BRAVE NEW FAILURE

Hello Spirits, just a quick post here to give you an update on another book I just finished. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley. You may have heard of it since it is considered very innovative, brilliant, philosophical, political yadda yadda and all that. It was written in the 1930s and depicts an alternate reality, dystopian kind of world. It's science fiction as I like and I was considering this as my next book submission.

I only planned to read the first chapter just for reconaissance to see if it might be good for book club. Well that dastardly, deceitful book lured me right in with an exciting, gripping first chapter so I just kept on reading. Well the joke was on me. If I were to draw a line graph of the level of my happiness throughout the book, it would be something like this:

Started out great, slowly began getting worse, then got absolutely terrible at the end. Of course this is all just my opinion. And you know what they say about opinions so no need for me to repeat that vulgarity here on this innocent blog. I was disappointed though because this is another example of a book that the world loves and respects for its genius, innovation, writing quality, political statements and all that. And I just plain thought it was crap. I'm not smart or philosophical so its hard for me to rely on book reviews.

The good news is you won't be forced to read it either, but please don't let me influence you if you decide to read it on your own. But it will definitely not be my next submission. The research continues.

On a side note, after Archimedes and I purchased and watched the movie UNBROKEN after we both finished the book. Excellent movie but I was nervous and anxious during the whole thing. Even though we knew what all was going to happen and how it ends and all that, it was still nerve racking. Looking forward to the discussion. I won't be making up my own discussion questions for this one since that would be disrespectful I think. It was fine for HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE which was just fiction comedy nonsense but this one I should and will take much more seriously.

See yall soon

Baron

MEETING CHANGE

Hello Spirits, after conferring with the powers that be, we have decided to push back the next book club meeting by one week so JB and Cat can attend the discussion.

The new date is now Sunday March 6th, still at Deuce's place. BTW, have we given her place a label yet? Archimedes and I have the mansion, someone has the mountain lodge, can't remember who 🤔😳.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing everyone. I am anxious to get everyone's impressions on UNBROKEN. I think I'm slightly closer to picking my next book submission. 

See y'all soon

Baron

Laura Hillenbrand Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Hillenbrand was born in Fairfax, Virginia, the daughter and youngest of four children of Elizabeth Marie Dwyer, a child psychologist, and Bernard Francis Hillenbrand, a lobbyist who became a minister.^[11][12][13] Hillenbrand spent much of her childhood riding bareback "screaming over the hills" of her father's Sharpsburg, Maryland, farm.^[14] A favorite childhood book of hers was Come On Seabiscuit.^[14] "I read it to death, my little paperback copy," she says.^[14] She studied at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, but was forced to leave before graduation when she contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, with which she has struggled ever since.^[15] She now lives in Washington, D.C, and rarely leaves her house because of the condition.^[15]Hillenbrand married Borden Flanagan, a professor of government at American University and her college sweetheart, in 2006.^[15] In 2014, they separated after 28 years as a couple, living in separate homes.^[6]

She described the onset and early years of her illness in an award-winning^[16][17][18] essay, A Sudden Illness.^[19][20] The disease still structures her life as a writer, keeping her mainly confined to her home. She reads old newspaper articles by buying the old newspapers or borrowing them from libraries, and does all her interviews with living persons by telephone.^[10][6]

On the irony of writing about physical paragons while being so incapacitated herself, Hillenbrand says, "I'm looking for a way out of here. I can't have it physically, so I'm going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination. And it's just fantastic to be there alongside Louie as he's breaking the NCAA mile record. People at these vigorous moments in their lives - it's my way of living vicariously."^[15]

In a 2014 interview, Bob Schieffer said to Laura Hillenbrand: To me your story – battling your disease ….is as compelling as his (Louis Zamperini’s) story.^[21]

--wikipedia

BOSSYPANTS BOOK DISCUSSION

My sweet, sweet Novel Spirits!  It's been so long!  I realize that it's because I've been a blogging slacker.  I really can't believe that we're already halfway through February 2016.  Time flies!

Normally, I try to blog within a week or so of our meeting, while the book and everyone's comments are fresh in my mind.  But here we are, 3 1/2 weeks after our meeting, and I'm starting to understand that Baron has a point about my abysmal note-taking.  "No, Archimedes, you're just being hard on yourself," I hear you say.  Well, here's what I'm working with for the book discussion of Bossypants (except in my messy handwriting):

Book - Bossypants

• dealing w/sexism; struggle to the top
• Bossypants - accurate description - not really
• accurate?
• lessons she learned - relatable 
• [Diesel] humbling experience of auditioning
• Name of our autobiography
• "Can I have a do over?"
• "24 and learning" [Diesel]
• "Nosey" [Deuce]
• "Hindsight is 20/20"
• interesting choices for her, career focused

3 1/2 me
4 [Deuce]
2 1/2 [Indy]
3 [Baron]
3 1/2 [Diesel]

This is what I give myself to work with.  Now on the one hand, this reflects what an utterly poor choice I am for secretary.  However, on the other, it is a testament to my memory skills that I normal construct a blog from notes as scant as these!

So, from these notes, I recall that we kicked off the meeting (after having some refreshments) with general thoughts on the book.  We noted that it was interesting to read about Tina Fey's struggle in the competitive industry of comedy to succeed, and we were surprised by the sexism she faced in that industry.  Indy and Deuce noted the "rough" language in the book.  Overall, we didn't think that "Bossypants" was necessarily an accurate title, because she didn't seem very bossy.  (I have no idea why I wrote "accurate" twice - suffice it to say, I'd had some wine by this point in the meeting.)  We talked about the lessons that Tina learned through her experiences, and Diesel related to the experience of auditioning and shared her own experience.  Kudos to Diesel; I have never been brave enough to even attempt it.  We all tried to think about what we would name our autobiography - I'm not sure if Indy's was "Can I have a do over?" and Baron's was "Hindsight is 20/20" or vice versa.  We wound up the meeting by noting that it was interesting to see what stories from her own life that Tina Fey chose to include in the book, and we noted that the focus of the book was definitely on her career rather than her personal life.  The numbers are our ratings of the book overall.

As always, the blog summary of the discussion is a poor reflection of lively Novel Spirits' discussion. And, as always, I am looking forward to our next meeting!  I can't believe that we are down to our last 3 books.  UNBROKEN is proving to be a real page turner!

Unrelated, but I am going to use the Novel Spirits blog platform to plug my latest obsession: the Hamilton Broadway musical.  I've been listening to the soundtrack practically 24/7; I highly recommend it.  [Disclaimer: there is some "rough" language in the Broadway musical, and several of the songs are raps, which may not be everyone's thing.  To be honest, rap is not my regular choice of music, but it won me over.  Give it a chance.] It was inspired by the biography ALEXANDER HAMILTON by Ron Chernow.

On a sad note: I saw in the paper today that Pat Conroy, one of the authors Indy has recommended, has pancreatic cancer. :(

Sorry to end on a sad note, but this blogger has to hit the hay.  Happy reading, Spirits!

JANUARY MEETING NOTES

Howdy Novel Spirits, just a tad bit late for this post but I guess you're all used to that by now. This post is for the meeting notes of our January meeting held here at the mansion a few weeks ago for the book BOSSYPANTS by Tina Fey. There wasn't much to the business portion of this particular meeting so lucky for you, this post will be short.

To start us off, Boss read I AM ABRAHAM LINCOLN for us. He did very well. And I must say I learned quite a bit about Abraham Lincoln from that kids book. He was a scrappy little kid.

Deuce received an obligatory chastisement for stalling on the T-shirts. (O_O) That's me looking at you Deuce!!

Gilligan received an obligatory chastisement for skipping out on his dues. (O_O) That's me looking at you Gilligan!! In Texas you say? No excuses! You millenials ever heard of Western Union???

JB and Cat received an obligatory chastisement for skipping out on the meeting for a lovely vacation out west. However, even though this club is fairly brutal with its criticism, I don't think we can commit double jeapordy with chastising them twice. I called them out in a previous post so I won't do it here..............  too much. (O_O) It has been snowy and cold here the whole time yall have been gone!!!!! Ok thats it :-)

Diesel volunteered to research run races for the group to run.... or at least the members who are into that sort of thing. Personally, I have a sticker on my car that says "0.0 I don't run". The races she will look into will hopefully have some sort of benefit for literacy or partner with libraries etc.

And we also agreed on the March meeting to submit a "soft submission" of our next round of book submissions. I have been researching books quite a bit and still not very close to a decision. "What do you know about PRESSURE!?!" There was my movie quote for this post, from ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE. In fact, I may have already used that one. Booo.

That's all for now Spirits. Short and bitter. See yall in a couple weeks. UNBROKEN is outstanding in my opinion! I will say nothing more.

Baron

Timeless

Wife waiting for returning sailor husband; as timeless as sea travel itself

LET THE CHASTISEMENT COMMENCE!!

Fellow Novel Spirits, as we all know, it is brutally cold, snowy, icy, bone-chilling WINTER outside. And I for one, am ready for warm weather. Oh wait, acutally I was wrong when I said, "As we all know" because unfortunately, we all DON'T know. There are certain treacherous Novel Spirits who betrayed the rest of us for the warm, sunny paradise known as Ha wee wee. (There was my movie reference. In HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA, Dracula's daughter Mavis incorrectly pronounces Hawaii "Ha wee wee". That's right Spirits, our very own JB and Cat are currently sunning and funning in HAWAII!!!! I am turning my nose up in the air currently.

And like a true Novel Spirit, I am throwing them under the proverbial bus of chastisement, just as it cruises by at a high rate of speed, and powered by a V-8 internal combustion engine that runs purely on BETRAYAL!!!!!

Let's do a little side by side comparison of what the two of us are experiencing right now. It will be a fun game to see if you all can figure out which pictures came from JB and Cat, and which comes from us:

Not sure if you'll be able to identify which one is us or not. But anyway, I hope JB and Cat are having a great time in paradise. With all the money the squirreled away in the super top secret hidden safe, maybe we can all take a field trip to Hawaii!!! I'm sure there are books that relate to Hawaii that we can tie it into. It's settled then.

BTW, I have started UNBROKEN, and so far it is extremely exciting. It's hard to stop once I've started. See you all in a few weeks!

Baron

Enticing Pictures For The Spirits

Getting a little cabin fever here at the lodge. Thought the Spririts might enjoy pictures of the Indianapolis Public Library. I took these when we were there in December.

 I'm pretty sure I could find something to read here!!