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What are you currently reading?
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Reggia
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Dec 13, 2023 11:13AM
I remember The Secret of the Old Clock being one of my favorites from way back when -- would be fun to do a re-read.
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Reggia wrote: "I remember The Secret of the Old Clock being one of my favorites from way back when -- would be fun to do a re-read."Well, I'm now a couple of days (and 101 pages) into it, and so far I'd have to say that I'd have liked it better as a kid than I'm liking it now. At this point, I'd rate it no better than "okay." Some kid's books can be appreciated by readers of all ages, and I've read and liked a good many of them as an adult. This is one where the "kid's book" limitations are unfortunately a lot more prominent, at least in my estimation. But I still intend to finish it!
Werner, I suspected that might be so because I asked a GR friend at another group about rereading Nancy Drew. She said that she found that Nancy Drew held less charm now for her as a woman of mature years. . . . But you don't know until you try.
Cynda wrote: "But you don't know until you try."That's very true! And I definitely don't regret trying.
Cynda will back full time 2024 wrote: "Werner, I suspected that might be so because I asked a GR friend at another group about rereading Nancy Drew. She said that she found that Nancy Drew held less charm now for her as a woman of matur..."So I feel that my memory has been jogged by the mention of your friend. Although I don't see it on my reading list, I feel like I may have re-read it this past year or so... and like your friend, I may have been less enthused. Still, I want to try another one, maybe the Boathouse mystery. :-)
Reggia, I hope you enjoy The Boathouse Mystery. Sometimes when rereading books read in childhood, one remembers the easier parts of childhood. I am slowly rereading Dr Suess books. I remember sitting next to the book case in my bedroom while my brother crammed his smaller body into the lowest level of the bookcase. (We were naughty and took all the books out of that shelf.) With my brother all curled up and my sitting next to him, I had a Dr Suess book or maybe Mother Goose on my lap, reading to him.Enjoy your memories.
Instead of revisiting the mystery books of childhood, I have read two and hope to read a third of the Enola Holmes mysteries. . . . I have heard some talk of the third book being made into a movie for Netflix. Fingers crossed.
I haven't read any Enola Holmes, but if there's going to be a movie it might pave the way.I'm a bit disappointed by my current reading of Sophie's Choice. I suppose there's time for it to pick up speed, but it's definitely dragging for now.
It seems that I am going to end the year far belong my personal challenge. Do any of you set a challenge for the amount of annual books read? Some years, I have included a certain number for classics, biographies, nonfiction, etc. In more recent years, I've just set a general number.
Up to now, I've never officially set a yearly challenge number for the books I'll read. That's because I felt that I didn't need to "challenge" myself to read; I read whenever I'm able to. :-) But over the years, I've noticed that I typically can read at least 30 books in a year. (If I don't, it's only because some books I did read were longer than normal!). That's essentially become my unofficial goal in my own mind each year; so I've decided that in 2024, I might just as well make it official. :-)
Muhammad, I have been wanting to find new spiritual warriors to read. . . . Ryan Holiday may be someone I will follow. . . .Thanks for the lead.
While I'm waiting to start a buddy read in another group on Jan 1, I'm dipping into
Irish Fairy and Folk Tales (1920), a collection of traditional Irish legends retold by James Stephens. This one is on my "being read intermittently" shelf.
Yesterday at another GR group, we started an impromptu readathon into Jan 1st. Early this morning I finished The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. Next I will start reading both The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin and Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Everytime I start reading science fiction, I get nervous , unsure if I am up to the task. The Mountain in the Sea at first puzzled me until I started to understand. Maybe it will be the same with The Left Hand of Darkness. We'll see.
In another group, my Goodreads friend Deb Atwood and I (and perhaps others who might join us) are taking part this month in a buddy read of
The Hacienda (2022) by Mexican-born writer Isabel Cañas. This is a Gothic tale set in the Mexico of 1823, and is the author's first novel.
I am currently readingLes Misérables by Victor Hugo
The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables by David Bellos
It's secondary information as I read this masterpiece.
I am continuing
Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer This is dark folk-style tales for adults. Ooohhh.
One moment. . . .I did recently reread a book originally read in childhood. I have started making my slow way through the Narnia books. I read them when a child. I read them to my son. Now I make my way through the Narnia books again. It is different, less about the fantasy and more about the biblical references. The magic may be gone, but the connections have become clearer.
Wishing all a Happy New Year!I haven't started any new reads yet, as I still have to finish a handful started from last year.
Cynda, I hope you will share any highlights or notes of interest on your Les Misérables reads as I'm very eager to hear other's impressions as well as the different things we pick up on when reading any book.
Hi Reggia. Happy New Year!I see that a thread is open here to discuss Les Misérables, so I posted some insights there. I am able to follow because like so many others I have watched more than one movie version of the novel :-)
I'm hoping to read more Narnia, too. My daughter was visiting recently, and saw the series on my bookshelf. She seems to think I read them all aloud, but honestly I don't think I did (think I just read the first, and encouraged them to finish the series); however, I would like to read them all for myself.But yes, I, too, am looking for Biblical references other than the obvious Aslan. CS Lewis had such an amazing imagination, and I love reading what he crafted from it!
Cynda, is there a movie version that is not a musical? I've googled a few times but having difficulty...
You're welcome Reggia :-)This month my GR classics group is reading The Confessions of St Augustine. So I read with. I am reading this Oxford edition: Confessions. To help me remember what's important here, I read this article:
https://www.crossway.org/articles/8-t...
I’m currently reading Lolita. Superb so far. Effortless prose.
Cynda, I read Augustine's Confessions when I was in college. I'll be interested in your take on it!
Thanks Werner. I will take my time so that I read each Scripture cite. Careful reading will take time. I will be sure to post some thoughts :-)
Confessions! Another one on my bookshelf (physical, that is)... your choices have certainly been inspiring me lately, Cynda!Hello Mark, and welcome! I haven't gotten to Lolita myself, so good to hear your feedback. I've just picked a few bits and pieces about it while reading another book that mentions it as part of their book club discussion.
Reggia - thanks for the welcome! Lolita will be my January book. Aiming for 12 in the year.You mentioned CS Lewis and Narnia in a previous post. Tom Shipley’s The Road to Middle Earth has some interesting insight into Lewis’ thought and also that of Tolkien. I’ll have to dig the book out for the specifics.
I'll be eager to read those insights. Please post as you are able, and feel welcome to start any new discussions about any particular book you feel might be of interest here.
I had a look through Shipley's The Road to Middle Earth regarding Narnia and Lewis, much aided by the index!Lewis and Tolkien were interested in "virtuous pagans", and what would become of them after death, and why. For example, in the Last Battle, a young man named Emeth is found. Emeth explains that all his life he served Tash (a demon) and scorned Aslan. Once dead, Emeth meets Aslan in trepidation: “for the Lion, will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him.” However, Emeth is saved, “for good deeds done for Tash belong to Aslan, the bad deeds for Aslan to Tash.” Then follows a discussion about if a man needed a church to be saved, and how Lewis might have agreed, but not Tolkien.
Oh yes, that is an interesting observation indeed. Would I be oversimplifying to say it seems a Catholic vs Protestant viewpoint? Yet, despite CS Lewis's stance... many with the opposing view still revere his works, both fictional and nonfiction.In reading Shipley's book, is it necessary to have read any, or all, particular books of Lewis or Tolkien?
Yes, a Catholic/Protestant distinction is noted.Shipley assumes, I think, that the reader is comfortable with all the works of both authors, and familiar with academic philology. There’s less of a reading of their works as allegory, which both authors denied, despite many thinking otherwise. I think both authors wanted to have supposed something novel.
I read that about CS Lewis denying allegorical intentions, and yet in both these authors works one cannot help but take note of it. I suppose we see what we want to see, but seriously! how can we not see the parallels in such fine examples?? :-)
Hi Reggia, it’s both an author’s reluctance to reveal “the bones of the ox” that produced the “soup” (as Shipley puts it in the last chapter) and a genuine inability to see one’s own influences. Many writers years later realise that they have been writing about themselves in various forms. Let’s have another metaphor. Writing a book is like nurturing a vegetable growing in a compost heap of ideas and influences. There is also the hard work of figuring out how to make the story work. All books have origin stories but the author would like to gloss over that and have the final story stand alone.
A question for this thread. Is the book enough? Or do you need to know how and why the author wrote it?
Is the book enough? Hmm. Well, it probably is... certainly at the time I may be reading it (whatever book it may be). To be sure, I hadn't any question whatsoever as to the metaphors until I saw an article quoting otherwise, lol. Sometimes I wish I'd never find anything out about artists, authors or even actors as it often skews my original feelings. ;-) But then, I may be so intrigued by their artistry that I may purposefully try to dig a little deeper and find out. Perhaps this is just a simple example of "ignorance is bliss" (not that it always turns out negative).
In recent years, I have noted many song and physical artists refuse to give interpretations, and saying it is for the viewer/listener to determine for themselves. I rather like that. :-D
Back in 2020, I first encountered Shiela Crerar, the heroine of a short story cycle by British author Ella M. Scrymsour (whose full name was Ella Mary Scrymsour-Nichol) published in 1920, through the story "The Werewolf of Rannoch."
The Adventures of Shiela Crerar, Psychic Detective collects all six of the stories; and having gotten a copy for Christmas, I was able to start reading it yesterday!
Reggia wrote: "I read that about CS Lewis denying allegorical intentions, and yet in both these authors works one cannot help but take note of it. I suppose we see what we want to see, but seriously! how can we n..."Actually, allegory is a form of literature in which EVERY element in the outward story actually stands for something else. There aren't very many real examples of this in English-language literature. Probably the best-known are The Pilgrim's Progress (and Nathaniel Hawthorne's satirical "update" of this, "The Celestial Railroad,") and George Orwell's Animal Farm. It's not the same thing as a story in which some elements of the tale (even if they're the main ones) have symbolic significance.
Viewed from that perspective (which is the most likely one that both Tolkien and Lewis, as serious literary scholars, would have had), and given their tendency to careful precision in their use of literary terms, their denial that they wrote allegory makes sense. (Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has a central symbolism with allegorical features, but it isn't full-blown allegory; Tolkien's LOTR series is even less allegorical, with few if any symbols directly standing for real-world referents.)
Mark wrote: "Is the book enough? Or do you need to know how and why the author wrote it?"
If we couldn't sit down with a book, just read and experience it on its own terms, and both appreciate it and come to some sense of what the author is saying, without a necessity for special research into the background, then there wouldn't be much interest or point in reading as an activity and pleasure in itself. That said, for me, understanding why the author wrote it, and what he/she was trying to say with it, enhances my own understanding --and often my appreciation--of it.
Every element? I was unaware of that. Suppose it's why these, and I'm sure other, authors declined to call it such. That actually helps it make more sense to me.Werner: If we couldn't sit down with a book, just read and experience it on its own terms, and both appreciate it and come to some sense of what the author is saying, without a necessity for special research into the background, then there wouldn't be much interest or point in reading as an activity and pleasure in itself. That said, for me, understanding why the author wrote it, and what he/she was trying to say with it, enhances my own understanding --and often my appreciation--of it.
Absolutely, yes, you stated that quite well, Werner, thank you! It would become more of a chore, like required reading. I usually avoid forewords, partly so I don't see spoilers, but also because I just want to read it for myself first. After reading the book, I may, or may not, look it over for added insight.
Reggia wrote: "I usually avoid forewords, partly so I don't see spoilers, but also because I just want to read it for myself first. After reading the book, I may, or may not, look it over for added insight."That's what I do too, Reggia!
Of course every reader must do what works best. Maybe because I am also a reader of nonfiction--Nonfiction readers are often taught to preread--I often preread even for fiction works. After all the line between fiction and nonfiction is not always clear. Also I feel the ever-increasing pressure of time becoming more limited and having ever more books to read that prereading helps gets books read and ground up into the brain. I will never catchup, but I can make biggest, fastest effort. . . .That is part of nonfiction-reading mindset.
Prereading? Are you referring to the foreword, or possibly skimming the book first?
A floating, twisting narrative? Would that be like stream of consciousness?
Not having read The Wager, I just wanted to be sure I understood correctly, thanks for humoring me. Are there any well-known books that you've read which could be described like that? I'm just curious to know if I've read any...
A few years ago, my friend Andrew M. Seddon, finding that he had gotten an extra copy of the 2009 reprint edition of
Weird Stories (1882) by Victorian ghost-story writer Charlotte Riddell, kindly passed it on to me. I've finally begun dipping into it while I wait for a couple of review books I'm expecting by mail (so, for now, it's on my "being read intermittently" shelf).
A couple of days ago, I got my review copy (technically it's a contributors copy, but I'm treating it as a review copy) of
Wolf Wanderings, an anthology of both older and newer wolf-friendly short fiction edited by my friend Andrew M. Seddon, and was finally able to start reading it today. (All profits from the sale of this book go to wolf conservation organizations and sanctuaries.)
Jt, good to hear the feedback on Norwegian Wood -- quite eager to read it!
Barb and I started on a new book (I'm reading it aloud to her) today,
Cold Drip. It's the sixth book (in the main series numbering) in the Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series by my Goodreads friend Heather Day Gilbert, which we're planning to stick with until we get caught up (there will be at least nine books in the series, although the ninth one isn't scheduled to be published until November of this year).Meanwhile, for my individual reading, I'm about to start a review book from another Goodreads friend, Liane Zane. It's the second volume of her Unsanctioned Guardians series,
, The Harlequin Protocol, a prequel trilogy to her earlier series, the Elioud Legacy. Barring anything unexpected, I should begin reading this book tomorrow.
I'm in a reading slump. I FINALLY finished Les Mes -- the last 100 pages was my reward for sticking with it. :-) Surprisingly, I may actually want to re-read it, just not the same version and definitely not this year! Meanwhile, I have a half-dozen books pulled for a current fictional read as Sophie's World is not reading like fiction. It's more like Philosophy 101, and I don't have a problem with that it's what attracted me to the story as it's supposed to be woven into it, but it just isn't developing even though I'm halfway through. I can, and do, read it during the day... just need a little fiction at night. I guess bedtime stories die hard despite one's age. ;-)
There are a half-dozen hopefuls I've taken off the shelves, but I may reshelve and pull down another half-dozen; hopefully, I have this figured out in another 12 hrs.
Have a great week, everyone! Happy Reading!
I am doing a quick read of Fly Away, and have my next fiction read narrowed down to either Brothers Karamazov or Covenant of Water.
I've enjoyed all the Friends episodes I've ever seen, but admittedly even those were only a small percentage. His character was not one of which I was very familiar, but the way you described him as "intelligent, obsessive and sensitive" tells me enough to know I would've appreciated him. In your previous post, JT, you mentioned "[being] leery of any acclaimed, mainstream verse." There are a few contemporary authors that I do enjoy, but whenever a book becomes enormously popular with everyone else... well, I just seem to shy away from it, lol. And that is exactly how I'm feeling about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series. However, I haven't only been curious but a co-worker gave me the trilogy as a gift. We shall see, but... not... quite... yet.
I've finished Fly Away and have begun the long-awaited Covenant of Water. I'm also planning to add in my annual March read of a book set in Ireland, or a book by an Irish author. I have a handful in mind, but will give myself a few days to decide.
Earlier this week, I started on the next review book in my queue,
Dr. Andrew's Curious and Quirky Compendium: Hints, Helps, Perils, Pitfalls, Constructive Comments and (Hopefully) Awesome Advice for Aspiring Authors, by my Goodreads friend Andrew M. Seddon.
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