What Are You Reading the Week of 13 September 2014?
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1richardderus
Sherwood Anderson (13 September 1876 – 8 March 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and Elyria, Ohio. In 1912, Anderson had a nervous breakdown that led him to abandon his business and family to become a writer.
At the time, he moved to Chicago and was eventually married three more times. His most enduring work is the short-story sequence Winesburg, Ohio, which launched his career. Throughout the 1920s, Anderson published several short story collections, novels, memoirs, books of essays, and a book of poetry. Though his books sold reasonably well, Dark Laughter (1925), a novel inspired by Anderson's time in New Orleans during the 1920s, was the only bestseller of his career.
He may be most remembered for his powerful effect on the next generation of young writers, as he inspired William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Thomas Wolfe. He helped gain publication for Faulkner and Hemingway.
Anderson was born 13 September 1876 in Camden, Ohio, a farming town with a population of around 650 (according to the 1870 census). He was the third of seven children born to former Union soldier and harness-maker Irwin McLain and Emma Jane Anderson (née Smith). Considered reasonably well-off financially—Anderson's father was seen as an up-and-comer by his Camden contemporaries–the family left town just before Sherwood's first birthday. Reasons for the departure are uncertain; most biographers note rumors of debts incurred by either Irwin or his brother Benjamin. The Andersons headed north to Caledonia. Four or five years were spent in Caledonia, years which formed Anderson's earliest memories. This period later inspired his semi-autobiographical novel Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926). Anderson's father began drinking excessively, which led to financial difficulties, eventually causing the family to leave the town.
With each move, Irwin Anderson's prospects dimmed; while in Camden he was the proprietor of a successful shop who had an assistant, by the time the Andersons finally settled down in Clyde, Ohio, in 1884, a frontier town, Irwin could only get work as a hired man to harness manufacturers That job was short-lived, and for the rest of Sherwood Anderson's childhood, his father barely supported the family as an occasional sign-painter and paperhanger, while his mother took in washing to make ends meet. Partly as a result of these misfortunes, young Sherwood became adept at finding various odd jobs to help his family, earning the nickname "Jobby."
Though he was a decent student, Anderson's school attendance declined as he began picking up work, and he finally left for good at age 14 after about nine months of high school. From the time he began to cut school to the time he left town, Anderson worked as a "...newsboy, errand boy, waterboy, cow-driver, stable groom, and perhaps printer's devil, not to mention assistant to Irwin Anderson, Sign Painter..." in addition to assembling bicycles for the Elmore Manufacturing Company. Even in his teens, Anderson's talent for selling was evident (he would later draw on it in a successful career in advertising) . As a newsboy he was said to have convinced a tired farmer in a saloon to buy two copies of the same evening paper.
Anderson was a voracious reader. Though there were only a few books in the Anderson home (The Pilgrim's Progress and the Complete Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson among them), the youth read widely by borrowing from the school library (there was not a public library in Clyde until 1903), and the personal libraries of a school superintendent and John Tichenor, a local artist, who responded to Anderson's interest.
By Anderson's 18th year in 1895, his family was on shaky ground. His father had started to disappear for weeks on end prior to that year, Karl (Sherwood's elder brother) had left Clyde for Chicago in 1893, and Sherwood boarded at the Harvey & Yetter's livery stable where he worked as a groom–an experience that would translate into several of his best-known stories. On 10 May 1895, his mother succumbed to tuberculosis. (Irwin Anderson died in 1919 after having been estranged from his son for two decades). Anderson had signed up with the Ohio National Guard for a five-year term in March 1895, was going steady with an attractive girl (Bertha Baynes, possibly the inspiration for Helen White in Winesburg, Ohio), and working a secure job at the bicycle factory, but it was his mother's death that precipitated the young man's leaving Clyde. He settled in Chicago around late 1896, having worked a few small-town factory jobs along the way.
Anderson moved in with his brother and quickly found a job at a cold-storage plant. In late 1897, brother Karl moved away, and Anderson relocated to a two-room flat with his sister and two younger brothers newly come from Clyde. Money was tight (Anderson earned "two dollars for a day of ten hours"), but with occasional support from Karl, they got by. Following the example of his Clyde confederate and lifelong friend Cliff Paden (later to become known as John Emerson) and Karl, Anderson took up the idea of furthering his education by enrolling in night school at the Lewis Institute. It was there that Anderson heard lectures on Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and was possibly first introduced to the poetry of Walt Whitman. Soon, however, Anderson's first stint in Chicago would come to an end as the United States prepared to enter the Spanish-American War.
Though poor in Chicago, Anderson bought a new suit on the way back to Clyde to join his National Guard Company. Once back home, the Company was fêted by the ladies of Clyde before officially enlisting (sans six men who returned to Clyde) into the new federal army at Camp Bushnell, Ohio. According to Irving Howe, "Sherwood was popular among his army comrades, who remembered him as a fellow given to prolonged reading, mostly in dime westerns and historical romances, and talented at finding a girl when he wanted one. For the first of these traits he was frequently teased, but the second brought him the respect it usually does in armies."
After the war, Anderson spent a few months back in Clyde doing agricultural work before deciding that in order to advance in life he would need to once again go back to school. So in September 1899 Anderson joined his siblings Karl and Stella in Springfield, Ohio, where, at the age of twenty-three, he enrolled in what amounted to a senior year of high school at the Wittenberg Academy, a preparatory school located on the campus of the Wittenberg University. In his three terms there during the years 1899-1900, Anderson did quite well earning mostly A's in a variety of subjects and participating in several extracurricular activities including a debate club, called the Athenian Literary Society. In the spring of 1900 Anderson graduated from the Academy, offering a discourse on "Zionism" as one of the eight students chosen to give a commencement speech.
In May 1903 he stopped in the home of a friend from Clyde, Jane "Jennie" Bemis, then living in Toledo, Ohio. It was there that he met Cornelia Pratt Lane (1877–1967), the daughter of wealthy Ohio businessman Robert Lane. The two were married a year later, on the 16th of May. They would go on to have three children — Robert Lane (1907–1951), John Sherwood (1908–1995), and Marion (aka Mimi, 1911–1996).50 After a short honeymoon, the couple moved into an apartment on the south side of Chicago. For the next several years, Anderson worked at a variety of businesses, ending as the president of his own paint company. The stress of success was heavy for Anderson, resulting in an event now almost mythical in American literary annals.
On Thursday, 28 November 1912, Anderson came to his office in a slightly nervous state. According to his secretary, he opened some mail, and in the course of dictating a business letter became distracted. After writing a note to his wife, he murmured something along the lines of "I feel as though my feet were wet, and they keep getting wetter," and left the office. Four days later, on Sunday 1 December, a disoriented Anderson entered a drug store on East 152nd Street in Cleveland and asked the pharmacist to help figure out his identity. Unable to make out what the incoherent Anderson was saying, the pharmacist discovered a phone book on his person and called the number of Edwin Baxter, a member of the Elyria Chamber of Commerce. Baxter came, recognized Anderson, and promptly had him checked into the Huron Road Hospital in downtown Cleveland, where Anderson's wife (who he would hardly recognize) went to meet him.
Even before returning home, Anderson begun the lifelong practice of reinterpreting the story of his breakdown. Despite news reports in the Elyria Evening Telegram and the Cleveland Press following his admittance into the hospital outlining the cause of the breakdown as "overwork" and mentioning Anderson's inability to remember what happened, on 6 December the story changed. All of the sudden, the break became voluntary when the Evening Telegram reported (possibly spuriously) that "As soon as he recovers from the trance into which he placed himself, Sherwood Anderson...will write a book of the sensations he experienced while he wandered over the country as a nomad." This same sense of personal agency is alluded to thirty years later in Sherwood Anderson's Memoirs (1942) where the author wrote of his thought process before walking out, "I wanted to leave, get away from business...Again I resorted to slickness, to craftiness...The thought occurred to me that if men thought me a little insane they would forgive me if I lit out..." This idea, however, that Anderson made a conscious decision on 28 November to make a clean break from family and business is unlikely. Firstly, contrary to what Anderson later claimed, his writing was no secret. It was known to his wife, secretary, and some business associates that for several years Anderson had been working on personal writing projects both at night and occasionally in his office at the factory. Secondly, though some of the notes he wrote to himself during his journey (and mailed to his wife on Saturday, addressing the envelope "Cornelia L. Anderson, Pres., American Striving Co.") show that he had some semblance of memory, their general confusion and frequent incoherence is unlikely to be deliberate. While diagnoses for the four days of Anderson's wanderings have ranged from "amnesia" to "lost identity" to "nervous breakdown", his condition is generally characterized today as a "fugue state." Anderson himself described the episode as "escaping from his materialistic existence," and was admired for his action by many young male writers, who chose to be inspired by him. Herbert Gold wrote, "He fled in order to find himself, then prayed to flee that disease of self, to become 'beautiful and clear.'"
Anderson's first novel, Windy McPherson's Son, was published in 1916 as part of a three-book deal with John Lane. This book, along with his second novel, Marching Men (1917) are usually considered his "apprentice novels" because they came before Anderson found fame with Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and are generally considered inferior in quality to works that followed.
In his memoir, he wrote that "Hands," the opening story, was the first "real" story he ever wrote:
In addition, Anderson was one of the first American novelists to introduce new insights from psychology, including Freudian analysis. Although his short stories were very successful, Anderson wanted to write novels, which he felt allowed a larger scale. In 1920, he published Poor White, which was rather successful. In 1923, Anderson published Many Marriages; in it he explored the new sexual freedom, a theme which he continued in Dark Laughter and later writing. The novel had its detractors, but the reviews were, on the whole, positive. F. Scott Fitzgerald considered Many Marriages to be Anderson's finest novel.
Beginning in 1924, Anderson and his wife Tennessee Claflin Mitchell moved to New Orleans, where they lived in the historic Pontalba Apartments (540-B St. Peter Street) adjoining Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter. They separated that year and divorced. For a time, he and his wife entertained William Faulkner, Carl Sandburg, Edmund Wilson and other writers, for whom Anderson was a major influence. Critics trying to define Anderson's significance have said he was more influential through this younger generation who he influenced than by his own works.
Anderson referred to meeting Faulkner in his ambiguous and moving short story, "A Meeting South." His novel Dark Laughter drew from his New Orleans experiences and continued to explore the new sexual freedom of the 1920s. Although the book is now out of print (and was satirized by Ernest Hemingway in his novel The Torrents of Spring), it was a bestseller at the time, the only book of Anderson's to reach that status during his lifetime.
Anderson frequently contributed articles to newspapers. In 1935, he was commissioned to go to Franklin County, Virginia, to cover a major federal trial of bootleggers and gangsters, in what was called "The Great Moonshine Conspiracy." More than 30 men had been indicted for trial. In his article, he said Franklin was the "wettest county in the world," a phrase used as a title for a 21st-century novel by Matt Bondurant.
In the 1930s, Anderson published Death in the Woods (short stories), Puzzled America (essays), and Kit Brandon: A Portrait (novel). In 1932, Anderson dedicated his novel Beyond Desire to his mistress and soon-to-be wife Elizabeth Copenhaver. Although by this time he was considered to be less influential overall in American literature, some of what have become his most quoted passages were published in these later works. The books were otherwise considered below the level of quality of his earlier ones.
Beyond Desire built on his interest in the trade union movement and was set during the 1929 Loray Mill Strike in Gastonia, North Carolina. Hemingway referred to it satirically in his novel, To Have and Have Not (1937), where he included as a minor character an author working on a novel of Gastonia.
In his later years, Anderson and Copenhaver lived on his Ripshin Farm in Troutdale, Virginia, which he purchased in 1927 for use during summers. While living there, he contributed to a country newspaper, columns that were later collected and published posthumously.
Anderson died on 8 March 1941, at the age of 64, taken ill during a cruise to South America. He had been feeling abdominal discomfort for a few days, which was later diagnosed as peritonitis. Anderson and his wife disembarked from the cruise liner Santa Lucia and went to the hospital in Colón, Panama, where he died. An autopsy revealed he had accidentally swallowed a toothpick, which had damaged his internal organs and promoted infection. He was thought to have swallowed it in the course of eating the olive of a martini or hors d'oeuvres. Anderson's body was returned to the United States, where he was buried at Round Hill Cemetery in Marion, Virginia. His epitaph reads, "Life, Not Death, is the Great Adventure."
Novels
Windy McPherson's Son (1916)
Marching Men (1917)
Poor White (1920)
Many Marriages (1923)
Dark Laughter (1925)
Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926, semi-autobiographical novel)
Alice and The Lost Novel (1929)
Beyond Desire (1932)
Kit Brandon: A Portrait (1936)
Short Story collections
Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions From American Life in Tales and Poems (1921)
Horses and Men (1923)
Death in the Woods and Other Stories (1933)
Poetry
Mid-American Chants (1918)
A New Testament (1927)
Drama
Plays, Winesburg and Others (1937)
Nonfiction
A Story Teller's Story (1924, memoir)
The Modern Writer (1925, essays)
Sherwood Anderson's Notebook (1926, memoir)
Hello Towns! (1929, collected newspaper articles)
Nearer the Grass Roots (1929, essays)
The American County Fair (1930, essays)
Perhaps Women (1931, essays)
No Swank (1934, essays)
Puzzled America (1935, essays)
A Writer's Conception of Realism (1939, essays)
Home Town (1940, photographs and commentary)
Sherwood Anderson's Memoirs (1942)
At the time, he moved to Chicago and was eventually married three more times. His most enduring work is the short-story sequence Winesburg, Ohio, which launched his career. Throughout the 1920s, Anderson published several short story collections, novels, memoirs, books of essays, and a book of poetry. Though his books sold reasonably well, Dark Laughter (1925), a novel inspired by Anderson's time in New Orleans during the 1920s, was the only bestseller of his career.
He may be most remembered for his powerful effect on the next generation of young writers, as he inspired William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Thomas Wolfe. He helped gain publication for Faulkner and Hemingway.
Anderson was born 13 September 1876 in Camden, Ohio, a farming town with a population of around 650 (according to the 1870 census). He was the third of seven children born to former Union soldier and harness-maker Irwin McLain and Emma Jane Anderson (née Smith). Considered reasonably well-off financially—Anderson's father was seen as an up-and-comer by his Camden contemporaries–the family left town just before Sherwood's first birthday. Reasons for the departure are uncertain; most biographers note rumors of debts incurred by either Irwin or his brother Benjamin. The Andersons headed north to Caledonia. Four or five years were spent in Caledonia, years which formed Anderson's earliest memories. This period later inspired his semi-autobiographical novel Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926). Anderson's father began drinking excessively, which led to financial difficulties, eventually causing the family to leave the town.
With each move, Irwin Anderson's prospects dimmed; while in Camden he was the proprietor of a successful shop who had an assistant, by the time the Andersons finally settled down in Clyde, Ohio, in 1884, a frontier town, Irwin could only get work as a hired man to harness manufacturers That job was short-lived, and for the rest of Sherwood Anderson's childhood, his father barely supported the family as an occasional sign-painter and paperhanger, while his mother took in washing to make ends meet. Partly as a result of these misfortunes, young Sherwood became adept at finding various odd jobs to help his family, earning the nickname "Jobby."
Though he was a decent student, Anderson's school attendance declined as he began picking up work, and he finally left for good at age 14 after about nine months of high school. From the time he began to cut school to the time he left town, Anderson worked as a "...newsboy, errand boy, waterboy, cow-driver, stable groom, and perhaps printer's devil, not to mention assistant to Irwin Anderson, Sign Painter..." in addition to assembling bicycles for the Elmore Manufacturing Company. Even in his teens, Anderson's talent for selling was evident (he would later draw on it in a successful career in advertising) . As a newsboy he was said to have convinced a tired farmer in a saloon to buy two copies of the same evening paper.
Anderson was a voracious reader. Though there were only a few books in the Anderson home (The Pilgrim's Progress and the Complete Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson among them), the youth read widely by borrowing from the school library (there was not a public library in Clyde until 1903), and the personal libraries of a school superintendent and John Tichenor, a local artist, who responded to Anderson's interest.
By Anderson's 18th year in 1895, his family was on shaky ground. His father had started to disappear for weeks on end prior to that year, Karl (Sherwood's elder brother) had left Clyde for Chicago in 1893, and Sherwood boarded at the Harvey & Yetter's livery stable where he worked as a groom–an experience that would translate into several of his best-known stories. On 10 May 1895, his mother succumbed to tuberculosis. (Irwin Anderson died in 1919 after having been estranged from his son for two decades). Anderson had signed up with the Ohio National Guard for a five-year term in March 1895, was going steady with an attractive girl (Bertha Baynes, possibly the inspiration for Helen White in Winesburg, Ohio), and working a secure job at the bicycle factory, but it was his mother's death that precipitated the young man's leaving Clyde. He settled in Chicago around late 1896, having worked a few small-town factory jobs along the way.
Anderson moved in with his brother and quickly found a job at a cold-storage plant. In late 1897, brother Karl moved away, and Anderson relocated to a two-room flat with his sister and two younger brothers newly come from Clyde. Money was tight (Anderson earned "two dollars for a day of ten hours"), but with occasional support from Karl, they got by. Following the example of his Clyde confederate and lifelong friend Cliff Paden (later to become known as John Emerson) and Karl, Anderson took up the idea of furthering his education by enrolling in night school at the Lewis Institute. It was there that Anderson heard lectures on Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and was possibly first introduced to the poetry of Walt Whitman. Soon, however, Anderson's first stint in Chicago would come to an end as the United States prepared to enter the Spanish-American War.
Though poor in Chicago, Anderson bought a new suit on the way back to Clyde to join his National Guard Company. Once back home, the Company was fêted by the ladies of Clyde before officially enlisting (sans six men who returned to Clyde) into the new federal army at Camp Bushnell, Ohio. According to Irving Howe, "Sherwood was popular among his army comrades, who remembered him as a fellow given to prolonged reading, mostly in dime westerns and historical romances, and talented at finding a girl when he wanted one. For the first of these traits he was frequently teased, but the second brought him the respect it usually does in armies."
After the war, Anderson spent a few months back in Clyde doing agricultural work before deciding that in order to advance in life he would need to once again go back to school. So in September 1899 Anderson joined his siblings Karl and Stella in Springfield, Ohio, where, at the age of twenty-three, he enrolled in what amounted to a senior year of high school at the Wittenberg Academy, a preparatory school located on the campus of the Wittenberg University. In his three terms there during the years 1899-1900, Anderson did quite well earning mostly A's in a variety of subjects and participating in several extracurricular activities including a debate club, called the Athenian Literary Society. In the spring of 1900 Anderson graduated from the Academy, offering a discourse on "Zionism" as one of the eight students chosen to give a commencement speech.
In May 1903 he stopped in the home of a friend from Clyde, Jane "Jennie" Bemis, then living in Toledo, Ohio. It was there that he met Cornelia Pratt Lane (1877–1967), the daughter of wealthy Ohio businessman Robert Lane. The two were married a year later, on the 16th of May. They would go on to have three children — Robert Lane (1907–1951), John Sherwood (1908–1995), and Marion (aka Mimi, 1911–1996).50 After a short honeymoon, the couple moved into an apartment on the south side of Chicago. For the next several years, Anderson worked at a variety of businesses, ending as the president of his own paint company. The stress of success was heavy for Anderson, resulting in an event now almost mythical in American literary annals.
On Thursday, 28 November 1912, Anderson came to his office in a slightly nervous state. According to his secretary, he opened some mail, and in the course of dictating a business letter became distracted. After writing a note to his wife, he murmured something along the lines of "I feel as though my feet were wet, and they keep getting wetter," and left the office. Four days later, on Sunday 1 December, a disoriented Anderson entered a drug store on East 152nd Street in Cleveland and asked the pharmacist to help figure out his identity. Unable to make out what the incoherent Anderson was saying, the pharmacist discovered a phone book on his person and called the number of Edwin Baxter, a member of the Elyria Chamber of Commerce. Baxter came, recognized Anderson, and promptly had him checked into the Huron Road Hospital in downtown Cleveland, where Anderson's wife (who he would hardly recognize) went to meet him.
Even before returning home, Anderson begun the lifelong practice of reinterpreting the story of his breakdown. Despite news reports in the Elyria Evening Telegram and the Cleveland Press following his admittance into the hospital outlining the cause of the breakdown as "overwork" and mentioning Anderson's inability to remember what happened, on 6 December the story changed. All of the sudden, the break became voluntary when the Evening Telegram reported (possibly spuriously) that "As soon as he recovers from the trance into which he placed himself, Sherwood Anderson...will write a book of the sensations he experienced while he wandered over the country as a nomad." This same sense of personal agency is alluded to thirty years later in Sherwood Anderson's Memoirs (1942) where the author wrote of his thought process before walking out, "I wanted to leave, get away from business...Again I resorted to slickness, to craftiness...The thought occurred to me that if men thought me a little insane they would forgive me if I lit out..." This idea, however, that Anderson made a conscious decision on 28 November to make a clean break from family and business is unlikely. Firstly, contrary to what Anderson later claimed, his writing was no secret. It was known to his wife, secretary, and some business associates that for several years Anderson had been working on personal writing projects both at night and occasionally in his office at the factory. Secondly, though some of the notes he wrote to himself during his journey (and mailed to his wife on Saturday, addressing the envelope "Cornelia L. Anderson, Pres., American Striving Co.") show that he had some semblance of memory, their general confusion and frequent incoherence is unlikely to be deliberate. While diagnoses for the four days of Anderson's wanderings have ranged from "amnesia" to "lost identity" to "nervous breakdown", his condition is generally characterized today as a "fugue state." Anderson himself described the episode as "escaping from his materialistic existence," and was admired for his action by many young male writers, who chose to be inspired by him. Herbert Gold wrote, "He fled in order to find himself, then prayed to flee that disease of self, to become 'beautiful and clear.'"
Anderson's first novel, Windy McPherson's Son, was published in 1916 as part of a three-book deal with John Lane. This book, along with his second novel, Marching Men (1917) are usually considered his "apprentice novels" because they came before Anderson found fame with Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and are generally considered inferior in quality to works that followed.
In his memoir, he wrote that "Hands," the opening story, was the first "real" story he ever wrote:
Instead of emphasizing plot and action, Anderson used a simple, precise, unsentimental style to reveal the frustration, loneliness, and longing in the lives of his characters. These characters are stunted by the narrowness of Midwestern small-town life and by their own limitations.
In addition, Anderson was one of the first American novelists to introduce new insights from psychology, including Freudian analysis. Although his short stories were very successful, Anderson wanted to write novels, which he felt allowed a larger scale. In 1920, he published Poor White, which was rather successful. In 1923, Anderson published Many Marriages; in it he explored the new sexual freedom, a theme which he continued in Dark Laughter and later writing. The novel had its detractors, but the reviews were, on the whole, positive. F. Scott Fitzgerald considered Many Marriages to be Anderson's finest novel.
Beginning in 1924, Anderson and his wife Tennessee Claflin Mitchell moved to New Orleans, where they lived in the historic Pontalba Apartments (540-B St. Peter Street) adjoining Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter. They separated that year and divorced. For a time, he and his wife entertained William Faulkner, Carl Sandburg, Edmund Wilson and other writers, for whom Anderson was a major influence. Critics trying to define Anderson's significance have said he was more influential through this younger generation who he influenced than by his own works.
Anderson referred to meeting Faulkner in his ambiguous and moving short story, "A Meeting South." His novel Dark Laughter drew from his New Orleans experiences and continued to explore the new sexual freedom of the 1920s. Although the book is now out of print (and was satirized by Ernest Hemingway in his novel The Torrents of Spring), it was a bestseller at the time, the only book of Anderson's to reach that status during his lifetime.
Anderson frequently contributed articles to newspapers. In 1935, he was commissioned to go to Franklin County, Virginia, to cover a major federal trial of bootleggers and gangsters, in what was called "The Great Moonshine Conspiracy." More than 30 men had been indicted for trial. In his article, he said Franklin was the "wettest county in the world," a phrase used as a title for a 21st-century novel by Matt Bondurant.
In the 1930s, Anderson published Death in the Woods (short stories), Puzzled America (essays), and Kit Brandon: A Portrait (novel). In 1932, Anderson dedicated his novel Beyond Desire to his mistress and soon-to-be wife Elizabeth Copenhaver. Although by this time he was considered to be less influential overall in American literature, some of what have become his most quoted passages were published in these later works. The books were otherwise considered below the level of quality of his earlier ones.
Beyond Desire built on his interest in the trade union movement and was set during the 1929 Loray Mill Strike in Gastonia, North Carolina. Hemingway referred to it satirically in his novel, To Have and Have Not (1937), where he included as a minor character an author working on a novel of Gastonia.
In his later years, Anderson and Copenhaver lived on his Ripshin Farm in Troutdale, Virginia, which he purchased in 1927 for use during summers. While living there, he contributed to a country newspaper, columns that were later collected and published posthumously.
Anderson died on 8 March 1941, at the age of 64, taken ill during a cruise to South America. He had been feeling abdominal discomfort for a few days, which was later diagnosed as peritonitis. Anderson and his wife disembarked from the cruise liner Santa Lucia and went to the hospital in Colón, Panama, where he died. An autopsy revealed he had accidentally swallowed a toothpick, which had damaged his internal organs and promoted infection. He was thought to have swallowed it in the course of eating the olive of a martini or hors d'oeuvres. Anderson's body was returned to the United States, where he was buried at Round Hill Cemetery in Marion, Virginia. His epitaph reads, "Life, Not Death, is the Great Adventure."
Novels
Windy McPherson's Son (1916)
Marching Men (1917)
Poor White (1920)
Many Marriages (1923)
Dark Laughter (1925)
Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926, semi-autobiographical novel)
Alice and The Lost Novel (1929)
Beyond Desire (1932)
Kit Brandon: A Portrait (1936)
Short Story collections
Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions From American Life in Tales and Poems (1921)
Horses and Men (1923)
Death in the Woods and Other Stories (1933)
Poetry
Mid-American Chants (1918)
A New Testament (1927)
Drama
Plays, Winesburg and Others (1937)
Nonfiction
A Story Teller's Story (1924, memoir)
The Modern Writer (1925, essays)
Sherwood Anderson's Notebook (1926, memoir)
Hello Towns! (1929, collected newspaper articles)
Nearer the Grass Roots (1929, essays)
The American County Fair (1930, essays)
Perhaps Women (1931, essays)
No Swank (1934, essays)
Puzzled America (1935, essays)
A Writer's Conception of Realism (1939, essays)
Home Town (1940, photographs and commentary)
Sherwood Anderson's Memoirs (1942)
2Iudita
Impressive bio on Anderson. I think this weekend I will start Stone Mattress. I'm not a big short story fan but this is a collection I would like to read so I will start them and see where they take me. Perhaps I will also start One Night In Winter.
3Citizenjoyce
I felt as though my feet were wet and kept getting wetter Wow. Aimee Bender could have written that breakdown.
I've started Dreams of Gods and Monsters. As much as I've loved both other books of the trilogy, it took me about 1/4 of the Days of Blood and Starlight to really get into it. Dreams has grabbed me right from the first. This woman can write.
I've started Dreams of Gods and Monsters. As much as I've loved both other books of the trilogy, it took me about 1/4 of the Days of Blood and Starlight to really get into it. Dreams has grabbed me right from the first. This woman can write.
4hazeljune
I am loving The Sheep Queen by Thomas Savage, this novel was originally know as I Heard my Sister Speak My Name. The setting is Montana, fascinating.
5Iudita
#3 Citizenjoyce - I also found the writing in Laini Taylor's series to be quite wonderful. Even though the series was YA fiction that was quite readable for adults, I would still like to see this author write some serious adult fiction. I was quite swept up in the whole Daughter of Smoke and Bone Series. I loved the exotic locations, the lovely imagery and especially the writing.
6benitastrnad
I also loved the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. I had a few problems with the way the last book ended but overall that series was quite a ride.
I know it was marketed to a YA audience, but really? These are adult novels and they are being marketed as YA simply to improve sales. I have a problem with that .
Even though I think these books would get lost in the crowded adult market they really aren't YA novels. But then I am sort of a crank about this subject. I don't think the Harry Potter books are children's book either. I think they are adult novels - novels written about children for adult consumption.
Right now I am listening to a good old fashioned children's book - Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. I somehow managed to not read this book and it is time to join the ranks of millions of school kids who have had to read this book in many a classroom. It is very good and deserves its reputation.
I know it was marketed to a YA audience, but really? These are adult novels and they are being marketed as YA simply to improve sales. I have a problem with that .
Even though I think these books would get lost in the crowded adult market they really aren't YA novels. But then I am sort of a crank about this subject. I don't think the Harry Potter books are children's book either. I think they are adult novels - novels written about children for adult consumption.
Right now I am listening to a good old fashioned children's book - Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. I somehow managed to not read this book and it is time to join the ranks of millions of school kids who have had to read this book in many a classroom. It is very good and deserves its reputation.
7seitherin
Still working on Neuromancer and Eclipse One.
8PaperbackPirate
This week I am having trouble putting down Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It's a good problem to have!
9Bjace
Working on Rabble in arms, a novel about soldiers from Maine in the Revolution.
10princessgarnet
The Runaway King by Jennifer A. Nielsen (YA read)
11framboise
Hi Paperbackpirate! I read Gone Girl in a couple of days. That was a good one. Interested in seeing the movie version coming up.
I just had a nice long & much needed nap while reading The Luminaries. It is mildly interesting at pg 80 or so. Normally I don't read books of such length, but after all the accolades here, I bumped it up on my TBR list. It's interesting enough for me to keep going, but I'm not thrilled about it.
I just had a nice long & much needed nap while reading The Luminaries. It is mildly interesting at pg 80 or so. Normally I don't read books of such length, but after all the accolades here, I bumped it up on my TBR list. It's interesting enough for me to keep going, but I'm not thrilled about it.
12Citizenjoyce
I just finished and reviewed a 5 star read The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld. This is a beautifully written novel about men on death row that never questions their guilt but ponders what makes us human.
13richardderus
>12 Citizenjoyce: Thumbs-upped your review!
14Citizenjoyce
>13 richardderus: Thanks. As you might tell, I loved the book.
15richardderus
Really? I was left a bit unsure as to your opinion of it.
/irony
/irony
16Vonini
I picked up Between the sheets by Colette Caddle. Some good old chick lit :-)
17Peace2
It's been a slow month - but a concerted effort since Friday and I've now finished Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella, Squire Terence and the Maiden's Knight by Gerald Morris and Round Ireland With A Fridge by Tony Hawks (and yes it did take me longer to read it than it took him to make his journey!).
Concentration now turns to the audio version of The Cry of the Go-Away Bird by Andrea Eames and to the tree versions of The Emperor of Nihon-Ja by John Flanagan, Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith and Stormchaser by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.
Concentration now turns to the audio version of The Cry of the Go-Away Bird by Andrea Eames and to the tree versions of The Emperor of Nihon-Ja by John Flanagan, Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith and Stormchaser by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.
18browner56
Working my way through The Bone Clocks, my August ER book. I've seen so many recent comparisons--mostly unfavorable--between this one and Cloud Atlas and, while perhaps inevitable, that seems a little unfair. I'm enjoying The Bone Clocks so far and David Mitchell is a truly wonderful story-teller.
19rocketjk
I've started Life Class, my first reading of Pat Barker.
21Peace2
>20 Vonini: I did enjoy Twenties Girl but it made me cry in the end (sniffle sniffle) It seemed very different to anything else that I'd read by Sophie Kinsella.
22Vonini
I had the same feeling, it's not as light as her other books. But in a good way. Even though I love her lighter books too, she's just so funny! :-) Have you read The Undomestic Goddess? Or Remember Me? Very good too.
23Peace2
>22 Vonini: I'm pretty sure The Undomestic Goddess was actually the first of hers that I read, many a moon ago, but Remember Me? doesn't sound familiar at all (there could be an element of irony involved in that if I find out that I have actually read it!). I recently listened to I've Got Your Number and enjoyed that one too.
24MsMaryAnn
>14 Citizenjoyce: Very nice review of The Enchanted. It's not a book I would have ordinarily noticed, but it does look very much to my liking. Another fine recommendation added to my wishlist!
25framboise
22 & 23: I too love Sophie Kinsella and have read all of her books. I find her books under that pseudonym more entertaining and fun than those under her real name Madeleine Wickham.
26Citizenjoyce
I finished Dreams of Gods and Monsters, and I think it suffered from the excellence of the writing of The Enchanted. It's just so hard to put anything else in my mind and heart after that. Plus, the star crossed lover plot got a bit old. However, the characters were great and the emphasis on diplomacy over war was well portrayed.
>24 MsMaryAnn: Thanks. I don't see how anyone could resist it.
>24 MsMaryAnn: Thanks. I don't see how anyone could resist it.
27benitastrnad
I finished listening to Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson. I had never read it before, so was surprised at the quality of this novel for children. Loved it.
I also finished reading Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox and will reserve judgement on it because it is obvious that this is only part of the story. I started Dreamquake immediately and was surprised to find out that it was a Prinz honor award recipient. Perhaps that is why I have both titles in my private collection? (I try to read award winners and honor books - partly because of my job, but also because sometimes some good books win these awards.)
I also finished reading Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox and will reserve judgement on it because it is obvious that this is only part of the story. I started Dreamquake immediately and was surprised to find out that it was a Prinz honor award recipient. Perhaps that is why I have both titles in my private collection? (I try to read award winners and honor books - partly because of my job, but also because sometimes some good books win these awards.)
28Meredy
>26 Citizenjoyce: I see on Amazon that Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus, wrote a cover blurb. Would you say that people who loved The Night Circus would enjoy The Enchanted?
And what about people who didn't?
And what about people who didn't?
29NarratorLady
Finished and thoroughly enjoyed Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. It's not great literature but a good story very well told. I'll read more of Moyes' books.
Beginning the much hyped Orphan Train. My first encounter with this dreadful phenomenon was last year while reading The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty. I understand that there are a few more books out with this same theme.
Beginning the much hyped Orphan Train. My first encounter with this dreadful phenomenon was last year while reading The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty. I understand that there are a few more books out with this same theme.
30seitherin
Finished Neuromancer by William Gibson. I actually liked it more than I was expecting. The only thing that kind of tweaked me, and it is a very tiny thing that only happened a very few times, was the use of 'alphanumeric' instead of 'alphameric'. I don't know when the latter became part of computer speak, but I've gotten so used to it that the former felt out of place.
Next up is The Maze Runner by James Dashner.
Next up is The Maze Runner by James Dashner.
31Copperskye
This afternoon I finished Louise Penny's latest, The Long Way Home and thought it was great.
Next up is an ER book, We Are Not Ourselves. It's gotten some great reviews and I'm looking forward to it, but yikes, it's a chunkster at 620 pages!
Next up is an ER book, We Are Not Ourselves. It's gotten some great reviews and I'm looking forward to it, but yikes, it's a chunkster at 620 pages!
32mynovelthoughts
>12 Citizenjoyce: Loved loved loved The Enchanted - such beautiful writing! I would recommend it to anyone.
I am enjoying The House at Riverton - I am interested in seeing where it will go.
I am enjoying The House at Riverton - I am interested in seeing where it will go.
33alphaorder
Read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas yesterday. Now starting The Liar's Wife.
34GuinR
I am currently reading the following The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. Will be starting This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl by Esther Earl, Lori Earl, Wayne Earl, John Green since it must be returned to the library.
35snash
I finished a LTER, There Was and There Was Not which was an honest and thorough investigation of the difficulties inherent in honoring ones history without being ruled by it. In looking at the Armenian/Turkish situation, the reflections are relevant to any minority/majority dynamic as well as the difficulties of immigrant populations. It is an excellently written thought provoking book.
36Citizenjoyce
>28 Meredy: I can only assume Erin Morgenstern wrote a blurb for The Enchanted because she appreciates good writing. The books have little to do with each other, so liking or not liking one would have no indication of how you'd feel about the other. To me The Night Circus is magical realism. The magic in the story is an accepted part of everyone's world. In The Enchanted the magic lives only within the mind of the narrator. So even if you do or don't like magic it has no bearing on what you'd think of The Enchanted. The bigger indicator would be how you feel about probing the causes of extreme personalities and how you feel people outside the laws of humanity should be treated.
37Meredy
>36 Citizenjoyce: That does sound interesting to me. I'm not a fan of The Night Circus, and I think we're using different definitions of magic realism, but I've put The Enchanted on my library request list on the strength of your recommendation. Thanks.
38richardderus
My review of the book circle's latest book, The Day of the Locust, is over in my thread...post #134.
39Citizenjoyce
>38 richardderus: I haven't read the book but loved the movie. Burgess Meredith with his ailing heart doing the old soft shoe up the stairs, it grabs my heart just to think of it.
40sebago
Season of the Witch is my current read. Do not want to hurry it but my boss gave me Winter World by Ken Follett and I am itching to get started on it. :)
41grkmwk
Finished This Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems by Wendell Berry night before last, so last night I started Anson County: Poems by Joseph Bathanti.
I'm also reading, and loving, both A Burnable Book and Women in Clothes. The latter is unlike anything I've read before, and is exceeding expectations!
I'm also reading, and loving, both A Burnable Book and Women in Clothes. The latter is unlike anything I've read before, and is exceeding expectations!
42Citizenjoyce
What is so good about Women in Clothes? I keep hearing about it, and it doesn't sound that interesting.
I could't get into Lisette's List, which seems to be an interesting book about art, because The Enchanted has set my attention span askew, so I began a re read of Geek Love because I knew it could shake my head back in place.
I could't get into Lisette's List, which seems to be an interesting book about art, because The Enchanted has set my attention span askew, so I began a re read of Geek Love because I knew it could shake my head back in place.
43benitastrnad
I started listening to Fire Chronicle by John Stephens. This is book two in a children's series. I enjoyed book one so can't wait to see what I think of this one. I also finished reading Destiny of the Republic and thought it was good, but not the outstanding that many people tell me it is. It did bring to life an obscure president who didn't really get a chance to be president and the author also managed to make me feel sympathetic to the assassin. That is good writing, but somehow something was missing from this book.
44sebago
Starting Winter of the World today yay!!
45grkmwk
>42 Citizenjoyce: Part of what's so good about Women in Clothes is precisely that it is unlike anything I've read before, yet it's accessible. It reminds me of a reference text, but it's not. Definitely pushing boundaries in being defined by type, and stretching me as a reader. While I am reading it straight through (albeit slowly), it lends itself to skipping around. Physically, it is a beautiful book, and I cannot pick it up without flipping through it to admire it purely as an object. It's weighty, but not cumbersome. It's paperback, but with high-quality cover paper, with jacket flaps.
I'm also enjoying reading thoughts and opinions from women beyond the fashion world as they talk about women's clothes, and why they wear what they do, why they have the style they do. It's a collection of conversation transcripts, photos, survey responses, poems, and reflections by 642 different women from very different walks of life. Some are famous, some aren't. Wide cross-section of ages, nationalities, sexualities, lifestyles. It's refreshingly honest.
Finally - and I admit, this will sound odd - it is the first book in a long time that I bought for myself. I don't mean that it's the first book I've bought in awhile, rather than checked out; I buy books frequently! :) What I mean is that this is a book that I'd heard about some months back, put it on my wishlist, and forgot about it. Then, I heard about it again, and again, and again, and everything I read about it made me realize that this was a book I needed to read, one I needed to read right now, for where I am in my life at this time. So, I drove across town to buy it. I didn't order it, I didn't wait until I was near the bookstore to scoot in and grab it, I didn't wait for a family bookstore outing, or ask for it for Christmas. I knew I needed it, and I left work and bought it. And I'm captivated.
Now, I'll also be the first to admit that this book certainly isn't for everyone. In fact, it will likely have a fairly small readership that truly loves it. My mom and sister wouldn't appreciate it, which isn't a knock against them, or the book. But it speaks to me.
I'm also enjoying reading thoughts and opinions from women beyond the fashion world as they talk about women's clothes, and why they wear what they do, why they have the style they do. It's a collection of conversation transcripts, photos, survey responses, poems, and reflections by 642 different women from very different walks of life. Some are famous, some aren't. Wide cross-section of ages, nationalities, sexualities, lifestyles. It's refreshingly honest.
Finally - and I admit, this will sound odd - it is the first book in a long time that I bought for myself. I don't mean that it's the first book I've bought in awhile, rather than checked out; I buy books frequently! :) What I mean is that this is a book that I'd heard about some months back, put it on my wishlist, and forgot about it. Then, I heard about it again, and again, and again, and everything I read about it made me realize that this was a book I needed to read, one I needed to read right now, for where I am in my life at this time. So, I drove across town to buy it. I didn't order it, I didn't wait until I was near the bookstore to scoot in and grab it, I didn't wait for a family bookstore outing, or ask for it for Christmas. I knew I needed it, and I left work and bought it. And I'm captivated.
Now, I'll also be the first to admit that this book certainly isn't for everyone. In fact, it will likely have a fairly small readership that truly loves it. My mom and sister wouldn't appreciate it, which isn't a knock against them, or the book. But it speaks to me.
46Citizenjoyce
>45 grkmwk: Thanks. It does sound odd, but I guess I'm going to have to check it out for myself.
47Meredy
>45 grkmwk:, >46 Citizenjoyce: I notice that no one has written a review of that book yet.
I have virtually no interest in fashion, haven't at any point in my life, but I do have a certain way of thinking about what I wear, and I do notice when someone wears something that's really great or really terrible on her. So I think the book might be of interest even if I don't look at a fashion magazine from one end of the year to the other. But I wouldn't mind seeing another LT review or two first.
>43 benitastrnad: I felt something similar myself at the end of Destiny of the Republic. I wonder if what was missing was the sort of wrap-up we'd expect if the narrative had been fiction: a comeuppance for the villains, or some unfolding or revelation, or just a logical counterbalance to the loss and sadness: something to give us a sense of justice, or symmetry, or even just moral necessity. It wasn't fiction, though, and the author couldn't make that happen. I still thought the book was outstanding, despite the tale it had to tell.
I have virtually no interest in fashion, haven't at any point in my life, but I do have a certain way of thinking about what I wear, and I do notice when someone wears something that's really great or really terrible on her. So I think the book might be of interest even if I don't look at a fashion magazine from one end of the year to the other. But I wouldn't mind seeing another LT review or two first.
>43 benitastrnad: I felt something similar myself at the end of Destiny of the Republic. I wonder if what was missing was the sort of wrap-up we'd expect if the narrative had been fiction: a comeuppance for the villains, or some unfolding or revelation, or just a logical counterbalance to the loss and sadness: something to give us a sense of justice, or symmetry, or even just moral necessity. It wasn't fiction, though, and the author couldn't make that happen. I still thought the book was outstanding, despite the tale it had to tell.
48moonshineandrosefire
Well, hello there everyone! :) I thought I might miss out on this week, but happily I'm not as late as I suspected I might be. Anyway, I've read rather a bumper crop of books (for me) this week:
I had started reading Twenty Wishes by Debbie Macomber on Wednesday, September 10th and finished it on Friday, September 12th! I absolutely loved this book, truly a feel-good story - comforting and emotionally satisfying for me to read! :)
Up next for me was Hush by Nancy Bush. I started reading this book on Friday, September 12th and finished it on Monday, September 15th! :) This was truly not a bad book - I enjoyed it in parts, and it certainly very well-written; I just thought that there were too many characters involved in a very convoluted mystery. I had trouble keeping all their names straight in my mind.
I started reading Between Husbands and Friends: A Novel by Nancy Thayer on Monday, September 15th and finished it the next day - Tuesday, September 16th! Another great book by Nancy Thayer. There's never really been a book by this author that I haven't liked on some level - she writes such poignant stories filled with characters that really resonate with me.
I started reading Death at the Priory: Love, Sex and Murder in Victorian England by James Ruddick on Tuesday, September 16th and am quickly coming down the home straight of finishing this book up very soon - maybe tonight, Thursday, September 18th! I'm really enjoying this book so far. It's about the Charles Bravo Murder in 1876.
I had started reading Twenty Wishes by Debbie Macomber on Wednesday, September 10th and finished it on Friday, September 12th! I absolutely loved this book, truly a feel-good story - comforting and emotionally satisfying for me to read! :)
Up next for me was Hush by Nancy Bush. I started reading this book on Friday, September 12th and finished it on Monday, September 15th! :) This was truly not a bad book - I enjoyed it in parts, and it certainly very well-written; I just thought that there were too many characters involved in a very convoluted mystery. I had trouble keeping all their names straight in my mind.
I started reading Between Husbands and Friends: A Novel by Nancy Thayer on Monday, September 15th and finished it the next day - Tuesday, September 16th! Another great book by Nancy Thayer. There's never really been a book by this author that I haven't liked on some level - she writes such poignant stories filled with characters that really resonate with me.
I started reading Death at the Priory: Love, Sex and Murder in Victorian England by James Ruddick on Tuesday, September 16th and am quickly coming down the home straight of finishing this book up very soon - maybe tonight, Thursday, September 18th! I'm really enjoying this book so far. It's about the Charles Bravo Murder in 1876.
49CraigShoemaker 
This message has been flagged by multiple users and is no longer displayed (show)
I am the author of LoveMaster'd and I think all of you would love the book. The description is as such.
Seven years after his own first marriage has ended bitterly, happily remarried comedian Craig Shoemaker gets a Facebook message from Leah, a casual acquaintance, in which she tells him that her marriage of thirty years is ending. Something in Leah's deeply sorrowful message strikes a chord in Craig and he writes her back and offers to share some of his own hard-won wisdom on how to handle the dissolution of a marriage. But Craig's troubles with his ex-wife are far from over and he comes to need Leah's insights and support as much as she needs his. What evolves is a unique spiritual journey and an extraordinary friendship, conducted entirely through Facebook private-messaging. Through their correspondence, Leah and Craig struggle together through life's storms and eventually triumph over them, transcending into fully realized lives enriched by mindfulness, acceptance, and grace. Oftentimes painful, frequently funny, and always emotionally riveting, Lovemaster'd is a page-turner that imparts priceless lessons on spiritual awakening, in dramatic, can't-put-it-down style.
It seems most of the people that get involved with this love touching and meaningful stories and I think this book would provide that for you as well.
Seven years after his own first marriage has ended bitterly, happily remarried comedian Craig Shoemaker gets a Facebook message from Leah, a casual acquaintance, in which she tells him that her marriage of thirty years is ending. Something in Leah's deeply sorrowful message strikes a chord in Craig and he writes her back and offers to share some of his own hard-won wisdom on how to handle the dissolution of a marriage. But Craig's troubles with his ex-wife are far from over and he comes to need Leah's insights and support as much as she needs his. What evolves is a unique spiritual journey and an extraordinary friendship, conducted entirely through Facebook private-messaging. Through their correspondence, Leah and Craig struggle together through life's storms and eventually triumph over them, transcending into fully realized lives enriched by mindfulness, acceptance, and grace. Oftentimes painful, frequently funny, and always emotionally riveting, Lovemaster'd is a page-turner that imparts priceless lessons on spiritual awakening, in dramatic, can't-put-it-down style.
It seems most of the people that get involved with this love touching and meaningful stories and I think this book would provide that for you as well.
50Citizenjoyce
Well, Geek Love managed to shake up my brain enough to reset it, so I'm able to go on with normal reading. I do love that book. So, I've finished (and reviewed) The Arsonist, a beautiful novel about dealing with uncertainty. Now, on audio I've started The Storied Life of A, J. Fikry and on paper, The Bone Clocks.
51framboise
I've mostly decided to quit The Luminaries after giving it a good try. At almost 200 pgs in, I see no end in sight and find it less than mildly interesting and very convoluted.
52MsMaryAnn
>50 Citizenjoyce: Nice review of The Arsonist. Another one added to my wishlist! Enjoy The Storied Life of A.J. Firky the book was wonderful. I have never read any books by David Mitchell but I am looking forward to The Bone Clocks and your comments.
53Citizenjoyce
>52 MsMaryAnn: Thanks. I liked Cloud Atlas so we'll see how this one goes.
54Vonini
I finished Between the sheets by Colette Caddle. A bit more heavy handed than I like my chick lit. It's about a writer who has her husband walk out on her and her subsequent struggle in finishing the book, dealing with the event, alcohol and her past. Not bad, I kept reading it and moderately enjoying it, but not great either. I could take it or leave it.
Now I've dived into the sixth volume of the highly addictive Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward, called Lover Enshrined. Looks like an excellent read again!
Now I've dived into the sixth volume of the highly addictive Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward, called Lover Enshrined. Looks like an excellent read again!
55CarolynSchroeder
51 - I came to the same conclusion about The Luminaries, but at about page 300, so I gave it a real effort. I think the issue for me was all the characters felt very much the same and were all repugnant. A little of that is okay, but geez, give me someone likable! The only female character was just icky, weird (and not in a good way) and no matter how skillfully crafted or well written, I felt so aware that the characters were merely pawns in the plot. So it got to be a chore to pick up. When you don't really care why one guy is murdered, one person was poisoned and another disappeared ... well, time to move on.
I am now halfway into The Signature of All Things which I love and will finish. Big surprise as I did not care for Eat, Pray, Love.
I also finished Bringing Yoga to Life which was awesome.
I am now halfway into The Signature of All Things which I love and will finish. Big surprise as I did not care for Eat, Pray, Love.
I also finished Bringing Yoga to Life which was awesome.
56benitastrnad
"It isn't easy living up to Dwarfish standards."
I am having great fun listening to The Fire Chronicle by John Stephens. This is the second book in his children's series "The Books of Beginning." These books are simply delightful to listen to. (No surprise since the narrator is Jim Dale.) They are really good children's books, but they are also wonderful for adults to listen to as there are several levels of reading that can be done in them. For instance, the above quote. It is a line in a dialogue between an old wizard and a 12 year-old who is in love with Dwarves and all the attendant lore associated with them. A children is going to hear that line one way. I heard it another, and laughed long enough that I had to rewind the CD to listen to the parts I missed.
This series would make great read-alouds for parents and children.
I am having great fun listening to The Fire Chronicle by John Stephens. This is the second book in his children's series "The Books of Beginning." These books are simply delightful to listen to. (No surprise since the narrator is Jim Dale.) They are really good children's books, but they are also wonderful for adults to listen to as there are several levels of reading that can be done in them. For instance, the above quote. It is a line in a dialogue between an old wizard and a 12 year-old who is in love with Dwarves and all the attendant lore associated with them. A children is going to hear that line one way. I heard it another, and laughed long enough that I had to rewind the CD to listen to the parts I missed.
This series would make great read-alouds for parents and children.
59framboise
#55 - Glad I am not the only one here who quit The Luminaries! I gave it a good effort, but like you said, why bother when you don't care about the characters? I feel like I wasted too much time on it.
I have also heard a lot of praise for The Signature of All Things, to my surprise, and am reluctant to pick it up. Let us know how it goes.
I have also heard a lot of praise for The Signature of All Things, to my surprise, and am reluctant to pick it up. Let us know how it goes.
60PaperbackPirate
11 framboise
I finished it in a few days too. So good. Can't wait for the movie now and to read Gillian Flynn's other books.
I finished it in a few days too. So good. Can't wait for the movie now and to read Gillian Flynn's other books.
