Kenneth’s
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(group member since Sep 04, 2014)
Kenneth’s
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from the Discourse in a Digital Age group.
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I posted my review of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...I think the discussion was very good. I didn't even get to discuss a number of things I wanted to (but I put them in the review). Left Bank Books was nice and the perfect size for the number of people who came (7), though we would definitely want a larger place if we were to get back up to our previous numbers. Parking was an issue.
I had a broken link to "Men Recommend David Foster Wallace to Me" that I hope I fixed in the last post. In that essay, Coyle mentions Pynchon as of the same following as Wallace. In Gay's "Not Here to Make Friends", she mentions Claire Messud's response to a critic about making friends with her characters, saying she would not want to be friends with characters by Wallace or Pynchon.
Gay also brings up Gone Girl - which we also read - as a paragon of unlikable characters. I know I definitely said that about Amy. I want to think it was not because she was lashing out against the "cool girl" expectation, but I need to examine my motives too.
Good to have you back, Lene! Welcome to social networking! I'm still about halfway through. (I thought I might change and read the book in a timely manner, but I haven't done that yet...) Here's an article that's really made me think, entitled "Men Recommend David Foster Wallace to Me". This is a riff on the brilliant 2008 gender essay "Men Explain Things to Me" (and I *sincerely* hope I'm not being patronizing about this).
We read some DFW a year or two ago, no doubt as a result of such a recommendation. Some of Gay's essays - the Scrabble one in particular - independently reminded me of him. I'm not surprised he's on the required reading list for the mansplaining type.
I see your premise that the list appears tilted towards fiction. Leaving aside that the list is trying to stretch your reading horizons and take you out of your comfort zone, there are a lot of opportunities for nonfiction on this list. I also think it's intended that you go looking for books to fit the categories, and not just match books you are already reading to the categories. Finally, there's a lot of leeway for interpretation. Basically, if you think a book counts, it probably does. Categories 2 (True Crime), 5 (BRICS Countries), 6 (Nature - could include Whitewash, in my opinion), 12 (Memoir), 14 (Social Science), and 22 (Essay anthology) offer very obvious opportunities to read things in your preferred genre, but it doesn't stop there. I'm not certain of your exact tastes, but here are some suggestions to consider. Some of these could even hit multiple categories.
1 (Posthumous) - Pioneer Girl, Laura Ingalls Wilder
4 (Comic written and Illustrated by the same person) - Climate Changed by Philippe Squarzoni
7 (Western) - National Geographic's The Old West by Stephen Hyslop, or any true story about cowboys or outlaws from that time period
8 (Comic by a person of color) - March, by John Lewis
9 (Colonial) - Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
13 (Oprah) - Night by Elie Wiesel
15 (One sitting) - Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
18 (A third absurdly broad comic category) - Safe Area Gorazde or Palestine or anything by Joe Sacco
23 (Protagonist woman over 60) - What Happened by Hillary Clinton
That's 15 categories I'm very certain you'll find something that suits your reading preferences. The Read Harder Goodreads Group is a good place to look for suggestions, if you decide to take on the challenge.
I Hate the Internet was published by We Heard You Like Books, which is a small press, but probably not quite small enough to qualify for the challenge. Sadly, I counted it in my original tally at first glance. It may be on the fence.
Anne turned me on to the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge, and I'm going to participate this upcoming year. You may have noticed I'm now reviewing all of the books I read, and I look forward to noting my successes (and perhaps failures too). I also took a look back at last year's and I'm proud to state that our book club fulfilled no less than twelve of the items without even trying, and possibly more depending on your interpretation. I'm glad I can contribute to you reading harder.
How about you? Did you achieve any reading goals this year?
It occurs to me that (of course) Hollywood gave Katherine Johnson the nerd treatment. She was a charming, charismatic woman, as written by Shetterly. She was given a job as a hotel clerk, for instance. Meanwhile, her film counterpart was a soft-spoken bookworm who was painfully awkward.It really upsets me when Hollywood pushes those stereotypes. I'm surprised I didn't realize it sooner.
We are definitely meeting on the 13th. I would like it if everybody could bring a little snack to share and celebrate our club. I'm sending out some email instructions in a few minutes here. If you know what you want to bring, go ahead and list it. So far we have:Lucy: Desserts
Me: ?
Yes, Jules Verne. We haven't yet considered this grandfather of Steampunk and Science Fiction, and I have a fun plan in mind for that title. Though, I don't have to be strictly beholden to library advertisement policies anymore, so there may be a bit more leeway in what books go where. We could even put up alternate books, in case people just can't do the month's "main" book. That's something I've seen employed in book clubs to reasonable success.
As I have mentioned, the St. Louis Public Library will no longer be the patron for our book club come January. I am exploring opportunities to continue the club. Let me know your opinions. As long as we can still meet in person, the Central West End seems like the place to do it. I'm sure the library could accommodate us, but we can try different venues as well. I would like someplace I could access and demonstrate technology, though I don't need to be reliant on the laptop. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
Is 7 PM on the second Wednesday of the month still good for everybody? This represents an ideal time to revisit that meeting time, if there are any conflicts.
My proposed books for the next 3 months:
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
Let's talk about Hidden Figures. We had a good time seeing the film way back in January (despite some rather... liberal viewpoints relating to library books). The movie has the same problems as any biopic, except magnified because you're dealing with more people. You need to summarize the lives and achievements of your main characters while providing a compelling through-line to your film. Reality inevitably falls by the wayside. That doesn't even take into account that Shetterly wanted to bring attention to all of these women, and not just 3 of them. We have plenty of time to go into detail about what the movie got wrong, but what did you think of the book?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqMwK...What is Anime and Manga - this video has a fairly complete description, and we'll watch it tonight.
https://tapas.io/http://www.smackjeeves.com/
Here are two sites that do free webcomic hosting. As a result, they both have a lot of free manga hosted on the site that you can peruse at your leisure.
http://www.tcj.com/confessions-of-a-m...This is a fascinating link that describes the process and difficulties of translating Japanese manga. I imagine that any translators face a similar peril, but manga has some troubles all its own.
I hope you are finding our first manga manageable. Honestly, I should have given you some tips on reading it first (like from this site: https://techaeris.com/2014/07/28/mang...) so that you might not be as confused as you are feeling. But, a little bit of exploration on your own is good too. You can read my review on my profile page. What do you think?
https://bookriot.com/2016/08/02/sexis...Another thing to think about. Does anybody else agree? Clara, Nuria, Bea, Penelope, Sophie, Jacinta, Bernarda, and Daniel's unnamed (!) mother are all fairly one-dimensional stereotypes defined entirely by their relationships with men. Naysayers will say that the presentation of women as magical sensitive creatures you can beat and abuse is a reflection of the setting of the book, or through the eyes of a young man who's a product of his time. Fermin's womanizing ways may be entirely appropriate to that culture, thus explaining why the author included that. However, the author could have given the women some defining characteristics aside from who they loved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xYzs...Take a look at this video and understand... Zafon intended this story to be "feel good" at heart! ... While I grant you that it ends reasonably well considering all the torture and death, I think we may have to come to terms with the fact that Spanish culture is somewhat different than our own.
For my first offering, take a look at this interactive map of locations in the novel. https://roubert.name/joakim/sombra/ This book is a tiny tour of Barcelona! If you click on "View the Placemarks directly in Google Maps here," I think it's best, but I didn't want you to miss the descriptions on the linked page.
Interesting thoughts so far! From what I've seen of Ms. Yousafzai in interviews and videos, she is very competent with regards to world history and politics. While no doubt Ms. Lamb helped lay things out for her, I would bet she could have written more of that than we think, with just one caveat... The first editions of this book were published a mere 3 weeks after her attempted murder! That's way too soon for her to have any say in how she was represented. I am going to try to see what those editions looked like - it might make for a good comparison.
An issue many people raise with the book is how simple the language is, and how meandering the memories - surely she (quite fluent in English) or her co-authors or editors could have made it more engaging?
She graduated from Edgbaston High School this year, and moved on to Oxford. She joined Twitter on the conclusion of her high school education, and quickly became active about human rights and education. You can find that here: https://twitter.com/Malala
