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Finished reading The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. I love this novel. The narrator is telling in 1969 a story set in the south of England between 1867 and 1869. That was a time of Victorian puritanism but, as the novel shows, also a time of hypocrisy and double standards. Class differences of the main characters brought out that hypocrisy more.

At the beginning of the novel the main character has the reputation of a prostitute but we discover later that she was actually a virgin. A woman of the lower class, she is not accepted as normal even by her social peers. She thinks differently and acts differently. I like such kinds of women.

FM

Finished reading TO THE RIVER by Olivia Laing.

The author writes about hiking from the source of the River Ouse in Sussex England to its mouth, a distance of 46 miles. The journey lasted one week. She describes in extraordinary detail scenes along the way, and recalls the history associated with some places. She reminisces about the English writer Virginia Woolf who had deliberately drowned herself in the same river in 1941. I'm impressed with Ms Laing's deep knowledge of trees and other plants, birds and insects, so numerous along her path and she names them all.

 

FM

Finished reading WHAT POETS ARE LIKE: Up and Down with the Writing Life by Gary Soto.

Shame on me, I had never heard about Gary Soto until last week when my library recommended him to me. He is a Mexican-American or Chicano poet, teacher, essayist and filmmaker. His track record is impressive: 14 poetry collections, 21 young adult/children's books, 1 play, 7 memoirs and 2 films. He won many awards.

Fresno City College in California has honoured him with a Gary Soto Literary Museum.

This particular book is a collection of personal essays. They are witty, informative, and inspiring. I'll certainly check out Gary Soto's other books.

 

 

FM

Finished reading My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead.

Middlemarch is an 800+ page novel by the English writer George Eliot whose real name was Mary Ann Evans.

Rebecca Mead, a middle-aged British-born staff writer of the New Yorker magazine, first read Middlemarch in her teens and became so fascinated with the novel that she has re-read it time over time. "I think Middlemarch has disciplined my character," she writes. "I know it has become part of my own experience and my own endurance."

In My Life in Middlemarch Mead explores the life and world of George Eliot, including the English midlands of Warwickshire, the real-life setting of the fictional place, Middlemarch.

FM
Last edited by Former Member
Originally Posted by Anjali:

Alena06, yes did that in high school too..i uses to fight with my brother whenever he borrowed them to read them first .

 

Warrior, I have some of his books, ever so often will go back and read them.

The school library was my source.  I had a few keepsakes though, but left them behind  when I left Guyana.  One of my faves was 'To kill a mockingbird'..  Got it when I came first in my High School class. 

 

Happy Saturday all!  Enjoy the fresh air.

alena06

Finished reading My Father's House: In Search of a Lost Past by Matthew Carr. The author is the eldest son of Bill Carr, a lecturer at the University of Guyana from 1966 until his death in 1991.

Matthew Carr, along with his mother and three siblings, had followed Bill Carr first to Jamaica where he lectured for 6 years at the UWI Mona Campus, thence to Guyana. They stayed in Guyana only 10 months and were sent packing back to England.

Bill Carr established himself in Guyana as an outstanding lecturer in English Language and English Literature, and as a competent dramatic actor at the Theatre Guild. He was less known as a PPP activist and Mirror newspaper columnist who wrote under the name Little Boy Blue. He however had his demons, principally alcoholism, and there was hardly a rum shop in and out of Georgetown that he hadn't visited.

I knew all these things before reading this book. I was shocked to discover within its pages that Bill Carr was a compulsive wife beater and a violently abusive father.

Matthew Carr retraces his steps back to Guyana five years after his father's death, visiting his grave and meeting Bill's Guyanese wife and friends to search for answers regarding Bill's  actions and motivations.

FM

 

* Arrite! Gabriel Tarde's The Laws of Imitation is next on my list.

 

Read this:

 

A common fallacy is the idea that the majority sets the patterns and trends of social, economic and religious life. But history reveals quite the opposite: the majority copies or imitates the minority and this establishes the long run developments and socio economic evolutions.

 

* This looks like it will be an interesting read--it's true---the crowd always follow the leaders.

 

* Check this :

 

https://guyana.crowdstack.io/topic/re...ry-is-100-guaranteed

 

Rev

FM

 

* Michael Crichton's "Travels" is next on my list.

 

Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am.

When Michael Crichton -- a Harvard-trained physician, bestselling novelist, and successful movie director -- began to feel isolated in his own life, he decided to widen his horizons. He tracked wild animals in the jungles of Rwanda. He climbed Kilimanjaro and Mayan pyramids. He trekked across a landslide in Pakistan. He swam amid sharks in Tahiti.

 

Fueled by a powerful curiosity and the need to see, feel, and hear firsthand and close-up, Michael Crichton has experienced adventures as compelling as those he created in his books and films. These adventures -- both physical and spiritual -- are recorded here in Travels, Crichton's most astonishing and personal work

 

Rev

FM

 

* Curtly Ambrose's "Time To Talk" is next on my list.

 

* What a great West Indian fast bowler! He is one of my favorites. He has been described as "one of the leading--and most lethal--fast bowlers of all time.

 

* During his career Curtly was notorious  for his silence---he rarely spoke to the press---his mantra was "Curtly talks to no one."

 

* Oh well! Curtly is now talking in his autobiography nicely titled "TIME TO TALK".

 

* This should be a fun read.

 

Rev

FM

 

* Arrite! Next on my list is "One hundred years of Solitude" by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 

* Someone once said:

 

Solitude is the soul's holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead.

 

* I am curious to read what Gabriel Marquez has to say in his book that has been described as "one of the 20th century's most enduring works."

 

Rev

 

 

FM
Last edited by Former Member
Originally Posted by Rev:

 

* Arrite! Next on my list is "One hundred years of Solitude" by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 

* Someone once said:

 

Solitude is the soul's holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead.

 

* I am curious to read what Gabriel Marquez has to say in his book that has been described as "one of the 20th century's most enduring works."

 

Rev

 

 

Excellent choice, Rev. I read it 27 years ago. In fact, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is/was one of my favourite authors.

FM

Finished reading HIGH SEAS MISSIONARIES: Caribbean, Guyana & Amazonia 1991 by William Cooper. The author relates his experience with a group called Youth With A Mission as they ferried relief supplies and preached the Gospel in the Caribbean, Guyana and Brazil. I like people who put their lives on hold temporarily to serve a higher cause, whether in politics or religion or the environment or just plain charity. Honor before money.

FM
Originally Posted by Rev:

 

* I saw Bill Gates recommending Darrel Huff's "How To Lie With Statistics" at a TED conference, so I figure I'll take a peek.

 

* This book was first published in 1954. The Rev hopes to pick up a few useful tips on how to lie using stats.

 

Rev

I couldda swear you had mastered this book already.

FM

PETER HOPKIRK'S 'TRESPASSERS ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD'

 

 

For nineteenth-century adventures, Tibet was the prize destination, and Lhasa, its capital situated nearly three miles above sea level, was the grandest trophy of all.

 

For hundreds of years men set out to explore the secrets of Tibet, hidden high in the mountains of Asia and long known as “the roof of the world.” In this collection of accounts, Hopkirk examines the various expeditions that set out to explore Tibet’s mysteries and their successes and failures.

 

* I'm into reading books on adventures these days.

 

Rev

FM

Finished reading Falls of Death by prolific Guyana-born novelist Christopher Nicole.

In 1942 a plane carrying three male and two female Americans disappeared into the jungles of British Guiana. The plane was en route to make a sightseeing tour of the famous Kaieteur waterfall. Seventy years later, the great grand-daughter of one the crew decides to investigate what happened to the plane and her great grandpa. She is also determined to find out if the disappearance might be linked to a series of recent mysterious deaths in the vicinity of the falls, leading her into a deadly adventure of her own.

After reading this book, you will never think about Kaieteur Falls as you did previously.

 

FM

May I suggest the following ... All the books members are recommending to read be listed somewhere in the main page header named "Book Club" or something like that mostly because - the thread is 10 pages long and it's going to get longer; lots to read ...

 

A Good Read is "Tuesdays with Morrie" - (I've most of Mitch Albom novels - not all are as well written)

Genres: Sociology, Fiction, Biography, Biographical Novel

 

Tuesdays with Morrie is based on a memoir by an US writer Mitch Albom. The story recreated by Thomas Rickman into a TV movie of the same name directed by Mick Jackson, which aired on December 17, 1999 and starred Jack Lemmon and Hank Azaria. (I enjoyed watching the movie)
TR
 

 

FM
Originally Posted by Rev:

 

* I saw Bill Gates recommending Darrel Huff's "How To Lie With Statistics" at a TED conference, so I figure I'll take a peek.

 

* This book was first published in 1954. The Rev hopes to pick up a few useful tips on how to lie using stats.

 

Rev

Interesting book but not as interesting as Freakonomics. Actually, I should not say one is better than the other since they are of the same genre...illustrating the pitfalls in the interrogating of reality in these fields and the beauty in them when used to unearth truths to  nagging questions.

FM
Last edited by Former Member
Originally Posted by Rev:

 

* Arrite! Next on my list is "One hundred years of Solitude" by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 

* Someone once said:

 

Solitude is the soul's holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead.

 

* I am curious to read what Gabriel Marquez has to say in his book that has been described as "one of the 20th century's most enduring works."

 

Rev

 

 

Read this when I was in College a long time back.

alena06

 

This book is a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination and critique of meat consumption by humans, throughout their evolution and around the world. Setting the scene with a chapter on meat’s role in human evolution and its growing influence during the development of agricultural practices, the book goes on to examine modern production systems, their efficiencies, outputs, and impacts.

 

* Well, This book will be in my mail box later this week. I am a meat eater---love a good steak, a good hamburger, and good spare ribs. Oh! I had some tasty bunjal duck last Saturday. Anyway, I am curious to read what Vaclav Smil has to say in his highly recommended book.

 

Rev

 

 

FM

Finished reading THE GLASS PALACE, a historical novel by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. It is set in Burma, India and Malaya. The plot is bracketed with two important events in Burma's history: the 1885 removal and deportation of King Thebaw and his family by the British and the 1996 house arrest of Burmese politician Aung Sang Suu Kyi.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412DS2BHP2L.jpg

FM

Image result for the wooden horse book

Finished reading THE WOODEN HORSE by Eric Williams. I had attempted to read this novel 52 years ago when I was a teenager but abandoned it after a few pages. When 13 inmates recently escaped from the Lusignan prison by tunnelling, I remembered THE WOODEN HORSE and borrowed the e-book version from Toronto Public Library. I approached the story with a lifetime of experiences and a fair knowledge of prison systems gained from reading and two personal visits to prisons in Cuba and Guyana in 1989.

THE WOODEN HORSE is based on the real-life successful escape by three Second World War British prisoners-of-war who had been captured in Germany. Eric Williams, an airman whose bomber was shot down, was one of the trio. They built a wooden vaulting horse, placed it at a certain spot in the prison compound every day ostensibly for physical exercises, and dug a 150-foot tunnel outwards to freedom within a few months. That escape from prison was an ordeal but the greater ordeal was to get out of Germany and German-occupied European countries and return to Britain. 

While reading this gripping novel I wondered how many other prisoners it had inspired after publication in wartime and peace time.

FM

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