Family first. Always. But I love how you are able to read and listen with your family, traveling to distant lands from a hospital bed. We're a pretty forgiving audience, and would be disappointed if we found out you weren't human like the rest of us.
Yep, I also ran into difficulties with Tristram Shandy, for much the same reason, and laid it aside for now. I did read East of Eden this year, but had already read every other novel on your list. I've managed 31 new reads this far. The most interesting in fiction were:
-The Night of the Hunter, by Davis Grubb: Southern Gothic horror and searing parable on religious hypocrisy, echoing Jesus' words "Ye devour widows houses and for pretence make long prayers."
- Roots by Alex Haley & Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill: well-written and reasearched novels on the loss of identity, culture, and language inflicted by the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh & Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: two classics everyone says to read and they aren't wrong.
- Erewhon by Samuel Butler: Victorian era utopian satire in the honoured tradition of Utopia and Gulliver's Travels.
- Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu: a slow burning Gothic horror novel on related but not quite the same themes as Collins' Woman in White, it is a more eccentric and atmospheric book than Collins'.
I've read three non-fiction that I found notable so far:
- Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann: like The Night of the Hunter but it actually happened, which makes it even more enraging and horrifying.
- The Stream Runs Fast by Nellie McClung: McClung was one of the women who successfully sued for women to get the vote in Canada and a notable writer; her memoir paints fascinating views of early 20th century Canada.
- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: despite hearing so much about this historic landmark work over the years, it wasn't what I expected: it is a critique of the education of women in a style that reminded me simultaneously of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte.
I hope that your family members stabilize and stay out of the hospital! In the meantime, I'd skip the last battle -- it's a combination of heavy-handed and misogynistic that drives me insane. Most kids don't feel the overbearing Christian imagery of the other books, but it really wrecks the last one even from a child's perspective.
I've been rereading books I read years ago, and appreciating details I missed the first time around. I've reread the first two books in Susan Howatch's Starbridge Series. The series is about three very different Anglican priests in the 20th century, and every novel is a psychological/theological thriller. I'm currently in the middle of Great Expectations, and wow, is it good. Much better than I remember. It's relatively short (for Dickens), which is nice.
What a year you've had!
Family first. Always. But I love how you are able to read and listen with your family, traveling to distant lands from a hospital bed. We're a pretty forgiving audience, and would be disappointed if we found out you weren't human like the rest of us.
Yep, I also ran into difficulties with Tristram Shandy, for much the same reason, and laid it aside for now. I did read East of Eden this year, but had already read every other novel on your list. I've managed 31 new reads this far. The most interesting in fiction were:
-The Night of the Hunter, by Davis Grubb: Southern Gothic horror and searing parable on religious hypocrisy, echoing Jesus' words "Ye devour widows houses and for pretence make long prayers."
- Roots by Alex Haley & Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill: well-written and reasearched novels on the loss of identity, culture, and language inflicted by the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh & Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: two classics everyone says to read and they aren't wrong.
- Erewhon by Samuel Butler: Victorian era utopian satire in the honoured tradition of Utopia and Gulliver's Travels.
- Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu: a slow burning Gothic horror novel on related but not quite the same themes as Collins' Woman in White, it is a more eccentric and atmospheric book than Collins'.
I've read three non-fiction that I found notable so far:
- Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann: like The Night of the Hunter but it actually happened, which makes it even more enraging and horrifying.
- The Stream Runs Fast by Nellie McClung: McClung was one of the women who successfully sued for women to get the vote in Canada and a notable writer; her memoir paints fascinating views of early 20th century Canada.
- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: despite hearing so much about this historic landmark work over the years, it wasn't what I expected: it is a critique of the education of women in a style that reminded me simultaneously of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte.
I hope that your family members stabilize and stay out of the hospital! In the meantime, I'd skip the last battle -- it's a combination of heavy-handed and misogynistic that drives me insane. Most kids don't feel the overbearing Christian imagery of the other books, but it really wrecks the last one even from a child's perspective.
Oh yeah? Well, I have read some stuff, too. You’re not the boss of me!
Wow! How do you make the time? What is your schedule like?
I've been rereading books I read years ago, and appreciating details I missed the first time around. I've reread the first two books in Susan Howatch's Starbridge Series. The series is about three very different Anglican priests in the 20th century, and every novel is a psychological/theological thriller. I'm currently in the middle of Great Expectations, and wow, is it good. Much better than I remember. It's relatively short (for Dickens), which is nice.