Hayley

I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to anyone who preferred Agnes! She’s a bit too perfect.

I’m on chapter 9 and already very intrigued!

I hope it’s feeling better today @lunababymoonchild! And I hope you get to eat properly!

Poking my head back in here a little late to say that I finished Nicholas Nickleby and I loved it! And I was NOT expecting that with Smike 😬

No, I don’t think Dickens modelled Dora on Catherine. I think it’s more that, viewing David Copperfield as based on the events of Dickens’ life, Dora’s an acknowledgement of the fact that he’d started to view his first marriage as something that he didn’t necessarily want to last forever. Of course, things didn’t work out as conveniently for him in reality. Hence the attempt to have Catherine institutionalised, which you mentioned! On the subject of women in Dickens, I’d also like to throw Betsy Trotwood in to the list of good characters. She’s one of my favourites.

I was on the fence about getting this when I first saw it. I’ve seen another review that said the characters were unlikeable. Maybe when it’s on sale 😄. I like that about Hound of the Baskervilles too!

I’ve never had a peach muffin but I love both peaches and muffins - I need to try this!! A little sad that I can’t go to a lovely orchard to buy baskets full of seasonal fruit, but I guess the supermarket will do 😄

Yes, definitely not an accurate portrayal of his marriage 😅. Perhaps more the way he’d have liked it to have gone… @KEV67 is right though, he wrote David Copperfield quite a few years before the divorce. So it’s kind of a sweeter portrayal of youth and naivety and marriage not always being what you expect. But I agree, it is painful to read!

Dora’s part in the story is sad. Her intentions are good but she’s so young and just does not know what she’s doing at all. Even sadder when you consider the fact that David Copperfield is semiautobiographical and the issues with Dora likely reflect Dickens’ real issues with his wife.

Hi Mostafa, the sites which offer free pdfs of books which are still in copyright are illegal and we don’t allow them on the forum. It looks like archive.org has Mistborn available to borrow though (it’s free to sign up for an account if you don’t have one already): https://archive.org/details/mistbornfinalemp0000sand_a4i8

Oooh that is tempting…

Great! I think I’ll be going for The Devil and the Dark Water too then (as soon as I’ve finished off Nicholas Nickleby!) I might also re-read Rime of the Ancient Mariner because it’s been years since I read that! 😄

Great! I think I’ll try The Devil and the Dark Water (as soon as I’ve finished off Nicholas Nickleby). It’s been a very long time since I read that, so I might join you!

Happy first of the month! With one additional vote in for the sea, are we all happy to proceed with that without a poll? (although @lunababymoonchild, I like the idea of including poems in our reading, based on different themes! There are definitely plenty featuring the sea…)

Don’t forget to throw any other suggestions in before tomorrow! 😄

Do we have Circe yet? She has to score pretty highly for all the seducing and turning men into animals. The head witch from Roald Dahl’s The Witches was also very villainous.

My suggestion (as it reminds me of summer): A book related to the sea. We might read classics featuring sea voyages (like Moby Dick or Treasure Island) or something with a bit of a fantasy twist like The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Taunton (I really want to read that one…). There are also loads of non-fiction books that would fit with this one, like maybe Michael Palin’s Erebus.

I can’t believe it’s nearly time for our third group already! As a reminder for those who haven’t participated before: ‘Throughout 2023, the BCF Book Club will be in session! We will vote on categories four times per year (January-March, April-June, July-September, October-December) and participants will choose a book from that category. This means that we might not all be reading the same book, but we will all be reading from the same category.’ So please leave your category suggestions for the third Book Club event (July-September) below! We will hold a poll on Friday 30th, if necessary, to make our final decision. It would be helpful if you could leave a book suggestion next to your suggested category .

It’s time to start thinking about the next challenge and I’m making good progress with Nicholas Nickleby, but I still don’t think I’ll quite finish it all before the end of the week! I’ve reached a point in the book now where

I definitely have that feeling with a couple of text books too. They don’t even contain up-to-date information any more but there are a lot of memories connected to them as objects!

@muggle not that looks delicious! I could eat a big slice of that right now, with cream 😄. I also love raw rhubarb!

Hi and welcome! I know that we have a bit of a different layout to BGO, so just let us know if anything seems confusing!

I do really want to read this one! I won’t have time to do it for this challenge though, I’m on chapter 27 of Nicholas Nickleby and that’s not quite half way through yet! I am really enjoying it though. There’s quite a range of characters in this one and I’ve reached a point where some of their stories are starting to intertwine, which is a feature I always enjoy in Dickens’ books!

That sounds really good! I’ve started to really like eggplant recently (although we call it aubergine here). I used to find the texture a little unpleasant but then my boyfriend pointed out that I’d probably just had badly cooked aubergine… so he made some and I love it! I am a very big pasta fan too 😄

Salt Publishing are having a very good summer sale on some of their books right now. I wasn’t planning to buy books for a while but I just got three I’ve had my eye on: Broken Things by Padrika Tarrant, Liminal by Bee Lewis and New World Fairy Tales by Cassandra Parkin. They were £2, £2.99 and £1, respectively, for the paperbacks! https://www.saltpublishing.com/collections/summer-specials