me tired with your endless energy to have jobs and do all this reading, reasearch and intelligent commenting. You all are such an inspiration. Would love prayers and good wishes. Love, yobs

Andy wrote: "Regarding number 8: "8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation."

Oh I feel so sorry for the academics who build the canon, who do the an..."

Oh you are such an iconoclast on revered positions. but remember, todays iconoclasts become tomorrow's icons with iconoclasts of their own.

Sibyl wrote: "What I particularly liked about the dialogue, except its Waiting for Godot-like style, were some of the subjects. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are on their way to England they wonder about wha..."

;P

I just saw this on tv, with one of the guys being the main star of the new series Lie To Me, which I have foudn interesting for its first season. This makes me want to go back and read it again.

Whitaker wrote: "Yoby wrote: "Look for what we have in commoninstead of our differences? I need a little of both. I need people I can schmooze with about books, it is like being homesick. But books weren't writt..." "that CR radicalizes us" In some areas, I think it is radical to be unradical. So many opinions are out there, it is radical to withoold what we think, it is radical not to have a cell phone, (I don't) or to not know how to read text messaging. Many say that books are out because digital is in.. But the new greenies will complain how all the digital media and players will be stripping the earth of even more of it's minerals and ores, and we are destroying trees and ecosysytems to get to them. Had an interesting talk where they mentioned a lot of the natives that were studied for oral histories up here couldn't read, so they spoke them, and if the person for the story was far away, it would pass by word of mouth, and they had no problem remembering at all. Will that be the ultimate green literature?

Harley wrote: ""17. Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty."

My assumption is that he is referring to the republican/democrat polarization of the political society. (Red vs Blue states) H..."Who was it that I read who said that is the argument culture aggravated by the media, because good news and peaceful conversaitons don't sell on air time." I try to stay dow below it. I wasted a lot of my life on that when I could have done something better for my health.

I was just thinking the same after I was back home fro a really great writer's conference. I wantyed to interogate everyone "Do you know who the Writer Laureate of Alaska is? [answer:Nancy Lord, I have read all of her books])

But if they start reading, I won't have any wildlife to observe and write about! This is Alaska. (I am thinking of Lord's short story The Woman Who Married A Bear.)

Look for what we have in commoninstead of our differences? I need a little of both. I need people I can schmooze with about books, it is like being homesick. But books weren't written about people sitting around reading, so I need people of all kinds.

Beej wrote: "I'm on page 50. In fact, I've been on page 50 all week. Yup, I'm 'stuck.' I'll 'unstick' tonight.

The hardest part is keeping everyone straight; I have put a little sticky tab there on the PRINC..."Read it fast and ignore the names. Just get into the story. And for the life of me why Tolstoy think women with little mustaches are cute is beyond me.

I take C S Lewis's read to just go for it because it is a jolly good read, not because it is litrature. I do think you have to be past a certain age or life experiences to really enjoy it. Past all the wide range of emotions and stuff that life throws at you and what you starte thinkinbg is wonderful or praise worthy and what you end up with or back again. Read it at your normal pace and the people sort themselves out.

Sherry wrote: "Sounds like you had fun frying up your brain."
Tons of fun frying up my brain, but I feel like I partied way too hard, with no liquor or drugs around. I can't think much right now, like I sprained another brain muscle.

Al wrote: "Before we move on to Karenin, I want to jump in on the gender politics. One of things that I also realized about this book is that besides Levin, most of the interesting and compelling characters a..." I know men like Karenin. It is easier to have compassion for them if they aren't related to you by family or marriage, to the point you have to interact with them more than once a year. But I do appreciate a man jumping in there and explaining him from a man's point of view. I, frankly, am tired of women frustrated by men, and getting upset with characters in literature as if it were personal. I like to be irritated by them for a moment, but as for the villains and putzes and control-freaks in my own ife, I thank "God foir them at a Looooooonnnnnngggg distance, because if everyone were patient and kind and politically correct, what in the hell would there be to write or read about?

Sherry wrote: "I suggest both, thicker hide AND a Kindle. That way it's not so heavy when you have thicker books." ROFLOL Hey, I just realized I am beginning to speak text-messaging. Maybe I am like Benjamin Button.

Sherry wrote: "I can read War & Peace on my Kindle and nobody knows. "
Now there's another good reason to get a Kindle, that, or grow a thicker hide.

Am I the only oen who ever has higher fines at the library than it costs yearly for all the books I purchase? I* am so envious of people that return their books on time and just pop into the library to get a book.
But I am looking for this one. I love doty, and I love my dogs, and come perilously clo9se to treating them like my children. I talk about them as if they were.

Andrea wrote: "Interesting that one of my main venues for finding and discussing print literature is the internet. I've read more since I joined goodreads than I have in months before. I feel so much more conne..."
I have, too. And for so long most of my friends made me feel ashamed that I liked to read good literature, as if I were doing it to just show off (maybe that was partly true, but I can't stand novels you can suck down like a soda) But here I feel so - at home. I can throw out a reference to another novel while discussing any current one, and almost everyone can pick up on the reference, as if the authors were just temporarily out of the room but we are all family. It feels more home than home ever has.

Halfway through on W and P, but have been at a writers conference all week, so haven't thought much about Anna. I fried my brain writing and listening to writers and gossiping about our favorite writers like we were a small town and the authors were our favorite if somewhat addled relatives. It was so great, but I am so tired, frazzled, crisped, mit chared wires and fried motherboard in my brain to say the least. Back in a day or so.

I'm half way through from my first atempt, so I feel great about this. I also met a writer at the workshop I just came from who Loves Tolstoy, so maybe I can get him to comment.

Whitaker wrote: "Actually, I thought Isabel Archer was an idiot, both before and after her marriage to Gilbert Osmond. Before, she was idealistic and fiery which is great to see in a young person. But she had absol..."
Is there a limit on the amount of shoes we can throw?

Sherry wrote: "Yoby, I'm impressed! Getting through 200 pages in a day in any manner is amazing. I was slow as snails."Hah! I don't think so. I see most of you juggling so many books that I feel like I am a horse that needs to be let out to pasture I plod so slowly. I'm only reading during my coffee breaks, I just make them longer than usual. But thanks for being impressed. That does help. When I guilt myself or shame myself at not keeping up, my whole brain locks down. When I don't feel like I Have to Get It, or come away from the discussions sounding brilliant, then I don't scare myself off. But I am glad it is wquickly in someone's eyes.

Liz wrote: "Yoby, I really like what you said about Levin and/or Tolstoy not resolving their "camaraderie/make a difference" campaigns for the poor. You don't have to, but I'd love it if you expounded on this..."
Levin never did get his farm to where it made a profit, or get his peasants to use the modern machinery, never did get the close camraderie with the peasants like he wanted. Theu humored him and put up with his attempts to become one with them. Toalstay went through the same thing in his life, except he was a mixture of Levin and Stepin, because he wanted to give all he had away (Like Levin) but also wanted his wife to follow his example without considering how he was going to leave her destitute with all those children.(Stepin demanding that Dolly liquidate her property so he could pay off his debts.

It is just screwy how much the novel imitates his own life, with himself playing the various men's parts, and the women desperate or clingy or obstinate, but never really there. Even Anna in the end became wo desperate and hystericla that she trew herself in front ot the carriage, and is only shown as a seductress at the end whose sedutive ways were failing her with Vronsky. I don't really like his female characters that much.

But back in that time, there wasn't supposed to be any depth to women. I think Levin felt that way , as did Stepin and Vronsky. Their women were there for comfort and to run a yhousehold and organize all the nicities of life, but nothig more than that -

I'm going to have to brood on this some more.