The Church of Our Lady of Unread Books

The confessional booth at the Church of Our Lady of Unread Books is now open. Mother Urania will be hearing confessions and assigning penance. So everybody needs to come clean about what books they haven't read. Mother Urania says so.

Goodness gracious....mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.....I have not read TONS of them......

You need to be more specific my child. Our dear Lord is quite satisfied if you have not read some books as they are most unsuitable. However, on the subject of those other books, you need to tell Mother Urania all.

Bless me mother, for I have sinned. This is my first Unread Books Confession.

- I have not read Daphne duMaurier
- I have not read PG Wodehouse (although my dear husband has read him to me, and I loved the BBC Jeeves television series which aired on PBS in the US)

I hope everyone can forgive me, repentant sinner that I am.

Oh dear.

I have not read Proust. I have it sitting there on the TBR bookshelf, an enormous 3-volume set, and its sheer size daunts me.

*standing outside the confessional, saying this in a conversational tone of voice rather than a penitant whisper, as I don't feel the least bit contrite about it*

Alas, I confess...

I have not read George Eliot .... but I have read T.S. Eliot
I have not read Ulysses ... but I have read The Odyssey
I have not read Thomas Hardy ... but I have read Rob Hardy!

I have not read many of the viragos in my possession. Yet. Forgive me, mother, for my sins of omission.

#4 You are absolved as to Wodehouse. Having him read TO you counts. We will have to work on the DuMaurier failing. It is considered most greivous, as you know.

I know I will be flogged. I know it.

I. have. not. read. Pride and Prejudice. Unless it was years ago in another life. In which case I am still very guilty, as apparently I do not remember it. HOWEVER, I am not so unregenerate as lindsacl, who does not seem to own any Daphne du Maurier books (if her catalog can be trusted). I DO have a copy of the Complete Novels of Jane Austen in my possession.

Many sins to confess. Like tiffin, I haven't read Proust. But I am unrepentant. There are also a couple of gaps in my Dickens reading: I haven't read Barnaby Rudge or The Old Curiosity Shop. The only George Eliot I've read is Middlemarch. I've read all of E.M. Forster except Maurice and The Longest Journey. I have no patience for Faulkner or Henry James, and have never finished a single one of their novels. Ditto Norman Mailer and John Updike. I did read one Philip Roth novel (American Pastoral) and actually enjoyed it, but I think I'll stop there. Of the non-fragmentary works of Jane Austen, I have not read Lady Susan.

>8 laytonwoman3rd: I won't flog you because I must join you in sin against Miss Austen. Although I've read P&P and Emma, I have not read any of her other books. My catalog shows I own Persuasion and Mansfield Park, but alas, I have not read them. And I don't even own Sense and Sensibility! (And yet I own and have read The Jane Austen Book Club, which is in no way a substitute for the real thing.)

But I must admit, I am completely unrepentant for not having read Moby Dick. No one can make me read a giant book about a guy chasing a giant whale. No one.

>7 laytonwoman3rd:: Thank you very much
>8 laytonwoman3rd:: Yes, you will be flogged. And you KNOW my catalog can be trusted, but I am not unregenerate! I feel most humble and repentant today.
>9 rbhardy3rd:: I haven't read Proust either, but am married to someone who has so I'm counting that. We are the yin and yang of reading snobs.
>10 Talbin:: I haven't read Persuasion or Mansfield Park yet either, but they are nearly top of the TBR now. Persuasion definitely before end of year; MP likely to be read soon thereafter.

Definitely put Persuasion on the top of your pile!

I too have not read Faulkner, Updike, Mailer, Mark Twain, among quite a few others.

I will not repent for having tried to read Moby Dick and having given it up, nor will I repent for not liking Mark Twain (although I own a few among his books and have read most of those I own).

Doing the happy dance here because someone else gets impatient with Henry James and won't read Moby Dick (I have read it but was solidly on the side of the whale). Actually, "impatient" is a very genteel way of expressing the feeling that you are about to break out in hives or hurl the book into the woods for the brush wolves to sniff suspiciously and then mark it in the ancient canine manner.

*mark it in the ancient canine manner* LOL!! I have had to discard books which were marked in the ancient FELINE manner, but have never actually wanted to throw one to the wolves. There have been some awful sleazy titles that I wanted to pick up with tongs and deposit in the bin, though -- I suppose the wolves would enjoy rolling in those.

For those of you who can't stomach the thought of swimming all the way through Melville, I can offer a truly wondrous alternative: Moby-Dick: a pop-up book by Sam Ita. Although the title may give rise to indelicate images, it is an awesome piece of paper engineering, including a spyglass you can actually see through and a marvelous whale.

(edited to try to get touchstones to work -- no luck)

The Ambassadors is quite possibly the most wretched book I have ever attempted to read. I don't feel any penance is necessary for that "sin" of omission. My husband fell asleep in the bathtub trying to read it when we were in college (No, we weren't married then, and no, it wasn't my bathtub), and the book was never quite the same.

>16 aviddiva:: give rise to indelicate images... ROFL !

Please ladies and gentleman, Mother Urania must intervene and plead for the Dick. While in places, Moby Dick is tough going, this is one of those books for which "staying the course" is actually a rewarding and not a pyrrhic victory.

You raise your eyebrows in astonishment; you ask yourselves “Has Mother Urania finally lost it (again)?” Ah no, listen to Mother Urania. She will not lead you astray when it comes to good books. Having shepherded many a reluctant student through Melville’s mighty epic, she speaks from experience.

So why read Moby? First of all, it’s a remarkably and delightfully salacious little book. Remember, Melville himself confessed to Hawthorne that he (Melville) had written a “wicked” book. Consider the following passage from chapter 94 aptly entitled “A Squeeze of the Hand,” then consider the portrait of Hawthorne below, and draw your own conclusions. (Mother Urania refuses to explain everything.)

By way of context for the following quotation, the men on the good ship Lollipop (aka the Pequod) have begun to harvest the whale sperm.

Exhibit A: The Quotation

It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several others, I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! no wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious mollifier! After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralize. . . . Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, - Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves. (italics Mother Urania’s)

Exhibit B: The Bonny Hawthorne


If the preceding passage and Hawthorne’s dashing portrait do not convince you, peruse the chapter titles in the book’s table of contents. They constitute a splendidly suggestive read in and of themselves. Who cannot delight in such chapter titles as “A Bosom Friend” followed immediately by “The Nightgown.” Or “The Pequod Meets the Virgin,” “The Crotch,” and “The Tail.” Or consider the sensuous title “Heads or Tails” evocatively following by “The Pequod Meets the Rose-Bud.”

If you still remain unconvinced, consider the book’s stirring and oft-quoted first line “Call me Ishmael.” The prose in the opening paragraph is masterful, but you really must experience the whole epic to grasp the grandeur of the closing lines of the book:

“And I only am escaped alone to tell thee. JOB

The Drama's Done. Why then here does any one step forth? - Because one did survive the wreck.

It so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappearance, I was he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman, when that bowsman assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three men were tossed from out the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So. floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the half-spent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like another ixion I did revolve. till gaining that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin like-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.

And no I will not tell you about the aforementioned “devious-cruising Rachel.” You must read the book for yourself.

P.S. I nearly forgot penance: three Hell Mary's (a variant of the Bloody Mary) and seven contemplations of "The Whiteness of the Whale."

I read Moby Dick in the summer after my junior year of high school. I also read a lot of Hawthorne.

Congratulations Rob. You get the medal for extra special goodness today.

I read Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter my junior year of high school, also. And I loved Moby Dick! I think everyone would love it if you were teaching the class, urania!

I also like Henry James, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and Mark Twain and I have read all of the Jane Austen novels, most of Du Maurier's and several by George Eliot.

My big sin of omission is Proust. I tried once. My children were just too distracting. I will try again, someday, I hope. Forgive me.

sorry urania. I've read MD twice and it just isn't my cuppa. But A+ to you for your efforts to convince me otherwise!

tiffin,

Mother Urania is saddened that you have hardened your heart to the joys of Moby Dick. She will keep you in her prayers.

#16 My husband loves Moby Dick. In fact, when we discovered that I was pregnant (after nearly 8 years of marriage) his somewhat stunned reaction was "What am I going to do with a baby? I mean, you can't lean over the crib and say 'So....little person. Have you read Moby Dick?' " I just put the pop-up version in my Amazon cart. He's getting it for Christmas. He will laugh his parts off. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, aviddiva.

Mary, next time we're in Tennessee, we have to get together. You can talk to him about whales and obsessions.

Oh layton that will be so much fun. I hope you can stay with Robbie and me. We love having house guests.

I always thought that Hawthorne was a hunk.......sigh

Me too, Paola. I guess Melville did too.

Yes, apparently Hawthorne was so devastatingly handsome that when Sophia, his future wife, first set eyes on him she immediately rose from her sickbed to which she had retired apparently for good in preparation for that slow but not disfiguring decline of which 19th-century young ladies were so fond. She was healed. (Yes, yes. I exaggerated a wee bit here).

Alas for poor Melville's wife Elizabeth, the evidence is fairly strong that he beat her.

Laytonwoman, my husband really likes Moby Dick, too -- I gave him the pop-up version last Christmas, after reading about it on someone's LT secret santa list. I think his favorite Melville is really Billy Budd, though, maybe because the Benjamin Britten opera is so wonderful. We saw it a couple of years ago with sexy young baritone Nathan Gunn playing Billy, and it was fantastic.

I confess...though they are sitting in my library, I haven't read:
Bleak House
The Great Gatsby
Middlemarch
The Age of Innocence
Jude the Obscure
Justine - Lawrence Durell

I loved the BBC mini-series of Bleak House and Middlemarch.....so since I've seen them does that count? Am I forgiven?

Ah#14 that's me! I had a Melville and Hawthorne class and I remember my professor making us sit in the dark classroom and listen to the mating calls of whales for the full 1 1/2 hours. Though I boycotted Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn, I have read an awful lot of Hawthorne..but not the Scarlet Letter if you can believe it. Yes, a class on Hawthorne and no Scarlet Letter. Strange. But not as strange as the darkened classroom and whale calls.
Also have not read most of the austen novels, but plan to and no Ulysses, though someday I will force myself.
Oh, and I can't stand Dickens. Never have, never will. Have tried. I'm surprised living in England I haven't been stoned yet for admitting such a truth.

>32 ms.hjelliot: Ah, hjelliot, a woman after my own heart! Not only have you not read Moby Dick, but you also can't stand Dickens! Although I have read four Dickens novels (all for some class or another), I will probably never read a fifth - at least not willingly. I know all the reasons people love Dickens - the characters, the descriptions, the "reality" - yet the way Dickens handles these things drive me crazy. I find his characters overdrawn, the descriptions overwrought, and the "reality" over the top. His stories are just too melodramatic for me. It always seemed to me that Dickens took "real life" and added either a bit more fictional weirdness or harshness than was necessary to make his point - almost as if his stories are caricatures of real life.

Talbin, I know I'm oversimplifying it to say it this way (it has taken people entire books to express it) but Dickens was trying to bring some truths home to a very hedonistic, self-centred class of entitled (and titled) people in England. They enjoyed lives of unimaginable privilege and luxury, virtually blind to the poverty and social injustices which existed all around them. What grates as hyperbole to our 21st century sensibilities shot some hard truths home to the 19th century imagination. His works were responsible for galvanizing reforms in child labour laws, as an example. It was interesting for me to read some social histories of that time. It revealed to me that Dickens wasn't exaggerating at all and that under his satire burned a deep, fierce anger.

Also, many of his books were written for magazines or serials, so his pot-boiler style was purposely designed to keep people hanging on for the next instalment. That's why you sometimes feel like you are leaping from chapter to chapter. The melodrama suited the medium.

That said in support of Dickens, I too find his style a bit exhausting. I reread Bleak House last winter and had to do so in instalments. It wasn't something I could sustain all in one go, no matter how much I respected the intent of his writing.

HJ, I would probably be stoned for admitting that I don't like Hardy.

Hm. . . I like Dickens and Faulkner. And I've always had a fondness for Papa Hemingway. I've read Moby Dick but I wasn't a big fan of it, although if urania were leading the class instead I may have had a different opinion.

I've only read three of Jane Austen--Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park. I've never read anything by Anthony Trollope. I've never read Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market. I've never read I Capture the Castle.

tiffin: I don't like Hardy, even though we share a last name. I was forced to read Jude the Obscure in a high school English class. Wretched. I've read only one other of his novels, the surprisingly good Far from the Madding Crowd. I've tried to read others, but they're such downers!

oh Rob, it was Jude which did me in too. Wretched is exactly the word.

christiguc, Billy Budd is even more rampantly homoerotic than Moby! Although the Queequeg and Ishmael marriage bed scene.... {70s flashback} When I read Billy Budd in an undergrad Am. Lit. course, the seminar presentation was done by a young man who was the president of the Gay & Lesbian society at the university. He gave the entire presentation of the story a High Camp interpretation which had us weeping with laughter. I suspect urania would have loved being in that class.

Tiffin and Rob! You don't like Jude the Obscure! Think of all those lovely melodramatic moments: Sue jumping out the window on her wedding night to avoid sex; Little Father Time and his delightful high jinxs. How could anyone dislike the lugubrious excesses of a child who kills his siblings and hangs himself? And that touching suicide note - "Done because we are too menny." Having cheerfully thrown intentionalism out the window many years ago, thereby shocking a number of my professors, I laugh uproariously whenever I read Jude. It's funnier than Cold Comfort Farm.

P. S. I must say this thread is quite revealing. I never realized how much animosity certain writers evoked in the breasts of others. I feel as if the spirits of quite a few resentful teenagers and college undergraduates have surfaced here. Mother Urania thinks that therapeutic intervention may be needed.

I confess that I have not read many of the 'Great Books' collection on show behind glass doors in my lounge. Perhaps that's because they are, if I'm not mistaken, all by men (sorry Rob). However, I have read Plato's volume and found it very amusing, and profound, of course. Got stuck halfway through St Augustine. Enjoyed the Greek dramas. War and Peace keeps beckoning to me but I have resisted so far.
How Green Was My Valley, which I've been meaning to read for years, I shall be reading for my Global Challenge.
I loved Thomas Hardy during my melancholic period years ago. Dickens was indeed trying to get the message across that all was not right in Victorian England in an amusing and at times over the top style.
Oh! and perhaps my worst offence, being British, I have not read all of my complete collection of the Bard.
I also have loads of VMC's to read.

Hope my penance will not be too many Hail Men and Pater Nauseums.

I feel as if the spirits of quite a few resentful teenagers and college undergraduates have surfaced here
well, not exactly, urania.

Hardy. Well, I could never achieve the distance required to laugh at Hardy. He seemed to dash me to the grim earth before ever allowing laughter.

Yes tiffin, I quite agree. Forgive my levity if it has given offense. Levity and flippancy are my methods of coping with a world that is profoundly and heartbreakingly sad. Humor (sometimes misplaced) is my armor against despair. Pax.

In high school, I was forced to read Jude the Obscure, Great Expectations and 1984. In college, I was assigned Jane Austen's Persuasion for a freshman English class. I disliked all of these books. Coming back to them later in my life, when I had matured a little, I was pleased to find that rereading Great Expectations and Persuasion was a tremendously rewarding experience. I can't say the same for Orwell and Hardy. Some books benefit from a little more experience of life. Others are, for whatever reason, never going to appeal to certain readers. De gustibus non disputandum est.

I don't like Dickens either. I tried Pickwick Papers cos it was meant to be amusing and I sat stony faced through the thing. I often feel inadequate for this, but I do like Henry James, I love Middlemarch...

Oh and I have read the beginning, end and the bit with the adverts in Ulysses, but not the rest.

#41: oh urania, none taken. Humour is my armour as well, for the same reasons.

#42: Rob, De gustibus non disputandum est, yep! And sometimes nulli urinari contra ventum too. hehe
{trans: there is no dispute about taste, and, don't p*ss into the wind}

Lyzzy, in me 'umble opinion no one should ever feel inadequate because they don't like a particular work or author. It would be a dull world if we were all the same. You're a reader, that's what counts.

LyzzyBee (and other Dickens haters),

If one doesn't have a taste for Dickens, I think the Pickwick Papers is one of the more difficult books with which to start - in part because of the picaresque form. I do so love Dickens (although his social snobbery infuriates the hell out of me) that I hate to see anyone give up on him. I didn't initially like Dickens either, chiefly because my first introduction was A Tale of Two Cities, which I do not consider "typical" Dickens. I think David Copperfield is the most reader-friendly of his novels. It's an orphan story, our-hero-cast-out, a cast of hilarious characters, notable villains, and lots of interesting subplots. And just for the record, I do not think young Davy turns out to be the "hero" of his own tale.

I've appreciated Hardy for his bleakness which has matched mine, from time to time. I love James and Wharton. I'm not crazy about Dickens but think there's still hope, and I've lived through Moby Dick vicariously (a former mate was obsessed....). When I first read Jane Eyre a hundred years ago, I thought it dull. Now it's a perennial favourite having read it thrice over since.

Being apart of this group, and others on LT for the past year or so, the holes in my own literary education have become craters.

>34 tiffin: tiffin - Your description of the why's and wherefore's of Dickens is spot-on. But after reading Dickens in high school, college and graduate school (and even teaching him twice to college freshmen) and I still don't like his style. I understand it and where it's coming from, but I don't particularly like it. I'm not much for several of the Victorians, actually, whether novelists or poets. Some tend to get a bit florid for my taste, including Dickens (and Longfellow, but that's another story - all that sing-songy tetrameter). I'm a bit more of an Austen, James, Faulkner, Wharton, Cather type of gal - I generally like a leaner, drier, more muscular style.

ETA: My original reply came out much too b*tchy and just had to be edited. That's what a nice long walk with the dog does after a difficult day - it helps to even things out a bit.

I don't think I've read a Dickens book all the way through since junior high school -- but I did like A Tale of Two Cities at the time. My most vivid memory of David Copperfield was his love, whom I named "Dumb Dora." I have seen numerous stage productions of not only, The Christmas Carol -- please god, spare me from another one -- and the epic Nicholas Nickelby which was wonderfully theatrical, and a musical of A Tale of Two Cities -- now on Broadway (I preferred the book). I also thought the film version of Great Expectations with Ethan Hawke was intriguing -- especially since the Miss Havisham scenes were filmed here in Sarasota in the Ringling mansion. The touchstones don't seem to be working very well.

#47...Talbin...oh dear, for you to have originally given a "b*tchy" response means my post must have given offense somehow and for that I AM sorry. If it sounded as though I was saying that you didn't like Dickens because you didn't know anything about him, that was the furthest thing from my mind. I was actually thinking how difficult it would have been for him to crack through the complacency of the privileged to reach their social consciences - perhaps melodrama was the pickaxe he needed. So if I came across as one of those pompous know-it-all academic types, please be assured that I am not. I just like jumping into discussions with both feet.

I fully agree re "leaner, drier, more muscular". Although not as muscular as Moby Dick. And I too use a walk with the dog to "even things out".

>49 tiffin: Dear tiffin, it was nothing you said, and everything I brought to the table before even replying. You most certainly did not come across as a "pompous know-it-all academic type." After thinking about it for just a moment, I realized that I replied with a sort of flip pompousness that your well-written response did not deserve. I, too, had jumped into the discussion with both feet, but used a tone that would have worked better amongst my closest friends - the ones who call me on a b*tchy tone - and not with someone who I don't know and who was being incredibly helpful.

>46 bleuroses: bleu, I think it is important to give books/authors a second or third chance during our lifetimes - as you did with Jane Eyre. I know that many books I once thought dull have improved with (my) age! ;)

> 51 except for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I appear to have read 3 times. At 18, I understood it all. At 26 ish, I half-understood it. At 35, I understood it not at all! Maybe this is that "things we know we know and things we know we don't know" thing and I'm just less arrogant now or something!!

I love that observation, Lyzzy. Some books just don't grow along with us, I guess!

I've been planning to read Middlemarch for about three years now. I bought a gorgeous second-hand hardback edition, hoping that would inspire me ... but so far, nothing. It's not that I don't WANT to read it - I just haven't read it.

The rest of the list includes a lot of books already mentioned: Moby Dick, Proust (even though I have friends who are members of not one, but two (!) Proust discussion clubs), etc. And I'm with Rob when it comes to Henry James and Faulkner. We do not get on well.

Then there are authors I have no intention of ever reading - Tolkein springs to mind.

Ah miss_read, I sympathize on some of your choices. I have started Middlemarch three times but never finished and Proust I finished the first book and started the second but then stalled out.

#54 Dear miss_read,

I love Tolkien, but having met some die-hard Tolkien haters I think I understand your misgivings. You should probably never read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. But gentle reader, Tolkien did have a wry and charming sense of humor, which comes out in some of his shorter works. Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major are two lovely works and the latter is gentle as well. Tolkien also wrote a sweet short story "A Leaf by Niggle," which is magical. So perhaps some rainy day when you need a cheery, cozy book, you might give Tolkien a try. In the meantime, I suggest you pick up a copy of Bored of the Rings (Harvard Lampoon's hysterically funny parody) forthwith. Even die-hard Lord of the Ring lovers like myself find it funny.


P.S. No one should see the movies. They are horrid and destroy the work's loveliness.

P.P.S. As for Middlemarch, I do like it, but I find Dorothea rather trying at times. I much prefer Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. And the BBC series of that book is gorgeous.

I have about a hundred unread books at the moment, including Testament of Youth which has been in my bookcase for over 20 years. I LOVED the tv show but have never opened the book for reasons that are totally beyond me.

Referencing all the worthy tomes above - I hate all the same ones for all the same reasons, most of which date back to HS. After I became a stay at home mother I forced myself to return to the Hardys and Melvilles but even audio did not help.

I used to finish a book, no matter how boring. Then I started giving up after 100 pages. Now, at 57, I toss anything that has proved a bummer by page 50. Life is just too short...

As much as I am trying to persuade myself, I just CANNOT read Don Quixote and Moby Dick.

>58 aluvalibri: I agree with you Paola! Don Quixote or Moby Dick....I don't think so!

But Don Quixote is so funny.

Urania, Bored of the Rings sounds great! I'll keep a lookout for it!

#57 - Romain, can I make a suggestion?

Read The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby!

It is a wonderful book, semi autobiographical and one of the characters is based on Vera Brittain.

I'm sure it will inspire you to read everything else you can find by and about both women - it did me!

I will very definitely never read Moby Dick but I haven't quite given up hope of working my way through Don Quixote one day.

Fleur

I would love to read Winifred Holtby, just as I would love to finally open Testament of Youth. Unfortunately I have never come across ANY Holtby in any form here in New Jersey. I will have to look at interloan as they are sure to have it somewhere in the state.

I am a New Zealander who lived for about 20 years in Britain. I can remember going to bookshops in England - particularly a feminist one on the Charing Cross Road - and there being a whole wall of the green Viragos. I was so broke I used to buy one at a time.

Now here I am, much more solvent, and finding Viragos - or even obscure British authors - is a treasure hunt. I find Viragos on stands of Harlequin Romances outside Mom and Pop second hand book stores. I ask the owners if they have more and they look blank.

But as to Vera Britain I cannot tell you why I don't read this one book. I know it will be good, I know I will enjoy it...

I had Elizabeth and her German Garden in my book case for much the same length of time. I read The Enchanted April but just could not bring myself to open a book about gardening in Prussia in 1900. When I finally did, it was wonderful!

I have just finished The Lady Vanishes by Ethel Lina White. This should have been a Virago and is SO much better than the Hitchcock film. The heroine, far from being the upright conservative girl of the movie, is a rather fast, extremely rude, heiress who offends all her fellow passengers before she even starts her journey. It was hugely enjoyable.

Fleur, I am off to look at interloan. Thank you.

romain, you can get a second-hand copy of Winifred Holtby's South Riding from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-key... for only $1.64!
:)

Got it, thank you. Another parcel coming to the house. My husband hates Amazon :)

Romain, was that the Silver Moon Bookshop? I remember it well. I used to work just around the corner in Cranbourn Street until I moved home to Cornwall a few years ago. I can still visualise the green stand of VMCs in my university bookshop too. If only I had the foresight and the budget to buy a few more ....

Yes indeed it was. Opposite Foyles? I bought a lot of books there and still have many of them. I am reminded, every time I move, of Lawrence Durrell moving with 2 trunks of books and his clothes in a brief case.

romain: I've never been much of a reader of memoirs, but I found Testament of Youth gripping. During our year in England, I lived a few miles from where Vera Brittain is buried in the churchyard of Old Milverton, outside of Warwick. Thanks to fellow Viragoite Marise, who did a little research for me, I finally found the grave, and blogged about it here.

Thanks Rob

Vera Brittain was one of those people who made a difference and I'm not deliberately ignoring her book.

I'm going to have to get it down from its shelf and place it by the bed. It's still in beautiful condition and I can even remember buying it (remaindered) - for $2NZ in a Dunedin bookstore.

I shall be reading Vera Brittain's Testaments of Youth, Friendship and Experience next year for my 999 Challenge. Looking forward to them.

Dear Mother --

I have not read the Harry Potter series but I have watched the movies. I feel like a cheater, but I'd rather read books that don't get made into movies (though then I get so excited when those kinds of books finally do!).

What inconsistency this displays in my soul, I know not; I can only confess how it manifests in my thoughts and actions.

Make her eat all the ear wax and vomit flavoured Bertie Bott's Beans as penance, Mother!

I didn't say that, it was my evil twin.

My dear outrageous socks,

I do not think our blessed Lord will care that you have seen the Harry Potter movies without reading the books. Indeed, Mother Urania has read the books but walked out in the middle of the first movie because she was cold and bored.

tiffin, Mother Urania is shocked at your lack of charity and a certain tendency to evil intent. Go read one Virago in the Naughty Room. If you do not behave, Mother Urania will take away all of your Viragos.

*gulp*

*faints at the thought of such cruel punishment*

........found a good safe hiding place for my VMC's where You Know Who can't find them.....

#76 Mother Urania always knows.

Oops! Didn't see you there Mother! Hmmm! I'm a good girl, I am!

Dear Mother Urania,

I came across this today....

Claire Tomalin reviewed Jenny Hartley’s forthcoming book Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women in the Guardian and called it ‘vivid, intelligent and enthralling’. ‘It is about Dickens setting up in Shepherds Bush in 1847, when Shepherds Bush was farming land outside London – Urania Cottage, a house in which girls from the streets, the prisons and the workhouses, girls who stole and prostituted themselves, wrecking their own lives and seemingly helpless to save themselves, might be changed through kindness and discipline, and so prepared for new lives in the colonies.’ .......

and I couldn't help but think that you, our dear Mother, might have a certain secret ancestral past?

On my continued reading, it was this that caused me to swoon in the pleurisy of the afternoon....

His money came from the millionaire Miss Coutts, but the idea and organisation was all Dickens's, and for 12 years he effectively managed the Home for Homeless Women, installed in Urania Cottage - the name, bestowed by a previous owner, particularly inappropriate, since Urania is another name for Aphrodite, goddess of love.

A spokeswoman for Mother Urania has no comment at this time.

oooh! Goddess of Love! And a nun too!

Paola, hush!

Paola, am I going to have to impound your Viragoes?

</b>Dear Mother, do calm thyself. Shall I fetch you a glass of Pomegranate Fig juice? You're trembling and looking frightfully pale.....

Mother, stay calm, back to the room where nothing much happens - except for SECRET KNITTING.... and reading of the aforementioned book which we will now be ordering en mass. Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women by Jenny Hartleythat is ...

Bleu - Pomegranate Fig juice - what are you triyng to do to poor mother .... she may look even more pale if she ovedoses on that .....

the aforementioned book which we will now be ordering en mass

Hmm, do you think we could get a group discount?

Julie, I thought she might looked flushed.

Bernadette!!!!! You are the ONLY person on LT to own that book!!!!!!

Unfortunately, I don't own it (yet). :-)

I am going to look into finding a copy. I added it as a reminder for myself and because I thought it was a shame that there were no copies listed on LT. :-)

*contemplates adding "urania" as a tag*

Ooo, I love the last line of the Guardian article - "You might see it as the revenge of Urania Aphrodite."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/dec/20/charles-dickens-fallen-women-review

Particularly apropos in conjunction with Message 85.

(ETA link)

Warning - may seriously damage your wallet - plus any resolutions regarding NOT buying books.

On Amazon.co.uk I looked up 'the book' and guess what? Not only does it qualify for a free, yes free, on day delivery but also I can get Dreams from my Father with it for only £16.98.

Methinks this may be a no brainer ....

Oh! Julie! I was just going to take a peek at Amazon! Hmmm!

*Mother Urania fanning herself vigorously* Ladies, I am shocked at the utter lack of discriminating taste shown in hitherto well-behaved young women. Have you forgotten? Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women is on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. And even though said index was abolished in 1966 by Pope Paul VI, I hope you have been reading the current Pope's latest Papal Encyclicals. Along with reinstating the Latin mass, he also plans to bring back the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. I expect he will also have Vatican II declared a work of the Devil. In the meantime, EVERYBODY on this thread (and that includes you Paola) needs to drink three Hell Mary's and perform the following act of contrition: read Moby Dick in its entirety and then write it the whole thing out (by hand) three hundred times, and compose an essay on the experience. Mother Urania is not most pleased at the moment.

Mother's helper, I am....

Hell Mary Recipe

1/2 oz Tequila
1 oz Aquavit
1 dash Tabasco Sauce
1 dash Horseradish Sauce
1 dash Angostura Bitters
8 oz Vegetable Juice
Black Pepper, lots

Hell Mary Directions

Add ingredients to a shaker, fill with V8 juice and shake vigorously.
Add black pepper (lots) to taste.
Serve in a collins glass filled with ice, and
garnish with celery and a lemon wedge.

Not Moby Dick......NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wonder what kind of essay I could produce after three Hell Marys?

bleu,

You'll need a bit more tequila in those Hell Mary's if your going to get through your act of contrition.

sqdancer,
Trust Mother Urania. She doesn't assign three Hell Marys for no reason.

I'm still working on my homework of author connections. Can I have a Hell Mary penance for that, too?

This message also hearkens back to the Naughty Room echoing recently among the posts...

Goodness gracious!!! This just reminded me that I have not even started yet (goes into hiding).

Dearest Paola,

Don't even think that hiding out in a church will grant you sanctuary. I have eaten forbidden fruit and gone over to the other side. I know how to find you (and your Viragoes) any time I want. Baahaha.

Okay, I have not read:

The Illiad
The Odyssey
The Canterbury Tales
Tom Jones
Bleak House
David Copperfield
Moby Dick
Anna Karenina
Ulysses
Lord of the Rings

I did read Clarissa and War & Peace - do those count as penance?

Hie thee to the Naughty Room.

Sigh. Off I go, then.

I've read some of the books mentioned, and haven't read lots of them, but I won't repent because I don't think it matters. However, I do feel guilty about not yet reading Pride and Prejudice. I have seen the Colin Firth version of the movie at least four times though, and I've read most of Austen's other novels. I've come clean here because I don't want anyone to think I'm walking around pretending to have read P&P.

Joyce, I read that last year, so I get to take a high stand here!

Andrew, neither The Odyssey nor The Iliad? Frankly, I'm surprised!

Christina, I own them, they're on my list of books to read before I die, I just haven't got round to reading them yet. I've read some of the ancient Greek plays, some Greek (and Roman) historians, but no epic poetry.

>4 lauralkeet:: Redeeming myself here: I've now read Daphne DuMaurier! I read Rebecca last month. And loved it, of course.

>106 Leseratte2:: However, I will join Andrew in the Naughty Corner b/c I have not read:
The Canterbury Tales
Tom Jones
Bleak House
David Copperfield
Moby Dick
Anna Karenina
Ulysses
Lord of the Rings

But I don't really feel badly about any of that!!

Your chattter's disturbing; I don't like what I hear.
To the N. Room march quickly while I drink holy beer.

Heard in an echo from said Naughty Chamber:

Having read Ulysses, it seemed written specifically to be unreadable, if you like that sort of thing. (I owe my discovery of The Anteroom to that process as they were published around the same time, though, so it definitely ended up being fruitful).

But Moby Dick is a masterwork! (This coming from one with previously-witnessed dubious literary taste, but I'm being utterly honest!)

Note the way echoes employ copious use of parentheses!

I'm into my political biography and 20th century history at the moment - but I put down the Alan Clark Diaries: In Power after 60 pages - instead of being amusing he was VILE and I couldn't manage what is probably a very good historical document! Feel bad I couldn't persevere !!