Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The library book by Susan Orlean. .fascinating.

Loved The Library Book!! She's my kind of non-fiction writer; I generally love that style of starting with an isolated question or event, and then following all its elements backwards and outwards. I learned a lot about women's role in the education workforce.

For anyone who struggles with non-fiction (I do) I'd add most of Mary Roach's books to my list of readable nonfiction recs. Grunt might have been my favorite.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Orbital and omg I love it so much.

Still making my way through Moby Dick. Slow going because for every paragraph I read straight through there are 4-5 that I need to restart — a problem of my own attention span, not the book. The book is brilliant. FYI I will likely still be posting Melville in May, but by god I am going to finish! (Moby Dick, the book, has become my white whale lol).

Hi book twin! I read Orbital last November and loved it…her descriptive language is so beautiful!!

I am also currently reading Moby Dick…where are you? And have you tried audio to supplement? I found it helpful for some of the more didactic chapters (Cetology), but did need to go back and read the chapters that were written more like a play.

Anonymous wrote:The library book by Susan Orlean. .fascinating.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP above…I’m having an unexpectedly nautically heavy year, and am reading/listening to Moby Dick. I had no idea how many modern phrases have their root in sailing jargon.

I’m also starting Mexican Gothic (book club).

And just finished A Room of One’s Own (Woolf), which remains relevant regarding the arts, and some views of women. I read this and the short story the Yellow Wallpaper after reading All Fours.

A very interesting companion to Moby Dick is "Dayswork" by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel!

Another good one is Wild and Distant Seas by Tara Karr Roberts. The idea is that Ishmael fathered a daughter in Nantucket, and the novel takes off telling the stories of all of the descendants that come from this initial pairing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP above…I’m having an unexpectedly nautically heavy year, and am reading/listening to Moby Dick. I had no idea how many modern phrases have their root in sailing jargon.

I’m also starting Mexican Gothic (book club).

And just finished A Room of One’s Own (Woolf), which remains relevant regarding the arts, and some views of women. I read this and the short story the Yellow Wallpaper after reading All Fours.

A very interesting companion to Moby Dick is "Dayswork" by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel!

Anonymous wrote:PP above…I’m having an unexpectedly nautically heavy year, and am reading/listening to Moby Dick. I had no idea how many modern phrases have their root in sailing jargon.

I’m also starting Mexican Gothic (book club).

And just finished A Room of One’s Own (Woolf), which remains relevant regarding the arts, and some views of women. I read this and the short story the Yellow Wallpaper after reading All Fours.

Anonymous wrote:Orbital and omg I love it so much.

Still making my way through Moby Dick. Slow going because for every paragraph I read straight through there are 4-5 that I need to restart — a problem of my own attention span, not the book. The book is brilliant. FYI I will likely still be posting Melville in May, but by god I am going to finish! (Moby Dick, the book, has become my white whale lol).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Long Island Compromise. So far all I can say is it’s long.

I feel like I am the only person in the world who didn't like Fleischman - I couldn't get myself to read another loooong book about miserable rich people

I'm reading The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl and really liking it. It feels so different from the books that are coming out now - and it's set in the 80s - so I thought it was old, but it just came out a couple of years ago. It's about a repressed young woman whose difficult mother leaves her a small inheritance with the order that she must use the money to go to Paris. And her finding herself while she's there - starting from when she blows all the money on a dress that leads her into a different life. I'm about halfway through it. It's slow and precious, and I like it a lot.

Read Divorce Towers before that - it's a rom com/mystery/whatever that I got from Amazon First Reads. It wasn't objectively good but I still enjoyed reading it. Fast, fun read.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Long Island Compromise. So far all I can say is it’s long.

I feel like I am the only person in the world who didn't like Fleischman - I couldn't get myself to read another loooong book about miserable rich people

I'm reading The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl and really liking it. It feels so different from the books that are coming out now - and it's set in the 80s - so I thought it was old, but it just came out a couple of years ago. It's about a repressed young woman whose difficult mother leaves her a small inheritance with the order that she must use the money to go to Paris. And her finding herself while she's there - starting from when she blows all the money on a dress that leads her into a different life. I'm about halfway through it. It's slow and precious, and I like it a lot.

Read Divorce Towers before that - it's a rom com/mystery/whatever that I got from Amazon First Reads. It wasn't objectively good but I still enjoyed reading it. Fast, fun read.

Anonymous wrote:Long Island Compromise. So far all I can say is it’s long.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"The Voyage Home" by Pat Barker. It's the last in her Trojan War trilogy and came out a few months ago.

I still think "The Silence of the Girls," the first book concerning Briseis and the start of the war, is the strongest in the trilogy.

Would you recommend the trojan war trilogy? Any new or unique takes from the same old story?

I could write an essay on this, haha! It depends on what you're read and enjoyed. There's a glut of Greek retellings from female perspectives right now, but I think Pat Barker is one of the stronger writers in this genre. She was listed for the Booker prize for "Silence of the Girls," which can stand alone as a book. The trilogy follow more minor female Iliad characters.

Madeline Miller's "Song of Achilles" and "Circe" are both extremely popular, and they're solid novels. "Circe" is kind of a fun perspective that is not entirely focused on the Trojan War. Natalie Haynes is also pretty prevalent in this genre and has written "A Thousand Ships" (pretty good) as well as individual novels about Medusa (pretty strong), Medea (haven't read), and Jocasta (eh). Jennifer Saint also writes individual novels about Greek women, like "Elektra," "Ariadne," and "Atalanta." I don't feel strongly about any of those novels; they were entertaining but perhaps not groundbreaking in their perspective anymore. I enjoyed "Clytemnestra" by Costanza Casati.

Colm Toibon wrote "House of Names" as a retelling of the Oresteia (so immediately post-Trojan War). "Ithaca" by Claire North is about what was going on while Odysseus was away, and it is also the start of a trilogy. I quite liked it, though it's fairly dense comparatively.

Ok so finally, I want to put in a plug for "Bright Air Black," by David Vann. It's an utterly bizarre, surreal novel about Medea and Jason and the Argonauts (so, well before the Trojan War). It does not take a contemporary perspective, and in fact makes clear how alien the Greeks' thinking and behavior would be to us.

Thank you for all this, sincerely. I did immediately think of Circe which I agree was fun and clever but not all that. In fact I heard it lauded so much I looked it up because I had forgotten I had already read (and forgotten) it. Will check all of these out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"The Voyage Home" by Pat Barker. It's the last in her Trojan War trilogy and came out a few months ago.

I still think "The Silence of the Girls," the first book concerning Briseis and the start of the war, is the strongest in the trilogy.

Would you recommend the trojan war trilogy? Any new or unique takes from the same old story?

I could write an essay on this, haha! It depends on what you're read and enjoyed. There's a glut of Greek retellings from female perspectives right now, but I think Pat Barker is one of the stronger writers in this genre. She was listed for the Booker prize for "Silence of the Girls," which can stand alone as a book. The trilogy follow more minor female Iliad characters.

Madeline Miller's "Song of Achilles" and "Circe" are both extremely popular, and they're solid novels. "Circe" is kind of a fun perspective that is not entirely focused on the Trojan War. Natalie Haynes is also pretty prevalent in this genre and has written "A Thousand Ships" (pretty good) as well as individual novels about Medusa (pretty strong), Medea (haven't read), and Jocasta (eh). Jennifer Saint also writes individual novels about Greek women, like "Elektra," "Ariadne," and "Atalanta." I don't feel strongly about any of those novels; they were entertaining but perhaps not groundbreaking in their perspective anymore. I enjoyed "Clytemnestra" by Costanza Casati.

Colm Toibon wrote "House of Names" as a retelling of the Oresteia (so immediately post-Trojan War). "Ithaca" by Claire North is about what was going on while Odysseus was away, and it is also the start of a trilogy. I quite liked it, though it's fairly dense comparatively.

Ok so finally, I want to put in a plug for "Bright Air Black," by David Vann. It's an utterly bizarre, surreal novel about Medea and Jason and the Argonauts (so, well before the Trojan War). It does not take a contemporary perspective, and in fact makes clear how alien the Greeks' thinking and behavior would be to us.

Anonymous wrote:Orbital and omg I love it so much.

Still making my way through Moby Dick. Slow going because for every paragraph I read straight through there are 4-5 that I need to restart — a problem of my own attention span, not the book. The book is brilliant. FYI I will likely still be posting Melville in May, but by god I am going to finish! (Moby Dick, the book, has become my white whale lol).