ChocolateMuse enters sheepishly, 2017

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ChocolateMuse enters sheepishly, 2017

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1ChocolateMuse
Juil 14, 2017, 9:18 am



Can I come in? I faded away about this time last year, but I'm feeling the urge more and more to log my reading again. I do hope nobody minds my belated entry - and fingers crossed I actually keep it up for the rest of this year.

Part of my problem in the past has been a reluctance to post my 'fluff' reads. That ends now. I just hope my highbrow friends will forgive my lowbrow tastes revealed! Also audiobooks. I don't subscribe to Audible, but I do listen to a lot of librivox.org free public domain books read by amateur volunteers. The quality varies, but there's enough good stuff on there which has kept me going for a long time. Also, I abandon books a lot. Maybe I'll post them too, or at least some of them.

About me: I'm female, Australian, aged 33. I live by myself with a grey tabby cat and three Barnevelder chickens. I work in a medical school at a university but am not a doctor. At the moment for work I'm writing stories about fake patients for students to study, trying to make the 'patients' seem more like real people instead of mere disease hosts. I'm also preparing for a higher level piano exam, which is called AMusA. I belong to a three-person book club, which helps me read at least one book every two months which I wouldn't otherwise read! My literary home ground is 19th century England, but I don't dwell there all the time. The best book I read last year I recorded on my abandoned thread: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I think the best book I've read ever, would have to be Middlemarch.

Pleased to meetcha. :)

2ChocolateMuse
Modifié : Juil 14, 2017, 11:06 am

On librivox I recently discovered Mary Roberts Rinehart and I'm delighted with the find. I've listened to three of her books so far, all quite different from each other.

The Window at the White Cat
This was the best of the three, and also my first. Its opening sentences show shades of Raymond Chandler*: In my criminal work anything that wears skirts is a lady, until the law proves her otherwise... So when Hawes announced a lady, I took my feet off my desk, put down the brief I had been reading, and rose perfunctorily. But before long, it comes into its own and is heaps of fun. The main character is a young lawyer, who is soon caught up with a mixed bag of characters, including a beautiful young lady (of course), two elderly spinsters, one domineering and one fluffy (also of course), a weak young man, a laconic detective, a newspaper reporter, and several corrupt politicians. The White Cat is a back-street political club, rather shady. Corpses, robberies, missing persons and bloodstained handprints all present and correct. But I'm making it sound silly, and it's not. It sits squarely inside its genre, but it isn't one long cliche. It has its own voice, its own flavour. A very enjoyable light read. The narrator does a great job too.

*actually, I've never read Raymond Chandler. But it's how I imagine him to be!

The Breaking Point
This is something quite different, a much more serious novel and is in fact a kind of psychological thriller. Our main character, Doctor Dick Livingstone, is your average 1910s Fine Upstanding Young Man, and his love interest is your average Lovely Innocent Young Woman. But Dr Dick has a secret, which we spend several chapters not knowing, but I'll give a semi-spoiler (sorry) and reveal it: Dick's memory only goes back to a certain point in his life, and before that it is a complete blank. He has learned from psychologists that this is most likely due to some terrible event of which he is so afraid that he cannot face it. It's obvious Mary Roberts Rinehart had an interest in the new, groundbreaking psychology of her time. Even in The Window at the White Cat, they carry out an extremely feeble session involving association (the silliest part of the whole novel, and the only part that annoyed me). The whole of The Breaking Point is partly an exploration of that interest, but the mind is not the only realm we explore. From cozy small-town American life, we end up travelling out west, to remote huts in the mountains, desperate rides on rocky lonely trails, and gradual, slow revelations of long-held secrets. It's the old-fashioned kind of romantic. I like it.

Tish: The chronicle of her excursions and escapades
And something totally different again! This is sheer light-hearted comedy. In many ways the book is a curiosity, revealing the things that made people laugh in the 1910s. A big part of their humour was apparently people doing things outside of their usual sphere. The first part of this book was supposed to be funny simply because three middle-aged spinsters go careering around in a motor car! And it becomes more hilarious when one of them actually drives a racing car in a motor race!! Could anything be more side-splitting!!! But in fact, as the story proceeds either the book itself, or I myself, changed, and I began to enjoy it a lot, in spite of some blatant racism. Do not read this book if you are Syrian, and not a good idea if you're Native American either. And of course if you are neither, some bits of this book will still make you sad. But the three spinsters become real characters, not just archetypes and some of it is genuinely funny, like Aggie's Mr Wiggins, and the whole set-up in the Maine Woods. With aforesaid reservations, I recommend it. I only found out after I finished that this book is actually the second in a small series. The first one is called The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry, which I am in the middle of now.

3ChocolateMuse
Juil 14, 2017, 10:14 am

In actual paper books, I'm currently reading The Lost Domain, or Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier. This is a book-club choice, and the bit of 'serious' fiction I'm reading at the moment. This is an older translation by Frank Davison.

On my Kindle app, I'm reading Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault, the first in a trilogy about the life of Alexander the Great. Not loving it, so time will tell whether or not I finish it.

In non-fiction, I'm reading Confronting the Classics by Mary Beard. A library book. Again I may or may not finish it, though it's good.

4theaelizabet
Modifié : Juil 14, 2017, 10:34 am

I applaud this effort! I love Club Read and read the reviews regularly, but was never very good at keeping up when I actually joined. I promised myself to try again this coming year. In the meantime, I look forward to shadowing you, too, (does this really mean I'm a lurker?) because you're always such a thoughtful reader.

I liked Confronting the Classics, but then I'm a real Beard fan. And I still haven't read Middlemarch, which is one of my many reading holes. After your mention, elsewhere, of reading Mary Stewart, I read and thoroughly enjoyed The Moon-Spinners. I thought the young heroine was quite modern for an early 60s book.

Oh, and I have some Renault on my shelves, too. just haven't dived in yet. You might find this interesting: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/07/the-american-boy

5ChocolateMuse
Juil 14, 2017, 10:54 am

Thanks thea. And thanks for calling me a thoughtful reader, though you might see a whole new side of me now that I'm revealing my fluff-reads in all their sad nakedness. You're one of the highbrow friends I was worried about.

I'm so glad you enjoyed that Mary Stewart, and chuffed that you read it on my recommendation. That's one of those gloriously atmospheric ones, though most of them are. I read them just as much for setting and sense of place as for plot and character. And you're right, her heroines are modern for their time, strong and intelligent - though they still get dominated by Mr Rochester types. Which is kinda fun, anyway!

If you comment, then you're not a lurker! And please do!

Thanks for the link - it's almost 1 am, but I will read it later.

6AlisonY
Juil 14, 2017, 4:45 pm

Welcome back! There is no such thing as fluff reads on here - post away no matter what you're reading.

7ChocolateMuse
Juil 15, 2017, 7:58 am

Thanks Alison! That's one of the things that makes this such a great group - not to mention its lovely members!

8ELiz_M
Juil 15, 2017, 8:35 am

I love the picture in the first post!

Thanks for mentioning Mary Beard. I wish I had heard of her a month ago -- I went to Greece on vacation and visited Knossos Palace and the Parthenon, among other places that she also probably mentions in her books.

9ChocolateMuse
Juil 16, 2017, 7:06 am

Thank you! I like the picture too. Never has a sheep looked more sheepish :)

Probably Mary Beard does mention those places, though I haven't seen it yet. Confronting the Classics is a collection of book reviews about works which discuss the classics. But I'm pretty sure some of her other books talk about the actual history. As do all three Marys mentioned in this thread, oddly enough! I just realised that, how interesting!

10ChocolateMuse
Juil 16, 2017, 7:15 am


Le Grand Meaulnes, or The Lost Domain, by Alain-Fournier

A dreamy, episodic novel about adolescence, nostalgia, dreams, and loss. What stood out to me the most was its incredibly vivid sense of place. Right from the first page, I could feel the shabby, cold house in the French countryside consolidate around me. I could hear the boards creak when they were walked on, and see the specks and flaws in the very windowpanes. Further afield, I could feel the bleakness of the landscape in a bare winter; the fields of yellow-grey, the sparse trees. That was the best part.

The unfolding of the story, although more straightforward than many a French novel of my experience, is episodic and slightly unconnected - but it is written in the voice of a narrator who is recalling the vividness of his adolescence as something long ago, so the style works quite well. The story is about an adolescent boy who stumbles upon a kind of random dreamlike fête in the middle of nowhere, joins in, and falls in love with a beautiful girl. Afterwards he cannot find the place, nor the girl, tells his friend the narrator about it, and together they build up an enormous, overwhelming dreamworld, a consuming desire to find what was lost. No surprises then, that all does not end happily - but to me it was more melancholy than tragic.

The French title, Le Grand Meaulnes, refers to the character Augustin Meaulnes, who is the one who finds the fête and drives everything that happens afterwards. The narrator, a younger boy, is drawn into it willy-nilly, as it were. What I failed to understand is what’s so grand about Meaulnes. From the moment we are first introduced to him, he is more odd than attractive. He is obsessive, secretive, irritable. He does impulsive selfish things (especially late in the book) which he has the grace to regret afterwards when it’s too late. Don’t get me wrong, I like reading about flawed characters - but I can’t understand why everyone in the book is so drawn to him, why he is such a magnet, why our narrator is so absorbed by him and why unfortunate women suffer because of him. Everything revolves around this young man, and I can’t for the life of me see why.

No one seems able to mention this novel without also mentioning that its author died early in WW1 as a soldier - a kind of French Rupert Brooke. (Apparently I can’t either!) I’m tempted to wonder if the author’s early promise and untimely death adds to the fame of this book, since apparently this is required reading for almost every French school child to this day.

11ChocolateMuse
Juil 16, 2017, 7:25 am

I also finished The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (LV audiobook). Written as the first of the series, it wasn't as good as the second one - Rinehart was still getting to know her characters here. The first part of the book was probably meant as a stand-alone story in which Tish and friends were expected to appear and disappear with the story - I suspect she got attached to the characters and just kept writing about them.The story does involve a corpse hanged after death, a gorilla, and a continuous reappearance of one right foot, mostly within the confines of a hospital... not to mention a large pile of guinea pigs with their throats cut. It was unexpected.

12ChocolateMuse
Juil 18, 2017, 10:44 pm

I'm abandoning both the Mary Beard and the Mary Renault... with abject apologies to theaelizabet for the Mary Beard! Really, I'm just not in the mood for either of them, there's nothing wrong with the books themselves. I hope no one else is put off by anything I abandon... I think I mentioned that I do that a lot!

13lilisin
Juil 19, 2017, 12:09 am

>10 ChocolateMuse:

Yes, my French parents gave me that book saying I HAD to read it as it was a French giant. I'll get to it I'm sure. It does keep looking at me with a funny look so I know that it knows that I should be reading it. :)

14ChocolateMuse
Juil 19, 2017, 1:15 am

I'd be really interested in what you think of it, lilisin. I'm not sure what it is that makes it so important to so many people. A friend over on another LT group said - well, I'll quote, to save time:

--

In Simone De Beauvoir's autobiography she describes how reading Le Grand Meaulnes totally transformed her life. she was in junior high school (I guess - SDB is a bit vague about her dates and ages). it was after reading it that literature took the place in her life that religion formally had, and she decided to dedicate her life to literature rather than the church. She also describes how the book made similar impact on her cricle of friends and acquaintances.

--

I find that hard to understand. What is life changing about this book? It was an enjoyable read, but I felt nothing profound in it. I'm wondering if it's something to do with being French, which is why I'm so interested in your reaction lilisin (you are French, right?). Then again, maybe it's only life changing if we read it as an adolescent?

15lilisin
Juil 19, 2017, 2:21 am

>14 ChocolateMuse:

Yes, I'm French. I'll definitely keep you in mind when I read it.

It reminds me of how people say to be transformed by books like Catcher in the Rye or On the Road. I'm not the type of person who becomes "transformed" by things (I can't stand the inspirational quotes that people try to stick everywhere) so I have trouble understanding these things myself.

16theaelizabet
Modifié : Juil 19, 2017, 6:44 am

No apologies necessary about the Beard. As I remember, it was a dip-in, dip-out sort of experience for me. I think I kept it on my nightstand for about a month or so while I did just that. And I'm a big "abandoner," too.

Interesting, this idea of what, if anything, transforms us, and when. I think maybe A Wrinkle in Time had that effect on me. I first read it when I was eight. And maybe my first brush with Shakespeare when I was 13? (Romeo and Juliet, of course). Youth does seem to be a component, doesn't it?

17dchaikin
Juil 19, 2017, 1:32 pm

Please bring out your fluff. Happy to see you here and to get to read some of your reading thoughts. Interesting about your experiences with the Marys, and I'm intrigued by Le Grand Meaulnes.

18ChocolateMuse
Juil 20, 2017, 8:30 am


Hans Anderson's Fairy Tales
Judging from the modern-day way of portraying fairy tales in movies and book retellings, I had assumed they were nearly always dark and full of violence if they were original. Though I also knew that Anderson’s tales have inspired many a classic Disney film (more on that in a minute). But Hans Anderson’s tales actually are not, of course, very dark at all, with almost no violence. True, some do not end happily, even some we think we know pretty well - e.g. the Little Mermaid does not in fact get her prince, but he marries someone else and the little mermaid dies. Some are highly moral while others are completely amoral, like Big Klaus and Little Klaus, where the most successful liar gets all the riches while the equally greedy but more gullible man dies. Most of the stories made lovely bedtime reading for me, it’s been my nightstand book for a few weeks. The stories stray so utterly into the realm of fancy that they are as unpredictable as a dream. Anything can happen, and does. I liked that, especially just before sleep.

I think modern-day Disney needs to do some neoclassical stories and go back to Anderson again. Why, for example, have they not done a story on The Snow Queen? Okay, I just googled it and see that Hallmark, of all things, have done one. But it has all the Disney elements - boy and girl BFFs, an evil spell, the capture of the boy by the Snow Queen (shades of Narnia) - then an epic journey through strange and dangerous lands undertaken by the girl to find him (#Feminism!) resulting in the final showdown in the Snow Queen’s castle… and then they are back home again, all grown up and soon to be married. I mean, what is Disney thinking? It’s ready-made!

All in all, these were fun. I’m ready for the less sunny ones now, and the Brothers Grimm are waiting for me.

19dchaikin
Juil 20, 2017, 8:51 am

>18 ChocolateMuse: How fun to read through these. I flipped through them a few years back when my kids were a little younger and thought about reading all of them. I had kind of forgotten about that idea.

20ChocolateMuse
Juil 30, 2017, 7:37 am

Thanks Dan, it was fun! And the Brothers Grimm are going well too...

21ChocolateMuse
Juil 30, 2017, 7:45 am


Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre

I picked this one up at my library after seeing it recommended by Vivienne. Thanks Vivienne! It was a great read, giving a really interesting insight into what it was like to be a double agent or counter-spy in WWII Britain. One tends to think only of the thrill and the danger of spying, forgetting that it's actually dirty work. You have to get people to trust you, and then betray them. I could never do it, whether spy or counter-spy. (Did anyone read that Donald Duck comic when they were kids, something about Spain, and counter-counter-counter-counter spies? It just came into my mind...) Somehow in espionage it's possible to do something truly heroic and something definitely ugly at one and the same time. The spy network in WWII Germany was so weak, that unbelievably enough, MI5 managed to find every single German agent in the whole of Britain, which enabled them to manipulate all of Germany's secret intelligence during the war.

This is popular history, and all the better for that. It's set me off on a bit of a WWII kick in general.

22ChocolateMuse
Modifié : Juil 30, 2017, 9:03 am

For audio, I finished the third Tish book in librivox and am glad to be finished with her for now. It was nice while it lasted, but gets old after a while.

Also finished a short one, The Confession, again by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Another little psychological exploration.

I've hit a bit of a podcast kick lately, which has resulted in fewer audiobooks. Has anyone listened to the Lore Podcast? Well-researched storytelling of true unexplained and slightly creepy happenings. The best episodes are the ones exploring what people have done to other people due to believing in folklore. The story of what one man did to his wife in Ireland after becoming convinced she was a fairy changeling is truly horrific and fascinating.

Also, wandering_star recently mentioned the Backlisted podcast, and I've been listening to a few with enjoyment. People talking about books which have been around for a while and have drifted, half forgotten, to the bottom of the generic pile. So, thanks, wandering_star!

23AlisonY
Juil 30, 2017, 9:52 am

>20 ChocolateMuse: I think from memory the Grimm fairytales are the darker ones, right? It's lovely reading through fairy stories again. I expected to be able to immerse myself in them when my kids were younger, but somehow nowadays they seem to go straight from picture books to Horrid Henry and the like. Perhaps its a generation thing.

24ChocolateMuse
Août 1, 2017, 2:38 am

>23 AlisonY: Indeed they are darker, some of them anyway. Grimm by name and grim by nature, though not as many of them as I'd expected. Some are really rather Hans Anderson-ish.

25ChocolateMuse
Modifié : Août 1, 2017, 8:56 am


Duma Key
This was (practically) my first Stephen King ever. I don't much like getting scared, and have always avoided horror. But it was a pleasant surprise for me to find that this book is not horror. No doubt a lot of King's other books are, but not this one. Oh, there are walking corpses near the end, and the undercurrent of all of it is a definitely creepy power that is angry, but most of the supernatural element was just plain interesting. Apart from the zombies, that is, which were genuinely the only boring things in the whole book. But this novel, I found, isn't about walking corpses, or even about powerful beings which are angry. It's about friendship and family, love and memory, and things that happen when nice people are badly wounded (both emotionally and physically). I grew to really care for the characters, and it's that which makes it such a good story. There are some things that I wonder how King got away with, such as the way in which the main character himself actually serves as deux ex machina, and also the way in which he "just knows" some things which turn out to be 100% true... but it worked! For me, anyway. The friendship and the characters made it work, and the setting was wonderful too.

Even though I haven't read any other Stephen King (oh, apart from a few chapters of Gunslinger, which I tried and abandoned a few years ago), I've read a lot of reviews of a few of his novels, and I think some of the things that I found so interesting are actually not new. He's done accidents before, and the strange powers that can grow out of them. (this is totally understandable since King himself had a major accident). He's done creative people who create something a good deal bigger and more powerful than they meant to. Not to mention angry powers and the walking dead. So I don't know if I'd have enjoyed it quite so much if all this wasn't new to me. But anyway, I did! Also, I understand a lot of his novels have been about a large cast of characters, on a huge scale - but this one is the opposite - basically one man, alone in a house on the edge of Florida. That was really well done.

26dchaikin
Août 1, 2017, 8:41 am

I'll have to check out Backlisted.

Interesting to read about your first look at King. I tried two books this year, but didn't give either much a chance. Haven't abandoned them, so much as put them aside. The opening didn't draw me in, anyway. That was my first non-cinematic attempt at King.

27theaelizabet
Août 1, 2017, 12:37 pm

>22 ChocolateMuse: >26 dchaikin: I love Backlisted podcast. I especially appreciate their ability to speak intelligently and appreciatively about women writers.