Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

I believe GR now allows Group Moderators to send out broadcast messages without being friends with everyone. I just sent out a group broadcast message, so if you didn't get it, then maybe GR hasn't fixed the issue.

I am going to sound like an advert for a moment.

I have just started a free 30-day trial of Scribd. So love it. Has books written by writers we commonly read here and books about writers/their writing and fanfic and academic papers and who knows what else. . . .Well stuff I was going to maybe have to pay for and then hope to give away.

I went looking because I like books at no extra cost--other than the monthly fee which is same as Kindle Unlimited.
Check it out here:

https://try.scribd.com/perks1/?utm_me...

Been a member off and on for years!

Well. That was exciting. And by exciting I mean, who could've predicted something like 'putting all your eggs in one basket' could have escalatingly bad consequences.

Aubrey I am confused. Which eggs? Scribd subscription, messaging, or page format?

Lynn wrote: "Aubrey I am confused. Which eggs? Scribd subscription, messaging, or page format?"

The major Amazon Web Services outage that took out a sizable number of sites, including Goodreads, offline for hours yesterday.

Aubrey wrote: "Lynn wrote: "Aubrey I am confused. Which eggs? Scribd subscription, messaging, or page format?"

The major Amazon Web Services outage that took out a asixable number of sites, including Goodreads, ..."

Ha! i didn't realise that's what happened, :lol . Thought it was just a GR issue.

Aubrey wrote: "Lynn wrote: "Aubrey I am confused. Which eggs? Scribd subscription, messaging, or page format?"

The major Amazon Web Services outage that took out a sizable number of sites, including Goodreads, o..."

Oh wow Aubrey! I had no idea it was so widespread! AWS is used by so many places!

Yep! It was pretty bad. We use several platforms for online schooling and half of them were down.

Thanks for the information. I received an email from the head of the tech department for our school system, during the outage. He warned that several things might not work due to the outage such as our online textbooks. I checked and found the only problem I had was with my personal Kindle Cloud Reader on a school computer, but saved Audible and Kindle books on my phone were fine. By the time school was out I had honestly forgotten about it.

Author bell hooks has died at age 69. She wrote more than 40 books in her too short life. RIP

Author Anne Rice also passed away earlier this week.

And now Joan Didion. These last weeks of 2021 are really hitting the literary world hard.

I am a fan of bell hooks.

Aubrey, how sad about Didion! I had not heard about that one! :(

Oh i've discovered WORDLE (can't put a link in just have to google it), a nice little daily word game.

They havn't made the older games available yet so its just one new one per day, only takes a minute but good fun :) .

https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/

Milena wrote: "https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/"

How did you do that? It won't let me put in any links anymore :( .

Edit: Never mind it only doesn't allow links if they're in GR's own html formatting, how stupid :lol .

I just discovered that a couple days ago too! I’m enjoying it! :D

Wreade1872 wrote: "Milena wrote: "https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/"

How did you do that? It won't let me put in any links anymore :( .

Edit: Never mind it only doesn't allow links if they're in GR's own html..."

Don't feel too bad. I was only able to do it because the site let me. If it hadn't, I would have been just as lost.

I got today's on the 4th try. Anyone else?

Milena wrote: "I got today's on the 4th try. Anyone else?"

Yeah today should have been tricky but got it on 4, i only had the 3rd and 4th letter but had eliminated a few possibles so took a shot and it was right :) .

It was my first one, and English isn´t my first language, but I just managed at the sixth try. :) Addictive - thankfully only one word a day! ;)

Got it on the 5th try. That was fun!

That was fun! I got it on my 3rd try!

You guys are good! 😄 I took the full six today. (And, Michaela, English is my first language!)

Wreade1872 wrote: "Oh i've discovered WORDLE (can't put a link in just have to google it), a nice little daily word game.

They havn't made the older games available yet so its just one new one per day, only takes a..."

There's a non-secure site that it looks like someone made as an unofficial archive for Wordle. It doesn't seem like it's virus ridden or anything, but I'm going to avoid posting a link anyway. You can find it by searching 'hello wordl' in your preferred search engine and finding the one with a 'foldr.moe' attached, and it should come up pretty easily.

Aubrey wrote: "here's a non-secure site that it looks like someone made as an unofficial archive for Wordle. It doesn't seem like it's virus ridden or anything, but I'm g..."

No it was the right site, just that if you put the link on its own like this https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/ its fine but i was trying to put it like this Wordle which is not allowed, apparently.

There’s a buddy read of The Bone People soon and I just found out that Keri Hulme died at the end of last year.
Here’s a couple of obituaries for anyone interested.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/keri-...

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment...

Terris wrote: "That was fun! I got it on my 3rd try!"

Just came across this, and I am a sucker for word games. Got the word on my 5th attempt, but had three green from my third effort. Thanks for leading me into temptation ;,>)

Janelle wrote: "There’s a buddy read of The Bone People soon and I just found out that Keri Hulme died at the end of last year.
Here’s a couple of obituaries for anyone interested.

htt..."

Ah jeez, that makes four major authors I'm personally invested in that got taken out last month. What a year. I was somewhat worried about Hulme's ability to complete her works in progress, and unfortunately, looks like I was right to be so.

I got lucky and got today's Wordle on the 3rd try! Some nice endorphins. I really like this Wordle game.

Thanks for the link Milena and Wreade!

Greg wrote: "I got lucky and got today's Wordle on the 3rd try! Some nice endorphins. I really like this Wordle game.

Thanks for the link Milena and Wreade!"

Third try for me today too. I wish there was a thumbs up option on Goodreads.

I hadn't heard of Keri Hulme before i've added one of her books to my to-to list.

As for the Wordle, i actually failed one a few days ago, due to international spelling differences :/ it was a word we spell with an extra U. Oh well.

I had heard that Keri Hulme died which is sad. The Bone People is a book I have continued to think about since I read it several years ago. It is not going to be for everyone because there are serious trigger warnings for a tough topic. I won't mention what that is since the reveal is an important part of the book. It is a great book but emotionally difficult. I may need to join the buddy read since I have been meaning to reread it.

Has anybody read “The Mysteries of Udolpho“ by Ann Ratcliffe?

Dave - I tried reading it after I read Northanger Abbey. I did not like it at all and probably only made it about 30 pages.

Natalie - interesting. I just came across an allusion to it in Trollope and was astonished when I looked it up and found that it was a) soooo long -more than 30 hours in audiobook) b) wildly popular when published in 1794 c) considered to be the foundation of the gothic genre d) satirized by Austin in “Northanger Abbey” e) mentioned or alluded to in a number of other novels in the 19th century.

Its not likely I’ll ever try to read it, but it is not often I learn of a book or author that had such a significant place in literary history.

It’s fascinating that it had such an appeal to contemporary readers but it unknown today unless readers come across it in another work, like you did.

That is such a long book! I thought it was very poorly written, especially coming straight off of Austen. I’m curious to just go check it out again and see if I feel the same. I know I definitely don’t want to read the whole thing. 😆

Natalie wrote: "It’s fascinating that it had such an appeal to contemporary readers but it unknown today unless readers come across it in another work, like you did.

That is such a long book! I thought it was ve..."

I’ll be interested in you reappraisal, even abbreviated. I am reading “Persuasion” now and “Northanger Abbey” is on my 2022 challenge list.

I wonder if reading at least parts of Udolpho would help me appreciate Austin as a satirist? Without knowing something is satire, I just read a novel as a straight story when I don’t know about the issues or times being satirized.

It might! Northanger Abbey is probably my least favorite Austen because it seems so silly to me. (I still like it, but don't love it, as I do say, Persuasion. :) Perhaps when it came out people would have more easily seen the humor because of how popular Udolpho was.

Natalie, I am new to Austin late in life, only having read my first of her works, “Pride and Prejudice”, last year.

I love satire - I am having a grand time laughing-out-loud at Trollope satirizing all things Victorian. But it is because I know so much about the Victorian era that I appreciate the satire.

Never able to resist pulling a loose thread, I googled “Jane Austin and Satire”.
I found an interesting article in March 2014 edition of the Oxonian Review in which the author noted the critical praise received by Ang Lee’s film adaption of “Sense and Sensibility” and especially the observation of how faithfully Lee captured the “sensibility” of the novel which achieved Ang’s stated goal of “breaking viewer’s hearts..

Then the author notes that Austin would be appalled at the novel being interpreted as an admiration of sentimentalism, because Austin was a “superb social satirist” who “set out to deflate the conventions of the 18th century novel: she is defiantly anti-romantic, realistic, and clear-eyed, parodying the absurd excesses of the popular sentimental fiction of the day.”

He goes on to cite both “Northanger Abbey” and “Sense and Sensibility” as early examples of Austin’s satire.

Since I have read neither, I need to find exactly out what “popular sentimental fiction of the day” (other than Udolfo) Austin is satirizing. I suspect I am going to find, as you did in Udolfo, that it is unreadable to modern readers, many of whom don’t realize that Austin is, in early works, satirizing now forgotten novels that modern tastes would reject.

I reread all of Austen over the past two years and this time through I was tickled pink by how funny Sense and Sensibility was. I hadn’t picked up on it the first time through. There is one scene in that book about buying a cigarette case that is so funny but it’s not depicted in any of the movies.

Dave wrote: "Natalie, I am new to Austin late in life, only having read my first of her works, “Pride and Prejudice”, last year.

I love satire - I am having a grand time laughing-out-loud at Trollope satirizin..."

Dave, I wonder if the author in the review was partly talking about romantic ideas of love at all costs? I recall several of Austen's novels where her characters look at their situations with realism, wanting to avoid moments of sentimentality that could upend their futures. As I understand it, women of Austen's time faced numerous legal and financial hurdles to their independence, and a moment of sentimentality could be disastrous. I can think of at least a few moments in her novels where young women almost fall into disaster. Persuasion comes to mind.

I do love her novels and I very much enjoy the humor and satire!

Natalie, I consistently find that books I reread in my senior years astonish me for what I missed decades before. Starting with books assigned in High School. Whether the standard curriculum of short stories like “A Rose for Emilie”, or novels like “Great Expectations,” that I reread, I come away thinking, “ how did the school district expect me to understand anything other than the plot when I had no life experience to relate to larger issues that make literature so enjoyable?”

At the same time, I recognize I am literary Monday morning quarterbacking. The schools are charged with teaching reading, and in college something of literary appreciation. I was fortunate in High School to have a really demanding teacher in both American and English Lit who ignited my love of literature.

In college I read a lot of literature independently (while majoring in business), but even those books, on rereading, I now find that my life experiences open up whole new levels of understanding.

As for the author of the review, what I got from reading that was that Austin was an accomplished satirist. That stuff about her being appalled at “Sense and Sensibility” as a movie was, IMHO, academic hogwash.

I also am a lover of movies and respect Ang Lee as a director. I am not into “which is better, the movie or the book”. I see them as different art forms and find it interesting what it takes to turn a novel into a successful movie.

Being very much an introvert, I live a very rich “life of the mind” and tend to favor literature that contains a lot of interior monologue. That is very hard, but not impossible, to capture on film,

Although I am only now getting around to reading Austin, there has never been any doubt to me of her high place in literary history. I started with “Pride and Prejudice” because it was well known. I loved it and was quite amazed at how well it captured the subtlety of human relationships that still holds true today. Now, in the middle of “Persuasion”, a distinctly realistic novel, I have just read where Mrs Smith tells Ann what a self-absorbed wretch Mr Elliot is. It was almost chilling because I have known and worked with people in my life that were so precisely described by that conversation.

As for sentimentality, Austin may have satirized it in her early career. But her later novels I am finding realistic. As I get older, I find my reading much more inclusive and enjoy sentimental escapism among the wide range of my reading tastes. For me, it serves as an escape valve from the grim reality that constantly besieges my mind in the news. It “lightens the load” of reading novels such as “The Kite Runner” (which I am also reading) that I read to understand our common humanity across geography and time.

Such interesting thoughts, Dave. I have wondered the same things, re-reading books I read in high school, wondering what the point could possibly be of reading what means so much to me now back when, as you say, I had so little life experience to view it through.

But I wonder if it is a chicken and egg argument. I think of some of the books I read when I was young, for example The Great Gatsby, William Saroyan, Animal Farm, and think they gave me ideas with which to see those experiences I was to have through, in a way. So there is much to gain all through our reading lives I guess.

And by the way, the beautiful Ang Lee film of Sense and Sensibility is a favorite of mine. :-)

Kathleen wrote: "But I wonder if it is a chicken and egg argument. I think of some of the books I read when I was young, for example The Great Gatsby, William Saroyan, Animal Farm, and think they gave me ideas with which to see those experiences I was to have through, in a way. So there is much to gain all through our reading lives I guess."

I love that Kathleen! I suppose if enjoyment and engagement are present, there's always something valuable to get from it!

One funny thing as I re-read books that I had a profound experience with when I was 18. Some I find that I desperately misread, or latched onto a tangential point only, but the experience was still deeply meaningful and I "learned" something from them philosophically, psychologically or whatever, even though I didn't put it all together. I have a different experience of them now but still cherish my younger thoughts.

Chevkhov's "The Kiss" for instance boiled down to the one moment where he looks down as he stands upon the bridge, looks at the water moving, and realizes that what is beneath him is different moment by moment, that his world is constantly in flux. Ah, I was so lost in wonder at that the first time I read it! Though really, I got almost nothing else from the story back then. :D

So interesting that you should mention that Chekhov story, Greg. I haven't read it yet, but just listened to a writing instructor's lecture that includes thoughts on it. Interestingly, he basically says that is the point of the story in a way, that the character stays the same while these things happen around him, so I love hearing your experience with it.

I completely agree with your point, and it's amazing all the different ways reading can impact us, isn't it!

My new little obsession, recommended to me by the Smithsonian email: https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/

Lena wrote: "My new little obsession, recommended to me by the Smithsonian email: https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/"

Makes two of us

Ah yes, that´s going round on Social Media! Managed a few, but then lost interest. ;)