Jinjer 31: Books, Books, and More Books

[SapphireSlytherin]

11 minutes ago, Carm_88 said:

The Outlander series

DH knows I'd leave him for Jamie Fraser... lol

[Palimpsest]

Well, having perused all these lists and made note of some new books I think I should read, I will try to get back to topic.

I think we should start Jinger off gently with her reading program.  She can drink coffee as she reads.

First.  I assign her Laura Ingalls Wilder.  All the books, up to and including The First Four Years.  Laura works outside the home even before she marries, kisses, doesn't promise to obey, and works like a dog after marriage and babies.  I include the First Four Years because, although it suffers from a lack of editing, it talks about how life isn't all rainbows and unicorns.  I'll put this under a spoiler for those who have never read it.

Spoiler

And it describes how Almanzo is disabled from a stroke after diphtheria, so Laura had to work to help support the family for the rest of her life.

And let me just put in a quick plug for Pamela Hill Smith:  Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life and  Laura Ingalls Wilder's Pioneer Girl:An Annotated Edition (get this one from the library if you are not an addict like me.)

Now let's move Jinger on to Katie.  What Katie Did is cloying but she needs the background.  Kate is still a prig in What Katie Did at School but it is school, at least, and the other characters have some high jinks.  Skip the next couple of books because Katie is a pious bore and move on to Clover and In the High Valley.  I wish those two books were better known.

Then I think I'll assign her George Orwell's Animal Farm. She can read it as a children's book but it might open her eyes to how propaganda is used.  Napoleon = Gothard.

I think we may now be ready to assign her The Handmaid's Tale. 

 

[SapphireSlytherin]

10 minutes ago, Palimpsest said:

Then I think I'll assign her George Orwell's Animal Farm. She can read it as a children's book but it might open her eyes to how propaganda is used.  Napoleon = Gothard.

Sadly, I don't think the SOTDRT has provided her with enough education to recognize and/or understand the allegories in Animal Farm.

[nickelodeon]

@laPapessaGiovanna You have the most amazing taste! 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

1 hour ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

DH knows I'd leave him for Jamie Fraser... lol

So does mine!

[nausicaa]

7 hours ago, CarrotCake said:

I also never understand why some people feel like they have to struggle through some books they dont enjoy because apparently you 'should have read them'.

Reading should be fun and relaxing.

As @veron1que said, there is a lot to learn by challenging yourself with a book that isn't as immediately accessible in terms of structure, language, or culture. Also, depending on your goals, knowing the canon helps to understand references and larger cultural trends in literature. 

Reading can be used to be fun and relaxing, but that's not everyone's goal all the time with reading. Nor should it be.

[SamiKatz]

One of my favourite authors is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but 100 Years of Solitude is the most problematic book for me.  Not because I don't enjoy the story/writing, but I find if I put it down at all I lose track of who is who!  When a book starts with a family tree, you know there might be trouble ahead.

As an aside, I would like to learn to read Spanish so I could read Marquez and Allende in their native languages

[Palimpsest]

38 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

Reading can be used to be fun and relaxing, but that's not everyone's goal all the time with reading. Nor should it be.

I'm remembering having to read Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (originally The Saddest Story) as an assigned book.  

For those who haven't read it:

Spoiler

- no likable characters, set just before WWI, a rather sordid love affair, an unreliable narrator, a suicide, and madness.

I hated it initially.

On the other hand, as a technical achievement I think it deserves its place as #41 0n the Guardian's list of the 100 best books.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/30/good-soldier-ford-madox-ford-100-best-novels

I've read it several times now and uncover more plot twists each time.  I still don't "like" it, but the writing is brilliant.

[Hashtag Blessed]

Are we doing book recommendations!? I read for pleasure a LOT. I'm also in a book club so that helps.

I'm currently reading Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, which is really good so far. It just came out and it is about a British Muslim family, mainly two sisters, and what happens when their brother is radicalized. I'm about halfway through and it has been intimate, heart wrenching, and eye opening. 

Can I also recommend anything by Margaret Atwood? I've read three of her books this year and they were all great. Handmaid's Tale is harrowing, Alias Grace is spooky but not nearly as harrowing. I'm planning to read Blind Assassin before the year is out. 

[NotQuiteMotY]

On 9/18/2017 at 11:36 PM, Rachel333 said:

Have you guys read the Thursday Next books? Those are really fun books for book lovers.

I really didn't like those, actually. Part of it may have been knowing that the author's a hypocrite, though. He condemns fanfiction while basically writing it himself.

19 hours ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

I see all those "must read" book lists, and some of them make me cringe. I've never been able to get past the first few pages of The Hobbit, War & Peace, Jane Eyre, Anne of Green Gables,  and others. Life is way too short and there are way too many really good books to be read, instead. I forced myself to finish The Great Gatsby and I still regret wasting those hours of my life on a truly awful book.

You don't like Anne of Green Gables, The Hobbit, or Heidi? Meet me with pistols at dawn!

Seriously, those were all books I've loved and re-read. Plus the Little House books, Tamora Pierce, the Prydain Chronicles, Narnia, The Dark is Rising series...

This thread is bad for my library stack. I'm going though the Bloody Jack books, but now I want to go reread others.

[PennySycamore]

@tabitha2,  yes, I'm familiar with Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Genji.  In fact, I still have my copy from HIS 280H Survey of East Asian History I took in the spring of '73 at the University of Georgia.  I just pulled my copy off the shelf to re-read (or read for the first time.  I'm not sure we got to the novel in class.) 

[tabitha2]

I adore almost every Pratchett and could read them and Good Omens over and over  but damned if I didn't try drop the the Long Earth because I just couldn't get into it. 

[tabitha2]

46 minutes ago, PennySycamore said:

@tabitha2,  yes, I'm familiar with Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Genji.  In fact, I still have my copy from HIS 280H Survey of East Asian History I took in the spring of '73 at the University of Georgia.  I just pulled my copy off the shelf to re-read (or read for the first time.  I'm not sure we got to the novel in class.) 

 

I adore the Royal Tyler Edition because of the wonderful extremely footnotes and introduction about the  rather bizarre shadowy world she lived in. 

[Thorns]

Or we could try Jinger on Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey, with a young girl that runs away from her strictly religious and patriarchal religious group because she is about to be (forcably) married, meets a horse (okay, that part might be weird on her) that takes her to the Queen (female!) and makes her into an important figure in the government - not so straight forward when you are a naive sheltered girl taught to not have any opinion ever.... But fitting. And it throws some religious (probably blasphemic for Jinger) thoughts about "there is no true way" into the mix.

Or Daughter of the Empire by Raymond E.Feist - set in a society not unlike a feudal Japan, where strict rules and regulations for conduct is challenged when young Mara have to asume the title as family head instead of going into a convent. Que the conflicts between meeting societies expectations, misogyny and religious rules and her morals. 

[LuckyShot]

6 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

I'll have to look up Will Ferguson, but Bill Bryson and John Cleese's autobiography. Yes!

Definitely check him out. He's a Canadian author so not as well known internationally but I think his writing is fantastic, funny but also educational. I just finished his book Road Trip Rawanda and would highly recommend it. 

[Palimpsest]

2 minutes ago, LuckyShot said:

Definitely check him out.

I was doing just that when you posted.  I do know him. I loved How to Be a Canadian!  

Now off to look for more of his books.

[BeccaGrim]

I'm an author IRL so I love this conversation. This is a good list: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-100-books-everyone-must-read-2014-2

[SorenaJ]

On 9/19/2017 at 4:04 PM, Feministe9000 said:

I hope Joy continues to make terrible food, then Austin will eventually use up all the gift cards for fast food they probably got from getting married, and be forced to cook himself! What a 180 that would be for him, simple, traditional boy that he seems to be

How traumatic! Having to cook for yourself. Will have to have a bucket next to my bed, just so I won't barf on my new laptop, 'cause those Duggars are grossing me out. 

[ElToro]

8 hours ago, victoriasponge said:

I love Jane Eyre (was my favourite book from my first full read through at 13 until I started uni) but hated Shirley and it's put me off reading any more Bronte works. 

Ah but I loved, after the powerlessness of Eyre, she gave Shirley wealth, prestige and independence..... And her two female protagonists remained friends despite being in 'competition' for the same man. And who she got with, in the end, was not undermined by her money and power.

And it gives one of my favourite descriptions of women waiting to be 'chosen' by a man and, if disappointed, how they have to suck it up and not let it show. 

Spoiler

Take the matter as you find it: ask no questions, utter no remonstrances; it is your best wisdom. You expected bread, and you have got a stone: break your teeth on it, and don't shriek because the nerves are martyrized; do not doubt that your mental stomach—if you have such a thing—is strong as an ostrich's; the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, if you survive the test—some, it is said, die under it—you will be stronger, wiser, less sensitive. This you are not aware of, perhaps, at the time, and so cannot borrow courage of that hope. Nature, however, as has been intimated, is an excellent friend in such cases, sealing the lips, interdicting utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation—a dissimulation often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling down to sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, and leaving a convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because it is half-bitter.”

It is so fitting with the Duggers. I bet they have taught their girls to break their teeth on stones, swallow, smile sweetly and carry on.

[AprilQuilt]

Woah, @ElToro! I've gotta read Shirley! 

[SamiKatz]

1 hour ago, BeccaGrim said:

I'm an author IRL so I love this conversation. This is a good list: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-100-books-everyone-must-read-2014-2

I've been trying to read more, and I think the Lord is laying on my heart that I should read all of the books on this list (I've read a few already).

Angela's Ashes is the saddest book I've ever read, but I saw Frank McCourt give a reading one time and he was so funny and charming.  I also went to a reading by Michael Ondatje (The English Patient is another fav), and he just seemed so sweet and shy.  I was charmed by him as well.

I think The Color Purple should be on that list as well though.

[ElToro]

17 minutes ago, AprilQuilt said:

Woah, @ElToro! I've gotta read Shirley! 

Mind you, there's also a whole load of boring shit about a bunch of vicars. You just have to skip those parts!

[SapphireSlytherin]

28 minutes ago, SamiKatz said:

Angela's Ashes is the saddest book I've ever read

Another tiresome book, for me. I just do not like McCourt's writing style at all.

[cascarones]

Currently reading: Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

I've got a love of Austen and a very beautiful copy of the seven novels that my first love drove hours to get. I absolutely love  when people sign books with a personal note, those are books that will never get discarded no matter how many times I move. I have a very battered copy of Bridget Jones  that lives in my travel bag. It found me from a borrow a book shelf at a hospice center, and it brought a lot of laughter to a sad time. I too love to read and was an early reader and put in school ahead of schedule because I kept getting caught being up in the night with my brothers' school worksheets around me trying to teach myself with the help of Keebler fudge stripe cookies.

For Jinger: I think she'd enjoy some of the history of fashion books, catch some interest on trend setters and foray wildly off into historical fiction. Same with books on the coffee trade, or there's plenty of Christian authors who write both fiction and non-fiction. My mum has everything Madeline L'engle wrote, biblical, autobiographical or the chaste love stories. 

[Lurky]

Apologies if anyone has already said this, but Jane Austen divides into dreary heroines and the awesome ones.  I recommend Emma (or Clueless!  I love that film!), Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility.