Planning For Our First Read of 2020

[Lily]

LOL! Won't make recommendations at this point, but I started with the short A Room of One's Own. In the years since, I've read many a female writer take the position that "room of one's own" really isn't that necessary to creative opportunity. Once in awhile, I go back and reread Woolf and consider the balance of the two views -- I can "see" either as "true," depending a lot on circumstances and individual personalities.

[Susan]

The Sound and the Fury (like Tristram Shandy) has been sitting in my bookshelves since college waiting for its day to come. I’m glad to dust it off and start reading soon, although in a way this just reinforces my book hoarding tendencies ;). “See, I knew I’d read it some day.”

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

Susan wrote: "The Sound and the Fury (like Tristram Shandy) has been sitting in my bookshelves since college waiting for its day to come. I’m glad to dust it off and start reading soon, although in a way this ju..."

I just recently read Tristram Shandy along with the Western Canon group--I'd had it on my shelves for about 35 years. Total vindication of the “See, I knew I’d read it some day” principle.

[Christopher]

Bryan "They call me the Doge" wrote: "Susan wrote: "The Sound and the Fury (like Tristram Shandy) has been sitting in my bookshelves since college waiting for its day to come. I’m glad to dust it off and start reading soon, although in..."

This doesn't strike me as at all paradoxical or imponderable.

What else is going to stay on your shelf for "someday" but the big'uns? Or who is going to risk not having Moby Dick on hand for that rainy day?

Those books which age like fine milk are the ones which seemed like a good idea at the time. I was just thinking about a surely admirable account of the 1996 campaign, Trail Fever: Spin doctors, rented strangers, thumb wrestlers, toe suckers, grizzly bears, and other creatures on the road to the White H, which I picked up for a song back in 2000, I guess, but guess I may not get around to ever.

It does seem more timely now than a month ago, however.

[[deleted user]]

To each her own! I've read nearly every book by Woolf. To the Lighthouse was a transformative reading experience for me when I read it in college for Humanities 200.

I'm the kind of person who needs a room of one's own. To the point that I chose not to have children, LOL.

I recently read an a piece by Toni Morrison looking back on writing The Bluest Eye (it is it's 50th anniversary this year). She had to write it with an infant in her lap, who would regularly spit up on her writing (she wrote longhand). And she would have to rewrite sentences. She said it helped her hone the book, the unplanned revisions.

[Kerstin]

Christopher wrote: "Those books which age like fine milk "

LOL!!!

Though nerd that I am... spoiled milk mostly happens to pasteurized, or even worse, homogenized milk. It putriefies. Raw milk, on the other hand, do to its multitude of good bacteria naturally sours into delectable sour milk, which can be made into cheese. My mother mourns the fact that sour milk is no longer available as it was decades ago. Now I don't know specifically if there are aged cheeses made from soured milk (with our without rennet), but fine aged milk - cheese - keeps just about indefinitely under proper conditions. ;-)

[Christopher]

Kerstin wrote: "Christopher wrote: "Those books which age like fine milk "

LOL!!!

Though nerd that I am... spoiled milk mostly happens to pasteurized, or even worse, homogenized milk. It putriefies. Raw milk, o..."

I've heard that spoiled pasteurized milk is not really "sour milk," as you point out.

On the other hand, processed "rolled" oats last much longer than "steel cut" oats.

Something else I learned the hard way.