The Next Best Book Club discussion
Revive a Dead Thread
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And The Winner for Februarys Group Read is....
AHHH I must be too soon because I don't see it!!
Donna, it's down toward the bottom. I thought I had missed it, too.
No. It really wasn't there for a sec! but after refreshing my page 2 more times it finally showed up. Phew!!!!
I dunno Fiona but I have nominated the same book 3 times already and it hasn't won yet! I am going to read it regardless I just wanna share!
What happened to Bridget Jones? =(
I can't see the poll to vote. I must be doing something wrong.
Sorry Fiona, I have to vote for books that I already own, which doesn't include ICTC. ;)But if anyone wants to vote for, I dunno, a book set in Afghanistan and maybe another book which is a variation of my name, it would be much appreciated.
*wink wink, nudge nudge*
I just realized, last night, actually, that I own Mists of Avalon already, so...
Mod
I confess I voted for Emma because I have it, and it is familiar territory, and my impending temporary relocation is shredding my nerves despite assurances that I will be given an Internet line.I don't have much in the way of valuable furniture, but for my bed being relatively new and my Dell a relatively expensive upgrade, but I will have to do all this without a power chair fitted for me that I can trust, and the anxiety is doing its number on me, which is why I am not hunkered down and producing like a good journalist. I want the renovations done and over with so I can fight over my new chair in peace! But if they are booting me in Feb and I can still log in, I will have plenty of reading material on hand, even in boxes...
Hmm... I have Emma too. I think I may change my vote. :)
How excitement! my nom is in joint 1st place. Vote for Remains of the day! (not only becuase its on my shelf and needs reading but it won the booker prize lol). Small dilemma though - how am i going to read something 'on top' of the winter challenge!
Fiona, I think I voted for your suggestion. The other one I chose the one I suggested Mists of Avalon.
I voted for my nomination: kafka on the shore. but I have 7 books on the category 1 on mt tbr. so i'm just hoping one of them wins.
Jeane, I voted for yours because I have it. We're still going to read Outlander, right?
There are a few that are on my TBR and also some that I have read and some I own so if any of those win then I will be OK. I hear so many good things about Bridge of Sighs
*wink*
I think whenever there's been a tie in the past, we've read both books. That would probably be up to Lori to decide though.
And there are some awfully big books nominated. Maybe we'll have a runoff vote this time?
Kandice wrote: "Jeane, I voted for yours because I have it. We're still going to read Outlander, right?"Great kandice, if it would get chosen I think it would make me finally read it! I also chose the one Fiona likes but for the other category. There were many interesting ones but as it will come from the library I limited my choice. Would love to read the one about Obama, but didn't find it in the local library yet.
poor Lori, we are already talking about what to do if the result is a tie, if if ....:-) I am so curious which books get picked!!!! I always hope my suggestion gets picked but it makes me read more books I wouldn't have thought about. like now I am reading Jonathan strange and Mr Norrel! Wouldn't ahve watched that one in a bookshop BUt I am really enjoying it!
LOL!!What if 2 really big books won??? As you say, Feb is a shirt month ;)
I was poking around in another group and saw that they have sort of a "Vote for my nomination because..." thread. Do you think something like that would be good for campaigning here? Or, I guess we sort of use this thread for that, don't we?
My daughter's name is Anja, so I'm actually buying Anja the Liar. On top of judging a book by the title, it does sound like an interesting read!
I voted!!! So many great choices. It was hard to choose. I have read several on the poll, so I never vote on one I have read. Lots I'd like to read.Can;t wait!!
Rachel, I agree with you to a point. I just Googled "Margaret Mitchell" and found an article on her, which contained this quote:"[Gone with the Wind:] has been hailed as a contribution to feminism, held up as an allegory for the development of the United States, and condemned as racist and even sadomasochistic. Racist it unquestionably is--almost inevitably so, given the time and place of its composition. Beyond that, it gives powerful support to damaging stereo-types that for long helped sustain racial segregation. It romanticizes the slave-owning class, and, except perhaps for D.W. Griffith's classic Birth of a Nation, no work has done more to misrepresent Reconstruction as a cruelty visited upon an innocent white South--whereas today historians generally agree that it was an honest, if flawed, attempt to bring real democracy to a region that had never known it."
Scarlett is a spoiled girl, who wants to have everything her own way, and keep her easy life exactly the way it always was. Some of her anger at the difficult life she has to live after the war comes across as racism.
However, Scarlett also trusts, loves and defends black people. When she is attacked in Shanty Town, Big Sam saves her. Later, she defends her aunt's black servant to Yankee women as "part of the family". Pork, a servant in her own house tells her (and I'm paraphrasing here) 'that if she was a nice to white people as she was to blacks, more people would like her'.
I don't mean to ramble on... :) The book does promote race and class stereotypes, but I still think that it is worth reading anyway. It's one of my favorite books, even though I don't have a racist bone in my body.
(Edit to add that this is one of the best books for teaching people about racism and how NOT to behave.) :)
Eh. I tend to think things have their time and place. As a disabled woman, I readily admit I have biases, and I may even be more wicked still and have prejudices as well. Would I not read Norman Mailer because feminists castigate him? I think not; in his heyday he was a writer of great power, and I just ordered some of his work.I can barely remember GWTW. I know I read at least part of the novel when I was 12, in Shriners Hospital, which butchered crips of the poor for free, as they would me. Do I consider it great literature? No, but it was popular because Mitchell troped on post-Reconstruction nostalgia for an agrarian caste system which is treated as a hallowed way of life by those who are comforted with notions of "everyone knowing their place", and Scarlet is, in some ways, an American Cinderella, like most heroines of such a type. Mitchell's *South* is no more real than Faulkner's, or even Morrison's, for that matter--but the story endures, powerful in its own right.
I don't condemn it for that. I don't buy it, but I don't condemn it for being what it is.
That is cool by me Rachel. If we did not have the argument, in a philosophical sense, we wouldn't be human. I think, however, I was attempting two points, at least through the back door: Humans will always find ways to exploit each other. I have suffered for my broken body at the hands of a variety of ethnic/cultural groups, and two, Mitchell was a good hacker for her time. I don't think she should be hanged for creating a popular romance which was acceptable by pre-WW2 standards.We have grown up since then, but every literary and cultural history has the sin and the price of its civilization behind it, the era of Obama notwithstanding.
Rachel wrote: "And now I want a doughnut."Can't help you there. I don't want to cook just yet so I am slicing feta cheese on cracker and maybe trying it with a bit of sliced turkey.
"We can't learn from the mistakes of the past without first acknowledging them."You are absolutely right.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is another one of my favorite books and is an excellent example of a book useful for teaching tolerance. But, I think that ANY book that depicts ignorance, prejudice and racism, (or any negative trait for that matter) is useful in the same way, as long as someone takes the time to USE it.
"Every story (movie, book, etc.) has layers and I think that people should make an attempt to breach more than just the outer shell. I want them to taste the sweet knowledge contained in the jelly center."
I can agree with you there! (Mmmm... Jelly!)
Let's show the US President some love and vote for
The Audacity of Hope Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
!!!
Mod
As far as creating a post for pushing your book for noms.... uh-uh! NO way! what a disaster that would be... becuase you are correct, we totally use this thread for it! hee hee... If we did that, people would start creating a poll for each book that was nominated and it would be craziness.... Sheer insane craziness.....
You're such a good moderator Lori! Always thinking ahead. (we WOULD muck up the threads!)
Mod
Live and learn some, right :)
oh no... i think am guilty of having posted a vote fixing post on this thread pushing my nom. The shame! slunks of with tail between legs ... have been told!
JG wrote: "I was poking around in another group and saw that they have sort of a "Vote for my nomination because..." thread. Do you think something like that would be good for campaigning here? Or, I guess ..."I don't think so JG. And I also like the surprise of it.
Sorry to come back to it: But isn't that exactly why you should read books that are "distasteful"? Some things are to be read because they are "good books" and/or for what they can teach you directly - To Kill a Mockingbird, for one - and others for what they teach you indirectly.
Gone with the Wind was published in 1936, by a southern white woman born in 1900 (and that too was pretty unusual; I'll give her points for breaking out of the "southern belle" mold). I think it has a lot to teach if you look at it from the right perspective and keep in mind the historical context.
If you want another book from that era (a little later, Angelou was born in 1928) that teaches directly, try Maya Angelou's "I know why the caged bird sings", the first of her autobiographies describing life in the southern US from the perspective of a young black girl (in the mid 1930s) at the time when Mitchell was writing GWTW.
PS: I read GWTW and didn't despise it. Thought bits of it were okay, but wanted to slap Scarlett soundly. I don't think Mitchell wanted us to like Scarlett; she was describing a type to avoid.
Gone with the Wind was published in 1936, by a southern white woman born in 1900 (and that too was pretty unusual; I'll give her points for breaking out of the "southern belle" mold). I think it has a lot to teach if you look at it from the right perspective and keep in mind the historical context.
If you want another book from that era (a little later, Angelou was born in 1928) that teaches directly, try Maya Angelou's "I know why the caged bird sings", the first of her autobiographies describing life in the southern US from the perspective of a young black girl (in the mid 1930s) at the time when Mitchell was writing GWTW.
PS: I read GWTW and didn't despise it. Thought bits of it were okay, but wanted to slap Scarlett soundly. I don't think Mitchell wanted us to like Scarlett; she was describing a type to avoid.
Hayes, thank you for stating what was in my head better than I could! :)
Is voting still open? I can't see anything for voting (I'm using Firefox on a Mac)...
Glad I could be of service, Becky! :D
Hayes wrote: "Sorry to come back to it: But isn't that exactly why you should read books that are "distasteful"? Some things are to be read because they are "good books" and/or for what they can teach you dire..."Hayes: I rather agree that context is a relevant factor. The movie version of The Miracle Worker also has southern motifs, and can be considered implicitly *racist* if we are going to judge it by the same standards a modern child of identity politics would use to judge Mitchell. Yet The Miracle Worker signals the advent of disability activism in the US, as well as being a great play/movie, on its own artist merit, at least thanks to Bancroft and Duke.
Maybe I'm going to get zapped for coming to the defense of a novel I don't much care about, but I don't think it's fair to hold Mitchell responsible for reinforcing whatever stereotypes she does reinforce. She was, as you point out, a woman author of the post-Reconstruction South, and racism has a very long and ugly history in the US, beyond region. In that sense, GWTW is a soft pedal.
Susanna wrote: "Is voting still open? I can't see anything for voting (I'm using Firefox on a Mac)..."Not sure but if you go to the right where there is polls, you can see.
Susanna wrote: "Is voting still open? I can't see anything for voting (I'm using Firefox on a Mac)..."I just changed my vote by clicking on the box of the title I wanted. I had no problem and I'm also using Firefox on a Mac.
Susanna, do you know where to look? At the upper-right-hand corner of each page are a bunch of green links. Click on the one that says "polls." The polls for the group read are toward the bottom of that screen.Sorry if you knew that and you're just having trouble, but I couldn't decide from your post exactly what kind of trouble you were having. When Lori closes the polls, she clearly posts it in the title of a thread.
The Next Best Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Gone with the Wind (other topics)Gone with the Wind (other topics)
Gone with the Wind (other topics)
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (other topics)
Bridge of Sighs (other topics)
You can vote once on each poll.
Poll 1 is for the regular Fiction/Non Fiction novel.
Poll 2 is for the Romance/ Love Story novel.
Voting is open NOW until Monday.
Get em in while you can!
The top vote getter on each poll will be our group reads for February.