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Book Thread
delalluvia:
Just finished reading "The Oracle" by William Broad, which is the non-fiction story of the rediscovery of the oracle of Delphi and how a modern geologist and archaeologist proved that the old stories of the strange 'pneuma' and subterranean crack in the ground that was the source of the 'voice of the gods'.
Andrew:
I am getting along in The Little White Bird by J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. It is a touching and humorous fictional account of a fussy bachelor leisured gentleman's obsession with and growing involvement with a working class family and their baby boy, whom he adores. There are autobiographical elements of Barrie and how he became part of the Llewelyn Davies family, but it is no autobiography. Peter Pan makes his first appearance in this book, which was later revised and shortened as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, my next read. The way Barrie weaves in his own fairy lore as told to little David into what is also a realistic and comic picture of life in London is quite captivating, although it can be a little disorienting at first when the fantasy appears unannounced. This book was from 1902, the play Peter Pan was produced in 1904 and the narrative Peter and Wendy is from 1911.
tamarack:
I just noticed this thread for the first time and skimming through it I noticed that several of you mentioned liking The Perfect Storm . When I read it several years ago I became really interested in what it was like day-to-day on a sword boat, not realizing at the time that Linda Greenlaw had written such a book. If you remember, Linda is the captain of the Hannah Boden, the sister ship to the Andrea Gail.
I have since read The Lobster Chronicles, which tells of life at home on Isle au Haut, Maine, where she returned to learn lobstering after she tired of the sword boats, and All Fishermen Are Liars, which was fun to read but wasn't a book that I kept when I was finished with it. She has a wonderful way with words and a great, dry sense of humor.
I seem to have a somewhat different taste in books than most of you, but if you liked the Perfect Storm I think that you would also enjoy The Hungry Ocean, at least.
Front-Ranger:
I need help. As the Labor Day weekend starts in the U.S., I find myself with four books to read, and I don't know in which order I should read them, or if I should pass any of them up altogether. They are: The Book of Ruth, by Jane Hamilton, The Time Traveller's Wife, The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood, and Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende.
What's unusual for me in all of these books is that they are by and about women. I usually read books about men, and am almost finished with John Steinbeck's To A God Unknown. I selected these books to bring a little balance into my life, and also because Annie Proulx has convinced me to read more fiction by women. (She doesn't include many strong female characters in her books, though, at least not lately.)
Your thoughts welcome!!
Andrew:
I can't help with any of those titles since I haven't read them, but if your interest in works by and about women continues, see my recommendation on p.2 about Wives and Daughters by Elisabeth Gaskell. The Victorian period was an interesting transitional time. Although women still ostensibly had traditional roles, de facto there were big changes going on. Gaskell herself was the big breadwinner in her family and this very book, published serially, was allowing her to buy the house their family needed. If you have an idea about what 'Victorian' means in literature from other authors, like Dickens or Trollope or Thackeray or Eliot, well, they're all different from one another and she is at least as different from any of them.
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