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Book Club Discussion for November 2024 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-11-06 21:17:08
Imported:
2026-06
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Dear Book Club Readers ---

You had another incredible reading month in October, 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 November 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!

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Comments

Ruth Poe

Ben -- oh please, oh please, may we read Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport? For those of us in the US, it will be such a comfort since He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is coming back into power. I read this book at the end of the last administration and I found it completely tuned to all the maternal and social anx that I was going through. The challenge of it became quite reasonable and reassuring in a weird way. The fact that her repetition of The Fact That was only a place holder. I would love to read this again in the context of your bookclub. There is so much to unpack and savor. Thx.

Phil

Ben I vote for Beowulf and the Aeneid sometime in the future to continue the epic poem theme. And a real treat would be the Kalevala .

Victor Bieniek

I finished Song of Solomon, which was wonderful! I will definitely read more Toni Morrison. I needed something fun and distracting so I read Saturation Point by Adrian Tchaikovsky which succeeded in both categories. Now making way through Dante's Inferno, which I find very challenging.

p.j.

I’m new, and what brought me to the club was my plan to take another crack at Infinite Jest. DFW’s short stories make my spine tingle and my eyes water like a kundalini awakening, yet I knew I would need some academic guidance if I was going to read IJ the way it needs to be read. And then I found Ben on youtube. IF will be my January read. This past year I read Anna Karennina, Jane Ayre, A Gentleman in Moscow, Mrs. Dalloway, a load of short story collection: Tolstoy, Lydia Davis… a bunch of memoirs, non- fiction. I wont even begin to guess what Ben plans for 2025. But i am excited to delve into Dickens in December (i can use a bit of comfort reading at the moment) and hope to keep up with the 2025 syllabus. Next year, after IJ, I plan to read Paradise Lost, Count of Monte Cristo, Persuasion, and FINALLY finish A Fine Balance, by Rohenton Mystery, tho i think im spelling his name wrong. A decade ago i got ¾ through it, was absolutely loving it, then something happened. Work? Illness? Something huge caused me to put it down, and leave it down for too long. now a decade later i still wonder sometimes, how does that story end? Has that ever happened to you? You ever let a good book go like that that still haunts you, demands to be finished?

Jeanya

I am so excited to be back but having a bit of tech ignorance. Can anyone a link to a lecture on Montaigne? Thank you in advance.

Donna F.

I’m surprised no one responded when I asked if anyone else loved one of Louise Erdrich’s books. I have to introduce her and her work to you. Her work is informed by her mixed heritage. Her father’s family was German, and her mother’s family was French and Ojibwa Native American. Her books have won many awards, including the 2021 Pulitzer for fiction. In “The Night Watchman”, she wrote about her grandfather, who, besides doing that job, did what he could to keep Native Americans from losing the little benefits they had. Amazon says of another book, “A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, The Plague of Doves—the first part of a loose trilogy that includes the National Book Award-winning The Round House and LaRose—is a gripping novel about a long-unsolved crime in a small North Dakota town and how, years later, the consequences are still being felt by the community and a nearby Native American reservation.” And one of my favorite books is described on Amazon’s page, “In a masterwork that both deepens and enlarges the world of her previous novels, acclaimed author Louise Erdrich captures the essence of a time and the spirit of a woman who felt compelled by her beliefs to serve her people as a priest. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse deals with miracles, crises of faith, struggles with good and evil, temptation, and the corrosive and redemptive power of secrecy.”

Paul England

I guess we can all read what we want, whenever we want right? However, I for one have been feverishly checking and refreshing the Hardcore feed here waiting excitedly for Ben’s selection for 2025. Last week I completed reading Far From The Madding Crowd and loved it. As a Devon lad born in the 1960’s it certainly resonated with me as had the 1967 Julie Christie Alan Bates film (Terence Stamp played Troy) which I had watched on a long London to Exeter coach journey back in the mid-80’s. I’d read what I consider the ‘holy Trinity’ of Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess and Jude the Obscure many moons ago. Tess was an A level text and our intrepid band of brothers took a little tour around Hardy’s Wessex one day around that time. I’m doubtful of finishing ‘all of Shakespeare’ but am closing in. I’m as far as Cymbeline with the narrative poems and Sonnets still to go. Poetry wise I managed to find a copy of Heaney’s ‘Death of a Naturalist’ which is wonderful. Jonathan Franzen is an itch I want to scratch having dipped into ‘The Corrections’ on audio. David Copperfield is a delight too. Some of his ‘eccentrics’ are clearly ‘on the spectrum’ it seems to me. Mr. Dick and Uriah Heep most notably. Just my opinion and I’d be happy to be shouted down but curious if anyone here has any similar thoughts. Happy reading everyone.

Gholson Lyon
>>156828007

working my way through the Shakespeare Sonnets now. I watched the 10 deep-dive sonnet-by-sonnet videos from 1-10, but noticed that those stopped thereafter. Although, Ben's recent video on all the sonnets was great too! I thought I would just insert here that I would love more of the sonnet-by-sonnet analyses, but I also understand that Ben must be so busy with so many other things!

Yumi Yarns

I took a bit of a break from East of Eden this year... not really intentionally, but here we are in December and I'm picking it back up to try and finish before the new year. Interestingly, I'm now reading The Mistress by Rachel Hawkins at the same time and it's shocking how similar her character, Ruby, is to Steinbeck's Cathy Ames. Part of me was annoyed that I had set EoE aside for so long since I really enjoyed it from the start, but now I'm glad that I happen to be reading these two novels at the same time since these characters are so similar. Idk, it feels like reading destiny or something and I'm very much enjoying it since both women are characters that I like reading.

Yumi Yarns
>>156736354

I read Shadow Tag by her in 2010 and I don't really remember much of it now (except the ending, haha), but I remember really enjoying her writing style. Erdich is one of those authors that I keep meaning to go back to and read more of her work because even though I don't remember the details, the overall way that I felt while reading makes me want to hear more of her stories.

Jen Clair

I just finished Les Miserables (aka The Brick) and I sobbed at the end. Such a beautiful worthwhile book. I started on the first day of fall as one should lol. I highly recommend if you have not read it yet! It’s far superior to the 2012 movie in every way of course. In fact, that movie was the reason I avoided reading it because i found the movie so sad and depressing. While the book certainly has its sad part I felt like it is a masterclass in how to perfectly plot a book (and with multiple threads)! The only other book we’ve read that I felt the same way about, plot wise, is The Count of Monte Cristo. Of course Les MIs is far more than just a plot- centric book. A must read! Now I’ve started Far From the Maddening Crowd and am determined to finish before Dec. 31. I’m disgusted with Kindle because it only counts books and not bricks lol. I read nine bricks this year, but it looks meager when Kindle shows only the nine covers lol.