October Book Wrapup: all the inventive book structures

[@thebaileygrind]

I’m with these people on staying home to consume less 😂 I love how many tags you participate in. I need to start to diversify my reading. Amazing recs 🖤

[@NicoleACottageWitch]

@@thebaileygrind yeah, staying home is my default state so it’s probably a much harder suggestion for some people! And yeah, it’s fun to try to read a bit outside of what I might normally read. It does mean going searching for books that aren’t on display at a bookstore, but you can find some cool things that way.

[@SecondThoughtsAboutTheMission]

Writing all of these down! How did you read so much on top of Tom Jones?! 😂 I’m in awe. I have a couple of Vandana Shiva books I need to read. I might have to read Walking the Twilight Path! Joyce Carol Oates is intense. I have Bellefleur on my goth lit TBR (which I forgot to include) and I’m not sure I’ll have time for, but we’ll see. It’s been a long time since I’ve read Poe’s poetry, but I think I agree: I like it best. It’s nuts I haven’t read Frenchman’s Creek yet. I’ll look for a copy of On a Woman’s Madness. Bend Sinister is interesting because I believe it was his only ‘political’ novel, as he hated political novels. And of course Nabokov would use the index in an expansive way and turn it into art. I haven’t read Pale Fire yet; I’ve been saving it, because I know it will be a favorite. Have you read Series of Unfortunate Events? It’s like Nabokov for kids. My daughter wanted to read the series with me a few years ago. She stopped after 4 or 5 books, but I continued on. The Italo Covino book sounds like a trip! I’ll have to check it out. I haven’t read Ghandi’s autobiography, but it sounds interesting, and I should.

[@NicoleACottageWitch]

@@SecondThoughtsAboutTheMission Lots of audiobooks is the answer. Tom Jones I definitely listened to sped up. I can usually do 1.5-2x depending on the narrator but for parts of that one it was 2.5x because it was just so slow! It came up in the Cambridge companion to gothic fiction, though-Fielding wanted to be an ultra-naturalistic alternative to the pre-gothic romances that he didn’t think highly of! These were the first Joyce Carol Oates stories I’ve ever read but I am interested in more now. I read Unfortunate Events years ago and loved it. I remember thinking it was so clever and good fun. As memoirs go, Gandhi’s was interesting. He did t try to always make himself look good, which I appreciated, but he certainly lived an eventful life.

[@SecondThoughtsAboutTheMission]

Even so … that’s a lot of reading 😊 I’m still interested in Tom Jones when the time is right. I caved ….. I went ahead and got a copy of the Cambridge Companion to Gothic Literature. I agree with your words on Ghandi: I think if we look for perfection in all of our heroes and myths, there will be nothing left to look up to.

[@NicoleACottageWitch]

@ I also don’t have kids. That’s a big time-saver!

[@SecondThoughtsAboutTheMission]

It’s true! lol