The Golden Notebook who here has read it?

[hfojvt]

Tell me something about it. I think I have a copy around here somewhere, but a search of my living room (8 bookshelves) did not find it.

I just saw Doris Lessing discussed on PBS.

[pitohui]

1. i read it, it's wonderful, READ IT

however i don't want to describe the story, go into it without preconceptions, some say it's the first novel where women are really friends and really speak to each other, instead of just being catty backstabbers, but it's WAY MORE than that

honestly i would think most DU readers, or at least the female ones, would also get a kick out of the "children of violence" series, or if it is too long to read the whole series, just read the last one, "the four-gated city"

"mara and dann" a great adventure tale, hard to believe it was written by someone in her 80s

"the sweetest dream" another recent novel is bittersweet and would probably speak to many who have been in the progressive movement

"the summer before the dark" is the story of her menopause, fictionalized, which sounds crude, but also another moving story

oh god, so many good books, so little time

[hfojvt]

2. aha! Success!

I searched upstairs (four bookshelves) without success. Twice. Then checked downstairs again before finally finding it. Kinda daunting though - 666 pages.

"The acclaimed masterpiece that explore's one woman's liberation from her sexual bondage and her efforts to live as an equal in a man's world."

Written in 1962, the year I was born. Did I grow up in this "man's world" then?

"Anna and her friend, Molly, see themselves as 'free women' trying to live their lives with the freedom of men. Each has shed a man after bearing a child and now takes or leaves men as fancy dictates."

Is that 'the freedom of men'? Certainly not for married men. Did Anna and Molly also "shed" their children?

[pitohui]

9. well, those blurbs are awful aren't they?

i suggest you not take them too seriously

they really wrote some bad jacket copy back in the day, i have jacket copy from one of her books about returning to africa as a banned person, and the jacket copy had a lot of stuff about how "forbidden" emotions, trying to make it about sex, instead of about the fact that she was a communist who was active in working for the civil rights movement

it even had an illustration of the dark man bending sinisterly (or passionately?) over the quivering blond woman

that is just so not...doris lessing!

[Critters2]

3. I haven't read the Golden Notebook,

but The Grass is Singing is an amazing novel!! I was so glad to hear Lessing got the prize!!

[Jade Fox]

4. I did.....

but it was too long ago. I can't remember much about it. I think I liked it. :shrug:

[hfojvt]

5. Recently skimming through "Pebble in the Sky"

it was amazing/scary to see many things that I believe reflected in there. Not so much that I converted after reading it, but perhaps the ideas percolated and influenced later observations that confirmed them.

For example "It is an almost universal disease - hate for hate. Do your people really want equality, mutual tolerance? No! Most of them want only their own turn as top dog."

It just echoed how I have long complained about the vice of returning hate for hate and wondered sometimes if people were complaining not about the unfairness of the system, but only about their own position in it.

[hfojvt]

6. Has anybody else read any Lessing?

Is anybody going to look, now that she has won a Nobel?

[MrCoffee]

7. i never have...thinking i might need to. and a question for you

ever read Orhan Pamuk? he won last year.

[hfojvt]

8. Whoops, that name is not even familiar to me

and I used to have a bookstore.

Sheesh, about the only name I recognize on this list is Toni Morrison

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/

Well, I have read Russell and Faulkner and tried Sartre. Solzehnitsen I read as a HS freshman. I was disgusted by Hemingway though, and not really a huge fan of Camus either. I do recognize some older names on the list, but not much since 1980.

[pitohui]

10. i have an idea for a great short read a progressive would like by lessing

there's a long short story of hers, called "the temptation of jack orkney," i think it would mean a lot to a lot of people here if they read it

a lot of material in her children of violence series was based on her life, as an activist in africa, but that's a five volume series! so maybe not the place to start if you just want a taste

she will not preach nor will she be politically correct, as a novelist of realism, a lot of what she describes is just painting what she sees, a description of our world and our struggle, not a prescription

so maybe some folks won't like it but to me she's just the right mix of capturing a time without all kinds of slop and sentiment (she is not one bit "romantic" so the chick lit fans are not going to be happy with her)

[hfojvt]

11. to say that she is "not one bit romantic"

does that means she scoffs at the idea of love?

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

12. The Magistrate gave me his copy

I started to read it and "All Quiet on the Western Front" at the same time, finished the latter and never finished the former. I think it was because I was determined to read the introduction first. So I've taken it back off the shelf and am just going to start with the story, and read the intro later.

[applegrove]

13. I think I may have a copy of it too. Though I am not sure.