Hard to sustain that alliteration.

To acquaint passersby with my 2009 reading habits, here are some books I read last year:
In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo, John Porter Houston
Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo & Les Misérables, Mario Vargas Llosa

Emma, Jane Austen
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
The Annotated Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Searching for Jane Austen, Emily Auerbach

Howards End, E.M. Forster
Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster
Maurice, E.M. Forster
The Longest Journey, E.M. Forster
Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster
Selected Short Stories, E.M. Forster

King Lear, William Shakespeare
Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt

Essays of Montaigne (still working on these, I luv him)

Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton
Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link
The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, Harry Stephen Keeler
Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
The Ghost in Love, Jonathan Carroll

The Painter of Signs, R. K. Narayan
The Bride Price, Buchi Emecheta
Jamilia, Chingiz Aitmatov

Diary of a Nobody, George Grossmith
Little Black Book of Stories, A.S. Byatt
Outfoxing Fear (folktales), Kathleen Ragan
Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault translated by Angela Carter

And links to last year's threads:
#1: http://www.librarything.com/topic/50280
#2: http://www.librarything.com/topic/75878

Books completed in 2010:
4. The Passport, Herta Müller
3. Silas Marner, George Eliot
2. Leave It To Psmith, P.G. Wodehouse
1. Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, P.G. Wodehouse

Books partially read in 2010:

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 8, 2010, 6:17pm.

Current reading Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit. War and Peace is on hold for most of January while I meet a deadline on a composition. You can usually tell when I am hardest at work on a project by the difficulty level of my extracurricular reading. Last year around this time there was another deadline and I was inhaling Alexander McCall Smith books. This year I'm slightly more ambitious with lots of Jeeves and Wooster.

Which is all to say, if you're here to follow my oh-so-high-powered reading, come back in February. ;) At the end of the month, I'll be reviewing Herta Müller's The Passport for Belletrista. Then back to Tolstoy. After that, I suspect there will be more George Eliot and E.M. Forster. Possibly Dostoevsky, Dickens, Vikram Seth, R.K. Narayan, Zakes Mda, Homer (The Odyssey), Italo Calvino.

Edit: touchstones, work, dagnabbit!

Message modifié par son auteur, Déc 31, 2009, 10:31am.

Touchstones are the bane of the LibraryThinger's existence, no?

Love the alliteration! To quote my pastor, "It's just alliteration ... which makes it better." :p

Way cool Medellia;
I can use your 2009 reading list as a tool for my 2010 reads!~!
Just wanted to pop over and say hello. I am looking forward to this year's reading.
belva

That is a very cool reading list for 2009. In fact, I think it's mine. OMG!

Mmm.

Nathan- Your pastor is quite right.

Belva- Thanks for stopping by! I do recommend anything on the list above--it was a great reading year, and that's my "best of" list.

Murrmurr dear- Just wait 'til you see what I'll be reading this year. The list will seem eerily familiar, I'm sure. :) I did end up picking up The Icon and the Axe, btw. I picked up Natasha's Dance, too, for good measure. Hubby has already browsed the Billington & is intrigued.

You and hubby will not be disappointed. I have added Billington to my list of Really Great Books. I dip into it constantly.

Here's a quick taste to get the flavour.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/01/james-billington-on-pasternak.html

You're a darling, and the quote is wonderful. I also like the tag "Someone on Something."

Hi Medilla. Just stopping by to mention that I printed out the Ted Chiang story from the link you provided awhile back over at the Salon. I love short stories and figure your rec. will be a good one. By the way, you had a stunning year of reading last year!

Hope you enjoy the Chiang! MurrMurr, the story Teresa's talking about made me think of you, too. There's a kind of Whorf-Sapir basis for the story, though in an out-there SF way.

I did have a great reading year after all! It had started out a bit slowly. A lot of the same interests will be bleeding over into this year as well (more Proust criticism/Proust reread, more Forster works & criticism, get started reading everything George Eliot ever wrote!).

huh? huh? what what what?

Guess you could use a link, hm? :) Thread below in the Salon, messages 8 and 9 (link to story online in 9). Teresa & I are talking about Ted Chiang's "Story Of Your Life."

http://www.librarything.com/topic/77608#1615577

Great reading list for last year. Did you read all of In Search of Time Lost in one year? I'm trying to do that this year--I'm well into Within a Budding Grove and for the first time after several attempts to read Proust, I'm hooked.

And, although its focus was not literary, I was mesmerized by Figes's The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. Natasha's Dance is on my list of TBR.

Aruba- It took me one year, from Sept '08 to Sept 09, to read all of ISOLT. I was quite hooked & am looking forward to a reread with the Salon starting in June. The curse of ISOLT, for me, was that I didn't really start putting all the pieces together 'til the last few volumes. I finished the last volume and thought... I want to read it again, but I also feel I have to read it again. Once I finished Le temps retrouve, I knew I'd understand Swann's Way so much better if I went back to it.

I feel the same way after reading only the first volume. I'm thinking that I could do a circular reading of all the novels for the rest of my life, i.e going back to Swann's Way each time I finished the last volume.

Medellia - I picked up Passport over the weekend - I hope you'll remind us when your review is posted.

I was going to just sort of slip into the ISOLT read on Les Salon...thinking three months...1000 pages a month...I can do that. Am I being naively optimistic? Perhaps I should pass on that one for now.

I picked up The Passport in Hong Kong and read it while traveling home. My review is on the book page. It just didn't strike me as great... or even that good... I'm sure there was much I missed amidst the crying kids, turbulence, and interruptions by flight attendants wanting to sell cheesy duty free goods. Could be I just wasn't in a Romanian frame-of-mind at the time. That happens. I have got her book The Appointment on my TBR list. I haven't given up on Ms Müller. Last year's winner turned out to be one of my favorite authors.

Hi Medellia... sorry for the slight deviation from your flight path. I've starred ya'.

Banoo - I'll check out your review after I read it.

>17, 18 I thought The Passport quite good, though I liked The Land of Green Plums better. I have The Nadirs somewhere in the TBR pile. Kudos for trying to read Müller under difficult circumstances!

#15, etc. Medellia and Aruba, It also took me a year or so to read ISOLT, mixing it up with other reads, and I felt the same way about needing to reread it. I'll have to zip over to the Salon and see about reading it again with all of you, although at the same time of course I feel the inexorable pull of all those other books on the TBR . . .

#17 dchaikin: I doubt that we'll be doing all of ISOLT in three months in the Salon; I suspect it'll drag out for considerably longer than that. I think it'd be possible to read Proust in 3 months if you had lots of time & energy to devote to it. Like Rebeccanyc, I read other things between volumes, and there were times of the year when I just didn't have the stamina to tackle Proust. My reading speed for Proust was slow--average of maybe 15 pages per hour, some parts being slightly slower (10 pp./hr) or faster (20-25).

Rebecca, I, too, feel the pull of all those other TBRs. I'm trying to balance reading widely with reading deeply this year, but there's so much out there (and in here, in my apartment :) that I haven't read.

Thanks for the comments on The Passport, folks. I'll definitely post the link to Belletrista when the review is up. Welcome again, Banoo.

"Sixty-five pages a day is a good goal. Devoting less than an hour every day to "In Search of Lost Time" hardly gets you in the mood, and devoting more than an hour and a half a day for over two months might interfere with your other responsibilities."

So says Jane Smiley in this Salon article. She apparently read ISOLT in 70 days. I think it may take me somewhat longer :)
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2005/08/28/proust/index.html

15 pages per hour! - I shouldn't be that surprised, from what I've heard about Proust, but still...

Teresa- I read that article some time back. Smiley also appears to advocate reading those 65 pages in 60-90 minutes a day. Quote:
"Sixty-five pages a day is a good goal. Devoting less than an hour every day to "In Search of Lost Time" hardly gets you in the mood, and devoting more than an hour and a half a day for over two months might interfere with your other responsibilities."

Maybe she's Harold Bloom, but I'm not! I couldn't possibly read 65 pages of Proust in 90 minutes, not if I wanted to understand & retain. Not if I wanted to enjoy it, either, for that matter.

Dchaikin- YMMV! I'm sure everyone will have their own different Proust pace. I did spend a good deal of every hour underlining beautiful quotes and passages and taking extra time to really soak them in and consider them.

25>Medillia, having read some of Proust already I can say that your rate of 15 pages per hour sounds fast to me! Forget 65 p. in 90 minutes!

I'm reading between 15 and 30 pp. a day, which works out to about an hour or so. I'll occasionally read a little more if something is actually happening. lol. I anticipate reading a book every other month.

Forgive me if I've said this elsewhere, but one valuable resource that I splurged on is Paintings in Proust by Eric Karpeles, which reproduces all the paintings Proust refers to in ISOLT. While the reproductions are not of the highest quality, I'm enjoying the glimpses into what Proust was visualizing when writing certain passages.

Aruba: I'll occasionally read a little more if something is actually happening. lol.

Ha, yes, I was the same way.

I also give a thumbs up to Paintings in Proust. I don't have a personal copy yet, but I had it checked out from my uni library for a while (then some cheeky person recalled it! the nerve! wanting me to give up semi-permanent possession!). I hope to read/skim a lot more Proust criticism before June and put together a list of secondary texts for the Salon folks.

Message modifié par son auteur, Jan 5, 2010, 2:44pm.

Pages a day of Proust in another perspective: Suppose whatever edition you get of ISOLT is around 2,500 pages (my two volumes from the early 30s - in surprisingly decent shape - are actually closer to 2,300 pages) but most editions don't have such small print, I'm betting.

So, if we roughly can read, say, 20 pages an hour on average, and if we divide 2,500 pages by 20 pages/day, that comes out to 125 hours of total reading time. One hour a day and you'd be done in just over four months, assuming you read every day.

Or, suppose you were able to read 24 hours a day nonstop, day after day. You could have ISOLT completed in Five days, Five hours flat!

Oy! That must be some pretty small print, 'Rique. My Modern Library editions (6 volumes) total about 4200 pages (though that includes an index), and my Penguin Proust comes up to something like 3400 pages. Your "Five day five hour Proust challenge" would make an excellent LT group, methinks. But don't forget that Lola the Tranny Granny (not to be confused with the Divine LolaWalser) read all of Proust in one day. That's the real record.

In reading news, I finished Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, a delight as always, and just started Leave It to Psmith. Rena/ChocolateMuse recommended Psmith to me about a year ago, and here I am at last...

That article by Jane Smiley about reading ISOLT speaks VOLUMES about Jane Smiley, and reinforces again why I don't bother to 'read' her ...works? (to put it kindly, Mother Theresa kindly).

An epitome of everything that is wrong with contemporary American..... literature? no, that's not right. writing? scrawling? blurting? mewling? puking?

Poor Proust. To have his genius and life's labour reduced to some 70 days by someone with the mentality of a Kansas housewife.

Sigh.

Leave it to Psmith... brilliant.

"Say it with flowerpots!"

Yay! Meddy, you are about to discover the origin of those lemon-coloured pyjamas, and, as WW hints, the Great Flowerpot Saga. Pity you can't listen to Jonathan Cecil reading it for your first introduction.

Murr, you make me SO afraid to read Proust, or anything else serious. I'm sure I'll miss everything I should get, and reveal my own housewife mentality to the Club Read literati.

btw why Kansas? What is it about Kansas? All I know about Kansas is that it's very grey, and has tornadoes in it.

Exactly, so what kind of mentality do you think that produces? The only thing I know about Kansas is that Dorothy -and Toto- managed to escape from it.

(Actually, the remark originated from Gore Vidal, who said it of Truman Capote, in reference to his (dreadful) book Cold Blood, probably. I stole it. Don't tell any one.)

Chocolate Muse, with your reading list from last year, and your excellent and sensitive reviews, I should say you will have no problem enjoying Proust. As for understanding it, what you get from it is what you get from it, and as others have said so well already, it takes a lifetime of reading to appreciate its glories.

Thank god for books like that, eh?

I'm a housewife and I read Proust. I also recommend Paintings in Proust and Roger Shattuck's Proust's Way. Won't be reading it in 70 days though.

ETA Just popping in Medellia to say I'm enjoying your thread and your visitors.

Message modifié par son auteur, Jan 6, 2010, 1:21am.

I want to be a housewife and I want to read Proust. Are these ambitions contradictory? Perhaps only if I'm in Kansas.

I read Leave it to Psmith, but now I want to find Cecil's reading and listen to it. I bet it's even funnier aloud. Medellia, if you can come up with a good hypothesis about the meaning of the phrase "pale parabola of joy," please do share it :)

Alright! So if I read Psmith I'll be in on all those inside jokes that the cool crowd has! I'll let you know, Amy, if I come up with a good hypothesis.

I'm ducking all talk of housewives and Kansas (though I do harbor a perhaps unfair grudge against Kansas due to the one problematic drive I made through it). I already went to the Cat's profile to complain about Jane Smiley's article anyway. :)

Rena, one of my favorite things about being in my 20s is that if I don't "get" great art, I can plead youthful ignorance and say that maybe some day I'll understand it.

Hi, Merry! Thanks for stopping by. I've been lurking in your 2009 & 2010 threads (in the 10x10 group or whatever you guys are going to have to rename it :-p). I'll be following in some of your 2009 footsteps this year.

I, too, endorse Roger Shattuck's Proust's Way. I also really enjoyed Malcolm Bowie's Proust Among the Stars. It deserves more press than it gets.

Yeah, I'd like to be a housewife and read Proust too. I know nothing of Kansas.

*doesn't want to be a housewife OR read Proust* So there.

I can't believe it, but Leave it to Psmith is the only Wodehouse I've read, although I liked it very much. Parts of it were simply brilliant. The send-up of the standard spy story "secret meeting" may be one of the funniest things I've ever read.

>34, Murr, I'm perhaps more flattered than the occasion warrants. Thanks, I'll try to live up to it this year :)

I guess Murr (and Gore Vidal) really meant "stereotypical Kansas housewife", since everyone knows stereotypes rarely actually exist. I don't think anyone meant that housewives are inherently unable to read Proust intelligently, whether from Kansas or not.

I intend to read Middlemarch and Crime and Punishment and Moby Dick before I get to Proust, but I will get there. Maybe reading those others will make me better prepared for him.

>39, ncgraham, that's the bit when the crook's up the tree, right? And just before it is Freddy and the housemaid. Hah, so funny. I love that book.

touchstones are touchy

Oh, I forgot that there were several secret meeting send-ups in that book. I was thinking of the earlier meeting between Psmith and Freddy, when the later arrives with chrysanthemums stuffed down his shirt and muttering some idiotic password. So great.

medellia--as a composer you might be interested in this lecture by composer John Adams discussing music in Proust, including the Vintueil Sonata.

It's at www.chicagopublicradio.org/content.aspx?audioID38665.

If that doesn't get you there, go to the chicago public radio site and search 'Proust sonata'. The lecture was given in Nov. 09.

Thank you so much, aruba! I'm looking forward to listening to it. (I get back to serious reading in two weeks. :) I also have an essay at home (unread) musing on why Proust chose to make Vinteuil's other piece (later on in the work) a septet. And I also just picked up a new critical work on Forster (well, it's sort of recycled from some lectures, but just published) called Concerning E. M. Forster, by Frank Kermode; one of the chapters is called "Beethoven, Wagner, Vinteuil." (Forster wrote briefly about Proust & his use of "the little phrase" from Vinteuil in the last chapter of Aspects of the Novel.) So I will add your John Adams lecture to these other things and have a high old time.

I also have checked out from the library a book called Proust as Musician, by Jean-Jacques Nattiez. Looks like it may be a little over my head, what with the Schopenhauer-slinging and so forth, but I ought to give it a try eventually.

I finished Leave It to Psmith last night. Got a bunch of hearty laughs out of it, definitely among the funniest Wodehouse I've read. On to some Jeeves & Wooster, either The Mating Season or Very Good, Jeeves.

Med,

as a Forster junkie I must ask you to report on the Kermode book once you are done.

Seconded

Thirded! (Oh wait, I'm me.) Will do, though I have to read A Passage to India first. I've been saving this last piece of unread Forster (well, except for some of the short stories) for a special treat.

Fourth'ded.

Medellia: Fyi: there's another Proust fanatic back after a long absence - Pummzie, remember her? - who just wrote a Swann's Way review. She's in the 75 Books Group but imho, she should be over here instead and someone ought to send her an invite. I've bugged her enough already today otherwise I would.

What do you think of this title: "The Passion of the Proust." A title for what? I don't know. It just came to me.

The Passion of the Proust

for sailors and soldiers, wasn't it?

You boys!

I don't know what it would be a title for, but I like it. I read Pummzie's review when you pimped it in the Salon, 'Rique (you did do that, right? I'm not imagining things?). Very fine indeed, although if Swann's Way is really the definitive manual on love, I think the human race might as well off itself right now, lol.

Speaking of Proust & passion, I fairly recently reread the scene with Swann rearranging Odette's cattleyas. Whew! *fans self* Proust does know how to get the heart racing. I should be careful, I haven't been able to figure out where to fit a fainting couch in this little apartment...

Message modifié par son auteur, Jan 18, 2010, 9:47am.

Just browsing threads (I'm new to LT) and found this one. I'm thrilled! I have often asked people if they have ever heard of a book with a character Psmith in it. I read one of the Psmith books back in high school and could not remember anything about it other than the name Psmith. I suppose I could have googled it, but I am never in want of a book to read.

Thanks again!

Glad I could be of service! And welcome to LT.

By the way, should you ever have another question about the name of a book you read long ago, there's a group here called Name That Book. They're almost supernaturally good. A while back, my father had told me about a science fiction short story that he had read decades ago; I gave the details in a post, and a day later I had the name of the story & bought my dad the book.

Thanks for the tip! I'm still trying to figure things out here. :)

Reviving my thread to say, WOOHOO, I finished my piece! And I have my life back.

At the immediate moment, I'm not thinking about reading or anything brain-stretching. I do need to read & review Herta Müller's The Passport for Belletrista. (When I put in that touchstone, "Top O' the Mournin' " by Maddy Hunter pops up. What?!) But first I'm going to sleep for about three days. :)

And in perfect timing, I received my Folio Society Mill on the Floss today, which was my gift to me a couple of weeks ago for working so darned hard. Take a gander (it's even lovelier than I expected, with the silk a bit shiny) :

Message modifié par son auteur, Jan 26, 2010, 2:48pm.

Beautiful, Medellia. And congrats on finishing your piece! *applause*

Medillia! So glad you are back and that you survived!

Thanks, Amy!

Now I can finally go to that Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library, Teresa. I'm going there soon to see a concert, so I may do them both in the same day.

Hurrah!

coz you're back, coz you've finished your piece, coz you have a gorgeous new book, coz it's Eliot, coz the silk is aquamarine and SHINY coz there's an Austen exhibition on, coz you're going to it, coz it's a lovely sunny day here, so just

Hurrah!

Message modifié par son auteur, Jan 26, 2010, 7:50pm.

>57 Terrific! You may make it there before we do. We were going to go over the holidays, but couldn't make ourselves leave the fireplace and the mountain of old movies that we had saved up to watch. We're going though, probably in late February/early March. Let me know what you think if you get there first.

Message modifié par son auteur, Jan 26, 2010, 7:44pm.

54 - Why hello my lovely Eliot. Would you care to pop down the street for a visit one day? :)

Thanks for the heads up about the Austen exhibit. I'll try to hit it this weekend.

Medellia!

You are back, you're alive, and you don't have a composition breathing down your neck. How lovely. And speaking of lovely, that's an absolutely gorgeous copy of The Mill on the Floss. Now you just need to read it, now you have the time for it. :P

EDIT: I had to read an essay by Lionel Trilling in my Jane Austen class recently, and wondered where in the world I had heard the name before. Lo and behold, what do I notice when I look at your profile page just now but a book by Trilling on E. M. Forrester! Thanks for keeping me cultured, Meddy.

And rest up.

Message modifié par son auteur, Jan 26, 2010, 8:28pm.

Lovely looking edition of the Eliot book. Congratulations on your composition, Medellia.

Am a great fan of reading great books in an asthetically pleasing package. I am reading a 1912 edition of Wives and Daughter which has sweet illustrations, a lovely embossed cover, heavy stiff pages and a great smell.

I have a lovely, very old copy of The Mill on the Floss, inscribed by a friend and given to me as a gift. I thought it a wonderfully unusual gift to give an old book and inscribe it as if it were a new one.

Congratulations on finishing your composition!

Thanks everybody! Now I have to play catch-up in my reading thread! I will be making a few different posts.

I needed something life-affirming and beautiful after I drove myself into the ground working, so I read Silas Marner. Thanks, Nathan, for the recommendation (and also janeajones & solla). It was exactly what I needed.

Need a boost? Try Silas Marner. You have to be able to take a tiny bit of Victorian sentimentalism (grins at Talbin), but it's surprisingly little, considering the cast & plot. I loved the fairy tale feel.

There's always so much to say about Eliot. In less than 200 pages, she gives us a story rich with symbolism and allusion, a picture of village life toward the end of the Napoleonic Wars, an exploration of the nature of subjective and objective perception, sign and substance, theology and country religion... and so on. Wow.

Twice I have seen references to connections between Silas Marner and The Winter's Tale. I plan to read the latter, when I can manage it. I also have a BBC adaption of Silas Marner and an audiobook version, neither of which I've enjoyed yet. So hopefully I will get a chance to do a bit of closer study on Silas Marner this year.

One quote for you all: "I can do so little--have I done it all well?"

On the table now: I finished Herta Müller's The Passport and have reviewed it for Belletrista. I will post a link to my review when Issue 4 is up next month. In the meantime, Issue 3 is up, and there are lots of great things.

I can say that once I read The Passport, I was surprised at the number of negative reviews and low ratings I've seen here. I thought it was great, very artfully done. I had gotten a bit apprehensive about it after the negative vibe here at LT, but I should have trusted in the wise and all-knowing Lois. (And dchaikin, too, whose review is here at LT.)

Currently reading: way too much. I have the attention span of a squirrel on sugarcane these days. I should probably stop indulging myself, but I haven't yet. I made it through book one of Paradise Lost for the Salon group read. I am pleased to find that I am at least understanding the plot and enjoying the language. Hooray for me. My edition has excellent notes, so I am reading each book once through without notes, and then again with notes.

Also reading: the introduction to my Oxford edition of The Symposium. I read some Plato back in my high school days, but not The Symposium. I have another edition around here as well, with a translation that I think will be more accurate (and more difficult). More on that later, maybe.

Plus I'm reading some Jane Austen-related stuff. I think I'll make a separate post on this.

>64 Oh dear, I think I'm getting a reputation!

ETA: I think now I'll have to read Silas Marner - and love it - just to prove that I'm not completely without sentiment! ;-)

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 8, 2010, 3:10pm.

OK, Jane Austen. Thanks again, Teresa, for mentioning the Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library, and if you haven't made it yet, janepriceestrada, I think it's worth a visit. It's there through March 14.

Highlights: a number of Austen's letters, including the famous backwards-written letter to her niece ("Ym raed Yssac"). I also saw the excisions that were made to her letters. I had read before that her family censored her letters when they were first published, but I didn't realize that that meant that they actually cut pieces out of her letters! It's actually funny in a way, to see these sentences that start with, "Edward is quite...", or "Martha is so...", and then the rest of the sentence is just missing because a sliver of the next line has been cut out. But sad, too, 'cause man, I wanted to read those zingers.

Also, some of Nabokov's notes on Mansfield Park for his Cornell lectures, including a classic pencil drawing of a barouche. I did some Googling, and apparently the lecture, drawings and all, is reproduced in Lectures on Literature, which I must now buy.

Besides that, there were first editions of her novels and other related novels (some Fanny Burney, some Samuel Richardson, etc), and illustrations from various editions of Austen's works. Oh, and the manuscript of Lady Susan, the only surviving complete manuscript of any of her works.

Those of you who don't live around NYC, the Morgan has an online exhibit:
http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?id=22
There's more if you click on "online exhibition" in the box in the upper right.

So I've also been dipping into Claire Tomalin's Jane Austen: A Life. And, darn it all, right next to it in the bookstore I found something else, A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen. Aaaand, since I love to show off my beautiful Folios (hooray for aesthetically pleasing packages!), I have a stunning edition of Jane Austen's Letters bound in silk:

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 8, 2010, 7:18pm.

#66: Yes, I couldn't resist giving you a wink and a nod, Talbin. You're one of many people, of course, who feel that way, but you've sort of become my concrete example. :)

Glad to see you posting again! I can't wait to get to the Morgan, hopefully later this month. It does sound terrific. (I'm not surprised her family cut up her letters. Ol' Jane could be quite a wicked little, well, you know... The cutting up of letters reminds me that Charlotte Bronte's father cut her letters into pieces so that he could give them away or sell them to fans after her death, at least according to one of her biographers.)

Was the Blake exhibit still there? Did you see it, too? I've also dipped into the Tomalin quite a bit, but have yet to commit to reading the entire book, though I have it and will get to it some day. What I've read was really excellent, though. I've seen A Truth Universally Acknowledged at my library, but kept myself from taking it out just yet. I have too many other books from them right now. And now I'll go somewhere so that I may properly swoon over your Folio edition of Austen's letters! How beautiful!

One more little thought I forgot earlier: again in Silas Marner, Eliot uses the image of a web. Silas Marner, the weaver, concentrates on his "brownish web," the cloth he is weaving, instead of connecting with the people in the village.

In Middlemarch, Eliot uses a web as a metaphor for the relationships of the people in the town to each other. The structure of the novel works along these lines. People are, at the same time, connected and disconnected.

I must throw out Proust here. From the final volume, Time Regained:
" . . . the poet was right when he spoke of the 'mysterious threads' which are broken by life. But the truth, even more, is that life is perpetually weaving fresh threads which link one individual and one event to another, and that these threads are crossed and recrossed, doubled and redoubled to thicken the web, so that between any slightest point of our past and all the others a rich network of memories gives us an almost infinite variety of communicating paths to choose from."

After quoting this in Proust Among the Stars, Malcolm Bowie writes,
"After the ecstasy of difference without end comes the quiet satisfaction of a connecting and unifying web. The narrative breathes out, and the world is many. It breathes in again, and the world is one."

...Ahhhhhhhhhh. Sweet, sweet unity.

Sadly, the Blake exhibit closed January 3. I didn't make it. But I have looked at the online exhibit.

I've been enjoying the Tomalin, too. A LT member recommended it. I'm not usually much on biography, but this one is doing it for me.

Great reading and threading here.

I can thoroughly recommend Nabokov's Lectures on Literature. Nabakov is an amazing critic, often infuriating, but always thought provoking. I'm quite sure you will love it. While you're at it, you should also get Lectures on Russian Literature as well.

That Folio society book is exquisite.

Hey Cat!

While you're at it, you should also get Lectures on Russian Literature as well.

Well... if you insist. :-D Thanks!

So, so glad you enjoyed Silas Marner! Sometimes it's just as satisfying to see a great author tell a simply story well as it is to see them build up a great tome of a novel, and Eliot does both equally well. I love what you have to say about its fairy tale feel; one of the things I so enjoy about the book is that it sounds like a local story people might have told their grandchildren for several generations. And what audiobook do you have, pray tell?

One of the other students in my Jane Austen class presented on the Claire Tomalin biography a couple of weeks ago, and now I want to get my hands on it. I'm doing a presentation on the last half of her letters nearer the end of the semester, so I'll get to read those then. Man, am I jealous of you for having such a gorgeous copy of them! And for going to that exhibit!

that Folio Society book is gorgeous! You can send it to me if you get tired of it.

Get off it, it's mine.

Nathan, I agree with everything you said. The reader on my audiobook is Andrew Sachs. (Which makes me laugh a little, as I previously only knew him as Manuel on Fawlty Towers.) I bought it on iTunes so I'm unsure of publisher and so forth. I listened to clips of several different versions, and his was the only one I liked--I'm just beginning to try this audiobook thing, and I find I'm very picky.

Kirconnell & the Cat, I am sorry to say that you will have to pry my Folio from my cold, dead hands. (Omg! Was that a knock at my door? *shiver*)

Oooh yes, I've listened to clips of that as well. It sounds wonderful. Sachs played some role (Puzzle, I think?) in the Focus on the Family version of The Last Battle, and was spectacular—he'd make for a very fine narrator, I think. I'd love to get into audiobooks, but they're just so darn-tootin' expensive! For now I'll have to stick with whatever my library carries, unless something interesting crops up at booksales.

I bought this one on a whim, but if I develop an audiobook habit, I will be getting them from the library. Happily, the NYPL carries all kinds of stuff.

As I believe I told you before, I had bought the audiobook because I was headed to Philly for the weekend, and I get bus-sick if I read. But I ended up falling asleep on the bus on the way over and the way back. Drool and all. :)

Can I briefly sing the praises of http://librivox.org/

The quality varies, as it's all read by volunteers - but the good thing is that it's ALL FREE. Their philosophy is that it's fun to read aloud, and listening is a side benefit, yet many of the recordings are fantastic. I heartily recommend almost anything read by Andy Minter - his The Old Wives' Tale is particularly good. They've recently got enough hours of audiobook recorded all up to enable one to listen non-stop for two years.

If you've got iTunes, it's a one-click process, then simple transfer to iPod and there you are.

*end of ad-break*

Ooooh, oooh, oooh, I may just have to listen to his recording of The Princess and the Goblin. How delightful that he's done that! I'm just wary of making may way through such a vast catalog of amateur recordings. At the same time, it's a delightful idea—the sort of thing I might involve myself in if I had the time!

If I were to pay for downloads, I might start at http://www.silksoundbooks.com/ Cheaper than iTunes, and great readers in general - Anna Massey for Grimms' Fairy Tales, Greta Scaachi for Anderson's Fairy Tales, Sir Derek Jacobi for Frankenstein, Olivia Williams for Persuasion ... you get the picture. In general, though, I'd prefer cassettes and CDs ... I'm such an old-fashioned lad!

Sorry for taking over your thread like this, Meddy. :P If you tire of it, we could always transfer it over to mine (which is languishing of late).

Nathan, I have recorded some myself, though NOTHING would persuade me to tell you which reader I am. And recording one's own makes one much more forgiving of and prone to enjoy the amateur nature of the recordings. (Nothing could be more amateur and embarrassing than my earlier recordings). Recording is a lot of fun, particularly when remaining anonymous.

I listened to Pickwick Papers last year, which was read by many different readers, some good and some frankly bad - and enjoyed each one very much indeed.

Oooh, and I've had The Princess and the Goblin awaiting me on iTunes since only yesterday! :) Don't know when I'll get to it though, I'm still listening to Barchester Towers on and off... quite a bit of Andy Minter in the latter as well.

And to further spam you, here's an LT thread of LV recommendations: http://www.librarything.com/topic/15997#1500664 - begun a long time ago and only updated sporadically.

Also, Karen Savage is another excellent reader to look out for.

*echoes Nathan's apology to Meddy*

>76 Nice kitty! I have some herring to trade.

>80 Oh, thank you, ChocolateMuse, for the link! I have a serious audiobook habit due to my long commute to and from work. I'm checking this out today! *kissing the ground you walk on*

>81 Nathan, I checked out your site as well and it looks very good. Reasonable too. However, like you I get cassettes and CDs when I can.

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 10, 2010, 3:34am.

Because I know how much you like Forster, I thought you'd appreciate that I found a pristine "used" copy of the Everyman's Library edition of A Passage to India. It looks like new - I don't think it's been read before. It's one of Forster's I haven't read, and having a nice copy (with attached silk ribbon bookmark and all) just makes it nicer.

Talbin- Nice! My Howards End is an Everyman and looks like your Passage. I'd like to do as you did and pick up an as-new "used" Everyman Passage. My current copy is a 1950s Harcourt Brace hardcover. My mother bought it for me on one of her trips here. (I picked it out. :)

The Folio Society has a Passage to India, but I must say I was disappointed in my Folio Room With a View.

Catching up, catching up...

Hmm, you and Nathan must have a conspiracy. He has been trying to enlist me in the ranks of Marner-maniacs for years, and I have thus far resisted. I liked Silas Marner, but did not love it. Not sure why. Maybe I thought it was too predictable? Too simple? I've read it twice and thought the same thing both times.

It's actually funny in a way, to see these sentences that start with, "Edward is quite...", or "Martha is so...", and then the rest of the sentence is just missing because a sliver of the next line has been cut out. But sad, too, 'cause man, I wanted to read those zingers.

Oh my! Yes, that's incredibly tantalizing. But at least we have the letters in some form, even though the juicier bits are excised.

*quells a sudden intense feeling of jealousy at Medellia's gorgeous copy of JA's letters*

...

*keeps quelling*

I get most of my audiobooks from the library. I do have a few that I have managed to snag on PBS and BM. But I can't imagine buying one brand new. They are expensive! Chocolate, if I had an iPod, I would so be downloading from Librivox. But I don't, and am forced to rely on the ancient technology known as compact disc. Terrible, I know.

Medellia, I'm curious, what disappointed you about your Folio edition of Room With A View? How could a Folio edition disappoint in any way? Don't tell me there was a typo or something dreadful like that.

Med,

did you know about this????

Original Letters from India
By Eliza Fay
Introduction by Simon Winchester
Annotated by E.M. Forster

Eliza Fay's unfiltered, forthright, and often hilarious letters bring the perils and excitement of an earlier age to life. Her grueling journey, which began in April 1779, took the newly married Eliza through Europe, up the Nile, over the deserts of Egypt, and finally across the ocean to India. Over the course of the trip, she encountered wars, territorial disputes, brigands, and even imprisonment. The letters will delight readers with their truth-is-stranger-than- fiction twists and turns and their depiction of a bold and determined young woman.

"Fay (1756-1816) was an actual Englishwoman, even if she was also, in the words of E. M. Forster, quite 'a work of art.' Only a woman as confident in mind and body as Mrs. Fay could have survived the perilous adventures in foreign lands she relates here with such sang froid…. Had Forster not come upon a 1908 edition of her letters and cajoled Virginia and Leonard Woolf into reissuing them, a unique document of juicy 18th-century realism might be lost to us." —Richard B. Woodward, Armchair Traveler, The New York Times, 1/31/10

It goes on my wishlist for sure.

Well, darn! Went right on my wishlist!

Meant to say earlier that there's no need to apologize, Rena & Nathan, for hanging out on my thread. I really appreciate the recommendations of the best readers on LibriVox. I've wanted to do the LibriVox thing before, but I was to lazy to do some research to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Amy- 'Sokay, you don't have to join Nathan & me on Silas Marner, or Cold Comfort Farm (which I know he's going to love). We'll just start our own little club, NYAH. ;) My Room With a View came with a boring spine (I admit I like it better when the spines have a bit more decoration, so I have something pretty to look at when they're on the shelf), and worse, the illustrations look like something that a 7-year-old scribbled with crayons. Blah.

Andrew- nice! I did not know. On the wishlist. Maybe I'll pick it up & read it when I get around to Forster's Hill of Devi and his correspondence with Syed Ross Masood.

I should also add, while I'm on my reading thread, that I'm not reading. Very busy with teaching & school, and it has been leaving me in a bit of a slump in my off time.

But while flipping through Paradise Lost (still haven't made it through Book II), I found a reference in Book XI to fugue, which I happened to be teaching yesterday (to a class of non-music majors--a challenge for something as complex as the Baroque fugue). Googling for more info on the passage, I found another short passage from Dante that includes the words 'fuga' and 'caccia.' (flight, chase - both were names of a kind of canonic piece of music in the 14th century, the very, very distant predecessor of the fugue; the word fugue derives from the Latin fuga, from fugere 'to flee' and fugare 'to chase') This was in a lecture on fugue which is hanging out there on the internet:
http://www2.nau.edu/tas3/wtc/i19s.pdf

Dante, Purgatorio, Canto XIII
Rotti fuor quivi e vòlti ne li amari
passi di fuga; e veggendo la caccia,
letizia presi a tutte altre dispari . . .

from my Hollander translation:
"When they were routed and turned back
in bitter steps of flight, I watched the chase,
my heart filled with such boundless joy . . ."

Milton, Paradise Lost, Book XI
He looked and saw a spacious plain, whereon
Were tents of various hue; by some were herds
Of cattle grazing: others, whence the sound
Of instruments that made melodious chime
Was heard, of harp and organ; and who moved
Their stops and chords was seen: his volant touch
Instinct through all proportions low and high
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.
(volant: light, rapid; instinct: instinctively; transverse: across (the strings, the keys) )

The Dante & the Milton both have the idea of flight and pursuit paired. The enjambment in the Dante gives a sense of tumbling forward. The Milton (in addition to some contextual interpretations that don't make sense here because I'm taking it out of context) passage is apparently sometimes analyzed as a metaphor for divine providence--God is the composer of the fugue, we are the polyphonic voices, he allows us free will but imposes certain rules and restrictions, and he brings the voices into harmony.

So my idle flipping turned into a great framing device for the class, thinking of fugue in these terms of flight and chase, enjambment (very appropriate for the C minor fugue from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier, my piece of choice for this lesson), and the combination of freedom & rules.

I decided a month or two back that I want to tackle Dante full-on this year or next, but that I definitely ought to read The Aeneid first, along with Ovid and probably Homer.

Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 19, 2010, 12:05pm.

Medillia, I wish I could have taken a class from you. You sound like a brilliant teacher. Thanks for posting the above. Very interesting.

Hi, Medellia!
I just caught up with your thread and have a question about a book you read last year. (How is that for late?) What did you think of Diary of a Nobody? Did you get the Folio edition? I tried to order it but was too late. Now I am wondering if it is worth searching for on the secondary market sometime.
--BJ

Meddy, I have just finished with learning that very fugue - my teacher told me last lesson there's nothing more I need to do on it.

I too wish like crazy I could go to your classes. I really really do. Do you wanna video them and put them on You Tube? :)

If you put them on YouTube I will take up piano again, more than forty years later, just to be able to learn from you.

Yaaaay, Meddy!

I am here with my notebook and pen at the ready waiting for the lectures to begin...

Fifth-ed! In the meantime :) is there an overview/introduction to music theory/appreciation you might recommend to non-music majors?

ClubRead demands more syllabi! By which I mean I would be very interested as well. :)

I think we've scared poor Meddy away from her own thread. You don't have to do it Meddy... (I guess...)

(Be back soon, everybody. I'm busy with school & rehearsals for an upcoming premiere of a piece this week. :)

Just read your review of The Passport on Belletrista. There is so much great info there that now I want to read the book again.

Thanks, Daniel! I guess I should put up the link so that everybody can be in on the one literary thing I've been doing lately:
http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue4/reviews_7.php
(Btw, my real name is not Simone Cornelisson, so you may all continue to call me Medellia. Which is also not my real name. I am cloaked in mystery. Lol. :)

Reading continues to be sporadic. I've picked up War and Peace again because I could not resist its pull. I fret that I may not have the time & energy to properly appreciate it right now. I reassure myself by acknowledging that I'll be rereading it someday anyhow. I get more than one shot at this.

Thanks, all you other folks who stopped by to comment on my mini-lecture. :) Detailmuse, I have the scholar's problem of being mainly acquainted with exorbitantly expensive textbooks for theory & appreciation. Do you play an instrument and do you read music? I think that most people who don't play an instrument (and many who do) and want to understand/appreciate what they listen to are usually better off going with a more general, less technical approach--i.e., music appreciation books (which will talk about fundamentals of music; lower-level aspects of harmony, key, form, etc; canonic pieces; hallmarks of the music of major eras; etc). I find that fewer people are really interested in the nitty-gritty details of music construction ("this is how to build a major scale," "this is this chord, this is that chord," "don't write parallel fifths," etc), which is what a "theory" book or "fundamentals" textbook will give you.

I believe Teresa had mentioned Aaron Copland's What to Listen for in Music in the other thread. RUN, DO NOT WALK, to the store to get this book. It's a great book for amateur and veteran listeners alike. Also great for the general listener: Leonard Bernstein's The Joy of Music and The Infinite Variety of Music.

If you wanted to really shell out, you could then buy a music appreciation textbook. These will come with several CDs and will usually give you a pretty good education about music from the Middle Ages onward. Some books I like: Music: An Appreciation by Roger Kamien, Craig Wright's Listening to Western Music, and Joseph Kerman's Listen. One that I have recently encountered and like very much is The Enjoyment of Music by Kristine Forney and Joseph Machlis. These are all pretty expensive, but You could get off cheaper by buying older, used editions. (Though sometimes it can be hard to get the CD sets with used textbooks, and you won't get access to the online resources that come with a new book--and the latter can actually be very helpful & substantial.)

Hope that is a little helpful. If I have misunderstood and this is too low-level for you, let me know & I'll start bringing the hard-core music theory. (Woo! *pumps fist* :)

Billiejean- I enjoyed Diary of a Nobody. Victorian humor really does it for me, so if it's your thing, too, then go for it. But I don't have the Folio edition. After I had read the book (which was after the Folio sale/clearout of that edition), I wished I had picked it up when it was still available. Maybe I'll find it on eBay one of these days.

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 5, 2010, 6:26pm.

Wow! -- this is SO helpful. I do play piano but feel I know little about appreciation and nothing about composition. And I did get the Copland book, which (flipping through it) seems exactly where I wanted to begin. Regarding tutorials with music samples, I've been eyeing a couple of audio courses from The Teaching Company, though they're quite a time commitment as well as pricey; I'm watching for them to go on sale (each course does at least once/year).

let me know & I'll start bringing the hard-core music theory. (Woo! *pumps fist* :)
Someday! I'll look forward to it :)
Thanks again!

I can almost echo detailmuse word for word... so thank you a million times, Meddy!

I've been reading stuff by Antony Hopkins too, which I've found helpful - Pathway to Music is a little cheesy, but there's good stuff in it for someone at my level. He seems to have been fairly prolific, and used to do a radio broadcast called Talking about Music as well. Wish I could get my hands on that...

I have ordered the Copland book. :)

The ONLY teaching company series i have not liked (i gave the set to the library) was Greenberg's set on the history of the symphony. It wasn't a matter of material, i think it was probably v. good, but he comes across in a very, very annoying manner. Neither Patty nor I wanted to keep the set.

On the other hand, their history of jazz set was excellent. I'm NOT a jazz fan by any means, but Bill Messenger (peabody conservatory) taught us both a lot and very enjoyably. His other course, on American musical theater suffers by comparison, largely, i'm sure, because he couldn't get rights to the cast recordings at a reasonable price. As noted, w/ the teaching company you just have to keep you eye on what's on sale.

BTW if you don't mind burning a bunch of cds, most of the teaching company's courses can be downloaded. Of course the time spent burning the disks probably comes to more than the $10.00 saved. But $39.00 seems SO much cheaper than $49.00!
I think we've gotten a dozen(?) sets from them, all on sale, over the last 3 yrs and, except for the Greenberg, they've ranged from good to superb.

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 9, 2010, 11:14pm.

Glad to be of some help, detailmuse & Rena. I'll have to check out Antony Hopkins' stuff. You jogged my memory with "Talking About Music" and now I have 3 more books to recommend to you guys, all 3 by Michael Steinberg. In '07 I took a class with him called "Talking About Music." (Sadly, he died in July.) He was a lovely person, and he wrote program notes for a number of major American orchestras for many years.

The books: The Symphony: A Listener's Guide, The Concerto: A Listener's Guide, and Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide (particularly the first and third). These are great general introductions to some major works in those genres, not too technical at all, very unintimidating and with a friendly tone. Check them out if you can.

Bob, thank you very much for your input! You're always helpful.

War and Peace
" 'No, life isn't over at the age of thirty-one,' Prince Andrei suddenly decided definitively, immutably. 'It's not enough that I know all that's in me, everyone else must know it, too: Pierre, and that girl who wanted to fly into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life is not only for myself; so that they don't live like that girl, independently of my life, but so that it is reflected in everyone, and they all live together with me!"

...I have something in my eye. Excuse me.

**sniff** I'm sorry, did you say something?

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 12, 2010, 2:59pm.

*snuffle* oh Meddy, pass the bottle.

*hic*

Message modifié par son auteur, Mar 13, 2010, 12:10pm.