August 2019 Update

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.

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Classics Spin April 2019

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.

 

 

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.

Back to the Classics 2019 List Ideas

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

Categories

1. 19th Century Classic. Any classic book originally published between 1800 and 1899. – The House of the Seven Gables – Nat Hawthorne 1851

2. 20th Century Classic. Any classic book originally published between 1900 and 1969. – The Ox-bow Incident by Walt VanTilberg Clark 1940

 

3. Classic by a Woman Author.  NANCY MITFORD’s LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE

 

4. Classic in Translation. CANDIDE – Voltaire

5. Classic Comic Novel. Any comedy, satire, or humorous work. ?

6. Classic Tragic Novel. Tragedies traditionally have a sad ending… Hardy: Jude the Obscure

7. Very Long Classic. Any classic single work 500 pages or longer, not including introductions or end notes. – The Three Muskateers should work for this.

8. Classic Novella. Any work of narrative fiction shorter than 250 pages. – One Fine Day – Mollie Panter-Downes 179pp 1947

9. Classic From the Americas (includes the Caribbean). Includes classic set in either continent or the Caribbean, or by an author originally from one of those countries. – ?

10. Classic From Africa, Asia, or Oceania (includes Australia). Any classic set in one of those contents or islands, or by an author from these countries. – Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook?

11. Classic From a Place You’ve Lived. Read locally! Any classic set in a city, county, state or country in which you’ve lived, or by a local author. – The Age of Innocence / Wharton / Newport RI

12. Classic Play. Any play written or performed at least 50 years ago. Plays are eligible for this category only.  X

THE RULES: 

• All books must have been written at least 50 years ago to qualify; therefore, books must have been published no later than 1969 for this challenge.

 

Maybe this year I will read at least 6 and achieve this Challenge for the first time!

Copyright © 2007-2018. Care’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.

A Classic Woulda Coulda Shoulda

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

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!

 

Copyright © 2007-2018. Care’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.

Wide Sargasso Sea #ccspin

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

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:

1. the Woodlanders – Hardy
2. The Way We Live Now – Trollope
3. Eileen Chang’s Love in a Fallen City
4. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
5. Twelve Years a Slave – Solomon Northup
6. Rabbit, Run – Updike
7. Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
8. Jude the Obscure – Hardy

9. 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…

 

 

Copyright © 2007-2018. Care’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.

Classics Club Update and Spin-Done-Read Link

Today is the day we share what we read for the latest Spin.

I read Cold Comfort Farm and got a kick out of it. Glad I finally got to it and that I got it well enough.  I know the humor seems to hit & miss for some people but I always seem to enjoy a good satire even when I don’t quite know what I’m chuckling about/with. Whatever, it works for me and it’s all about me. Ha!

And I was able to talk the hub into watching the film!! 

I’m having a good year getting back to classics. I finished Stoner in January and have a plan to capture quite a few titles as options in my quest to fulfill this year’s What’s in a Name Challenge.

Good fun!

Next up is my post on Jane Eyre – hoping to finish before the close of the month.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2007-2018. Care’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.

Cold Comfort Farm

Thoughts  by Stella Gibbons, Penguin 2006 (orig 1932), 233 pages

Challenge: Classics Club Spin for April

Genre: Satire? “Comic novel”

Type/Source: Tradeback/Library

 Why I read this now: Spin and library had a copy – woo hoo!

MOTIVATION for READING: I originally had this on my Club 50 because it was a book I saw on many people’s done-read list and I wanted to get in on that.

“He was a tree-trunk; a toad on a stone; a pie-thatched owl on a bough.”

WHAT’s it ABOUT: Supposedly, it makes fun of the classic style of British farm novels? I have not read any British farm novels so I can’t comment to that.

Poor orphaned Flora finds out that her inheritance will not be quite adequate to live on so she decides to crash on relatives who will have her. They all acquiesce to the idea but she can’t go to them all, right? so she picks the one that will most benefit from her influence:  Cold Comfort Farm. She arranges marriages, lets the bull get some sunshine, finds servants to wash her curtains, gets one cousin to ‘realize his ambition’ which allows another cousin to realize a dream. One cousin is discovered as Star Material for Hollywood talkies and another discovers the health benefits of travel. It’s quite crazy and madcap and all arranged by Flora’s capable hands.

All that and she somehow herself is proposed to; she gets to fly off to live happily ever after.

“Henceforth her life would be one of exquisite sunny natural content.”

WHAT’s GOOD: I did find it funny. Not laugh out loud joke funny but amusing. I loved that every mode of transportation and all mediums for communication are utilized.

What’s NOT so good: Well, it’s an old book set in another time, so it has a few crass mentions of ‘other’ that are stereotypical and insensitive but only a couple. It really isn’t kind to women, either, tbh. And by that, I mean poor women.

I did scratch my head a few times in mild bewilderment and some questions never get answered. Do we really want to know what Aunt Ada Doom saw in the woodshed? No, no we do not. And what exactly did they do to Flora’s father that they had to accept penance of taking in Flora? And who was Adam?  I never did figure out who Adam was but shrug. No matter.

[Updated to add:   I remembered to read the Introduction by Lynne Truss who explains and admires this work in terrific prose. So, anything I didn’t get was because I can be obtuse – ha! The Intro is fab. Be sure to read it; get THIS edition with the cow on the cover so you don’t miss it. And, if you’re like me – you’ll read it after so nothing is spoiled. I would never read an Intro before a book. Why oh why do they want me to read it first?!]

FINAL THOUGHTS: I kind of wish I had a Flora Poste to interfere in my life… She surely would have some sensible advice to provide.

RATING: Five slices of apple pie.

“What they was having themselves proved to be apple tart and vegetables, so Flora did quite well.”

 

 

Copyright © 2007-2018. Care’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.

Classic Spin March 2018

Mar 9: number 3 selected; thus, I get to read Cold Comfort Farm. [My review]

It’s another SPIN!  My favorite… This button has the information post:

Drawing and number announcement will be March 9; book at that number from this list must be read by the end of April. Let’s do this!

Here are my 20:

1. The Three Muskateers
2. Jude the Obscure
3. Cold Comfort Farm
4. Wide Sargasso Sea
5. The King Must Die
6. The Dud Avocado
7. Charlotte Sometimes
8. One Fine Day
9. The Ox-Bow Incident
10. The House of the Seven Gables
11. Candide
12. A Handful of Dust
13. Rabbit Run
14. Love in a Cold Climate –> Love in a Fallen City
15. Naked Lunch
16. The Counterfeiters
17. Love in a Fallen City moved to spot 14; switching with Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
18. The Woodlanders
19. Confederacy of Dunces
20. The Way We Live Now

I was planning on getting to The House of the Seven Gables sooner than later so let’s all hope the spin number is TEN!

My original list and progress page is linked here for my own convenience.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2007-2018. Care’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.