Author Topic: The Library (Read 2300645 times)

JeanneP · « **Reply #11520 on:** July 27, 2013, 02:41:26 PM »

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!

*Suggestion Box for Future Discussions
*SeniorLearn's Archives

I was thinking that Rosemary mentioned going on a holiday. Maybe it was to see her daughter who was working someplace over the school holiday time. I could be wrong so don't repeat me. Sure she is fine and busy no matter where she is.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #11521 on:** July 27, 2013, 02:44:05 PM »

Judy on the Natchez Trace just north of Jackson is a wonderful Craft store - many of the artists are from the Cherokee Nation - the unusual necklaces are to die for.

JeanneP · « **Reply #11522 on:** July 27, 2013, 08:51:47 PM »

Just picked up "22 Britannia Road" Amanda Hodgkinson. Think this is going to be a hard to put down book. Hope so. I have just read a little from it. Had some boring ones lately. Maybe its me. Hot weather got me down. They found it for me in LP.

Steph · « **Reply #11523 on:** July 28, 2013, 09:39:41 AM »

Natchez? We did that once, it was great fun. Lots of places to stop and look . Then at the far northern end, there is Elvis birthplace.. Judy, if you get to North Carolina and want to see the mountains in the summer and fall, email me..or the winter for Florida. Glad to see you back.
Where the heck is Rosemary,, I think she said they wanted to move or possibly that they were. Anyone know??

PatH · « **Reply #11524 on:** July 28, 2013, 10:01:43 AM »

Rosemary hasn't posted for a while, but she was here yesterday (you can see by looking at someone's profile) so she's presumably OK, just doesn't have anything to say.

JeanneP · « **Reply #11525 on:** July 28, 2013, 05:48:40 PM »

I knew it would happen when I got my hands on the book "22 Britannia Rd ." I got it yesterday. Stayed up until 4am reading. Then slept awful. Just tried taking a nap. Got few more pages to go. I think it a good read. It is her first book and I don't see any new ones. That happens so often. Hope to see more.

Steph · « **Reply #11526 on:** July 29, 2013, 08:34:09 AM »

Never heard of the book.Who is the author and what is it about?

Frybabe · « **Reply #11527 on:** July 29, 2013, 09:16:47 AM »

Steph, included on the Amazon site is an interview with the author.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143121049

Steph · « **Reply #11528 on:** July 30, 2013, 08:52:26 AM »

Will try and check it out sometime later today.

JeanneP · « **Reply #11529 on:** July 30, 2013, 03:07:53 PM »

I dont usually buy books any more but I will watch and buy this one when I see it at a good price. Now growing up in England during the WW2 may be it reached me more. I met many Polish people as my town took in about 30 thousand of them in 1946.. My Church was a large Anglican and now it is a Polish Catholic. All our papers moved to another district in about 1960

ursamajor · « **Reply #11530 on:** July 30, 2013, 03:37:48 PM »

The Natchez Trace is a beautiful drive; I prefer it to the Blue Ridge Parkway because it isn't crowded. No mountains, though. But be careful; the speed limit is 50 mph and it is ENFORCED! Also lots of nice B & Bs along the Trace.

rosemarykaye · « **Reply #11531 on:** July 31, 2013, 07:39:08 AM »

Pat - I ALWAYS have something to say, albeit rubbish!

Thanks for missing me - I am still here, not moved house, but I have had virtually no internet for the past 2-3 weeks. The only time I've been able to use it is when I have been at the library, and then I tend to have to catch up on emails, or on admin for the local arts centre of which I am secretary. As we all know, it's only when you don't have internet that you miss it - I realised how much I use it, but I don't feel bad about that, as I actually think that it is a great means of communication. By the end of the internet 'drought' (although I don't actually know if it is the end) I was almost becoming depressed at my inability to contact anyone. Even when you think - 'ok, I'll go and write a blog post or a letter or something' it's not long before you think 'I'll just look that up' for some detail or other - then realise that you can't - INFURIATING!

Anyway, telecommunications are restored for the meantime, although I am going to be away 4th - 12th August, as we are hiring a narrowboat on the Oxford Canal and going on it to Cropredy, the Fairport Convention folk festival near Banbury. My elder daughter has been to it twice before with her friend's family. As the time approaches I am looking forward to it less and less - am worried about how the dog will behave on the boat and at the festival, whether I will find the noise intolerable, how sociable I'll have to be with people I don't know (husband is VERY sociable), how unbearably hot it's going to be, and how late I'll have to stay up for 3 nights! Why did I ever get into this? Anyway, I'll report back afterwards!

We've just had the Open Golf Championship at Muirfield, which is 5-10 mins up the road from my house, so for a week the whole area was inundated. However, the extra police and rail staff (our tiny village station was the 'transportation hub' for the whole thing) were extremely helpful and friendly, and although all our roads were closed, we had permits to use them, so felt a bit like the queen driving up and down and waving at the officials! I have not the slightest interest in golf, but I suppose it was an experience.

The local art gallery of which I am a trustee is trying to raise funds to make a bid for much larger premises - the campaign has only just started, and I'm quite excited to be involved in that. If it gets off the ground, they hope to develop it as a gallery, meeting place, community resource, cafe, craft workers' studios, etc. I am going to start volunteering to run the gallery reception one day a week from the end of the month, as the two paid workers need to devote all of their time to getting the local authority, local politicians, grant-makers, etc on side.

So that's what I've been up to! Meanwhile, we await Anna's exam results with bated breath, as on them rests whether or not she can take up her place at Cambridge in October. The last result comes on 15th August.

Hope everyone is having a good summer and not too hot.

If I disappear again it will no doubt be internet-related,

Rosemary

mabel1015j · « **Reply #11532 on:** July 31, 2013, 07:43:56 AM »

New list of free audio and video titles and podcasts from LearnOutLoud this morning and they will soon be adding more. Sorry, I don't know how to shorten the URL

http://www.learnoutloud.com/content/blog/archives/2011/07/free_learning_guide.html?utm_source=FROTD&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Free%2BResource%20of%20the%20Day

Steph · « **Reply #11533 on:** July 31, 2013, 08:41:56 AM »

Just caught the ending this am on Today of an author who has written of the historical Jesus and caused some sort of firestorm. Off to look it up on Amazon. Seemhe got interviewed on Fox and the interviewer wanted to argue??

mabel1015j · « **Reply #11534 on:** July 31, 2013, 08:48:00 AM »

He's a Muslim who has always been fascinated with Jesus his whole life, a religious professor, don't remember where. The Fox interviewer asked "as a Muslim, why was he writing about Jesus?" which is a good interviewer question to move the discussion along. However, it seems she really didn't understand WHY a Muslim would be INTERESTED in the historical Jesus, as tho he had no business writing outside of his religion!!!!! Did any of those people go to college??? Can she really believe a writer/biographer can only focus on his/her own category of person? Incredible!

Frybabe · « **Reply #11535 on:** July 31, 2013, 09:10:46 AM »

Interesting poll in the header. Not only have I not read five of the six listed, I have no desire to.

marjifay · « **Reply #11536 on:** July 31, 2013, 09:52:20 AM »

Re the poll in the header, I read Gone with the Wind when in the 7th Grade. Recently read The Great Gatsby and didn't care for it. Read Ulysses with a group at UCLA and loved it -- but doubt I would have read it on my own. Saw the film of To Kill A Mockingbird, but never read it. Not a fan of Jane Austen, but haven't read all that much of her books.

Marge

marjifay · « **Reply #11537 on:** July 31, 2013, 09:57:46 AM »

Jeanne -- How interesting. I had never known that so many Polish people went to England to live. 30,000, wow! How did the people in the town feel about them? I have put 22 Britannia Road on my TBR list.

Marge

PatH · « **Reply #11538 on:** July 31, 2013, 09:59:16 AM »

I've read and enjoyed Pride and Prejudice, Narnia, and Mockingbird. I've read Gatsby, twice, but it doesn't work for me. Ulysses is beyond my poor brain.

Marge, if you liked the movie, you would like the book of To Kill a Mockingbird. It's even better.

PatH · « **Reply #11539 on:** July 31, 2013, 10:00:19 AM »

Oh, I've also read a lot of Other.

marjifay · « **Reply #11540 on:** July 31, 2013, 10:00:32 AM »

Mabel and/or Steph: Do you know the title of the book or the name of the author who wrote the book on the historical Jesus? I saw just the end of the interview this morning but didn't get the details.

Marge

jane · « **Reply #11541 on:** July 31, 2013, 10:30:46 AM »

Marge...My husband heard the interview on Fox and was dumbfounded. He also heard the NPR interview.

It's: http://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/140006922X

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by
Reza Aslan

If you do a google with FOX news interview with Aslan , you'll see all the comments made about it.

ginny · « **Reply #11542 on:** July 31, 2013, 10:39:13 AM »

Love the comments here on the Poll, aren't they fun? We're just getting started with them and would LOVE to hear ideas for the next one, we can put them anywhere, this was just a test piece.

Don't you hate to not have read something everybody thinks is famous? Drives me nuts. For some reason I have an antipathy to reading the most popular book or most famous book of the moment. And by the time I get TO it, it's eons later and people are not talking about it.

Are there any "Other" books we should list there? We've got a super idea for the Christmas season for Books into Movies, a poll. We're open to any subject for a poll. The downside is you have to give choices, you can't add something like Bridge Over the River Kwai, so it would be in Other.

It appears that Polls need very clever provocative questions and good choices of answers, and our readers here are about the most intelligent and scintillating you'll find, so hopefully we can come up with some great thoughtful ones in the future.

Does anybody read Sinclair Lewis any more? Babbitt, Arrowsmith, etc.?

I'm currently reading This Town. It's new and it's by a NY Times writer who lives in DC. It's about behind the scenes politics and the movers and shakers of our US government. I am not putting it in Non Fiction yet for several reasons: I'm not that far into it, it reads like a really dense NY Times article so you don't speed read it like a novel, and it's full of startling things.

It starts with Tim Russerts honorary service, who came, and why. I now think I understand these giant funeral or memorial turn outs. I did not realize that Tim Russert was so powerful.

He also makes the statement that among many attributes Russert was perfect in carrying on the... I don't know the word...image? tradition? myth? .... of fathers...sons...sports...that powerful men like to hear. This book is something else. He puts in several quotes of the "Real John McCain," that we would not be likely to hear, or that we would not expect to be said, otherwise: it's almost like you are seeing another reality: the masks all stripped off and the real persons inside, and what's really going on beneath the surface. It isn't a "hatchet job," it appears to be what really is; he's used lots of quotes. Now we can see what's wrong with "Washington."

The Clintons have already appeared and I have a feeling they will be back as the book progresses. I always thought Bill Clinton was not as people perceive him. There was a documentary a couple of years ago which showed a completely different person, a much smarter, ruthless and ambitious person, and a much more serious/ negative person than his public persona shows. It will be interesting to see what he says about the Clintons.

The book is an eye opener. The author has not put an index in the back, saying, if you want to know how you came out, you need to read the book.

As they say, truth is often stranger than fiction. If it IS the truth. It sure explains a lot.

PatH · « **Reply #11543 on:** July 31, 2013, 10:52:57 AM »

I would sort of like to read Arrowsmith again, because it seemed to me when I read it a lifetime ago that at a couple of crucial points the protagonist wasn't thinking the way a scientist would really think, and I wonder what I would think now. But there are too many TBRs. I probably won't ever get to it.

ginny · « **Reply #11544 on:** July 31, 2013, 11:07:36 AM »

Oh really? Arrowsmith was one of the pivotal books of my youth. What an interesting comment. Arrowsmith was my Ayn Rand sort of experience.

I think perhaps now Lewis is now dated because he used so many expressions of the day. The last time i looked at Lewis I was struck by how dated the prose was, real '20s and '30s and Fitzgerald did not do that, for instance.

I always hated Babbitt. Just hated it. Also Main Street. Never could stand Main Street nor understand it or Our Town, (which Lewis did not write) for that matter. Never read Elmer Gantry. Did not see the movie. Don't recall Dodsworth but I think I did read it. Never read Cass Timberlaine.

Lewis won the Nobel Prize in 1930, the first US writer to do so. Yet he's somewhat forgotten today.

Years later I was shocked to discover there was a sequel where the Babbitts do Europe, which I was surprised to find I thought good. Almost like Virginia Woolf.

ginny · « **Reply #11545 on:** July 31, 2013, 11:14:55 AM »

What if we put The Ugly American on that list? Has anybody here read it and is it good?

ginny · « **Reply #11546 on:** July 31, 2013, 11:29:30 AM »

Rosemary, welcome back! We have definitely missed you! I was so glad to see you post and then I forgot which discussion I saw it in, and here you are! I thought you were moving, also. But you're doing stuff a lot more interesting.

Oh best of luck on the test for your daughter!! I saw a movie once on that test and somebody whose child was going to one of the Oxford colleges, I wish I could remember it, but it was nail biting time. Good luck to her!

We had a student just apply here in Latin mentioning her A Levels taken many years ago, and I really have no idea what those are. I do know what the CGSE is in Latin but the A Levels and the O Levels are something I've never been able to understand, despite my earnest questions.

maryz · « **Reply #11547 on:** July 31, 2013, 11:38:59 AM »

Rosemary, sorry about your internet withdrawal - never a fun thing. I envy your upcoming narrow boat trip. We loved seeing them when we were in England and wondered how it would be. I'll look forward to hearing your report about the experience.

rosemarykaye · « **Reply #11548 on:** July 31, 2013, 12:18:27 PM »

Ginny - A-levels are the last exams you take at school, usually aged 18. (You can leave school earlier and not take them.) The A-level courses are normally 2 years long. Most people would sit three A-levels - most universities would require at least 2 good passes, and for the most competitive subjects and colleges you would be asked for three A-levels with A grades.

My daughter needs an A grade in A-level Music, plus A grades in Advanced Higher Modern Studies and French, to fulfil her conditions for Cambridge. Advanced Highers are what Scottish schools teach in place of A-levels, but - just to complicate matters still further - some of the Advanced Higher courses are not very good and are not favoured by the better universities in England, - that's why Anna's taking A-level Music. The smartest private schools in Scotland would only teach A-levels - Advanced Highers are very much the preserve of the state (government funded) schools - hence children at these schools are at an immediate disadvantage if they want to apply to an English (rather than Scottish) university.

I don't know if that helps at all?! I took A-level Latin, along with English and French, in 6th year (ie at age 18). It was quite a hard course with a lot of language work as well as set books to study, but as we were lucky enough to have an excellent teacher and only 3 girls in the class (it was an all girls school) we all managed fine.

Rosemary

ginny · « **Reply #11549 on:** July 31, 2013, 01:44:27 PM »

Rosemary, thank you so much for that explanation, so it's kind of a.... it almost looks like a specialized or individualized college board test (called SAT here) which is given a lot of importance in some colleges (and some say virtuously they don't put much weight on them). They have a general Math/ Verbal/ Writing Sample test and specialized ones like Latin. We get number scores and I can see there you have grade levels instead, same thing, I guess. So you can get a "pass" grade on the A Levels, and then if you really excel you get an A?

Thank you for taking that time to explain, I think I will copy that and save it, it seems to come up all the time.

So then an O Level would be less than an A Level? If the really good colleges in England require an A on the A Level, then what is the O? Is the O for Outstanding?

(Do you remember anything at all from the A Level Latin test?) Where would a person who got an A on such a test expect to be placed in a course? Cicero? Vergil? Good on you for being such a scholar!!!

I appreciate your patience in answering these questions, too.

BarbStAubrey · « **Reply #11550 on:** July 31, 2013, 02:39:13 PM »

I sure want to get and read a copy of Our Town from what you are saying Ginny it includes - as much as I tried I still do not enjoy Sunday morning without Tim Russet - in comparison they are all nothing more than outlets for whatever spin is being offered.

Since I read the books polled in the heading I thought to look up some other great books and found that The Guardian has their list of 100 as well as a list of 100 non-fiction -

After going through the Guardian's list of novels I now have a list of 54 books I never read - however the opposite from the list of non-fiction - I only read a couple - I doubt I will read many from that list since few of the subjects grab me.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/12/features.fiction

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jun/14/100-greatest-non-fiction-books

PatH I would also enjoy re-reading Arrowsmith - I think I read it when I was in my twenties and yes, have to agree I did not enjoy Babbitt or another, John Updike's Rabbit Run nor did it enjoy Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and as a kid, I really did not like Little Women nor Robinson Crusoe - I gave Defoe a second read only a few years ago and still did not like it.

I downloaded free one of the books on the Guardian's list - Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome - only read the first chapter - fun - right off as these 4 guys decide they all have illnesses after reading in a medical journal known symptoms of all illnesses. One goes to the Doctor for a checkup telling him of all his ills - leaving with prescription in hand he goes to the chemist who says he cannot fill it - turns out prescription says, to go to bed by 11: take a 10 mile walk every morning and three times a day eat a beef steak, oh and I forgot what with it - so they decide to clear their systems with a week long boat trip ruling out a sea voyage sharing personal examples of how you need a month not a week to compensate for the first week's sea sickness - and then the one guy cannot join them as they settled on a week long river cruise thus, three men rather than four men. The comebacks are all that dry humor that puts a smile on your face.

marjifay · « **Reply #11551 on:** July 31, 2013, 04:49:08 PM »

Thanks for the info on the book, Jane.

Mabel wrote: "However, it seems she (the Fox interviewer) really didn't understand WHY a Muslim would be INTERESTED in the historical Jesus, as tho he had no business writing outside of his religion!!!!! Did any of those people go to college??? Can she really believe a writer/biographer can only focus on his/her own category of person? Incredible!"

That's only one of the reasons I don't watch the Fox channel!

Marge

JoanK · « **Reply #11552 on:** July 31, 2013, 07:04:33 PM »

I was surprised by the lists. I'd only read half of the fiction (most of those in the first half of the list, almost none in the second half).

I had read 35 of the non-fiction, many more than I expected, since I'm not much of a non-fiction reader now. Most of them were read when I was younger.

CallieOK · « **Reply #11553 on:** July 31, 2013, 07:26:01 PM »

Combining the lists, I remember reading only eight of the books. I may have read others but, apparently, they didn't make much of an impression.

What AM I doing in this discussion - or any of the others on this site?

ginny · « **Reply #11554 on:** July 31, 2013, 07:29:43 PM »

Oh wow, I was feeling very smug on the fiction till I got to the Non Fiction. I've read more of them than I would have believed, but the list of the Unread by Me Non Fiction is quite long.

Oh Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome!!! I can't remember what I just read not so long ago which kept making references to it. I didn't know what they were talking about. Now I see it's funny as well, I think I'm going to have to add it to my list especially if it's funny, if people are going to be constantly referencing it. I thought it was the old nursery rhyme and couldn't figure out what St. Jerome was doing mixed up with that. DUH

On the Guardian list: 77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor
A haunting, understated study of old age. This was a wonderful movie with Joan Plowright, did any of you see it?

I am very fond of Elizabeth Taylor's books (not the movie star) and am glad to see it here. I am thinking, however, there's a difference in the movie and the book and now I can't recall what it is, and which was better. Elizabeth Taylor is very like Penelope Fitzgerald in style. Remember Penelope Fitzgerald's Bookshop? I think we read it here. Masterful and, unlike me, of few words.

Her Offshore was different, I think, strange. I can't recall if we read her Blue Flower. Or Golden Child here. Might be fun to read one from each Guardian list, just to say one has. (A new one to us).

PatH · « **Reply #11555 on:** July 31, 2013, 07:51:22 PM »

Quote from: CallieinOK on July 31, 2013, 07:26:01 PM

What AM I doing in this discussion - or any of the others on this site?

You're adding your own comments, which are always interesting and to the point. You're talking with friends. You're having fun, I hope.

We all learn from each other, enjoy each other, talk with each other, and that's what we're about here.

CallieOK · « **Reply #11556 on:** July 31, 2013, 08:01:14 PM »

I am having fun - and learning, too. (My question was mostly tongue-in-cheek)

I think I've seen more of the movies than read the books.

PatH · « **Reply #11557 on:** July 31, 2013, 08:09:07 PM »

I hate to be picky, but one title appears on both the fiction and non-fiction lists: Primo Levi's The Periodic Table. OK, guys, which is it?

I own it, but haven't gotten very far in it. I can see the confusion: Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist, who ended up in Auschwitz, but survived, then continued to be a chemist in Italy. This book seems (as far as I got) to be bits about his life, tied to the elements of the periodic table and their properties.I'm guessing it's more properly autobiographic fiction.

pedln · « **Reply #11558 on:** July 31, 2013, 08:11:47 PM »

Rosemary, you will have a wonderful time. The dog will behave, the noise will abate or at least become tolerable and you will meet many delightful people. And you will come home with lots of ideas of neat, cool things to write about. Go and have a ball.

PatH · « **Reply #11559 on:** July 31, 2013, 08:43:33 PM »

Those lists are really quirky. I'm a John Buchan nut, but even so, I don't think The 39 Steps should be there.

Three Men in a Boat, however, is really funny, even though dated. Enjoy, Barb. For anyone who has a taste for that sort of thing, Connie Willis has written a book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, which deals with some time-traveling Oxford historians from the present, who are mostly trying to deal with missing artifacts from Coventry Cathedral, but get caught up in Jerome's book, solve a mystery, and lots of other amusing stuff. Leave your sense of reality behind.

Barb, another book on the list you might also enjoy is The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers. Written in 1903, it describes a holiday sailing trip by two Englishmen in the Baltic sea, in which they discover evidence of a German plot to invade England. It's got a lot of good sailing in it, a decent spy story, and a rather chaste romance (but she's an accomplished sailor; who could resist that).

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Author Topic: The Library (Read 2300645 times)