Girls Guide To Hunting And Fishing

D

DawnA

Cathlete
[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Dec-13-02 AT 00:21AM (Est)[/font][p]Hi everyone!
I just finished this book. Clare, it was fabulous!! I took it on vacation and sat on the beach and laughed and cried along with Jane the entire day. My husband thought I was drunk because I was cackling. I really didn't want it to end. What are you guys reading now??
Dawn
 
Hi Dawn,
I'm just started reading "Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Tracy Chevalier. Someone on here recommended this book (I don't remember who-sorry) and it is great so far-I don't want to put it down.

Joanne
 
Thanks for letting me know- this book is waiting for me to start it. I got it from the library and will start it as soon as I finish Lady of Hay.
 
Yes, yes, yes!!!!! Told you so!

I have just finished reading Ian MaCewan's (cannot spell this man's name, apologies) "Atonement" which I enjoyed a lot. So much so, that I have just gotten out his "Amsterdam" which won the Booker last year, and "Enduring Love."

I still have to say that the book I have most bought for friends, recommended, re-read and passed on remains to this day Keri Hulme's "The Bone People". Truly, truly fabulous. Get it from Santa and you'll be on the couch reading it til it's time to start work again after new year's.....

I just bought Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections", has anyone read it out there?

Clare
 
Dawn:

I did exactly the same. I rented it on books on tape, read by the author, lay on the floor in the living room and listened to the whole thing one Sunday, rolling from emotion to emotion. Loved it.

Clare
 
One of these years, when I finally go back to reading for pleasure, I am going to ask Clare for a reading list. Clare, I spent my entire youth reading while my mother kept telling me to go outside, it's such a nice day. But in the last 10 years, I haven't been doing much reading at all. I haven't finished a whole book in years. I think the last book I read all the way through was called Felicia's Journey by, I think, William Trevor. I don't know why I made it through that. When I was young, I once read every Agatha Christie written. I do have a penchant for mysteries. Now I read tax journals that put me to sleep. If you were to try to come up with suggestions for someone like me, who regards reading as a guilty pleasure that she never has time for, what would you include? I'm dying to know! Thanks girlfriend! :)
-Nancy
 
I just started this book yesterday. I am really enjoying it. I just finished Memoirs of a Geisha. Another GREAT read.

Thanks Ladies. I am enjoying your recommendations.
-joy
 
Hey Nancy!

(sorry I haven't emailed you for a while, I have spent two weeks doing nothing but read student papers, meet students in conference to discuss their papers, analyze the stories with them again, nurture their aching minds, etc, etc! Phew, the semester is nearly done and then I will be able to surface and check email)

Listen, I teach literature and how to read it for a living!!!! So I am surrounded by books, spend loads of time in Borders browsing, always on the lookout for a read to lose myself in...

Of course what I teach and what I research is different from what I read for pure pleasure, without a pencil in hand! Nothing of the material I research appears in the list below!

When Connie posted a request for reading material last month, those are some of the titles I would write to you here, and I have expanded the list. Under the title "books I have found totally absorbing, couldn't put down, made me think, moved me" would be:

1. Girl's Guide (as above) Melissa banks
2. The Bone People by Keri Hulme (TOTALLY FABB-O!)
3. Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
4. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
5. The Blind Assassin and Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
6. Anil's Ghost and The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
7. The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson (purely for laughs)
8. Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse by VIrginia Woolf
9. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (Penguin Classics)
10. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
11. The Three Marias (As Tres Marias) by Rachel de Queiroz
12. The Truth about the Savolta Case (La Verdad sobre el Caso Savolta) by Eduardo (aargh! someone's stolen my copy and skipped town!!!)
13. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
14. Al the short stories of Julio Cortazar (Argentinian, available widely in translation: this guy will make you think! A challenge)
15. All the stories of Jorge Luis Borges (Argentinian, available widely in translation: this guy will also make you think! If you like Poe, this is your man, a challenge)
16. Wise Children by Angela Carter (hilarious, full of a kind of "up-yours vulgarity" which I find appealing!)
16. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hing Kingston
17. Going to meet the Man by James Baldwin (especially title story, harrrowing)
18. Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
19. The House of Mirth Edith Wharton (a supreme novel, cry your heart out, rage at the injustice, man oh man! See the film with Gillian Anderson in lead role, ABSOLUTELY ROCKS!!!)
20. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
21. Swimming to Cambodia by Spalding Gray (but first rent the video, I have seen this film about 15 times over the years......)
22. Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
23. The Lovely Bones and Lucky by Alice Seabold
(I could go on......)

Some of these I have read over the last 11 years and they were the highlight of some grad course I took. They were the book I couldn't bear to finish, or refused to analyze because I loved it too much to pull it apart!

No-one should ever feel guilty about reading. It is an education. It is the way I understand my place in the world, how this world has come to be how and what it is, and if it were not for redeeming moments in great literature documenting the sublimity of human struggle, creating epiphanic moments of insight, moments that crystallize and truth appears suddenly illuminated, I would have written humanity off long ago.

There is enough here to keep anyone going for a while!!
So, maybe after the holiday Turkey dinner.......curl up on the couch and travel away from the mundanity of 21st century USA realities....

Enjoy!

Clare
 
Hi guys! I usually lurk in the Ask Cathe section, but when I stumbled upon this thread, I had to register and join in. I'm an avid reader (usually finish 1 book a week, but at one time was up to 3 a week) and am always on the lookout for new titles. As you can imagine, finding a whole list of recommended books was a very pleasant surprise. I'm not a lit teacher, but I have books I'd highly recommend (I might be a little off on the author's names):

Three Apples Fell from Heaven by Micheline Marcom
Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
The Toy Collector by James Gunn
A Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
Affinity by Sarah Waters

There are tons more, but I'm just going off the top of my head here. I also love Memoirs of a Geisha... I think I read that one about 3 times! What else would you guys recommend?

Raquel
 
hi Raquel:

interesting list: I couldn't gel with the Geek love book, dunno why. But I have both the Year of Wonders and the Sarah Waters books on my shelf, as yet unread, but waiting.....

I've read exellent reviews of the new Waters' book, "Fingersmith" is it? Have you read it?

Clare
 
Wow!! Thanks, Clare. What a great list. With a list like this you are forgiven for not emailing me lately. :)
I have to tell you: My first year of college I thought I would be a literature major and took some literature courses. In one of our courses, we read (and analyzed) The Awakening by Chopin and it really moved me. I bet if I read it now it would have a whole different meaning for me.

I have seen Swimming to Cambodia, but a long time ago and my memory is vague.

I read almost every Dickens novel when I was an adolescent, and I love Great Expectations, mostly for Mrs. Haversham, one of my favorite literary characters of all time.

As for Woman Warrior, my mother loves it. Should I consider her other recommendations, such as Angela's Ashes? I have complete faith in your opinion Clare, but not so much in hers. ;-)

You are starting to inspire me to read!! Thank you!! :)
This is a great thread.

Your pal,
Nancy
 
Hmmmm, Angela's Ashes...... I have stayed away from this one deliberately, but that doesn't mean your Mum is wrong. What works for one can be terrible for another.... My sister saw the movie version when it came out and felt depressed for about a week, and she does not know what an antidepressant is so I don't think this is necessarily a book you and I should be reading?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!

My husband listened to it on Books on Tape because he has a solid emotional constitution (I pamper his ego!!!), but he said it was still a bit of a wringer and a little hard going towards the end.

Personally I feel any one of us could probably write that novel already ourselves, this kind of narrative can become a little stereotypical after a while (working classes, British, struggle for emotional/cultural survival, tell it from the child's perspective so it seems even harsher .... anyone see that film "Liam" this year? Then you know what I am talking about..... )

I guess having read/seen a few of these narratives already (Nuala O'Faolain's "Are you somebody?", Roddy Doyle's "The woman who walked into mirrors," Terencce somebody's film "Distant voices, still lives" --not Irish but still working class harshness/survival story--) this is not a narrative road I currently choose to wander.....

I've just done a massive "Amazon.co.uk" order to be delivered to my family in UK and have spent a day researching recent publications! From this I have gleaned some more interesting titles that are now featuring on my personal list:

Carol Shields "Unless"
Sarah Waters "FIngersmith"
Yann Martel "Life of Pi"
Maggie O'Farrell "After You'd gone"
Lee Smith "The Last Girls"

I like to browse on amazon and read their reviews and the reviews posted by humble readers such as ourselves, this way I get introduced to titles I didn't even know were out there. That might be useful to you too, maybe it would give you the nudge to try some of these titles for yourself and REALLY NOT FEEL AT ALL GUILTY ABOUT READING!!!!!!!!!

I am also quite ruthless: considering how many books there are to read in the world and how little time, if a book has not grabbed my imagination by page 50 or so, I feel under no obligation to continue reading. Sorry, but there it is!

Remember: get rid of the guilt! You don't need it (devil in your ear!...... ;-)

Chat to you soon!

Clare
 
I just bought Fingersmith last weekend! I haven't started reading it yet, but I've read her two previous books and love them.

I agree that Geek Love isn't for everyone... I enjoy a lot of books that seem to be "love 'em or hate 'em" if you go by reader reviews (have you read Slammerkin?)
 
Good point, Clare! I wouldn't go near Angela's Ashes with a ten-foot pole now. Your warning is very much appreciated. Besides, it isn't like I'm looking for stuff to read..... I still have a lot of work to go on the reading for pleasure guilt......
-Nancy
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Our Newsletter

Get awesome content delivered straight to your inbox.

Top