January 2011
16 posts
Upcoming: Fairy Tales
Well, our Jane Eyre show is all recorded and will be showing up in your list of podcasts soon (assuming you subscribe on iTunes). Hopefully none of you hate us TOO much for the opinions we express. And even if you do, give us one more chance, but next up we are talking fairy tales!
Nicole and I are very excited about this show, I think we could easily spend the next month reading original tales,...
A Tale of Two Cities Discussion - Book 1, Chapter...
Nicole: We didn't really get to see anything this time round
Jen: Nothing except AWESOME imagery/metaphor! I adore the wine/blood scene, it is the one thing I really remember from reading this book 10 years ago. Although I could do without the guy writing "blood" on the wall, that is a little bit of overkill.
Nicole: I didn't really get that much from it aside from the poverty of the place, and how it is such a free for all.
Jen: Well, the poverty and desperate nature are huge. But also just knowing that this is all happening on the cusp of the French Revolution, and knowing what that will bring the metaphor of the scene is very powerful to me
Nicole: Ha, I'm looking back and I had missed that page where he foreshadows all the blood on the people. Yay, for me not being dim. So, yes...that does make it a bit more poignant.
Jen: Yeah, that makes a huge difference to the meaningfulness of the scene.
Nicole: While there is some good imagery here, I also felt that this is when Dickens starts to get into some serious overwriting.
Jen: Well, you know, the whole paid by the word thing...
Nicole: I wonder if his books would be a quarter to a half as long without it. I did love the way that Madame Dufarge is such a presence right from the beginning.
Jen: I am very much looking forward to reacquainting myself with her
Nicole: Her husband is the shop keeper, and later we find out that his name is Jacques and that he is Monsieur Dufarge. But right away she is a force, and so mysterious with her cryptic head nod.
Jen: Oh, the Jacques! That is a fun bit of confusion/mystery that Dickens is throwing in in this chapter too.
Nicole: It's all coming back to you, huh?
Jen: It is, vaguely. I remember a little about the Jacques, but mostly I remember that there is something to remember, as seems to be the case with most of this so far. I keep thinking, "Oh, that is a thing!"
Nicole: And he stops this time just as we are about to meet the father!
Jen: Such suspense! Such drama!
Nicole: We just glimpse a man making shoes.
Jen: I had such a difficult time not continuing to chapter six!
Nicole: How will we live til Saturday! I know. I wanted to peek. I didn't.
Jen: I peeked at the title. Spoiler alert: it is called "The Shoemaker"
Nicole: Well we saw the he was making shoes. I don't think you got away with much!
Jen: No, my renegade moves were sort of thwarted
Nicole: So Jacques is a bit of a rebel. He wears his own hair, and it's brown and curly!
No wigs. I love that Madame Dufarge lays her knitting down to pick her teeth with a toothpick.
So random.
Jen: It adds so much life to her character, she's that woman who puts down her knitting to pick her teeth
Nicole: Yes. Kind of gross, but endearing. Looking forward to finding out more about them all.
Jen: Me too, I can't wait until Saturday, when we can read more.
I Am a Mermaid →
Author Carolyn Turgeon has a new mermaid blog, in anticipation of her new book, Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale, which is out March 1st.
Check out the book:
Indiebound | Powells | Amazon
A Tale of Two Cities Discussion - Book 1, Chapter...
Nicole: So Dickens brings out the drama in this little chapter. What did you think?
Jen: Definitely some drama. Although things are still a little oblique, this is the first chapter where we really start to get an idea what is going on, like what the heck "recalled to life" means.
Nicole: I'm not sure I know what to make of Jarvis Lorry.
Jen: He is rather cold, isn't he? Or at least very unsentimental.
Nicole: He walked away from something huge and he's just, you know I was working.
Jen: And yet, everything that is happening so far seems to be consuming him. Just look at how he went over and over it all in his head on his journey.
Nicole: Well the way he is so cold with Miss Manette suggests that maybe he is a big compartmentalizer.
Jen: Yes, I was going to suggest that as well.
Nicole: And now that he has to think about this, he is very uncomfortable
Jen: He seemed very deliberate in trying to distance himself emotionally, which suggests that it is not a natural state for him. Perhaps he thinks he can do his business better with less emotional attachment.
Nicole: Getting her to recite the times table so he knows she's being rational… Well to drop a bomb like this, it seems like he would have told her to bring a friend or a trusted maid. But no, he would rather get that random woman who looks like a man. Now she has to travel too.
Jen: Although the fact she has to travel with him makes me think she doesn't really have anyone of note that could support her emotionally in this.
Nicole: But I wonder if he knew that. It sounds like the bank or someone just said come. Oh and by the way we have to go to France.
Jen: Right, I don't necessarily think it was him that summoned her
Nicole: All that is still very weird.
Jen: One thing I really like about this chapter, is that Dickens is giving us answers, even as he is raising more questions. Now I'm curious to find out how these things happened to her father, what sort of state he is in now, etc. But the nagging question from the last installment was "whatever does 'recalled to life' mean?" And now we begin to see.
Nicole: Yes. I would think that if you are writing to keep people reading that you have to be good at that.
Jen: I'm thinking about modern equivalents, though, shows like Lost, sometimes you would go many episodes and only really raise more questions, not always get answers. I think I like Dickens' approach better
Nicole: I think "recalled to life" is strange. It's still an odd phrase. But when you get released from prison after twenty years... I rolled my eyes when she remembered that he was the one that brought her across the ocean all those years ago.
Jen: Yeah, that was a bit farfetched. But to her, her father really is being recalled to life, she thought he was dead. He has been 'dead' all of her life, now he is alive again, at least to some extent
Nicole: He was talking about random banking and customer transactions and she is like 'this is my father's story". What?
Jen: Yes, that was odd, I am interested to see more of Lorry's character and see how it fits in
Nicole: Well what did he do with her? Obviously Tellson's has been paying for something. But she shows up with nobody.
Jen: Yes, she was a ward of the bank, I believe. So she must not have had any other family
Nicole: Raised with someone they hired? In an orphanage?
Jen: Just the money left by her parents with Tellsons. I'm guessing hired, if she had enough money for the bank to take her on as a ward.
Nicole: Weird. Have you given much thought to the narrator? Some aren't very present.
Jen: I haven't really, what are your thoughts about the narrator?
Nicole: but this one seems to like to interject with references to time. "They made curtsies then..." "In an earlier day..." It pulls me out of the story each time and I wonder what the point is, and who the narrator is. How much time has passed between the time the story takes place, and the telling?
Jen: 75ish years. The first book takes place in 1775, but Dickens wrote it in 1859.
Nicole: But only if Dickens is the narrator. We don't know that he is.
Jen: Right. I think at this point I'm basically just assuming that he is the narrator, until and unless I get other information.
Nicole: I'm just wondering if it will turn out to be someone close to the story.
Jen: I honestly can't remember. That would add an interesting element, though.
What’s Old is New: Winter 2011 Preview
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Jen and Nicole have scoured the catalogs for you and found a myriad of books based on or using works of classic literature or their authors. Here’s everything we...
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A Tale of Two Cities Discussion - Book 1, Chapters...
Nicole: So did you read your chapters?
Jen: I did, yesterday afternoon. It got me all excited about the book all over again
Nicole: This must have been a lot of fun to read like this. The set up had me intrigued. I don't remember a lot of the details, so I have vague ideas about who is going to be rescued. He also did a really good job in describing the mood of both countries and how scary it was to travel.
Jen: I remember a fair amount but was still able to pretend I didn't, and admired how well he was building curiosity about the story he was going to tell - all of the man's muttering to himself about someone being rescued after being buried alive.
Nicole: I had to read that part a second time because I had no idea what was going on, but then I got that he is being haunted by this idea of someone being buried alive and what it will be like to finally release him.
Nicole: I love that first paragraph of chapter 3 because no matter how close you are to someone there is always the unknowable about a person.
Jen: Yes, from what I remember and what I've re-read so far, A Tale of Two Cities is really like a huge puzzle, you have to keep putting together the pieces to figure out what the picture is that Dickens is creating
Nicole: I'm bummed already that we only get one chapter next time.
Nicole: But I also see how reading this way can allow you to read more deeply. Since you only have a little bit at a time, and curiosity is working to your benefit, you can reallygo back and mine the material for every little bit since it is all that you have.
Nicole: I probably would not have re-read the part that I did, if could have just rolled along to Chapter 4.
Jen: Absolutely. I can also see being much more likely to go back and reread the previous chapter after reading a new chapter, thinking much more deeply about what has happened and how things fit together
Nicole: I thought it was interesting that even though Jarvis Lorry identifies himself as being associated with the bank, Dickens doesn't explicitly say that he is the one dreaming (or whatever is going on there) about the prisoner. Especially after that long speech about never knowing who you are with and what they are thinking.
If you're participating with us, please feel free to share your own thoughts about these chapters below. If you aren't, there's still time to catch up! Just check out the schedule, linked in the sidebar of the tumblr page.
We have some great expectations for A Tale of Two...
Today starts our readalong of “A Tale of Two Cities.” Nicole and I - and anyone else who would like to join us - are going to be reading it in the original installments over the next few months (schedule here). We will be reading the the first installment this weekend and will post our thoughts here on Tuesday or Wednesday for everyone to chime in, but we thought to start we would...
Jen's Jane Eyre Book Pile Titles
I had some requests for the actual titles from my book pile, not all of which were legible. They are:
A “Jane Eyre” graphic novel
“Becoming Jane Eyre” by Sheila Kohler
“Charlotte and Emily” by Jude Morgan
“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
“Romancing Miss Bronte” by Juliet Gael
“Jane” by April Linder
“The Eyre...
I Recommend....
chrisbookarama:
The Sherlockian
I’ve never read a Sherlock Holmes book in my life but I loved The Sherlockian by Graham Moore. Fun and smart! Go read it.
Review to come soon…
So glad that more people are enjoying this. We loved chatting with Graham for our show on Sherlock Holmes.
“I was tired of these people. I disliked their laughter and their tears, their...”
– Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
If possible, I hate Rochester even more now than I did in Jane Eyre.
(via jendevoureringbooks)
Jane Eyre Episode: Sneak Peek!
(aka, Jen and Nicole discuss "Jane Eyre" on Google Chat)
Jen: This may be the episode where I use the phrase 'creepy bastard'
Nicole: Reader, I forgave him immediately
Jen: Reader, I'm a damn doormat
Nicole: Reader, am i annoying you by breaking the 4th wall?
Tale of Two Cities Readalong
In addition to What’s Old is New, Nicole and I have about a million projects together. One thing we are doing this year is challenging each other to read certain books we’ve loved and, as part of that, we’re going to do a readalong. Even before Oprah picked it as part of her final book club pick, Nicole and I talked about the fact that we both really wanted to read/re-read...
Huck Finn Without the 'N Word' →
What do you think? Makes it more readable and less offensive? Misses the point completely? Something in the middle?