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

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Hmm, actually I can tell you about two in England off the top of my head:

"Lady Chatterly's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence, for lewdness (argh, it looks like Goodreads has now gone and broken their book adding function, sigh. Why, GR why? )

and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy for heaven knows why....

I love using the "Imma" form just for fun, Jennifer! it seems to be a favorite among kids. :)

While we're all gathered chattily around the campfire, I want to point you people to a lot of hard work done by Amy on our "Banned books" project.
Have a look! https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I wanted to give applause when I saw all that hard work. ;)

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: ":) So much more to add though."

Phew, really? Okay, I'll take your word for that! Seems like you've become our resident expert on banned books, Amy!

Argh, now I'm behind again, and today is a busy day.... I'll catch up again soon, I hope!

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Real geeks use yyyy.mm.dd .."

That's the way that makes the most sense for me as well. It makes sense when adding days, and/or hours and/or seconds incrementally.

PS. I hate stones myself; as for length and height, I guess I know my height in both systems. :P

Interesting discussion. ..and yet, American English tends to have shorter forms with almost everything: where British English would go: centre, theatre, colour, armour, American would go : center, theater, color, armor.

I prefer the shorter versions: to me for instance armour looks really funny.

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Ruth wrote: "Ouch!"

Ouch indeed. 'Gotten' has always sounded vulgar to me. After 46 years in the colonies, I got used to almost everything in American English, but I draw the line at zee (used for..."

I'm totally okay with zee, but I agree with gotten. That and "done done it". :D

...and the time format and the lack of metrical usage. :P

Amy has done some wonderful work for us compiling a list - we should have a challenge coming up for the list soon as well. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Regarding "different ways to analyze a text" I refer those interested, to the
Casebooks in Criticism series:
https://global.oup.com/academic/conte...

and the Norton Critical Editions series: http://books.wwnorton.com/books/subje...

Buy one of these for a book that you love or have been wanting to read, read the essays, and you will see what I mean by: "there are many different ways to read a text". ;)

PS - In our other group, we all had rather thick skins and we seemed to weather disagreements better; I should actually go back and do an analysis of why. For example, there's a certain book that Derek loved and I just saw a lot of flaws in the- aha! ..and that's the difference, I guess - we were focusing on the text itself and not on one another's interpretations when we disagreed, I think.

We've always welcomed respectful disagreement... I suppose, though, that when one says that someone's observations are "unproductive", that is really dismissing the person in their entirety, and that's why it is so hurtful, so perhaps we should try and avoid those kinds of judgements in a book club where we're all friends. :)

Disha wrote: "but sometimes we focus on things which perhaps are not important to our understanding of the text and that's also O.K. I think what I am trying to articulate is that diagnosing Merricat is a fruitless exercise -- we can do it -- sure -- but I don't think it's productive. As in this thread -- we are swinging from paranoia and OCD etc. and that's great but we run the danger of being " prescriptive" and treating the characters as real people. We forget they are fiction and they represent reality and are not real. Sorry to bring i..."

Disha, I was actually addressing both yourself as well as Puddin there. I am not invalidating anybody's reading of the text or opinion on the text, including yours and Puddin's, but then I also need reciprocal respect - saying that "analyzing" the characters is fruitless and unproductive, is disrespectful towards everything I see in the text, and basically the two of you are telling me that I have wasted my time reading this text; because this is what I find in the text, and it makes me feel just exactly the way you felt when someone felt the same about your interpretation. I was about to remind Derek last night that no one has a monopoly over how people experience a text, but sadly my PC kept crashing - so please do not think I am singling you out in any way. :) And I really did find what you brought to the table very valuable, and I thank you again for it.

Keep in mind that one's background will always dictate how one reads a text - you have a strong background in folklore and feminism, and you will therefore notice and resonate with those things in the text that "stand out" for you. Derek has a strong background in science, and so "scientific" aspects and "logic" or lack of it in a text will stand out for him. The psychological characteristics of the characters stood out for me, because I have some background in that, do you see that? But for me to say your reading is unproductive or for you to say my reading is unproductive, is in itself unproductive, and not the kind of thing we should be doing in a group discussion like this, where we welcome all voices.

Come, guys, let's keep our minds open. ..and of course someone who is a professor in a certain discipline will see it in terms of his or her subject - because, remember, he is supposed to teach that subject- so if his subject is "feminism in literature", then he is going to highlight the feminist aspects of it, for that class .... but that does not mean everybody who reads the text should read it that way! One can certainly make people aware of such a reading, but when it comes to reading and evaluating literature, we are impoverishing ourselves if we hold only one viewpoint as the sole and only way of seeing that text. Do you see what I am trying to get at?

As for seeing fictional characters as "real" people, I am not too sure what you mean there. It is not as if the author has no control over what he/she does, but these are creations and so become "real" in their created sense. If you saw a statue standing in the city square, you can probably say that it is not "real" in the sense that it is not a real person, but the statue is nevertheless real - it has "realness" as a cultural object, and in that sense, it can more or less be accurately described. I can touch it and describe the texture, I can describe the color and shape of it, and so forth.

Now, as to how much it resembles what the artist had in mind with it, depends on the skill of the artist, no? ..and just as it would be with a statue or a painting, so is literature a cultural object that can be observed and described. Each person will see something different in a painting (just as different people see different shapes when they are looking at clouds), and just so will different people see a different composite picture when they read a text, but we can still describe elements that we observe inside that painting or that text. ..and nobody should be telling anybody else that what they saw in that painting or text is "wrong". Certainly, some people's views will be more informed than those of others- I might for example know why Picasso painted "Guernica", while the person next to me might just see a meaningless jumble in it - and I can explain the background I know of the painting to that person, but yet another person might be able to notice certain symbolism in the painting that I don't see, because I was not aware of how archetypes work, and so forth.

Also, not everybody enjoys doing structuralist analysis of texts. I myself do, (hence the interest in Propp's model) but I often just get blanks stares regarding that on a place like GR which has a very diverse readership.

I just feel that it's generally more productive if we all acknowledge one another's contributions and not act dismissively, even if we disagree. It doesn't feel nice when somebody tells you that your effort has been "unproductive".

Sadly the comments are much too large for my laptop, and I really don't like fiddling with settings on it, because it's finicky. Funnily enough, it's a tiny font you see while actually typing your comments....

Btw, what do you guys think of the new fonts? They look ok on my desktop, but terrible on my laptop...

Hey! I didn't get one, and I started a group for the idiot. And rated pretty much all of his books, except for let's say 2, and a few of them were at least 4 stars, if not 5! Grrr! Let me go look in my Junk mail folder....

Allen wrote: "Wasn't sure where to put this, but just got an email today from Goodreads inviting questions for an interview with Mieville ... Anybody else get that? I'll cruise the email later and post the link ..."

Ohboy, now I'm really going to get it in the neck for not having arranged one for Mievillians... I've had such a busy year this year that something like that was quite impossible...
Thanks for the news, Allen!

...and yes, please post the link!

Allen wrote: "Trying to get caught up enough with work to put some of these on my schedule. Definitely will try Jackson and Bradbury, but may have to come back later to Calvino. Still want to - very interesting ..."
That would be nice. :)
...so did you ever get to read Vandermeer's Finch?

Yolande wrote: "To me it felt more like a representative of a safe place to escape to, even if it is just in the imagination. A place of release and freedom where in reality there is none - a kind of a coping mechanism...."

Yep! It's magical and enchanting in the story... ..which is why I never thought of the "sinister" connotations and of "lunacy" while I was reading the story.

I sometimes joke about my own affinity for night-time and moonlight - I have always seen moonshine as something magical and enchanting, in RL too. :)

BTW! What do you people think of the new fonts on Goodreads!?!

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "In deference to our fearsomeless leader, I shan't add a spoiler, but q.v. my comment about the rules in the previous thread... .."

I wonder what on earth you could mean by that, Derek...

(view spoiler)[...it seems to me that you're not following the rools! :D (hide spoiler)]

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Did anybody else also feel almost as if the narrator was just being paranoid at first?"

Actually, no. She's certainly OCD, and a few other issues, but what kept ringing through m..."

Yes, well, see the later threads. :)