Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Awesome, Yolande! I like your very astute catch there with the whiteness. I guess I never thought to take it that far, but now that you have, it certainly works for me. *applause*

Yolande wrote: "When you introduced the book, Traveller, you mentioned that some feminists do not like this book so I've been looking out for signs while reading. It's still early but so far I don't really see anything much offensive.."

Well, many feminists -depending on your particular brand of feminism, have found the kind of glorification of the traditional feminine role as embodied in Tita and her cooking, cleaning, and general servant-like existence as a re-affirmation of traditional gender stereotypes.

Personally I can see where Disha is coming from in saying that Tita/Esquivel subtly subverts this role into a reciprocal position of power. Tita exerts power via her cooking. Not only does she penetrate, which is a symbolically male action, but she has the power of influencing people's emotions via her cooking.

The traditional feminine aspect that I personally found very attractive about her, are her immense nurturing abilities. Not only does she nurture with her food and cooking, but babies just need to be around her for her to take on a mothering role whether it is her biological child or not.

I think many feminists need to realize that not all traditional 'feminine' traits are negative - sadly many women have rejected them because they are part of what had contributed to make women appear to be the "weaker" gender and automatically along with that, second-rate citizens, and in some views, not even fully human - where "man" is the default and "wo-man" is some slapped on afterthought only created to serve man.

I might have more to say on the subject later, but i hope that at least answers your question to some extent, Yolande. (And I do know you are versed in feminist theory, if you thought I was stating some of the obvious but as we both know, you get your various divisions and flavors of feminist, so I was trying to bring those earlier comments of mine into context.) :)

Susan wrote: "Hi everyone! I love reading unusual, surreal, philosophical books. Looking forward to the discussion of Borges!"

Hello Susan, welcome! We're a bit quiet this August, but everybody is so busy that we deferred the action for a bit. Look forward to seeing you on the discussions!

Thanks, Cecily. I found a book on his life, but haven't had a chance to read it: Jorge Luis Borges.

Also Borges at Eighty: Conversations.

Yolande wrote: "Hey, here's a reference to the Romanovs: "In a million cellars the bewildered royal family faces the firing squad; the gems sewn into their corsets will not save them" I remember they had to shoot ..."

Hey, nice catch, Yolande! ...and what an interesting way Atwood chose to put it - almost sounds like poetry, heh. Terrible about even the young Romanovs being killed...

Glad to hear, and looking forward to the actual discussions! ^_^

Thank you Carmen! Yes, I saw an excerpt from that book somewhere on the internet.

Talking about Borges online, here is an interview with Borges. http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...

Oohh, we should actually be doing this in the bookchat thread, but what the heck, we're here now...

Yolande, I went through a phase of reading up about facism, which led me to read about dictators, which led me to read about Stalin, Franco and Mussolini, which led me to read about the power relationships in Europe that led up to WW1, which led me to be more interested in Bismarck and Queen Victoria... you get my drift. Oh, and the Romanovs were also in there somewhere.
Some of it was dry and boring at the time of reading, but I'm glad I did it, and feel I need to do some more. Sadly I ran out of time with that but I'll get back to it sometime...

Of course the Kaiser, King George of England and Tzar Nicholas were all grandchildren of Queen Victoria, if you're interested in biography. You might find this book interesting. George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I
But wait, what am I doing, you already don't have enough time... :P

Currently the philosophy of science is beckoning to me. Oh, for more hours in the day!

Oi, we're really going off-topic a lot in poor old Marge Atwood's book... :P

Well, the thing with non-fiction is that often there's a specific something I had wanted to read up on in it; and once I have read that, I get tired of the book. Or, I need time to digest the info I had read. But I blame the internet for this! ;0

PS, I had been eyeing that book for a long time, Derek! Still haven't opened it...

Yolande wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Yolande wrote: "Those were my feelings about him exactly. At the part where they come back from their honeymoon and she finds out her father died, I had an image of myself in tha..."

Oh good about still seeing you later on the LW4C discussion. It should work out fine, because we as yet have nothing going during August so you should have quite enough time to catch up.

I understand about the only one fiction at a time (though I am very bad - I'm a true 'snacker' and often have about 10 reads from various genres going - most of them non-fiction) :P

Yolande wrote: "Those were my feelings about him exactly. At the part where they come back from their honeymoon and she finds out her father died, I had an image of myself in that position, screaming at Richard for not letting me know and trying to get at him to strangle him. That kind of situation..."

Hi Yolande, I am so glad that you're enjoying the book! (I was wondering if you'd given up on it, so I'm extra glad!)

And yes! Nice comments about her thoughts on writing and her showing some of the writing process. That's part of the postmodernist metafictional angle that I had been talking about.

Also very po-mo is how the Sakiel-Norn story keeps being changed by both characters involved in the telling of it. (Not sure if you've come upon that part yet).

Thanks, Magdelanye!

Jan, please let me firstly explain to you why I had "diverted" the topic to a separate thread. A bit of background: We had another group before this one, but that group was a bit too much bound to author and genre and so we decided to make a new group with wider, more neutral "aims".

However, we had a very nice formula in that group: we would have a group discussion leader, usually someone who had read the book before, if we could find one, and then we would go for in-depth discussions.

Not sure how much group participation you have done, but it can become tricky because everybody reads at a different pace and a close reading can become very difficult to co-ordinate under such circumstances.

So what we do, is we create various threads on different stages of the book, which we leave open indefinitely - so that those who want to forge ahead can forge ahead, and those who fall behind, can still be part of the discussion. We have had people still visit and comment on the threads for months after "official" activity in the discussion had ended.

By the same token, you are quite welcome to still post in any of the discussion threads, they have not closed.

But I sensed this would be a long side-discussion, and if you scroll up in this thread, you will see that prediction came true; and I moved the discussion aside out of deference to those who were still reading and wanted to discuss - yes, I know the tea discussion ran totally wild - myself to blame there, I apologize - if I wanted to be consistent, I should have moved the tea discussion aside as well.
But truth be told, I had not anticipated we would all become so vociferous about tea...

Oi, and there we go blaming again... this time I will say nothing. :)

Jan wrote: "There is something I had wanted you to stop, or at least to think about, as you know, but perhaps I can address that better in the context of future reviews. "

I must admit that I feel that you telling me to stop uttering my own beliefs comes down to censorship; I wonder how you would feel if I asked you to stop talking about what you believe? I hope, in fact, that I have done the opposite, since I have invited you to explain yourself more fully, and to clarify exactly what your own point of view is.

...but without making assumptions about specific persons in particular. You are welcome to attack my point of view with a cool, calm rational argument. Please tell me, in clear, neutral, non-blaming terms why you think something that I am doing or saying is unacceptable to you, and I promise I will carefully consider your argument and explain why I do or do not agree with it. I might in fact agree with you, and we'd both end up happy. :)

I hope that we can at least come to agreement that there is space in this world for all of our views; even if and when they do clash. I can perhaps tell you why I personally disagree with the Christian or Jewish or Muslim faiths, and that is one thing, but telling you to stop expressing what you believe in, is quite a different matter isn't it?

Jan, please note that I used the phrase "seem to be" along with spokesman/apologist, and I leave the question open as to whether spokesman or apologist. That is not quite the same as saying: "you are an apologist."

I put out the fact that I would not be open to "conversion" to emphasize that although I am quite open to persuasion when it comes to academic facts, I am much less open to changing my belief system.

But, Jan, why not then come out with it right from the start and say that you belong to the Jewish faith, and then we would all have known exactly where we stand.

If you do belong to the Jewish faith,(note that I am not saying that you do, I am positing "if" you do - because you have still not confirmed exactly what your personal stance is, and you therefore cause me to dance around on eggs) then the doxistic gulf between myself and yourself is so immeasurable that we could never hope to fully agree on the subject of religion. That is not to say that I do not have very good friends who are Jewish, and that is not to say that we cannot talk about our beliefs. :)

...and then if (and note that I say "if" due to lack of confirmation) this is the case, I am quite prepared to respect you and your faith, but I also expect you to do the same for me and my faith.

As you know from previous discussions that we had on GR, I myself am a skeptic agnostic. (Note: I am not an atheist; atheists are completely different; - atheists tend to be defined as those who positively believe that there is definitely no god at all.) If anything, I am probably closer to being a skeptic Unitarian.

...and that is one of the reasons why I asked you to leave the personal aspect out of it - let us not attack one another personally for what the other believes; let's rather try and converse in a friendly, respectful, objective manner, and if we cannot stick to that, then we should rather not converse about religion at all, because I want this group to be a positive space of neutral discovery, I don't want negativity to build here.

PS. ...and people of all faiths are welcome here, as long as we all stick to the main rule which is mutual respect.

I want to add something here: disapproving of behavior is not the same thing as disapproving of a person. You can disapprove of your child's behavior, but still love that child. Do I personally dislike the purity doctrine? Yes, I do, and I can give many reasons for this, but it will have to wait until I have more time. Tell you what - come late November and I will write an essay on it and put it up in my personal "writing" section.

This does not mean that I am attacking Jews and Arabs and Europeans and Americans as nations or as people; it is a particular way of thinking that I am arguing against. Ideology, much the same as "taintedness" according to the purity doctrine, is not something that is inherent in an ethnic group; you are not born with it - it is something that is acquired during a person's life.

Cool, sounds interesting! So does one drink this hot? Sounds as if it might be nice as a cool drink as well?

Why, did you find more info on the Hittites, Magdelanye?
As a tea-drinking, Earl Grey drinking Canadienne, you will fit right in with the tastes if Canadians Derek and Puddin, and I suspect Chance is Canadian as well, but don't know her tea tastes. :)
With the tisanes & green tea, you fit in with myself and Cecily, and with the Chai myself and Puddin, (yes, I sometimes drink spiced Chai, -love the spices, but I hate pre-made spicy Chai because it's over-sweet).

Just reveal your recipe already, Magdelanye. :D

Magdelanye wrote: "The Law of Love in my humble opinion is even better than LWfC, with some remarkable illustrations and astute writing."

I've had enough of Esquivel for a while, but the combination with music makes that sound very appealing! Po-mo marries Magic realism!

Magdelanye wrote: "have to figure out how to get Chinas book, we are a bit out of the loop in this remote area."

Yeah, I suppose I have to get to it as well. Been a bit unmotivated due to my large TBR... but my curiosity is mounting!

Poll is here: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/list/1...

Well, then you still have 17 whole days in which to post, I guess. ;)

We'll remember you're gone - it's down on black and white now.