August 2019 Update

On August 22, 2019 By CareIn Audio, Author Recommendation, Book Picked Me, Classics, Classics Club, Flowers, Life, Lists, Pie10 Comments

Thoughts

I’m still here! I’m around. Just not as frequently and via less apps. (usually ALWAYS on Twitter, if you are looking for me…)

But I need a new cellphone – it has been “hiding” my apps and so they just aren’t available. Meaning no Litsy, which I miss and then I can’t remember passwords and online-life is just too complicated anymore. I miss the old days when blogging was fun and we didn’t have to jump through any hoops to leave comments and even visit!

The image above is from goodreads. (I am on goodreads; often.) I seem to be devouring the free (and short!) audiobooks from Audible. Treasure Island will end up helping me make the Classics 50 in Five Years. I think I have a few more months. (Need to check that.)

Speaking of Classics 50 — I just started the audiobook of Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer.

(I’m on a Penelope kick?)

AND, when I went to goodreads, I couldn’t find it in the editions offerings. So I added it. I love being a gr librarian! Hopefully I did it right and correctly verified that an edition wasn’t already in the catalog.

I added the appropriate image and everything!

Back to my tbr image: the Elizabeth Bowen and the William Golding book were recommended by Penelope Lively. I just finished her Dancing Fish and Ammonites

and it was delightful.

Funny thing is that I have yet to read any fiction (or anything!) by Lively and now I’ve gone and read her memoir.

I’ve done that before — read an author’s memoir or biography before I’ve read any of what made the author an author in the first place. Did that with PD Wodehouse…

I am also reading A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess because it is handy. I found it on the Take-One-Leave-One bookshelf at my apt complex. I think it is on my Classics 50 list, too? (Really need to go look at that list soon.)

Looking back on what I’ve read lately and would like to recommend, I find I am baffled by what I stated in my last post. I *did* actually read a few books in June. I read The Great Believers (which is two posts ago – look at that, I wrote an actual review.) and I read The Psychology of Time Travel – I liked it a lot and invite you to check it out.

Here’s the pic of the truly latest reads:

Yes to Good Omens (my first Terry Pratchett) and enthusiastic yes for Crazy Rich Asians. The Silent Patient was so-so. I DNF’d The Woman in the Window, Lost Children Archive and Black Leopard,Red Wolf. NOT for all the same reasons, but one applicable reason for all is Too Many Books Not Enough Time.

That said, I hope you have terrific books in your life, the opportunity to eat some great pie and aren’t too stressed about time nor world affairs nor climate/weather, etc. Goodness! Can’t end on a downer! How about some Rhubarb Raspberry Handpies…

Copyright © 2007-2019. Care’s Online Book Club aka Care’s Books and Pie. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club aka BkClubCare. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Classics Spin April 2019

On April 26, 2019 By CareIn 1001 Books To Read Before Dying, Author Recommendation, Celebration, Classics, Classics Club, Lists9 Comments

I’m late to the party but WOW! . . . do I make a grand entrance to the party! (Slide in, look around? no one has noticed I’m late. Walk in casually, present a bottle of wine to the host…)

Here’s my list from August 2018’s spin:

The Three Musketeers – Alex Dumas
Jude the Obscure – Hardy
the Woodlanders – Hardy
Rabbit, Run – Updike
Naked Lunch – Wm Burroughs
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
The House of the Seven Gables – Hawthorne
Vanity Fair – Thackeray
Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
Candide – Voltaire
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
Confederacy of Dunces – JKToole
Twelve Years a Slave – Solomon Northup
The Way We Live Now – Trollope
the Counterfeiters – A. Gide
A Handful of Dust – Waugh
The Ox-bow Incident – Walter Van Tilberg Clark
Eileen Chang’s Love in a Fallen City
One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes

And then I went HERE (random.org); entered the above and then hit GO to get:

SO, it looks like I will be reading The Golden Notebook because according to the Monday, April 22 post at the Classics Club blog, the number hit is 19.

Pretty cool that I own a copy of this book. AND have discussed a readalong with my penpal Jill. Not sure how exactly we will conduct a readalong via snail mail but I think it can be done. Just a case of reading some, writing it, putting in the mail. Repeat. Anyone who want to join in?

AND….. one more thing. Here’s a pic of a pie. Lemon Meringue.

Back to the Classics 2019 List Ideas

On January 6, 2019January 6, 2019 By CareIn Challenge, Classics, Classics Club13 Comments

My selections here are mostly from my Classics Club 50 and are shown in RED.

What’s in a Name Challenge 2019

On January 6, 2019January 6, 2019 By CareIn Celebration, Challenge, Classics, Lists, What's in a Name 201913 Comments

It’s ON! I’m so excited to be participating once again in the Challenge that suits me and my reading style so well. The What’s in a Name 6-Category Reading Challenge now hosted by Andrea at Carolina Book Nook. The image below will link to the Challenge Sign up Page.

The categories and my ideas for a book I might read to satisfy:

A precious stone/metal – The Alexandrite: A Time Travel Noir by Rick Lenz
A temperature – Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford (a CC50)
A month or day of the week – One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes (CC50)
A meal – Anyone want to support my thoughts that The Bird’s Nest (Shirley Jackson, CC50) qualifies because it is a dish considered a “delicacy in Chinese cuisine“?
Contains the word “girl” or “woman” – Marie Benedict’s The Only Woman in the Room
Contains both the words “of” AND “and” – Looks like Nonfiction is the way to go. Two interesting options:

A Classic Woulda Coulda Shoulda

On December 30, 2018December 30, 2018 By CareIn Classics, Classics Club, Year End Summary5 Comments

This is a 2018 Year End Summary (Sub)Post to provide a record of update on my Classics Club 50 (CC50) but also to bemoan the fact that I never actually entered the Back to the Classics 2018 Challenge. And wouldn’t ya know it?! Yep, I could have met it. I actually achieved 8 of the categories by reading only 10 books that count as classics! LOL

My list:

By Our Beginnings by Jean Stubbs 1972 – a new to me woman author
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons 1932 – CC50, a new to me woman author
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy 1958 – CC50, another new to me author and satisfies the COLOR category as well as a woman author
Emma by Austen 1815 – satisfies the REREAD category and a single word title plus a woman author
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brönte 1847 – 19th Century classic, a woman author
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather 1912 – a 20th Century classic, and a woman author
Stoner by John Williams 1965 – CC50, single word title
Vanity Fair – Thackeray 1848 – CC50 and I possibly could fight that it is a travel classic or even maybe a crime classic? yea, maybe not.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys 1966 – CC50 and a classic that scared me. and OH YEA– woman author
A Wizard of EarthSea by Ursula K LeGuin 1968 – a new to me woman author and totally a children’s classic

I am just shaking my head. I usually NEVER hit enough categories to fulfill the Back to Classics Challenge and so I didn’t enter it for 2018. Go figure.

On the other hand, I am only 3 classics away from having read 50 in 5 years. I have to the end of 2019. Now, don’t get too excited because I have to read 24 from my CC50 list to make it but I never committed to that… woo hoo!

Next up is my recap post with pie charts. Enjoy this photo of a pie:

Copyright © 2007-2018. Care’s Books and Pie aka Cares’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

The Dud Avocado

On November 10, 2018November 12, 2018 By CareIn Classics, Classics Club, Debut Novel, DNF, Library, What's in a Name 201814 Comments

A review and a clarification…

First, the response to the comments on the prior post: I did not mean to imply that WordPress is hard and difficult to figure out. I really REALLY do think it much more preferable than Blogger – especially when I do hear that platform has not been updated ever. Yikes. WP is better at spam filtering, if nothing else.

It was only that I didn’t want to deal with any changes. I want my OLD way I’m used to. If I do take the time to relax into it and deal, I’m sure it will be lovely. I just couldn’t do quick because I couldn’t FIND my tags and categories. Not a big deal. I could have taken the time to ask customer service where they are hiding this feature in the latest upgrade, but I was in a hurry.

That said,

I’m right now typing this on the WRITE-NOW button that is available to me and I’m rolling with it.

READY for my REVIEW?

Cool. Here goes.

by Elaine Dundy, 1958, 260 pages, Kindle Edition

I loved the Introduction to The Dud Avocado.
I actually read it first, too, and I don’t remember why. (I never read the Intro to a classic if I’ve yet to read the story!! What has happened to me?!)

Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish The Dud Avocado. I did enjoy the breezy style in the beginning and I chuckled in amusement with her observations and challenges of living in Paris as a young lady in the 50s.

But then I put it down and left it a few days and when I did come back to it, I couldn’t figure out where it was going. I put it down again and then, then,

oops. The book expired and I wasn’t able to read on. It was a library eBook and Too-Much-Time-Passed… POOF! It was gone.

DNF and I’m not that sorry. I can always check it out again.

I’m still going to count it for the What’s in a Name Challenge

Fruit or Vegetable Category

And it is on my Classics Club 50 list so WOO HOO!

Wide Sargasso Sea #ccspin

On August 25, 2018August 26, 2018 By CareIn 1001 Books To Read Before Dying, Author Recommendation, Book Blogging Community, Book Giveaway, Classics, Classics Club, Mystery, No Pie Mentioned, SPOILERS!!!16 Comments

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, Norton 2016 (org 1966), 174 Pages

Introduction by Edwidge Danticat (read last, though, of course. I adhere to a strict policy of never reading Intros until I read the text. Ahem)

Challenge: For this month’s Classic Club Spin.

Genre: Fan-Fiction? Carribean Historical Fiction, an Anti-Romance, perhaps.

Type/Source: Tradeback / I finally had the opportunity and forethought to plan for a shopping trip to an Indie Bookstore who to my excitement and delight had a copy for me to purchase!

Will ship to anyone interested – just let me know your opinion of Jane Eyre.

_ ____ ________________

For those book-readers-and-pie-lovers who don’t already know, this work of fiction is the back story to one of the characters in Jane Eyre. Jane is the plucky poor governess who woos Rochester to marriage but then finds out that he is already married. And this first wife is living in his house, chained up in the attic! Sorry if I spoilt that for you, but I am truly shocked when I encounter people who don’t know what Jane Eyre is about. Book readers, even. How, I ask, do some college educated people I am friends with actually not know about Jane Eyre! A diverse world we live in; I keep finding out.

Anyway, Jean Rhys had read Jane Eyre and wanted to know more about this first Mrs. Rochester and so she put her ideas into this short novella.

I probably should reread it. It is atmospheric and confusing. It is stream of consciousness and vivid. It provides narrative on the lady’s childhood (tragic) and then switches to a time right after she is married to an Englishman and is this part is from this unnamed guy’s perspective. We know this is Rochester.

And he comes off as an asshole. The first part is rather straightforward and we sympathize greatly with Miss Antoinette and her sad mother and her scary circumstances – poor and friendless in hostile territory, a failed plantation on a Caribbean island. It is sketchy exactly how her fortunes turn but mother somehow remarries money… more tragedy happens and then Part 2.

Rochester marries Antoinette for her money, but doesn’t really remember everything cuz he gets the fever for a few weeks while all this is happening. Antoinette seems happy and crazy in love but Rochester is bewildered and befuddled and then finds out Antoinette’s true father was a drunk and much worse, her mother is ‘mad’, crazy, a whore. Rochester is filled with rage. He’s been tricked!

Antoinette also becomes enraged to find out this guy is a total jerk. Partly because he starts calling her Bertha – or was that before he got pissed off, I forget; but it was odd to me why he did that (and it is just so hard to think of the name Bertha as a “pretty” pet name – so confusing.) And THEN! He sleeps with a servant, UGH! and basically treats everyone like the asshole he is.

Part 3 is in England, to scenes familiar to those of us who know the setting and storyline of Jane Eyre.

Yikes… so rather than reread just yet, I post this and invite any of you to share/correct me on these thoughts.

I would love to take a class on Jane combined with discussion of this story, the history it depicts, the themes throughout both, and the motivations of both authors. Fun stuff!

The Introduction is excellent, too!

Four slices of pie. Alas, no pie nor pastry mentioned in Wide Sargasso Sea.

Cross another classic off my 50. Thank you Spin for the prompt to get this read.

I am on to my next: Vanity Fair – a classic I know little about (and what I might think I know seems to be wrong.) I know that Becky Sharpe is a famous conniving female character of literature and so far, Thackeray is entertaining in a Dickens kind of way…

[insert copyright note here and book cover image at top when I get back to a PC – I can’t figure out how to do that with this device…]

Classics Club Spin! August 2018

On August 1, 2018August 1, 2018 By CareIn Classics, Classics Club, Lists, Random11 Comments

So. I saw on Twitter this morning that the latest SPIN! number was about to be announced and then…

I missed the interim window to make my list because I saw that the SPIN! number was published! Ooops. whoops. I hadn’t made my list yet.

So I entered 20 books into a random list order generator and so I could still be surprised by whichever book landed on the SPIN.

Here’s the list BEFORE I entered them into the randomizer:

The Three Musketeers – Alex Dumas
Jude the Obscure – Hardy
the Woodlanders – Hardy
Rabbit, Run – Updike
Naked Lunch – Wm Burroughs
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
The House of the Seven Gables – Hawthorne
Vanity Fair – Thackeray
Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
Candide – Voltaire
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
Confederacy of Dunces – JKToole
Twelve Years a Slave – Solomon Northup
The Way We Live Now – Trollope
the Counterfeiters – A. Gide
A Handful of Dust – Waugh
The Ox-bow Incident – Walter Van Tilberg Clark
Eileen Chang’s Love in a Fallen City

and here’s the results UP to the SPIN NUMBER of 9:

the Woodlanders – Hardy
The Way We Live Now – Trollope
Eileen Chang’s Love in a Fallen City
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
Twelve Years a Slave – Solomon Northup
Rabbit, Run – Updike
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
Jude the Obscure – Hardy
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

Alrighty then! Off to the library website to order the book. Or go to Audible and check if the narration is highly rated? Maybe. I have a credit to use…

Let Me TELL You What I’m Reading

On June 13, 2018June 13, 2018 By CareIn Audio, Author Recommendation, Classics, Lists, Online Book Club, Pie, Rooster!13 Comments

Thoughts. In motion.

Something different. Something fun? More? Maybe NOT? Keep trying?

Jane Eyre

On May 2, 2018 By CareIn Audio, Author Recommendation, Classics, Pie12 Comments

Thoughts by Charlotte Bronte, 2016 (orig 1847), 19 hours 10 minutes

Narrated by Thandie Newton.

Challenge: Personal

Genre: Classics, Feminism, Gothic Romance?

Type/Source: Audiobook / Audible

Why I read this now: #shrug

MOTIVATION for READING: Oh Jane. Jane, I feel like I know you. I have ‘known’ your story for what feels like forever. But, my memory fails me! I’m not really positive that I have met you face-to-face and heard your story from you directly. Perhaps I have only heard talk from other acquaintances, about your Mr. Rochester and his mad wife in the attic. I can’t remember if I was lying when I say I have read your book. Did I? or does it just seem that way because I know of the tale? (I have the same issue/question re: Wuthering Heights.)

I had to be sure. I decided that experiencing Jane Eyre via audiobook was the way to go (a first-read or reread – who cares? I suspected I would enjoy it – I love long classics on audio.) Lucky for me, I was able to select THIS edition.

WHAT’s it ABOUT: Hmmmm, dare I spoil it? Have I already?! EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT JANE EYRE IS ABOUT, right?

Actually, no. One of my best friends asked me yesterday, what is about? Crazy, huh? She’s such a good egg but is she plugged into the world of literature-mania like me? She is NOT.

And I had hard time telling her. How much to tell? I shrugged and told her she wouldn’t like it and would probably DNF it. I know her well enough.

WHAT’s GOOD: Thandie Newton is a dream. She is PERFECTION. She made every line beautiful and dreamy; she delivered the exact amount of emotion to every sentence. Fraught or loving, scary or forcefully independent.

Listen to Thandie’s voice and her thoughts on doing the narration:

What’s NOT so good: Bronte can go on and on with descriptions but I enjoyed it. (I suspect my friend would roll her eyes in weariness. I also suspect she wouldn’t like the old language.)

FINAL THOUGHTS: If you want to audiobook a classic, choose this one.

RATING: Five slices of gooseberry pie.

“I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again. What are you going to do with these gooseberries?” I inquired, as she brought out a basket of the fruit.

“Mak’ ’em into pies.”

“Give them to me and I’ll pick them.”

“Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought.”

“But I must do something. Let me have them.”

She consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over my dress, “lest,” as she said, “I should mucky it.”

pierating

	Rutheilla on August 2019 Update
	The Avid Reader on August 2019 Update
	Care on August 2019 Update
	Care on August 2019 Update
	Care on August 2019 Update
	Care on August 2019 Update
	BermudaOnion on August 2019 Update
	Deb Nance at Readerb… on August 2019 Update

Care's Books and Pie

Category: Classics