All About Books discussion

Measure for Measure is one of the Shakespeare plays I've never seen or read, despite its fame. Maybe I'll remedy that this year...

Jean wrote: "Measure for Measure is one of the Shakespeare plays I've never seen or read, despite its fame. Maybe I'll remedy that this year..."

You can read along with the video using the BBC Production available here on YouTube.

Sorry - I can't watch YouTube as the streaming here is so slow. Thanks for trying though, Leslie, and now I know the BBC made a TV version as well as radio there may be a DVD of it I can borrow from the library some time :)

Jean wrote: "Sorry - I can't watch YouTube as the streaming here is so slow. Thanks for trying though, Leslie, and now I know the BBC made a TV version as well as radio there may be a DVD of it I can borrow fro..."

I think that you could download it and then watch it later, but if your Internet is slow that is probably difficult too. :(

Yes, an hour to download 5 mins is about the rate. OK for a few seconds-worth of material but otherwise not worth bothering with :(

Jean wrote: "Yes, an hour to download 5 mins is about the rate. OK for a few seconds-worth of material but otherwise not worth bothering with :("

Yikes! I guess I should stop complaining about my own connection then...

CAT #6: Lymond Series
I finished rereading the first book of this series, The Game of Kings. Possibly even more wonderful than I had remembered it being :)

5 done; 3 in progress; and 97 to go!

Progress update for January:
CAT #1: done!
CAT #2: continuing with On This Day in Tudor History
CAT #6: first book done
CAT #7: 2 done (both from Guardian list too! ☺)
CAT #11: 2 done
CAT #12: one done (from Guardian list too! ☺)
CAT #13: 2 done
CAT #14: one done

I picked up books from the library for CAT #5, 8, 9 today...
(edit): CAT #8 - one done, CAT #10 - one done

Challenge A (Palliser series) - The Prime Minister ✔
Challenge B (Barsetshire series) - Happy Return ✔
Challenge C (Morse series) ✔
Challenge D (Guardian list) - 5 done

I finished my second audiobook for CAT #10 today, Interpreter of Maladies. These are amazing short stories which I would recommend but probably better written than in this audiobook edition.

I finished my first book for CAT #5 today - Greenmantle by Charles de Lint. Great book - I have a lot of thoughts and images swirling around my head right now!

Amazing progress Leslie!

Charbel wrote: "Amazing progress Leslie!"

Thanks Charbel! 16 done and 89 to go...

CAT #4: French Classics
Guardian list
The Immoralist by André Gide

4 stars. Though short, this book packs in a lot of things to think about. I have never read any of the French existentialists (and I am even unsure that this book or author is thought to be in this school), but I was surprised by how easily this flowed. The only thing at all dated about it was the fact that tuberculosis is now rare - perhaps the new translation by Walter Ballenberger had something to do with that.

Short synopsis: The story is almost entirely told as a first person narrative about a man Michel who almost dies and in his recovery, becomes "reborn" in a way but lost in another way.

Michel goes from being a student of languages and history to someone primarily concerned with sensations and feelings of the present. For example, he says "I was not thinking about anything. Why bother to have thoughts? I felt extraordinarily good." and then later: "The history of the past now appeared to my eyes to be this immobile, terrifying fixity of the night shadows in the little court in Biskra. It was like the immobility of death. In the past I was pleased with this rigidity which provided precision for my mind."

For a while it seems like things will work out well, but (view spoiler)[ once he and his wife Marceline leave the farm in Normandy, things just go downhill. They lose their first baby, and then Marceline becomes ill. It seems like he becomes more and more lost as she becomes sicker and sicker. After her death, he finds "Something in my will has been broken." (hide spoiler)] I see Marceline as being almost the physical manifestation of Michel's soul...

CAT #10: Audiobooks already owned, not rereads
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
4 stars. Absorbing tale of a farmer from youth to old age, through drought & famine and good times.

Letter from Birmingham Jail
5 stars Short but powerful.

Spy Killer
3 stars Surprisingly enjoyable pulp fiction; spy thriller set in Shanghai.

CAT #11: Mysteries off my shelves
Book #3 - Hamlet, Revenge!

Second book in the Inspector Appleby series was an above average English country house mystery with a twist. Innes' writing style is a bit dry with a hidden wit - it might not be to everyone's taste but I like it; an author who can refer to Conrad's Lord Jim and P.G. Wodehouse's Lord Emsworth on the same page and make sly references to Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot is my kind of guy! As Appleby says at one point in the investigation: "Order, method: the little grey cells!" and later, one of the house guests suggests the Duke send for "...a real detective. There is a very good man whose name I forget; a foreigner and very conceited -- but, they say, thoroughly reliable."

This is a greater tribute than it might appear at first sight; Hamlet, Revenge! first was released in 1937 so Poirot was not nearly as well-known as he is today.

CAT #2: Nonfiction
first book finished for this catagory - Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

4½ stars.
Well-written account of everyday life for people in North Korea. While my ignorance about the collapse of North Korea's infrastructure and the terrible famine during the 1990s can be partially excused by the fact that their own government works hard to conceal these things, I am embarrassed by how little I knew.

Demick does a good job of showing how people adjust as things went from good to not so good to terrible. These are the stories of survivors (and defectors) & I am fairly sure that I would not have been able to cope with the deprivations and restrictions that these people faced. The ingenuity and resiliance displayed is amazing, heart-wrenching and yet uplifting...

CAT #13: Plays
Play #3 - A Midsummer Night's Dream

3 stars. Not the best Shakespeare play, although it does have some great lines such as "The course of true love never did run smooth."

This was my introduction to Shakespeare, aged 11! In my first year at Grammar school I was picked to play "Bottom". Not the best-named character for someone plonked in with new lot of females... ah girls can be so cruel!! :D

I did actually quite liked the play though. But wanted desperately to play Titania...

Leslie I love how decorated your challenge is!

Charbel wrote: "Leslie I love how decorated your challenge is!"

I had a lot of fun doing it! :D

CAT #2: Nonfiction
This book completes this tier of my challenge & I didn't even get to the two already adorning my shelves!

Three Singles to Adventure by Gerald Durrrell is a fun and easy book but I wish that I had read it instead of listening to the audiobook. No reflection on the narrator, who did an excellent job, but I wanted to see illustrations of the animals and the localities. Unfortunately, audiobooks are all that my local library had available.

I feel like that too Leslie! Most of the Kindle versions miss out the illustrations - and the original ones by various artists are always quirky and humorous line/pen and ink drawings.

If I don't know the animal in question I usually google it to look at a photo.

I've reviewed 4 of these by the way I think, plus the trilogy :)

CAT #14: Read the USA Mysteries
book #2 for this category - Corpus Delectable set in Delaware

3 stars. Good first book - as is often the case with first books in a series, this is a little heavy on the background material, but the main character is likable and for the most part believable. While the mystery was fairly well done, it is not one that the reader can solve.

CAT #2: Nonfiction
Book #4 in this category - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

5 stars for the Librivox audiobook recording by Elizabeth Klett, 4½ stars for the Kindle edition book. Elizabeth Klett is absolutely wonderful narrating this autobiography. I couldn't stop listening once I had started!

I decided to read this in honor of Back History Month. As a result of a recent conversation, I realized that my previous focus on the Civil Rights movement was perhaps a little too 'easy' on my white upper middle class conscience. I didn't really know anything about this book other than the fact that I had heard the title before. I was ready for the book to have descriptions of atrocities but what I wasn't ready for was the literate style of the prose. I know, shame on me for my stereotypical preconceptions!

Powerful autobiography of Harriet Jacobs; this story of her life growing up as a slave and her eventual escape into the North is enhanced by the matter-of-fact manner which she uses to describe some terrible conditions. By matter-of-fact, I don't mean that she is accepting of these conditions - she speaks passionately about the injustices, cruelty, and hypocrisy she sees both in the south and the north - but she doesn't dramatize when she is describing them. I found this factual tone to make the story more compelling, and while the abuses she describes are now well-known, it must have taken a tremendous amount of strength of mind to write and publish this in 1861. She not only documents the terrible degradations of slavery, but also the racism she and her children are forced to undergo in the "free states" of New York and Massachusetts. I can see how incendiary this book must have been when it came out! Even as an emancipated woman living in a free state, it must have been dangerous for her (even using a pseudonym).

A heartfelt, personal and informative eulogy, Leslie. Thank you for sharing this :)

Jean wrote: "A heartfelt, personal and informative eulogy, Leslie. Thank you for sharing this :)"

This is partly a result of that little discussion you and Jenny were having about writing up reviews!

Wow, that's great :) I was actually thinking of suggesting you paste all this into a review, in case it "got lost in among the threads", but then I realised it is on your own thread, so that is not very likely.

On the other hand, it would be nice for other readers to be able to read it (if you feel able to share it), and not all of them will have access to this thread, or think to look at it.

I agree! Other readers should read it.

Thanks Jean & Charbel -- I ended up copying it into my review of the Librivox recording.

Ah, good :)

CAT #13: Plays
Play #4 - The Real Thing by our seasonal playwright, Tom Stoppard.

3 stars. This play about love (when is it the "real thing"?) & jealousy doesn't age as well as some of Stoppard's other plays. That said, it is still a fun play to read & I would love to see it performed.

Simply beautiful! Reading your thread is like reading a personal magazine, Leslie :)

I agree!

Progress update for February:
CAT #1: done!
CAT #2: done! but continuing with On This Day in Tudor History anyway
CAT #4: first book done
CAT #5: first book done
CAT #9: first book done
CAT #10: 4 more done (halfway there!)
CAT #11: finished 3rd book for this
CAT #12: second book in progress (finished in March)
CAT #13: 2 more done for a total of 4
CAT #14: one more done for a total of 2

Challenge A (Palliser series) ✗
Challenge B (Barsetshire series) ✗
Challenge C (Morse series) ✔
Challenge D (Guardian list) - 1 new-to-me done (2 rereads)

CAT #12: Group Reads
Guardian list

I have finally finished Middlemarch, which I think I will have to revisit at some point. It really picked up for me towards the end, and I think some of my struggles earlier come from being a bit burnt out on the "chunksters" -- too many 600+ page books in too short a space of time. But for now, 3½ stars...

Jean wrote: "Simply beautiful! Reading your thread is like reading a personal magazine, Leslie :)"

Thanks Jean & Charbel!

CAT #10: Audiobooks
Challenge C: Guardian list

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser; narration by Dan John Miller. Miller did a fabulous job with the narration, one of the best I have heard.

Unfortunately, I found that the book itself was too long - I lost interest about 2/3 through which left me with about 280 pages to slog through to get to the end. But as with Middlemarch, I suspect that is partially due to burnout. I would like to revisit this someday but not in the near future...

Challenge B: Barsetshire series
Book #22, Jutland Cottage

2½ stars. While the romance was sweet, the humor which I like so much in the other books in this series is missing. Also, I found certain descriptions were repeated too frequently & were a little grating. Overall, one of the weaker books in the series. I hope that this isn't a sign of things to come...

Just a quick summary of how I am doing on the Theme Challenges so far:

New Starts = read a book that is by a new author or is the beginning of a series new to you ✔
Low Vision Awareness = Listen to an audiobook or read a book available in large-print ✔
Iditarod = Read an adventure book (either fact or fiction) or a book that involves the Artic or dogs in some way - NOT YET
April Fool's Day = Read a book that makes you laugh ✔
Cinco de Mayo = Read a book about war (fact or fiction) or read a book about Mexico or written by a Mexican author ✔
Ramadan = Read a book that involves spirituality or religion in some way ✔
Tour de France = Read a book about France or written by a French author ✔
Tree Climbing Days = Read a book about childhood or about nature - ?perhaps the Gerald Durrell book
Interpreters and Translators = Read a book that was originally written in a language other than that you are reading it in ✔
Halloween = Read a ghost story, horror, or a book about the paranormal ✔
Family Literacy = Read a young-adult or children's book ✔
Abolition of Slavery = Read a book that involves human rights or freedom fighting ✔

CAT #10: Audiobooks
Theme = Halloween

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, narrated by Will Patton. Young adult book about a teenaged girl named Blue and the "Raven Boys", a group of boys from a local private school. Blue's family are all gifted with psychic powers; Gansey (one of the boys) is searching for the ley lines which he hopes will guide him to the burial place of an old Welsh mystic or king. While the story itself isn't my usual cup of tea, I was quickly drawn in and became interested in finding out what would happen.

CAT #10: Audiobooks
Challenge C: Guardian list

Silas Marner by George Eliot, narrated by John Peakes. I found this story much more interesting than that in Middlemarch, although it didn't have those wonderful witty descriptions. However, Eliot's style still isn't really my cup of tea, so I think that I will put reading Daniel Deronda and The Mill on the Floss on the back burner for now.

CAT #2: The Real Classics
Agamemnon by Aeschylus, translated by Richard Lattimore (1947)

I found Lattimore's translation difficult to read and ended up supplementing it with the YouTube video of the (British) National Theater production of Tony Harrison's translation, which I found easier to understand. Even that was difficult in places but perhaps because I was busy trying to match up the video with the text...

In case you are unfamiliar (or like me have forgotten) the background to this play, a short synopsis:
   Agamemnon & Menelaus are brothers; their father Atreus had banished their uncle Thyestes over who would rule Argos. Thyestes returned begging to be taken back, Atreus pretended to forgive him and then murdered Thyestes 2 oldest sons and serves their flesh to Thyestes at a banquet. When Thyestes finds out, he lays a curse on the entire house.
   Years later, Agamemnon & Menelaus marry sisters Clytemestra and Helen respectively. Helen goes to Troy, setting off the Trojan War. When Agamemnon has assembled all the Greek forces at Aulis, ready to set sail for Troy, they are prevented from leaving by contrary winds. Agamemnon is told by the seer/prophet Kalchas that in order to get proper winds for sailing, he must make a sacrifice of his virgin daughter Iphigenia, which he does.
   After 10 years of fighting the Trojan War, the action of this play begins...

Clytemestra is an avenging demon, although that isn't readily apparent at first. Her strike at Agamemnon may be justified as she claims, by right of vengence for their daughter Iphigenia, but she doesn't even attempt to justify killing Cassandra. Aigisthos (Aegisthos?), youngest son of Thyestes and Clytemestra's lover, enters in the last part of the play to take over the kingdom. Further doom is clearly indicated...

Annoyingly for me, the book I got from the library has the first and the last plays of the trilogy but not the second one. :( I will have to download a Kindle version... or just watch the play on YouTube!

Sounds like an exciting play to say the least. It's always a shame when the translation gets in the way.

Charbel wrote: "Sounds like an exciting play to say the least. It's always a shame when the translation gets in the way."

With these ancient texts, it seems that many of the older translations need a translation of their own!

Lol! I love that idea.

CAT #2: The Real Classics
The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus, translated by Gilbert Murray

I couldn't leave this trilogy unfinished, so I hunted down a copy of the second play for my Kindle. Murray's rhyming translation was easier for me than Lattimore's prose had been, but still challenging in quite a few places. I also watched the YouTube video of this play (another production of the National Theater using Harrison's translation). These productions are really worth viewing for anyone interested in theater or in the ancient Greeks.

CAT #12: Group Reads or Readalongs
Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore

I hovered between 3 and 4 stars for this classic historical fiction. It is tempting to say that it would be better abridged - shorter and more to the point - and certainly the main love story has plenty of excitement to be a worthy book on its own. However, the more I thought about that, the more I realized that Blackmore, by writing this as he did, is making a statement about life in that time (late 1600's) just as much as he did with the plot. John Ridd is a farmer, and for the survival of his family and their dependents, taking care of the farm had to take precedence no matter how much he might want to be following his love or having adventures (not that John ever wanted adventures!). By breaking up the action with bucolic scenes, it is a reminder that this is what truly matters, not the adventure. You couldn't get that message with an abridged version.

CAT #11: Mysteries I Own
Frequent Hearses by Edmund Crispin

Sadly, Fen himself is mostly at the beginning and the end of this 7th entry in the series. Crispin's writing style continues to enchant me and I look forward to the next book, which I have checked out of the library :-)

I can't remember ever reading any of this series...

The Moving Toyshop from 1946 is one of the best, I think, with a lovely sketch-map of Oxford right at the start (so no spoiler in what follows), marked with letters A to L. A is Toyshop (second position), and L is Toyshop(first position). What fun in store for you, Jean, if you read these! I see that all the main 8 novels plus one book of short stories, from 1944-1953 are on Kindle, from £2.57 to £4.31.

And I now know there was a last one written in 1977, a year before he died, The Glimpses of the Moon, not as good, say the reviews, but good enough. So, I've just bought the Kindle of that for £2.57. So, fun in store for me, too. Thank you, Leslie, for this serendipity!