labwriter reads in 2017, Chapt. 1

Here it is 2017, and I'm back here at the 75--again!--with good intentions--again!--of recording and maybe even saying something about the books I read this year. I love reading the threads in this group, but I'm mostly a lurker--for the past 8 or 9 or 10 years or so, or however long it's been. I'm so right-brained that I'm not sure I even have a left brain, so there won't be any stats about my reading here. My intention is mainly to have a record at the end of the year of the books I read (or re-read) or listened to in 2017.

Which reminds me . . . I'm fascinated by the question, "Is listening to audio books really the same as reading?" What do people here think? I've been doing an increasing amount of listening to books as I garden or work in the kitchen or do general work around the house. What I've mainly found is that I've become a better listener. Since I've always been a visual learner, I think the phenomenon of teaching myself to listen better has to be a good thing. But that doesn't really answer my original question.

Sometimes I do the shorthand thing of rating a book on a 1 to 5-star rating; sometimes I don't. I like to keep track of the 5-star books, especially, but I also find that sometimes those ratings just get in the way. I probably don't read as much as I used to, but I definitely plan to read more than I did last year. That's the plan, anyway.

So here's a toast to an excellent 2017 to all of us here at the 75!

Books Read in 2017

January

1. The Trespasser, by Tana French. Audiobook, narrator Hilda Fay. 4.5 stars.
2. Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. 5 stars.
3. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson. Audiobook, narrator Simon Vance. 4.5 stars. (a re-read)

February

4. The Biographer's Tale by A.S. Byatt.
5. The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson. Audiobook, narrator Simon Vance (a re-read).
6. Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, by Megan Marshall.

March

7. Letters of E.B. White, collected and edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth.
8. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson. Audiobook, narrator Simon Vance (a re-read).
9. Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire, by Kay Redfield Jamison.
10. All Creatures Great and Small, by James Herriot.

One of the books I've recently started is a volume of correspondence--Words in Air, The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, ed. by Thomas Trevisano. I'm a big fan of biography, but it seems that so many biogs are so heavily dependent on letter collections. So why not read the letters instead? I'll have more to say about this book later.

And speaking of biographies, I'm also reading A.S. Byatt's The Biographer's Tale. Here's the first sentence of the blurb on the back: "Phineas G. Nanson, a disenchanted graduate student, decides to escape the world of postmodern literary theory and immerse himself in the messiness of 'real life' by writing a biography of a great biographer." Anyone who doesn't see the hilarity in that sentence probably won't like the book.

Welcome back! I think that listening to audiobooks and reading are two different experiences, but of equal value. Certainly, I experience them differently. Mrsdrneutron mostly listens, I mostly read, so I think there's a place for both.

For the purposes of the challenge, though, either works for me! :)

Good to see you back, Becky. I have been doing more listening to books than I used to as a way of keeping my numbers up and keeping my mind involved as I do mundane tasks. As Jim said, they are different but both methods have merit. A good narrator is so important as you well know. I am going to address this question in more detail on my new thread. As we say in Missouri: "Come See Me".

Happy New Year!

Hello!! I'm a relatively recent "convert" to audiobooks. And I don't think it's the same as reading -- I consume the contents in a very different way and find myself focusing on different elements when I listen and when I read with my eyes. It's not actually "reading" -- it's listening. You end up consuming the same information and absorbing the story, but you aren't using your eyes and imagination in quite the same way. I think you process language differently through your eyes than you do with your ears -- as the storytellers of old could have told us when printing disrupted the old culture of oral transmission of tales. It's not that one is better than the other; they simply are very different, and my experience with the book is quite different. (I know, because some of my audiobook experiences have been "re-reads" of books I know well, having read them once or several times in print versions.) But I resist a hierarchy of better or worse, just as I resist describing audiobooks as "reading".

I am part of the group.
I love being part of the group.
I love the friendships bestowed upon my by dint of my membership of this wonderful fellowship.
I love that race and creed and gender and age and sexuality and nationality make absolutely no difference to our being a valued member of the group.

Thank you for also being part of the group.

I agree with Jim. "Different", "but of equal value". When I first started listening to audiobooks just a few years ago, I had to work hard to keep my mind tuned to the narrator; I didn't feel as if I got enough of the "book" experience back then. But the more I persevered, the more I've enjoyed my audiobooks, to the point that last year, 84 of my 190 books were audio. If I wasn't able to "read" while doing housework and driving, I would have missed out on a lot of good books.

Great discussion about audiobooks. Like you, I'm a visual learner, so I've had to learn how to absorb information and stories through audio. But I've come to enjoy this. And like Cindy, I would miss out on some books if I didn't take advantage of communting and exercising time to listen to them. I also had a new insight about audiobooks just today. I saw that Rachel (TheHibernator) is reading and listening to Paradise Lost at the same time. This seems like a good strategy for a lyrical book like that one.

Happy reading in 2017, Becky!

Hi, Becky. Just stopping by to drop a star.

I'm a fellow visual learner! Have you ever read The Visual-Spatial Learner by Linda Kreger Silverman? If you have not, I would highly recommend it.

I love to listen to audiobooks because I always want to be reading, but like everyone else, I've had to learn to concentrate on listening. I work from home now, but when I worked in downtown Columbus, I had between a 30-60 minute commute one way, depending upon the traffic. Listening to a book in the morning kept me from thinking (read worrying) about work on the way in, and allowed me to decompress on the way home each day. I really miss that commute time in the car - grocery shopping while listening doesn't work for me as I can't concentrate and now I'm rarely in the car for more than 20 minutes at a time, so it takes forever to finish a book!

Thank you all so much for visiting--and for the great discussion.

I agree that listening isn't the same as reading, and that it's also a case of "different" rather than one being better than the other. My own listening skills have improved so much since I started the Audiobooks. When he was little, I always read to my son, even after he learned to read. We just switched to a different level of read-aloud. And "rretzler"--you mention Linda Silverman. She has long been a fierce advocate for gifted kids.

Anywho, I really came here to post a pic and say something about the books I'm reading. This is from a trip we took yesterday, driving over Monarch Pass in Colorado. Fortunately, we were following a snow plow.



I just finished listening to The Trespasser, by Tana French. In the main, I enjoy her books. Hilda Fay is the narrator. She also narrated The Chemist, by Stephenie Meyer, a book I finished in December. Fay is an Irish actress born in Dublin, so she brings an added dimension (for me) to French's writing.

If you're familiar with French, then you know that she writes police procedurals. I've enjoyed others by her--mainly The Likeness and In the Woods. It's unusual to say that an author of crime fiction transcends genre writing, crossing over into literary fiction. French does just that in this book--the writing is that good. I loved this book and was sorry to see it end. I'd rate it somewhere over 4 stars and somewhere under 5.

That is a beautiful photo, Becky. I miss the mountains. I've enjoyed all of Tana French's books and still have The Trespasser to look forward to. Sounds like a good'n to start off the new year.

>12 labwriter: Ah, someone who knows about gifted kids - seemingly a rare thing indeed. Yes, I started reading Linda Silverman for that aspect and determined that my gifted household was also very visual spatial, as well. (Now I have very large selection of both literature on the gifted, as well as visual-spatial) I have a 15 yo son and an almost 12 yo son and we still try to read together. This year, as the 15 yo is in HS, it has been difficult to find time but we have enjoyed it for many years and I still hope to enjoy it until he goes off to college. How old is your son, Becky?

>12 labwriter: I zipped through the entire Tana French series in November and December, and was sorry to reach the end, though also relieved because other books were waiting.

Setting a star and wishing you a happy new year!

Listening to audiobooks is definitely different from reading. The reader's voice becomes a part of the story, especially with a first person narrator. I can tune in and out of audiobooks and can usually pick up the thread of what I missed (which is interesting in itself - what does that say about the way stories are told). I rarely "read" an audiobook as intently as a paper book. Sometimes, if I really like an audiobook, I'll read it in paper. Sometimes, if I'm flagging in a paper book, I'll switch to audio. I know right away if an audio is not going to work for me - the reader's voice, my ability to focus - and I'll abandon it right away. Paper books I'll stick with much longer.

I can't really speak to what's happening in the brain when listening versus reading, but the two feel very different. I don't want to listen to an audiobook before I go to sleep. I want the experience of connecting with a page, I want quiet, I want the ability to see where I am in the chapter and go back and forth to answer questions I might have. I was going to say that reading is more personal and intimate, but that's not quite it. Reading is maybe more cocooned and has more of an ability to completely wrap me in a different world. With audios, my body is always doing something in my world, and it's my ears and brain that go elsewhere.

>12 labwriter: and >15 qebo: : Becky and qebo - I'm another fan of the Tana French series. I'm really taken with the way she brings her detective du jour for each new mystery. After the comments here, I do wish my library had them on audio!

I just finished In the Woods and feel torn about what to think of it. Still processing. But I guess that's the sign of a good book.

Fascinating stuff about audio books. I very rarely listen to them, usually to help me fall asleep. Something like falling asleep to a parent reading to you!

I love the sound of the Bishop Lowell letter collection. I have a selection of Bishop's letters One Art: the selected letters which I like to dip in and out of, as it's pretty weighty.

Hi everyone and thanks for visiting! Whew, the numbers in this 75 group are growing faster than I can keep up with them!

>16 swsmith: A good or lousy narrator can make or break an audio book for me. I guess that's one of the biggest issues with audio books. When I'm reading, the narrator comes out of my own head. When I'm listening, the narrator becomes a big factor. A bad narrator can destroy a good book, and a good narrator can save a so-so book. I've been listening to audio books long enough now that I have several favorite narrators, and I tend to gravitate to books narrated by my favorites. I think the worst part of a bad narrator is when the voice doesn't fit the character. Ugh. The good thing about Audible is that they offer a sample before purchase, and if you buy and really hate something about that audio version, then they will give you a refund.

>19 charl08: I read the Lowell/Bishop letters every night. I'm hugely enjoying them. I imagine I'll get Bishop's letters when I'm finished. Maybe read a bio of her. She had a very fascinating, different (as well as difficult, by the sound of it) life. She's a good one to point to when encountering a Millennial who thinks she has invented "feminism" and strong women--my DH has cousins with daughters like that. Oh my. Tedious.

I like this New Yorker article about her: Elizabeth and Alice

>14 rretzler: My son is 36 and just got married this past year (first marriage--very characteristic of him to be cautious and "late"). We lived in Denver when he was young. Linda Silverman was helpful but also somewhat off-putting. She seemed to want all G&T kids to attend a G&T school. We decided to put our son in a Montessori school. Some days it worked and some days it didn't. When I called her one time after a particularly trying incident, wanting support and/or advice, her reply was, "What did you expect?" He survived and we survived, but it was always a challenge. When we moved to St. Louis (he was 8), I ran into a particularly hostile strain of the PC attitude that it was somehow "elitist" to recognize that G&T kids often need a different path, an attitude I found to be awful and unhelpful. It's hard to negotiate all of the issues when you're in the middle of things. Looking back, there are things I would definitely have done differently, but I also have to remind myself that we did the best we could with the information we had at the time. Frankly, when my son and his wife have kids, if they do, I hope they consider homeschooling.

One of my favorite people from the New Yorker is Katharine White, long-time fiction editor at the magazine and wife of E.B. White--another woman that probably 99.999% of millennial women know nothing about. The article "Elizabeth and Alice" mentions that K. White was Elizabeth Bishop's editor at the magazine. Would someone PLEASE publish an edition of Katharine Sergeant White's letters? Here they are at the Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections.

Well, oh joy. There's a biog coming out of Elizabeth Bishop--Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, by Meagan Marshall. It will be out Feb. 7. That's a happy coincidence.

>14 rretzler: and >20 labwriter: : I suspect my son would have been termed Gifted and Talented had our little public school been capable of sorting through anything like that. As a very young one, after he finished whatever task was at hand in his classroom, he was easily bored while made to wait on the rest. I wish I had known about the visual spatial concept then. We ended up homeschooling him for about five years, until he was mature enough to handle classrooms. When he took his PSAT, he scored in the top one half of one percent of students in the States, and won a full-ride National Merit Scholarship. I think it's a wonderful program, especially for those whose families are not financially gifted (as ours is not). Anyone who has a young high school student should read about it. A few years ago, I wrote more about it here. There are many colleges that compete for these scholars, offering full-ride or otherwise very generous scholarships for the privilege.

Today, my son is 30 years old, an Emergency Medicine doctor living in Germany, challenging himself in every way, with career, language, travel (including taking me along on part of it!), and now with a wife and child.

>22 countrylife: Not all G&T kids do well in school. School was a struggle for my son his entire life. He tried three times in three different universities to finish his undergraduate degree. But he has a huge heart and a loving wife. I have been humbled by his struggles, watching him work to find his way in life.

Becky, I'm really happy that you're back this year and really sorry that I'm not here so much to enjoy the conversations. Love reading about listening!!! And I'm off, so I'll just say that my life doesn't afford real listening time. Hmmm. It's not affording much real reading time either. I'm one of those curious creatures whose learning style is split almost equally between audio and visual.

>25 labwriter: Thanks for visiting, Peggy. I don't get around much to the threads, either. Life gets in the way, is all I can say.

My reading these days is a bit scattered, as usual. I'm still reading the correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, Words in Air. They were both poets, of course, and they both had their "issues" with mental health and/or addiction--it sounds like mostly alcohol in EB's case. Robert Lowell must have been severely bipolar. He had severe manic episodes which required weeks (months?) of hospitalization. Creative people really do pay for their creativity. So is it better for people like this now with the kinds of drugs that are available? I remember hearing or reading somewhere, "There are no poets on Prozac." I read a book a few years back that covers the issue of creativity and mental illness in a fascinating way--Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, by Kay Redfield Jamison.

I recently had a very good friend who was hospitalized for the first time for a manic episode--and she's in her mid-60's. It sounds as though the entire experience was punitive, from her family's point of view, and also fairly barbaric. In the year 2017, it seems like we ought to be able to do better than we do with these issues.

Anywho, the conversations per letters between EB and RL are fascinating. They discuss each other's poetry, a lot, and they also gossip quite a bit about the poets who are their contemporaries. They also seem to avoid seeing one another, even as they write constantly about possible plans for getting together. RL lived in Boston and Maine; EB lived for much of the time in Brazil. Right now I'm into the late 1950s in their relationship. They must have written more and more to each other as the years went by, because I'm only about a third of the way through the book. RL was six years EB's junior. He died in 1977 at age 60, EB in 1979 at age 68.

I'm participating in the group read, The Bible as Literature. Because of that, I've decided to take a crack (again) at God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, by Adam Nicolson. My marker is on page 16 from my first pass through the book. I don't remember why I stopped the first time--probably I just got interested in something else. Happens to me all the time.

I really loved Colm Toibin's little book On Elizabeth Bishop. Part biography, part lit crit.

I enjoyed the Nicholson book too. Hope you have more success with it the second time around.

>27 charl08: Hi Charlotte. I hope to get around to God's Secretaries. It's one of my favorite categories--books about books. It's not very long, but I'm also making a quilt, so my sewing time eats into my reading time. Which is one reason I like Audio books so much.

My current Audio book is a re-run: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson. I'm a big Larsson fan, so I've read the series. One of my favorite characters of all time is Lisbeth Salander. A natural redhead who dies her hair black. Who does that? The narrator for the series is Simon Vance--perfect, IMO. He also narrated The Girl in the Spider's Web, the "fourth" book of Larsson's series that was written by David Lagercrantz. That one is OK, but if fans of Larsson are expecting a continuation of his series, the way he would have written the next book, then I think they're doomed to disappointment.

Anywho, I'm enjoying the audible re-run. If my kitchen is clean, then I know I'm liking my audio book--ha.

Another book on my desk that I would like to read, along with God's Secretaries, the book about the making of the King James Bible, is another one that was inspired by the group read of the Bible. We're still in Genesis, although just about ready to move on. I'm currently reading about Jacob his son Joseph and Joseph's brothers, and someone referenced a book by Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers. There is a 2009 translation by John Woods that looks like it would be very worthwhile--and readable. The book is a true doorstop at 1500+ pages, but I think I'm going to give it a whirl.

>20 labwriter: >22 countrylife: >23 labwriter: I have both a 15 yo son and an 11 yo son who are gifted and throughout this process realized that I was also gifted. It is definitely true that the gifted are not always successful - I think a lot of this has to do with the lack of early challenges. When I was in school, no one knew much about gifted kids - I was young for my age, starting kindergarten at age 4, but was totally bored with school - there was never anything to challenge me, and so I never really learned to persevere. If I can do something the first few times, I am likely to give up. I won't go into all of my trial and tribulations, but I now know how important it is to challenge gifted kids at a very young age - by the time that they are in elementary school, it may even be too late. Both of my sons have been seen by Sylvia Rimm and Edward Amend, and both told us that we should NOT homeschool. We did not, and although sometimes I question that, I think we did the right thing by keeping our kids in the public schools.

Unfortunately, even though our school system is good, it has been very frustrating to make sure our boys are getting the right challenges. My older son is what one would typically think of as a gifted child - not only is he gifted; he can be a high achiever (when he wants to be). I'm sure you are aware (but most people are not) that there is a big difference in being a high achiever and being gifted - and that it is likely the majority of the kids who are getting good grades who are actually high achievers and not actually gifted. Older son is in 9th grade and by the end of last year had already finished his HS math credits needed for graduation. For next year, he will take the last math class that he can take in HS, and then we will have to explore him going to OSU for math for part of the day - there is the likelihood that he will spend his 11th and 12th grade years of HS taking college classes for both HS and college credit. Fortunately, he has at least one friend who will also likely be doing this.

My younger son tests just as intelligent as my older son; however, he has some learning disability which we are still trying to figure out. We think it may be dyslexia and we have learned a lot about dyslexia and how it can manifest itself in gifted children. The term is "stealth dyslexia" because typically these children can read, and well, just not up to the level of their potential. Comprehension is an issue for him, which becomes more of a problem in all subjects as he gets older. Interestingly, on a reading test where he has to read and then write the answers to questions, his comprehension is one grade level below, but when he has to read and answer multiple choice questions about what he has read, he tests 5 grade levels higher that his current grade.

I would have loved to have both of my sons in a gifted school, unfortunately, there are none near here. Even with all of the frustrations that we have had with getting the right challenges with our school system, I'm glad that there are there and not homeschooled. I'm glad that they are taking part in the social aspects of public school. My older son is especially lucky because he has 2 friends who are also gifted and that has been a GREAT thing. I wish I could find similar friends for my younger son.

It is good to hear that both of you have gifted sons who have turned out to be successful. It is very difficult to have a gifted child!

>29 rretzler: It is very difficult to have a gifted child! Amen! It sounds like you've had some real challenges and you're meeting them well. And I bet you've gotten about zero "sympathy" for your plight from other parents, teachers, etc. The attitude often is, "Oh, everyone should have such a problem." Well, try walking around in a GT parent's shoes for a week.

I like what you say about the difference between high achiever and gifted. I think a lot of people who don't have GT kids think the two are somehow connected or even exactly the same. Nothing could be further from the truth, in my experience. The vast majority of teachers would definitely rather deal with a high-achieving kid than a kid whose IQ is off the charts but who isn't living up to his/her potential--whatever that might be.

I don't quite agree with you about the correlation between "success" and early challenges. My son was an only child, and I worked part-time nights (R.N.) so that I could be with him most of the time. His first sentence--literally--was "I want to take my lawn mower to the grocery store." He was probably stimulated within an inch of his life with different classes and programs before he started formal pre-school at Montessori, including little classes that were specifically for GT kids. Before he was three years old, he was consoling a little boy in a GT class who was a few months younger than he was about not knowing how to read, showing him how he could learn to read from his crayons. My son was a highly empathetic kid who wore his heart on his sleeve. He's still like that today (at age 36), but he hides that side of himself with "humorous cynicism." Looking back, I think he was hurt by several (maybe many) teachers who didn't know how to deal with him. I have some very negative feelings, looking back on his school experiences. There is one particular teacher, who, if I met him on the street, I would happily punch in the face. Such is life.

ETA Well, that's really rude, but it's a measure of how I felt and still feel--even after 25 years of so.

>29 rretzler: Apologies for barging in on the conversation, but Robin, have you looked into the Columbus Academy in Gahanna?

>31 scaifea: Hi Amber! Not barging at all. You're very welcome here.

>31 scaifea: I will happily listen to anyone talk about gifted children and their experiences at any time, Amber!

I did think about Columbus Academy and also Wellington School, which is in Upper Arlington - closer to us and IMO perhaps a little more geared to gifted children (as opposed to wealthy children.) While I would have loved for them to go to Wellington or even Academy, I factored in a lot of stuff - money, friends, transportation time, etc. We will never know if we made the right choice, but I do have comfort in the fact that I know both of my boys are very, happy well-rounded kids with a lot of good friends. This comes not from me, but from our Elementary School guidance counselor, who is wonderful, and several teachers, they have had over the years. I guess it came down to spending the money on a private school or being able to send them to a good college and using some of the money currently to being able to travel and be together as a family. Also, I wanted them to be involved in other outside activities and was afraid that if they had to spend an extra 60-90 minutes or more on the bus each day, they would be missing out on a lot. We live in a very good community and didn't want to move closer to either school. Their friends are here in Dublin, and it is easy for them to bike to their friends' houses on weekends and in the summer. If they went to a school out of the community, they would not have that same experience. I think for us it came down to trying to make things as normal for them as possible, yet still finding challenges for them. Plus, I think I've kind of enjoyed trying to stir up the Dublin schools a little bit, hoping that they would change for the better for all gifted kids. I think there's probably a trade-off that we're making - perhaps not having them reach their intellectual potential versus attempting for them to have a bit of normality - but who knows what the right answer is!

>30 labwriter: It is difficult to talk to most people about having a gifted child, as you know, because you always feel like they think you're bragging. For many years, I wanted to start a group for parents of gifted kids in Dublin, but could never get anyone interested in meeting. I understand, given how busy we all are. Just this past fall, I happened to join a group of Dublin adults on Facebook, and one of the parents was complaining about not being able to get their child into an accelerated math class. Well...considering that I've had that fight with two kids, I gave them my advice and about 2 hours later, this parent messaged me to let me know that my advice had worked for her, and that quickly! So I decided it was time to start a Facebook group for parents of gifted kids in our school system. Within a day we had 75 members, and now I think we are probably up to around 100, a few months later. Lots of good advice, sympathy and information! Eventually, I think I'd like to be able to take it further, but I just don't have the time, since I'm still struggling to understand the difficulties my younger son is going through. But it is a wonderful thing to know that there are others you can talk to who understand what you are going through! And I know what you mean about those teachers who don't understand - that's when the "mama bear" in me really gets riled up!

It sounds like your son has an Emotional Overexcitability (Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities). When I was 3-4 yo, I had a recording and book of Peter and the Wolf. Well, I read the book and listened to the music once, and that was it for me. Still to this day, I refuse to listen to Prokofiev's composition, and I refuse to watch Bambi and Dumbo, as well. It all made sense after I learned about Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities! Then I understood that my older son was not being difficult because there were only certain socks and shoes that he wanted to wear. "My feet don't feel good!" was a sure way to strike terror into me, but now that I get it, we just take more care with what we buy and when we find something that works, we buy one in every color!

Another thing that I've learned is that the gifted kids almost always come from a parent or parents who are also gifted!

>33 rretzler: I wouldn't want to move out of Dublin, either, if I were you! Lovely area. When we lived in Gambier, one of my colleagues at Kenyon enrolled their daughter in the Columbus Academy and actually bought an apartment nearby for her and the mother, who would stay in Columbus during the week with her. Talk about extreme! Yeesh. Tomm and I talked about private schools for Charlie, but we both went to public schools and have done just fine for ourselves. Charlie's in second grade now and we've been lucky enough to have mostly teachers who recognize his abilities and give him extra stuff to work on to keep him from getting frustrated and bored, including this year's teacher.

So I guess I have three books going now, which is about the maximum number I'm able to effectively handle at one time without getting hopelessly fractured. There's no hope of finishing any of these anytime soon. Oh well.

At night I read the correspondence between the poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, Words in Air. As the years go by, the letters get more and more gossipy about their fellow poets. It's fun to overhear their conversations about Marianne Moore, E.E. Cummings, Allen Tate, etc.

During the day I'm listening to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which has such a perfect narrator--and my favorite character, Lisbeth Salander. I definitely like Mikael Blomkvist, too.

And then when I can I'm reading Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feiler, a read that complements my group read of the Bible. I watched the PBS series over the weekend that featured this book and the author. It was really excellent.

I've added a book to my list of current reads, which means that it will be even longer before I finish any of them. Oh well. This is for the group read, Bible as Literature. What happened to the group? I dunno. I wish they would come back. The goal of the group read is to read the Bible in one year. Anyone is welcome.

The book I've added to my list is An Educated Man: A Dual Biography of Moses and Jesus, by David Rosenberg.

Walking the Bible is a really excellent travel narrative. My problem with the book is the tiny text. Ach.

I'm wondering about group reads here at LibraryThing. I've been in face-to-face reading groups before, groups that have been useful, interesting, and fun, and some that have disintegrated into bitch sessions about neighbors. If people have had experience with group reads here--whether successful or not so much--would you be willing to share your experience? What makes a group read at LT successful? Why do group reads at LT fail? Any ideas?

I'm frustrated because the Bible as Literature group read, started Jan. 1 with the stated goal of reading the Bible straight through in one year, has apparently blown up. We didn't even get through Genesis before the group started collapsing. It seems like a real shame, since there were several people who seemed committed to the idea, and the group started out with enthusiasm.

I'd appreciate anyone who has some insight into how group reads here at LT can be more successful.

>37 labwriter: Sorry to see that the Bible as Literature group read seems to be struggling.
I have come to the conclusion over the years, Becky, that because we all read at such vastly different paces, the groups can pall.

It is a laudable aim to read the Good Book cover to cover in the year. I hope it gets back on track.

>38 PaulCranswick: I hope so too, Paul. I think this group must have set some sort of record for getting bogged down. I'm torn between continuing to try to post something vs. simply letting it go. I bought several books specifically for this Bible as Literature group read that I wouldn't have bought otherwise.

I like the reading plan for reading the Bible straight through in one year, found at Bible Gateway. I think I'll continue doing that on my own, but I don't see much point in posting when so many seem to have dropped out, particularly the group leader.

Reading for Jan 21, Exodus 10-12.

>37 labwriter: There was a science, religion, and history group a few years ago that started strong and fizzzled. Seemed a combination of different commitment levels and other demands on time. I was as guilty as anyone; even though I was interested in most of the books, I wasn't notably more interested in those books than others on my list, and writing comments is much more difficult than speaking comments would be in a RL meeting.

>40 qebo: Good points. I think you're exactly right.

There's a group of people here on LT that are taking an interesting approach to group reads. They start a group per book, then divide up the book into sections with a thread for each section. That way folks can read at their own pace and still be part of the conversation.

>42 drneutron: Sounds like a good plan. I think "read at their own pace" seems to be key.

For now I'll continue some rather minimal posting in the group read. I don't know what happened to the person leading the group. Maybe she'll come back eventually. I'm focusing on the characters that I encounter in the Bible. Who were these people and what can we learn from them? I've been exposed to the Bible all my life from daily readings in the Episcopal church. I've studied different books of the Bible with groups in my own Episcopal church and also with a very large eclectic group--that for about 3 years. The one thing I haven't done is to read it straight through, so maybe this is a useful endeavor in that it will give me a different perspective.

Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, ed. by Travisano and Hamilton. 5 stars

I've hugely enjoyed the letters between the poets Bishop and Lowell. They had a 40-some year friendship that seemed to thrive on the fact that they almost never saw each other in person. The letters themselves aren't particularly remarkable, especially considering that they both wrote for a living. However, they had a friendship that seemed as necessary as breathing to both of them, and that's what makes their correspondence special. They would go for months without writing to each other, and then both of them would express how distraught they were about not writing. As Lowell once wrote, "I seem to spend my life missing you!" He could have written that line in every letter.

I haven't actually finished the book yet, although I'm close to the end, and I know I'll feel sad to have to let these two go. It's the early 1970's; EB is just 60 yet she seems "old," at least in her own mind; RL is six years younger, has divorced his wife of many years, turned his back on the beloved daughter of that marriage, and is living with a woman about 20 years his junior, a mother of three young children who is about to have another child, this one fathered by Lowell. It's simply amazing to me that EB doesn't tell him what an ass he's making of himself--but she doesn't. I would love to know what she really thought of him at this point, but in her letters she is unfailingly supportive of him.

On the Extrovert/Introvert scale, EB is almost off the scale towards the Introvert side. "I suffer from lack of company," she writes, "--but better none at all than bores." She's really a woman after my own heart. In 1972, around the same age as I am now, she was teaching poetry at Harvard, having taken over Lowell's classes when he moved to England. After her second or third year at Cambridge, she writes, "I know so few people here--my own fault, mostly--and keep thinking I must cultivate some--and feel lazy about it. But teaching, such as it is, and entertaining, too, seems too much. Perhaps I'll have a party now . . . The very thought makes me want to go to bed and read all day--"

EB hated what was going on in the culture in the late 1960s to early 1970s. In 2017 we get so caught up in whining about our narcissistic little cultural/political dramas that it seems we think that no time other than our own has seemed difficult. In 1965, she writes to Lowell about a fellow poet: "Oh but he was an absolutely gifted, and noble man, poisoned and killed, though I can't prove it, by our tasteless, superficial, brutal culture. In 1970, she wrote that a friend had written to her: "'What an awful world we live in'--and then catching herself up and saying 'My God--my mother used to say that and I thought it was just because she was old--so I must be old now too.'"

Little is said by these two about the drug culture of the young that must have been all around them. However, EB and RL both had "issues" with alcohol, especially Elizabeth. Of course she smoked--probably multiple packs a day. Her I'm sure of, but he probably did as well. In 1969 Elizabeth also rather casually mentions that she and her friend are planning a trip to Buenos Aires right after Christmas, "to get away a bit, and also to buy Dexamyl. They have stopped manufacturing it in this country and I can't get along without it." Dexamyl was a combination of amphetamine and barbiturate. Good Lord. The drug was marketed as an antidepressant; it was also something used by "tired housewives." If you combine the terrible things they ate, the cigarettes and booze, the drugs that were so casually prescribed, and the almost complete lack of any sort of exercise, then it's no wonder, I guess, that people of their generation felt "old" at the age of 60.

She also doesn't seem to have been very happy about getting old: "He's a nice man, but a dreadful photographer (said about the magazine photographer sent to do a magazine photo shoot on EB) --about 85% of them had me with my eyes shut, looking exactly like both my grandmothers." When she was 60 she wrote: "I flatter myself that we are both awfully well-preserved, don't you think? But then when I see a snapshot of myself I wonder who that pleasant, foolish-looking old lady is."

RL didn't much like the culture or the times, any more than EB. He wrote to her after he received a letter from her cataloging a particularly bad summer: "Oh I've had a lovely summer, but when I look inside it's sad and acid: age, death of friends, aging of everything in sight, the bad immediate future of this country, most countries, talents and decency misused, etc. The stuff of life always." It's interesting to note that Lowell was 51 years old when he wrote that to Elizabeth.

Unlike most of his set--fellow poets, fellow academics--Lowell seemed to get more conservative as he aged. In 1968, he wrote: "Oh, and to see my friends again--lovely, but so turbulent. Death to politics! The jargon is migraine; and they all seem to be activist."

What I've really enjoyed about this book is being able to eavesdrop on these two, especially as they grow older. What was it like to be 60-ish in the late 1960s and 1970s? Anyway, I love these two people, and I'll hate to see the end of this one.

I just finished listening to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, narrated by Simon Vance. This is a re-read for me (technically "listen" rather than read). The reason I wanted to listen to the audio book even though I've read the book is because of the narrator, Simon Vance. He's been described as one of the best narrators in the business. I gave the book 4.5 stars, which is meaningless. I mean, why not 5 stars? Larsson is brilliant, unlike the guy who has "taken over" for him to continue Larsson's Millennial Series, David Langercrantz.

Let me just say that Langercrantz is no Larsson. I read Millennial #4, The Girl in the Spider's Web, and while the book was largely unobjectionable, it is so obviously not in the same league with the previous three novels. Frankly, I wasn't going to read Spider's Web. I should have gone with my gut on that one, but like a dope I read the thing. Larsson was a really excellent writer, and Lisbeth Salander is one of my favorite contemporary characters. However, sadly Langercrantz has made Lisbeth into something of a passive victim in his book. I'm really unhappy that the series was allowed to continue under a successor.

Evidently there's been something of a family feud about the continuation of the series. Eva Gabrielsson was Larsson's partner for 32 years, but because she wasn't married to him, under Swedish law she has no right to an inheritance. So the Larsson estate (and the decision to continue the series) went to Larsson's father and brother. Gabrielsson describes Langercrantz as "a totally idiotic choice," and she's very bitter--understandably, I would say.

>45 labwriter: Yup, I've heard that Spider's Web was terrible, so I just won't read it. :)

Hi Becky!

First time visitor, but certainly not the last.

A couple of thoughts:

1. I count books I listen to, but I'm a stats person like @drneutron, so keep a spreadsheet. Last year I broke it out by pages read and hours listened, although I also kept track of equivalent pages read by using the hardcover edition of an audiobook's number of pages. They are different experiences and for me they don't need to be rated one above the other. Having said that, I read many more books than I listen to, and now that I've retired and don't have my 40-minute-day-each-way commute, haven't even started one this year. I actively dislike female readers, with the exception of books where female readers read female parts and male readers read the male parts.
Also, if the (male) the reader annoys or otherwise doesn't work for me in the first 2 or 3 minutes listening, I abandon it.

2. I'm in the Group Read of the Bible as Literature, and as a non-Christian who thought long and hard about participating, I'm continuing on, using Rachel's recommended The Literary Study Bible. Rachel has had some family issues and admits to being behind, but I feel like the group has turned it into a religious reading of the Bible, which just isn't for me. It's early days, but I'm happily plodding along on Exodus right now. I'll keep checking the thread, but frankly skip most of the comments.

3. I agree with your assessment of the Langercrantz book. I read it, gave it 3 stars, which in my rating system is 'good', but all three of the Larsson books got 4 or 4.5 stars, 'excellent', or 'stunning'. I've read and listened to the Larsson books but won't bother re-reading the fourth book.

>47 karenmarie: I feel like the group has turned it into a religious reading of the Bible, which just isn't for me.

I think that's a really good point! The group read is titled "Bible As Literature." I don't think we've discussed anywhere in the group what the heck that means. I'm not looking for anyone in this group to tell me what they think something "means" in the Bible. Nor am I looking for a political rant. I think this would be a very interesting discussion to have in the group, because I'm sure there are others who feel the same way.

>47 karenmarie: >48 labwriter: That's essentially why I decided not to follow along with the thread - I was afraid that it wouldn't actually maintain an 'as literature' attitude, and I had enough of the other stuff when I was a kid.

>47 karenmarie:; >48 labwriter:; >49 scaifea:

This is what I posted today at the group read, "The Bible As Literature." I don't know if it will change anything or what if any response I'll get.

I was having a conversation with someone on my thread about this group. The comment made was, "I feel like the group has turned it into a religious reading of the Bible, which just isn't for me." The title for this group read is The Bible As Literature. I have a feeling that we never really identified what that phrase means--which may be why we're not getting the participation here that (I, at least--I don't know about anyone else) had hoped for.

My religious tradition is Christian, specifically Episcopalian, but I didn't come to this group looking for a religious reading, or interpretation, either. What I was looking for here was a way of reading the Bible that I haven't experienced before--a literary reading. However, I've struggled here in my posts with what that means. What I eventually decided to do was to take one literary element--character--and try to apply it to what I was reading. To some extent, that's worked pretty well for me. What I'm concentrating on--at least at this point--is the human experience to be found in these biblical writings.

One book that has been a help to me in looking at the Bible as literature is Harold Bloom's The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible. He's a literary critic (to my mind a giant of a literary critic), who describes himself in the Introduction as "desperately secular," and says that he rereads the Bible in many of the ways that he turns to Shakespeare or to Walt Whitman. The God, or Yahweh, of the Bible, according to Bloom, "is in the first place a literary character and has to be interpreted as such."

I hope that some of the many people who signed up for this group will weigh in on this issue. I'd like to know what others think of this--how do we talk about "the Bible as Literature"? What were people looking for, originally, when they signed up for this group? How can we open up the discussion, rather than narrowing it?

Two books that I'm finding very useful for The Bible As Literature group: The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode; and The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible, by Harold Bloom. Another handy reference is the OED. Mine is the online version.

I think our group has gone through some version of the developmental sequence of small groups--"forming, storming, norming, and performing." I think we might be somewhere in the storming/norming phase. I've thought several times of simply dropping out, but I keep asking myself the simple question, Is this group useful to me? So far the answer is Yes. I guess in every group like this, you always wish there were more participation. Although there were few who weighed in on my question about the Bible as literature, asking the question at least clarified the concept in my own mind. So that was useful--at least to me.

After I finished listening to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I found I was missing the voice of Simon Vance, so I kept going in the series. Thus my current audio book is Book 2, The Girl Who Played With Fire. What I'm finding about the Larsson Millennium Trilogy is that they hold up to rereading. I seriously doubt that will be the case with the Lagercrantz Book 4, The Girl in the Spider's Web.

The book on my nightstand is A.S. Byatt's The Biographer's Tale. It's the story of a disenchanted graduate student who decides to give up his postmodern literary studies and write a biography of a great biographer. I'm finding this thing laugh-out-loud funny, remembering my own literary studies when I was working on my Master's in English lit. I'm not sure I'm supposed to be laughing so much at this thing, which in itself is pretty amusing.

Reading the Bible (as Literature). I'm in the third book, Leviticus. It's no wonder I've never read it before in any of my Bible study groups, since the book is mainly a catalog of priestly laws.

The plan is to read the Bible within one year, so a reading plan is helpful. The one I'm using is from Bible Gateway. Feb. 4 is Leviticus 11-13. Using this plan, the reading for the day usually takes between 15 and 30 minutes. I'm finding that very manageable.

From The Literary Guide to the Bible: "Perhaps the greatest problem facing students of the Bible as literature is the fact that so much of the Bible is not literature at all." I really recommend this reference--at least so far. It's a series of essays, one for each book of the Bible, written by different biblical scholars, the main focus being the literary qualities of the biblical texts. Some people will be encouraged and others put off by Robert Alter's Introduction: "most educated modern readers. . . will very likely see modern fundamentalism as dangerous and atavistic; yet to repudiate the biblical inheritance altogether must strike them as barbarous." I'm not a fundamentalist Christian, I am an "educated modern reader," but I don't view fundamentalism as either dangerous or atavistic. If that is Alter's view, it is moderated by the fact that many different authors write the essays contained in this book.

I'm also reading Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses, by Bruce Feiler. This is an excellent book that's been on my shelf for years (published in 2001). I'm reading this pretty sporadically, so unfortunately I'll probably be finished with the Pentateuch (first 5 books of the Bible) before I'm finished with Feiler's book.

My other project (like I need one, since I don't give unlimited time to my reading) is to read something about each of the 45 U.S. presidents. I was inspired by the group here at LT reading presidential biographies. I've wanted to do something like that for a long time. I imagine it will probably take me a couple of years, or even more. I found an abridged edition of George Washington's diaries--George Washington's Diaries: An Abridgment, by Dorothy Twohig, ed. She is the retired Washington Papers editor. I guess I'll start there. I won't necessarily be reading biographies. I'm not sure if I want to read Ron Chernow's biog of Washington--Washington: A Life. Yes, it's by the author of Alexander Hamilton, the one that "inspired" the musical. Yes, it won the Pulitzer Prize. But when I read Hamilton in 2010, I found it to be so infused by Chernow's own political view of the world that I simply couldn't get past Chernow and get to Hamilton. I realize that's a view that wouldn't be shared by more than about 2% of the readers here at the 75. But I'm used to that. Those who share Chernow's political bent, of course, simply love, love, love his books--like The New York Times and NPR. Gah. Anywho, I see it's an audiobook, so maybe I'll give it a try. Frankly, Chernow isn't that great a writer (uneven, wooden prose; often grabs for the first tired cliché). I know, that's heresy. He also, as I remember, left out the context of the times that is so important to understanding the motivation of a person from a different era. I see that I gave it 2 stars. I wish I'd written a review.

But I was also thinking of listening to all of the Jack Ryan books, called "The Jack Ryan Universe" at Audible.com. Let's see: Jack Ryan vs. Chernow. That might be something of a no-brainer, actually. Ha.

Hi Becky! I've read 3 of the 4 Bruce Feiler books on my shelves and greatly appreciated them all. Good luck with Walking the Bible - it's the first one of his I read and still my favorite, although Learning to Bow is also very good. He combines memoir and scholarship quite well, IMO.

>54 karenmarie: I'm seriously enjoying Feiler's book, and I have no doubt that I would like others that he's written. He's very engaging.



The Biographer's Tale, by A.S. Byatt.

I loved Byatt's Possession, a novel I read some years ago. I loved the idea of this book, but for me it just didn't live up to its promise. Recommended read for anyone considering graduate school in the humanities.

My new bedside table read is a gem that's been languishing on my shelves for about 15 years: Alone! Alone! Lives of Some Outsider Women, by Rosemary Dinnage. This is a book of essays. From the Introduction: "I have always liked weirdness, oddity, outsiderism, nonconformity. So I arrived at the idea that a collection of pieces on women who, by choice or circumstance, defiantly or sadly, stood outside the boundaries of the ordinary could be of interest."

I was up far too late reading this thing last night. Her writing and the way she approaches the women of these essays is something special.

So far about four out of five reads have been from books off of my shelf. That's a good trend! I'm also making quilts using my fabric stash. It's not only a trend, it's a theme!

Feb 5, Leviticus 14-15

I have nothing to say about today's reading which is all about ritual cleansing from defiling skin diseases and the like. The Lord is still speaking to Moses and his brother Aaron.

Still plowing through Leviticus. I guess I prefer an extended study of an individual book of the Bible (spending weeks and having the time to read various scholars) than I do reading the entire Bible in a year. I'm glad I'm reading Leviticus, since I've never read it straight through before, but it certainly is heavy lifting.

I'm working on two quilts, so that cuts into my reading time. Still hugely enjoying the Rosemary Dinnage book.

I'm also working on getting my books organized on my basement shelves. I have a huge collection of biography, memoir, and letters which are useful to me only if I organize them in chronological order by birth date of the subject. That little project has taken me weeks, working on it a little at a time. DH is building the last shelf on the last basement wall. He's a saint. I'll post pictures when I'm finished. We moved into this house in November of 2015, and it's taken a long time just to get the books out of boxes and onto the shelves (considering there weren't any shelves in the basement when I started). The only time I've ever seen my darling daughter-in-law at a loss for words was when I recently showed her my "book project" in the basement. The only books she owns reside on Kindle. I could hear what was going through her head: "What are we going to do with all of these books when this woman is dead?" Well, I guess it's a question worth having a conversation about.

I became interested in Elizabeth Bishop's life recently when I read the letters between Bishop and Robert Lowell. Coincidentally, a new biog of her was just published: Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, by Megan Marshall. I started this last night. For a full-life biography, it's a pretty slim volume--and slimmer still because Marshall adds chapters relating to some sort of memoir of her own life. She was a student of Bishop (for a semester, studying poetry-writing). I'm not very far into the book, but I'm honestly wondering how much of this is going to be Marshall's memoir vs. Bishop's life.

Leviticus was heaving reading and I just finished it yesterday, Becky. (thanks for starting the 2nd group read thread).

I'll do a bit of Numbers today and keep pacing it through the 12th to get through Numbers 18. I think if I don't read pretty much every day, I might be in trouble.

I admire your basement book project - last year when I retired I inventoried every shelf of books. Later on, after I took over daughter's rec room and renamed it Karen's Retreat, I put all her stuff in boxes and started moving the books I had read up there, to leave room downstairs for my 'to be read' books. It's fun getting books out, seeing their shining little faces, and knowing where each one is. I'll look forward to seeing the pictures!

>45 labwriter: >52 labwriter: Becky, I too listened to the Millenium Trilogy instead of reading it and enjoyed Simon Vance's reading. I've been hesitating to read Langercranz's book #4, and it sounds like I have a good reason.

I always have a book that I am listening to and a book or two that I am reading. I do count the books I listen to as books read for my list - as I get the same thing out if it. I have debated as to how to count the pages versus time for the audiobook and decided that it was just simpler for me just to use a page count. Maybe someday I'll keep track of time that I listen, but since I probably don't do more than 10 or so in a year, pages is a more meaningful number for me. Everyone has his/her own way of doing things.

>59 karenmarie:I think if I don't read pretty much every day, I might be in trouble.

That's me too! I sure don't want to get behind, especially in Numbers. And I know how you feel about getting the books where you can see them. My books have been in boxes for several years due to remodeling the old house and the move to the new house. It's like seeing old friends again.

>60 rretzler: I plan to branch out with some other Simon Vance reads--things I wouldn't ordinarily read--just because I like him so much.

>60 rretzler: Hi Robin: I could pages for audiobooks as the hardcover edition pages. I have also started counting hours, too - the official hours declared for the audiobook - but since I retired I don't have a commute and don't listen to audiobooks much.

Old friends, indeed, Becky.

I spent a good part of yesterday organizing the biographies and letters & memoirs section of my books that I'm taking from boxes and putting on new shelves (thanks to DH) in my basement. I've been "warned" that there is only one more wall for shelves (well, yes, I can see that). It's looking like all my books will fit with some room to spare--and we all know what happens to "extra" shelf space. Ha.

Naturally when putting the "letters" books on the shelf, I managed to find one that "must" be read right away. My list of books that I want to read now is getting out of control.

Empty shelves are always temporary. *smile*

Glad you're having fun filling the shelves and finding 'must-read' books.

Still reading:

A group read of the Bible as literature.

An audiobook version of The Girl Who Played With Fire, a re-read. I'm listening to this as I get my books organized on the shelves. I have so many biographies that I decided the only way to deal with them is to put them on the shelves chronologically by birthdate. This isn't as OCD as it might sound. I needed some system so that I could know what I have on the shelves, and this one seems to work the best.

A new biography of the poet Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, by Megan Marshall. Recently as I was getting my biographies out of boxes and onto shelves, I found that I have one of Marshall's other two biographies: The Peabody Sisters, which is really excellent. She's also written a biog that I haven't seen of Margaret Fuller that won the Pulitzer Prize (an award that I think always must be looked at with skepticism, since these kinds of awards have become--or maybe always were--so politicized). Yeah, call me a skeptic.

The Bishop biog is good, but slight. And it's even "slighter" (is that a word?) because Marshall has inserted chapters in the book that are essentially a memoir of the (one) writing workshop she took at Harvard with "Miss Bishop" back in the early 1970s. It's unusual that she's included these chapters in the biography. They seem like an authorial intrusion, since they really don't have much to do with Elizabeth Bishop. I think they would have made a nice New Yorker article, but I wonder if they're included in order to "flesh out" a book that is essentially quite thin. Evidently the "reason" for this biog is a new cache of letters that were found that were previously believed to be destroyed.

I really like this photograph of Bishop. Unlike almost all the others I've seen of her, this is a candid shot. I have a face a lot like hers in almost all of the pics that are taken of me--the camera and I are not friends. And it's funny that two of my great-aunts, whom I never know, have faces for the camera that are exactly the same.

I finished listening to Simon Vance read The Girl Who Played With Fire. I think I might as well listen to #3, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Those evidently aren't Stieg Larsson's original titles for the books. I don't know whose idea it was to change the titles so that they all contain "The Girl," but I think it was brilliant marketing. It was also a brilliant move to get Simon Vance to read the audio versions.

Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, by Megan Marshall.

Megan Marshall is a biographer's biographer. She's written The Peabody Sisters, an enormous biography that took her something like 10 years to write, and Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. Marshall writes extremely readable prose, and I enjoyed reading this one, even though before I read her letters and this biog, Elizabeth Bishop wouldn't have made my top 100 list of people I was interested in reading about. That's what a good biographer can do--take any subject and tell their story in a way that's interesting.

Highly recommended.

There's a new biog about Bishop's good friend and fellow poet, Robert Lowell: Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character, by Kay Redfield Jamison. That's going to be my next read, I think--although it's not out yet, so it will have to wait a bit. Jamison also wrote Touched by Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, a book I've read and hugely recommend.

I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 volumes of letters, most of which are by writers. It occurred to me (again) as I put these on my shelves recently that I need to read more of these.

So in the spirit of "reading more," I've chosen as my next read, Letters of E.B. White, ed. by Dorothy Lobrano Guth. White was very much alive when Guth started on this project. He really ought to be named as one of the editors, since Guth had Andy hanging over her shoulder as she worked for three years on the project. Someone suggested that his wife, Katharine Sergeant Angell White, was the obvious choice to edit the letters. "Obvious choice" because she was fiction editor for years at The New Yorker. Her influence was so great there that it was said by some that she more or less invented the magazine. However, poor health kept her from being the one to do the job of editing Andy's letters.

If I'm honest here, I have to admit that while E.B. White writes terrific letters, it's really Katharine who interests me most. And I wish so much that someone would put out an edition of her letters. She had a truly formidable personality. From what I can gather from reading books about the magazine--like Brendan Gill's Here at The New Yorker--people were terrified of her. I wish someone would publish an edition of the letters and memos between Katharine and Harold Ross, for example. At some point, Katharine and Andy moved to their farm in Maine so that Andy could write. Katharine continued working for the magazine "half time," and Ross did his best to keep her informed about what was happening in the office. Their back-and-forth must be priceless. This, for example:

When you get long memos not written on my beautiful office typewriter, it means Mr. White is trying to write. He told me hearing me batting away made him feel uncreative, when he was struggling to put words on paper! . . . So I just shut up, and take to pencil.

I'm pretty far from finishing anything.

Still listening to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

I'm still part of The Bible as Literature reading group (almost finished with Numbers). I've switched to the Norton Critical Edition, edited by Herbert Marks, using the King James Version (KJV). I'm also reading 6 or 7 references to go along with the daily readings.

Still reading the Letters of E.B. White.

Still reading Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses.

I'm not sure what direction my reading will take when I'm finished with White's letters.

I'm finishing up the hand quilting for the Double Wedding Ring quilt for my son and DIL, planned to be finished for their first anniversary next August. And I've started a quilt for my first grandbaby. They didn't waste any time; however, since they're in their mid-30's, I didn't expect that they would.

Reading and quilting. Life is good. Where will I find time for gardening? Or genealogy? Good grief.

Your first grandbaby! Congratulations! When is s/he due?

>70 countrylife: Thank you, Cindy. The due date is Oct 1, so they have a long way to go.

>69 labwriter: Where will I find time for gardening?
I hope you can, though you don't seem to have a lotta time to spare. Congrats on first grandbaby.

Hi Becky! Congrats on first grandbaby in the fall. I have Letters of E.B. White on my shelves. I might pull it down for a skim.

>72 qebo:, >73 karenmarie: Thanks for the good wishes.

>72 qebo: We recently bought an camper-trailer (I don't really know what to call the thing) and plan to do a good bit of traveling and camping. In our other (younger) lives, we were backpackers, but I've told DH that unfortunately I'm done with sleeping on the ground. We are somehow going to have to do our traveling around putting in the garden. I also need to do some work on the front--figuring out plantings and some kind of landscaping plan. If not for last year's wedding and this year's baby, I think I could work it all out. Ha.

I ordered a book that is just out, and when it came in the mail I had to put everything else aside to start the thing: Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character, by Kay Redfield Jamison. Jamison is careful to say that the book is not a biography: "I have written a psychological account of the life and mind of Robert Lowell; it is as well a narrative of the illness that so affected him, manic-depressive illness."

This looks to be an impressive account. Jamison is eminently qualified to write about the subject. One of my favorite books on the subject of creativity and "insanity" (my word, not hers) is one of hers, Touched by Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. Jamison is a clinical psychologist whose work has centered on bipolar disorder. She also wrote An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, which I haven't read.

One of the things I like to do when I'm reading biographies and letter collections is to collect a group of people who knew each other and who wrote either to or about each other. So I have Robert Lowell writing to Elizabeth Bishop, lifelong friends. Bishop's editor at The New Yorker was Katharine White. Katharine's biographer says she was "afraid" of Lowell--not well explained. Lowell and Bishop were friends of Mary McCarthy, who was also edited at TNY by Katharine White--and they were friends. I have either two or three biogs of McCarthy on my shelf, so I plan to read about her. I also have her letters. It will be interesting to see if the collection includes letters to Robert Lowell.

I finished the Letters of E.B. White, collected and edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth.

Evidently someone wrote to ask White about the "aging brain" (he was 72 at the time and still writing). Here's what he said:

My experience is that I have to struggle harder, tire sooner, and come apart at the seams more completely than was the case when I was young. The aging mind has a bagful of nasty tricks, one of which is to tuck names and words away in crannies where they are not immediately available and where I can't always find them. This is extremely annoying to a writer, who wants his words where he can find them.

About the same time he wrote this about "creativity":

the creative life is hell more than half the time, riddled with trials and errors, and paved with woe. I know what it is like to try to bring something into being, as you've been doing the last few months. I know what an unhatched egg does to the spirit.

I also finished my audiobook, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, by Stieg Larsson, narrated by Simon Vance. I haven't decided what's next for listening, although it will be fiction.

I'm also still reading the Bible. I'm reading a Norton Critical Edition of the King James Version of the Old Testament, edited by Herbert Marks. Along with that I'm reading Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings by Robert Alter. Alter is OK, although his approach is secular, so he's pretty much taken God out of the Bible. I prefer the KJV.

I'm continuing with Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses, by Bruce Feiler. This is a fascinating read, although I don't spend enough time reading it.

And then there's the biog of Robert Lowell by Kay Redfield Jamison. This turns out to be less of a biography and more of a treatise on bipolar disease as it relates to Lowell. He was hospitalized with mania regularly--often once a year, for years of his life. The book is very intense, and sometimes I have to take a break from it.

I enjoyed the "aging brain" quote. That sounds like an interesting book.

>77 countrylife: Hi Cindy. I'm finding myself interested particularly in what people wrote in their letters when they were "older," since I just turned 65. I think it's interesting to learn at what age different people think they are "old" and what they have to say about aging in their letters.

I'm continuing with my "group read" of the Bible. We've lost most of the group, including the leader. Maybe others are lurking, which perhaps is useful for them but not particularly so for those of us who continue to post our comments. But I'm grateful for the faithful remnant who remain. I'm hugely enjoying Herbert Marks's notes in the Norton Critical Edition of the KJV. I highly recommend this edition, particularly for those who are looking for a "literary" take on the Bible. Marks is the editor for the Old Testament. He includes some excellent scholarly articles, in the tradition of the Norton editions--Context, Reception, Criticism.

My current audiobook is Without Remorse, by Tom Clancy, first published in 1993. The book is set during the Vietnam War in Baltimore. It's not the first of the Jack Ryan novels, but it's the first in the chronology of the series. We learn how John Kelly became John Clark and also quite a bit of his back story.

I'm also reading God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, by Adam Nicolson. The book starts out slowly, but now that I'm 40 or so pages into it, I'm finding it to be a more interesting read.

I'm still trying to finish the Robert Lowell book which I got because I thought it was a biography.

I finished Robert Lowell Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character, by Kay Redfield Jamison. This book is probably 50/50 about Robert Lowell and about manic-depressive illness, Jamison's preferred term for the disease, who believes the term "bipolar disorder" is misleading, trivializing, and far removed from the clinical reality of depression and mania by those who experience them. Jamison is not only a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, but she also suffers from manic-depressive illness herself. Interestingly, she is also an honorary professor of English at the U of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Lowell's reputation was largely set and destroyed by his biographer, Ian Hamilton, who published the biography in 1981. Jamison: "{the biography} was widely read in the literary community and its impact on Lowell's reputation as a poet and man was lasting and negative." Hamilton chose to portray Lowell as "loutish, mad, humorless, a snob, and an overrated poet. . . . His struggles and suffering, except for the suffering he caused to others, are not much in evidence."

Highly recommended, especially for anyone who has an interest in manic-depressive, or bipolar, illness.

I'm taking a break from the intensity for awhile in my nightly reading with James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small.

I'm also continuing on with God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, by Adam Nicolson. It's fascinating to learn that the KJV was written by a committee. Of course, the times were so very different from our own:

The establishment of Jacobean England was as small as a village. It was intimate with itself, engaged in endless conversation. The currency of this world was talk between people who had known each other all their lives, and the intimacy of those relationships was crucial to the nature of the conference and its outcome, and to the qualities of the Bible that would eventually emerge from it.

I finished James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small (1972). This is the first of four (five?) volumes of his tales as a country veterinarian in Yorkshire, England. This one is set in the 1930s, a transitional time in veterinary medicine, before the advent of antibiotics. Many of the ancient remedies are still used, if not by Herriot then by the farmers of the area. The small farmers of Yorkshire country life are the backbone of these stories. Contrary to popular belief, these books are only partially autobiographical, which of course only makes sense. Herriot is above all a storyteller

I found the book hugely relaxing and diverting from all the political nonsense that is going on these days, which is certainly one of the answers to the question: Why do we read?

I think I'll go on to read the second volume, All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974). These have been on my shelf for ages. When my son was young, I read him stories from Herriot's book of dog stories, James Herriot's Dog Stories--highly recommended. Evidently he also has a book of cat stories.

Maybe before I read the second Harriot, I'll read the literary biography of Robert Lowell by Ian Hamilton, published in 1981. This biography was "credited" with destroying Lowell's reputation.

>80 labwriter: I read those sometime in my early teens and loved them. I have a fond recollection of sitting comfortably on a warm summer's evening, enjoying the sunset and "All Things Bright and Beautiful". The perfect combination!

And yes, he is a great storyteller. These were enjoyable books.

Hi Becky!

Since I've retired, I'm mostly around people who've retired. Frankly I get tired of hearing the complaints about aging because everybody faces it. My goal is to face it gracefully and keep my complaints to a minimum.

>78 labwriter: I'm still reading the Bible for the group study, but since our leader has abandoned us and everybody else is reading different versions of the Bible and in addition are reading companion books, I sort of feel left out in the cold. From what I can glean, I'm probably also the only non-Christian in the group that posts. I'm happy to be reading the Bible, don't feel particularly that it is literature so far, and am disillusioned with most of the 'heroes'. David, as I'm reading II Samuel, is not particularly attractive. Since I don't come at it from a perspective of faith or reverence, so far it's just repetitive stories about sneaky and brutal people who have to be yanked back into obedience to God. I think what I just wrote is mostly disappointment, but that's what I feel.

>79 labwriter: I think that I vaguely knew that the KJV was written by committee. I've added God's Secretaries to my wishlist. It sounds fascinating.

>82 karenmarie: I get tired of hearing the complaints about aging

I think people who complain about aging probably complain or have complained about everything else in their lives, all along the way. Complainers complain. Years ago when I was an R.N., for about a year I worked on an IV team in a hospital that was about 90% geriatrics patients. Some of them were so bitter and angry; some were so sweet, you just wanted to sit and spend time with them. That experience left me feeling that aging doesn't really change who you are except that it "concentrates" your personality. You are who you've always been, only more so. That was my take on it, anyway.

I'm sorry you feel left out in the cold and disappointed in the Bible as Literature group. I've really struggled with this "group read," since I guess around here group read can mean a lot of different things. It doesn't help that the group leader abandoned the project after about 5 minutes. Also, I think a big difficulty with the whole concept of this group is that "Bible as Literature" was never really defined, even though I know several of us tried. Without that, the group really has no concrete focus.

I would also suggest that a "group" like this one is not a good way to read the Bible if you don't have much prior experience with it. I think it would be useful to audit a class taught by someone who is used to teaching the Bible as literature and who uses a text that is geared in that direction. I've mentioned the Norton Critical Edition a couple of times, the OT edited by Herbert Marks. His notes are excellent. A book like that in a class of 10 or 12 people taught by a professor who knows what they're doing would be ideal. That's just my 2 cents. Frankly, I'm pretty close to abandoning the group read myself.

>83 labwriter: aging doesn't really change who you are except that it "concentrates" your personality. You are who you've always been, only more so I can agree with that from my experience with my ageing mother who's now 95. The individual parts that make up her personality are still the same, but they have become much more pronounced as she has got older.

>80 labwriter: I loved James Herriot as an older teenager and read one of his again fairly recently and enjoyed it again. I agree, sometimes you just want something warm and comforting.

My reading is competing with quilting these days. I haven't finished any books for awhile. I'm close to finishing the baby quilt I'm working on.

I'm still continuing with the Bible read, although the group is more or less moribund. I've decided to abandon the schedule and slow it down so that I can read more supplementary material. I'm thinking I'll get the Old Testament read this year and the New Testament read next year. I'm really enjoying the Norton Critical Edition of the OT, edited by Herbert Marks. The notes are excellent, and it's a joy to read the King James Version again. I highly recommend this edition.

Hi Becky!

I just finished 1 Chronicles, 4 days late from the original schedule. Boy, is that book demanding in an eye-crossing way. So many names. Sometimes I'd stop and try to pronounce one, others I'd see that it was a name, and move on.

I think that for me, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kinds, and 1 Chronicles have been rather brutal. I haven't skipped anything except some of the names. I'm glad to be reading, yet right now the enthusiasm is flagging a bit. I'm sure things will pick up.... soon, I hope.

I may end up being the only person who tries to read to the original schedule with the original book. Oh well, I'm very stubborn!

Good luck with the quilting!

I'm just catching up with your thread, Becky, and saw your comments about The Biographer's Tale. It sounded like it would be something I could relate to but I am finding it a slow read. I haven't come to any funny bits yet.

Your discussion about ageing is interesting. I plan to keep active and interact with people of all ages. I am sure I could find plenty to complain about but why dwell on the negative. I have lots more to do. I'm only 65 - my father lived until 95. That's lots of years after 65, (of course, my mother only lived until 66 so you never know what might happen.)

>79 labwriter: It has been a while since I read God's Secretaries, but I remember enjoying the read.

My grandmother gave me the first Herriot book when I was in junior high school around the time they were first coming out. I have enjoyed them for years, and was recently thinking that I might read one with my boys. Of course, we need to finish the Prydain Chronicles and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child first, so it might be a while. They are definitely due for a reread though.

Wishing you a splendid weekend, Becky.

This is a time of year when I as a non-American ponder over what I am thankful for.

I am thankful for this group and its ability to keep me sane during topsy-turvy times.

I am thankful that you are part of this group.

I am thankful for this opportunity to say thank you.

It is that time of year again, between Solstice and Christmas, just after Hanukkah, when our thoughts turn to wishing each other well in whatever language or image is meaningful to the recipient. So, whether I wish you Happy Solstice or Merry Christmas, know that what I really wish you, and for you, is this:

Wishing you all good things this holiday season and beyond.