Karen G’s last login was 2 days ago. « hide recent activity
Karen G commented on World Without End 1 month ago.
“ Should I read Pillars first? ”
Karen G reviewed Back Roads 1 month ago.
“ I have to start out by saying this is a rated R book. However, I read it anyway. There were too many personal parallels to... ”
Karen G has read Back Roads.
Karen G rated Back Roads 1 month ago.
Karen G has read The Inferno.
Karen G reviewed Gathering Blue 2 months ago.
“ I haven't found a Lowry book I didn't like. She's amazing. In Gathering Blue she takes the reader into a different... ”
Karen G now owns Fire of the Covenant: The Story of the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies.
Karen G reviewed Fire of the Covenant: The Story of the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies 2 months ago.
“ As always, Lund writes a great novel. The characters feel like members of your own family by the time you are finished. ... ”
Karen G reviewed Catch-22 2 months ago.
“ Just not my cup of tea. ”
Karen G rated Catch-22 2 months ago.
Karen G’s last login was 2 days ago. show recent activity »
Rated 5 stars
Rated 3 stars
Read the review for Art & Fear
Read the review for Secrets
Read the review for The Boxcar Children
Rated 4 stars
Read the review for Harry the Dirty Dog
Read the review for Believing Christ: The Parable of the Bicycle and Other Good News
Read the review for The Inferno
I looked over more of your bookshelf and found your review of Chronicles of Narnia. Your read it to your class for nine years? So...you are a teacher, too! Elementary I presume (because you read Narnia to them...and by the way, Narina is such an amazing Christian allegory. C.S. Lewis was a genius). That explains why you have so many childrens books on your shelf! It's rare to see The Giver, The little Princess, Holes, and Where the Wild Things Are, on the same shelf as Les Mis, Monte Cristo, and Gone With the Wind (lol). Also, after reading your thoughts on The Book of Mormon I assume that you are a Latter Day Saint? That's odd, because another woman that I wrote yesterday was also a Latter Day Saint. Before and after school I like to scan the Shelfari comments on the many books I've read, and when I find a comment that seems particularly intelligent, or seems to be a duplicate of my thoughts on a book, I like to send a note to that person just to say hey and share some thoughts. Your most recent thoughts on forgiving one's self are certainly true; all of those thoughts. But I think the teachings of the Bible (if one takes them seriously, which I do) make us feel so small, and feel as if every negative thing that has happened to us is our own fault for having, as 1st John says, "The lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life"....ewwww, I am so guilty of all that, particularly the pride of life, which seems to set the other two in motion! I am a science teacher (mainly chemistry and physics but I've taught them all) and I'm in my 23rd year. I began reading copiously in 2002 when I was 44 year old. Until then I hadn't read three novels since Jr High! But in '02, I started reading memoirs written by women. I was searching for some answers about what really lives in a woman's head and heart (at that time things were going really bad for me along that line, and most of it was my own fault for being so uninformed). Anyway, as I searched the bookstores for female memoirs, couldn't help but notice all the other books, mountains of them! I felt so ignorant because I'd read none of them! Every time I left a bookstore I felt as if I wanted to read every book ever written, not for entetainment, but for enlightenment...there was so much to know about being human and I knew only my own small world. Since then I've done little but read, and I still feel as if I've barely put a dint in all there is to know! My friends of yesteryear would faint if they knew that their old jock buddy was now a literary nerd. But, at 52, I am a bit old to do all the stuff that was fun when I was younger (stuff that required beauty and athleticism, but wow was it ever fun! I loved having a vigorous, healthy body) Now, I am really enjoying becoming smarter! I wish like crazy that I'd done all this reading back when I was young enough to allow some of these recent enlightenments to take me in better directions. So, you are an artist and photographer? I'd like to see some of your work if you'd like to share it. I could use an intelligent, literary-minded pen pal. Would it be rude of me to invite you to send your thoughts to my regular email? If not, let me know and I'll send you my yahoo address.
Oh Wow! I just checked your bookself and you have given Hugo's Les Miserables five stars! How nicely that fits in with our discussion! I have told many people that if I had to pick one book as my all-time favorite, it would be Les Miserables. The reason? Jean Valjean should be the icon of masculinity for all the world to uphold. His superior physical strength and worldly experience so perfectly tempered by his loving sensitivity toward all suffering things, and his sense of obligation to provide for and protect all suffering things is almost Christlike (as close as anything human could come). Valjean is an ideal that all men should shoot for, though in reality it would be nearly impossible for a man to be all that he was. Hugo wrote a lesser-known novel entitled "Toilers of the Sea" that also featured a Valjean-like character (I forget his name). I think Victor Hugo is to men what Jane Austen is to women; both set high standards for their gender then placed those standards before us. Though I strongly dislike reading Austen novels I realize that she had a good head on her shoulders and had I known her as a person I probably would have had great respect for her. (Sorry Jane, but I'm just not into reading dozens of pages about crumpets, tea parties, trivial conversation, and each woman's preferred method of making doilies). Hugo had his downfalls as a writer, too...far too much wandering off the storyline for pages on end).
Yes, the Bronte attraction to domineering men was most likely sociological. Perhaps the men of that time and place felt as if they had to be ruthlessly domineering in order to be attractive to women. I grew up as one of four sons (no sisters) so naturally I knew nothing about the developement of the female mind while I was growing and developing. Everything I "knew" was more a product of how I thought it ought to be rather than having any factual basis. Yet from what I have been able to grasp in my 23 years as a high school teacher, even the girls of today seem to prefer the rougher, less sensitive sort of man. They say they don't, but when I observe who gets (and keeps) the girls who could have any guy they want, I can't see that much has changed. Just like each man has his own concept of femininity (real women don't chew tobacco, don't get tattoos of anchors on their chest, and don't squeal their tires in the parking lot) I'm sure that women have their ingrained concepts of masculinity as well, and it seems that the nice guys just aren't...just aren't...sexy. I'd better stop or I'll get up on a soap box and have to be shot!!
Karen, I read your comments on Wuthering Heights, and I couldn't agree more. The novel was indeed poorly written, and should have been entitled "Heathcliffe scowled so everyone got sick and died". Jane Eyre was much better, containing all the elements of ghostly mystery that Wuthering Heights attempted, but unlike W.H., Jane Erye delivered a good story. Still, even Rochester had some of the same brutally domineering natures as Heathcliffe. It makes me wonder what the Bronte sisters had been exposed to that made them choose such men as their image of romance? I know that their father was a minister (so is mine) and such "men of God" can sometimes be terribly overbearing without realizing it.
