Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
If Art does not enlarge men’s sympathies, it does nothing morally. The only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings, is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring human creatures.
George Eliot
Quoted by Rebecca Mead in
My Life in Middlemarch page 56
I am very grateful to bookgirl for praising My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca and causing me to buy it. I learned a great deal about George Eliot's life.
Books, (both fiction and non-fiction), poetry, plays, films and music have all contributed to my growth and understanding. I have grown larger in understanding and like the Grinch my heart has grown larger. The very best books have remained in my memory for many years.
As I look at my list, I can see that the books that I included have characters with depth and emotion that show what their lives were like. I was able, as George Eliot said, to imagine a life different from mine. I had sympathy and empathy. I felt that I was walking in their shoes.
Ms. Mead points out on page 158
The notion of sympathy was a very important one for Eliot, as it had been for the Romantic poets. “Sympathy” was a far more resonant term in the Victorian era than it tends to be today, when it is often understood to mean no more than “feeling sorry for”. When Eliot and her peers used the word, they meant by it the experience of feeling with another person: of entering fully, through an exercise of imaginative power, into the experience of another.
Eliot wrote to Blackwood:
My artistic bent is directed not at all to the presentation of eminently irreproachable characters, but to the presentation of mixed human beings in such a way as to call forth tolerant judgment, pity, and sympathy.
On page 172, Ms. Mead points out what we all know as readers:
Even so, all readers make books over in their own image, and according to their own experience…we each have our own internal version of the book, with lines remembered and resonances felt.
Mead also realizes that we see books differently when we re-read them at different ages.
Eliot says:
The secret of our own emotions never lives in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past.
Ms. Mead identifies with Dorothea in the story of Middlemarch, but while I liked Dorothea, her beauty and riches and the desire to learn from her husband does not resonate with me. It is Mary Garth, who was plain and hard working and who has to choose between Fred Vincy and the Rev. Mr. Farebrother, who has my sympathy and concern.
I admired the movie made of Middlemarch for PBS…a six-hour BBC adaptation with Juliet Aubrey as Dorothea. It is lush and I feel that it brought the characters and the village to life. I highly recommend it.
My list is predictable in some ways because many of the books are classics. Other titles may be new to you. I cannot list all of the books, plays, poems and short stories that I love so I hope you will include your own list in the comments.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Mrs. Mike by the Freedmans
Shakespeare’s Plays and Sonnets
The Cat from Hue by John Laurence
Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott
The Charioteer by Mary Renault
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes
http://www.poemhunter.com/...
East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
D Day, Citizen Soldier, Wild Blue by Stephen Ambrose
Angela’s Ashes, ‘Tis, Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Taylor Branch:
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65
At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68
Testament of Youth, Testament of Experience by Vera Brittain
This Hallowed Ground by Bruce Catton
The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals ed. Patrick Hart & Jonathan Montaldo
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent van Gogh by Irving Stone
Gettysburg by Stephen Sears
James Herriot
All Creatures Great and Small
All Things Bright and Beautiful
All Things Wise and Wonderful
The Lord God Made Them All
1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
Mahatma Gandhi:
The Roots of Violence
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles.
Young India, 22 October 1925
Madeleine L’Engle
A Circle of Quiet: A Crosswicks Journal
The Irrational Season: A Crosswicks Journal
Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage
The Summer of the Great-Grandmother: A Crosswicks Journal
Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
Night Country by Loren Eiseley
Shane by Jack Schaefer
Our Choice by Al Gore
And There Was Light: Autobiography of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance by Jacques Lusseyran
In the First Circle (The First Uncensored Edition) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
(Foreword…In 1968 an expurgated version titled The First Circle came out in many languages. The loss in English of the preposition “In”…subtly shifts the novel’s focus from people in a place to the place itself; the present version eliminates this distortion…Compared with the version previously available in English, the plot has been altered, depictions of some major characters have been substantially modified, new characters have been introduced, and many entirely excised chapters have been reinstated. For readers familiar with the previously available English version, In the First Circle will be a revelation).
A Worn Path by Eudora Welty
http://www.myteacherpages.com/...
Will Eisner’s New York with into by Neil Gaiman (graphic)
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren1946
Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley (1965)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Essays by Michel de Montaigne
I Buried My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Hiroshima by John Hersey
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
What books have inspired you the most?
Diaries of the Week:
Write On! How fiction is different.
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Robert Fuller says:
The chapter: Adam on the re-election trail.
http://www.rowantreenovel.com/....
The Kindle version of The Rowan Tree:
http://www.amazon.com/...
My memoir Belonging still free via Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/...
My father's memoir -
https://www.smashwords.com/....
The paperback of my father's memoir is rolling off the print-on-demand presses as we speak. Then, at last, I will enjoy a cup of tea and consider finishing my play.
NOTE: I am doing fine, but our fearless R&BLers leader,
Limelite, could use some Hugs and Healing Vibes. On
May 22, she left this message:
...I ended up in the hospital with a diagnosis of diverticulitis.
Have been here since Mon. and no telling when I'll be allowed to return to my son's and d-i-l's to recoup. But I do know that I'm not up to maintaining a virtual life for the time being. Miss you all and the communal warmth terribly, but I'm just exhausted. Besides, all the morphine and subsequent low PO2 levels have made me very stupid.
Thanks to all of you in advance for your good wishes, but I will be unable to read or respond further. So, please don't bother msg. me. I already know what sentiments all your good hearts contain. Thank you.
As they say in radio comm., "Over and out."
I couldn't stand it any longer so I did send a message, yesterday, and I received this reply, today:
Thanks -- lovely to hear from you. Am out of hosp. However, not out of woods.
Please forgive me if I don't communicate. As you say, still house shopping on top of all this. Lime Spouse bearing burden.
Love and best wishes to you and fond greetings to all R&BLers.
I am sending her more good thoughts and best wishes here, tonight, even though I know she isn't able to respond to individual messages right now. Get well {{{{{{HUGS}}}}}}, Limelite!!!
NOTE: plf515 has book talk on Wednesday mornings early
You don’t have to like all the selections to vote in the poll. You can mention which one you were voting for in the comments.