Book Nerd’s Comments (group member since Dec 20, 2018)

Book Nerd’s comments from the Never too Late to Read Classics group.

Three high school students formed the Galileo Club to share their interests in science and space exploration. But they never imagined they would team up with a nuclear physicist to construct and crew a rocket bound for the moon.

And they never expected to gain some powerful enemies in the process.

Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian," The Iron Heel chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are most explicitly on display. London presents a fictional "Everhard Manuscript", hidden and found centuries in the future. This book is a platform for him to espouse his socialist views and predict the collapse of capitalism. Very different from his other action novels, it envisions a future oligarchic tyranny in America and the rise of the Socialist party. The book has been credited with influencing George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

She was Laura's aunt.

Welcome Jim. I want to get into Dickens soon too.

Welcome Moss and Jimena.

Pam wrote: "I found The Iron Heel on SimplyE (free app). It has a lot of SF, including short stories that are hard to find outside of a collection."
Good find.

Emmy was a really minor character. I had to look back to find her.

It would probably be agood book to read in the rain.

Hi Mary. Welcome to the group.

Jen wrote: "Ah yea. The book link I shared has almost 300 user reviews and almost 3000 ratings, proper publication year and award history, and links to several other editions, whereas the one you're using has 1 review, 4 ratings, and most of the book description is quotes from reviewers, no other editions linked to it.
I looked at various other editions linked to the English language one I linked. they seem to have descriptions and all the other info but not in English."
Oh okay. I added it.

Yep, nice review, Nancy.
I found this kind of odd but in a good way.
(view spoiler)[I feel like you could make an argument that none of this actually happened. Most of it was just weird feelings she had and coincidences like a kitten getting into her apartment.
She did actually have a conversation with Satan at the end but that could have just been in her head.

Anyway I felt for her feeling trapped by the expectations of her family but was envious the whole time that she doesn't ever have to work or worry about money. (hide spoiler)]

I read this at the end of November.
It was an okay little mystery, pretty young adult. Not much to say about it beyond that.

One very weird thing in my copy was that it was "updated" to mention cell phones, gps, and things for modern readers. But you could tell that you were reading the 1973 story. They were constantly calling each other on landlines, "turned the key and turned on the headlights" in a car, etc.

Jen wrote: "Aniara
Harry Martinson

Perhaps use these more informative links in the schedule to better encourage interest?"
Thanks. The book link didn't have a description but the author link is better.

Michelle wrote: "Good list! Looking forward to a few of them!"
Pam wrote: "Good list! I definitely want to read The Hearing Trumpet and will look for the Star Trek series. We have a used/new bookstore that carries a good selection of SF including lots of Star Trek books. I’ve never looked through them before."
Glad you like it.
Star Trek books can be fun but they're almost all stand alones, not canon to the shows. But the only ones that are fifty years old are the novelizations of the episodes.

Mbuye wrote: "I understand that Lolly Willowes might be considered fantasy, but why science-fiction? Just a thought .😊"
It's not. Some things are both sci-fi and fantasy but most are one or the other. (People who say there's no difference get on my nerves.)

I'm about a hundred pages in. Nothing really magical has happened yet but I'm enjoying it.

Glad you liked it.

January - We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
February - ’Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
March - The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
April - The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
May - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
June - The Were-Wolf by Clemence Housman
July - Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
August - The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore
September - The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns
October - The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' by William Hope Hodgson
November - Japanese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn
December - The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

January - The Iron Heel by Jack London
February - Rocannon’s World by Ursula K. Le Guin
March - The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
April - City of Illusions by Ursula K. Le Guin
May - The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs
June - Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin
July - BookTrek (read any of the original series novelizations: Star Trek)
August - Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick
September - The Inverted World by Christopher Priest
October - Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
November - Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space (link 2) by Harry Martinson
December - The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

And we'll read a Robert Heinlein juvenile novel about every month. There are 13 of them(most people don't count Starship Troopers) so it's problematic.

When Laura Willowes’s beloved father dies, she is absorbed in the household of her brother and his family. There, she leaves behind “Laura” and enters into the state of “Aunt Lolly,” a genteel spinster indispensable to the upbringing of her nieces. For twenty years, Lolly is neither indulgent nor impulsive, until one day when she decides to move to a village in the Chilterns, much to her family’s chagrin.
But it’s in the countryside, among nature, where Lolly has her first taste of freedom. Duty-bound to no one except herself, she revels in the solitary life. When her nephew moves there, and Lolly feels once again thrust into her old familial role, she reaches out to the otherworldly, to the darkness, to the unheeded power within the hearts of women to feel at peace once more . . .