Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Book Club Discussion for June 2024 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-06-05 20:12:20
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
haven't archived this post yet. have a subscription? use the importer!

Content

Dear Book Club Readers ---

You had an incredible reading month in May, and it would be lovely to hear about the books you're enjoying this month.

Your comments in these Book Club Discussion threads continue to reveal your deep love of great literature, and we would love to hear about how your reading is treating you at the moment.

So, tell us what your June is looking like.

What are you reading at the moment?

Let us know anything that's on your mind, your literary loves, and anything you wish to share or sharpen your thoughts about.

  • Author details

  • Seasonal reads

  • Areas to explore

  • Your current Big Read

  • Complementary art forms

  • Questions about literature

  • Favourite lines and passages

  • Things you're finding difficult

  • Rewarding literary rabbit holes

  • Musings, notes, and marginalia

  • Things you want to recommend

  • Resonant character descriptions

  • General life updates (we're interested)

This is the place to put anything bookish you like, and get other readers weighing in on your thoughts!

Our wonderful Book Club community continues to be a literary oasis thanks to your thoughtful appreciations of the Great Books.

Reading through the recent book discussion threads, one can see what a truly special group of literature lovers we have here:

So thank you so much for being a part of the family, and I hope your month is filled with exciting bookish adventures.

Happy reading!

Files

Previews only

Comments

Charles S.

Lately I’ve been thinking about unreliable narrators. I just finished Willa Cather’s “A Lost Lady” and Somerset Maugham’s “The Moon and Sixpence.” Both of those have narrators or points of view that we can’t quite trust. I’m trying to persuade my local reading group to choose Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” next, where (if I remember correctly) the main narrator is buried about four layers deep. However, I think I’m a gullible reader, because often I don’t catch on to a narrator’s unreliability until someone points it out for me. Maybe with practice I can become more suspicious!

Nidia

Hi, I’m new to the book club. I just finished The Master and Margarita and really appreciated the lectures to get through it. It was a little trippy for me but I did enjoy the novel within the novel quite a bit. I’ll be picking up Jane Eyre next which I haven’t read since high school. I also just got the Amor Towles “a Table for Two” and am enjoying the short stories. Maybe I’ll follow along with the book club in real time someday, I just had things on my shelf before joining. What I struggle with the most is trying to slow down. I’m a speed demon by nature and will miss things if the novel becomes a slog to get through.

Jeanya

Does anyone else see Crime & Punishment in Edgar Allan Poe's SS The Tell Tale Heart. Clarissa is fascinating but slow and painful reading . Is not Miss Howes treatment oh Hickman as sexist as Clarissa's judgements on men? Does anyone know which edition of Montaigne we will be reading. I come to the end of my membership at the end of July I think until then, Fair Winds.

Anna B.

Hey all, I just found a used copy of Kafka’s Short Stories- Modern Library edition. Can’t wait for when we touch on these later this summer.

Christopher Cassidy

I don't know if this is useful for any one else but I thought I'd share my entirely digital method of reading and note taking. I keep trying analogue, because I am attracted to it in an ideological way - I love the idea of a physical library of books full of my notes and highlights, walls full of sticky notes and boxes full of record cards. But my brain just doesn't seem to like it, and I feel resistance all the way. This is the most fluid digital system I have created, if anybody has any tips or refinements, or alternative methods let me know, I'm fascinated by the different techiques people use in their creative pursuits TOOLS Kindle (I have an Oasis because I think I'm fancy) KIndle for Mac App Obsidian App (you could use evernote, roam, notion, scrivener or apple notes but for me this is the best, and its free) READING Read the full text on Kindle (walking, on buses, sneakily on a work computer, on the loo, in dark mode under the covers when your girlfriend is trying to sleep) Highlight until your heart's content Don't be afraid to reread your kindle book MAKE A BOOK NOTE When finished create a note for the book in Obsidian I title mine eg. "Steinbeck, J (1952) East of Eden" Open your desktop kindle app and go through your highlights When you discover a significant one highlight it in Blue (Kindle auto-highlights in yellow, this will help it stand out) In your book note, write a reference eg "Steinbeck.1952.8 Memories Mixed with Fable" When you need a more mindless task, or when you've finished a part of the novel Turn each of these references into a note of its own, linked to the book note in page order You can use 'Go to Location' (eg pg. 8) on the kindle app to find your reference Now the fun starts CHARACTERS Create a note for characters e.g. "Steinbeck 1952 Characters" Create a heading for significant characters e.g. "# Tom Hamilton" Copy the links from your book note relating to this character and paste them under the heading If your character note becomes unmanageable you can create a note for each character linked to this central note If you want to expand on a character you can then consult your yellow highlights You might want to just list these rather than extracting, you can always look them up pretty quickly once you have a reference You could use each of these to write a character profile, or look at relationships by having two notes open at the same time Of course you can also compare characters from multiple works as well I think these note lists provide you with two great overviews of the novel, now you can go deeper THEMES I then create a note for each significant theme that I want to write about Again I use the process of making a list from that central book note What is handy about Obsidian is that it creates two way links, so if you go through your quotations one at a time, you can add a link the quote to a theme note and when you open the theme note the quote will be listed there (that will make more sense when you try it, its not as complicated as I'm making it sound) CONNECTIONS Some of the theme notes can be quite specific to the novel, but I generally want my books to talk to eachother, so I will create general topic notes, that these more detailed notes can slide under. I use the chapter titles from Bennett and Royle's awesome An Introduction to Literature, Theory and Criticism for my general topic titles (listed below) For instance one of the topics that arose for me in Steinbeck is how some characters have had to adapt to their environment in order to survive, and that sometimes, creativity and difference are sacrificed, other times these elements are necessary for the individual. So that loose thought goes in a note called "Steinbeck.1952 Adaptation, Survival and Creativity" and can be found, not only in the Steinbeck.1952 Themes note but also under the general notes 11: Feelings; 15: Wounds; 25: Ideology and 12: Creative Writing Again the joy is perhaps in making the lists of notes into mini-essays, that can then be linked together, so you start to build a huge web. And for what purpose? Well for me, mainly fun :) 1 The Beginning 2 Readers and Reading 3 The Author 4 The Text and the World 5 The Uncanny 6 Monuments 7 Narrative 8 Character 9 Voice 10 Figures and Tropes 11 Feelings 12 Creative Writing 13 Laughter 14 The Tragic 15 Wounds 16 History 17 Me 18 Eco 19 Animals 20 Ghosts 21 Body 22 Moving Pictures 23 Sexual Difference 24 God 25 Ideology 26 Love 27 Desire 28 Queer 29 Suspense 30 Racial Difference 31 The Colony 32 Mutant 33 The Performative 34 Secrets 35 The Postmodern 36 Pleasure 37 War 38 The end

Angelina
>>140915939

I finished Jane Eyre last night! It was my first read and I am obsessed with it. I have already re-read the end twice. I loved how complex Jane and Rochester were described. They truly belong together. I think I will re-read the end again tonight. I have started Wuthering Heights this morning. This is a second read for me. Didn't like it at all first time round. But I guess it all went over my head. Now with guidance ... Also the audiobook read by Juliet Stevenson a huge plus!

Carol Keller

I have been reading from the new collection of short stories by Stephen King called "You Like it Darker". What I've read has been enjoyable, but still not dark enough! I finished John Williams' "Stoner". It was highly recommended by someone I follow on Instagram and I give it 3/5 stars. It's well written, but so bleak. I read part of Genji but it's not holding my interest. Especially after just finishing Pride and Prejudice which I found to be dull. They are both way too much like a reality dating shows which I hate. I am reading Middlemarch following the original publication schedule and finished the section entitled Three Love Problems. This book I love! It's very hard to not go on, but that causes me to summarize each chapter which helps me remember better and jogs my memory when I go back to it. Middlemarch is an interesting companion read to Pride and Prejudice, I think there are many similar themes... I'm comparing Mrs Garth to Mrs Bennet...The class and social structures..quick marriages...But it's so much richer and more interesting. For me, Eliot is a much better writer.

Bobbe Nunes
>>140985665

This comment was wonderful, inspiring, thought provoking on many levels, a generous offering, thank you for your work . . . makes me want to hum Cat Stevens: A Million Ways to Be . . . to imagine how various our desires and need to read. I have given myself permission to fold down the corners to what I consider the gems while reading . . . I am activating the fact that paper has "memory" in this way, I do not need to mark but when I reread I can fold down or up from the corner and follow the point provided by the bottom or top edge of the paper to satisfy my curiosity and kindle my memories. I also find that I read several books at one time and this method takes me to the book and provides a quick way to become reacquainted and inspired to continue where I left off.

nicole gravel

Hello everyone! I am reading Martin Puchner's Culture, A New World History. I had met him in a course on world literature on Coursera. A grand tour around the world, from nefertiti and amhenotep to luis de Camoes's Lusiad

nicole gravel

As I truly cherish this book and truly want to share it with you, let me quote the last lines of the Introduction: ...A new story of culture emerges, one of engagement across barriers of time and place,, of surprising connections and subterranean influences. It's not always a pretty story,and shouldn't be presented as such, but it's the only one we've got: the history of humans as a culture-producing species. It's the story of us.

Jack King

These monthly discussions are my favorite. I can't always keep up with the reading depending on what else is going on in my life but I like getting a sense of which wonderful rabbit holes everyones' reading journeys are taking them. I got taken in by Moliere's plays and especially his tumultuous life. Almost finished reading Bulgakov's incredible introduction to Moliere's life - "The Life of Monsieur de Molière: A Portrait by Mikhail Bulgakov." I'm also reading some chapters in Russian. I'm building a library of books in my collection with a significant number of titles from the most discussed Hardcore Literature reading lists. I got a couple Jane Austin books and plan to add some other oft mentioned books such as Anna Karenina, Middlemarch and others.

Angelina
>>140933502

I got a used copy in German, me too I am eagerly awaiting the lectures !