lunabee34

Link to Volume 3 and Reading Schedule

Chapters 42-49 pgs 226-314

( spoilers )

Link to Volume 3 and Reading Schedule

Chapters 34-36 pgs 1-114

( SPOILERS )

Link to Volume 2 and Reading Schedule

Chapters 32-33 pages 320-end

( spoilers )

I nominated Moths again this year, so here's the link to my promo post.

Also, you should know that Fiona is now dismissing me with, "That's so 1900s, mom." *dies laughing*

Link to Volume 2 + Reading Schedule

Chapters 21-22 pages 117-156
Chapters 23-25 pages 157-206

( spoilers for novel )

Marriage: Nadine remarks that marriage quickly matures women. The novel argues three options for society marriages--"'amiable friendship,'" "'direct antagonism,'" or rare true love (134). Nadine argues that no one can stay in love. She also argues that "'love is like all the other fine arts--it should be treated scientifically'" (177).

Link to Volume 2 and Reading Schedule

Chapters 14-16 pages 1-62

( Spoilers )

Here are the final two entries of the read along.

( Chapters 10-11 )

( Chapter 12-End )

Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything by Barbara Ehrenreich

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is . . . a really weird book, and I don't know what to think about it.

The basic premise (and it's not spoiling anything to say this because Ehrenreich tells you this in the first chapter) is that she has an experience she can't explain as a late teen and continues to periodically have similar experiences throughout her life though none with the intensity of that first instance.

The book uses a journal she wrote starting when she was 12 and going through her undergraduate degree to help her construct the narrative, and part of the weirdness of this book is the erudition of the journal and discussion in it of what she was reading. I mean, I don't think she's lying about it because the journal exists and she can just show it to people to prove that as a thirteen year old she really was writing disquisitions on the existential meaning of life and Camus or whatever. But it's just weird to read that level of intellectual prowess in the journal entries from someone that age when I struggle to get my college students to successfully read Kant. LOL

I appreciate that she comes to the conclusion that connecting to other people is the answer to her existential questions, but the conclusion of the book is so abrupt and also, well, weird. She spends the whole book being uber rational and scientific and exploring all kinds of explanations for her experience, including dissociation because of her abusive family (which I think, honestly, is the most likely explanation), only to end the book in the last like ten pages by saying she's now not really an atheist and thinks there's an Other out there that she connected with. I think that's actually a fine conclusion to come to; it's just that she doesn't spend enough time on it compared on the 200+ previous pages of how nothing like that could be possible for the argument to be successful.



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( Charles Chesnutt, Tanith Lee, James Joyce, Ouida, poetry, and Victorian lit crit )

Link to Volume 1 and Reading Schedule

Chapters 4-5

( Spoilers for Novel )

Can't wait to see what you think.

Are people still interested in doing a read along of Princess Napraxine by Ouida? It is a true Victorian triple decker, so the book is in three volumes.

You can find the three volumes here (the ones with the blue covers): https://archive.org/details/texts?tab=collection&query=princess+napraxine.

If people are still interested, I will make up a reading schedule of 50 pages per week. Does that sound doable? Let me know.