#2025reads #poetry #classicschallenge 2025 @Lunakay

A 1912 translation of Chinese poems in the public domain. The poems in this collection are plain and what runs through most of them is stillness or nature. This occurs through a variety of themes, including resignation, loss, love or appreciation. I found some poems to be a poignant read, whilst others charmed or humoured me.

#SundayFunday @BookmarkTavern

this one, and it's lined up for this year's reads - yeyyyy - and looking forward to it

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

brilliant question and a tough one to find the book that fits, for me it's a variety of Japanese prints including those by Hokusai

#SundayFunday @BookmarkTavern #stageplay #2025reads

I found this to be a wonderful, thought-provoking play, which did take me several attempts to see the nuances but I‘m glad I kept trying.

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl #ClassicLSFBC @RamsFan1963

I am really looking forward to this one, I've been wanting to read it for ages

#classicschallenge 2025 @Lunakay #2025reads #narrativepoetry

Reading this for the second time, was as hard as the first. Through Hecuba‘s agony, Euripides shows the senselessness of war. Her voice is also the voice of the surviving women, and its truly awful, but I‘m still glad I read this. What stands out for me is the women‘s strength. They have been through so much and yet they are not broken.

#classicschallenge 2025 @Lunakay #2025reads #poetry

18 pieces of prose poetry of varying length scattered with wonderful imagery.

I read “A Hunger Artist: Four Stories“ by Franz Kafka last year, it was beautiful though not a happy read but since then I've become more interested in Kafka‘s work.

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView great question

1/ yes but life has also taught me to say mostly yes, as sometimes yes can also make things tougher

2/ this is the closest I could find to Coen brothers' screenplay of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?“, a fantastic read and I love the movie just as much.

#classicschallenge 2025 @Lunakay #JaneAustenThenAndNow @Crinoline_Laphroaig #VirginiaBloomsberries @AllDebooks #2025reads

Current read and one of the 62 books I've lined up in 2025. I read a mix of fiction & nonfiction, classic & contemporary. This year my main focus is Jane Austen, Bloomsbury Group, reading poetry, continuing with mythology, and trying to read a bit more science. I'm not very good at stickling to my plan, but I try.

#SundayFunday @BookmarkTavern

I love reading poetry but stumble at the theory, so I'm going to try and work on this next year.

I finished this a month ago but it was this month‘s read for #VirginiaBloomsberries, and post it now. Overall, an interesting read, especially the insight of what the 5 women achieved against the odds, which frequently was overshadowed by other biographical details of these women‘s lives. Mixed response but still a pick.

#2024reads

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl #JaneAustenThenAndNow @Crinoline_Laphroaig #2024reads #2025reads

I‘m currently listening to an abridged Jane Austen collection (bookcover right) after listening to an audio drama of JA‘s Emma (bookcover left). The production of this audio drama was a touch dated but I like how the script uses narration to bridge scenes of dialogues, and after an hour I warmed to it. I have more JA books for 2025.

#12Booksof2024 @Andrew65

Jan: Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
Feb: War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad - Christopher Logue
Mar: Hollywood Behind the Lens - Marc Wannamaker & Stephen Bingen - ARC read
Apr: Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
May: Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath - Heather Clark
Jun: We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
Jul: Vincent: a Graphic Biography - Simon Elliott - ARC read
Aug: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo

#SundayFunday @bookmarktavern

Choosing this was tough, I‘m going with Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. It has a bit everything, romance, drama, social novel, crime, survival story.

#SundayFunday @bookmarktavern

definitely with something in mind, I can't browse, it's no good for me, 😂 😂 if I did, I'd come out with the whole store .

Mind you, that doesn't work either, I have 3 translations of The Aeneid, and let's not even get to how many versions of Frankenstein or Romo and Juliet I have - ummm, 7 for the first and 5 for the second, so yeah, no browsing for me 😂

thanks @RamsFan1963 and #ClassicLSFBC, great pick

I enjoyed the wackiness and the comedy, but the flat characters, especially the women, left me a little exasperated at times. So, not a perfect novel but there are some interesting parts to it and I am intrigued to know how the story continues in the sequels.

#TLT #ThreeListThursday @dabbe

We're the Millers
The Terminal
Love Actually

#hitchtoscreen #2024reads

mid-pick, I enjoyed some parts more than others and for this I would read again.

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

1/ always fun putting up the decorations

2/ Tale of Genji, not a snowflake in sight but I'm really looking forward to it as I've been on the waiting list on Libby for, something like over a year, and it just delivered it, a wonderful surprise

#SundayFunday @BookmarkTavern

This is one of the many which I have, along with the Iliad: A New Translation by Peter Green. Before I had discovered these books, I did not know that they were around to make these old works an easier read. At first, they were tough but the extras that these books come with, really helped, it's been amazing, I'm reading books that I always thought would be out of my reach, I am truly grateful to these books.

#WondrousWednesday @Eggs

I hope I'm not too late to play this
2/ City and It's Uncertain Walls - what a brilliant title, just caught my eye, so I'm intrigued
1/ that would be a room with ambient lighting, a fire going on the background, the one that crackles, coffee and a stack of books, yeah, a nice dream 😂 reality where ever I can fit it in

#Two4Tuesday is my fav question, thanks @TheSpineView

1/ I tend to plan ahead what I read, one of my favourite things is lining up future reads.

2/ I'm going to go for the #currentread for #hashtagbrigade, this one didn't go to plan, it took me 5 months to read and I was sure when I finished I'd think never again but no, it's left an impression and I would definitely read again, next time I'm hoping it doesn't take this long.

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl #ClassicLSFBC @RamsFan1963 #currentread

Libby hold became available. What a fantastic opening.

#currentread #hitchtoscreen #PoetryMatters #vivid

#TodayILearned #nfnov #nfn #writers #currentread #VirginiaBloomsberries

This was an amazing discovery. I‘m always in awe of writers who not only create works in different forms but can also do translations. From what I have discovered in other books, I‘m thinking Dante was not easy to translate.

thanks @TheSpineView for #Two4Tuesday

1/ for eternity? this is a tough, it's close, I guess I would go for stripes

2/ the last one I borrowed was a few weeks ago, Labours of Hercules (Poirot # 26), by Agatha Christie, 4*, an entertaining read

#PoetryMatters is giving me the time I‘ve always meant to put aside for #poetry. This extract is from an anthology that covers the twentieth century. Koenig is the protagonist of this long #poem. I like this one in how its unexpected, #vines here are of wild yams and bananas described as cows with unmilked fruit; just wonderful descriptions that remind me why I 💛 poetry 😊

thanks to @dabbe for #TLT #ThreeListThursday

A Christmas Carol, what can I say, it‘s the spirit 👻 of 🎄. The other 2 are Shakespeare‘s Twelfth Night (probably better to watch then 📖, & is a little dark in places but the mayhem and misunderstanding makes it entertaining to read / watch). The one that surprised me, Emma / Emmuska Orczy‘s Scarlet Pimpernel, I found this fun to read, it‘s a classic with a heroine who goes on a daring adventure.

I know poetry and prose are always talked about separately but to me they always feel like one. Like many #writers this also shows Woolf's work. #PoetryMatters #vision

This is an extract from this month‘s #VirginiaBloomsberries , Woolf talks about the process of writing but I think this applies to many things, where we start of with an idea but the end product is not what we had quite envisioned but somehow we still find a way to carry on.

#2024reads #nonfiction

I read this a few months back, at times this was a touch dry but the examples and illustrations included made this an easier, fun read.

Keith Houston throws in many facts and trivia of 11 typography symbols, at times this is a touch overwhelming but at the same time fascinating. One of these is how the ampersand used to be the 27th letter of the English alphabet. I‘m still grappling with this one.

Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade is lined up for next months #VirginiaBloomsberries. I started reading it and 😍. This is a #nfnov, a #nonfiction that covers the lives of 5 women, three of whom are HD (Hilda Doolittle), Dorothy L Sayers and Virginia Woolf.

#PoetryMatters #Villa

my #currentread for #2024reads is the abdridged ed of Sylvia Plath's journal, for me all of Plath's writing is like reading poetry

#Two4Tuesday, thanks @TheSpineView

1/ both - I can't choose, I 😍 them both
2/ dusty, unexpected, informative
extras (couldn't resist 😃) amazingly this is older than The Iliad and has somehow surived

#HitchToScreen @JenlovesJT47

here's my #FirstLineFridays thanks to @ShyBookOwl for this fun idea.

I'm looking forward to reading this, 😂 it will be a lot lighter than my other current, myths about Mesopotamia

The artist Vanessa Bell is Virginia Woolf‘s sister. This is a companion catalogue to an exhibition running at MK Gallery (Milton Keynes, UK). The first time I saw Vanessa Bell‘s art I was struck by her style and how her art is painting, crafts and interior decorating. I love how this catalogue shows this. I would have liked more depth in the writing but the images of Bell‘s art make up for it. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

#2024reads #VirginiaBloomsberries #art

Fascinating and enjoyable are not how I would have described reading this. I‘ve had this on my tbr since 2016, I‘ve always imagined this to be a difficult read, but instead it was the complete opposite, and what a read!!! I didn‘t grasp everything but I was okay with this as I intend to read this several more times more whilst trying to get more familiar with global ancient history.

#2024reads #nonfiction #philosophy

Greek myths retold for a very young audience; Theseus is described as a good king for listening to his mum, and Medea as wicked and naughty.

Parts of this are outdated but my younger self would have still found these stories fun and engaging. Here there‘s adventures, a little bit of magic, monsters to fight, some quirky characters and heroic deeds. When the book ended I wanted it to carry on and tell me more stories.

#mythology #2024

Natalie Haynes‘s retells the story of Jocasta and her family by synthesising several Greek myths. Borrowed from Libby for the 2nd time, I knew what was coming but I was still surprised. It was how the tension is built as the story switches between two timelines, one telling Jocasta‘s story, and the other tells the story of her daughter Ismene, but what stands out is how Jocasta, the wife of Oedipus, is put back into centre stage of her own story.

5 joys from my weeks, and a wonderful quote from my current read, The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes, so true 🙂

I like this more for it heroic read is how it shows the people involved are from all walks of life, and other parts of the world, where most of them had no expectation of being credited, receiving pay or a reward for their contribution to make the OED.

This is not a perfect read but for me an interesting one.

thanks to @debinhawaii for this, my 5:

1 - finished watching Rings of Power, enjoyed it more than the first
2 - found a drama about Kafka, really interesting, I don't know much about him
3 - one of my plants has little pink flowers - I didn't know it did that
4 - enjoying the autumnish air
5 - can't beleive I've read 55% of Plato

Sylvia Plath reading some of her poems and talking about her work. And it‘s wonderful how she reads them, I love her poetry that is full of stark, sharp imagery.

Extract from Candles by Sylvia Plath
--------------
They are the last romantics, these candles:
Upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers,
And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,
Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints.

#PoetryMatters #2024reads

Set in Melbourne, Australia, Aisha, Rosie and Anouk are 3 friends with different lifestyles who have kept in touch since school. They are part of a circle of family and friends. When Rosie‘s child is slapped by Aisha‘s husband it unearths the social, racial and class divide. The novel puts under the scope some hard questions.

As a read it‘s not easy, the characters are not likeable and the story meanders and has large cast of characters. cont ...

I'm almost half way through. There are no ghosts or witches in this one, but the thought of reading it has always been a scary thought. 🎃🎃

I'm really enjoying this, I had no idea that so many ordinary people helped to produce the OED 😊

This retell of Homer‘s The Odyssey is a mix of poetry and prose. It‘s not quite a Halloween read, but the story is told by Penelope and the 12 maids after they are dead. They are angry at what happened to them, and they will have their say:

”we are the maids
the ones you killed
the ones you failed
we danced in air
our barre feet twitched
it was not fair …”

Electra by Euripides is his version of the second part of Aeschylus‘s Oresteia. This not something I would read for leisure, it‘s not a fun read, and it‘s a slow burner. Just interesting to see Euripides‘s version of Electra.

This is not a leisurely read, it‘s alarming, bloody, angry and very anti-women. Orestes by Euripides is hardly produced for the stage today but worth a read if, like me, you‘re trying to put all the pieces together that makes mythology.

#books #eBook #readaway2024 #2024reads #mythology #stageplay

I enjoyed this one, and would read again

This has been on my tbr for ages, and finally reading it. Not exactly Halloween read but the thought of wanting to read it was scary enough. 😃