Category Archives: Classics

A Gathering of Old Men

April 5, 2023Book to Movie, Challenge, Classics, Classics Club, Library, Pieapple pie, classics club spin, Library, plarines same as pralines, possibly the 29th book of the year, race relations, set in Louisiana, tradeback, Trying to get back in the blogging swingCare

Thoughts by Ernest J. Gaines, Vintage Books Random House 1983, 214 pages

Challenge: Classics Club SPIN due April 19, 2023

Genre/Theme: Adult Literature / Race Relations

Type/Source: Tradeback / Library

What It’s About: Set in the 70s in rural Louisiana, this tale looks at friendship and loyalty, race relations, changing times that rail against ingrained attitudes, and dreams versus regrets. What a fabulous telling! Tautly paced, calm before coming dreaded storm, we get quick glimpses of real people and all treated relatively respectfully. Well done Author Gaines, a master of story craft.

A man is shot dead and friends rally around the man assumed to have done the deed because he has always been a rock to his beliefs, standing up for my himself. So all the old men grab similar shotguns, shoot and bring the spent shells so that “proof” of who done it is not so easily conclusive. The dead man is white, the group confessing to the killing are all black, except for the white woman who also wants to protect and rally for her own rules of justice (which is not in agreement with the sheriff.

All are more in fear of the family, the father and friends of the dead man coming to claim their own brand of justice. The sheriff is also hoping that won’t happen, but can he stop it?

“I ran out on the front garry and seen it was Miss Merle, and looked like a heavy load just fell off my shoulders.”

Thoughts: This was tense and well plotted. I loved seeing all the perspectives and outlaying of viewpoints black and white, the hopes and dreams over the decades that brought all these people to this point. I am looking forward to watching the movie. It’s got a great cast.

To be honest, I had no prep and it was challenging to figure out with certainty who was white and what was their role and relation to the community and who was black; when it came to the side players and how Gaines introduces everyone, I was challenged and I appreciate that. I really admired the subtleties.

Rating: I think I might raise my rating at a 5 slice of pie. Apple pie is mentioned rather frequently. Could pie be a metaphor? That we assume pie can heal the worlds ills and yes, why can’t it? Sadly, this situation is not easily fixed by apple pie but the ending was more positive than I ever expected.

I had Lucy bake me an apple pie, because I knew how much Jack just liked his apple pie. I told Lucy when she came to work that morning if she baked me the best apple pie she ever baked in her life, I would give her half the day off.

Copyright © 2007-2023. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Classics Club Spin March 2023 #ccspin #MyCCSPINList

March 15, 20231001 Books To Read Before Dying, Book Blogging Community, Book Picked Me, Classics, Classics Club, ListsClassics Club SPIN!, Lists, Spin #26Care

Time for another Spin! #33 – Number reveal 3.19 – Read by 4/30/2023

UPDATE! The number 18 was selected so I will be reading Gaines’ A Gathering of Old Men.

Click the image above to go to the announcement post.

Will update later with the selected spin number which will identify the book I need to read…

My Spin List:

1	Villette
2	Twelve Years a Slave – Solomon Northrup
3	Confederacy of Dunces – JKToole
4	the Counterfeiters
5	Eileen Chang’s Love in a Fallen City
6	A Few Green Leaves – B. Pym
7	Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – PK Dick
8	Under the Greenwood Tree – Hardy
9	The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
10	At the Mountains of Madness – Lovecraft
11	Pale Fire – Nabokov
12	The Once and Future King – TH White #OaFKingalong on Litsy
13	Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates
14	The Good Soldier – Ford M Ford
15	Death Comes for the Archbishop – W.Cather
16	Rabbit, Run – Updike
17	All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville West
18	A Gathering of Old Men – Ernest Gaines
19	The King Must Die – Mary Renault
20	The Way We Live Now – Trollope

Here’s hoping 12 hits – GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

Copyright © 2007-2023. 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.

All Quiet on the Western Front

February 1, 2023Author Recommendation, Book to Movie, Challenge, Classics, Wian2023book #9 of 2023, Book to Movie, had discovered then forgotten that a new movie had been made based on this book then discovered it again and then am now scared my memory is wonky, library book, on average 55 German soldiers died in every hour of the fifty-month long conflict, tradeback, unfathomable, Wian2023, Wian_qxz, WW1Care

Thoughts by Erich Maria Remarque, Random House Trade 2013 (orig 1928), 227 pages, translated from the German by A.W. Wheen

Challenge: for Classics Club 50 list #2, #WiaN2023 – Category QXZ in title

Genre/Theme: War – WW1

Type/Source: Trade Paperback / Library

“We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out…we creep in upon ourselves and with big eyes stare into the night…and thus we wait for morning.”

What It’s About: Paul is 20 years and realizing his time on the front will permanently impact any hopes of his having any “normal” life, assuming he survives the horror, the filth, the lice, and the inhumanity.

“This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”

Thoughts: This was beautifully written and struck me hard.

Rating: Five slices of pie. No pie mentioned.

“We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.”

2023 Wichita Library #ReadICT Challenge

January 2, 2023Celebration, Challenge, Classics, Wian2023the WIAN image will go to the host blog signupCare

My town library has a yearly challenge of 12 months, 12 books, 12 categories. They don’t get hung up on the once a month thing…. Let’s go!

This year’s categories are:

A book with a non-human narrator
A book with a long title (7+ words)
A book about friendship
A guilty pleasure read
A book told from a villain’s point of view
A book about time
A book with a color in the title
A book featuring a LGBTQIA+ protagonist
A book about death or grief
A book set in the Great Plains
A book about a secret or closed society
A book by an author visiting Wichita (in-person or remote)

Follow my GoodReads tracking here.

Happy New Reading Challenge Year! Eat some pie.

2023 What’s in a Name Challenge

January 1, 2023Celebration, Classics, Wian2023the WIAN image will go to the host blog signupCare

Here we go again! my favorite reading challenge, the one that is less pressure and most engaging to me for year round fun. It gets me to look carefully at the books on my shelves that need to be read.

The What’s in a Name Challenge Categories for 2023 are:

Punctuation – easy
7 Deadly Sins – Damnation Spring?
You or Me – so many options!! LOL
Chess Piece – The Once and Future King? or The King Must Die by Mary Renault
Celebration – Anna Quindlen’s Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake
Q, X, Z

(The hyperlinks above will click over to the host pages for the categories. SWEEET)

Follow my GoodReads tracking here.

Happy New Reading Challenge Year! Eat some pie.

2022 Challenge Status Updates

December 23, 2022Celebration, Classics, Classics Club, What's in a Name 2022CC50_2, Challenge Status Update, Stats Post Ups SOON, the WIAN image will go to the host blog signup, WiaN2022Care

and what nots….

Btw, I deleted all my Twitter accounts. End of an era? I do miss it, but it was no longer the Twitter I knew and loved.

Let’s talk CHALLENGES. I’m looking at the few challenges I worked at in 2022 and picking books from what I read that satisfy as a last ditch effort – I was picky and in doubt about a few but at this stage in the game, WHO CARES!

The What’s in a Name Challenge is COMPLETE:

I’m not bothering to figure out if I posted to the host site (SORRY!) and just enjoying the accomplishment over here in my personal glory/reflection.

Moving on to the question of will I continue in 2023! YES! Yes, of course, and I have a stack of books picked out that will satisfy the new categories but will list more in a dedicated post here in the next few days or weeks.

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Classics Club 50 Part 2 – I read a few classics from my lists and some I realized after that the publish date qualifies for this challenge so I will commit, once again, to a dedicated post in the future with what I’ve read so far and how many I have yet to read. Quick glance says I have to read between 20 – 25 by the end of year 2024. I’ll make it. Looking good.

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Buddy Reads! Who is in for 2023? The Stephen King Fairy Tales is sure showing up in the publicity marketing machine! Anyone want to commit a date for that in 2023?

or is TOB going to suck up all the reading time and force me to say, “How About April?!”

Which brings me to the Tournament of Books. I am almost half way through the 18 on the short list. I think I’ll make this one, too. HUZZAH!

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Eat some pie.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

October 9, 2022Challenge, Classics, Classics Club, Family, Historical Lit, Pie, Sort of Review, What's in a Name 2022book #78 of 2022, book cover links to goodreads, can't recall how I acquired this one, I love pie, Kentucky Blue People, Pack Horse Librarians, this read also gave me the completion to my page count goal of 22500, tradeback, Wian What's in a Name, WiaN2022, Wian2022:DescriptionCare

Thoughts by Kim Michele Richardson, Sourcebooks 2019, 309 pages

Challenge: What’s in a Name 2022: Category Person with Description

What’s in a Name Challenge: Description category

Genre/Theme: Adult Fiction; history, pack horse library, blue people of Kentucky

Type/Source: Tradeback / Purchased at Half Price Books, I think

What It’s About: This story focuses on the last of the Kentucky blue people and how our protagonist worked to make her own journey in the world, as a Pack Horse Librarian, during the Depression. The story isn’t light – it contains disturbing violence, racism, and death. There are also tender moments and some humor.

Thoughts: I actually allowed myself to get swept away in this and it could be because I needed a hero to truly cheer for after a struggle with NightBitch, I’m not sure. It certainly is more plot and story and not the introspective contemporary snob-literature that I often find myself really falling for. I didn’t notice, for example, all the melodrama and the repetition of her being blue, over and over again until I read it in a review. Oh. Yeah, perhaps. Maybe it was all the references to pie. It surely gained it an extra slice on the rating for pie being a many-mentioned element.

And I also agree that the ending was … a bit much. Too much for only a few pages! WHAT JUST HAPPENED? Good thing I didn’t have a chance to go read reviews before I finished which is what happens when I have doubts mid-way. But I just kept trucking with the story until the last page.

“The first Friday in June, Troublesome always held its pie bake dance, a pie auction to hitch unmarried folks.”
page 60

Rating: Four slices of pie. Because of the pie and the fast flow.

“Winnie‘d been … the only one to bring a pie and sit with me one long Sunday, and then the next, reading to me while I recovered.”
page 73

Question: Will I read the second in the series? The Book Woman’s Daughter, published in May of this year. I don’t know. I’m not rushing out to get it, and I rarely read series books… I probably won’t, to be honest.

A View of the Harbour

May 22, 2022Audio, Author Recommendation, Challenge, Classics, Classics Club, Family, Pie, Sort of Review#BookSpin on Litsy, book cover links to goodreads, Buddy Read, Buddy Read with Laila, definitely captured a slice of time in history, family drama, I do love these ET covers by Virago, I just planted giant elephant ear plants and am calling them "Bertram and Tory" LOL, I love pie, lady novelist!! lady publisher?!, Prudence was an interesting character that I am not so sure of, shepherds pie, tourist town with no touristsCare

Thoughts by Elizabeth Taylor, Virago Modern Classics 2006 (orig 1947), 304 pages

Introduction by Sarah Waters

Challenge: Buddy Read with Laila of Big Reading Life; Set At or By the Sea Category of #ReadICT

Genre/Theme: Adult Fiction; quiet small British seaside village post-WW2

Type/Source: Tradeback / Purchased at Watermarks Indie bookstore

What It’s About: This story focuses on the inter-relationships of the neighbors living directly on the harbour; from the doctor’s family, the pub workers, the widowed proprietor of a tourist wax museum, the librarian, the vicar, etc. The pivot view to all begins with Bertram, a painter who has moved to the area for the season: to catch the right light off the sea, to capture the perfect seascape, to be “an artist”. He fancies himself a man-of-the-people as he rudely? comically? insinuates himself into the neighborhood. A lot of life happens in this book.

“Always intelligent, often subversive, and never dull, Elizabeth Taylor is the thinking person’s dangerous housewife. Her sophisticated prose combines elegance, ice wit and freshness in a stimulating cocktail – the perfect toast to the quiet horror of domestic life.”
—Valerie martin

Thoughts: I love this author. True, her stories do not have a lot of action exactly, but they have drama! and depth and comedy, beautiful sentences and interesting glimpses into every character – the good and the bad, the endearing, the appalling. Ah, not really! not that much appalling exactly. Well, maybe. (One more reason I love classics – humans have always been dastardly and behaved badly, amiright?)

“I know who to,” Beth said, shocked to find herself ending with a preposition. But she was much thrown out by the surprise of it all.”

Rating: Four slices of pie. LOTS of whipped cream. Shepherd’s Pie mentioned

“Forking up shepherd’s pie with an expression of contempt.”

Update March 2022 in Review with Note on #TOB2022

April 1, 2022Audio, Celebration, Challenge, Classics, Classics Club, Coconut Book, Debut Novel, Historical Lit, Library, Life, Lists, Pie, Rooster!, Science Fictiondata overload data overlord, hashtag #CaresPieShow, hoping spring with spring me back into blogging, I hate wordpress blocks, Manage to read both the Litsy Book SPIN and the DOUBLE spin, monthly stats, NonFiction, not-ins-PIE-erd, on a path to 100 books for the year!, Only one Litsy Bingo, pie pie pie and more pie, piroshkis, pyrex pie dish, squash pie, techie things that used to be fun are losing their shimmers, tracking my books this year, where did I travel, why are images blurry anymoreCare

Monthly Recap Time!

10 books; 32 for the year
2759 pages, ~31.5 hours | 8 597 total pages, 92.5 hours for the year so far
- By Type:
  Hardcover – 0
  Tradeback 3
  eBooks 3
  Audiobooks 4

My favorite was … Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore, followed by the delightful Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley, a classic novella from 1917.

Locations and travels:

Odessa TX in the 70s (Valentine)
San Francisco, also in the 70s (We Run the Tides, for #readICT)
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks links to WRtT because both were set in exclusive high schools, this one in Massachusetts (#readICT)
Parnassus on Wheels traveled New England in the early 1900s
London both now and 1700s in The Lost Apothecary (book club)
Puerto Rico and Brooklyn NY in Olga Dies Dreaming
The Stand-In took me to Toronto
Wintering took place in England (WiaN)
The Alchemy of Us covered history across many maps

UPDATE on #TOB2022

My least favorite Klara and the Sun took the Rooster in March’s Tournament of Books
I can confidently state the The Trees captured the hearts for favorite of the Commentariat so that is the book I’m most recommending as “THE BEST”; my personal favorite is The Sentence
I read ALL THE BOOKS! and you can see my rankings in my February recap.
Am inspired to read a new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley, one of the judges this year. MANY if not most of the judgments were excellent.

Pie was mentioned in four of this month’s reads. A history of PYREX mentions pie, all kinds of pie and multiple paragraphs cover a summer expedition to eat pie across the country, squash pie in Parnassus on Wheels and this from WRtT:

April 3 is Chocolate Mousse Pie Day, April 5 is Empanada Day, April 28 is Blueberry Pie Day! I don’t think I made any pie in March. I just wasn’t feelin’ it.

What was YOUR favorite book of March?

Copyright © 2007-2022. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

The Optimist’s Daughter

February 24, 20221001 Books To Read Before Dying, Author Recommendation, Book Picked Me, Classics, Classics Club, Family, Pie, What's in a Name 2022a very Southern Lit style book, book coinky-dinks, getting a lovely couple of inches of snow today falling softly, grief, I'm surprised there isn't a movie of this, Reacher's love interest uses Eudora Welty as her fake hotel signin name, set in Mississippi, someone sent me a postcard of a Welty quote and I'm sure she had no idea I was reading the book that mentioned said quote, what's with goodreads hiding the original publish year?Care

Thoughts by Eudora Welty, Vintage Books 1990 (orig 1969), 180 pages

Challenge: Classics Club, CC50_part2, WiaN – inspired by Ann Patchett

Genre/Theme: Adult Fiction, Southern Lit, Grief

Type/Source: Tradeback/Book-A-Holic purchase

Carolina Book Nook hosts the WiaN Challenge

What It’s About: Laurel is the daughter of the “Optimist”. She is in her mid-forties, and her mother has been dead over 10, maybe 15 years already. Last year, her father the Optimist up and married Fay, who is maybe forty but probably only late 30s and looks even younger.

Let’s just say that Fay is a piece of work. The southern ladies would say, “Bless her heart”. Actually, I don’t think they even bother with that. All the menfolk think Fay is tender and helpless and to be pitied. The women, not so much.

UGH. (Fay really appalled me.)

Father dies, Laurel manages (by which I mean that she “processes”), Fay annoys and despairs.

Thoughts: Please please please let me know your thoughts if you have read this. I wrote on a Litsy review:

So very much to think about! Packs a punch and not only because it is about grief but about personality, society expectations (and burdens) and perception. Would be a terrific book club book.