2015: The Year of Reading Women discussion

What about Jean Rhys? I'm about to read Quartet before the end of December, will reread Wide Sargasso Sea in January/February (tied by school schedule here), and would really appreciate company for Good Morning Midnight. Anyone wants to join?:)

yeah - will be re-reading her this year - probably GMM in around feb/march if you are interested

I am:) i will drop you a line soon - would like to take a look at your Modernist shelf, if you don't mind:)

sure - I have been very loose with the definition of modernist! Basically anything roughly around that period which caught my eye made it on the list...

I'm possibly in for Wide Sargasso Sea. Been planning to read it sometime...

I will need to finish Wide Sargasso Sea in the second half of February - can you get hold of the book by, say, mid-January?

Just to be clear, I for one, already own Wide Sargasso Sea. :)

@Traveller. Great. So do I. Just let me know when you want to start.

@Jonathan - am I correct in assuming you're not interested in WSS? I'm still up to GMM.

Bloodorange, I'm tied up with some current books and a discussion on one of my own groups here on GR which will happen in January, so, any time in February might be a good fit for me there.

I would opt for the beginning of February, then:)

I've been planning to read Wide Sargasso Sea in 2015, especially since I recently finished Jane Eyre so I'm in.

Great! When would we like to start? I should like to have read it by 23 February - 2 March, is that OK? As you probably know, the book consists of three parts, the last of which is very short. There also are author's notes, and I believe the book is best read with them. The volume isn't big, but may be dense at times. Would we need two, three, four weeks?

Well, as long as we avoid end spoilers, I'm sure we can discuss the book in blocks from beginning to end, starting before we've actually finished reading the book. In other words, we agree to discuss only the first 5 or 10 chapters until we're ready to move on to the next block, and so forth.

I have another group here on GR where we do in-depth discussions, and we take the books in blocks of about 10 chapters each (depending on the size of chapters) and it works pretty well.

...so, how about we start the discussion around Feb. 10-ish?

Hmm, or did I misunderstand you, BloodOrange? How about Feb 1? If you want to take 3 weeks and be done by Feb 23? Let's make that your call. :) How about you 'lead' this discussion for us.

I'm not sure we can avoid end spoilers in this case, given what this book is (view spoiler)[ - a prequel to Jane Eyre (hide spoiler)]. Yes, I would be very grateful if we could start in early February:)

Early Feb is fine with me.

Ha, yes, I was thinking about that... but what I meant was, that we discuss the book as if we are reading it literally together ....
I've never read it, and all I know is the connection with the other well-known book. So I don't know what is going to happen regarding the minutiae of the plot, only what you mentioned in the spoiler.

Shall we be open with that fact from the start of the discussion? Since it is, like you say, an extremely important part of the book. But still keep the exact end details for later on in the discussion - okay, it is up to you - you're our leader on this discussion if Yolande and Jonathan agree to that. ;)

But Feb 1 would be great for me.

I agree.

I'll do my best to discuss it piece by piece, but I think we may agree to bear the spoiler:) in mind to fully appreciate some of the some foreshadowing/ imagery.

This is my first group reading, and I count on you to tell me, what kind of division into sections will work best for this one:) Feb 1 is great, thanks!

I've pointed you to some group discussions in a PM, Bloodorange. Unfortunately we'd need to stick to a single thread, so I suggest you work out more or less how to divide the read over the 3-4 weeks ahead of time, and give your suggestion in your first post on the thread. If you like, I can start the thread for you by doing the first post and you can take over from there. Then we can gauge how well the divisions work for us as we go along.

Hmm, maybe I should do the admin for Bell Jar, though I haven't read it before - it would be nice if someone who knows the book helps us out, though I have had some brilliant impromptu buddy-read discussions before with people who had never read the book we were discussing before.

But in any case, the Bell Jar discussion is sure to give you pointers, so don't worry. :)

Thank you. I'll do my homework and will come up with something. Yes - I, too, thought it is quite fortunate I will by that time have the experience of the Bell Jar discussion.

I've been thinking about the division of the book into three sections, and it struck me that the story of the protagonist and her marriage should be easily divided into three stages. And such is the case.

I have a Penguin Classics edition, where the main text is 124 pages long. The first part of the novel ends on p. 35, and p. 39 opens the second part, narrated by the female protagonist's husband; a description of an event crucial to his perception of their marriage ends on p. 80. I would thus propose a following schedule:

Week I - entire part I of the novel. (pp. 1-35 in my edition)
Week II - part two of the novel, ending with the meeting with D. ("Then I walked to the tree where I'd left my horse and rode away as quickly as I could.") (pp. 39-80 in my edition)
Week III - part II continued: subsequent dinner with Antoinette ("The telescope was pushed to one side of the table making room for a decanter half full of rum and two glasses on a tarnished silver tray") + v. short part III (pp. 80-124 in my edition).

What do you think?

That sounds good, Bloodorange! :)

..and since you're being so industrious, I quickly created the thread for the actual discussion for you here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I also noted the discussion in the group schedule.

Industrious. Yes, industrious is my middle name:) (And so is yours, it seems:) Thank you! I'm copying the tentative schedule there.

Hopefully we'll make a good team. :D

I'm in for WSS -- should be fun.

@Jonathan,

is March still OK for Good Morning, Midnight?

Bloodorange and Jonathan, (& others wanting to read GMM ) would late March work for you? Sorry to be a bit of a drag, but I'm hungry for more Rhys and my Feb/March is so very full...

I could do March, but late March/early April would also look fine - I might be unavailable during Easter, but I have a free preceding week. April is somewhat awful for me, as far as work goes.

Perhas we could start after "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter' discussion ends (e.g. on Sat, March 21, and discuss GMM for some three weeks - e.g. until Sun, 12 April?)

If this isn't possible, what are your preferences?

Bloodorange wrote: "Perhas we could start after "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter' discussion ends (e.g. on Sat, March 21, and discuss GMM for some three weeks - e.g. until Sun, 12 April?)"

That would work for me, if ok with Jonathan. And Nate? Thanks for compromising, Bloodorange!

Oh! It's not in the march schedule... I'd better get hold of it...

Zanna wrote: "Oh! It's not in the march schedule... I'd better get hold of it..."

We came back to this idea only yesterday:) I'll post it in the schedule as soon as we come up with final dates.

End of March would work well for me

I'll be happy to read it literally anytime. I usually have several books going, so I'll just interleave this one into my reading whenever. Although March would give a nice Quartet in January --> WWS in February --> Good Morning Midnight in March progression.

Thanks, Nate! I'm relieved to see the dates work, more or less, for everyone. I'll post info/ start a thread later today.

Does anyone feel there's any 'homework' to do before approaching GMM?

Here is the link to the separate Good Morning, Midnight thread:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...