On The Same Page discussion

Michelle wrote: "Started listening to And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie."

I've read this probably in my early teens, and loved it then. I wonder how does it read with adult eyes and how well it aged. Happy reading!

Getting down to business with And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.

Ten people lured to a weekend houseparty on an isolated island find that they are being eliminated one by one. Will they identify the murderer or become his prey? This book apparently was originally published with a title that would be offensive today. The title in the version I listened to had been changed to the above and all references to the racial slur were changed to soldier. This really did not affect the enjoyment of the story one way or the other so I'm glad they made the change and allowed current generations to enjoy one of Christie's masterpieces.

I hate to admit this but I'm a little lukewarm when it comes to Agatha Christie. I did not feel that way about this particular story. While the plot used has become somewhat overused today, it was clear that when Christie wrote the book that was not the case. Even if it had been she handled all the plot twists like the master mystery writer that she was. You could see the genius at work in this one. This was also one of the few, if not the only Christie that I have read that did not have one of her signature sleuths following the clues and I think I liked that better.

3 Sorry Marple and Poirot but I didn't miss you stars.

Quotable:

“There was something magical about an island—the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world—an island was a world of its own. A world, perhaps, from which you might never return.”
― Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None

“When the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men. And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Soldier Island.”
― Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None

Whew! made it through Selected Stories by Alice Munro.

An extensive selection of Alice Munro's short stories throughout her writing career. These stories deal with people both modern day and in the past and their everyday problems and relationships. But on a deeper level Munro is able to take a sample of her characters in most workings, extract them and display them for the reader's careful examination. These little slices of soul truly display Munro's genius.

I struggled with this book not because I didn't enjoy it but just because of the enormity of the collection. So many brilliant short stories and each one deserving of careful reading and consideration. A quick, skimming read might have been entertaining, but the real joy of these stories was their depth and that required a slow and thoughtful read. The stories generally deal with the ordinary parts of life and relationships but when you dig a little deeper each one reveals a nugget of the character's thinking and motivation and perhaps commentary on the human condition in general. It is easy to see why Munro receives such acclaim for her short stories.

4 a stunning oeuvre stars.

Quotable:

“The only choice I make is to write about what interests me in a way that interests me, that gives me pleasure. It may not look like pleasure, because the difficulties can make me morose and distracted, but that’s what it is—the pleasure of telling the story I mean to tell as wholly as I can tell it, of finding out in fact what that story is, by working around the different ways of telling it.”
― Alice Munro, Selected Stories

They had found out so much about each other that everything had got cancelled out by something else.
― Alice Munro, Selected Stories

“How can you get your finger on it, feel that life beating? It was more a torment than a comfort to think about this, because I couldn’t get hold of it at all.”
― Alice Munro, Selected Stories

I'm not a fan of short stories, but your review is intriguing. I might give it a try...

Ioana wrote: "I'm not a fan of short stories, but your review is intriguing. I might give it a try..."

Just remember to take it slow. Maybe read something else between stories. On one level the stories seem mundane or gossipy but when you think about them they seem very personal almost voyeuristic.

Michelle wrote: "Whew! made it through Selected Stories by Alice Munro.

An extensive selection of Alice Munro's short stories throughout her writi..."
Michelle~You are reading some interesting books. I have been trying to read some more short story collections. Alice Munro supposed to be the master of these. Glad you liked the collection overall.

Michelle wrote: "Getting down to business with And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.

Ten people lured to a weekend houseparty on an..."

I liked this one too. I also had the newer version and didn't have to deal with racial slurs. I have dealt with that on some older versions of her works and was not pleased.

I, on the other hand, love Poirot. Miss Marple is okay, but not sure why she is the supreme sleuth, but oh well. LOL

Kristine wrote: "Michelle wrote: "Whew! made it through Selected Stories by Alice Munro.

An extensive selection of Alice Munro's short stories thr..."

Yes, Munro is very much worth the read if you are looking for short stories. This collection was extensive. Knowing what I know now about her writing I might opt for a book with a smaller collection of stories instead of one that encompasses decades.

Alondra wrote: "Michelle wrote: "Getting down to business with And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.

Ten people lured to a weekend..."

I actually thought I was a Poirot fan myself but I liked this approach better somehow.

Michelle wrote: "Kristine wrote: "Michelle wrote: "Whew! made it through Selected Stories by Alice Munro.

An extensive selection of Alice Munro's ..."
Michelle, that makes sense. Short-Stories are attractive to me since I can read a short passage I will enjoy. If I get bogged down reading decades of stories, I don’t think I would like that. Thanks for the heads up, if I read her, will go for something smaller.

Given how this list started (see original post) I thought it would be appropriate to update you on my obsession with book lists. Yesterday I got an email newsletter from Southern Living magazine. I like getting these for the recipes. They cover various other aspects of life (decorating, gardening etc.) but I rarely pay attention to that. Yesterday however they featured a book list - 50 Classic Books Everyone Should Read in Their Lifetime. Really? Even Southern Living is going to pump up my TBR and feed my list obsession? I want you all to know that I deleted the list.

But... not before I determined that I had read 33 of the 50.

Of course, I went looking for the list. I couldn't find it, but I did find Southern Living's 60 Classic Books Everyone Should Read in Their Lifetime, so I'm not sure if they added books or what, but what's another 10 books amongst friends? I have read 37 books on that list.

Because I'm helpful and all that, I also want everyone to know that I found Southern Living's 50 Books from the Past 50 Years, and I've only read 21 of those. I made spreadsheets for each. :-) :-) :-)

Sooo helpful. Lea. Searching now.

Michelle wrote: "Given how this list started (see original post) I thought it would be appropriate to update you on my obsession with book lists. Yesterday I got an email newsletter from Southern Living magazine. I..."

I love Southern Living magazine. So, not only enabling me with plants, now they want to enable me with books. Ugh.

I realize that this is Michelle's "home" and you can do anything you want here, but you 2 are too much. For the rest of us and our sanity, please stop 🤣🤣🤣
Now I need to search not for one, but 2 "must read in your lifetime" lists. Seriously???

Alondra wrote: "Michelle wrote: "Given how this list started (see original post) I thought it would be appropriate to update you on my obsession with book lists. Yesterday I got an email newsletter from Southern L..."

Right?!! I just wanted recipes. Thats all just something different to cook for the fam. Not a whole new reading project.

Ioana wrote: "I realize that this is Michelle's "home" and you can do anything you want here, but you 2 are too much. For the rest of us and our sanity, please stop 🤣🤣🤣
Now I need to search not for one, but 2 "m..."

Hey Lea ramped it up. I'm not taking all of this one.

So I'm reporting back. Lea is right the list was 60 books not 50 which is kind of a problem because I was feeling good about 33 out of 50 but now less good about 33 out of 60. I don't know why. Also I checked out the second list 50 books from the past 50 years and I am terribly behind there with only 18 out of 50 read. This is madness!

Michelle wrote: "Whew! made it through Selected Stories by Alice Munro.

An extensive selection of Alice Munro's short stories throughout her writi..."

I've read a few of her collections. She does know how to present a short story, something that isn't easy to do. It's quite different from writing novels. She was definitely an expert in the genre.

Bill wrote: "Michelle wrote: "Whew! made it through Selected Stories by Alice Munro.

An extensive selection of Alice Munro's short stories thr..."

A master definitely!

Michelle wrote: "So I'm reporting back. Lea is right the list was 60 books not 50 which is kind of a problem because I was feeling good about 33 out of 50 but now less good about 33 out of 60. I don't know why. Als..."

Some lists, I feel real good about; this list, not so much. Some are hinky and won't get read, but I could try at least 10 more. 🤔

Alondra wrote: "Michelle wrote: "So I'm reporting back. Lea is right the list was 60 books not 50 which is kind of a problem because I was feeling good about 33 out of 50 but now less good about 33 out of 60. I do..."

I liked the list of 60 not so much the list of 50. A lot on the second one were ones that I probably will not read but who knows if they pop up on enough lists I may change my mind eventually.

Yeah, I hear that. I feel more accomplished on the 1001 lists, because I've read much more! ☺️😂😂

Currently reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Michelle wrote: "Currently reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro."

I used to have that. Not sure if I still do. I'll look for your comments on it.

Coming soon Bill

Michelle wrote: "Currently reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro."

Oh no! I have the book, but after watching the movie, I don't think I can do it. I was in tatters and angry afterward. *sigh*

ya'll are crazy with these lists. My TBR is already ridiculous.
I will continue to watch what everyone says about the books you read and add things that look interesting to my list. Now I will probably go look a those lists

Ok, so I've been offline mostly this month and then I come back to Michelle and Lea talking about more best of lists?? Ladies! I now have to go and look them up. Sigh. 🤣

@Ann @Lillie We're just feeding your TBR. We wouldn't want you to run out of books to read.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro completed.

Three young people grow up together and form bonds which will carry into their future. In their case the future will be brief and is set by society into a certain path which they do not at first fully understand. Their behaviors, while typical of youth, have a disastrous effect on the relationship and they struggle to repair it in time.

This book is devastating. On the surface it is a simple story but underneath it is commentary on so much life, relationships, humanity, science, human dignity. The reader learns to read this book with the same numb detachment the main characters use to consider their future. Otherwise it is too much. Even then the horror comes across the reader in waves. Suffice it to say this book will stay with me forever.

4 some things you can’t unread and don’t really want to stars.

Quotable

What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that. But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we'd understood that back then-who knows?-maybe we'd have kept a tighter hold of one another.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, and maybe even call.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

On a different note. I’m hazy about the details but I’m pretty sure I’m finished with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson.

After receiving an assignment to report on a desert motorcycle race, a reporter and his “attorney “ embark on a drug fueled journey to Las Vegas which results in much mayhem and destruction and somehow the discovery of the American dream. At least I think that’s what happened I’m honestly a little vague.

I think I would have appreciated this book more if I had been high. Unfortunately that’s not my thing so I’ll do the best I can with this review. I googled the book and the author and I read all about Roman a clef and Gonzo journalism. While that gave me some appreciation of the intent of the author, I still have trouble seeing this as much more than a long drug induced paranoid rant. There were a few nuggets of political and societal commentary interspersed throughout but I’m not sure they were profound enough to justify the rest. The only way I can see this as a classic that everyone should read is in the sense that On the Road by Jack Kerouac is a classic. As a period piece which imparts a sense of the period from a specific viewpoint. So back to Gonzo journalism I guess the author was successful. Unfortunately a drug user’s high is seldom fully appreciated by the sober people who witness it.

2 this book was a trip - literally stars.

Quotable

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Too weird to live, too rare to die!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

You took too much man, too much, too much.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Halfway there! Next up The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.

Michelle wrote: "Halfway there! Next up The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe."

As I recall, this was fascinating. I hope you enjoy.

Bill wrote: "Michelle wrote: "Halfway there! Next up The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe."

As I recall, this was fascinating. I hope you enjoy."

Thanks Bill! I’m looking forward to it.

Michelle wrote: "Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro completed.

Three young people grow up together and form bonds which will carry into their future. In th..."

That was it in a nutshell. It was a great story. 😩😩😭😭😭

It was. There were so many layers. I won't forget it.

Soldiering on with this list to finish Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

A handful of the members of a utopian society begin to question the status quo after experiencing life outside of their community. Huxley was strangely prescient writing in 1932 about many things that are available today for example cloning, birth control, anti-depressant drugs. There were many comparisons that could be made between Huxley's utopia and modern life. In addition to the above some that spring to mind would be single use consumption, the wellness industry, the sexual revolution, media conditioning and even essential oils.

I am glad I read this classic utopian novel. I am not sure that I would recommend it. It was frankly on the boring side. I was also troubled by some references which would not be politically correct today but since the entire book was satire, I can't be sure that some of those references weren't in fact satirical. I was fascinated by how closely Huxley's utopia predicted the current day. He obviously had commentary on many subjects that he saw society trending toward but I'm not sure if there was one overall message to the book unless it was that true happiness cannot be achieved unless unhappiness can be experienced.

3 after this book I need a Soma vacation too stars.

Quotable:

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

I think I've tried this in the past, and could not get into it, glad to see you succeeded. The quotes are scary...

Ioana wrote: "I think I've tried this in the past, and could not get into it, glad to see you succeeded. The quotes are scary..."

If I had not listened to the audiobook Ioana I wouldn't have made it through either. Even then I was wishing for a full cast performance rather than a straight reading. That would have been much more effective.

The quotes are scary. Noticing the parallels between Huxley's utopia and modern life was in fact the most interesting part of the book. But yes a little scary.

Michelle wrote: "Soldiering on with this list to finish Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

A handful of the members of a utopian society begin to qu..."

It was one of those books I was glad I read but it wasn't as good as I thought.

Exactly Bill!

Meeting the challenge with. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.

In his 1979 classic Tom Wolfe writes about the earliest years of the American space program. The Mercury program flights which are considered the first American space missions are the main purview of the book but the real focus is on the men who made the flights. The group of pilots and test pilots who became the first astronauts and the reaction of the world around them. Less time is spent on the actual space flights than on the factors that formed the need for space exploration and the people who pursued it. Wolfe strips all reverence from this moment in history and reveals the politics, the hype, and the bumbling experimentation of that time in history. Mostly though he holds up for examination the “righteous stuff” of the first men in space.

Once again I am of two minds about a book on this list. On the one hand this book not only brilliantly portrays a unique period of time, it also conveys a particular attitude of the major players in that time. It did the latter so well that the book itself carries an unmistakable attitude - the attitude of the right stuff. Writing of this caliber has to be admired and the book is certainly deserving of its status as a classic. I would even agree that it falls into the category of books everyone should read. BUT. I really did not enjoy reading this book. The level of male posturing was unbelievable and don’t even get me started on “Mrs. Astronaut “. And also what was wrong with John Glenn having values? I know we have made great strives in recent years in the way we think about gender roles but I had a hard time reading about this level of misogyny. I’m pretty sure we have proven that “girls” can have the right stuff too.

3 Amazing writing but also a huge load of misogynistic BS stars

Quotable

After all, the right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life (by riding on top of a Redstone or Atlas rocket). Any fool could do that (and many fools would no doubt volunteer, given the opportunity), just as any fool could throw his life away in the process. No, the idea (as all pilots understood) was that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back at the last yawning moment
― Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff

The world was used to enormous egos in artists, actors, entertainers of all sorts, in politicians, sports figures, and even journalists, because they had such familiar and convenient ways to show them off. But that slim young man over there in uniform, with the enormous watch on his wrist and the withdrawn look on his face, that young officer who is so shy that he can’t even open his mouth unless the subject is flying— that young pilot— well, my friends, his ego is even bigger!— so big, it’s breathtaking!”
― Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff

The figures were averages and averages applied to those with average stuff”
― Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff

I checked out the read banned books thread on our group’s homepage and just so you all know, I have read only 26 of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books list. Obviously something I should work on. Maybe another list???

Michelle wrote: "I checked out the read banned books thread on our group’s homepage and just so you all know, I have read only 26 of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books list. Obviously something I should work on. Maybe another list???"

I've only read 37 books on the list. I did not make a spreadsheet for this. :-)

Lea wrote: "Michelle wrote: "I checked out the read banned books thread on our group’s homepage and just so you all know, I have read only 26 of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books list. Obviously somethi..."

I can see why you wouldn't make a spreadsheet for this one. I actually think many of the ones on that list that I haven't read are books that I probably won't read. Still, it was an interesting list. Can anyone tell me why the Eric Carle book is banned? I read that to my kids a lot. It teaches you how to draw a star. Obviously I missed something???

Actually, maybe don't tell me. I probably don't want to know.

Michelle wrote: "I checked out the read banned books thread on our group’s homepage and just so you all know, I have read only 26 of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books list. Obviously something I should work ..."

Another list won't hurt. You officially completed the original list; so, everything else is a freebie!! :)

Alondra wrote: "Michelle wrote: "I checked out the read banned books thread on our group’s homepage and just so you all know, I have read only 26 of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books list. Obviously somethi..."

I'm actually considering it! You people have turned me into a list maker. ACK!

Michelle wrote: "I can see why you wouldn't make a spreadsheet for this one. I actually think many of the ones on that list that I haven't read are books that I probably won't read. Still, it was an interesting list. Can anyone tell me why the Eric Carle book is banned? I read that to my kids a lot. It teaches you how to draw a star. Obviously I missed something??"

Yes, I agree that a lot of the books are ones I probably won't read. I also don't get why someone would ban an entire series. They banned way too many series, and that's just lazy. :-)