UK: It's definitely American values, which is still interesting. I felt I didn't really get it (read when my sister was studying it), because it all seemed too obvious, money, all awful vulgar people, hypocrisy, Ok, which has often been how I feel about American writers with the exception of Henry James. We read Death of a Salesman in school which is perhaps a tad more nuanced but to me similarly puzzling, I don't have a lot of sympathy for either 'tragic hero', to me both simply behave badly to inexplicable ends. My sister does like American lit...but has always been materialistic and is working on moving to the US! What I don't really get is it tends not to feel like the pursuit of these values is questioned enough, Gatsby is far from really outside them himself. It is low class here to be seen to throw money around, but our aristos have tended to be considered particular cheapskates even next to continental European equivalents (France emphasises money used to show artistic/aesthetic good taste more).

I did get a lot more out of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, which shows the emergence of new, American values, and whose heroine while a monster of materialism in a lot of ways is shown to have been influenced by her upbringing and have better impulses, and there's a more critical lower class perspective. My new little rabbit is named Lily for her heroine and Trollope's Lily Dale (Wharton's bad girl Lily turns out to suit her best). Do think it shows that Wharton would go on to have a strong connection to France, though (FSL speaker myself - consider French values to have remained closer to those we're losing through Americanisation). Lily's aesthetic desire for the beautiful and very expensive may even make more sense in that context than it would in an English one, you only have to compare our palaces to Versailles (Wharton was interested in interior design. I do think Americans still care much more than us about it).

Thanks! Writing it down as one to get my mum for her birthday - it was her who gave me her Agatha Christie books to read as a child, too. She loves the French mystery writer Fred Vargas, very uniquely weird with a lot of eccentric characters, the first Three Evangelists one is probably a softer introduction than the first Adamsberg novel The Chalk Circle Man.

Could be, especially with older voters a key demographic of supporters. But then pointing out that digital is frequently an effective replacement might let said older voters in on the fact that the kids can look up all the inclusive sex education material they want online (and that just for starters), and then there'd be more of a push for internet regulation too.

It's not the keeping them, a vegan might have rescue chickens, it's the use of them, including eggs. There are health problems associated with egg laying, as domestic chickens are bred to lay far more and bigger eggs than their jungle fowl ancestors. So a vegan with rescue chickens would feed the eggs back to the chickens, seeing them as theirs, helping them regain the lost calcium, and also consider hormonal prevention of egg laying. Veganism is primarily against seeing non-human animals as being for human use.

Most people forget things they're not using. Since you couldn't come up with anything at all and it's just this one book, and not up to date psychology, it sounds like you're not that interested and maybe were expecting something different, though.

I would have no problem recalling many of the main details from having studied psychology, but then it was more concrete, studies, diagnostic criteria applicable to real people. You may not be able to remember because it was a psychotherapy book and wasn't really saying anything, just waffle trying to sound meaningful, that stuff is bunk, so it's not surprising if there was nothing for your memory to keep hold of.

The real problem in Madame Bovary is she just doesn't fancy her husband and he's not really trying to help, otherwise she could read her drippy poetry with him and it'd totally feel like it was about them.

FSL speaker: I've read it in English and at the time found it a change from more morally upright 19th century English novels. Tried to read it in French a decade later, couldn't buy into anyone's characterisation (look at female writers' characterisation of women who are more on the sensitive or romantic side, vs. Flaubert's) or the descriptions of Emma's fingernails, got bored, read (also in French) the blingtastic D&D campaign that is Salammbô instead, and now incapable of ever taking Flaubert seriously as a writer. Hard to believe he'd ever really met people, especially women.

I complained about the French all the way through Villette, it was a paper copy for uni with notes, so I kept having to flip to the back to even follow what the characters were on about. It's so funny now I read French, it makes you aware how similar the two languages actually are (60% English vocabulary being Latinate, most directly from French), so it's hard to remember what I thought the big deal was.

My big bugbear now is how keen eighteenth century French writers are on throwing in original phrases in Latin, which are impossible to look up. I wonder what women were expected to do since most wouldn't have had a Classical education. Not be reading it? Ask a man? On the one hand as a woman it makes me feel justified in going 'quid?', on the other, I do have the opportunity today to improve my scattered Latin...

There are diagnostic criteria for mental illness, and many are linked to physical conditions and causes, it's not meant to be something arbitrary.

Yeah, I'm not about to jump on someone for just not liking a book, but mental illness is neither a cute quirk nor an everyday emotional struggle, and people co-opting them causes actual problems for those of us with them. This doesn't really seem like it's an issue with a difference of opinion over a book at all.

I think it depends. I will never get over having read A Place of Greater Safety, and it'll always be why I now know French and have a lasting interest in the Revolution, but that one, what happened is not only real but even unimaginably worse knowing more of the history. I know it might seem obvious to have been expecting it but I really wasn't, either. It also personally connected with me (disabled) because Mantel drew on her experience with health issues and how they're part of the historical personages experiences too.

Purely fictional sad endings, especially if you have a sense of unfairness about it, it might come back to you when you think about it but I haven't really had that feeling last more than a few days. Keep doing other things.

It's been a pretty standard aspect of at least European lit since forever, long before the internet or electricity. Bits of Ancient Greek, lines in Latin, French/Italian/German, occasionally I see English in older French works too. In English or Russian works entire exchanges may be in French because through to the end of the nineteenth century the reader is assumed to understand it. Thing with French is, sometimes it is sufficient to make sense of Italian, Latin, so sometimes the writers may also be anticipating that, and of course with English writers, there's an extent to which native English speakers know French phrases anyway.

I think it's nice other languages are entering the mix more, the idea we'll all perhaps know more Arabic words and expressions.

I use the Kindle dictionary or Google it if I don't understand but haven't always found it to work, with Latin especially unless it's a well-known line you're a bit stuck unless you can piece it together yourself.

The book is almost nothing like the movie, more that just a few aspects were taken from it: it's not exactly an adaptation, and it shouldn't be surprising an original film can be better than a book (it's not even good to begin with). Similar with the Earthsea and Borrowers ones, except the former was generally agreed to be a mistake. I'd like there to be a better adaptation of Earthsea, none have really hit the mark so far imo.

UK as well, no longer a patient having been discharged despite needing help. How does that work with how limited to non-existent resources are, are you a private practitioner? What about the patients for whom there is a diagnosis that would be a clearer fit?

I have OCD, and finding out about it, while studying psychology, was an entirely positive experience, suddenly I had an explanation of what was going on with my mental rituals, and there were strategies to cope. My first panic attack, before my mum explained what it was and that she had them too, was an utterly petrifying experience as well. The stigma comes from prejudiced and ignorant people, not the patient themselves (I know I'm not alone in finding getting a diagnosis hugely positive), and the labels can be a way to educate them. The prejudiced also tend to think all mental illnesses are the same, and have an image of violent paranoid schizophrenia. I don't think patients benefit from being lumped together like that.

The little monster on the leg kind of makes it seem like the image suggests pulling down, to me. I think the artist was probably thinking of institutions in a negative light.

(My ability to help is probably limited to whether being sick on things is helpful...)

Right. So, while waiting on the NHS, I should be motivated to...pull it down? Not sure this will help.

Absolutely, the original ranch buildings already burnt down, it sounds like long past time to leave everything about this in the past.

https://blog.humanesociety.org/2018/07/a-death-at-chincoteague-once-again.html

There are already so many domestic ponies needing safe homes, without preserving a contribution to the problem.

Weird/obscure eighteenth century French stuff, at least if I felt guilty. Did you know Marat wrote a romance novel? Yep, that Marat. It's basically a kind of eighteenth century Polish War and Peace, about the then topical conflict involving the Confederates, with a bit of Romeo and Juliet in there too. It's very very period, sentimental, a bit Gothic, he is not the greatest literary talent but I unironically love it, found the central romance super cute because I have admittedly awful aesthetic taste in romance (still want more like it, Paul et Virginie was a disappointment, Lettres d'une Péruvienne is genuinely good but ultimately not actually romantic) and (not even in spite of his insistence on bringing the plot to a grinding halt to go off on one of his classic political rants at one point) it cemented my attachment to the writer. His anti-military views came across very strongly. It was prefaced with some comments from the creeps who underhandedly obtained it from his widow and lost the last page -fortunately the story remains fairly complete- and they didn't seem to know how to fit it into their preconceptions about him. Believe there's another one as well but afaik it only exists in manuscript form (and even if I had access I can't read his handwriting). There's still an awful lot of his political work I could have read instead (The Chains of Slavery is interesting and the original is the English version fwiw), I know I could be much more systematic about studying this period (guilt), but I'm not that sorry. Or for reading his essay on the treatment of gonorrhea. I'm in this in part for those little details.

Also, although it was a popular bestseller at the time and far from obscure, I want to know if anyone still reads Rousseau's terrible parenting advice? 10/10, absolutely hilarious and (I think deliberately, he seems like that) infuriating.

A Place of Greater Safety. I think Mantel connected with the history and wanted to write about it in part because of her struggles with her health, and so did I, it's not always easy to pin down but it runs through it. I won't reread it, I have looked through for specific passages, but what I did was learn French. Reading the actual words of the people involved feels, often painful but also a privilege.

What you may not be appreciating is that reconciling with something still means accepting a loss, of having had something taken from you, in some cases. Refusing to accept it can mean insisting on the importance of what was lost. This is a sensitive area for disabled/chronically ill people. I was promised a 'normal' life as a teenager prior to the negligently-performed operation that disabled me. As disabled people in society, we are seen as lesser, as not fully human, as though 'normal', full human life doesn't apply to us, isn't even something we have a right to desire.

Absolutely, they should have every right to kill themselves if they so wish, suicide is an issue of bodily autonomy. Maybe check out philosophical works on this subject. It's not a taboo question. Camus' Absurdism presents suicide as not the answer, but as 'the only really important philosophical question'. I love Camus, I would absolutely put his work in front of a sufferer of chronic illness before any work of stoicism written by some Roman Emperor. Camus contracted TB, he went from fit and sporting to living under the shadow of death, he knows what he's talking about.

Camus was also very politically active. I'd suggest books about political movements and activism before a book of stoicism, too. Marcus Aurelius directly benefited from people being encouraged to accept their lot in life. Pitchforks are really a far preferable problem solving approach in this case.

The other day I was reading the reviews of Joan Didion's two books on grief. It seems she wrote them because having looked, she found there was not a book. Now there is: but on the loss of her daughter, in particular, the reviews seemed to suggest that she had found the limits of art. (So did the composer Leos Janacek in his opera about art and loss after the death of his daughter: the opera suggests that art is simply inadequate) There being a book doesn't always help. Sometimes specific advice, shared experience, talking to real people, is helpful regardless of if it does or not.

I've personally yet to find a book that discusses the kind of health problems I've experienced. Have never even come across anyone else with precisely the same issue, particularly at this severity. A male Greek philosopher probably doesn't know all that much about women's health: the kind of generalised life advice often found in philosophical books can just feel like a platitude to someone struggling with a specific issue. It's at best the equivalent of 'learn to live with it', which is much easier said or read than done. Even if the person knows there is no other option in living than to live with it, their conflict can remain in simply not wanting to, and hope is also not so easily extinguished.

Reading aloud is absolutely a part of how books have always been read, including solitary reading aloud. If you prefer it it's fine.

Someone affirmed my struggling by telling me the only approach to the political sections in Phineas Finn was 'endure or skip', and somehow it's still a bit of reading advice that makes me smile...and encourages endurance.

I'd still tell Trollope he needs, not necc. an editor, but to make those sections more detailed so they either tie to character conflict, with the reader knowing all the named characters better, or go more deeply into a specific topical political issue, if not both, just to commit himself more instead of being too vague. He got more into the swing of writing the parliament scenes as he went on with the series, partly just due to having worked out how to develop a fictional government: his serious interest in real politics, having stood for election unsuccessfully, resulting in a miserable time in his life (Phineas' difficulties are more sharply depicted than his integration into parliament), may have initially hindered as well as helped, since writing a series of parliamentary novels really ended up requiring inventing and deviating from the real historical government.

So, I've certainly whined while reading before, counted pages, cursed, but even when I've felt an aspect of an otherwise good novel genuinely isn't quite working, find there's still something to get out of that.

You can think about why something works or doesn't, including considering if it simply doesn't work for you personally, compare to what does, it's a way to think about the construction of a work. Reading often imperfect eighteenth century political texts, having had in mind the specific goal of wanting to better understand the period and individuals involved, I've also become very interested in precisely those aspects, moments of hesitancy, where the writer seems to get stuck, lose confidence, perhaps get bogged down and even seems to go on excessively, their quirks and what they get hung up on, in what they don't say so feels missing from the text and what perhaps cannot be said. It can be a form of character study and lead to more of a feeling for the period.

Back to Trollope, I'm forever frustrated by his beloved fox hunting scenes, as a hunt sab supporting vegan (yes, I know hunting with dogs is supposed to be illegal here today, the law isn't enforced, fellow UK people, support your local hunt sabs!). Which is why one of my most memorable literary moments is how utterly moving the letter the Archdeacon writes to his son, ostensibly on the subject, is. I had to figure out how he'd done that, while using a topic I hated so much, and so chose the section for a close reading exercise. As much as I might prefer he'd had a different hobby and want to get through these too-long-to-me scenes ASAP, they generally illustrate character, and that's his key strength as a writer.

That's interesting, I was just saying yesterday that my mood on waking up depended on how well I was going to be before I really quite knew that. What I have is looking like gut mobility issues due to spinal injury. I'm pretty keen on the inflammation theories given how much my anxiety unexpectedly improved on anti-inflammatory medication.

I'll listen to music if the book mentions it, but otherwise would find it distracting. Can't imagine throwing on random classical music that may not even match the period, it'd be like having two different emotional tones going on at once.

My dad described Bach's St. John's Passion as 'nice, Churchy music'. I tried to listen to it, it's just full of a sense of religious awe/terror, despite being a militant atheist, ended up an emotional wreck. Not all music is that emotional to potentially clash with a book (or not, maybe) as much, but a piece like that, I can't understand how it could even not bother someone.

I am also into opera so the line between books and music as narrative doesn't really exist as much, maybe. There's quite a lot of opera adaptations of books/plays, too! (Sometimes the opera version has become the more known, like Carmen, La Bohème, though those two also made a lot of changes to the source material)