Sunday Morning Book Thread - 10-01-2023 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever
guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

(NOTE: I realize that there is a very serious situation going on in Israel right now. However, let's try to stay on topic in the comments for the Sunday Morning Book Thread. No doubt CBD's post-Book Thread will address the Israeli situation.)

PIC NOTE

This is the "banned book" display in the library where I work (but do not work for). As usual, it contains a mix of classics such as Harper Lee'sTo Kill a Mockingbird and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath along with LTBTQ+ literature, as though they are equivalent in quality. Naturally, NONE of these books are actually "banned" in any conventional sense as they are part of our university's collection of literature. No one is raising up a storm to get them removed from the shelves, as far as I know. But I seriously doubt that anyone is lining up to check them out, either.

MORE ON RECOMMENDATIONS (the Moron Recommendation are below!)

The videos below showed up in my YouTube feed recently. The top video shows a young man who finished reading Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time Series and his own recommendations for why you should read the series. The second video is from a woman who recently finished reading Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (otherwise known as Remembrance of Things Past) and provides her recommendation for why you should read that series. (I would have embedded both videos, but Sarah turned off that ability so I'll just include the links.)

• Should You Read The Wheel Of Time? (Spoiler Free)
• Why and How to Read the 7 Volumes of Proust's In Search of Lost Time

I was fascinated by both YouTubers' reactions of reading those series, as each series is very, very different from the other. Wheel of Time is a 14-book epic fantasy series. In Search of Lost Time is a seven-volume "autofiction" about one man's life journey through French society and culture. However, their reactions to their reading experience share some interesting parallels. You can clearly tell that each reader has had a transformative reading experience over the course of reading each series.

Conor spent over a year reading Jordan's magnum opus. I did something similar from November 2021 through December 2022, reading one book a month until it was finished. It was my second readthrough, so I already knew what to expect. It was Conor's first time, so he was able to get to know the characters and story with fresh eyes and a new perspective, as someone who is relatively new to the field of fantasy fiction. You can clearly tell that he's emotionally affected by his reading experience--it had a profound impact on him.

Sarah spent two full years reading Proust's magnum opus. Like Conor, she considers it to be a transformative experience for her as a reader. Each volume in the series had more to offer her than the previous volume. She is effusive in her praise of Proust's writing style, even though she admits that the story is relatively "plotless" in comparison to other novels. Mostly it seems to be about one man's recollections of his experiences growing up in France and his interactions with the people around him as he navigates the treacherous social circles of high French society at the time. Like Conor, you can tell that she has been "marked" by this experience, so much so that other books may not hold as much meaning or interest for her by comparison.

Both Conor and Sarah give mad props to Jordan and Proust, respectively, for their depictions of details and characters. They equate the characters to old friends that they are eager to reacquaint themselves with, though Sarah says it may be a decade or more before she re-engages with Proust. Both of these YouTubers also feel that the series that they read had an immensely satisfying ending, that the reading journey they each took over months and years led to a worthy payoff. Should you read either series? I suppose that's entirely up to you and your own interests. Even though I have not read any Proust, I can clearly see how he impacted literature as a whole and the literary fiction genre in particular, just by hearing Sarah describe his style. I also flipped through it a bit as I have two translations on the bookshelves outside my office. Robert Jordan has had tremendous influence on the fantasy genre, regardless of whether or not you enjoy his series. Sometimes it's worth getting to know authors only because of how they have shaped the writers that came after them.

BOOKS BY MORONS

We've got a couple of interesting contributions today:

Matt Dunlap (AoSHQ nic: Aewl) with my modest offering to the book thread. My Cancer Journey: Stage 4 to Cured. It is a novella length memoir. Book blurb is as follows: In May of 2021, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer. I had joined the men's club that no man wants to join. Prostate cancer is the second most frequent cancer diagnosis made in men and the fifth leading cause of death worldwide. This is my story of trials and tribulations of cancer treatment with a surprising alternative cure. It's available for Kindle now and the paperback version should be available soon. [Looks like the paperback version is available now! - PS]

Comment: Just an FYI, but September is apparently Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. Didn't know that until I looked it up...

Hello all, my name is Isabelle Roberts and I am a long time lurker. I have finally decided to try my hand at writing, and I decided that I would write the kind of book that I love the most, a 19th century book about a young woman going out into the world for the first time. It is called Charlotte Miller, Governess, and I really hope that you enjoy reading it! Here is the summary:

Charlotte Miller is a young girl sent by her mother out into the world of nineteenth century England to make her way as the governess to the grandchildren of the Fifteenth Earl of Derby.

Among the problems of her troublesome students and indifferent employer, Charlotte must navigate a world far above her station while discovering secrets of her own past that she could have never imagined.

Told in the style of Jane Austen and Alice Bronte, Charlotte Miller, Governess is a touching work of a young woman facing the difficulties of the world and forging her own path.

Here's the link: https://amzn.to/3LJDid3

Thanks!

Comment: A couple of weeks ago I wrote a Thread about historical fiction and how one of the defining characteristics is historical accuracy. If you go to the link for Isabelle's book, you can find at least one historical anomaly just by looking closely at the cover.

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

Woohoooooo

I'm the Number One Book Pimp!

Get off my corner, bitchez!

Posted by: All Hail Eris at October 01, 2023 10:49 AM (8qu4N)

Comment: Because sometimes this just needs to be said. Also, this comment cracks me up whenever I read it!

Finished the second book in James Rollins' Moonfall series (feels like it will be a trilogy). I enjoyed it for the characters and worldbuilding, but it should come with a Fantasy Trope punchcard:

1. The magical savior child
2. Who is more powerful than she can imagine
3. Quest to retrieve artifacts that can save the world -- OR DOOM IT
4. Flying critter Deus Ex Machina
5. Royals switched at birth

Fun, but at 700 pages it needed some severe pruning.

I appreciate the detailed maps. You can never have enough maps.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at October 01, 2023 11:03 AM (8qu4N)

Comment: Some time ago, I noted that there's nothing wrong with a book series that seems to hit all the right notes, even if they may be cliche at times. As long as the story is competently told, who cares? Genre fiction can often be formulaic, simply because the readers are *expecting* certain tropes in that genre. A mystery that is solved in the first five pages isn't much of a story, after all, unless that's the leadup to a genre switch or the setup for an even deeper, more complex mystery.

I am a total sucker for epistolary fiction. Recently reread Dracula, which I had forgotten was epistolary. It's one of those books I read as a kid and COMPLETELY missed all the nuances of. I'd recommend a reread if, like me, you haven't read it as an adult. (I'll note, while there definitely are sexual undertones that went way over my head as a kid, it's nowhere near as much as modern readers make it out to be. There is also quite a lot of Christian imagery that I can tell goes over the head of modern readers.)

(Side note, there's a couple of bits where a Yorkshire dialect is rendered phonetically, complete with all the Yorkshire-unique terms and slang...and I didn't need the translations in the book's endnotes. You know you've read too many old English novels when...?)

Posted by: Mrs. Peel at October 01, 2023 11:04 AM (Y+AMd)

Comment: I may have to add Dracula to my bucket list. I've heard good things about Bram Stoker's version of the vampire legend, and I've greatly enjoyed stories that are based off of Stoker's novel in some way, such as Kim Newman's Anno Dracula, which also has epistolary elements in the form of Dr. Seward's journal entries. (Interestingly, they take the form of voice recordings on wax cylinders, rather than actual diary entries, which is a little weird now that I think about it.)

I'm flinging convention to the wind and not wearing pants. (I am in a dress, though, so some modesty). My kids picked up a stack of "easy reads" at the library for de-stressing in the midst of our sale/move, and one of the titles was Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz.

I adored the movie with Anton Yelchin, but had no idea Koontz wrote the book it was based on. I'm not a fan of his, but I started reading the book, and it's (gasp) better than the movie! Richer character details, better background writing, my own imagination filling in the holes--which look surprisingly like the movie, because that's what I'm thinking of as I read--I'm thoroughly enjoying it. And it's a series, so I have more. Always a good thing!

Posted by: Moki at October 01, 2023 09:49 AM (JrN/x)

Comment: I remember enjoying the movie with Anton Yelchin. Though I did find the ending to be very sad. Not sure if the book is the same way, or would have the same emotional punch. Still, it may be worth reading. I think I've always pictured Koontz as a Stephen King knock-off or something and have never really given his works a fair shake.

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

• The Last King of Osten Ard Book 2 - Empire of Grass by Tad Williams -- Ancient Nabban is on the brink of civil war while an even more ancient enemy threatens all of the lands of Osten Ard in a misguided quest for vengeance.
• The Last King of Osten Ard Book 3 - Into the Narrowdark by Tad Williams -- This is really the first half of the last volume, but Tad is incapable of writing trilogies, so the last book is often split into two volumes.

That's about all I have for this week. Thank you for all of your kind words regarding the Sunday Morning Book Thread. This is a very special place. You are very special people (in all the best ways!). The kindness, generosity, and wisdom of the Moron Horde knows no bounds. Let's keep reading!

If you have any suggestions for improvement, reading recommendations, or discussion topics that you'd like to see on the Sunday Morning Book Thread, you can send them to perfessor dot squirrel at-sign gmail dot com. Your feedback is always appreciated! You can also take a virtual tour of OUR library at libib.com/u/perfessorsquirrel. Since I added sections for AoSHQ, I now consider it OUR library, rather than my own personal fiefdom...

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 10-01-23 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

(Huggy Squirrel makes a mental note to get his prostate checked!)

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

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