Hayley
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Posts posted by Hayley
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On 7/14/2023 at 9:33 AM, France said:
Granted it was written before he dumped poor Catherine but nothing I've read about her indicates that she had much in common with Dora, though she probably did suffer from post natal depression.
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.
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11 hours ago, Brian. said:
The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse (3/5)
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 😄.
11 hours ago, Brian. said:The setting of Dartmoor really adds to the story and its almost a character in it's own right.
I like that about Hound of the Baskervilles too!
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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 😄
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On 7/12/2023 at 4:47 PM, France said:
If they reflect anything in his marriage it would be what he wanted the public to think not anything approaching truth.
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.
SpoilerAlthough the real one didn’t conveniently die, like Dora 😬
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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
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1 hour ago, lunababymoonchild said:
I have just bought Poems of the Sea (Macmillan Collector's Library, 301) by Gaby Morgan (Editor). I bought the hardcover.
Oooh that is tempting…
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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! 😄
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Great! I think I’ll try The Devil and the Dark Water (as soon as I’ve finished off Nicholas Nickleby).
1 hour ago, lunababymoonchild said:Just bought The Rime of the Ancient Marriner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as my poem for the sea. It's 66 pages long so I'll take my time and I'm sure that there will be others.
It’s been a very long time since I read that, so I might join you!
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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…)
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Don’t forget to throw any other suggestions in before tomorrow! 😄
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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.
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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.
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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
.
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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
SpoilerI’m really nervous about Smike - I have a feeling I’m going to hate Ralph even more very soon 🥲.
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15 hours ago, KEV67 said:
I think I spent so much time reading them I don't want to get rid of them.
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!
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@muggle not that looks delicious! I could eat a big slice of that right now, with cream 😄. I also love raw rhubarb!
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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!
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2 hours ago, Chrissy said:
I completed The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by HG Parry today. I really enjoyed it.
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! -
On 6/10/2023 at 9:29 PM, muggle not said:
Tonight we are having eggplant parmesan with a side of spaghetti. And a bottle of zinfandel.
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 😄
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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!
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21 hours ago, France said:
Actually, I'm not sure I know anyone who liked it as a child. Is it like clowns, something that adults think children like?
Well you know one person now 😄. I loved Alice in Wonderland! I was probably heavily influenced by the Disney movie but my dad bought a hardback set of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass for me when I was about seven and they were my prized possession. They felt very grown up. I did actually find them hard to read at that age but I think, because they were challenging, I felt as though I was unlocking new things from it all the time. And I think that’s part of the appeal of them as an adult too. Carroll wrote in so many clever puzzles and references to things he was interested in, it still feels like there are new things to discover!
My sister did think it was ‘too weird’ as well though. Maybe I was just a weird child 😂.
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We had quite a long thunderstorm yesterday evening and there are more forecast for this afternoon. It only cooled down very slightly though, so I’m still very hot 🥲.
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On 5/12/2023 at 2:29 PM, lunababymoonchild said:
thunderplump
Thunderplump is a brilliant word 😄
My weather app is telling me it will be 28C today (!) and might thunder. Not ideal on one of my busiest work days 🥲
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The BCF Book Club - Part 2 Completed Reads
in Group Reads
Posted
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 😬