#middlemarch is 900 pages or so

[jovies]

If Woolf makes an appearance you know Plath probably will too. Taylor may be keen to cast Joe in the Ted Hughes role and make people think he tormented her with affairs.

Frankly where is my Wuthering Heights track? Let's get schlocky lmao. Maybe he can be Dracula and his harem of vampire women sucked the life out of her (we'll let Olivia have vampires for right now). Oh - she hasn't mentioned Anna Karenina yet, right? Listen, I'm as dramatic as they come, we all throw on Keira Knightley dramas and feel all the things sometimes. I just take umbrage to engaging in it in shallow pastiche and attempting to pass that off as depth.

[we-pay-for-everything]

Hey you! What are you watching or reading these days? Anything worthwhile?

Hi, friend! Thank you for thinking of me!

I’m still watching my Kdramas, hehe. The women are often hysterical (and a lot of the men too - especially the unnattractive ones) and the writing can be sexist and absurd, but there are a lot of amazing dramas. There’s something refreshing and natural about them. They have more personality and charm than American dramas, and look less artificial as well. If you ever decide to watch a Kdrama, I’m your gal! I’ll tell you everything you need to know!

As for books, I’ve finished Middlemarch!, which is a masterpiece. It’s nothing short of brilliant. George Eliot really understood people... she saw through all the bullshit and noise of society, into the very core of things. Her astuteness and wit amaze even now. She had such compassion for people because she knew circumstances make a person as much as personality does. The book is full of rich characters caught up in their own drama, against a backdrop of political turmoil that makes the universe feel even more realistic. If Middlemarch wasn’t centered in Middlemarch it would be considered an epic (I think?). The book is truly epic - so many characters and relationships, all connected yet independent. Every character feels important, even “minor” ones. 

Anyway, it’s truly a book worth reading. One of the very best I’ve ever read. 

As to what I plan on reading next (you didn’t ask, but I’m sharing), I want to read a few books by female African authors (since I’ve only read one, and most of the women I read are American or European), and there are 3 books I want to buy. Unfortunately, these books aren’t readily available in Portugal and some of the editions are very old. But that just makes me want to buy them more. The world isn’t just North America and Europe, yet it often feels that way... I’ll by one, or all, of those books (which are some of the most popular and feminist African books): So Long a Letter (Mariama Bâ), Nervous Conditions (Tsitsi Dangarembga) and The Joys of Motherhood (Buchi Emecheta). None of the books are longer than 200 or so pages, which feels very odd after reading a 900 pages book, haha. 

So yeah, that’s it! Thanks for the ask! Hope you and your loved ones are okay!

PS: So Long a Letter was written in French, so maybe you can find the book and read it in your own language (if you want!).

[ovidialee]

Index, addenum and manuscript!

Index: What book character would you like as your best friend?

For a long time I drew a lot of solace from Sookie Stackhouse. Rose Hathaway is also fiercely loyal and just fierce as a fighter and personality. These were also my answers to @nonie-star​‘s question of who I identified with LOL. Maybe I’m looking for someone very much like me in my life.

Honestly Snape would probably be the most loyal friend anyone could ask for and he would literally give up his life for me.

Addendum: What is a book trope you can’t stand?

1) Morally superior Little Miss Perfects that every guy wants for no apparent reason (LILY).

2) Only 18-30-year-olds can be marriable heroines. This is a common trope in romance and erotica, which is why I generally don’t read those genres.

Even though I love Jane Austen, I dislike Emma and S&S because I hate the amazing super rich way older guy with so much integrity who only wants the 16-year-old, because it’s too close to real life (especially here in shitty LA) where 50-year-old guys only marry 25-year-old women (real stories), which means I’m screwed out of ever getting married to anyone under the age of 80. 

Manuscript: What is a book you want to read but are intimidated by? Anything Stephen King. I’m deathly afraid of horror. And probably Anna Karenina at nearly 900 pages. Took me months to finish Middlemarch and that was amazing, but I needed a book club with weekly HW assignments, plus the BBC TV show, and Sparknotes, and I also tuned out during some of the audiobook in order to finish it. It was the most academic work I’ve voluntarily done as an adult.

Thanks for the ask! BOOK QUESTIONS HERE

[rosncrntz]

book tag: 4, 11, 22, 29

four - what’s the next book you’re hoping to read?

i’m halfway through the absolutely FANTASTIC lucky per by henrik pontoppidan which i’m hoping to finish soon!

eleven - have you ever bought a book because of who the author was?

yes, of course. all the time. i pre-ordered susanna clarke’s new book, for example (and i’m very excited)

twenty two - how do you organize your books?

i really don’t.

twenty nine - what’s the biggest book you’ve ever read, and how many pages did it have?

probably middlemarch by george eliot - which is about 900 pages long. but it’s also the most beautiful book ever so it’s well worth the bulkiness.

book ask

[goneontherun]

We were together again, gathered in Mrs. Lee’s living room for the third book club session of the year, the fifteen or so of us pressed up around her coffee table in the middle of June. I was on the soft loveseat this time, smothered by her floral cushions on my left and a fat, bulk of a woman on my right, sweat gathering between my thighs. Why the fuck won’t Mrs. Lee turn the fan on? I squirmed and tried to prop myself up with one arm, conscious of the wet stain I would leave on her couch, with the fabric clinging stubbornly to my skin. Mrs. Lee had set out cups of tea on the coffee table, and Jillian, the woman beside me, was already on her second slice of cake. I didn’t know her name was Jillian at the time. I’d never seen her before, but she had written her name in equally fat, block letters on her copy of the book. I’d heard sometime that book clubs are supposed to be good for me, on account of a friend from college, who ran book clubs of her own out of her living room in Ann Arbor. I’d told her that I missed our undergraduate English classes, arguing about form and devices in our classroom in a grey-brick building overlooking the chapel and the rolling hills of Western Mass. A time when the words on the page spoke about the very leaves that were flaking off the trees in the woods just five minutes away, and winter quarter brought the snowy evenings that were apt for stopping in. Besides, you might meet someone, she added, winking at me over Skype. But the connection was slow and her eye ended up in a mess of pixels. I nodded. I pictured intellectuals gathered around a table in a coffee shop, peering at small text in thick books over the top of their round glasses. Maybe I’ll finally meet someone who shares my enthusiasms for the Romantic poets, I thought. I give the room a once-over, and sink further into the flowery pattern: so how the fuck did I end up with a group of semi-retired middle-aged women, talking about Middlemarch in a three-room flat in Jurong East? Jillian was going on about the most romantic bits of the novel, Dorothea this and Will that, the cake crumbs spitting out from her mouth and landing on the marble floor. Okay but how about the other characters, Mrs. Lee said, pulling the leadership card that Jillian seemed to have ignored. I’d like to talk about Celia. On the other side of the room, I noticed someone yawn and glanced up at the clock on the wall. Our eyes met, she shrugged, before she looked back at the book on her lap. 90 minutes, like the 1000-level seminars in junior and senior years. I didn’t have the heart to feign interest. Besides, I didn’t finish this 900-page monstrosity. Between following the latest drama series and dragging myself to the CBD every morning, there was no place in my imagination for the petty troubles of these characters who lived in landscapes and times I never inhabited. Someone else had started talking, something about the gossip, but I couldn't stop watching Jillian finish her third slice of cake, picking off the crumbs, and licking her lips as if it was the treat she came for. She caught up to me in the lift lobby after the session. As soon as Mrs. Lee had announced that it was all the time we have today, ladies, and the books thud shut, I dislodged myself from the sofa and stumbled into the corridor into a view of a sunset over the park. Mrs. Lee lived in one of those flats whose open, common corridors still faced the rest of the world, and the view of concrete flats and trees competing for space jarred me from the English countryside I had been forced to imagine. "Hi! I'm Jillian. You were next to me, weren't you?" There is no way to pretend I didn't hear or see her. The elevator we were waiting for was still on the third floor, slowly hauling itself upwards. I nodded. "You didn't say anything! I was hoping to hear what you thought of the marriages. Which one was your favourite?" I didn't think anything about marriage, and only six-year-olds chose favourites. I hated her even more. “Actually, I didn't read the book," I said. I watched for her suppressed disbelief and disgust, and waited for her eyes to glaze over as she passed me off for some fraudulent book club member. "Victorian lit is just not my taste." She shrugged, and laughed. She entered the elevator and stood in opposite corners. The doors slid shut, and immediately I regretted coming. "What do you read then?" Who was she to inquire about my personal tastes? She was looking at me, her glasses and thick, choppy bangs doing nothing to temper the force of her gaze. If this was what Eliot had meant by being "found" by another's stare, I felt it completely in that moment. I told her I didn't like to read much, and in fact the truth was that I haven't finished a "real book" since senior year. By then the elevator had turned into a confession box, and I was there, head hung, whispering words to a figure that seemed to be both the woman she is, and the woman who was next to me on the couch for those 90 minutes. We were not partners, and in fact we shared nothing except be subjugated to a physical proximity. By "real book" I meant the kind of thing on my class syllabi, or the kind of thing you'd find on a university reading list. By senior year I meant since the last English class in took in the Fall semester. I read, yes, but I didn’t mean snippets in the newspaper here and there, and The New Yorker's Fiction archives when I feel guilty. "There's just no fucking inspiration here," I finished. "No history, no culture, nothing worth reading. It makes me just want to be a mindless working drone." The doors slid open, and we stepped out into the evening light. I was suddenly conscious that I had been talking too much. What the fuck had I done? Why did I spill my guts to a stranger? In panic, I turned to Jillian, anticipating her reply. She looked away, and we began walking towards the train station, passing along the way the crowds of home-bound office workers, earphones in and hands full of shopping bags, straining like trees under the weight of the fruit their bore. She kicked up the fallen angsanas and took a detour to show me the busker near the walkway between the flats and the station. I know what she wanted to say about the poetry of the place, and I stopped myself from telling her how big of a cliché it was. "I never used to read much too. But then I noticed there are stories everywhere," Jillian offered. "It was my first time at Mrs. Lee's book club anyway, and it was quite interesting. I didn't think many people would be interested in these thick books. The cake was good too." You'd be surprised, I said by way of evasion, and mentioned that she should come again. At this point, the home-bound crowd surged around us, and instinctively I started to take out my wallet, about to apologize for my outburst and bid her goodbye, then run off to catch the next train to Pasir Ris, arriving in 3 minutes. "Wait a second." The busker started to blow into his harmonica: a Chinese oldie about a girl as beautiful as an orchid. She might’ve reached out to keep me but I let the crowd take me away in the hum of an oncoming train. Elsewhere the sun was rising. Elsewhere someone was playing an English song we all knew. While waiting, I set my copy of Middlemarch on a bench on the platform. A painting of rural England set against the red concrete tiles. It was one way to say goodbye.

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED COLUMNIST Lifting Kids to College Frank Bruni APRIL 26, 2017 Continue reading the main storyShare This Page Share Tweet Email More Save 44 Photo Sierra Williams, a student at University of Southern California, was enrolled in the Neighborhood Academic Initiative. Credit Brad Torchia for The New York Times LOS ANGELES — If you go by the odds, Sierra Williams shouldn’t be in college, let alone at a highly selective school like the University of Southern California. Many kids in her low-income neighborhood here don’t get to or through the 12th grade. Her single mother isn’t college-educated. Neither are Sierra’s two brothers, one of whom is in prison. Her sister has only a two-year associate degree. But when Sierra was in the sixth grade, teachers spotted her potential and enrolled her in the Neighborhood Academic Initiative, or N.A.I., a program through which U.S.C. prepares underprivileged kids who live relatively near its South Los Angeles campus for higher education. She repeatedly visited U.S.C., so she could envision herself in such an environment and reach for it. She took advanced classes. Her mother, like the parents or guardians of all students in the N.A.I., got counseling on turning college into a reality for her child. Sierra, 20, just finished her junior year at U.S.C. An engineering major, she’s already enrolled in a master’s program. “My end goal is to get my Ph.D.,” she told me when I met her recently. She wants to be a professor and, through her example as a black woman in engineering, correct the paucity of minorities in the field. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story It’s now some two decades since the first class of seniors in the N.A.I. graduated from high school and went on to college. More than 900 kids have used the N.A.I. as an on ramp to higher education — more than a third of them ended up at U.S.C. — and that number is growing quickly as the N.A.I. expands. Photo More than 900 kids, including Vanessa Zelaya, center, have used the N.A.I. as an on ramp to higher education, and more than a third of them ended up at U.S.C. Credit Brad Torchia for The New York Times The public school that many N.A.I. enrollees attend, the Foshay Learning Center, was responsible for more new arrivals on the U.S.C. campus last fall than any other public or private high school in America. Nineteen N.A.I. alumni started as freshmen; 11 more transferred from other colleges. And N.A.I. doesn’t even represent the whole of U.S.C.’s efforts to address inadequate socioeconomic diversity at the country’s most celebrated colleges. Although U.S.C. has often been caricatured as a rich kids’ playground — its nickname in some quarters is the University of Spoiled Children — it outpaces most of its peers in trying to lift disadvantaged kids to better lives. Those peers should learn from its example. According to a recently published study whose data was just a few years old, 38 of America’s top colleges, including five from the Ivy League, had more students from families in the top 1 percent of income earners (about $630,000 annually and above) than from those in the bottom 60 percent ($65,000 and below). There are many reasons, principally a failure to identify and recruit disadvantaged kids whose abilities and accomplishments make them perfectly eligible for elite colleges with low acceptance rates. (U.S.C.’s is now about 16.5 percent.) But we also don’t make enough disadvantaged kids eligible in the first place. We don’t guide them through elementary, middle and high school so that they have the necessary grades, scores, skills and mind-sets. This is the problem that U.S.C. has been focusing on: University administrators figure that they can’t just wait for public education to improve and should use some of their considerable resources to chip in themselves somehow. “We’re not doing a good job in K-12 schools,” C. L. Max Nikias, the president of U.S.C., said to me recently. “The pipeline is not there. I feel that puts more responsibility on our shoulders to improve the raw material for us.” Photo At N.A.I., the first class every day is taught in a room on U.S.C.’s campus, so that college is demystified for students like Jessica Hernandez-Flores, center. Credit Brad Torchia for The New York Times At an event in Washington on Wednesday, he plans to urge more colleges to form partnerships with K-12 schools. “I don’t know what is holding them back,” he said. Many are already doing at least a bit of work along those lines, and the importance of continuing these projects, expanding them and exporting them to colleges that lag behind can’t be overstated. Some schools host summer programs for disadvantaged kids. Some send their students and even their faculty members into the communities around them to teach, tutor or mentor needy kids. Some have been instrumental in the establishment of community centers for those kids. But what U.S.C. has done stands out. In addition to the N.A.I., it has been involved in the establishment of three charter high schools serving low-income neighborhoods in its general geographic area. The first of these, U.S.C. Hybrid High, was set in motion by the U.S.C. Rossier School of Education. Last year’s seniors were Hybrid High’s first graduating class. All 84 were accepted into four-year colleges. The second charter, U.S.C. East College Prep, is in its second year, so it has only freshmen and sophomores. The third, U.S.C. College Prep Santa Ana, has only freshmen. Meantime there are hundreds of kids from the sixth through 12th grades in the N.A.I. During high school, their first class every day is taught in a room on U.S.C.’s campus, so that college is demystified and becomes a fixed part of their vocabularies. They head back to campus on Saturdays for special classes and enrichment activities. And they must have a parent or guardian willing to come to campus for separate sessions. Photo An N.A.I. class on the campus of U.S.C. Credit Brad Torchia for The New York Times One recent weekday morning I sat in on an A.P. English class that a Foshay Learning Center teacher was holding in a room at U.S.C. Her 31 students were all in the N.A.I. All were minorities. Almost all spoke up readily and repeatedly as they discussed aspects of the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” including themes that connected it to another book they’d recently read, “Middlemarch.” Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world. Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. SEE SAMPLE MANAGE EMAIL PREFERENCES PRIVACY POLICY “Freedom means … what?” said the teacher, Jacqueline Barrios, and in this instance she answered her own question. “The ability to have a voice. To think for yourself.” Photo Sergio Lopez, a student at N.A.I., will be the first among his parents and siblings to finish high school. Credit Brad Torchia for The New York Times ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story During a pause, I asked the students how many had a parent who had graduated from college. Only four hands went up. I asked how many would be the first in their families, including siblings, to enroll in college. Eighteen of the kids raised their hands. One was Sergio Lopez, 17. He later told me that he’d be the first among his parents and siblings even to finish high school. His dad, a mechanic, immigrated from Guatemala and his mom, a homemaker, from Honduras. 44 COMMENTS Sergio was just accepted into U.S.C. and will head there next fall, joining a student body that isn’t as lopsided with the 1 percent as many other elite colleges are. According to that study, 13.9 percent of U.S.C.’s students are in that bracket, while 21.9 percent are from the bottom 60 percent of family incomes. He told me that any nerves he might have felt about college, especially as a first-generation college student, are allayed by how familiar U.S.C.’s environs have become. “It got comfortable,” he said, adding that an N.A.I.-assigned mentor at U.S.C. has given him tips on how best to study: Ditch the dorm for the library, which has fewer distractions. That may be a no-brainer for some kids. For others, nothing about college is obvious — or inevitable.