SO impressed and proud of you finishing Solenoid - you are my inspiration. I know if you can finish it, I can too. Ideally I'll return to it this winter, my summer attention span isn't lending itself to something so philosophical and frankly bleak. 'I do not mourn the time I spent reading it' really made me laugh - sometimes books are merely an achievement and little else.
you absolutely can finish when the time is right - I am glad you didn't push through or you would have hated it, like me with C&P, which I will return to this winter, so we will finally finish both our buddy reads 😂
CONGRATULATIONS on finishing Solenoid!!!! 🥳🥳🥳 I’m so proud of you!!!
I also journaled hard on the cazimi/lit candles/did all the intentions. I love that you love CHANI too 🥹 Love love love the sneak peak into your journal and the cameo from Minnie. I wanna snuggle her.
I have to say my reread of The Shining is giving me so much life right now that I’m secretly praying for a movie remake that isn’t so cold and flat. Better yet, I would take a 10 hour series.
Chani has taught me more about life and love than any non-author on this planet godbless her!
this take on The Shining is SUPER intriguing. I loved the movie but it has been ages since I read the novel. King notoriously hated the adaptation, and yet they went and made Dr Sleep which was just a bit off. Let's petition for a series - who would be the showrunner.... like a Ryan Murphy dark or Mike Flanagan with a bit more flair...
There is so much the movie left out/got wrong/failed to capture. Reading it as an adult, I now view the movie as a huge failure (in comparison to the book) and it needs to stand alone. I do think the movie is interesting if I don’t think about the book version at all. 😂
Mike Flanagan for sure! I actually enjoyed the Doctor Sleep movie (read the book as well and liked it better than The Shining adaptation. Felt more warm and full of life.)
Congrats on finishing Solenoid!! 👏 currently reading two semi-challenging books, story collection Panics by Barbara Molinard and John McPhee's nonfiction Rising from the Plains; audiobook/treadmill book is Stephenie Meyer's The Chemist
I do hope that both the Leo Asker and Anna Koray series show up in your Nordic Noir guide. I've read both (including the most recent entries as ARCs), and they were 5-star reads.
Oops; I'm sorry! I love both series, which have a similar vibe, and read the most recent in each virtually back-to-back, but Nicola Solvinic's Anna Koray series (The Hunter's Daughter and The Sister's Curse) is set into Ohio.
Tell me more about your first Silent Book Club meetup. Was there talking of any kind? I don’t know that virus-averse me wants to just sit around with other reading respirators 😣, but I’m awfully intrigued anyway.
I DNF’ed House of Mirth in June. I kept asking myself “why?” each night after reading it. Like as in “why do I care?” Turns out I didn’t.
There was an optional talking portion of the club, but your experience will depend on where your club meets. Ours is at a local coffee shop that has both outside & inside seating. The organizer sets up outside and people can sit wherever, then invites everyone to the patio to say what they are reading. You have a genuine concern there about those respirators!
i love a mystery audiobook - i know you said true crime, but classics like an agatha christie poirot really deliver as an audiobook experience!!! i will wait patiently for the nordic noir guide - like many i'm only really familiar with stieg larsson and i know there's a whole world out there.
I want to read Dissolution from your vibes alone! I love how you’re getting congratulated for finishing Solenoid 🤣👻. I’ve never read it and I’m not sure I’m up for it. I’m glad you don’t mourn the time you spend reading it.
Oh and thank you for sharing my iconic first sentences post!!
Girl the shout out!!! 🥹 congrats on getting through Solenoid. I hope it’s a book that gets bigger in your mind the more time passes and you forget the chore of reading it (maybe that’s Middlemarch for me, because of self imposed deadlines…always). Also love the seasons where I am more article-prone than books, it’s a harder thing to quantify but it’s a good muscle switch up. Hope you get so much more slow and gentle reading done this month!!!
just get some coffee or tea in you and you will totally un-curmudgeon when you see what everyone else is reading and want to talk about it with them ! 😂
Best book I read in June--Middlemarch. Thanks to your remarks here,Natalie, I find I am in the same reading group with you that Haley leads online. "Ah," you say, "but we are reading it a section at a time--you didn't finish it in June did you?" Not quite, but after a certain point I was hooked and needed to read ahead. I finished it on the 4th. I'm so glad I finally cracked what I'd thought was an old-fashioned tome. It was wonderful.
Comments on a few works I completed in June: reading Aeschylus’ Oresteia, listening to The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, and watching for the first time Stanley Kramer’s “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Common theme: the battle between “justice” and “order.”
I found the Oresteia brilliant in many ways but confusing and disturbing in its conclusion. I loved the way Aeschylus brought several characters on stage for brief periods making important points but then when they left they were never to return. This started off in “Agamemnon” with the watcher who was waiting for the fire signal to alert Clytemnestra that her husband’s side had won the war at Troy, and that he would soon return. Similar brief “shining” moments for Cassandra, and Agamemnon himself, in the first play and for Elektra in “The Libation Bearers.” And then the different uses Aeschylus employed the Chorus for across the 3 plays, ending up with the Furies being key characters in “Eumenides.” I also appreciated the way for the most part in “Eumenides” both sides got to make their argument. The final wrap-up though seemed to me unjust. Yes, order is important, and I’m all for forgiveness, but this seemed too easy, and has happened so often throughout history, the side that was forced to give in has almost always been either been the much-abused side or has represented that side.
So little regard for the story of Iphigenia. I realize we’re talking about a different culture and an ancient time but it reminded me of injustices in our history where maintaining or restoring “order” seemed to be much more important than justice. Compromise of 1877 comes to mind. On the other hand, what was the alternative? Were we going to fight the Civil War again?
The Personal Librarian added to my understanding of this “justice vs. order” tradeoff. This novel is based on the life of Belle Da Costa Greene, a woman who worked for the fabulously rich financier J.P. Morgan and helped amass his rare books and manuscripts collection. She came from a Black family in the late 19th century where the father fought for civil rights and did not hide the fact that he had Black ancestry while the mother wanted her children to pass for White since so much of the country would not allow them to prosper as Blacks.
I didn’t realize until I read this book how critical the Supreme Court was in reinstating the “2nd class or worse” status for Blacks when it declared in 1883 the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional. That explains why the 15th Amendment declaring illegal attempts to keep men from voting based on their color or race was not enforced, and gave rise to Jim Crow laws. It took until the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 to correct the injustice done by the Supreme Court in 1883 and elsewhere.
Some of the same agonizing questions came up in “Judgment at Nuremberg.” The movie is 3 hours long but went quickly for me, perhaps because I watch many movies the way I read books, relatively little at a time. And Kramer did a great job of keeping the movie moving with enough side stories to keep my interest high. I particularly liked Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland but most of the acting I found first-rate. Four German judges were on trial a few years after World War II ended. At least 2 American characters in the movie argued that the German judges on trial should not be found guilty. Otherwise the German people would see their convictions as a judgment on all German people and they would be less likely to help in the fight against Communism. I was reminded of the January 6 folks being pardoned no matter how violent they were.
SO impressed and proud of you finishing Solenoid - you are my inspiration. I know if you can finish it, I can too. Ideally I'll return to it this winter, my summer attention span isn't lending itself to something so philosophical and frankly bleak. 'I do not mourn the time I spent reading it' really made me laugh - sometimes books are merely an achievement and little else.
you absolutely can finish when the time is right - I am glad you didn't push through or you would have hated it, like me with C&P, which I will return to this winter, so we will finally finish both our buddy reads 😂
CONGRATULATIONS on finishing Solenoid!!!! 🥳🥳🥳 I’m so proud of you!!!
I also journaled hard on the cazimi/lit candles/did all the intentions. I love that you love CHANI too 🥹 Love love love the sneak peak into your journal and the cameo from Minnie. I wanna snuggle her.
I have to say my reread of The Shining is giving me so much life right now that I’m secretly praying for a movie remake that isn’t so cold and flat. Better yet, I would take a 10 hour series.
Chani has taught me more about life and love than any non-author on this planet godbless her!
this take on The Shining is SUPER intriguing. I loved the movie but it has been ages since I read the novel. King notoriously hated the adaptation, and yet they went and made Dr Sleep which was just a bit off. Let's petition for a series - who would be the showrunner.... like a Ryan Murphy dark or Mike Flanagan with a bit more flair...
Yes! Bless chani!
There is so much the movie left out/got wrong/failed to capture. Reading it as an adult, I now view the movie as a huge failure (in comparison to the book) and it needs to stand alone. I do think the movie is interesting if I don’t think about the book version at all. 😂
Mike Flanagan for sure! I actually enjoyed the Doctor Sleep movie (read the book as well and liked it better than The Shining adaptation. Felt more warm and full of life.)
I think I just couldn’t get over the hat. The lady in the hat was so weird and not in a good way lol
Hahaha very true
Congrats on finishing Solenoid!! 👏 currently reading two semi-challenging books, story collection Panics by Barbara Molinard and John McPhee's nonfiction Rising from the Plains; audiobook/treadmill book is Stephenie Meyer's The Chemist
::takes a bow:: I have heard of none of those so I look forward to your thoughts on them!
I do hope that both the Leo Asker and Anna Koray series show up in your Nordic Noir guide. I've read both (including the most recent entries as ARCs), and they were 5-star reads.
I have The Mountain King on hold at the library! But I haven't heard of Anna Koray - who is the author? They are Nordic?
Oops; I'm sorry! I love both series, which have a similar vibe, and read the most recent in each virtually back-to-back, but Nicola Solvinic's Anna Koray series (The Hunter's Daughter and The Sister's Curse) is set into Ohio.
Love your footnote audiobook confession, lol.
Tell me more about your first Silent Book Club meetup. Was there talking of any kind? I don’t know that virus-averse me wants to just sit around with other reading respirators 😣, but I’m awfully intrigued anyway.
I DNF’ed House of Mirth in June. I kept asking myself “why?” each night after reading it. Like as in “why do I care?” Turns out I didn’t.
Minnie!!! Such a stunner.
"Turns out I didn't" 😂
There was an optional talking portion of the club, but your experience will depend on where your club meets. Ours is at a local coffee shop that has both outside & inside seating. The organizer sets up outside and people can sit wherever, then invites everyone to the patio to say what they are reading. You have a genuine concern there about those respirators!
Hmmm, I should see if there’s one near me. I think my problem with reading in public is that I get distracted people watching.
i love a mystery audiobook - i know you said true crime, but classics like an agatha christie poirot really deliver as an audiobook experience!!! i will wait patiently for the nordic noir guide - like many i'm only really familiar with stieg larsson and i know there's a whole world out there.
ok thats an excellent suggestion, classic mysteries on audiobook! I could get behind that if they aren't too stylized to follow.
I want to read Dissolution from your vibes alone! I love how you’re getting congratulated for finishing Solenoid 🤣👻. I’ve never read it and I’m not sure I’m up for it. I’m glad you don’t mourn the time you spend reading it.
Oh and thank you for sharing my iconic first sentences post!!
it's hilarious I feel like i finished a dissertation lol
Brava!🥇🥇🥇
Girl the shout out!!! 🥹 congrats on getting through Solenoid. I hope it’s a book that gets bigger in your mind the more time passes and you forget the chore of reading it (maybe that’s Middlemarch for me, because of self imposed deadlines…always). Also love the seasons where I am more article-prone than books, it’s a harder thing to quantify but it’s a good muscle switch up. Hope you get so much more slow and gentle reading done this month!!!
slow and gentle is right!! it takes all my effort to slow the EFF DOWN. Articles are a treat though when I let myself read without ulterior motives
My first Silent Book Club outing is in two weeks! I am excited and will probably be the group curmudgeon wanting to just read and not engage 😇
just get some coffee or tea in you and you will totally un-curmudgeon when you see what everyone else is reading and want to talk about it with them ! 😂
Ooh yes, this is a very wise suggestion and prediction that will 100% come true. Will report back.
Best book I read in June--Middlemarch. Thanks to your remarks here,Natalie, I find I am in the same reading group with you that Haley leads online. "Ah," you say, "but we are reading it a section at a time--you didn't finish it in June did you?" Not quite, but after a certain point I was hooked and needed to read ahead. I finished it on the 4th. I'm so glad I finally cracked what I'd thought was an old-fashioned tome. It was wonderful.
That is beautiful!! If I had more time, I think I would be right there ahead with you, it certainly is addictive.
I have similar feelings about audiobooks and Murderland is on my TBR, so maybe this is my sign.
its very good as audiobooks go!!
Comments on a few works I completed in June: reading Aeschylus’ Oresteia, listening to The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, and watching for the first time Stanley Kramer’s “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Common theme: the battle between “justice” and “order.”
I found the Oresteia brilliant in many ways but confusing and disturbing in its conclusion. I loved the way Aeschylus brought several characters on stage for brief periods making important points but then when they left they were never to return. This started off in “Agamemnon” with the watcher who was waiting for the fire signal to alert Clytemnestra that her husband’s side had won the war at Troy, and that he would soon return. Similar brief “shining” moments for Cassandra, and Agamemnon himself, in the first play and for Elektra in “The Libation Bearers.” And then the different uses Aeschylus employed the Chorus for across the 3 plays, ending up with the Furies being key characters in “Eumenides.” I also appreciated the way for the most part in “Eumenides” both sides got to make their argument. The final wrap-up though seemed to me unjust. Yes, order is important, and I’m all for forgiveness, but this seemed too easy, and has happened so often throughout history, the side that was forced to give in has almost always been either been the much-abused side or has represented that side.
So little regard for the story of Iphigenia. I realize we’re talking about a different culture and an ancient time but it reminded me of injustices in our history where maintaining or restoring “order” seemed to be much more important than justice. Compromise of 1877 comes to mind. On the other hand, what was the alternative? Were we going to fight the Civil War again?
The Personal Librarian added to my understanding of this “justice vs. order” tradeoff. This novel is based on the life of Belle Da Costa Greene, a woman who worked for the fabulously rich financier J.P. Morgan and helped amass his rare books and manuscripts collection. She came from a Black family in the late 19th century where the father fought for civil rights and did not hide the fact that he had Black ancestry while the mother wanted her children to pass for White since so much of the country would not allow them to prosper as Blacks.
I didn’t realize until I read this book how critical the Supreme Court was in reinstating the “2nd class or worse” status for Blacks when it declared in 1883 the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional. That explains why the 15th Amendment declaring illegal attempts to keep men from voting based on their color or race was not enforced, and gave rise to Jim Crow laws. It took until the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 to correct the injustice done by the Supreme Court in 1883 and elsewhere.
Some of the same agonizing questions came up in “Judgment at Nuremberg.” The movie is 3 hours long but went quickly for me, perhaps because I watch many movies the way I read books, relatively little at a time. And Kramer did a great job of keeping the movie moving with enough side stories to keep my interest high. I particularly liked Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland but most of the acting I found first-rate. Four German judges were on trial a few years after World War II ended. At least 2 American characters in the movie argued that the German judges on trial should not be found guilty. Otherwise the German people would see their convictions as a judgment on all German people and they would be less likely to help in the fight against Communism. I was reminded of the January 6 folks being pardoned no matter how violent they were.
Ah, the age-old questions.