Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Alexandre Dumas:
Le Collier de la Reine ***
Ange Pitou
La Comtesse de Charny
Le Vicomte de Bargelonne

Vladimir Nabokov:
Lolita (reread)
Machenka **
King, Queen, Knave
The Luzhin Defence
The Eye

Sinclair Lewis:
Dodsworth
Arrowsmith
Main Street

Miscellaneous Fiction:
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
The Winds of War by Herman Wouk
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Independent People by Halldor Laxness
Beloved by Toni Morrison
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Their Eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Mutiny on the “Bounty” by Charles Nordhoff
August 1914 by Solzhenitsyn
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislas Lem
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Sundial (reread) by Shirley Jackson

Socio-Psychology:
Thinking and Speech by Vygotsky
The Robbers Cave Experiment by Muzafer Sherif **
The Myth of Repressed Memory by Elizabeth Loftus***
When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger ***
Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case by A.M. Rosenthal
Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection by Deborah Blum

Miscellaneous Non-Fiction:
The Black Count by Tom Reiss
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin
Ten Days in a Madhouse by Nellie Bly**
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
The Nimrod Expedition by Sir Ernest Shackleton
Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler

wahey! Tales of Pirx the Pilot! was not expecting to see that on anybody else's list for 2017 - we must compare notes!

Watch out for O'Brian - Master and Commander is the first of a series with some twenty books, and so can put you off any other reading for a good month!

Your list looks great! Good luck :)

Nente wrote: "Watch out for O'Brian - Master and Commander is the first of a series with some twenty books, and so can put you off any other reading for a good month!"

Bring it up! I'm kind of hoping it'll be similar to the Count of Monte Cristo.

Darren wrote: "wahey! Tales of Pirx the Pilot! was not expecting to see that on anybody else's list for 2017 - we must compare notes!"

And looking forward to it! Did you put a 2017 list online yet?

I have not yet fully finalised my 2017 challenge - it has gone through 4 revisions already and I feel a 5th coming on...!

Pirx The Pilot will not be in the challenge, but will be in my "Black Ops" list that will get read out of the glare of publicity! ;o)

I edited my list to include résumés of socio-psychological experiments such as the standard Stanford Prison Experiment (The Lucifer Effect) and Obedience to Authority.

When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World was an experiment conducted inside a cult to prove the theory of Cognitive Dissonance. It states that when people are torn between two contradictory attitudes such as believing in the cult's credo that the end of the world will come at a fixed date and facing the truth that the world did not end on the said day, proven wrong, the faithfuls will likely feel a new surge of faith and proselyting as opposed to renounce their faith.

Oh that's really interesting! How was it explained - just unwillingness to admit they were wrong, the need to defend their faith enforcing that faith?

Their need to reduce the tension pushed some to renounce their faith, but the true believers, the most heavily committed all acted counterintuitively. Another example is how subjects who agreed saying something they did not believe in reduced the tension that ensued by starting to believe in that contrary opinion. They did not hate something half as much after having been forced to say they loved it.

Sometimes I feel we are not actually in control of our brains, at all...
Though that begs the question of who "we" are, and that's too deep for a casual chat probably.

This is another proof of what you say: I just finished The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse by Elizabeth F. Loftus about how, in the nineties, thousands of women in their 30s and 40s suddenly recovered memories of sexual abuse and satanic ritual killings involving their family while in therapy. They had sought help to treat a depression or a relationship problem but the therapists told them their current state showed the signs of repressed abuse and they should try to recover and imagine if they couldn't, because their state of unhappiness was proof enough the abuse did happen. Hundreds of innocent parents were prosecuted after these fantasies were given the status of true memory and proof in themselves of the abuse even though no ritualistically killed babies could be found buried anywhere! The author compares this frenzy to that of the Salem witch trials.

I left a cult when I was 24. I've since come to understand why I got involved as well as why I was able to leave on my own. After that I was acquainted with others from a similar group that fell apart. What I found was that those who had some other frame of reference prior to their joining the group had a much easier time recovering. For example, the group I was in was Christian in doctrine, but I had been raised in a mainstream church and had loving parents who welcomed me home, no questions asked. They just said they loved me and were glad I was home. It was a wonderful example of unconditional love and gave me the space I needed to gain perspective and heal. Others I knew who didn't have that had no frame of reference other than the cult and often became bitter without a replacement for what at one point appeared to be the love and relationships in their lives.

Sorry for the long-windedness. I just find group psychology fascinating and will have to check out some of your books.

Definitely some interesting reading possibilities. I'll be checking out some of your books too.

Susan wrote: "I left a cult when I was 24. I've since come to understand why I got involved as well as why I was able to leave on my own. After that I was acquainted with others from a similar group that fell ap..."

I think what you say is an important point. If I may ask, was the decision to leave progressive, did the belief suddenly not make sense anymore? Was your joining the result of a member of the group's proselyting or were you yourself looking for something to belong to? I am also fascinated by group/crowd psychology, if you have some literature on the subject, it is welcome.

The other "group" book I read was The Robbers Cave Experiment: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation. Orig. Pub. as Intergroup Conflict and Group Relations by Muzafer Sherif. It illustrates how, after having experimentally (and without any difficulty) created group tension between two groups of young boys, experimenters attempted to reduce the friction. I would have rated it higher, had the experiment consisted of adult subjects. But the part about experimentally introducing groupbelonging feeling and tension toward non group members also appears, more dramatically in The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip G. Zimbardo.

If I have one book to advise you, and Kathy, it would be this one.

Although there were more factors, the primary reason I joined was because I wanted to contribute to something that I felt was important. The group did a lot of work in Eastern Europe for persecuted groups. (This was in the late '70s and early '80s.) But the personal cost became too high. The reason I refer to it as a cult is because of the tight authority structure, the inability to make personal decisions without permission, and the alienation from family and previous friends that was promoted, or really required. My personal beliefs became obscured by the group beliefs and that eventually became intolerable. So in that sense it was progressive. The emotional manipulation was intense. I tried to leave openly a couple of times and was basically beaten down (emotional not physically), so eventually I snuck out one morning and hitchhiked to the nearest town and caught a bus home. Still can't believe I did that :) I don't regret the experience. It was life-changing in a good way, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Thanks for the book recommendations. I'll check them out.

Thank you for your answer. I keep thinking how interesting it all is (charismatic leadership, emotional manipulation, group thinking...) That is of course from an outsider point of view. Then someone like you will remind me that the logistic of it is not what matters, that is is about individual lives. It must take time, if possible at all, to understand the mechanics that drive group thinking if you are a part of it, and there must be much reconstruction needed after the split.

I believe my interest spurs from being the outsider always, whether we speak of school cliques, the close circle of a friendship or membership in an activity... I felt "the wave" of people acting together at a concert, but I am very much ignorant of what it means to belong and to think what are not your own thoughts (though I am affected by my own culture...)

It did take time to sort it all out afterwards. I had previously lived in a commune-type situation and when I came back there, not only did I have to deal with my own feelings, but with those of others. Some were angry for me, some were judgmental because they believed I shouldn't have gone in the first place, plus in some ways I felt like I had given up and just couldn't make it and was wrong in leaving. Then I agonized over how I could have been so deceived.

It was a very confusing time. I was SO fortunate to have my family. They were not involved in the local group, so after a few months I moved back in with my parents and went back to school for my teacher's certificate and after that moved on to graduate school. So I moved on with my life, but it took time to heal and to learn to trust myself again in making decisions, and years to feel like I really understand it. As you might imagine, I haven't been much of a "joiner" since and for me that's been a good thing. I'm also a big believer in encouraging people to follow their own beliefs and make their own decisions. Right or wrong at least they are your own.

And it must have made you apprehensive when building new trust relationships. Thank god for your family, other people are often not so forgiving with their endless questions...

And thank god you proved independent enough to think by yourself and keep a distance with what the group was feeding you. For the people that actively need the relationship such a group offers, most attempts to steer them away will only reinforce their sense of belonging and they will fight against what could appear like an incoherence in their belief system.

I hope you'll never be stopped like this next time you want to contribute to something good and make a change about your life.

It's been a while since I've talked about it. Thank you! There have also been times when I've been able to help others by just being there for them when they had decisions to make, encouraging them to make them for themselves and not to please others. I do have a lot to be thankful for. Of course, the perspective of a few decades helps. :)

Wow that is an amazing story Susan. And Emerson I will definitely check out the book now.

I'am making slow progress... I have been adding to that list on an every day basis, with new forays into Non Fiction.

My june read will be a complete surprise, I don't know the title yet, it's not even listed on the editor's website, but author/schoolmate Thomas Flahaut tells me it's about Belgium post apocalypse. Looking forward to it!