Laurel’s Comments (group member since Jan 29, 2015)

Laurel’s comments from the Reading the Chunksters group.

Hello - playing catch up here. I'm not new, just mostly lurking and months behind. I'm a public librarian (adult services) in Minnesota, so most of my time seems to be spent reading about books rather than actually reading them. My average is about 36 a year. I manage 4 book clubs for the library, so that's another reason I lurk a lot.

I read just about anything, although I get bored with romance and the fluffier cozy mysteries. I like literary fiction, well-researched historical fiction, especially medieval and anything Celtic. I also read non-fiction, fantasy and sci fi, and thrillers. I like to create challenges for myself, like reading 10 titles within a year with birds in the title (The Goldfinch, The Nightingale, Red Sparrow, Cuckoo's Calling....) or Wife titles (Ahab's Wife, The Headhunter's Wife, The Time Travelers Wife...), things like that. The trouble is, some of these "themes" never end. I will be putting "wife" titles on my TBR forever now...

I'm currently reading Yseult by Ruth Nestvold which my Kindle app says is 579 pages, so I guess that is a chunkster, and it is book 1 of a trilogy.

Summertime is gardening time for me, but I'm hoping to get caught back up soon...

I had good intentions, but haven't started it yet.

Me, but I've gotten behind.

I do think one of the major themes of the book is the struggle between the Christian world and the pagan world, both of which were a major influence at this time and place. And at the age of 7, Kristin is perhaps exceptionally impressionistic. So she is absorbing both the influence of the strict Christianity that her parents practice, and the superstitions and folk beliefs of her community. I thought it was telling, both her "extreme" reaction to the dwarf woman and her "extreme" shame at being reprimanded for playing at marriage and baptism, two of the most sacred rites of the Christian church.

I read this probably 40 years ago and remember loving it. So I guess the archaic language of the old translation was not a deterrent. I've got the Nunnally translation now, and looking forward to rereading Kristin after all this time. What strikes me right off the bat is how it starts out much like the old Norse sagas, with its recital of lineage and land.

Yes, I also saw the film when it first came out. It is in Norwegian (with subtitles) and is only the first part up to the wedding. As I recall, it was much more sensationalized than the book, and even rather chilling. I must try and find it and watch it again after I finish the first book of the trilogy.

What I seem to recall from so long ago, is that the theme of guilt, stemming from a too-rigid view of Christianity, was the source of great heartbreak and tragedy. Though there must have been some kind of redemption by the end. We'll see what I think this time around!

the 28th is good for me

I've started War and Peace several times. Need to try again one of these days. Also keep starting And Ladies of the Club. On my nightstand is The Autobiography of Henry VIII.

But the one I'm planning to read next is King Hereafter.

If you do Proust in 2017, I may try and join....

I'm out here. I really, really want to get through this book this time, but I've taking on a chunk of another reading project through early October, so I'm going to have some catching up to do....

Tanya wrote: "I think youre right about the ages. I think the age gap between Minna and Ludwig, although large probably isnt too big... there might be other siblings between the two (dead or alive). "

When John and Anne get engaged, he says he is 28 and Anne is 18. If Ludwig is the same age as John, 28, and Minna is around 13, that is a 15-year gap which I don't think is unusual.

I've been doing some online research today about girls' education in the 1860s. My impression is that the students were generally younger than high school students today. Ages ranged from 13-20 at private girls' academies or boarding schools. It was a four-year curriculum so girls could have "graduated" as young as 16. I also looked up Oberlin College, and it said in the 19th century many students were younger than 17.

So I'm going to guess that Anne and Sally are 16 or 17. And Minna is 13 or 14.

Also, as many as 20% of Civil War soldiers were younger than 18, so I doubt that Ludwig and John are much older than about 22 in 1868.

I'm looking at my notes, now that I'm home and thinking about it. Captain Ludwig Rausch is Minna's brother. He fought in the 6th Iowa under General Sherman's command. Their father is a meat packer in Burlington. I don't have anything on ages, but I don't think it is that great. I would guess he is 22-25 maybe, and Minna is 15-18?

I have notes on that from when I started reading it before. This'll be the third time I've tried to read this book. But I kept notes on all the characters. Probably won't get to it until the weekend. I've got a house guest at the moment...

It's one of my goals for this year to read The Penelopiad.

I think I'm going with Butler's prose translation. It's quite readable and I want a version that James Joyce might have read. I can always try an audio version of something more poetic later...

This has been on my radar for awhile, along with Ulysses, so I'm in.

How about King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett?

Yeah, ebooks aren't ideal sometimes. I purchased the epub version of the P&V translation, and while there are links to the translations and word definitions, the historical notes are not linked. So I am reading it on my Nook color, and keeping the notes open on my tablet. I love the P&V translation, except that I don't like the way the translations are footnoted. Where there are English words interpolated in the French, the translation only includes the French, so that you have to flip back and forth to the same note in a block of text.

I decided to also get the B&N Classics edition (Garnett translation) which is much easier to read, but I don't like her translations as well. Sometimes she leaves out entire sentences, and simplifies too much, so you lose some of the humor that I find in the P&V translation.

Using both translations now, so I suppose when I am done I will have read the whole thing twice!!

I loved it when I read it years ago, and want to read more by her. I should reread it "someday" but I've got too much going right now.

I just got it from the library to reread, myself.

Don't know if this is the place to post this, but last time I read War and Peace, I also read Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia which I found very interesting.