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Allergies
I'm not sure I belong in this forum, although I could be accurately described as a bookworm. BUT . . . I don't go for most of the books listed on BM. I detest endless series of formula books which recycle a character and soon you don't remember which book is which. I am against "conspiracies to take over the world" -- what are they going to do with it if they get it. I am also violently allergic to serial killers, vampires, psychics, so-called horror (what can top the Holocaust, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and casual genocides?), science fiction and sappy (aren't they all, though?) romances. Oprah's choices are not mine at all. So I read mostly old books, often from second hand books shops or thrift shops. Unfortunately as I get older (and I have been at it for over 7 decades) the "old" books get newer and newer, and my choices get fewer and fewer. I forgot to mention "modern" inflated fiction, especially books of more that 300 pages or so. So we stick with the classics. By now, the trash of my youth have become today's classics. And what ever happened to the art of the essay?
When my daughter, an only child, was nursery age, she used to sit and tell herself stories. Will I have to write my own books?
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NinaBryna
13 years ago
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I have to ask, what do you mean by the "trashy" books of old are now classics? My reasoning in starting this bookclub was to introduce classic, modern and yes, even Young Adult novels- because this is what is popular now. I have already chosen two classic novels, Frankenstein and Dracula, so that we (as a group) will have an understanding of how the paranormal/horror genre got started. For June and July I am planning on getting us ready for our next genre- which is romance. However, I want the group to take a look at Jane Austen because I feel that her writings were the true foundation of romance. As for "my picks" I do ask for suggestions from the group. Right now there are four of us involved in this bookclub so therefore I base my choices around what they like. As time goes on and when others are involved, the genres will change. I believe the majority of us read for two reasons; for escape and for knowledge. For me, "fun reads" are my escape and when I formed this club I wanted my members to have an oppurtunity to "escape" out of their everyday lives and enjoy the reads chosen. By incorporating the classics, this will add to our knowledge and make for great debates/discussions. If you do not wish to take part, I completely understand and appreciate your comments.
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Authors: Barbara Tuchman, Anne Tyler, Jane Austin, Amanda Cross, Lytton Strachey,Laurie Lee, the Bronte sisters, Sharyn McCrumb, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Arnold Bennet, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi (Translated by Dorothy Britton), Robert VAn Gulik, Geza Vermes, all of Emma Lathen,Max Fimont, Daniel J. Boorstin, Bernard Berenson, Herbert Read, e.e. cummings,Han Suyin, Emily James Putnam, Dorothy Sayers, Aldous Huxley, Honor Tracy, George Orwell, George Eliot, Michael Gilbert, probably all of Rex Stout . . . These are all books I hang onto, and there are a lot more (see Francis Bacon on books and reading). I also read a lot of books in Hebrew, and a few in German and French There is a lot of fluff that I mooch, read and put back in Bookmooch. I am a "clean plate" reader and I finish them all (OK sometimes I skim).
Since I do not have a TV and don't spend much time at the computer (except for work), I read a lot and I've been reading for almost 70 years. I also read "The Giver" recently (borrowed it from my grandchildren), as well as "Herland."
There is definitely ageneratin gap here, but I would like to keep on reading your comments, and possibly some of the books you recommend. Many will probably not be available in Israel, although there are some second-hand book shops selling books in English.
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Dear Heather Rose (what a lovely image),
Generations seemingly don't all gap that much. My mother greatly admired Upton Sinclair
I have to admit to reading the first 2 or 3 Harry Potters. My grand-daughter played Moaning Myrtle ("You haunt a toilet!?") in her drama class presentation. After that they pretty much repeat themselves. I like theme and variations in music but not in literature: best to go on to something else, there is always something waiting.
I did read something by Vonnegut, but I don't think it was Slaughterhouse Five. It was a long time ago. Having been a Jewish child in Vienna during World War II, I have supped full of horrors; no piece of fiction can be anything but banal after the real ting. I find "horror" novels, ghosts and vampires just plain silly.
I read Women in Love, and the Rainbow, and Sons and Lovers, in college. I read Lady Chatterly (expurgated) when I was a teenager. oI find Lawrence's novels tedious and overblown, but his short stories are splendid. I read those in high school and have since reread them with pleasure. There's a paperback called "The Lovely Lady", the title story is a gem!
I notice that I left out of my list, among others, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (also William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlow). Favorite Dickinson poem:
"I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!" One of my favorite quotations, most suitable to a member of the Bookmooch family, is by Samuel Johnson: "We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting."
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Dear Lindsay,
This book club is a great idea, and you are to be congratulated or having launched it. Your choice of books is admirable, Frankenstein and Dracula (there actually was a Romanian ruler Known as Vlad the Impaler, owing to his habit of impaling anyone he didn't like an wooden spikes in his courtyard, and he was nicknamed Dracula or Dracuil = little dragon) in their day were not considered "serious" literature and gave rise to a long line of movies, a veritable industry, which got sillier and sillier, culminating in Frankenstein's Daughter, the Bride of Frankenstein (Elsa Lanchester, she tuned him down), Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (and, I think, the Wolfman) and "Young Frankenstein" and the Rocky Horror show. Dracula lost his Romanian identity, and became a teen-ager, western cowboy, and Roman Polanski turned him into a Jew, complete with accent. I think I saw most of them in my mis-spent youth. And then came Anne Rice et al.
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On Vampires: Let's not neglect the Adams Family (original TV version). And also a kind of funny story: In the later 1950s there was a character on TV who called herself Vampyra. She had long black hair and dresses all in black, straight out of the Charles Addams cartoons in the New Yorker magazine. At that time I happened to have long black hair (which I usually wound in what as known as a chignon), and the fashion was for dark or black tights. I was teaching in a Temple school and usually wore my charcoal gray Chanel (fake) suit and a variety of black tops. Until one Sunday morning, when I was trying to instill in my 9 year olds the story of Moses and the Exodus, one child was frantically waving his hand. "Yes, David?" I asked. "Morah (teacher in Hebrew)," he asked, "when you let your hair down, do you look like Vampyra?"
I thought I still had an old paperback that, inter alia, had all the dope on Vlad and Bathory, but it seems to have disappeared. Vlad is actually considered a great and noble leader by the Romanians. I suppose he had his good points. He killed (and often impaled) a lot of Turks, which was enough to make someone a hero in the Balkans.
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I remember Bewitched with great pleasure. I had often been told I looked just like Agnes Moorhead (in her pre-Bewitched days), and I used to have fun imitating her. I have her kind of voice, as well, and when I would call out "Daahwin!" you could swear it was Endora.
I still look like Agnes Moorhead, with a few wrinkles her and there.
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