The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion
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Summer 2014 Reading Project Discussion
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I would choose various American authors - three authors, three different novels: Herman Melville (Moby Dick), Hawthorne (The House of Seven Gables), and spice it up with something adventurous like Fenimore CooperFor the spring months, I think we should focus on more culturally diverse reading material. We have not read a German novel for a while.
On second thought, do you want the two runner-ups in the run-off poll as the potential reads for this spring?
Zulfiya wrote: "On second thought, do you want the two runner-ups in the run-off poll as the potential reads for this spring?"I am considering that possibility.
I was thinking maybe in the fall we could do the 2nd addition to our World Tour in literature.
Sounds good!
I like them all! Tough to select only one.If I had to though, it would be American summer.
While Twain would be great, I would love to do a Twain Project when either of the two projects we have going on are completed. I would like to do all of his books, something we couldn't do over the summer.
Also, I love the Trollope ideas, but again, tough to do all of them over the summer - they are long. A good project rather than summer read. Or maybe a summer into fall monthly read?
These all look good. Don't care about the order as long as we eventually do them all. I just like the in-depth coverage.
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Deborah wrote: "I have only one concern regarding a summer reading project. If a member doesn't care for the author chosen, he/she would have to wait until the summer project was over to participate (unless they p..."Yes, there is that to consider but considering the success of the Foryste project as I do think it went quite well and had goo participation, I thought it would be worth considering attempting again.
And if we did decide to go with an American Summer we would not be tied to only one Author.
Lynnm wrote: "IWhile Twain would be great, I would love to do a Twain Project when either of the two projects we have going on are completed. I would like to do all of his books, something we couldn't do over the summer.Also, I love the Trollope ideas, but again, tough to do all of them over the summer - they are long. A good project rather than summer read. Or maybe a summer into fall monthly read? ."
I agree with the idea of a Twain project when one of our other current projects completes.
And yes that is a good point about Trollope, as each of the books are themselves quite long it may not be possible to complete them all in a summer and if we did do Trollope we would have to consider extending the read into the Fall.
But I do know there does seem to be a certain amount of interest among many of our members in Trollope.
The The Forsyte Saga was a very engaging series of books that I had wanted to read for a long time. If we pick another monolithic project, we should be sure first that enough people are really interested.
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I'm interested in Trollope and Twain, very much.
Denise wrote: "I'm interested in Trollope and Twain, very much."Depending on what we decide on to read for the summer I am considering maybe a Twain and Trollope Project after our Dicken's and Zola projects.
I definitely would like to do a Twain project, and now I am rolling around the idea of also having a Trollpe project as well.
We would start the Twain project first after whichever project finishes first, either Dicken's or Zola, and than after the other one is over we can start Trollope.
Time-wise, we can guestimate, but the best estimates are 18 months for Dickens and more than two years for Zola if all goes well. Do you think readers are willing to wait? It is a little bit of a conundrum, so my suggestion is American summer, culturally diverse fall, and in January we might try to start a project if there are enough people who want to do it.
Zulfiya wrote: "Time-wise, we can guestimate, but the best estimates are 18 months for Dickens and more than two years for Zola if all goes well. Do you think readers are willing to wait? It is a little bit of a c..."Ahh thank you, for the update, I did not know how long it would take.
With that in mind I will consider the options and think of a good way of introducing Trollope into the group (and I haven't ruled out the prospects of getting started on him in the summer)
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Why not split the Trollope over two seasons - one series in summer, one in fall winter?Rather than being limited to American only in the summer?
Catherine, we are also reading all Dickens novels as a project. We are afraid it might be heavily and exclusively British for a year. And somehow it goes against the group's current policy - we are trying to diversify the reading material.
oh sorry. I didn't read the posts closely enough.
If you love BritLit, join the Dickens project. We shall start a new project when we finish all Dickens novels; so, we have quite a few months to go:-)
Ty I could read them all again for sure.
I am interested in participating in either of the Trollope series.
I am also interested in the Trollope series.
I'm reading the Chronicles of Barsetshire now and should be finished it at the end of August. That said, I would be happy to participate in the discussion, if chosen, because it will still be fresh in my mind.
I would love doing a Trollope series. But Twain or an american summer sounds good, too! Maybe we can vote about it? Whatever comes of it, I'm in!
Elsbeth wrote: "I would love doing a Trollope series. But Twain or an american summer sounds good, too! Maybe we can vote about it? Whatever comes of it, I'm in!"There will in fact be a poll set up shortly for are summer reading project.
Silver wrote: "Elsbeth wrote: "I would love doing a Trollope series. But Twain or an american summer sounds good, too! Maybe we can vote about it? Whatever comes of it, I'm in!"There will in fact be a poll set ..."
Great! It will be difficult to choose, though!
There poll is now up for our summer reading.
Why has Dickens stalled out? No posts this month
Christopher, right now I am moderating The Kill (La Curee) and also contributing to the discussion of The Idiot in this group only. As for the Dickens project, we finished reading the Dickens bio by C. Tomalin on April 05 as a part of our Dickens project, that is 10 days ago, and we plan to resume the project in May with the Bleak House. I usually take a three-four week break between the reads . I plan to post a reading schedule in the foreseeable future and things will be back to normal. I hope you will join in. It is my favorite Dickens novel.
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Yes, I think it would be interesting to do Trollope like Dickens, but we don't want to have too many of those projects going all at once or it might be difficult to keep up with them all. But after the current ones finish we can do more. As mentioned by Deborah there has been a lot of interest in doing Twain after Dickens completes.
Silver, I agree that we don't want too many of these going at once. My initial reaction to Chris's comment was, "wait, are we running out of Dickens?" I would be more interested in Edith Wharton than Mark Twain, but tastes vary.
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I'm looking forward to a Trollope project after Dickens as well. Although I couldn't wait for the Barchester Chronicles...I read the first one The Warden, and am now reading the second, Barchester Towers.I love both Wharton and Twain. Two completely different authors with completely different world views.
And while I agree that we don't want a lot of specific projects, they are very popular. The Dickens project seems to have added people and continues to have wonderful discussions for each book, even the ones that can be a bit difficult to get through.
Lastly, in another thread, they were talking about extending the timeline. I would love it if we went through the modernist period. Then, we could do Woolf! And talk about WWI. How exciting! :-)
I know it seems early to be thinking about or talking about summer already but I figured it would be a good idea to genreate a discussion about it, get ideas out there, see if indeed there is any interest in something like this to better plan and prepare.
Some possible ideas I have, which in part have been inpieresed by discussion in our Feedback thread as good summer reading.
1. Anthony Trollope - He has two different possible seirs we could choose from:
Chronicles of Barsetshire
1. The Warden
2. Barchester Towers
3. Doctor Thorne
4. Framley Parsonage
5. The Small House at Allington
6. The Last Chronicle of Barset
Palliser
1. Can You Forgive Her?
2. Phineas Finn
3. The Eustace Diamonds
4. Phineas Redux
5. The Prime Minister
6. The Duke's Children
2. Mini Mark Twain Project - There is a lot of interest expressed in reading Twain, and though I don't think we can get through all of his works in a summer we could choose a selection of his works to be read over the course of the summer
3. American Summer - Choose books to read from various American authors over the course of the summer.
I would love to hear your thoughts, opinions, ideas.
Would you be interested in doing a special summer reading project in place of our usual nominating and voting?
And if so what would you like to read over the summer?