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 August 2025 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-08-01 20:13:27
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
⚑ Flagged
haven't archived this post yet. have a subscription? use the importer!

Content

Dear Book Club Readers ---

You've been having an incredible reading year so far, and it would be so lovely to hear about the books you're enjoying at the moment.

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 August 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

  • Things that are giving you joy

  • 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 these 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!

Tags

Files

Previews only

Comments

Debi

I took a left turn in the reading schedule when I stumbled on The Invisible Man in a used bookstore. As a white, middle-class female I have no idea why I was compelled to read it, and after a couple of chapters I was ready to ditch it. Had it not been for the lectures, this read would have been a total loss. As it now stands, I pulled so much from this story, like sharing the awkward feeling of knowing I exist but feeling invisible to others. I shared in his expectations of needing others to validate my existence, to say I’m ok, to grant me permission to be whatever I’d like to be. I did think it was unfortunate that the narrator ends as he begins. After he’d suffered so much, he ended up in the same dark place. I hope my trials bring me to a better way of life, progress in my visibility, and a new way of seeing the world – especially others. Now in stark contrast I’m enjoying the light-heartedness of The Three Musketeers with all their bravado and danger seeking, their impulsive feelings of love, their brooding over all the lost things. I really appreciate the lectures that open up these stories, planting them deeper in the heart and mind, the suggested music and art appreciation, and the historical references that put it into context. Thanks so much for your work. Congratulations on your new little one. One big secret about child-rearing: no one knows what they’re doing. We learn most of it from the first one. We call my oldest son “the first pancake”. You know, it kind of seasons the pan so the rest come out okay. 😊

Josie Gimmestad

I have a question for you all! What kinds of books would you put on a list of “sublime” fiction? Because of the Moby Dick lectures, I now have a term and defined concept for my favorite quality in fiction — that magnetic thing that pulls me in and makes me feel. The only way I could describe it before was a cozy, beautiful, fearful, somewhat dangerous wonder. Like experiencing a severe thunderstorm, there could be a tornado and there’s an element of danger but you can’t help watching the lightning while wrapped in a blanket. Cozy + pretty + scary. I need a “to be read” list for stories that incorporate the sublime. Help! :)

Dr Jenny

Recovering from surgery at home, I pulled out The London Journal of Flora Tristan as a juxtaposition/accompaniment to my reading of Middlemarch. This is a Virago press paperback Translated by Jean Hawkes. It's extraordinary and challenging in it's horrific descriptions of the lives of working class and unemployed particularly women and children.

Dr Jenny

I can only manage to dip in and out of it, as the seething misery that Tristan reports upon is tough. Yet I do find her perspective fascinating. Flora Tristan was also Paul Gaugin's grandmother. Curious perhaps? They were both iconoclasts in their own ways

Jen

Hey everyone not sure if this is the right place for this question but I thought I’d give it a try. Does anybody have any recommendations of books to read when going through a depressive episode? I was thinking Anna karenina or a dickens maybe? I’m kind of craving a classic after not being able to read anything for a while. Thanks in advance for any suggestions

Anaik Carne
>>184745469

I’ve been on the same hunt for a while now. I started my list in the first reading of Anna K… the glimmerings of the sublime as I call them…and was surprised I did not have Moby Dick on that list (so much to re-read now keeping that in mind) I do sometimes wonder though if these glimpses of the sublime are based on personal experience or are they universal? Authors I find that really pursued this quality in their writing: Maugham, Kipling, Conrad, Durrell…I’m also wondering whether it’s difficult to come through in translation. Tolstoy’s does, but to me the encounters are not as sustained as the English writers, depending on the translation. In Japanese lit, Oe and Soseki.

artgirl

Hi Benjamin, in addition to Anna Karenina, I'm going thru the Story of the Stone right now (Penguin Classics) and comparing it to the original Chinese text. I'm still on Chapter 1 but so far, the translation of the prose is representative of the original. Thank goodness for the English translation because I feel the beauty of the writing comes to life via English. I feel that Chinese text comes across more like a factual news report sometimes. :) Where the translator took liberties was in the poetry, I felt. Sometimes I feel it was done to maintain the brevity/length of the lines and verses; other times complete meanings were changed or left behind. Not sure why that was. Additionally, I've just ordered Journey to the West, another classic Chinese work translated by Anthony C. Yu. There are four volumes. If one day you feature both of these works on Patreon, I would be so excited to know what you think of them. With each work spanning multiple volumes, it'll take time to get through but I am also enjoying the close reading and slow savoring. :) Finally, I read the opening paragraph of Wuthering Heights. I am a very sensitive person and easily feel the presence of spirits/demons. That book was teeming with them and was highly uncomfortable to read. A friend of mine who can also feel these energies told me she had the same feeling when she read the book 50 years ago at school, and just couldn't bear it. The book is downright haunted and personally, I recommend that no one read it for their own energetic and spiritual protection and mental health. :( But that's my personal opinion.

WildfellTenant

Hi folks, my name is Ivry! I am a new joiner. Can see a lot of people here loving Anna Karenina!! I’m Russian, and when I was like 10 I read parts of it (my grandmother did NOT want me to do that lol). I understood some of it but not all. It’s literally lying right next to me!! As well as Crime and Punishment. And War and Peace. Every time I see my mother, she asks me, have you read it yet?? So I would most of you guys here have read more Russian literature than I have 🤣 am hoping to fix that

Jessica Norman

Hey Everyone, Jessica here. Just finished Count of Monte Cristo this summer. A few chapters in and I realised I had free will and got on a train from London to Paris and Paris to Marseille. While at the Chateau d’If I saw a beautiful translation to describe my adventure— a literary pilgrimage. So what pilgrimage should I do next? Anyone done the sleeper train to Cornwall?

Jennie

Currently I'm reading The Count of Monte Cristo

Jen Wilson
>>188713357

Welcome Ivry. I finished Anna this summer and consider it the best novel I have ever read. The characters, settings, psychological tension and inner thoughts captured me as I read the book.

NicoleA
>>188894188

Oh that sounds like a brilliant trip. Very jealous of those living in Europe with so much access to literary history. I'm in Tasmania.