Greetings, Saloners! I hope you had a good week of reading. This week I finished one, started another (well, started two, actually), and had a couple of reading experiences that were a pleasant change from the usual.
1. Reading with hubby
I wish this wasn’t out of the ordinary. Steve and I have similar taste in books and back in the olden days we used to fight over share books all the time. But these days, between work and kids and the demands of everyday life, it’s not often that we get to read and talk about the same book at the same time.
Steve pounced on His Majesty’s Dragon, as I knew he would, because he a) loves PO’B as much as I do, b) has much greater tolerance for High Fantasy than I do, and c) is absolutely crazy for “alternate” history books, e.g. Harry Turtledove. So of course he was not able to resist this one, and it was such a pleasure to discuss it with him as we read it together. At the risk of sounding maudlin: I am the luckiest wife in the world!
I reviewed His Majesty’s Dragon here.
2. Reading email
My first experience with digital books! I heard about this from Myrthe. You go to dailylit.com and sign up for a book to be delivered, bit by bit, a little each day, to your email inbox. Myrthe signed up for Anne of Green Gables but almost immediately regretted it, saying that “Anne is exactly the kind of book to curl up on the couch with and spend the afternoon taken away to P.E.I. instead of reading it one bit at a time from a computer screen.” Oh, absolutely! Nevertheless, I wondered whether there might be other books that would actually work in this format. And sure, there was — P.G. Wodehouse! What better way to start the day than with a few paragraphs of What Ho, Jeeves?
3. Also reading
Ordinary Families by E. Arnot Robinson. I had never heard of this book, or the author, until I came across a review of it on another Saloner’s blog. I am not too far into it yet, but so far it seems promising. The main character, an 11yo girl, is very appealing, and the author obviously remembers very well what it’s like to be that age. Painfully well, in fact.
13 Comments
Happy Sunday and Happy Reading :)
Its nice that you two share books. His review of His Majesty’s Dragon is great!
LOL – I am married to a Steve too! The good thing is we have opposite taste in books. It really helps for reviewing.
I have never heard of dailylit.com. Thanks for sharing the website!
I have come across dailylit.com which may make some sense if you have a laptop with mobile broad band. I think one of those startrek kindle screens may also enable you to download on the hoof. But all sounds a bit of an effort!
Wife and husband fighting over the same book…green with envy. Can’t remember the last time my wife actually read a book(She paints, talks, dances, cooks, socialises, sings, mediates, networks)
DailyLit is neat, isn’t it? I’ve been reading Agnes Grey over the past month and a half or so. Only about twenty installments left!
I’m very intrigued about digital books…although I agree that Anne of Green Gables would not be one I’d want to read on the screen.
My husband and I occasionally read the same books – we both like British mysteries – and it’s fun to share opinions.
Bookworm :) , glad you liked it.
J.Kaye, see, I knew right away we had so much in common. ;)
Samantha, you’re very welcome!
John, it’s really no effort at all. Each installment is sent in the body of an email, not in an attachment, and they’re quite short. I can’t imagine it would take much time to download even with a slow connection. And ha ha, if it’s any consolation, I don’t do any of the things your wife does.
Christine, yeah it is neat. I can’t imagine reading anything serious or weighty, but P.G. Wodehouse is perfect. And I’m sure Anne Bronte is too.
Ravenous Reader, yes, although (so far) they feel like a poor substitute for the real thing. Dailylit is fun but I can’t imagine reading exclusively that way. I need paper and ink!
Thank you for posting the daily lit site. I had seen it before but did not bookmark it! This time I am going to pick a book and get registered!
LibrarysCat
Julie, I actually found a way that works. I wait until I have all the installments for one chapter and then I read them. Reading one chapter at a time works better than reading each installment separately. And I am finding that reading them at work, makes my day a bit brighter, because it is such a feelgood book!. But still curled up on the couch is sooooo much better! But that goes for any book, not just Anne. ;-)
I’ve been reading Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers via Daily Lit, and it’s an interesting experience. I agree witha previous commenter that the best way to read them is when you have the completed chapter, rather than trying to read it in the increments they send you. It’s a great way to be exposed to new literature as well. I never even thought to look for Wodehouse on there…
The Missus and I rarely, if ever, read the same thing. She loves the romance stuff while I gravitate towards historical themes.
We do read the same newspaper. Does that count?
Just wanted to mention — Turtledove gets credit for popularizing the genre, but I think his strengths are in the ‘history’ dept., not the ‘literature’ dept.
Not sure Eric Flint’s any better, but if you’ve got a a significant other who’s into alter. hist. and they havne’t yet found Flint, he’s fun.
But I have a special affection for John Birmingham. His Axis of Time series had me eagerly turning pages, and waiting for the next book and so on: a U.S. Navy fleet of 2021 (with the ship U.S.S. Hilary Clinton — named after the president in his future world) is shot back to WW II — scientific experiment gone awry — and finds the WW II folks love the 2021 technology, but have a hard time accepting a black admiral, or gay, female captain.
Anyone have other alt. hist. titles to recommend? (besides Philip Roth’s about Lindberg becoming president instead of FDR — that’s got to be the one that people know if they don’t know any other alt. hist. titles).
Libraryscat, I hope you enjoy it. I highly recommend P.G. Wodehouse. :)
Myrthe, oh yes I agree. Curled up on the couch (preferably with a kitty purring at your feet or on your chest) is definitely the best way to go. But email is better than nothing, I suppose.
Shauna, I picked Wodehouse because you don’t really need to read him in a continuous flow. You can appreciate him a paragraph at a time just as much as reading him in one sitting. I don’t know if I’d be able to keep track of a more challenging book if I read it this way. Worth trying, though.
Fred, newspaper counts, but only if you read the same sections. :)
Hubby, I forgot about Birmingham! He’s the guy who left a nice comment on this blog.