Trans-Atlantic Bibliophiles discussion
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The Woman in White
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Diane
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Aug 02, 2014 03:14PM
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How funny. I started this YEARS ago and have been thinking I should finish it. So yes, I will try. I just finished my London book group book about 20 minutes ago (the book group meeting is in an hour and a half... So typical of me)and I have few others to read, but I'll see if I can find it, if I still have it or I'll get it from Amazon! FUN, the book group is not moribund!!!
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Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. This round we're doing places we're from. So I decided I'm either from Cincinnati (I googled Ohio auythors and got dreck), American (too broad), German (ethnicity, but a stretch) or Brotish (adopted country). My first British choice (Regeneration, Pat Barker, in honour of the First World War memorials that are going on very actively) was what a REAL British person was going to chose, so that's OK. I picked, I think, Tender Is the Night. I love moribund - I think I read it in a Sherlock Holmes novel! BTW, If you have time for a 200 page novel, try Brooklyn - I would LOVE to know what you think before you read my comments. XX, P.
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I'm working my way through it - I keep getting distracted, but I do like it. Have a lot of plane journeys, so maybe I'll get it done in the next couple of weeks!Do we have a next book! I know probably everyone but me has read Tale of Two Cities, but I just read the kids version with my reading kid and I cried at the end; I suspect the 'real' one would be even more fab!!!
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How about Regeneration in honour of WWI? I'm reading right now Her Privates We by Frederic Manning, another WWI novel which is a loose autobiography, but I don't think it is as good. Other than that, I'll let you pick again, or maybe Emily has some ideas? The contemporary stuff I'm reading is worse than dreck... ALTHOUGH, I am reading the new James Bond novel (William Boyd) and he writes very much like Ian Fleming - misogynist, OTT sex and all.... :)
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Hmmm, if it took you a long time, then you didn't really like it (I read it in a day, so obviously it appealed to the blood thirsty soldier lurking in me!). Have you read all three? Well, anyway, we should think of something else then. Doesn't need to be WWI related, it was just a thought as it is the centenary.Do you like fantasy-esque stuff? How about Ben Aaronovitch? He writes stuff like Dresden, but set in London. Not really much to discuss there though...
Someone just gave me a book about bees (for obvious reasons) and living in a bee hive: Laline Paull, The Bees. Maybe can you check out the reviews of that and see what you think? I have only read the intro so far, I am having one of my periods of lack of attention span and seem to only be able to read absolute and utter rubbish which of course will never end up on goodreads :) !!! If that looks too odd, then I vote you or your mum or Emily pick something!? How many are we still in the group?!
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Ahhh, the bee book is fiction. It is apparently what life inside the hive is like. It looks a bit different and maybe a bit... Well needless to say, the bee(s) are anthropomorphised, and I am constantly being warned against doing that with my own bees. I get the intenseness aspect of Regeneration, probably one of the reasons I liked it.
Anyway, you pick, you always do a good job!!!
Hey Diane! I actually listened to The Woman in White! I liked it, but can't say loved it. Hearing scenes retold over again by different characters got tiring. I just finished a book that I highly recommend! It has to do with WW1 too! It's The Sandcastle the Girls, by Chris Bohjalian. It's about the Armenian genocide during WW1. I don't remember ever hearing about this in school!
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Learned about the Armenian genocide a bit from a brother in law who is Armenian, but one never learns the story really, just bits. So that sounds good, thanks for that! Is it decided?! I'll blast through the end of Woman in White now and then move to that one!!
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I really enjoyed this book. I'm always so interested in the background of the writer, and was interested that Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens were extremely close friends, perhaps even best friends. I know that Dickens' novels were usually published in serial form, and the various readers in "The Woman In White" have that serial feel to them, as well.
The relationship between Walter Hartright, Marian Halcombe, and Laura Fairlie is a very odd one, almost as though he has two wives. Marian supplied the intellect and Laura the physical attraction. In Collins' own life, he had no desire to marry, but lived with two separate women, fathering several children with one of them. I think he had no problem believing that one man can love more than one woman at a time, albeit in separate but equal ways, and that carries over into this writing. A quick study of the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkie_C... sheds a bit of light on his domestic situation.
