ChocolateMuse Café

Welcome! By the end of last year, my previous thread over at 50 Challenge had become something of a drop-in place for all sorts of like-minded people, and we had some fascinating conversations about various literary things. If you're interested, it's HERE.

I'm hoping very hard that the same friends I made last year will find their way here - some are from Club Read, others are 50 and 75-ers - and I hope plenty of others will drop in too.

This year I hope to read a good mix of serious stuff, fluff, classics and contemporary - and, fingers crossed, to have plenty of luscious conversation about it right here.

At the moment I'm on summer holidays, and Les Miserables is sitting in my bedroom eyeing me reproachfully every time I walk past. I've been resolutely ignoring it and reading Wodehouse instead.

He cast a look of agonized entreaty at the bullfinch, but the bird had no comfort to offer. It continued to chirp reflectively to itself, like a man trying to remember a tune in his bath.
From Summer Lightning

Yea! Glad to see you here! Happy New Year!

Hooray! I found you here! And I could use a cuppa, thanks. *seats self at table*

Any hot chocolate lying around that we could sip as we discuss? Why, of course — this is ChocolateMuse's thread! Hot chocolate, my favorite of the heated liquid beverages, is almost a prereq here :)

I don't recommend interspersing Les Mis with other reads for your first time. I loved being completely immersed in Hugo's world when I first read it (I know I keep saying this but it was so like a baptism). But I'll admit on my third read which I just finished, I did take a break and read Hogfather. Wait till you are wanting to read Les Mis before committing to it is my advice.

You and Medellia are making me want to pick up Wodehouse today, you know...

I took a break from Les Misérables my first go-round. I think it was when I got to that ghastly sewer section. :P I picked up The Phantom of the Opera, finished it quickly, and returned immediately to Hugo's world. By then, however, I was firmly in love with it. I'm cheering you on, Rena!—but I also hope it doesn't become one of those dutiful but joyless reading experiences for you.

Oh, y'all are exciting me to pick up Les Mis tomorrow. And it sounds like perhaps I should let Clarel and The Greengage Summer await the finishing of said tome.
And Wodehouse is a winner any day.

ChocolateMuse;
I am happy to see you here. Nice to be in familiar company. I hope you have a great year and I love how you have your thread set up. I wish I knew how to do pictures, etc but am just doing good to be able to type on this keypad. Good reads to you.
hugs,
belva

This Cafe looks so inviting. I'll think I'll join you for a while - but I'll probably have a latte instead of chocolate.

Don't worry, catarina—I take tea myself. *helps himself to a mug*

I'm shocked and beside myself that so many of you have put Hugo on hold. Les Mis is only 1,460-some pages long...what's the matter with all of you?!

Glad to see you all here! May the beverages of your choice flow freely.

I've made the official decision to stay off Les Mis for now, at least while I'm house-sitting at this beautiful resort-like house complete with tree-shaded gardens, gorgeous piano, and a million bookshelves. (I'm not kidding - if you're not jealous you should be!) I keep getting too distracted by other things, so I faithfully promise to return and devotedly absorb myself in it when I get back to normal life. Rique and Amy, you have my solemn word.

I dipped into Tolkien's Gown last night, by Rick Gekoski. I never realised being a rare bookseller gives one such an entry into the world of the literati! This Gekoski has met Tolkien, chatted with Graham Greene, worked closely with a rather irascible William Golding (called 'Bill' by his friends), and had Bernie Taupin, Elton John's lyricist, pop into his flat in the morning to ask for a present for his (Bernie's) wife. And I'm only up to chapter 4! This book is rather like the Woman's Day of the literary world.

Nice thread. I agree with Amy. In ChocolateMuse's thread I'd like to have hot chocolate too!

BTW, My new 50 Book Challenge thread for 2010 is here,

http://www.librarything.com/topic/80925

Whipped cream on mine please! :-) You've reminded me, I've got some Christmas chocolate to nibble on while I catch up on threads.

Alas, I just finished my Christmas chocolate. More's the pity.

*feels like he's hijacking Rena's thread—and we've barely started discussing books yet!*

No, no, Nathan... as I see it, we've settled into the cafe, and are at the stage of working out what we want from the menu before starting the actual literary conversation. It's what we do in my physical face-to-face book group anyway.

For me, despite my name, it's always a double-shot flat white.

So I ended up actually reading all of what I thought I would only sample - Tolkien's Gown by Rick Gekoski (I do keep wanting to spell it Gekowski, which I'm sure was the original spelling somewhere in his lineage).

I'm starting to suspect that I'm being hideously ignorant in betraying that I'd never heard of Gekoski before - by his own account at least, he's a pretty important personage in the bookseller's world. I never heard his Radio 4 series, which sounds like something I'm rather sorry to have missed.

As a writer, or rather as the apparent personality behind the writing, Gekoski both repelled and attracted me. While writing about Sylvia Plath's The Colossus, he quotes a personal inscription on a copy he has from Plath to Ted Hughes, which also mentions her father. Then Gekoski says to the reader:

if you haven't, in some form or another, just whispered 'that's so fabulous!' to yourself - I'm afraid you don't have the makings of a book collector. I'm not even sure if I would like you very much.

My immediate, rather humourless reaction was, 'well, maybe the feeling might be mutual!' but it illustrates the main argument I have with the book in general, and is a point Gekoski actually makes himself, without exploring it in depth - why do the physical aspects of a book matter? What's the point of paying exorbitant amounts for a first edition, or for an inscription you can read the essence of somewhere else? Isn't the beauty of a book in what's actually written inside? I concede there would be a museum-like magic in holding a book that the Great Author once held in his/her own famous hands... but how can it all be worth it?

Clearly, Gekoski would not like me very much.

Overall, there are some anecdotes worth reading - some about Gekoski's own experiences with great authors and their books; others about the authors themselves and their experiences. Some read like sordid gossip, such as the various wives and mistresses of Graham Greene; others, like the terse opinions of pseudonymed Miss Parkinson, professional reading lady of a publishing house, on first reading Lord of the Flies, are illuminating and funny:

Time: The Future. Absurd and uninteresting fantasty about the explosion of an atomic bomb on the colonies and a group of children who land in jungle country near New Guines.. Rubbish and dull. Pointless.

A good, though inconsistent, read.

I concede there would be a museum-like magic in holding a book that the Great Author once held in his/her own famous hands... but how can it all be worth it?

Agreed. I love the weeks when the back of the NYT book review is the full page add for Bauman Rare Books. I read about every book and always think that I would love to see them and may be even hold them, but spend that kind of money to own them? Nah. But if someone wanted to give me one I wouldn't turn it down. ;)

>16 ChocolateMuse:, 17: The further problem, I think, is that I would be afraid to touch them. And from my pedestrian point of view, I cannot see any reason to own books that I am not going to touch, hold, read, leave on the nightstand, the kitchen table, next to the chair, etc.

Gekoski would not like me, either.

Edited to end italics before they run away with your thread.

Oooh, this thread is delicious already! Looking forward to more reading and hot chocolatey loveliness in 2010 Rena!

P.S. Love the photo - perfect for waxing lyrical on literary matters...

I have a first edition of Charles Dicken's Pickwick Papers (I should make this clear, a first edition of the Library Edition issued in 1861). It has an inscription in it, in the most beautiful copperplate handwriting, dated 1861. it is in ok condition: the binding is a bit loose, and the pages are hardly yellowed.

I love the fact that John Middleton, who inscribed it just after he bought it in 1861, must have waited for this special two volume edition (with original illustrations) to appear, and then inscribed it with love and care. And that CD was alive when he did so. It's a piece of history in my hands.

Here, smell it.

Mmmmmmm.

Actually, I was forgetting smell, and weight, and texture.

What do I really mean? I think a big part of my problem is that there's so much emphasis on original binding, perfect condition, and rarity. I still refuse to care about that sort of thing (though the rarity has some appeal). But that's different to personality and meaning, and that kind of tactile history you're talking about. I have always loved an old book, simply because it's old, and smells old, and has thick pages, and was created in a different sort of world to this one.

As for inscriptions, it depends. I just happened to pick up a book of love poetry from the shelf of the place in which I''m house-sitting, and there's a lovely gushy and very personal inscription in there (I felt a bit like a stalker). And the book changed its meaning there in my hands. That, I think, is cool. On the other hand, I found another book in this same house, signed by the author (David Mitchell), obviously at one of those book signings where one lines up and gets it done as part of the author's publicity. If such scribbles as those have monetary value, I don't see why they should.

I was actually in a pretty crabby mood when I read and reviewed the above book - now, I think that Sylvia Plath inscription is rather fabulous, though still not worth $45,000.

My family never had a lot of money and I grew up making do and being thankful for what we had. That mentality has stayed with me as an adult, and so I am not overly interested in owning rare books. Are they fascinating? Absolutely. Am I willing to pay that kind of money for a book? No.

And I agree that tactile history is different. I have some very well-beloved paperbacks that I've kept in good condition though I have read and reread them countless times over the years. My Chronicles of Narnia are a good example of this. When I read them later in a different (one-volume) edition, I felt that I lost something. I really love almost knowing the page breaks and where the chapter endings fall. I love the feel of the neat, trim little paperbacks in my hands rather than the big, bulky omnibus. I meet a younger me lurking in the pages of my childhood favorites.

Lisa wrote: >16 ChocolateMuse:, 17: The further problem, I think, is that I would be afraid to touch them.

Yes, me too! I do have the expensive 50th Anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings — a huge, leatherbound, gilt-edged affair that really is impressive and beautiful. But... I can't haul it to work to read on my lunch break. I can't eat while I'm reading it. I have read it once, carefully, at home, but as a rule I need my books to come with me if I'm going to get them read. I can visit with this gorgeous edition, but I live with my big floppy paperback.

Every one of you is a book collector at heart, even if you wouldn't pay exorbitant prices for special editions, or inscribed copies. You all recognize something in the physical object that you love, above and beyond the text between the covers--and you collect what you love. I visited Bauman's gallery in the Bellagio in Las Vegas a couple years ago, and despite the fact that I'm sure it was obvious I wasn't likely to buy anything, a very nice gentlemen spent time talking to me about my book loves, and brought out a first edition of The Sound and the Fury in a clamshell box, encouraged me not only to touch it, but to handle it, examine it, look under the dust jacket, open it, smell it; and then asked if I wanted to be put on the mailing list for their gorgeous catalogs (duh? ya think?), which I'm still getting several times a year. It's like being a little kid with the Sears Christmas Book 50 years ago.

23> That's a great story (and "great" doesn't do your story justice actually). I never knew that others peeked beneath the dust jackets, just to see what how the spine was imprinted and cover too, perhaps. One must know how the book looks underneath, "naked," no?

I love old books, too. One of the reasons (besides cost:-)) that I haunt used bookstores. And whenever I find one in good condition I am happier to have it than I would have been if I found the latest edition of the same book. It is the idea of something being worth so much money that bothers me. Although, LW3, it seems like the people familiar with those types of books are less concerned (knowing you would not hurt the book, I am sure) than I would be.

Look under dust jackets? Of course!

>Look under dust jackets? Of course!

Where is the fun if you do not? :)

>25 LisaCurcio: "I love old books, too." Me, too. I recently bought a pretty 1899 edition of The Poetical Works of Tennyson, with gilt edging and a gilt lyre and pink morning glories on the cover, for about $2. It's inscribed, in an elegant hand, with now-faded brown ink. It's probably not even worth what I paid for it, but my house is littered with books like it.

>23 laytonwoman3rd: Lucky you! I would have loved to have examined The Sound and Fury!

That's what dust jackets are for, right? Like a kind of beautiful and permanent wrapping paper. You take it off, get acquainted with the book, then put it back on again for next time.

To my secret shame, I'm still reading light stuff at the moment. Hardly a worthy way of insinuating myself into the Great Club Read.

But, for anyone looking for light reads, have you tried The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society? I started it today, and it's growing on me. Epistolary novel by characters I'm enjoying getting to know, particularly the Society members, some of whom are scarcely literate, and are discovering great literature for the first time (a bit like me really). One of them writes:

"I don't believe that after reading such a fine writer as Emily Bronte I will be happy to read again Miss Amanda Gillyflower's Ill-Used by Candlelight. Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books."

A bit cutesy I guess, but it doesn't strike me that way while reading it. I guess it's what I'm in the mood for at the moment.

I also picked up The Odyssey this morning and read a bit (I've read it before, back in Year 12). This is an odd translation (Robert Fagles), which throws in rather jarring all-too-contemprary phrases in the midst of all the 'wine-dark sea' stuff, for e.g. here's Athena: "Why, Zeus, why so dead set against Odysseus?"

If the whole thing was in that sort of language, it would be okay, though gimmicky, but the very next line goes, "'My child,' Zeus who marshals the thunderheads replied..."

This reader doesn't like it.

lol
sounds rather dreadful, I agree.

"Dead set"? Eep!

I'll put Guernsey on my short list of light reads. No shame in those, Chocolate; I've been indulging in them myself!

I plan to read The Odyssey this year, in the Robert Fagles translation. I'll steel myself for potential eye-rolling. :) I do have that sort of reaction to almost every modern translation that I read--jarringly modern-slangy lines here and there. (Or, as with the Rose translation of Les Mis, the "gimmicky" every-line-is-modern-slangy effect.)

That is how I am feeling about the Robin Waterfield translation of the Histories. I am looking at several of the others to see how they "sound".

And when Fagles translations of the Illiad and the Odyssey came out, they were really touted. I have both, but have not read them. When I read The Iliad a few years ago, I read my Oxford Library edition and don't remember who translated it. I think I am going to have to compare the editions, now.

Have fun Meddy, I am giving up on that translation. I'll go back to a different one someday, and hopefully read The Iliad first, which I haven't read yet.

Lisa, speaking of them being touted, this copy of The Odyssey has on the front cover, "One of the ten 'Best Books of 1996' - TIME". Which amused me. I picture a gratified Homer doing book signings in Borders.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer
I said earlier that this is light reading - and it is. But dark concepts get brought in: the German Occupation of the Channel Islands, the bombing of London, even some of the atrocities in the concentration camps. This, combined with a literary society made up of people who have never read much more than the weekly paper and the scriptures; an author looking for material for her next book; a lost friend; a small child; and tangled romantic relationships, all put together in epistolary style, make this sound like an absolutely dreadful sentimental mish-mash of a book.

I don't quite know why it isn't. Really, it should be. I mean, even the author's name screams 'fluffy chick-lit!' from the cover. But I liked meeting the characters. Most were quirky, all were well-drawn. Some were cliched, yes, particularly the sour spinster who interferes with other people's affairs, but most were likeable and rounded enough. I liked the settings - from shattered and grim post-war London to idyllic flower-strewn Guernsey. The plot held few surprises, but it didn't need to.

I'm not sure why I have to be so moderate and faintly damning in this review, since I enjoyed reading the book very much indeed. I wanted story, and I got it. I wanted character, and I got it. I didn't want War and Peace, and I didn't get it. I recommend it, truly, I do.

This might have to be one of my 'busy summer in the shop' reads... I bought it for my mum a few months ago and she loved it, but I haven't been in quite the right place, reading-wise, for it recently. Sometimes my mind wanders away and reading gets a bit difficult - or in summer the shop might be especially busy - in which case something like this is perfect. Right now my brain seems to be engaged, which is good, and the shop is very quiet, so I'm trying to make the most of it!

I've been sampling George Orwell's essays here and there, and have started Out Stealing Horses, which promises to be awesome.

For anyone familiar with Orwell's essays, what's with the one called Spike? Was Orwell actually down and out, or did he pretend to be to get writing material, or what was going on there? I'm sorry to say I know little of Orwell's life.

Ellie I see from your thread you're reading Austen at the moment. Mmmm, reading Austen in the snow, I can only imagine it.

Yep, Persuasion in the snow. It's my fourth Austen and for some reason, one that I've kept consciously putting off. Heaven knows why - it may turn out to be my favourite! Who couldn't fail to feel for poor Anne and her silent love for the dashing Captain Wentworth? Wonderful.

> 36, Orwell did actually live the life of a down and out, but not out of necessity. It was, as you speculate, to obtain writing material. He did a similar thing in Paris, of course, for Down and Out...

He really seemed to enjoy these experiences and wrote about some memorable characters. It also allowed him to understand what it was like to be powerless, subject to petty whims of those in some form of power. No doubt this helped inform his opinion of dictatorships in later years.

Thanks zenomax! Most interesting. Kind of journalistic of him in some ways. As you say, it would have given him a deeper understanding of bigger things as well - if poverty isn't big enough in itself, I mean...

Also, I notice in my post above that I make it look as if Out Stealing Horses is an essay by George Orwell, which of course it isn't! No doubt we all know this, but I am clarifying anyway: it's a novel by Pers Petterson, which uses language in a beautifully evocative way.

Wow, you're reading so many books I've never even heard of this month, Rena. Kudos to you!

By the way, I've finally started my own thread this year—and in Club Read, too! It's here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/81701

To all my dear devoted fans: I'm going offline for a week. Amuse yourselves while I'm gone with my just-started Would like to read in 2010 collection.

While I'm gone I might finish Out Stealing Horses (I'm leaving this house and the book behind today, but maybe will be able to get hold of another copy) and will return at last *drumroll* to Les Miserables.

And thanks Nathan, you are constantly reading books I have never heard of, so it's only fair!

See you when I'm *sigh* back at work...

I'm glad to see your comments on the Fagles translation, Muse. Someone on LT recommended that one to me a couple years ago, and I haven't done anything about it. It sounds like that's not the one I want to read either. BTW, I loved The Guernsey Literary-and-All-the-Rest-of-It too.

Great idea for a collection - books I'd like to have read by the end of 2010. I wonder if making a collection like that would be a good way to avoid 'book floundering' every time I finish a book? Y'know, wandering distractedly from shelf to shelf, idly thumbing through a tome or two, drifting backwards and forwards wondering what on earth to read next? Hmmm... *shamelessly runs off to own library, hiding Rena's idea gleefully under her coat*

Ellie, I've done that and it's been really helpful so far. It helps me keep tabs on what I want to accomplish in my reading this year. Plus I just love lists :)

See you when you get back, Chocolate!

>43 elliepotten: Ellie - the emphasis is on would like, as you indicate. As soon as I HAVE to read something, I immediately don't want to. Sadly, I'm having that problem with Les Mis at the moment, despite the fact that it's undoubtedly a fabulous book.

Ellie, I checked your profile, and you haven't done it yet...! What's going on?? :)

>42 laytonwoman3rd: lt3rd (Linda, isn't it??) - the more I think back on it the more I like that book. I've found myself recommending it to people in Real Life quite a bit. My mum loved it!

As you see, I'm back. I've been reading Agatha Christie instead of Les Mis, and I haven't got hold of another copy of Out Stealing Horses yet. So I'm stuck in the ether at the moment with my reading.

I've created the collection but time has NOT been on my side for actually filling it... First I had a migraine that meant I could hardly look at a screen for two days, and then my mum made an unexpected trip up to my flat and discovered the piles of books all over the place and had a little meltdown... We're putting the house on the market soon and this place isn't fit to be seen by anyone outside of LT (who would appreciate the bookish clutter) right now!

Hope your enjoyment of Les Mis isn't dampened too much... My 1010's staying pretty open for precisely that reason. I've got a few ideas of what I might read for each category, but I'm chopping and changing depending on what I fancy.

I made my 2010 collection the other day, and it's ridiculously large and stuffed with classics. There's no way I'll make it through it all, but it's pretty to look at. :P

Exactly - and if it's pretty to look at, you're more likely to browse through it and nestle in amongst the titles like a child in a flower-filled meadow, don't you think? Thus making you more likely to read from the list without feeling pressured. :-)

Here's an interesting article on the way social media has changed the way people read. It never mentions LT, and I wonder if the mentioning of it would change the tone of the article which is, I think, a shade patronising towards people who discuss what they're reading with others. It seems to assume that socially networking your reading means you're far more interested in the socialising than the book, which tells me that Motoko Rich is missing a rather large point there.

But I do agree in one sense. Since I started discussing my reading on LT, it's benefited me by forcing me to think more clearly about what I'm reading and to become more of a critical reader; but that very fact has its downside. I've lost that snuggling in pyjamas sense of privacy in my reading, and that comfy feeling that I can read what I like, how I like, and that no one's ever gonna know. And, biggest downside of all - by being so critical, it's become so much harder to wholeheartedly enjoy a book, and to become immersed in it from the inside. A part of me is now always sitting on the outside, analysing the book and my own reactions to it.

Somehow, I think this whole idea is teetering on the edge of a vast discussion that's surely being held somewhere out there, about education and being educated.

*scary*

Ellie and Nathan, I have been browsing your beautiful TBR 2010 collections with vast enjoyment. My enjoyment is not the only vast thing either, I'll be interested to see how much you get through this year! The more impossible such lists are the better, methinks. Takes the pressure off and turns them into the flower-filled meadows of Elliedom.

I'm back into Les Mis and enjoying it again. As I mentioned on the currently reading thread, I LOVED the Waterloo section. Here's a copy and paste of my reaction:

Just finished with Waterloo... wow... Hugo name-drops a bit confusingly for someone not familiar with the history, but his descriptions are like living paintings (rather than film). Mist and blood and sabres, and rain, and mud. {endquote}

I am still re-reading Agatha Christie here and there... sorry Amy for not devoting myself solely to Les Mis, but I need to do this, for those moments when my brain simply will not take anything heavy in. I started off with the flamboyantly sensational - The Listerdale Mystery: short stories involving beautiful women, desperate plots, and people suddenly discovering that their husband is a wife-murderer of long standing; and The Secret Adversary: an unabashedly lurid thriller about Lost Important Government Papers and an imminent war, with one of those arch-villains that control vast networks of international crime. Now I'm reading Pocket full of Rye, which is a Miss Marple, but full of generally unpleasant characters. None of these have ever been favourites of mine, it's just filling a need I have at the moment for something with absolutely no vestige of intellectionism (it's a word now, I said so) anywhere in sight.

That's fascinating stuff about how reading has been affected by social media. And yes, the author of that article is definitely biased in favor of the more "classy" private reader (ha).

Laura Miller, a staff writer for Salon and the author of “The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia,” speculated that it was the more bookish people who tended to fiercely guard their private reading worlds. Casual readers, by contrast, are drawn by the social aspects.

I already dislike Miller because of her nastiness that comes out in The Magician's Book; the woman is rabid, frothing at the mouth, on the topic of Christianity. It's hard to take her seriously. And this just makes me dislike her all the more. How dare she make a judgment about whether or not I am "bookish" or "serious" about reading? She doesn't know me, and she doesn't seem to have much experience of serious readers who also like to seriously dialogue about what they are reading. She's the poorer for it.

I think that engaging in social reading is a trade-off. It's helped me become a sharper, more critical reader, and I have gotten so many fantastic recommendations and made a lot of friends. It's stretched me, and that's a good thing. But yes, you do lose some of the privacy of it.

I guess the thing is that we don't have to feel obligated to parse every line of what we read for the benefit of our buddies. You don't have to report in your thread everything that you read; don't feel pressured to do that.

And even though the past few years I have been extremely open about what I'm reading, wanting to discuss it with other readers, the experience of the actual reading is still between just me and the book. I curl up on my couch and pull a blanket up around me and lose myself in the author's world. When I emerge from that cocoon (literal and metaphorical!), I want to know if anyone else has been there too. It doesn't mean we were there together; but we might be fellow travelers who can reminisce about the places we have visited. If Laura Miller wants to say this makes me a casual (read: lazy) reader, whatever. I don't read to impress her anyways! :-P

And my dear Chocolate, it's perfectly okay that you aren't flying through Les Mis. Read it in the way that works for you. I agree, Waterloo is amazing. I don't get all the name-drops either but it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment.

The Secret Adversary is high on my list; it's been highly recommended and it sounds quite fun in an M. M. Kaye-mystery kind of way. International intrigue and all that. I read A Pocket Full of Rye when we were spending a weekend in Niagara Falls with some friends and it was terribly rainy. I was so worn out from being social all day that I escaped to our room later that evening and downed the book in two hours. It was like a lifeline.

Amy, I actually second Rena's opinion on The Secret Adversary: parts of it were fun, but in the end it left me unmoved. And the ending was pure cheese.

I dislike what you've related about Miller's Lewis book as well, but she wrote an excellent article on our current obsession with Jane Austen that Rena posted on my profile page. Check it out!

Wow. I feel like I've just had a spanking. That was a pretty strongly worded article. Interesting to note that we're neither classy nor bookish because we like to discuss what we've read.

Since joining LT and attempting to write down my thoughts about what I read, I've found that I remember more about each book and read more thoughtfully. Reading about other people's literary experiences has allowed me access to a huge number of books I'd never heard of and enriches my reading by making it less prey to whatever was featured on the bookstore's front tables or at eye level in the library. I'm not convinced that this has hindered my ability to lose myself in a book; I think that it has raised the chances of my being able to by enhancing the quality of the books I read.

I would be more willing to agree with her if she'd argued that sites like LT result in dustier houses or unwatched televisions.

I think part of it is that Miller is very proud of her untaught, intense secret love for books that she's had since childhood. It figures HUGELY in The Magician's Book; she goes on and on about how she was a very private child, how real her books were to her, etc. As if she's the only one that ever was like that, sheesh. She wants to make it exclusive because she is so proud of it, and so if she can dismiss chatty readers as "not serious," all the better for her ego.

No wonder you feel spanked, RG. You're meant to feel that way.

I'll have to look at that article, Nathan, as little as I like the thought of Miller and I agreeing on something... :)

Thanks for the article, and it really was not completely critical of social networking as part of reading. I chuckled at one concern--that people spend more time on line than they do reading. I think all of us have lamented that possibility here ;-).

Another quote by Miller that I really take issue with:

“If you want to build a culture where people who could just as easily watch a movie are going to instead say, ‘Oh, I’m going to read this Tracy Chevalier book or ‘The Kite Runner,’ ” Ms. Miller said, “then they do need that kind of stuff like the book groups and discussion guides.”

I actually don't go to movies or watch television at all, but many (probably most) of the "friends" I have made here do and they still are clearly well-read and are thoughtful readers. And I certainly don't see any "group think" going on here.

As a result of this "social networking" I have been introduced to what might be considered to be obscure authors and have been prompted to read books that I thought were beyond me. Thank you, LT!

I reviewed Miller's The Magician's Book here on LT and have discussed it with several people. Does that make me a casual reader, or is that one okay because it was Miller's and not one of those popular (read: lowbrow) Chevalier or Hosseini books?

:-P

Wait. How is writing a book about books you liked substantially different than writing about them in a blog or on a site like LT? I mean, there's more of it and you're doing it for fame and money, but she seems to have condemned herself as someone who, by her own definition, can't be considered "bookish".

I am feeling disgruntled. She irks me.

That's very true, RG! Aren't these threads just mini-blogs that we SERIOUS readers maintain not because they are our gainful employment, but because we just love to do it? Miller is a staff writer for The Salon and her articles appear online. It must mean she's not really serious or bookish.

If this irks you, try her book (at least the one I read). It's just brimming with ego.

Hello, Mlle. Muse, I hope you don't mind if I drop in on your very inviting and chocolate-y conversation. May I have a caramel macchiato? I can't drink them in real life b/c they're fat-making.

I did not like that article. First of all, it seems that the omission of LT is a hoooge oversight. My world changed 2 1/2 years ago when I found LT b/c for the first time in my life I found dozens of people with whom I could discuss books. Unless you work in a library, I think that's pretty rare. If your average person reads anything, it's the stuff you can find on the shelves at the grocery store. This is a private book world. While open to the public, we self-select as voracious readers of what I call "real" books. (Yes, I'm a book snob. So be it.) I hesitate to discuss what I'm reading with any old Joe I run into; if he's not a reader he may crash into my sensibilities. No such worries here.

Perhaps we should write Ms. Miller a letter and set her straight.

stupid and pointless article, full of wishy washy thinking. The writer conflates reading with talking about reading. the first is a private solitary experience, the second is a social one. they are two different activities. Claiming that the web has made reading a social experience is just unclear thinking. Talking about one's reading is the social experience, not the reading itself. Also, the article suffers from a lack of historical perspective (very common in most journalistic writing)

During the 19th century, for example, discussion and debate about books was carried on in the vast number of literary journals and magazines. Also, it was the custom then for books to be read allowed in the family circle and then discussed. THey had no TV, so what alse did they do but read and talk about their books.

the article is right about one thing, though: the time wasted on reading crap like that when we could be reading books, or having more meaningful conversations about our reading, like we do here in Club Read and this gorgeous cafe. I learn more from you guys than from journos and their drivel.

Rant over. Carry on.

Nice rant, Murr! I concur - and with everyone. Thanks for the article Muse!

60 - Good point. I often think that people who bemoan the rise in technology and wish for a return to the past are primarily thinking about a past they remember in their lifetime and not the a historical past to which they think they are referring.

Besides, one of the main reasons I grew up loving to read is because my mom read aloud to us every night until my youngest sister could read on her own (I was about 12 at that point). I think that qualifies as social reading as well.

I have been reading through the whole discussion about conversations about books, and according to the account of Miller's article given, it reminds me very much of those who similarly put down writing programs and groups. There are various arguments presented about that, from how it robs the writer of the necessary incubation period of their work because they discuss it before it is ready, or that it imposes a kind of group think on the work. But writing is a lonely business, and groups are a support when we might lose faith, and a source of another point of view which can't be imagined. The ranters on this have always felt very snobbish to me, implying that the true writers won't need recourse to this support. I say use whatever keeps you going and strengthens you. Writers who don't have group probably have other sources of support and feedback in their lives. Our individuality is not so fragile that our writing or our private responses to books is going to be threatened by discussion.

I LOVE this! Thanks everyone!

Funnily enough, we all seem to agree that sites like LT are worthy, and the people who use them are intelligent.

As our feline friend points out, reading is one thing, talking about reading is another thing, and then socially reading together or aloud is yet another, and all three have their useful and exellent place in life. (I wish I had someone to read aloud to and be read to by...). Probably the way we approach each thing as individuals is what makes a person 'bookish' or 'social' or whatever - rather than whether we do them at all.

I took that article semi-seriously because it was from the NY Times, and I thought that was, though journalism, at least something written for relatively serious-minded people. But after reading this discussion and looking at the article again, I feel I should apologise for taking up your time with an article that belongs more suitably in something like Women's Day. (But then this discussion wouldn't have happened, so I don't apologise really)

solla, thanks for your thoughts on writing groups too - in general, ours is a society that sees collaboration as something that adds value to almost anything... except Oh So Mistiquical Art (another word for the CM dictionary). I did my undergrad degree in professional writing, and the approach we learned there is that in general, anyone who thinks of writing as a divine inspiration from the Great Muse (i.e. one not made of chocolate), is having themselves on, and needs a cup of strong coffee or a nice lie-down.

The above thought though, is something Dickens would cheerily agree with and Yeats would have a blue fit at the mere idea, so it probably depends.

Haha! Excellent point about Dickens and Yeats!

On the side of Yeats, let's consider this poem by Lermontov:

The Angel
An angel was crossing the pale vault of night,
and his song was as soft as his flight,
and the moon and the stars and the clouds in a throng
stood enthralled by this holy song.

He sang of the bliss of the innocent shades
in the depths of celestial glades;
he sang of the Sovereign Being, and free
of guile was his eulogy.

He carried a soul in his arms, a young life
to the world of sorrow and strife,
and the young soul retained the throb of that song
-without words, but vivid and strong.

and tied to this planet long did it pine
full of yearnings dimly divine,
and our dull little ditties could not replace
songs belonging to infinite space.

That's gorgeous, Murr, thank you. I'm sure Yeats would be madly in love with the idea of being that young soul himself.

#64 - Muse, don't apologize. I thought the article was worth a read. Despite Murr's killing fundamental point ("The writer conflates reading with talking about reading.") it was interesting, even if we don't agree with her. (her being MOTOKO RICH, the writer of the article.)

*GASP* She's still here!

That's right folks, ChocolateMuse has re-entered the café. Reason: I have at last abandoned Les Mis after three painful months of stubborn and unhappy determination. It's not that I so hugely dislike the book, though I certainly don't love it - more that I felt I had to read it, and thus rebelled constantly.

Despite the fact that I only read up to Jean Valjean's plans to leave the convent in a coffin, I have nevertheless decided to write a review. I mean, I gave the thing three months! Surely I am entitled to write about it!

So... review HERE. (I'm out of practice with reviews, I think it shows).

And now... ah, the freedom. I stand atop the universe and own it all. I can read whatever I want! So I'm now reading Goodbye to all that by Robert Graves. I have long had a fascination with WWI, and this is the most honest, unembittered, unromanticised contemporary account of that war I have yet read - without being at all bland or overly objective.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I propose a toast *holds up strong espresso*... To non-compulsory reading!

The sad fact is, Hugo is simply a prejudiced and strong-minded old man.

*cries*

However, I'm with you on non-compulsory reading! :)

*ahem* I think I was a little harsh.

Apologies to Amy and Rique in particular. :(

Good review! As you know, I've yet to finish Les Mis. I'm about midway through it and believe I will get back to it before the summer. I enjoyed it, though, but not really as a novel, more as an historical artifact. And I can actually see myself rereading someday in another translation (she says boldly and, perhaps, stupidly). It's really been interesting to read everyone's varying reactions to it. I mentioned elsewhere that my daughter had a teacher (of a class called Global Citizenship) who claims this as his favorite book and swears he rereads it every one to two years!

I hear ya completely, though, about the freedom to read where the mood takes you.

To freedom! *holds up whatever she has to hand, which right now is chocolate Ovaltine and a packet of square crisps - how classy*

Good to have you back Rena, free of the Hugo-shaped millstone. That's not to say that I'll never tackle it myself, but it is a rather enormous millstone if it isn't doing anything for you...

Muse, enjoyed your review of Les Mis, especially the third paragraph.

I've got myself in the middle of quite a few books at the moment, which can all be put into nice neat categories.

Non fiction: Pathway to Music by Antony Hopkins
Audiobook: Barchester Towers - this has been going on for an awfully long time
Main book, as in the one I define as 'what I'm really reading right now': Goodbye to all that by Robert Graves
Re-read: Villette by Charlotte Bronte.

I'm enjoying them all, which is a nice change. Villette is giving me new insights I hadn't noticed before - Lucy Snowe as narrator is, particularly at first, purely an observer and not active at all, yet her character comes through far stronger than I noticed previously. Her observations are far from objective, and never err on the side of kindness. She can get quite nasty. It's fun.

*waves to you three who posted above* - thanks :)

Have you read any of Graves before? An Internet friend suggested I, Cladius to me many times, but I've yet to crack it.

75 - I, for one, will enthusiastically recommend I, Claudius.

Nathan, I haven't read anything by Graves before, but I have every intention now of reading anything by him I can find. I like his style, though I imagine his autobiography would be quite different from a historical novel.

>76 janemarieprice: ditto for I Claudius. There is also a sequel which is not as good, IMO it finishes rather abruptly. but I claudius is top notch historical fiction.

I shall certainly seek it out. I've now finished Goodbye to all that and my review is here: http://www.librarything.com/work/27768/reviews/56170356.

It's a literary, personal and straightforward account, I enjoyed it very much. As I say above, I want to read more by Graves; also to read more by his contemporaries - Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man for example.

Here, for my Club Read friends, is a bonus quote - Graves quotes it himself, as something he wrote during the war, calling the quote "facetious".

"War should be a sport for men above forty-five only, the Jesses, not the Davids. 'Well, dear father, how proud I am of you serving your country as a very gallant gentleman prepared to make even the supreme sacrifice! I only wish I were your age: how willingly would I buckle on my armour and fight those unspeakable Philistines! As it is, of course, I can't be spared; I have to stay behind at the War Office and administrate for you lucky old men. What sacrifices I have made!' David would sigh, when the old boys had gone off with a draft to the front, singing Tipperary: 'There's father and my Uncle Salmon, and both my grandfathers all on active service. I must put a card in the window about it."

Just before this quote, Graves says he and Sassoon no longer saw the war as one between trade rivals, but "merely a sacrifice of the idealistic younger generation to the stupidity and self-protective alarm of the elder". This is one of Graves' relatively rare spurts of bitterness that appear in the book.

The more I think about it, the more I recommend it!

Murr, guess what I got from the library yesterday... Chekhov's stories, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky! *throws balloons about in celebration*

Great review, Chocolate. I will have to seek out some of his work. I have I, Claudius, and it sounds like that's a good place to start.

I'm looking forward to your thoughts on Chekhov, as I haven't read anything of his myself yet. And speaking of Pevear and Volokhonsky, I received their translation of The Master and Margarita from BookMooch the other day. :) :)

Choc, you've certainly made Graves sound appealing, I will have to make room for him sometime. Enjoy Chekhov and make some time for his plays if you can.

Nice review of Goodbye To All That, ChocolateMuse! I heard it being read on the BBC radio program 'Off the Shelf' and loved it. I remember the narrative being enjoyable and lucid.

Oh you're going to read stories by Chekhov! I love Chekhov's short stories! My absolute favorite is a short story called The Kiss. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Hurrah!

I agree, an excellent review.

Sassoon's book is also good (although it is a fictionalised account).

You might also be interested in Old Soldiers Never Die, by Frank Richards.

Richards was a private in Graves' regiment, and so gives a foot soldier's perspective on the same events described by Graves.

Graves it was who encouraged Richards to write his story and who helped to get it published.

Thanks everyone! I've wishlisted Old Soldiers Never Die, zeno, it sounds excellent. Thanks for the rec.

I have begun on Chekhov and am intrigued. I read the introduction first, something I rarely do, but I'm glad I did this time. It helped me know what sort of things to look for and expect, particularly the impressionistic nature of his writing. I find it fascinating that impressionism in art, music and literature all emerged at around the same time. Did they influence each other, or was it something to do with society?

I've read The Huntsman and A Malefactor. They're very vivid. And gives one a sense of the uselessness of trying to change things.

I forgot to add - have you seen this? http://improveverywhere.com/2004/02/29/anton-chekov/

ETA: I should have said, the link is a prank staged by ImprovEverywhere. They put on a 'book signing' where a guy dressed up as Chekhov signed his book The Cherry Orchard. Heaps of people apparently believed he was real, despite Chekhov having been dead for almost a century.

I wrote #85 in a hurry, and I didn't manage to say all I wanted to say about the Chekhov stories. I've read a few modernist works before that are all about the hopelessness of trying to change things (Conrad's The Secret Agent comes to mind), and they are in my experience bleak, sordid things, full of ugliness and dirt. Still interesting, sometimes darkly funny, but left me wanting some sunshine and maybe a shower afterwards.

What I've found in Chekhov so far is that somehow all that bleakness isn't there. Something about the stories so far is bright, even joyful. I think it might be that Chekhov really likes his characters, and we like them too. The huntsman in the story of that name is blond, handsome, casually heroic (in a physical sense only), and the most total egoist I've ever met in fiction. He reminds me of the fictional portrayal of the American GIs in WWII, though with more complete self-absorption. His red shirt (or hat?), blond hair, the sunshine and the wheatfields, his looseness of limb, his almost childlike way of talking about himself... I think this is what I meant by 'vivid'. It's beautiful. Even the woman, his neglected wife, is soft and loving and is experiencing one moment of happiness in an otherwise hard peasant life. The story remains with me almost like a real memory of something that happened to me.

And yet, the huntsman goes his own way, and the wife goes back to her labour and poverty and empty house, and we know that nothing's ever going to get better for them, and nothing's ever going to change.

I won't go on about A Malefactor now, but the interaction of the two main characters is vivid and real - funny on the surface, frustratingly sad underneath. And the characters themselves we probably wouldn't like in life, but we like them here because Chekhov does. Even the magistrate, I think.

I keep coming back to the 'impressionist' description. We are just with the characters for a moment in time. They go away with no deeper understanding, no change of character, no plot arc - but we see a moment in their life with great clarity and sympathetic understanding.

That's at least my impression so far.

The story remains with me almost like a real memory of something that happened to me.

That is the essence of Chekhov, I think. I'm so glad you're enjoying him.

"Something about the stories so far is bright, even joyful. I think it might be that Chekhov really likes his characters, and we like them too."

#87 - I haven't read Chekhov in awhile, but I vaguely recall that how much he loves his characters, how well he brings them out, and how much we get to like them too because of that.

I'm glad I seem to be 'getting' Chekhov, thanks.

For the record, I wrote a slightly rushed review of Pathway to Music here: http://www.librarything.com/work/4252291/reviews/57080746.

*ahem* I wish to make a request if I may: could people only thumb my reviews if they really do find them helpful? I have ceased to get joy from my hot reviews because it feels like people are just thumbing them to make me happy, which is incredibly nice of you all, but not what I actually want. (I hope this isn't a completely crazy request!) Thanks :)

No worries, Chocolate. I only thumb the reviews of yours that I truly like (which is the majority of them... though I will say I didn't thumb your Les Mis :{)

Well I'm glad to hear it! Les Mis didn't make it to HR, so maybe people are more honest with their thumbs than I thought :) Thanks Amy.

I turned to comfort reading over the weekend (it was that kind of weekend) and have now discovered Barbara Pym. I only wrote a very short review, here: http://www.librarything.com/work/14407/reviews/57701488

"merely a sacrifice of the idealistic younger generation to the stupidity and self-protective alarm of the elder".

So true! I'm going to read this book then send it on to my son. You mentioned in your review that you thought the book would have been better if he had ended it sooner. Do you think the last part about his life after the war takes away from the importance of what he says about war?

P.S. I know what you mean about the thumbing of reviews. I never really look at that section of my home-page anymore. Many of the HR's are well-deserved--there are a lot of good writers on LT--but some seem to reflect more the enthusiastic support of friends in the same group.

Hi Bonnie! Nice to see you here! :)

No, I don't think the latter part takes away from what he says about the war. I just think it was unnecessary, and a bit like someone who's stood up and given an excellent speech at a function, but then doesn't know when to stop, and keeps going, and going, and going...

Yeah, I really appreciate having enthusiastic friends, it's part of what I love about LT, but lately I've been having a half shameful feeling that hot reviews are just a popularity contest.

on the other hand, thumbing your friends' reviews gets them up on the HR page where more of the LT community can see them.

I have read many great reviews - and thus been introduced to great books and some really good review writers - which I would otherwise have missed if they had not been thumbed so enthusiastically by their writer's friends.

Yes indeed, but hopefully that means that you think your friend's review is worth being read by the LT community - because of the review, not because they're your friend - and in that case a thumb is an excellent thing to give a friend. That's what a thumb is for (IMO), and I'm all in favour of it. :)

I know what you mean, Lorena. But I agree with tomcat too. And if a review really is unworthy or perhaps merely uninteresting to the bulk of the community, it falls off the list soon enough.

Problem is, most of what my friends write is indeed worthy of wider acclaim, in my opinion... hence the thumbs! :)

I like it when I see thumbs on my review or when they become hot reviews. I’m not a reader of the popular books. Most of the time I read some rather odd old book or some heavy duty classic or something. So, when I see thumbs I really hope that someone else is appreciating these unusual books, most of which (in my opinion) deserve a much wider readership. And when once in a blue moon they do become hot, I feel so glad! Not because my review is on the HR list, but because through this I ardently hope that someone else may find these books, take a look at them, read them and find joy in them. :-)

Porua, amen. I like that very much. In that respect at least, you entirely convince me.

Well okay, Amy and Murr as well... I see everyone's point of view and have retired to the fence, which, though not made of barbed wire, is still rather uncomfortable.

But actually, I think we're mostly saying the same thing really. I still hit everyone else's thumbs freely, because they always deserve it. I guess we've all chosen friends who have something worthwhile to say about worthwhile books to read, so my whole argument is possibly not even necessary.

*Leaves fence and goes to corner, and sits there rocking and biting fingernails*

On a more cheery note, I have finally finished Barchester Towers, and loved it. I'm left with a feeling of sunny streets, ancient cathedrals, and characters who are characters.

Review here: http://www.librarything.com/work/14216/reviews/51448732

Excellent review. I thumbed it because I found it helpful. ;) Trollope is another of those authors I have yet to read.... Would you agree with the critical consensus that Barchester is an improvement on The Warden?

:-D I do get excited about meaningful thumbs! Thanks Nathan!

And yes, emphatically yes, BT is an enormous improvement on The Warden. The latter is more one-dimensional, mainly concentrates on Mr Harding, who is a little too virtuous to be interesting, and has a large emphasis on legal and administrative matters which would no doubt interest more logical minds than mine. I mildly enjoyed it though. Here's an early review of mine, from about a year ago: http://www.librarything.com/work/15281/reviews/43749799

I forgot to add the other thing that annoyed me about BT though - in the final chapter, Trollope starts talking about how endings never satisfy people and all about the novelist's dilemma - metafiction it may be (if I've got the right term) but it pulled me right out of the story, which I didn't think suited this kind of book.

ChocolateMuse - so nice to meet another LT chocoholic! For myself, I can not imagine reading without a cup of chile arbol hot cocoa (once a day anyway)!

Re: the discussion about reading and social networking earlier - I can't imagine NOT discussing my reading! That's part of how I process my response - by hashing it out with someone. I think it's just become a widespread knee-jerk reaction to criticize the culture of social networking. Perhaps the subtext of the critique has to do with the practice of creating an identity through acts of online self-presencing. Do our LT libraries handily catalogue our personal libraries, or do they (really) project the image of ourselves that we want in the social world (literate, intelligent etc)? For me, I think my library does both - it is a useful organizational tool AND it reflects the quite specific identity of myself as a reader.

16 - I also read Tolkien's Gown - though in Canada my edition was called Nabakov's Butterfly. I enjoyed the glimpse into the rare book trade and the stories behind Gekoski's dealings with writers, but I was sometimes annoyed with him. His discussion of Plath certainly replays (uncritically) every cliche in her biography. Overall, I agree that the book is basically anecdotal and that's the part that succeeds.

Hi cocaofiend, welcome to my café! Help yourself to that very exotic sounding cocoa of which you speak - I've never tried it myself.

Yes, I think social networking is too often written off as the refuge for angsty teens and lonely housewives, which is an understatement of such an amazing resource, as we LTers know! :)

I'm glad you enjoyed Tolkien's Gown too - and Nabokov's Butterfly is a better title.

I have finished and reviewed Villette here: http://www.librarything.com/work/3113/reviews/24214846.

It's such an atmospheric book, so dark and gothic, with its ghostly nun and its vivid dream scene when Lucy is drugged and goes to a night-time festival in the park. Such a prosaic character in such atmospheric conditions! It was a reread of many times over for me.

"...a beauty only the elect can see."

I'd thumb you just for that phrase, Rena! I like your comparisons between Bronte's two novels.

Thanks Amy! I love LT - writing that review clarified my thoughts in a way I wouldn't otherwise have done.

And I do appreciate all the thumbs, and am feeling a bit silly over the whole fuss I made... :(

I have started The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I'm devouring it, it's got a kind of fascination I don't fully understand. It's more intelligent than I am, I fear, but still amazing to read. There's a horrific scene in it though, that's going to haunt me for a while...

Ooh, I love Murakami. I get that "fascination you don't fully understand" bit. TW-UBC is my second favorite (behind Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World). I confess that I skimmed that scene, though. I rarely do something like that, but I'm not great with violence.

Meddy!!! Long time no see!!

I skimmed it too, but it was still more than enough to bother me quite a bit.

I was going to make Kafka on the shore my next Murakami, but I just might aim for Hard-Boiled Wonderland etc instead. Awesome title.

Gosh, I really should surface more often, if I'm getting that sort of reaction. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it. :)

Kafka On the Shore is my #3, I think. You can't go wrong with either of those, though Kafka is really weird, even compared to other Murakami. Hard-Boiled Wonderland is weird, too, but I could make a lot more sense out of it.

Wonderful review of Villette Rena - my uni housemate Tom read it for his uni course and adored it, but somehow I've still never managed to finally get it down from my shelves. It's only been there, ooooh, about seven years now... Time for it to see the light at last, methinks!

Choc, I have to tell you that catching up on your thread (and rereading the earlier January discussion) is a delight at 3 a.m. Good stuff here!

Love your review of Villette. I am always unsure whether or not I have read it. I think I started it one summer during a move and never finished. Might be time to get around to it.

Thanks avaland! Thanks Ellie! Thanks Jane! And Meddy, please do surface MUCH more often!

Have put aside Chekhov for a while, even though I'm enjoying him very much. I'll return it to the library and come back to it later. I've never been great with short stories in a collection. I read a few and then get caught up with longer works somewhere else. But Chekhov is amazing, and he works well for me at the moment particularly, since I'm also discovering Debussy and the more impressionistic bits of Prokofiev, both for the first time. Impressionism of music and literature together, in this rainy autumn, is a most enjoyable way of living.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is heavy-going and very absorbing. I keep thinking he should have named this book The Hard-Boiled Wonderland. I mean, so much of the strangeness happens as a result of going down a deep hole in the ground! I'm getting closer to the end now, and some of the strange things are beginning, slowly, to link up. Such an intelligent book.

And avaland, I hope you got some sleep. 3am! Oh dear! :)

Hi, ChoccolateMuse! I haven't read Villette yet so staying clear of your review but congrats on its being so hot!

I see you are reading Murakami. I was at the book store the other day (Seriously, where else would I be!) and saw his Kafka on the Shore. I thought of picking it up but chickened out at the last moment. His books seem so complex! Maybe I should give it a go.

The Hard-Boiled Wonderland? LOL!

Hi Porua, start with Wind-Up Bird - Meddy says above that Kafka's kind of complex, and I had a look at it in the library yesterday and agree that it looks a bit much.

Amy, the full title is Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Even more cool!

Maybe I’ll gather enough nerve and take a plunge in to Murakami’s works with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle after all. Thanks, Muse!

Going back a bit about the whole thumbs thing, the nature of thumbs IS strange. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a review of a book called Nightmare Abbey. It’s a classic satire on Gothic novels and I presume hardly anyone here at LT has ever heard of it.

After that I got really busy with my off-line life and couldn’t come to LT for a few days. When I finally logged in after about a week to my surprise the review had ten thumbs.

Now, my reviews hardly ever get more than one or two thumbs. So, that really surprised me. Till this day I wonder who gave my review all of those thumbs and why? I really enjoyed writing that review so that makes me even more curious. Why would a review of a rather obscure little book written by poor little me get all those thumbs? Makes me wonder.

I would guess because it isn't as obscure as you thought, and a lot of people have heard of it but haven't read it, and your review helped them decide if it was worth pushing higher on the TBR list. Plus it was just a good review! ;)

For those interested in trying Murakami for the first time, I would NOT recommend starting with Wind up Bird. This book is kind of a watershed in his writing: before and after Wind up bird are like two totally different writers. Early Murakami is lyrical and romantic, after WUB he gets darker, and nastier elements begin to surface. If you begin with WUB it will be harder to enjoy the early stuff as it's meant to be enjoyed.

Start with Hard Boiled Wonderland, or Norwegian Wood, or South of the Border, West of the Sun.

just my two cents worth.

That's why I voted for the Norwegian Wood group read even though I already had Wind-Up Bird Chronicle--still love that cover though.

Thank you Murr, I didn't know. I picked up Norwegian Wood the other day and thought then that I probably should have started with that. But too late now.

I'll try to block out my reading of WUB when I do get to it and Wonderland!

No new reading to report, unless people want to hear about the stuff I'm reading for my studies... Designing Courses for Higher Education anyone? :-p

#116, #117 - the chapter headings of Hard-Boiled Wonderland are as fantastic as the title. I remember I was reading the book on a bus journey between London and Oxford, and when we got to the bus station the woman sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked me what the book was, because she'd been so intrigued by the chapter headings!

For what it's worth, I started with Hard-Boiled Wonderland and adored it. I read Norwegian Wood after that and, meh. I still haven't really warmed to it, though I've been thinking of rereading it, especially after some references in a brilliant essay by Richard Powers. It lacks that fantastical element that I love in Murakami. I used to think it lacked that mysterious "otherness" that Murakami's works have, too, but Powers convinced me that I must be wrong. Wind-Up Bird was my third Murakami.

(If I went back and did it differently, I'd read Hard-Boiled Wonderland, Wind-Up Bird, and Kafka as my first three.* But this is just my own preference; I like to read an author's best works* first, then fill in the others. (*YMMV) )

I don't really see a great divide between pre-Wind-Up Bird and post-Wind-Up Bird. For me, the nastier elements always seemed to be present, if latent, in his earlier work. Like, lurking in the corner of your eye, quiet, ominous music in the horror movie before the action sort of stuff. Even if Wind-Up Bird is a huge turning point, I wonder if it wouldn't be interesting to start with that pivot point and then use it as a reference?

Here's to different points of view! :) I shall cease to worry about my reading order.

I finished Wind-Up Bird last night and am now gasping for breath. I have no idea how I'm going to write anything about it. Like asking a flea to write a dissertation on the Colosseum. But I guess I have to try...

And with all this talk about Hard-Boiled Wonderland, I can't wait to start on it! But I have a few others lined up first.

Meddy, forgive my ignorance, but I cannot work out what YMMV stands for. You Must Murder Valerie? Yellow Makes Me Vomit? Somehow, neither seems to fit in with the context.

I'll let Medellia tell you that YMMV means your mileage may vary.

Unless it has changed in recent decades, the Colosseum has a huge colony of cats. Depending on the flea it could be a paradise. The flea of a certain character would be happy to let others know about that.

I was not taken by the first page of Kafka on the Shore, but I am still hopeful of hearing a variety of opinions on Murakami to guide me in my self-discipline or some such. Bite off only what you can chew, but bite away.

Robert

I was not taken by the first page of Kafka on the Shore, but I am still hopeful of hearing a variety of opinions on Murakami to guide me in my self-discipline or some such.

Try the second page. I thought it was a very fine page indeed. YMMV.

Thanks for the clarification; now I won't be able to rest until I've used it myself.

I have made a brave attempt at writing something about Wind-Up Bird - here: http://www.librarything.com/work/5069/reviews/53024463

129 - Nice review.

I have Kafka on the Shore so I've appreciated everyone's thoughts here.

Let me second that. Thank you for the review. I expect that I will get back to him, and Wind Up Bird Chronicle is one of the two books by him that I have.

Robert

I appreciate the appreciation of my fellow fleas, no insult intended :) Thanks.

I have now started Middlemarch for the third time - I've never got much further than the Casaubons' honeymoon in the past - could not get into it. Since Meddy read and loved it so much last year I've been meaning to try it again. Much better this time around... so far.

An interesting quote: Who can tell what just criticisms Murr the Cat may be passing on us beings of wider speculation? - Allusion to E.T.A Hoffmann? Prescient allusion to our present-day (but long-lived) Salon and Club Read friend and mentor? Or was Murr a common generic cat name at the time?

I tried out Middlemarch a couple of times as well, before really settling down and enjoying it. It's not a book you can skim, or read in bits and pieces--I don't think anyway. Once I slowed way down and really paid attention to each sentence, I loved it! But don't think I would pick it up and read it again.

131> can you give us more context for that quote?

Middlemarch! Middlemarch Middlemarch Middlemarch!! Glad it's going better so far. I agree with Bonnie--it's best to give yourself over to Middlemarch (as you seem to have done with Murakami). And if it still isn't doing it for you, don't make yourself suffer as you did with Les Miserables. :) Abandon it & assume that it's not for you (at this time or maybe ever).

Murrmurr! Surely you haven't forgotten Eliot's reference to the Tomcat Murr. My eyes lit up when I read it.

"Well, I am sorry for Sir James. I thought it right to tell you, because you went on as you always do, never looking just where you are, and treading in the wrong place. You always see what nobody else sees; it is impossible to satisfy you; yet you never see what is quite plain. That's your way, Dodo." Something certainly gave Celia unusual courage; and she was not sparing the sister of whom she was occasionally in awe. Who can tell what just criticisms Murr the Cat may be passing on us beings of wider speculation?
Middlemarch, Volume One, Chapter 4

PS-- Kudos on your Wind-Up Bird review. I have never been gutsy enough to write anything about Murakami. His works tickle me in places that are not easy to put into words.

Thanks for your kind permission to abandon, Meddy. I have no intention of taking you up on it YET, and I will try to keep the pressure off, which'll help a lot. I think it was mostly the pressure that made me detest Les Mis, and I continue to feel that I didn't give it a fair chance.

Thanks Bonnie, it's encouraging to see that someone else has been in the same situation. I have been savouring the sentences more this time around.

Oh and Meddy, thanks both for extended quote and for WUB kudos. I felt like a bit of an upstart to attempt to write anything about it, and my 'review', with all its kind thumbs, hasn't really got anywhere near describing its impact.

Murr, I do look forward to your primary-source enlightenments on the appearance of Yourself in Middlemarch.

oh dear it's been a while since I read Middlemarch, and I did forget that quote, yes, so thanks for reminding me. (dammit, what did she NOT put in that book?)

Good luck with your read, Ms Muse, Middlemarch is simply heavenly. And well done on Murakami as well.

Rena- Just let me know if/when my enthusiasm for Middlemarch begins to feel like pressure. I'll back off. ;)

Murrmurr: (dammit, what did she NOT put in that book?)
Exactly!

Maybe someday you will be inspired to give Les Mis another try. But be sure to keep it a secret, and don't tell me of all people :-P

Lovely reviews lately!

A certain change in Mary's face was chiefly determined by the resolve not to show any change.

I'm enjoying the sentences like that one, where you suddenly realise that something you've never thought about is incredibly familiar.

Going slowly, but still liking it.

I will add that I also read the whole of I Capture the Castle on Saturday. I picked it up intending to try it out before lending it to my sister, and six hours later I was reading the last page, having got absolutely nothing else done. But I don't want to review it beyond that, I don't know what to say about it and for reasons I can't quite work out, I don't want to pull apart my complicated reactions to it. It's not an incredibly deep book or anything... I just don't know.

It has Happened. I've fallen headlong in love with Middlemarch at last. Why on earth it took me so long I have no idea.

These intricacies of interaction and reaction and thought... gkkk I can't explain it but it's awesome.

Take Lydgate's decision of who to vote for - so many little factors and influences; such a complicated decision, and so irritating because it all seems so petty and worthless, and yet he has to worry about making the right decision. And the way he shows up late simply because he's so annoyed by the petty complication of the whole thing; and therefore has to make the deciding vote thus getting himself into a worse position, and then making a decision based on his annoyance at other people after all... and there's so much more to it than that, and it's just exactly like so many things in life, only no one else writes about it because it's so small and yet so big.

It's amazing. :)

Yaaaaaaaaaay. :) Reading Eliot, I kept wondering how this mortal being knew so very, very much about the inner lives of humans.

yes, absolutely. Eliot is Shakesperian in her understanding of people.

And, ms Muse, I Capture the Castle is one of my all time favourite comfort reads. if you decide to review it, I will read with pleasure and interest.

Zadie Smith (of White Teeth fame) has a fantastic essay in Changing My Mind about Middlemarch called Middlemarch and Everybody, which has me itching to read it again. I'd give you a synopsis, but I'd misrepresent it.

I am glad you love it. The BBC Mini Series is good too. Netflix has it.
ETA: Nevermind, I just realized you are in Australia and do not have NetFlix. It is on DVD though, so you should be able to get it.

Hmm, I tried Zadie Smith once and was so underwhelmed I've never been back. But that essay does sound good enough to track down, thanks!

jmaloney, I shall indeed. There's a version on You Tube with Spanish subtitles that gave me a sneak preview, but I stopped very soon because I don't want any spoilers, or, more importantly, to make me start imagining actors before I've read the book for myself. No one on earth could truly look or 'act' Dorothea... and what about Celia's blusehs that come and go like breathing? The movie would destroy so many nuances! But I still want to watch it.

Murrushka, one of the reasons I got hold of I Capture the Castle in the first place was seeing it in your library with the 'really great book' tag. (I still feel like a stalker whenever I reveal I've been prying in people's libraries.) I might review it some time, but it would be such a difficult review to write, I think because I related to it too personally, in a way that wouldn't relate to anyone else. Which I think is a high compliment to pay a book, but doesn't make for general reviews. I may yet see if I can find things that apply to others and write something. Maybe. Have you reviewed it?

no, I haven't, for many of the same reasons you mentioned. it's a pure pleasure-read for me.

Ah. Then I don't feel so bad. :)

it would be such a difficult review to write, I think because I related to it too personally, in a way that wouldn't relate to anyone else.

But that's just the kind of commentary I like, so talk on!

I've finished Middlemarch! And wow, Meddy, do I ever owe you big time for inspiring me to try it again the third time. To think what I almost missed! As I say in my review here: http://www.librarything.com/work/10108/reviews/55036443 I've actually never read anything as good as this before.

Well, I seem to be following a sort of Meddy syllabus this year - beginning with Murakami, going on to Middlemarch, and now I've started on The French Lieutenant's Woman. And I have every intention of reading an EM Forster after this. I'm actually not doing it on purpose, Meddy, it just happens to be what I want to read these days. So here I plod, one step behind you. :) It's a good journey.

>150 bonniebooks: Bonnie, well, maybe one day. I will say though, if you haven't already, don't watch the movie of I Capture the Castle. It's bad. Cheapens the whole thing to mere fluff.

Thumb! Thumb! Thumb! "It's a novel of failures in many respects, yet leaves us with the impression that to fail in a worthy cause is a worthwhile thing to do." Well said. Middlemarch is pretty much my gold standard now, too. And depending on the day you ask me, my favorite novel would be In Search of Lost Time or Middlemarch. (Even War & Peace takes a third place to Eliot.)

Glad you're taking the "best of Meddy" path this year. ;) Hope you enjoy The French Lieutenant's Woman, also a favorite of mine, as you know from the Salon. Quiet, unobtrusive postmodernism + Victorianism = ♥. Obtrusive narrator/author chiming in with observations, check. I still get a pleasant sense of mystery when I think about the book. And I loved imagining Sarah Woodruff at the Cobb, some imaginary decades after Anne Elliot and Louisa Musgrove. (I'm tempted to reread it now! Maybe before my 28th birthday in July--I'm 27 now, Anne's age--I can reread Persuasion + The French Lieutenant's Woman.) Speaking of Forster, at the moment, my reading life is hitting a lull. I'm eyeing A Passage to India, as my final "first foray" into Forster.

I tend to follow in the Cat's footsteps (shhhh--don't tell) with his "really great books," though I'm running many years behind him.

Gosh, what a responsibility!

Isn't it so exciting to fall in love with a book? So much easier than people. Or cats.

Seriously, you can't go wrong with Eliot as a gold standard for everything you read. That was a fantastic review.

Oh, you're making me want to reread so badly! Middlemarch is on my list for this year. Maybe I'll bring it on our vacation in May (along with 20 or so other books that I'm sure I won't get to). Very nice review, Lorena. And it's climbing steadily up the Hot Review ladder, too!

Medellia, I just turned 27 yesterday. Anne Elliot's age... that makes it seem better, I guess :)

#154: Happy late birthday, Amy! Nothing wrong with 27--you're a cube. Won't happen again 'til you're 64. :) Anne Elliot does put things into perspective; I can tell myself, hey, I haven't lost 8 years of my life, so I must be doing pretty well.

Wow, such praise from such esteemable people! :) :) Thanks, you three. And 21 thumbs, and a sudden rush of people adding me to their 'interesting libraries' list... I feel famous.

Meddy, possibly I shouldn't have dived straight into French Lieutenant's Woman so soon after Middlemarch. This godlike and all-knowing author-voice is so critical and almost mocking after Eliot's compassionate version of same, that I find myself arguing with him a lot. It's immersive though, and its atmosphere lingers after I force myself to put it down.

Happy birthday Amy! Since we're talking about it, I turn 26 this Friday.

Hello. Just wanted to say hi and that after your review I'm starting Middlemarch--it will take me awhile, but it's a book I've been wanting to read and now I feel I must.

:-)

Dawn

Welcome to my thread, Dawn! I hope you love Middlemarch as much as I did! Give it a good chance - I had to before I 'got' it.

My review seemes to have inspired a lot of people, it's great :)

I've ordered Daniel Deronda and hope to start on that maybe within the next month, I hope. Group (or partner) read, Meddy? I've got to finish FLW first, and then an EM Forster, probably A room with a view, so it won't be immediately. I also feel an Ishiguro read coming on... and I want to read Moby Dick over winter, while it's stormy and grey and appropriately atmospheric.

Speaking of Moby Dick, has anyone seen A_Musing lately? He seems to have dropped off the radar, which is a shame.

Meddy, possibly I shouldn't have dived straight into French Lieutenant's Woman so soon after Middlemarch. This godlike and all-knowing author-voice is so critical and almost mocking after Eliot's compassionate version of same
I think after reading Eliot, everything feels about as harsh as a smack over the head with a kipper. Or a slap across the face with a herring. I read FLW without having Eliot as a comparison, and I found the narrator's general tone to be one of gently ironic amusement. He's not without compassion for some of the characters (the last scene with Ernestina is particularly touching), I think, but his sympathy is not all-encompassing as with Eliot--man, he does not like that Mrs Poulteney.

I've ordered Daniel Deronda and hope to start on that maybe within the next month, I hope. Group (or partner) read, Meddy?
Ooh, yes please! I'm thinking of rereading A Room With a View soon also, so perhaps our dates will roughly coincide if this ends up being your Forster choice.

Oi! Don't mock a slap round the face with a herring! Few things are nicer!

But darling, I'm a vegetarian. And I don't think that soy herring exists. Nor is the demand for it likely to light a fire under some capitalist's tucus. *pout*

But Medellia,

Would you refuse a scrumptious dark chocolate herring served with strawberries and champagne?

Oh muse of chocolate,

If you liked I Capture the Castle, you might also enjoy Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker. Two Cassandra's. How can one go wrong?

Did I hear champagne? *clasps hands together pleadingly, deploys doe eyes*

Thanks urania, if I see it I'll give it a go. Looks good!

Meanwhile, I finished The French Lieutenant's Woman. *anticipatory cringe...* sorry Meddy and others who loved it. I didn't. Review here: http://www.librarything.com/work/6923/reviews/59159164

I've begun on Howards End, and am enjoying it muchly.

Meddy and co, you forget you are in a cafe. Dark chocolate herring with strawberries and champagne coming right up :) But doe eyes don't fill a tips bucket...

Too bad about FLW; I didn't get the same sense of the narrator that you did, but perhaps I'll change my mind on a reread (which I hope will be soon.) Hopefully Howards End will go better for you. My regard for Howards End has continued to rise since I first read it last summer. Eliot, Fowles, then Forster--you're getting a whole lotta intrusive narrator these days!

But doe eyes don't fill a tips bucket...
They do if you have enough of them! (ba-da, CHING)

Very interesting review!

I was particularly struck by the way you put your finger on the the importance of the theory of history in the book, (something I had not thought about when I read it - about 25 years ago gulp) and how yours differs from Fowles. Is Fowles a Hegelian?

You girls are gonna have a great time with Howard's End. I know I did. (Mwhahahaha)

And talking of tip buckets, may I please have a cup of very thick intensely dark hot chocolate, with a cinnamon stick in it, and a small saucer of fresh cream... oh! and a glass of Amaretto on the side, please.

Oh, missed the Middlemarch era but I always love hearing readers experience with this fantabulous book. Kudos to you, Muse, for taking it on. I love Eliot.

I was kind of interested to see what The French Lieutenant's Woman is like as a book. But seeing how you did not like it that much I'm not sure anymore. I don't like a patronizing narrator/author either.

I don't think that Fowles himself sees "that each succeeeding period in history is an improvement on the one before it." Next step in evolution = "better," "an improvement"--this seems to me to be taking a teleological view of evolution, which is false. Charles buys into this, IIRC, as a Victorian, but I can't imagine that Fowles himself would--not in any literal sense. And I also think that Fowles is too sensible to be a Hegelian, lol, but that's just my guess. I also felt that Fowles saw that our own time has its own societal constraints & machinery that limits us (even if we seem freer), just as the Victorians had constraints of their own.

This quote from FLW might be interesting to note--it doesn't seem so far from your own position:
"In a vivid insight, a flash of black lightning, he (Charles) saw that all life was parallel: that evolution was not vertical, ascending to a perfection, but horizontal. Time was a great fallacy; existence was without history, was always now, was always this being caught in the same fiendish machine. All those painted screens erected by man to shut out reality - history, religion, duty, social position, all were illusions, mere opium fantasies."

At any rate, "better" is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. As a woman, I can tell you that I would not hesitate an instant if given the choice between living during the Victorian period or during this period. I've read Middlemarch, after all--hell, no, I won't go. ;)

(You're really making me want to go and reread this and see if I was wrong the first time around. But I was just chosen today to serve for three weeks on a jury in a soul-crushingly boring financial malfeasance case. There went my reading time for the month of May...)

They're definitely guilty, Meddy, take a book and read covertly the court room, and then HANG THE BASTARDS!!!!!!

It was a bit risky, me putting that theory of history stuff into my review, because my experience with philosophy and other learned theories is minimal. Meddy, that quote you put in makes me doubt my review. You're probably right, and maybe I was attributing to Fowles what actually belonged to Charles, which is evidence of Fowles' skill as a writer.

Still, I hold fast on my view that Fowles felt the 1960s to be greatly superior to the 1860s, despite the patronising praise he hands out to them here and there... (...after all, repressing one's sexuality makes it all more fun... see the children learn what we adults already know, aren't they sweet...)

I'm so glad you found it interesting Murruska. The theory of history part was largely my interpretation, though I think Fowles was conscious of the nature of time and history as he wrote, as I guess one would nearly have to be, writing postmodern historical fiction.

And would you like a side of herring with that?

Porua, please don't be influenced too much by my review. I'm in the minority here, and the book has a feel about it that I think would probably attract you. I'd love to see what you think of it.

And thanks avaland :)

...after all, repressing one's sexuality makes it all more fun... see the children learn what we adults already know, aren't they sweet...
Patronizing attitude of the author aside, what a scene, eh? *fans self*

FLW is certainly a very interesting example of how difficult it can be to disentangle author from narrator, author's beliefs from characters' beliefs, etc. Similar to Proust in this way, I think.

Привет, MochaMushka!

I am so happy that I found your cafe and would love an Iced MochaRena, please!

Tani! Pull up a chair. But I don't know about this cannabalism... eating a MochaRena? Moi?

I watched the miniseries of Middlemarch last night. Copied from the pimping thread at Le Salon:

Muse: I'll just say, they messed up that final scene with Dorothea and the storm (avoiding spoilers). I mean, the bit with the storm in the book. No storm in the movie, or anything else much either. Bit of a let-down.

Meddy: Hahaha, wasn't that final scene completely wrong? I thought the miniseries as a whole was excellent, and I enjoyed it very much, but I had a very few quibbles with it, and that scene was a big one. It's funny, but if there's anything that I felt they got really wrong as a whole, it was the dynamic between Dorothea and Will. They cut out way too much of their conversations, and they cut out the good bits, too. (I'll copy this over to the cafe, if you like.)

(never mind Meddy, I've copied it for you)

***Some spoilers follow***

I completely agree. They did an excellent job of Lydgate and Rosamond - even added a dimension to it for me (though of course missed a million other dimensions as a movie must). But Dorothea and Will? Nope. Fail. I got a bit mushy every time Will came on screen, but I think that was purely because of the book. It missed that feeling of freedom they had in talking to each other, that easy, eager way they'd speak without any analysis or fear or inner translation. Of course, that would be all but impossible on screen, and I think they did try. But seriously, I was hanging out for that scene all the way through (after all, one reads the book for the insights, but watches the movie purely for the story) and I was SO disappointed. Sheesh. With Dorothea, of all people, for whom the meeting of minds is so much more important than anything physical. What a stuff-up.

Also, Dorothea's innocence and complete lack of seeing things as Will sees it until nearly the end was missing as well. There's very little to show she's so concerned about the money when he's not thinking about that at all. And that's SO important!

And where was that pivotal scene when Will goes to church to see Dorothea??

On the other hand, actually seeing Casaubon and Dorothea together helped to emphasise that travesty of young vibrancy waiting on wasted age. I could see it the way Sir James saw it. And Mary Garth was excellent. Mr Brooke wasn't kindly enough. Mr Farebrother was lovely.

I'm half regretting watching it, good as it was. I want to be able to re-read without picturing the movie. Seeing it on screen takes the depth and subtleties away.

Sorry, rambling a bit. But I do ♥ ♥ ♥ love ♥ ♥ ♥ Middlemarch so much :)

Ooooh, I will not read that last post until I have read the book... ;-)

No, no... my dear Mushka, No cannibalism here! I have decided to name my favorite drink (iced mocha latte) an ~ Iced MochaRena ~ in honor of your splendid little cafe.

I'll just take that easy chair over in the corner and finish up with the underground man and poke my head up in a bit.

My, but I do love a cafe. May I have a croissant with my Mocha, Rena? I never could eat herring, all those nasty little herring-bones and scales... my tastes run toward the sky and birds and their fluffy, comfy little feathers make a nice place to nap.

Please do nudge me if I fall asleep... one can never have too many power naps.

>174 ChocolateMuse: Good assessment of the mini-series, Choc.

I have yet to watch this miniseries. I want to reread the book first!

stay way form the mini series. I wish I had never seen it. it wasn't bad, it just interfered so with my images from the book.

>178 tomcatMurr: - tooo laaate. But I agree. Anyone who hasn't done it, don't do it.

Just to offer a counterbalance, go ahead and watch it, Amy. :) I thought it was quite good, and it didn't really interfere with my notions of anything.

I must say, you've been turning been turning out some stunning reviews (and, it appears, reading some very good books too) while I was away. I loved your Rachmaninov/Prokofiev comparison in the Villette review—great stuff! The Murakami and Fowles reviews were very good too, although I can't see myself enjoying either of those very much; indeed, Murakami rather scares me in theory. Maybe I should give him a try and see how he affects me in practice.

But, your Middlemarch review .... wow, wow, wow! ... so glad you finally fell in love with this. Your experiences with The Lord of the Rings and now this make me hope that you may eventually reconcile yourself to Les Miserables as well.

150: don't watch the movie of I Capture the Castle. It's bad. Cheapens the whole thing to mere fluff.

B-b-b-b-but, it has my beloved Romola Garai in it! Once I read the book (in other words, soon), I think I will have to watch the movie, but after that review I'll make sure to keep my expectations low. Gosh, this looks like it may be my second disappointing movie from this actress in a row. Pretty soon I'll have only my old favorites left. *weepeth mightily*

Ehhh, I apologize for exploding on your thread like that. Back on subject (I hope).

Wow, all this hub-bub about Daniel Deronda! Frankly, I'm a little surprised. Of course, I chose it as my second Eliot (after Silas Marner) but it's never been one of her most popular, and the critics haven't been too kind to it either. Personally, I didn't think it was any better or worse than The Mill on the Floss, but Silas Marner and Middlemarch just blow the rest of the Eliot I've read out of the water.

I think I side more with Meddy on the Middlemarch miniseries, and would probably recommend you see it, Amy, although with a grain of salt at the stand-by. I was rather disappointed when I watched it, but then, I used not to like the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice either! (And preferred the Keira Knightley version, if you can believe it.) The Tertius and Rosamund drove me up the wall, and Ladislaw was barely in it, but aside from that it's a pretty solid adaptation. I think I was just disappointed that it paled so beside both the novel and my favorite Eliot adaptation: the BBC Deronda, which has Romola Garai in it, but I'm not going down that path again....

I finished Howards End, and whatever it is that makes it great escaped me. I've written too many lukewarm reviews on great books this year (Les Mis and The French Lieutenant's Woman spring to mind) so I will give reviewing that one a miss. The fault is mine, not the book's, so I won't inflict my uninformed opinion on intelligent people.

However, I then went on to read A room with a view, and found that I rather loved it. My review is here: http://www.librarything.com/work/20174/reviews/56177681

Nathan! Welcome back to my cafe! Thanks for reading my thread and reviews with such evident interest :) I don't know why I chose Daniel Deronda over Eliot's others - actually, I do. I saw a bit of the movie on You Tube. And now, are you telling me it's a failure...??? nooooo...

Please vent explosively on my thread often. I like it.

DD is not a failure. I don't think Eliot could write a failure. It's just slightly lopsided and not as well-rounded as her very best. But then again, I've only read 4 of her novels, enjoyed them all and two are favorites. And I'm pretty sure the miniseries was why I read it in the first place as well. I know this is terrible, but I think I may prefer the miniseries to the book the *slightest* bit. For one, Daniel is a much more interesting character in the series, and it focuses less on the Mirah/Mordecai storyline, which I (and many scholars agree with me) find much weeker than the Gwendolen plot. Of course, in the novel you have more of Eliot's prose, so ... I probably shouldn't make that claim.

"Lukewarm" pretty much describes my feelings towards A Room with a View, although I was probably too young when I read it. I do want to try Howards End at some point, just so I have an excuse to watch the movie.

While The Mill on the Floss might be the more usual next-up choice after one has read Middlemarch and Silas Marner, I tried a little bit of Mill on the Floss when I was much younger, and it bored me to tears. I am certain now that it will not do so when I get to it, but... I'm waiting anyway. As for the critics and Daniel Deronda, I find that "the critics" and I often violently disagree. So they can stuff it. Maybe. We'll see. Nyah.

Rena, I'll be interested to see if Howards End grows on you at all. I liked it a lot when I first read it, but after several months of letting it sink it, letting my memories draw me back to it, flipping back through the (many) dogeared pages, I found that I really loved it.

Glad you enjoyed A Room With a View. I get a warm fuzzy feeling whenever I think of it. I find it tremendously charming and, for what it is, practically perfect. Hubby & I have it on the "read aloud to each other" list. (His only experience with it has been the movie, which he enjoyed.)

Nathan, I meant, so is the miniseries of DD a failure? But sounds like it's not.

Meddy, I read Room with a View so immediately after Howards End, that the impact of HE hasn't had time to digest before I went and muddled it with RoomWV. But I hope what you say will happen anyway.

Last year I read two different types of works by E. M. Forster. A novel, A Passage to India and a short story collection, The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories. I enjoyed the experience and both of the books made it to my year’s best reads list. But I don’t really think I’d enjoy reading either Howards End or A Room with a View. What really attracted me towards both A Passage to India and The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories is their unique storyline (or storylines in the case of the later). Of course, Forster’s writing is impeccable and one should read his books just for that. But from what I know about Howards End and A Room with a View the storylines just don’t attract me enough. Maybe someday I’ll read them but for now it seems improbable (especially with so may other books that I’m trying to get to).

#186: FWIW, you might at least keep A Room With a View on the far back burner. I would think that most fans of Jane Austen would like A Room With a View. I did, and I think it's one of the most "Austen-like" non-Austen works I've read.

I wanted to disagree with the critics on Deronda too, but in the end I found I couldn't. It's very good, of course—and it's probably more consistent in quality than Mill, which I love until I reached the last 1/4 of it—but a bit of a disappointment compared to its predecessor (Middlemarch). I'm thinking I might enjoy it more now, though, since it was the first of Eliot's longer works that I read.

And no, Rena, the miniseries isn't a disappointment—far from it. Actually, it's probably one of my favorite miniseries ever. :)

I read Cloud Atlas too long and too late last night. Woke up in the small hours with a clear understanding of the futility of human history - civilisations rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall... that's partly what the book is about, but there's a difference between reading the book and thinking about it, and having it hit one with all the clarity of 3am.

But wow, it's a fascinating book, full of ideas, exploring many things, and remaining at a basic level a ripping good story. Or stories.

Haven't finished yet, but some of the above may make it into the final review.

Here's a quote from the distant future, after the collapse of civilisation:

Old'uns' Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an' made miracles ord'nary, but it din't master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o' humans, yay, a hunger for more.

I also want to remember the word 'corpocracy'.

Also in my 'favorites' collection. :) Love your musings.

I'm very much looking forward to trying my first David Mitchell novel this year... And Daniel Deronda has been sitting on my shelves far too long - bought many years ago when I fell completely in love with Hugh Dancy in his first role... There are worse ways to be introduced to books!

"Corpocracy." I don't know what that means in Mitchell's book, but the increasingly huge international corporations already have too much influence over governments in my opinion, so will be interested to see how that term plays out in Cloud Atlas. I can see the book staring at me right now, and have heard nothing but good stuff, but I like to read a book straight through, so am waiting for a good long weekend to tackle it.

Bonnie, the word 'corpocracy' is only mentioned in passing once or twice in the novel, but the idea of it fills the whole book. From reading your post I think you will love Cloud Atlas as I did. Review coming eventually - I have finished the book and am at least halfway through Daniel Deronda already. Wow, such fabulous books have come my way this year :)

Ellie, you can't go wrong with any David Mitchell, methinks.

oh I'm looking forward to your thoughts on DD!!!!!!

Murr, do you remember late last year, you exhorted me to make 2010 my year of reading classics? Oh Mighty Murr, I have obeyed, and am duly grateful.

I am loving DD thus far, but some of it's missing that Middlemarch touch of depth and complexity of character. There are a number of characters who are All Good, or All Bad. Which is fine, but in the Mirah sections I do feel like I'm reading Dickens rather than Eliot.

But that's not the case throughout, and I think Gwendolen is marvellous. Eliot-like, I see bits of myself in her, and am horrified.

And I love the music she puts in, and Herr Klesmer is wonderful.

Here is my review of Cloud Atlas: http://www.librarything.com/work/3654/reviews/55036468

Also, more ravings on the Robert Frobisher sections: I get hooked on atmosphere in novels, and this was very atmospheric. Think dying yellow autumn leaves; wet muddy ground; clear blue skies; velvet smoking jackets, silky spaniels and wood fires; shabby carpets and the low warm sound of a cello. Most of those actual objects aren't described, but they're there anyway, because they couldn't not be there.

That's the first half. The second half is colder, more of a stone street-view, more fraught with desperation.

Oh dear! I'm running behind you. I cannot get to Daniel Deronda until I have finished A Suitable Boy, which is a big chunk of a novel. But after that perhaps I will ride your coattails through DD.

Nice Cloud Atlas review!

>195 ChocolateMuse:, yes, I do remember, and I'm glad it's working out for you!

Do you think Cloud Atlas will become a classic in the future?

I've added Cloud Atlas to the wishlist. BTW, saw you on the home page under Hot Reviews. Congrats.

Loved your review of The Cloud Atlas -- which I too caught on the Hot Reviews. Someone lent me the book about a year ago; now I feel I must read it.

Thanks everyone! It's so encouraging to write a review and have it appreciated like this.

>198 tomcatMurr: Murr, I think it deserves to be a classic. Mine not to predict whether it will be or not. It has big and timeless themes, strong story, and masterful use of language. Does that make a classic? Anyhow, I now pronounce it to be, since I read it in Rena's Year Of Classics.

I'm swallowing Daniel Deronda whole. Should I be a bit impatient at the Mordecai sections, or am I missing something?

Great Cloud Atlas review, Muse! Congrats on its being Hot. Your reviews make me want to read so many new books when I already have so much on my plate. No fair!

Hope to see you around at my thread. :-)

Should I be a bit impatient at the Mordecai sections, or am I missing something?

Well, if you're missing something, so was I. I liked the Gwendolen sections mountains better than the Mordecai/Mirah stuff. Even Daniel becomes a more interesting person around Gwen. That's fascinating: I never thought of the non-Gwen sections as being more like something out of a Dickens novel, but I can see it now. Would you say Daniel himself is Dickensian too, or is he more a pure Eliot figure, like Gwen?

Of the Mitchell books you've read, which would you recommend to a beginner?

Porua, it's only the same as what you do to me!

Well Nathan, it's funny you should say that, because I think Deronda is Dickensian when he's around Mirah, and he's Eliotish when he's around Gwendolen, and something else again, I'm not quite sure what, when he's around Mordecai. (Probably another kind of Eliotish, since I'm no expert on Eliot yet)

There are definitely highlights though in the non-Gwen sections. That beautiful moment where Klesmer visits Mirah and the Meyricks, where his vast personality enters the little room and Mab feels suddenly that the cottage piano "seemed a ridiculous toy, and the entire family existence as petty and private as an establishment of mice in the Tuileries". That whole scene is absolutely perfect, and so vivid.

And the Mordecai section is increasing in interest for me now I'm a bit further in. Deronda's dilemma as a truly honest man in such a situation is a hard one, and has more of the Eliot complexity that I remember from Middlemarch.

Also, I think all the non-Gwen sections are important even from a Gwen point of view (as well as in other things), since it shows us as the reader the complicated fabric of Deronda's deep and rounded life, so much more than the bits and pieces Gwendolen sees of it, all of which are firmly wrapped around her own existence and interpretation. Which is perhaps something most of us do when thinking of other people? And adds to the pathos a bit.

I think I'd appreciate Klesmer a little more now than I did when I first read the book. Looking back, I think I engaged with this text at what I would now consider a very "surface" level—but then again, I was only fifteen! (Wow, amazing that it has been so long.) By the way, did you know that some scholars think Klesmer is based off of Franz Liszt? It's a stretch, but there are some similarities. From my Penguin edition:

It has been suggested that Klesmer is a portrait of Liszt, and there are a few details which connect them: susceptibility to women (toned down in Klesmer's case {addition by yours truly: a lot}; a Wagnerian dislike of Bellini; the qualities of his music, in performance and composition; and the Wagnerian reference to 'the music of the future, a catch-phrase of the time we find in Lewes' discussion of Wagner.

BTW, I love the fact that in the miniseries, one actually gets to see Gwendolen's performance of Bellini, and Klesmer's obvious dislike of it. Of course, now I'm wondering if my memory is going, because I thought Wagner liked Bellini, or at least Norma—how could Liszt and Klesmer share a "Wagnerian dislike of Bellini," then? Oh dear, I better stop myself before I get off the subject of Deronda entirely....

Because it has been so long and I engaged the book on such a service level, I really don't have much else to say in response to your post, other than that it was very thought-provoking and I'm still geeking out about the Dickens connection. Again, it has to do with the miniseries: I've been wondering for years how Hugh Dancy was able to make both Daniel and David Copperfield (in an earlier miniseries) so much more interesting onscreen than they were on the page. Still haven't figured that out yet, but if Daniel is somewhat Dickensian himself, the connection will make more sense in my mind.

Still waiting for your Mitchell recommendation ;)

Better stop talkin', now.

I ♥love♥ Klesmer. According to the notes in my Wordsworth edition (the notes on the whole are awful - explains, for instance, what a physiognomy is, or that Apollo was a god of light and music, and fails to tell us what was scandalous about Charles Lamb, or what a 'burnous' is) they say Klesmer is partially based on Liszt, who Eliot met and admired in 1854; and partially on Anton Rubinstein. I don't know how this note writer seems to know this as a fact.

I think the way Klesmer looks and dresses is Liszt-like - which is brought into particular contrast on the day of the archery meeting. I can't wait to watch that scene in the miniseries, I think it'll be visually stunning. Is it?

I love how when Klesmer politely criticises Gwendolen's Bellini aria (only when requested to by Gwen herself) Eliot says, as an aside, "Woman was dear to him, but music was dearer'. ♥ :)

As to the Mitchell recommendation, really, you just can't go wrong. I personally started with Black Swan Green, went on to Ghostwritten and wound up with Cloud Atlas. Haven't read number9dream yet, or his new book. I was told to read Ghostwritten before Cloud Atlas, which I duly did, but I don't think it's really all that important.

Black Swan Green is a straightforward narrative, a coming-of-age story. The other two that I've read are in the Mitchell signature style, of connected short stories that make a much bigger whole. All three are brilliant.

Thanks for the help!

BTW, I think I've discovered why I didn't fall in love with Klesmer the first time around: he hates Bellini(!). That's not an irredeemable sin in my eyes, but still, it's quite a blot. On the other hand, I love that quote: it's great.

Did you see the quotes from Scenes of Clerical Life that I posted on my thread? One of them ties into a point you made in your Middlemarch review quite nicely.

Chocomuse, I am holding my peace until you finish Deronda (my 'peace', dear, not 'piece'). But I am following your discoveries with great interest and delight.

I had not known about the Liszt angle, and that is very interesting.
Here he is:

207> Could you give us a link to your post on "Scenes from a clerical life"? I would love to read it.

Bellini:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK-EZqAzoTo&feature=PlayList&p=C265F53150...

Wagner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrSOkOvoz1k

Take your pic.

The post is here. It's mostly just an assemblage of quotes from "Amos Barton"—I'm only just near finishing "Mr Gilfil's Love-Story"—but I'm sure to write up more thoughts later, probably in review form.

(I know it's terribly backward of me, but I must confess that I do prefer Bellini to Wagner. But I very much like Wagner as well.)

Oooh, diabolical Liszt on my thread! And divine Wagner (that was gorgeous) and beautiful Bellini :-) Thanks Murruszka.

I'm a bit of an opera n00b myself - solo piano's more my thing. Here's Liszt being unusually reflective http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS5LRRsNYZk (I'm learning this one at the moment)

And here he is with something more like Klesmer's "torrent-like confluences of bass and treble {which} seemed, like a convulsion of nature, to cast the conduct of petty mortals into insignificance": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP7byd4vJ3k&feature=related

And because I love Yundi Li, here's La Campanella: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvNJD1vL5qc

Nathan, that's a perfect quote to describe what Eliot does best (well, she does lots of things 'best'). I too particularly like "the sublime prompting to do the painful right".

After that Liszt eulogy, I thought I'd look into Anton Rubinstein of whom I know little. Seems he was similar to Liszt in drama and virtuosity and appearance, so no wonder Klesmer is supposed to be based on both of them.



Part 1 of his cello sonata: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7-quTMMaFU&feature=related

Point of Danial Deronda interest: Rubinstein was a Jew. (OK, I guess the name gives that away anyway)

ETA: Anton not to be confused with Artur Rubinstein, the 20th century pianist.

Rena! How's Moby Dick working for you? I've just got the Pequod out to sea and I'm lovin' this book. It's not at all what I expected! Did you happen to catch the Ric Burn's documentary "Into the Deep: American, Whaling and the World?" You can find it online here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/whaling/ Well done and great background. I was so captivated by it, that I ran right out and bought Moby Dick.

Wonderful review of Cloud Atlas. It is one of my desert island books. I too was struck by the quote about humans being unable to master their thirst for more.

Although Mitchell's two latest are good reads, I much prefer his earlier work (Ghostwritten, Number 9 Dream and Cloud Atlas). I recently received as an ER The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I liked it very much, but there was a disappointing middle section. It too is a more conventional book than his earlier work. I reviewed it, if you can call what I write a review.

I think Rena's abandoned Moby Dick, naughty gel that she is.

Nonono I haven't abandoned it! I'm just keeping quiet about it until I'm really sure I'm not going to abandon it. I'm not very far in yet.

Thanks Aruba! Have you read Black Swan Green? I thought it was fantastic, even though a straightforward narrative. I read your review of Jacob de Zoet with great interest. That disappointing middle section intrigues me. I've noticed Mitchell likes playing around with the real and the not real, a bit like Kazuo Ishiguro seems to in When we were orphans. We're left wondering what 'really' happened. I got a sense of that in Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas at times - like the section with the nuclear plant (can't think of the character's name atm), or the way Frobisher says offhandedly that the pacific journal seems too well-paced to be absolutely true. Would that middle section fit in with that idea do you think?

Teresa! Thanks heaps for that link! Fascinating, I can't wait to get a chance to watch it! (can't just yet) So are you telling me you're reading MD in partnership with me? Yay! I read the Jonah sermon last night (see, not far in at all) and I think I'm starting to get a sense of the book's imagery.

But I have to finish my DD review before we launch too far into Moby Dick! See, we're still in the cafe frequented by rich bejewelled women and their balding husbands; and young, ardent Jews with dark eyes that see a noble future. And see, there's still a male pianist with chin-length hair in the corner playing Liszt and Rubinstein with his strong hands. Review coming soon, I hope.

Looking forward to it!

By the way, I was just glancing at the to-read list you made at the beginning of the year, and I noticed a few books that were on mine too: The Woman in White, Quo Vadis, and Crime and Punishment. Thinking we should definitely team-read one of these! But not anytime soon, gah....

Funny you should say that, Nathan. A friend just then bought me a lovely copy of The Woman in White. I was thinking it might be my next-book-but-one, or maybe the one after. So let's see if we can! Would be fantastic!

Oh dear, I meant The Woman in White to be part of my Gothic rampage this fall. I suppose it won't hurt to start early! And I should be able to finish my Eliot and find time for my two Early Reviewer books before you finish Moby Dick and whatever else you have on your plate....

ooooooh goody The Woman in White!!!! A masterpiece!!

*Murr jumps up and down*

I probably won't get to it until (antipodean) spring anyway - MD will take a while, and then I'm thinking I might tackle another big book after that, if not two. I can wait till you're ready anyway! :)

Moby Dick, Moby Dick! I hope you hang with it, Rena. I would love to have someone to with whom to dish! Are you surprised at the amount of humor to be found?

Congrats on your Cloud Atlas review. I ordered it straightaway, based on it. Don't know when I'll get to it, though, as I'm happily stuck in the "American Renaissance" era for a bit.

I'll look forward to your and Nathan's read of Woman in White. Loved it even more than The Moonstone.

Gothic rampage? Yum. I love The Woman in White too! I don't recommend the movie though. Despite the lovely Justine Waddell as Laura Fairlie, the adaptation is very flat.

I am a fan of Moby-Dick too, but I'm almost afraid to talk about it lest I give Choc a sense of obligatory reading which may wreck all...

217: Yes--I've read Black Swan Green too--can you tell I'm a big David Mitchell fan?

I think the disappointing part of Jacob de Zoet was meant to be "real." Mitchell doesn't seem to play with the reader that way in this book. When I said it felt unbelievable to me, I meant that in the sense that it came out of the blue, went overboard and the story definitely did not need it. On my 75 book challenge thread, another reader also had the same feelings about that part of the book. I know a lot of people don't like spoilers (I don't mind them), but if you'd like I can PM you a broad description of what happens in that section.

>221 tomcatMurr: Murr, I think we cross posted. I hadn't seen your post until now. I'm trying to picture our venerable Cat jumping up and down. More vodka? We might get you dancing yet.

But I'm glad you approve of the woman in white. I have a nebulous idea of maybe reading a Tolstoy in between Melville and Wilkie Collins, so stay tuned :)

Teresa, I watched half of that documentary, and I'm feeling steeped in nautical lore (and gore). I'm looking forward to watching the rest. I don't think I will abandon ship now, I think I'm hooked - hence my bad nautical allusions.

Poor Amy. I now give you permission to be enthusiastic about Moby Dick. If I could prevent myself from being influenced by obligatory reading I would, but I can't seem to do it! But it's okay now with MD, I'm liking it on its own merit :)

Aruba, I can handle spoilers, but I don't seek them. I'll wait till I read the book. *sigh* so many books TBR...

Glad your onboard with MD! (ouch, the nautical allusions occur despite no attempt at making them). All I'll say is that when the Pequod set sail, I felt a chill.

Here is my Daniel Deronda review at last! I really struggled with this one, and still far from satisfied with it: http://www.librarything.com/work/17847/reviews/60577880

ETA: Teresa, embrace the nautical allusions! The worse they are, the better! Heyho, we're in for a whale of a time...

oh bravo! thumbed it!

Now, Choco, now that you have finished it, what did you make of the fact that Deronda doesn't know he is jewish? (plot spoiler be damned!)

Murr, whatever I made of it surely wasn't as in-depth as whatever you made of it, so please tell me your take on it!

I think if he hadn't been so sure he was Sir Hugo's son, he would have worked it out sooner. I think the introduction of Mirah and Mordecai feels more like destiny than coincidence. I think the whole mix of the way his mother feels about being Jewish versus the feelings of Mirah and Mordecai, and thus the complicated growth of Deronda's own sense of identity is an excellent exploration of that kind of search and self-discovery. The fact of Judaism and Jewishness being different is brought into focus by this whole situation in a way someone who is born knowing his origins wouldn't be able to highlight. Eliot makes it believable that Deronda wouldn't openly question who he is, and I have no quibble with that.

I dunno Murr, I feel like I've missed something. Did you think he should have known? Enlighten me, O Mentor Murr.

Yes, you have missed something (although your remarks above are interesting and perspicacious, and I agree with them), and so did Eliot, and so did Deronda: his foreskin!

In a very interesting and well known essay K.M Newton addresses this problem:

Deronda's identity is a mystery to himself and has always been. It is only when he is a grown man, having been to Eton and Cambridge, that he discovers he is a Jew. What this has to mean -given the conventions of the medical practice of the time - is that he never looked down. In order for the plot of DD to work, Deronda's circumcised penis must be invisible, or non-existent - which is one more demonstration in detail of why the plot does not in fact work....

Daniel Deronda and Circumcision

Pfffft. LOL, and there I was getting all psychoanalytical.

Poor George Eliot. I wonder if she ever found out.

well, I don't know, but it's important, because it has to do with larger questions of the Victorian representation of sexuality and gender, and the relationship between the sign (circumcision) and what it signifies (Judaism).

Now, the real question is, what did GE mean by omitting this all-important fact? According to the same essay, GE and GL's personal physician (and close friend) was a specialist in phimosis (tight foreskin) and one of the early advocates of circumcision (and masturbation) for medical reasons. in fact his book on the topic was in Eliot's library, signed with an inscription dedicated to Lewes. Now, you can make of that what you will, but it seems to me that this was not an oversight on Eliot's part.

Well that is interesting. I was assuming she just failed to think of it (which would be very unlike GE).

It seems very odd.

Unless we're supposed to just assume that Deronda' mother, being so against being Jewish, managed to prevent his circumcision? Seems awfully unlikely. One imagines Eliot had bigger reasons anyway, outside mere plot-convenience.

I am wading in unknown waters here.

Well, think about it some more, it is interesting.

Don't forget, Eliot explicitly tells us herself that Daniel is given to his father after the age of two, at which time, circumcision would definitely have taken place.

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable.
Middlemarch Ch 3.

If it wasn't an oversight, what was it? I'm assuming it wasn't customary for non-Jewish people, even Christians, to be circumcised then?

Great review, Muser, although I'm still not 100% sure I agree with you on Daniel being a three-dimensional character. For some reason, he always struck me as being a bit like David Copperfield: far less interesting than many of the people around him (Gwendolen, Grandcourt, Klesmer, the Meyricks, etc.—although not Mirah and Mordecai). I agree with you that the introduction of the other Jews into his life feels more like destiny than coincidence, something that could be said for much of the novel; it's a very "spiritual" book, and I think it wouldn't be too far off to characterize Daniel as a mortal Messiah. Of course, what he's going to do at the end of the book isn't spelled out, so it's all guesswork, really.

You mentioned Klesmer's later token appearances ... what do you make of Rex Gascoigne's one-chapter appearance in the last half of the novel? That always seemed random and out-of-place to me, but I've heard some interesting theories....

Are you going to watch the miniseries? I highly recommend it! But then, I think you know that already....

I thumbed you, but now I can't read the messages above, because I want to read the book...eventually! It took me a long time, and several tries, before I finally settled down with Middlemarch and read it at the slower pace it deserves.

>235 tomcatMurr: yessir! But you appear to have greater faith in the results of my powers of thought than I do.

236 - Nathan, I don't know. I see where you're coming from with the non three dimensional and the mortal Messiah thing. The latter is a particularly good point. I think the circumcision thing has baked my brain, and so I have nothing more to add on these points.

*more spoilers below*

I assumed Rex's re-appearance meant that eventually he and Gwendolen would end up, y'know, together, in the fulness of time. I liked how Eliot seemed to consider it a relatively unimportant point though, and open to some amount of interpretation. But there is a significant quote near the beginning, when Gwen and Rex are riding to the hunt together: "if only things could have been a little otherwise then, so as to have been greatly otherwise after! - if only these two beautiful young creatures could have pledged themselves to each other then and there, and never through life have swerved from that pledge!" ...Even before knowing the plot, I remember thinking that was a significant quote.

end spoilers

>237 bonniebooks: Bonnie, I've lost track of your thread, though having tracked down your latest one I see you read The Idea of Perfection. What did you think of it? And where can I find your writings on Middlemarch?

Yeah, if I hadn't decided to put my current thread on my profile, I wouldn't be able to find it most of the time either. I read Middlemarch before I joined LT so there's nothing on any of my threads this year or last. I kept picking up MM because I heard another author say that she read Middlemarch every year The first couple of times I tried it out, I read it too fast--big mistake! It is not a book that's hard to read or understand, but I had to slow way down and really enjoy getting to know all the characters in her story. I won't read it every year, but I will read it again.

238/ I'm sorry, I realise that may have come across as being bossy on my part. Not my intention at all. Just trying to encourage you to go with the thought. And yes, I have great faith in your powers of thought!

Apologies again.
:)

Beautiful review, Lorena.

Ahhhhh moral tales Ilove'em I love'em nom nom nom.

Great review, and I'll follow in your footsteps with DD after I finish A Suitable Boy.

238 > Yeah, that's the interpretation I'd read too. I didn't get that when I first read the book, so we'll see what happens when I reread (which probably won't be for a long, long time).

239 > I've read several authors make comments like that, Bonnie. It makes sense—reading Middlemarch regularly would certainly give one inspiration as a fiction writer. Hmmm....

Meddy, you need to post in your thread! Let us know how A Suitable Boy is.

#243: *hangs head, shuffles feet, mumbles* *but my mom is arriving today for a visit and I'm kinda busy and I'm getting avoidant about my thread 'cause I have so much to catch up on and and and* :)

Medellia, I know exactly how you feel with your thread. I neglected mine shamefully these past few weeks and every day just makes it harder to go back! Wait till you're in the mood and then make a couple monster posts :)

You're forgiven. But only just barely. ;) :D

I'm not glad I'm not the only one with thread anxieties. We should form a self-help group.

We should! But then... we probably wouldn't post in it :-P

>240 tomcatMurr: Murrushka, it's okay! I just think you overestimate my genius - but that's a compliment, thanks :) If you have any theories, do share them.

Look at all these people needing therapy. All of you: howbout you just put a post up that says "I read lots of stuff in the last x months". And then start from now. No need to backdate! Too much pressure, and then we'll never see your thread! I miss you all :(

I'm not glad I'm not the only one with thread anxieties. We should form a self-help group

Bet that will be a mighty big group! It doesn't take much to get off course in this big of a group. The thread police suggested I needed a new thread once I reached posting #250, but I was always too tired after reading everyone else's thread to bother commenting on my own reading, so kept putting it off, but felt too guilty to post on the old one, thus getting more and more behind on my 'reviews.' It's not a fun feeling--I wish I would have just skipped over the 5-6 books I felt I needed to comment on, because no one much cared/commented anyway when I finally got my act together. Bottom line, I say your thread is *your* thread, so however many times you want to post--or not--is up to you, and no apologies necessary!

eta: Oops! I forgot I was in Club Read, not the 75-group, but I'll still stick with my 'bottom line' about no anxieties/no explaining.

Bonniebooks, we love you!

bonnie - there is a little bit of irony in that that was post #250 in this thread. ;)

About falling behind on our own threads, a problem I've had with mine is that each comment/review seems to not be enough, so that I feel the need to put even more into my next review...which means a spiraling upward time commitment to something that originally was only supposed to take me a few minutes.

>252 dchaikin: how funny, I hadn't even noticed that Bonnie's post was #250! I'm intending to start a new thread soon, just thought I'd wait to see if there's anything more to add about Daniel Deronda before I relocate the cafe to somewhere in Nantucket.

And dchaiken, sheesh, tell me about it. Every time I get a hot review I feel all this pressure to make sure my next one deserves it too. Self-induced pressure's tougher than the other sort, I reckon.

HEY SOMEBODY BREAK OUT THE MOBY DICK THREAD!!!! HURRAH!! HURRAH!!

Good to hear you see the humor TheaE, since I think that's what get us fans over the top on it. If only Joyce had as good a sense of humor, maybe I'd be able to do Ulysses cover to cover...

>251 theaelizabet:: You do? Feeling a little Sally Fields-ish.