<p>Yeah, I used to do it the hard way, too, like this but without the extra spaces I put in:</p>
<p>[ i ] Word you want italicized [ / i ]</p>
<p>If you want bold, put a “b” instead of an “i.” If you want the text in a quote box, put “quote.”</p>
<p>Thanks for selecting the book, Mary. I’m always happy to read a book that has been in the house, in the pile. This one, Things Fall Apart has been sitting here for four years. I believe S1 used it in a Freshman Comp class when he was dual enrolled at our local CC his senior year in high school. Darn. I just tried to italicize with the control and i keys, but it didn’t work. Like SJCM, I have to use the brackets. </p>
<p>My daughter read Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight as part of her first year required read in college. I read along with her and enjoyed it. </p>
<p>TiredofSnow, I hope you like The Roundhouse as much as I did. I thought it balanced themes of suspense, Native American life, coming of age, and a gritty, dark story line beautifully.</p>
<p>* Y’all are the best! Thanks for your help. * I tried it the first time without the “i” in the second bracket.</p>
<p>Yay, good job Tiredofsnow!</p>
<p>Re The Roundhouse, Plantmom, another friend who read it and I both feel that it is NOT that dark, even though there is one incident of offstage violence and another very brief incident of onstage violence in the story.</p>
<p>What really made the book stand out for me was the strong feeling of community and family love that the story imparted. This more than counterbalanced any of the troubling aspects of the tale, in my opinion.</p>
<p>In addition, the book is gorgeously written…the language simply a delight. It is complex and nuanced enough to provide lots of grist for discussion, so I think your group will be very glad to have chosen it, Tiredofsnow.</p>
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<p>I talked to her last night. Though I already knew, it amused me to hear her rants again.</p>
<p>Hated:</p>
<p>Summer - Edith Wharton</p>
<p>Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger</p>
<p>Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston</p>
<p>Life of Pi - Yann Martel</p>
<p>Endgame - Samuel Beckett (Could have made the list but the teacher saved it.)</p>
<p>Not hated to the extent of the first four but not liked either:</p>
<p>Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain</p>
<p>The Warrior Woman - Maxine Hong Kingston</p>
<p>and on the flip side, she loved:</p>
<p>Murder in the Cathedral - T.S. Eliot</p>
<p>The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde</p>
<p>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</p>
<p>The Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope</p>
<p>Inferno - Dante</p>
<p>anything Shakespeare, with Hamlet a particular favorite.</p>
<p>All other required reading fell somewhere in a range of okay.</p>
<p>Interesting, Ignatius. I certainly commend your daughter on the books she loves.</p>
<p>Did you yourself ever read The Woman Warrior? I read it way back in the 70s, when it first came out, and really liked it.</p>
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<p>I am sure Flannery O’Connor would make for some interesting discussion. We’ve never done a book of short stories; let’s consider it for next time. Another classic collection of short stories that would be great to discuss is J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories. As for modern collections, my son has had very good things to say about Like You’d Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard.</p>
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<p>Absolutely! More than the story line itself, I was intrigued by the statistics. From the back of my book: “More than two million copies of Things Fall Apart have been sold in the United States since it was first published here in 1959. Worldwide, there are eight million copies in print in fifty different languages.”</p>
<p>Clearly, it has universal appeal. When my son was in college, he heard Chinua Achebe speak and was riveted by his talk. That’s how the book ended up in our house, but as with PlantMom, it has been collecting dust for the past few years, always on my must-read list, but never picked up (until now!)</p>
<p>NJTM: The books listed were all required reading. Her personal favorites tend to be science fiction/fantasy books. She also likes some mysteries.</p>
<p>mathmom listed the books on her bedside table, ready to read, though by now I bet she has an update. Anyone else care to do the same. I plan to grab a pile of books and read the month of May.</p>
<p>^ ignatius, baseball season is underway, so the first thing on my list is The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (which my husband has recommended to me several times).</p>
<p>On my bedside table: </p>
<p>Daniel Deronda. Started it before Christmas; got 60 pages in and then became distracted (holidays, illness, book club reading, etc, etc). I want to commit myself to picking it up again and giving it the attention it deserves.</p>
<p>36 Views of Mount Fuji by Cathy N. Davidson. An interesting non-fiction book about Japan that I plucked off my book shelf because it was a good size to carry with me when I went places. I’ve read 265 out of 288 pages and need to finish!</p>
<p>Dialysis Without Fear by Offer and Szafir. Long story here, as to why I have this book. Another one I need to finish.</p>
<p>The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. My son gave me this for Christmas and I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve been dragging my feet about reading it.</p>
<p>Update is that I finished *The Secret Garden *- A little disappointed by how didactic it was. I guess I haven’t read it in a long time! Very interesting to read it knowing that Burnett had been involved with Christian Science. The other two books are still there and *Things Fall Apart *will be joining them as soon as I located a copy - my library doesn’t have it, but town next to me does. </p>
<p>On the coffee table I’ve got David Byrnes’* How Music Works*, two museum catalogs: Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925, How a Radical Idea changed Modern Art and *The Artful Recluse - Painting, Poetry and Politics in Seventeeth Century China. <a href=“Lovely%20show%20at%20the%20Asia%20Society%20if%20anyone%20is%20in%20NYC.”>/I</a> Oh and I also have a copy of Defiant Daughters - 21 Women on art, activism, animals and The Sexual Politics of Meat. I have it because the daughter of a friend of mine wrote about growing up as a vegetarian, but I’m a little afraid to read it as I am a confirmed omnivore.</p>
<p>I guess The Secret Garden is didactic. When I reread it as an adult I was struck by how fulsomely sentimental it was…a real manipulator of one’s heartstrings, with a super romantic view of nature.</p>
<p>Hmm, Christian Science. So Colin wasn’t really sick, he was just spiritually needy…</p>
<p>I did like the book as a young person. I felt at that time that the book was quite mysteriously enchanting, but I was not able to put it in perspective.</p>
<p>Black Beauty also struck me as a little too gushily sentimental when I reread it as an a adult.</p>
<p>For you Mad Men Fans - bad boy Don Draper, reading Inferno on beach in Hawaii, recommended by his new “friend” ( don’t want to spoil for those who haven’t seen the season premier). </p>
<p>Ipad reading - Middlearch.
Nightstand- Where’d ya go Bernadette
"Once we were Brothers "- on my to read list, friend highly recommended last night.</p>
<p>Sorry, ignatius! I was referring to your comment that you “might not even notice” if a selection was bleak and melancholy. I’m a “bleaker the better” reader!</p>
<p>Somebody mentioned The Glass Castle–one of the reasons I disliked that book was that I thought that as a “child raised by crazy alcoholics” book it was too light. It should have been bleaker, in my opinion 
I felt a bit the same way about Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, but I liked that one much better.</p>
<p>Not sure what I’ll read next, but of the ones mentioned, I enjoyed both The Art of Fielding and Where’d you go Bernadette?. Both quick, easy reads.</p>
<p>Just read City of Thieves by David Benioff for another group, and thought it was wonderful. But it takes place during the siege of Leningrad–some people in that group thought it was too bleak :-)</p>
<p>library called and now I have two more with Bernadette
the snow child
don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight </p>
<p>Hands down best title goes to mathmom’s ** Defiant Daughters - 21 Women on art, activism, animals and The Sexual Politics of Meat**
Ummm are these two books ? Lol</p>
<p>In progress right for my book club: Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen. We’re reading this because Ernest Hemingway liked it so much. I’m also in the middle of Heart Rate Training, but this is not for my pleasure reading :). I’m listening to Truth in Advertising by John Kenney, which is amusing. I also have 25 or so other books checked out from the library, and the increasingly higher stack of books I intend to read some day. Some day.</p>
<p>Hard to believe Isak Dinesen also wrote Babette’s Feast. Out of Africa so lyrical and lush, and Babette’s Feast so austere and minimal.( read it last year for course )</p>
<p>Out of Africa was a book it took me years and years to get around to reading. When I finally did, I couldn’t believe I’d waited so long. It is absolutely wonderful!</p>
<p>I just started Things Fall Apart, and so far I like it a lot.</p>
<p>If any one wants more books set in East Africa one of my favorites is *West with the Night *by Beryl Markham - there’s some speculation that it was actually written by her husband. She was a bush pilot in Kenya in the early part of the 20th century.</p>
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<p>I never read the book, but I enjoyed the movie. Have you seen it?</p>
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<p>Don’t forget everything before June 1st! :)</p>