Thank YOU, Lightwizard! Hope that we will all share our best. I just need some more time to find out about the rules in able2know.
Not that many rules except common sense decorum -- learning to navigate the site may be the most work you'll find is time consuming but it's pleasurable work!
Sure it is pleasurable work...and I'm trying to learn fast )
Looks like you're a quick study!
Hey there, sozobe,
and thank you, I'll consider that as a compliment! :wink:
Glad to see you again,
Alexandra
Oh my, have we met? Was Alexandra your nom d'Abuzz, too?
(Yes, it IS a compliment!
)
Old Friends
Sorry, but I almost never reread books. There are just too many to get to. So many books and so little time.
In the last year I've discovered Anthony Trollope. He wrote fifty some novels. Right now I'm in the middle of "Dr. Thorne," a real pot boiler. He has better than average psychological insight, he does a great plot in the traditional sense, and, even if you have an inkling of how things will turn out, you keep wondering how he's going to make it all happen.
So far I think I've read about 6 of his novels recently, Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge." Hardy is a master.
"My Antonia" by Willa Cather is a wonderful tale of growing up on the frontier. Cather is a woman of rare insight.
Hazlitt--
Anthony Trollope--wonderful stories. Did you know he worked for the British Post Office and did his novel writing every morning for two hours before breakfast?
When I taught at a private school, the library owed the Complete Works of A. Trollope. They were shelved twelve feet from the ground and the library ladder had collapsed long ago.
I worked my way through, volume by volume, dragooning student after student to climb the stacks for me.
Noddy, you must have really liked Trollope.
About his writing habits, I've read that at the exact end of those two hours he stopped writing, even in the middle of a sentence, and continued the next day. Furthermore, if he finished one novel, he simply turned over the leaf and started the next one.
Talk about a methodical person!
Hazlitt--
I taught there for two years. The school was way, way out in the country and while I had a car (and the payment book for the car) I'm night blind and winter evening are ideal for reading.
Further, the Victorian editions were wonderful to read--beautiful bindings, good sized type and linen quality paper.
Have you ever read any books by Angela Thirkell? Her novels start in "Barsetshire" in the '30's and continue through the '50's.
I've found them wonderful reads & rereads--there is something soothing about the English countryside.
Lovely paper and bindings - yes!
Some of the joy of reading a good book is, for me, sensual - if the book has a lovely cover design and if it feels good in the hand, if the print is attractive, if the paper is pleasant to touch.....
When I was at school we had a poetry anthology, that was used in our final two years, that smelt of new bread! Such a joy to open.
I have an india paper edition of "The Lord of the Rings" - you know, that very thin, very white, cloth-based paper - and, although I very seldom look at that book now, when I do it is partly for the joy of the paper and the lovely print.
I re-read favorite books a lot. In addition to "Lord of the Rings". Golding's "Lord of the Flies" is another ringing favorite. "Cat's Cradle" has impressed me like nothing else Vonnegut ever wrote and I must have read it at least a half a dozen times now, cover-to-cover. (Incidentally, when I say "re-read." that's what I mean -- cover to cover. Just dipping back into a book for a particular chapter or passage isn't re-reading to me. I do that all the time.)
What else that I've read multiple times? "Joyce's "Ulysses." yes. Also "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Shakespeare's not worth mentioning. One dips into that from time to time incessantly. Poetry, in general, is something you don't really "re-read." If you liked it the first time, you probably re-read it all the time.
Noddy, did you read all 50+ Trollope novels in two years, or did you finish them after you left that country school? Were you ever able to interest any of the students in Trollope? Did you read to them--maybe Trollope?
I'm going to look into Angela Thirkell.
My situation is this: I'm retired these seven years, but keep pretty busy with ILR (Inst. for Learning in Retirement) classes. I don't get much time for novels just now. That is except for one thing. My wife, who is a retired school marm, has never been able to stop reading to the kids. Only the kids is now me. She reads me one to three chapters a day and we think it's not such a bad thing to be doing. Right now we are about 2/3 through "Dr. Thorne." Next comes "Empire Falls" by Richard Russo. Then we'll be looking for something new. Maybe it'll be Thirkell.
Hazlitt--
I finished the Complete Works in about ten months. In the Victorian editions, each book is published in at least three--if not five--volumes and the size of print and the respectable margins make reading easy.
Several students tried "The Eustace Diamonds" but even at a boarding school in the '60's Trollope was not a teen aged delight. The girls were preversely proud that I was reading every book on the top shelf, all around the room. Faculty reap glory in such strange ways.
Most books written "before the wars" were written to be read aloud. Long winter evenings existed in candle light, lamp light and gas light long before mass produced entertainment.
I did the same thing with the Trollope books, Noddy. Ditto Jane Austen, George Eliot, Thackery and many more. I read lot, and there are so many books out there that I seldom reread. I should, though, reading like that is like swallowing your food whole.
One of my most recently read books is the Brothers Karamazov. It was very nice until the end. Dostoevsky could at times really be into punishment. Such a guilty man. Love him. And now I'm reading the Canterbury Tales, suggested reading by Jespah.
I hate to say this, but Abuzz and, now, A2K do keep me from reading anywhere near as much as I would like. This internet stuff is adictive, dammit. I think I've got a cyber monkey on my back.
