Author Topic: The Library (Read 2049713 times)

Steph · « **Reply #16400 on:** December 28, 2015, 09:10:13 AM »

The Library

Our library cafe is open 24/7, the welcome mat is always out.
Do come in from daily chores and spend some time with us.

We look forward to hearing from you, about you and the books you are enjoying (or not).

Let the book talk begin here!

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Hmm, I guess I did not explain well. I am not quite sure that either Dali or Escher has much to interest small children.. Pompeii would be great and Calder with the sculpture.. But women standing directly in front of the wood cut with a 4-5 year old, proclaiming in a loud ringing voice all about the so called painting and the child antsy and wiggling and then later racing around the room, while she cooed on and on on his need to exercise was way past normal. My boys went from about 8 on, but started on Mummies, knights in armor, etc.
Dali.. I like some of him, but the later stuff is baffling to me.. But fun to look at. Was startled to discover that Escher started out with regular paintings. A truly glorious nude from his early stages so precise, that you could see the delicate ankle bones.

Frybabe · « **Reply #16401 on:** December 29, 2015, 05:00:10 PM »

Can't wait to see what is in store for our 20th Anniversary. A year long party?

PatH · « **Reply #16402 on:** December 29, 2015, 06:50:04 PM »

Barb, are you familiar with this Dali?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacrament_of_the_Last_Supper#/media/File:Dali_-_The_Sacrament_of_the_Last_Supper_-_lowres.jpg

It's at the National Gallery of Art here, so I've seen it a lot. It's huge, about 5 x 10 feet, and hangs on the landing of a staircase, poised over you as you go up. A small picture can't do justice to how incredibly luminous it is, light pouring over everything, through the glass of wine, which should be shielded by Christ's body, through the tops of the two Apostles with their backs to us.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #16403 on:** December 29, 2015, 08:10:48 PM »

Pat I'm not - the National Gallery is so huge and we only visited that one time - I do remember it was closing and we raced through all these rooms to get to the opposite door - the ones we were near had already closed and we were I think it was the new area where the permanent gigantic Calder hangs - I've only recently begun to appreciate the work of Dali - especially his use of color - for years now I could spend days, weeks, months in rooms full of Chagall and Kandinsky. Seeing some of the Kandinsky compositions it is easy to see why Calder takes my breath.

ginny · « **Reply #16404 on:** December 29, 2015, 08:22:51 PM »

What do you think would make a good celebration for the Books 20th Anniversary, Frybabe? What would you like to see?

We're open to all suggestions for an unforgettable year.

Steph · « **Reply #16405 on:** December 30, 2015, 08:43:11 AM »

A bookies gathering somewhere.. thats what would be fun.. I did love the one in Charleston.

rosemarykaye · « **Reply #16406 on:** December 30, 2015, 09:26:04 AM »

Oh a Books Gathering sounds like immense fun and maybe an excuse for me to cross the Atlantic. Not sure if I'd be able to, but it's a thought. Maybe it could include a visit to the homes of a few (ie deceased) authors that we all like (if such an author exists...)

Rosemary

rosemarykaye · « **Reply #16407 on:** December 30, 2015, 09:37:20 AM »

Jonathan - what an amazing cousin you have!

The Mr Bason in A Glass of Blessings is Wilf Bason, not Fred. Wilf likes 'beautiful things' so much that at one point he 'borrows' the (privately funded) priest's Faberge egg. He also cooks up amazing dishes for the clergy house residents - 'a dish of lasagna verde in compliment to Father Thames's Italian holiday' - and eventually opens a cafe in the West Country, where he offers a choice of 'Shrimp, Lobster, Crab, Devonshire, Carlton or Plain' teas.

I've been to Pompeii, but in some ways I think it might be preferable to see the exhibits in a museum; the place itself is overrun and it's hard to imagine what it was really like in its heyday.

Rosemary

bellamarie · « **Reply #16408 on:** December 30, 2015, 12:33:05 PM »

I would love a book gathering for a 20th celebration, and Rosemary what a wonderful idea of visiting a deceased author's home if possible.

PatH., That picture of the Last Supper looks amazing! When my hubby and I visited Washington D.C. years ago I was just astounded at the art painted on the ceiling and walls of the Library of Congress and other buildings.

https://www.google.com/search?q=library+of+congress+painted+ceilings+and+walls+pictures&rlz=1C1RNRA_enUS507US507&espv=2&biw=1242&bih=585&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAsNipj4TKAhUHlB4KHezJD1UQsAQIGw

I also remember the great art work when we visited the campus of Notre Dame in Indiana. When we walked into the Basilica of The Sacred Heart, I was just in awe!

https://ssl.panoramio.com/photo/36728740

We do have a pretty awesome Cathedral here in my own hometown of Toledo, Ohio as well. We have celebrated many special events here with our family and friends.

https://www.google.com/search?q=rosary+cathedral+in+toledo+ohio&rlz=1C1RNRA_enUS507US507&espv=2&biw=1242&bih=585&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjs3u61joTKAhVLGR4KHaBvCbUQsAQIOQ

Jonathan · « **Reply #16409 on:** December 30, 2015, 01:58:09 PM »

Magnificent! Awesome! From Dali's Last Supper at the NGA, To the Library of Congress, and the Basilica and the Cathedral...many thanks for the links.

What a pleasure it would be, meeting all of you at a book gathering this year, and I know of just the place. Edith Wharton's The Mount, in western Massachusetts. Herman Melville's place is just up the road, and Hawthorne's place just beyond that. There always seems to be a music festival going on, in the Berkshires. Not too far away is Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst. (What a life. I've just started reading Lives Like Loaded Guns, ED and her Family's Feuds.) The House of Mirth made for a great discussion early on. Not long after that my wife and I toured The Mount with plans to visit HM's Arrowhead later in the day. By the time we got there all visitations had been cancelled and we were left sitting in the car listening to the dreadful news. It was the morning of 9,11. It does bring back a lot of memories.

Happy New Year.

rosemarykaye · « **Reply #16410 on:** December 30, 2015, 02:41:44 PM »

Oh these places sound wonderful Jonathan. All I need now is somewhere lovely to stay (with not too lovely prices...)

Rosemary

Zulema · « **Reply #16411 on:** December 30, 2015, 11:05:05 PM »

Well, it's old Zulema here, looks like I remember everyone once a year. Western Mass. sounds wonderful. I have been to Amherst and Dickinson's house but never at Melville's, Hawthorne's or Whartons. It just gets harder to go places, but this sounds doable. I think about you all often, yet get distracted and don't post. I spend my time reading mostly.

Happy New Year to all and best wishes for a better world.

Steph · « **Reply #16412 on:** December 31, 2015, 08:18:34 AM »

Western Mass. sounds wonderful. My younger son went to school inSpringfield and the area is lovely and there is a music festival and or play festival in Berkshires in summer.. Closer to Boston is Louisa Mae Alcott family home.. I lived in Bedford, which is close to there .. Lovely area.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #16413 on:** December 31, 2015, 10:08:49 AM »

Looks like we have Julian Barnes being published in 2016 with The Noise of Time, his first novel since the 2011 Man Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending.

The story takes place in 1937 when a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House - the infamous headquarters of Stalin's secret police. Set at the height of Stalin's powers, during the Communist party purges, and drawing on the experiences of Soviet-era artists and composers, it's a story about the fault lines between art and authority.

I remember Barnes from reading Flaubert's Parrot. He also wrote, England, England and Arthur & George, as well as three books of short stories and non-fiction including, Nothing to be Frightened of Levels of Life.

Judy Laird · « **Reply #16414 on:** December 31, 2015, 05:53:03 PM »

Why don't we go back tg NewYork ?

Frybabe · « **Reply #16415 on:** January 01, 2016, 07:37:14 AM »

I was reading the ABE Literary Review and discovered that Henning Mankell passed away in 2015. I don't remember hearing about that. In fact I only remember that Gunther Grass and Terry Pratchett died.

http://www.abebooks.com/books/features/literary-review-2015.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-C151229-h00-litrevAM-341414TG-_-herogr&abersp=1

Looking at their list of book award winners, I see that two are on my TBR list: All the Light I Cannot See by Anthony Doerr won the Pulitzer Prize and The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu won the
Hugo Award for Best Novel.

What are must reads for you this year?

Yesterday, I brought home from the library The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George. It was mentione here, I think, not too long ago.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Steph · « **Reply #16416 on:** January 01, 2016, 08:52:37 AM »

Happy New Year.. May you all be healthy, happy and filled with joy and hope.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #16417 on:** January 01, 2016, 10:45:44 AM »

Wishing everyone an awesome New Year!!!

maryz · « **Reply #16418 on:** January 01, 2016, 11:08:15 AM »

Happy Reading in 2016!

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #16419 on:** January 01, 2016, 04:26:17 PM »

Shakespeare's 400th anniversary: 'man of Stratford' to be celebrated in 2016

http://gu.com/p/4faea/sbl

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #16420 on:** January 01, 2016, 04:41:08 PM »

Shakespearean, meet Shakespeare: Mark Rylance views first folio http://gu.com/p/464b6/sbl

The rare edition of Shakespeare’s plays recently found in a French public library will go on show at the Globe theatre in London for two months in 2016, in a season marking the 400th anniversary of the death of the playwright.

Steph · « **Reply #16421 on:** January 02, 2016, 08:38:12 AM »

hmm, started Towers of Trebizond. after the intro by Jan Morris( a long time favorite of mine).. I began to wonder. Thus far, it has far too much religious back and forthing for me. A few wonderful mental pictures and the characters when they leave off the snarky type comments on high, medium and low types of anglicans.. I will keep going, but as a quaker, I truly am not fond of this sort of nitpicking.

Frybabe · « **Reply #16422 on:** January 02, 2016, 11:03:50 AM »

Jan Morris the travel writer? If so which book is your favorite. I've only read one so far and hope to read her Pax Britainnia series as well as the three she wrote about Wales. She wrote two novels which got short listed for awards. Ursula La Quin wrote a forward to one. I may try them too, but I am mostly interested in the PB series and the Welsh books.

Dana · « **Reply #16423 on:** January 02, 2016, 11:36:34 AM »

I loved the three about the end of the empire, beautifully written and full of fascinating detail. She also wrote one about her sex change experience which was worth reading too.

Frybabe · « **Reply #16424 on:** January 02, 2016, 11:57:59 AM »

Dana, Conundrum is the book I read way back in the 80's. My Ex brought it to my attention, and thus began a rather traumatic and emotionally draining/depressing time for me.

rosemarykaye · « **Reply #16425 on:** January 02, 2016, 01:25:59 PM »

Sorry you're not enjoying Towers of Trebizond Steph. I do think all the 'nit picking' re types of Anglicanism is supposed to be very tongue in cheek.

Jonathan · « **Reply #16426 on:** January 02, 2016, 03:57:58 PM »

But that's the fun of it. The 'nit picking' and the 'tongue in cheek' become part of her soul searching. She is after all part of aunt Dot's missionary endeavours in Turkey and Armenia and thus concerned about how to pitch Christianity to the locals. Billy Graham's missioners are also there, but they, she feels, are only 'queering the pitch'.

Even Anglicanism has lost its way, in Laurie's opinion. '...and the more I talked the more I grew sure that what was keeping me from the Church was not my own sins but those of the Church.'

Things were fine as long as the Church Fathers, like St. Basil, Origen and Clement and ST. John Chrysostom in the 3rd century led the way. All down hill after that for the Church...['b]falling into things such as sentimentalism and exaggeration and puritanism and pietism and the Reformation and the Counter Reformation and revivalism and Lourdes and Lisieux and religuaries and pictures of the Sacred Heart in convent parlours and Salvationism and evangelical hymns and many more such barriers to religion.'[/b] You may well wonder if she doesn't end up biting her tongue.

This by the way was all pitched to a friend over wine and liqueurs. This book could be all things to all people.

PatH · « **Reply #16427 on:** January 02, 2016, 06:51:47 PM »

If you're attuned to it, the different gradations of Anglicanism can make for hilarious sfiction.

Steph · « **Reply #16428 on:** January 03, 2016, 09:19:16 AM »

I guess I am not the type for this sort of humor.. I will keep it in my, try it again file for a while.. I love some types of British humor, both the broad ( I am a total Monty Python fanatic) and the brittle.. Mitford girls are a wonderful example to me.. I love Lucia in all her silliness.. But this.. not so much.
I read a bunch of Jan Morris and of course the book on the change, when that certainly was not done very much.. Honest and caring. Her tourist stuff is fun.

rosemarykaye · « **Reply #16429 on:** January 03, 2016, 11:42:38 AM »

Don't worry Steph - plenty more books in the sea! I myself don't get Monty Python at all, though I do like Nancy Mitford, and I also enjoyed Jessica Mitford's Hons & Rebels.

My mother-in-law has never been able to get over my not liking Terry Pratchett's books - for her that has marked me down as a lifelong and irredeemable Philistine.

My own mother can't bear Barbara Pym, whom of course I love, nor can she put up with any 'cosy' mysteries - apart from Louise Penny's, which for me have gone off to the point that I didn't even finish the last one. Mother also doesn't like romance of any kind, whilst I enjoy a good, predictable love story once in while.

This is why, I think, SeniorLearn is such a great site - we can all discuss the things we do and don't like, and we're all wonderfully civil and open-minded about each other's choices. I used to think everyone was similarly polite till I started to read the comments under some other articles - even on The Guardian website the comments can be really unpleasant, and my daughters assure me that this is the norm for most online discussions (they hate them).

Rosemary

ginny · « **Reply #16430 on:** January 03, 2016, 12:58:12 PM »

What a nice thing to say, Rosemary! Thank you!

You're right about taste, too, everybody is different, and some people differ by the day. I do.

I think I have Monty Python and the Holy Grail memorized but my husband, when I finally dragged him in to the TV when it first came out on TV took one look at King Arthur and the coconuts and said, and I quote, "that is the most stupid thing I have ever seen, " and got up and LEFT! hahahaha

You're right about the Comments sections, too. Anonymity can do dangerous things to people. They will say things they would never say to your face.

But we're real, here.

Jonathan · « **Reply #16431 on:** January 03, 2016, 04:06:39 PM »

Thanks, Barb, for the reminder about the 400th Shakespeare anniversary. Resolved: to enjoy some Shakespeare in the coming year. Stratford (Ontario) with its ongoing Festival is just an hour up the road and I've heard a good Macbeth production is coming up. I wish they would do Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare cherrypicked the works of Ovid for this one. Here's an opportunity to get two birds with one stone. And I have a biography of Shakespeare I've been meaning to read for years. It's by Avram Teitelbaum and it's entirely in Yiddish. I picked it up years ago when I learned the language as a retirement project. It was hilarious. Shakespeare was popular in the Yiddish theater.

Woe is me. Alas. Those Resolutions. All year long I put books aside to be read next year. And just now I checked my resolutions shelf and I can't believe it. How did this come about. Three biographies in the pile on a certain theme: the 20th century, as seen through different eyes. Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, and Walter Lippman. I must take these down to Non Fiction. Perhaps someone wants to read along.

But first the Shakespeare.

PatH · « **Reply #16432 on:** January 03, 2016, 06:25:03 PM »

Rosemarykaye, I remember that a Barbara Pym discussion first brought you to this site. She's wonderfully subtle and understated, and I like her a lot. Pratchett is kind of the opposite, but I like him too. It helps to have a sci-fi/fantasy background.

Steph · « **Reply #16433 on:** January 04, 2016, 09:09:40 AM »

Aha,, I am a total Terry Pratchett fanatic.. I love him, so Rosemary, your Mum and I have a common interest. He is both broad and subtle and the combination is fascinating to me.. I loved all the Mitford girls and have read most of their stuff and then biographies of the family.. The English have a certain type of eccentricity that appeals to me..
I have read Susan Howatch, who started as a sort of romance writer, but then steered herself into at least one trio of books involving Anglicans. I have stars next to her,so I know I must have like them, although I adored Penmarric and the other she wrote using English Kings and translating them into ordinary people.

mabel1015j · « **Reply #16434 on:** January 08, 2016, 03:02:51 PM »

Don't mean to change the subject, but I'm preparing to present a series on Women's History at the library in March and found this interesting article about who's writing books and who the books are about. I don't even need to tell you, this is an old and everlasting story and why we have to have an emphasis on Women's History month, just to get heard and remembered.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2016/01/popular_history_why_are_so_many_history_books_about_men_by_men.html

Jean

mabel1015j · « **Reply #16435 on:** January 08, 2016, 03:16:59 PM »

I will provide a bibliography for each of the sessions I will be presenting, if you would like I can tell you each week what is on that bibliography. They are all non-fiction books, of course and most of them are female authors.

Maybe we should spend a year talking about and/or reading female non-fiction. Of course a lot of the fiction books we talk about here are by female authors, so we are doing our part there in supporting them.

Jean

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #16436 on:** January 08, 2016, 08:16:30 PM »

My gut tells me especially after reviewing a list of the top women writers today - that women write about feelings and life where as, history is facts and memory usually on a large stage. It is the difference between women philosophers and men and why they are on two separate tracks.

Yes Jean, mostly award winning novels written by women but there are a sprinkling of historians.

Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Goldfinch.
Chimamanda Adichie is from Nigeria, heralds a new generation of African authors with her bestselling Half of a Yellow Sun. Her latest novel, Americanah, was named one of the 10 best books of 2013 by the New York Times. Adichie is also a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant recipient.
Eleanor Catton was only 22 years old when she wrote her first novel, The Rehearsal. Her second and most recent novel, The Luminaries, was the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize —the youngest ever recipient.
Irish-born, Emma Donoghue wrote the international bestseller Room, (now a movie) narrated by a five-year-old imprisoned in a single room with his mother for his entire life. Donoghue’s newest novel, a murder mystery - Frog Music, set in San Francisco in 1876
Louise Erdrich wrote 13 novels. Most recent The Plague of Doves, a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer.
Mary Beard - 2015; SPQR: A history of Ancient Rome
Elizabeth Gilbert author of Eat, Pray, Love (made into a movie_ and in 2013 the Signature of All Things.
Helena Attlee author of The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit 2015
Sheila Heti – editor of The Believer magazine. Heti’s 2010 novel-from-life, How Should a Person Be.
A.M. Homes her 2013 Woman’s Prize for Fiction was the satirical novel, May We Be Forgiven.
Gillian Flynn, an Entertainment Weekly reporter and TV critic wrote the successful Gone Girl about a missing wife. Adapted for a movie by Ben Affleck
Philippa Gregory - born in Kenya, raised in Bristol England, The Tudor Court Series and The Cousins War Series, 2010, The Red Queen
Rachel Kushner - second novel, The Flamethrowers, finalist for the 2013 National Book award.
Hilary Mantel - Bring up the Bodies and Wolf Hall, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, The Giant, O'Brien
Claire Messud – The Woman Upstairs and The Emperor’s Children.
Jean Manco was a building historian in Britain until retirement - 2015 Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings
Lorrie Moore - New York Times bestseller Birds of America (1998), Bark (2014)
Alice Munro - 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature – 2013 film of Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.
Alice Roberts goes in search of the Celts and their treasures in a narrative history to accompanying a new BBC series. 2015 The Celts Search for Civilization
Karen Russell – short listed for Pulitzer for her Swmaplandia - collection of stories Vampires in the Lemon Grove – Novella, Sleep Dination
Taiye Selasi - Ghanian and Nigerian origin - short story The Sex Lives of African Girls – Novel Ghana Must Go Wall Street Journal 10 best books of 2013
Ruth Scurr writes the calmest and least abusive history of the Revolution, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution
Cheryl Strayed – Wild – Oprah’s first book club selection, made into a movie.
Amy Tan of The Joy Luck Club fame, her 2013 publication The Valley of Amazement.
Tessa Dunlop The Bletchley Girls: War, secrecy, love and loss: the women of Bletchley Park tell their story, 2015
Barbara W. Tuchman, Pulitzer Prize–winning classic The Guns of August, National Book Award A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour
Margaret Wrinkle, Wash, one of the top ten novels of the year by the Wall Street Journal.
Aphra Behn, (1668) best known for Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave, the history of a captured African prince who is forced into slavery in Surinam

marcie · « **Reply #16437 on:** January 08, 2016, 10:01:44 PM »

Quote from: mabel1015j on January 08, 2016, 03:16:59 PM

I will provide a bibliography for each of the sessions I will be presenting, if you would like I can tell you each week what is on that bibliography. They are all non-fiction books, of course and most of them are female authors.

Maybe we should spend a year talking about and/or reading female non-fiction. Of course a lot of the fiction books we talk about here are by female authors, so we are doing our part there in supporting them.

Jean

Jean, I would love to see your bibliography each week. That's a wonderful idea to have a focus on female non-fiction. During our 20th anniversary, I'm sure there would be interest to do that for at least one of our monthly choices.

Frybabe · « **Reply #16438 on:** January 09, 2016, 06:03:51 AM »

What a neat interactive chart in the article. I discovered that, in addition to breaking it out into subdivisions, if you mouse over the little dots, it comes up with the name of a book and the author.

Frybabe · « **Reply #16439 on:** January 09, 2016, 06:45:12 AM »

Barb, add Margaret Atwood and Urusla Le Guin to your list. Both, I believe, prefer to call many of their writings "speculative fiction" rather than science fiction. Among the many awards that both have received, Atwood won the Man Booker for The Blind Assassin in 2000, while the same year, Le Guin was named a "Living Legend" by the US Library of Congress. I am not sure if any of Atwood's works were discussed here, but we did do Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness.

I will also never forget Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population which won the Hugo Award in 1997 for Best Novel. Here again, the book is more social anthropology/social science fiction than hard science fiction. It is about an older woman who stays behind when the rest of the colony is removed from the planet they had settled. Alone, she finds a freedom she never felt before and slowly develops a relationship with the native beings that were discovered after settlement. They are the reason for the evacuation because of a colonial law against allowing advanced technology to taint less advanced beings. She also won a Nebula Award for The Speed of Dark about an autistic computer programmer.

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Author Topic: The Library (Read 2049713 times)