Oh the places we've been!

[Laurel]

What a great time we've had together the past two and a half years. Here's what we have read since spring of 2007:

Paradise Lost   April- June 2007

Eugene Onegin   July 2007

The Iliad (Fagles translation)  Sept.-Nov. 2007

Idylls of the King   Dec. 2007-Jan. 2008

---

Anna Karenina    Feb.-Mar. 2008

The Odyssey    Apr.-June 2008

War and Peace   Aug.-Oct. 2008

Ward no. 6 and Other Stories Nov. 2008

The Man Who Was Thursday Dec. 2008

---

The Aeneid (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Jan.-Feb. 2009

Inferno   Mar.-Apr. 2009

Purgatorio   May-June 2009

Paradiso  July-Aug. 2009

We'll all keep on reading, of course, but I'm stopping here as far as leading this group is concerned. I've enjoyed it immensely and have appreciated your participation and getting to know so many of you. But right now I'm just kinda tarred.

Laurel

[Choisya]

Surely you aren't leaving us Laurel?   You have been such an inspiration in leading us through these often difficult 'tomes', I can't imagine these threads without you!  Can you not just choose some less difficult books (non-Epics) so that we can all have a rest together?  Thanks to all your Beatrice-like efforts, here we are safely in Paradise, looking forward to enjoying a land of milk, honey and roses and you pull up the drawbridge!  Woe!

However, whatever your decision, I wish you much happiness and sincerely hope that you will continue to contribute your wisdom to other bookclubs here. 

Hugs and Grateful Thanks from Over the Pond.    

[rbehr]

I'd never have completed a reading list like this without your direction and the contributions of the group.  The pace you established for the readings allowed us to keep going in spite of the rigor of some of the readings.  This board and the literature we've discussed under your direrction has certainly opened up the horizons of this former techie.  Hopefully you'll consider a pause rather than a stop and come back when you're well rested and ready to tackle another major work of literature.  

Rae

---

Laurel wrote:

What a great time we've had together the past two and a half years. Here's what we have read since spring of 2007:

Paradise Lost   April- June 2007

Eugene Onegin   July 2007

The Iliad (Fagles translation)  Sept.-Nov. 2007

Idylls of the King   Dec. 2007-Jan. 2008

---

Anna Karenina    Feb.-Mar. 2008

The Odyssey    Apr.-June 2008

War and Peace   Aug.-Oct. 2008

Ward no. 6 and Other Stories Nov. 2008

The Man Who Was Thursday Dec. 2008

---

The Aeneid (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Jan.-Feb. 2009

Inferno   Mar.-Apr. 2009

Purgatorio   May-June 2009

Paradiso  July-Aug. 2009

We'll all keep on reading, of course, but I'm stopping here as far as leading this group is concerned. I've enjoyed it immensely and have appreciated your participation and getting to know so many of you. But right now I'm just kinda tarred.

Laurel

---

[Laurel]

Thanks, Choisya and Rae, for your kind words. It's time for me to move on, but perhaps we'll meet up again. By the way, I'm getting ready this week for a trip to Oregon on Saturday for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, which is in the foothills near the California border. I have tickets for nine plays and will probably be spending a night on the way there and back at the Wolf Creek Inn, where Jack London did some of his writing.

[KristyR]

Have a great trip Laurel, it sounds like fun!  Thank you so much for your leadership and encouragement here.  I read some great books that I never would have attempted on my own, and I look forward to finishing the ones I haven't finished yet.   Knowing I can look up past discussions on them is wonderful.  I hope to see you around the boards sometime in the future.

Kristy 

[Laurel]

Thanks, Kristy. I'm just about ready to take off. If you want, you can follow the adventure on my brother's blog here.

[Choisya]

Goodbye Laurel - have a wonderful time in Oregon and enjoy your pastures new afterwards.  I hope that the other bookclubs in which you may participate will appreciate the gem they are getting!

[bdNM]

Merci beaucoups et bon chance!

[Peppermill]

I can't say it better.  What a gift you have given us, Laurel!  Blessings to you in whatever is next in your life's journey!

We shall miss you deeply, and I do hope that B&N shall find someone to moderate an Epics, Etc. board in your absence. 

Life and accident have sometimes pulled me away from here, but each item on this list, even those I did not read completely (the end of Paradise Lost, some of Chekov's stories, parts of Tennyson) or that are still to be completed (Divine Comedy) have a new relationship to my life.  I have especially enjoyed Pushkin and Tolstoy, but have been deeply enriched by Homer and Virgil.

With deepest respect, Pepper

---

rbehr wrote:

I'd never have completed a reading list like this without your direction and the contributions of the group.  The pace you established for the readings allowed us to keep going in spite of the rigor of some of the readings.  This board and the literature we've discussed under your direrction has certainly opened up the horizons of this former techie.  Hopefully you'll consider a pause rather than a stop and come back when you're well rested and ready to tackle another major work of literature.  

Rae

---

Laurel wrote:

What a great time we've had together the past two and a half years. Here's what we have read since spring of 2007:

Paradise Lost   April- June 2007

Eugene Onegin   July 2007

The Iliad (Fagles translation)  Sept.-Nov. 2007

Idylls of the King   Dec. 2007-Jan. 2008

---

Anna Karenina    Feb.-Mar. 2008

The Odyssey    Apr.-June 2008

War and Peace   Aug.-Oct. 2008

Ward no. 6 and Other Stories Nov. 2008

The Man Who Was Thursday Dec. 2008

---

The Aeneid (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Jan.-Feb. 2009

Inferno   Mar.-Apr. 2009

Purgatorio   May-June 2009

Paradiso  July-Aug. 2009

We'll all keep on reading, of course, but I'm stopping here as far as leading this group is concerned. I've enjoyed it immensely and have appreciated your participation and getting to know so many of you. But right now I'm just kinda tarred.

Laurel

---

---

[Laurel]

Thanks to all. I'm in Portland, Oregon, now, on my way back home from the Shakespeare Festival. The weather was perfect, and I saw nine great plays. I especially enjoyed the way they all worked together.

I've enjoyed our time together, and I just wanted a chance to rest and read and let someone else lead. My continuing reading is greatly enriched because I now recognize the allusions to the great books we have read together.

[rbehr]

I'm glad you enjoyed your trip.  We were visiting in Chicago over the weekend and enjoyed west coast like weather (sunny, cool, with low humidity) - that's not the typical midwest Labor Day!.

I've got a question as to our options as a group - Will BN look for a moderator since we were a moderated group or will we just have to either:
1) Start functioning as a non-moderated (if that's a word) group? or
2) Individually merge into other groups that reflect our reading interests.

Thanks again for all of your contributions. 

Rae

---

Laurel wrote:

Thanks to all. I'm in Portland, Oregon, now, on my way back home from the Shakespeare Festival. The weather was perfect, and I saw nine great plays. I especially enjoyed the way they all worked together.

I've enjoyed our time together, and I just wanted a chance to rest and read and let someone else lead. My continuing reading is greatly enriched because I now recognize the allusions to the great books we have read together.

---

[Choisya]

Personally, I would like to continue with this group because we have all read such a lot together and have come to know each other over several years.   Whether or not a new leader emerges, I think we could continue with the reading list we have voted for, perhaps starting with Don Quixote  in October?  Until B&N appoints someone, I will volunteer to put up chapter headings and some links, as Laurel used to do, and to incorporate any ideas which members the group recommend. 

---

rbehr wrote:

I'm glad you enjoyed your trip.  We were visiting in Chicago over the weekend and enjoyed west coast like weather (sunny, cool, with low humidity) - that's not the typical midwest Labor Day!.

I've got a question as to our options as a group - Will BN look for a moderator since we were a moderated group or will we just have to either:
1) Start functioning as a non-moderated (if that's a word) group? or
2) Individually merge into other groups that reflect our reading interests.

Thanks again for all of your contributions. 

Rae

[Choisya]

This is a copy of a post Laurel made in March, which lists the books we had suggested - I have marked those which we have since read:

Epics Etc. Books to Read

Don Quixote
*War and Peace* Aug-Oct 2008       READ
*The Odyssey* April-June 2008       READ
(Ovid's Metamorphoses)
The Children of Hurin
Aeneid                                                    READ
Divine Comedy                                     READ
Canterbury Tales
The Faerie Queene
Remembrance of Things Past
The Magic Mountain
**Anna Karenina** Feb-March 2008  READ
Crime and Punishment
The Brothers Karamazov
Beowulf
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendahl
The Debacle - Emile Zola
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight        READ
Parzival
Le Morte d'Arthur                                      READ
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Evangeline
The Song of Hiawatha
John Brown's Body, Stephen Vincent Benet
The Epic of Gilgamesh
El Cid
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
The Nibelungen
Fahrenheit 451
The Gambler, Dostoevsky
Ulysses
The Kalevala
The Raj Quartette
The Portable Chekhov

Note: these are not necessarily books that we will read, simply books that have been mentioned for reading. Please let me know if I've left anything out or if you have new suggestions.
===================================

Message Edited by Laurel on 03-28-2008 09:20 AM

[bdNM]

Anyone interested in attempting Finnegan's Wake?

[rbehr]

I'll throw my hat into the ring for a reading of Don Quixote in October.  Thanks for volunteering to set a reading schedule. 

I'll also second your sentiments on continuing the Epics Group.  As you stated, we've covered a lot of reading and learned a lot together.  

Rae

---

Choisya wrote:

Personally, I would like to continue with this group because we have all read such a lot together and have come to know each other over several years.   Whether or not a new leader emerges, I think we could continue with the reading list we have voted for, perhaps starting with Don Quixote  in October?  Until B&N appoints someone, I will volunteer to put up chapter headings and some links, as Laurel used to do, and to incorporate any ideas which members the group recommend. 

---

rbehr wrote:

I'm glad you enjoyed your trip.  We were visiting in Chicago over the weekend and enjoyed west coast like weather (sunny, cool, with low humidity) - that's not the typical midwest Labor Day!.

I've got a question as to our options as a group - Will BN look for a moderator since we were a moderated group or will we just have to either:
1) Start functioning as a non-moderated (if that's a word) group? or
2) Individually merge into other groups that reflect our reading interests.

Thanks again for all of your contributions. 

Rae

---

[Peppermill]

---

bdNM wrote:

Anyone interested in attempting Finnegan's Wake?

---

Why Finnegans Wake versus Ulysses?  (I have the CDs of Ulysses, but have never gotten through either them or the book in their entirety.  But maybe you have already done Ulysses.)

I do think the previous discussions had been leaning toward Don Quixote.  That's another for which I have the CDs as well as the book (in a couple of versions), but have never gotten through them entirely.

P

[Choisya]

Bernard - are you offering to lead this one?  I understood from Laurel that she had proposed you as our next 'leader' - are you taking on the job?  I do hope so.  (I would still prefer for us to read Don Quixote next month though.)

---

bdNM wrote:

Anyone interested in attempting Finnegan's Wake?

---

[bdNM]

I have read Ulysses, but it always is ripe for a second, third, fourth, and so on, reading.  There was a bookstore in Kansas City, MO called "Bloomsday Books."  Their name is tied to Ulysses, for every June 16, the city of Dublin celebrates Bloomsday, in honor of the book, and its main character, Leopold Bloom.  Why June 16?  Because it is the date of the action of the book -- June 16, 1904 to be exact. It was, as I understand it, the day that Joyce left Ireland for the continent for good.  Every year, on Bloomsday, they would have readers come and read for 1/2 hour slots from Ulysses for about 10 hours, and they would conclude with a production of a play based on the book, with various people playing the various characters in the work.  They still do the play, but not the reading.  So I could certainly go for Ulysses as well.

[Choisya]

I have read Finnegans Wake & Ulysses - I like Joyce and I like stream-of-consciousness writing, but I am not sure whether I want to read them in a bookclub as a lot of the pleasure is in the continuous, non-stop, reading of them.  Are you intimating that you do not wish to read Don Quixote, or to lead the group?   

---

bdNM wrote:

I have read Ulysses, but it always is ripe for a second, third, fourth, and so on, reading.  There was a bookstore in Kansas City, MO called "Bloomsday Books."  Their name is tied to Ulysses, for every June 16, the city of Dublin celebrates Bloomsday, in honor of the book, and its main character, Leopold Bloom.  Why June 16?  Because it is the date of the action of the book -- June 16, 1904 to be exact. It was, as I understand it, the day that Joyce left Ireland for the continent for good.  Every year, on Bloomsday, they would have readers come and read for 1/2 hour slots from Ulysses for about 10 hours, and they would conclude with a production of a play based on the book, with various people playing the various characters in the work.  They still do the play, but not the reading.  So I could certainly go for Ulysses as well.

---

[bdNM]

I am willing to do so, but I haven't heard anything yet.  Before I commit to anything, I like to know what my duties will be (the dos and donts of the job), so we'll await further communication from the B & N folks.  I'm not opposed to reading Don Q, but it is rather long -- I'm thinking it's more like a 3 month job, though I haven't read it, so I don't know its level of difficulty.  If we go ahead with Don Q, I hope that we'll have some readers who know a fair amount about Spanish literature on board.