Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Here is the discussion thread for our buddy read of The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing.

I've had this book on my shelf for a couple of years. I'm always a little intimidated by 600+ page books, so I'm excited about reading it with others.

It looks like you can count me in :)

I'm sure it will be a challenge, but I'm excited to read this and very happy for the company!

Ok no commitment, but I've just ordered a second hand copy!

Cool! If Pink reads with us, we'll be five. I believe Bat-Cat is planning on this too. Hopefully it will work out for Kathy to join us as well.

I think this is one of those books that I always delay until later, even though I mean to read it, so I think it will help to read with others.

I'll join if I can hunt down the book! :D

I'm planning on it.

I might well join too.

Update: have hunted down the book and it's in my ereader now :P I have no excuses now... I'm joining!

That's great, there's quite a few of us now :)

Yes guys, I am planning on it - July/August looks pretty good for me.

I'm going to read The Mysteries of Udolpho before I start this one. I do still plan on joining.

I will most likely be able to start by the middle of July.

I already have my copy, so I do hope to start sometime this month and not leave it for August.

I started today. I'm only about 50 pages in, but I like it so far.

Nathan, you are so speedy. I have it, but haven't cracked it yet. Had this crazy idea I'd finish Jane Eyre first, but it's going to take me a while ...

Glad to hear you like it. I might just have to take a peek at it!

I'm planning on it being my first book of August but i'll join you guys then.

Hhm, I might start this week, but I'd like to read Uncle Tom's Cabin first, so I can concentrate on this and the Mysteries of Udolpho as my 2 long reads. I'll have a little peek as well and see how easy it is to read.

From what I can see, it's one I'm going to want to focus on, so it will be August for me. Glad there'll be some company here then!

I'm sort of planning to pick it up in the next week or two. I'm trying to get better at finishing books before picking up too many new ones.

I am still planning to read this with a start time of (hopefully) the next couple of weeks - I'm working on clearing up my reading projects at the moment. ;-) Like Kathleen, I think I will want to be able to focus on this one.

I've just read the introduction, written by Lessing in 1971, ten years after she wrote the book. Does anyone else have this introduction? It's fantastic, addressing the reception of her book as something that it's not and going onto discuss how people read, study and critique literature. She thinks people have become obsessed with themes and educational practices, looking critically at a book, rather than reading a wide array of material for pleasure, with individual reactions to the text. It's definitely worth reading and doesn't give away any spoilers for the book.

Pink wrote: "I've just read the introduction, written by Lessing in 1971, ten years after she wrote the book. Does anyone else have this introduction? It's fantastic, addressing the reception of her book as som..."

My edition has 2 introductions - one from 1971 and the other from 1993. I always read intros but it is great to know that there aren't any spoilers in these. Thanks Pink!!! ;-)

I usually never read introductions, unless it's non-fiction and even then I sometimes leave it until after I've read the book. I can't count how many times the plot of a book has been spoiled for me in an introduction, or even on the back of the book. Spoilers such as revealing which characters end up together or if somebody dies. I don't know why they include this information before the book, just so that someone else can analyse it and tell me what they think. I hate it. I only tentatively read this one as it was by Lessing herself.

Pink wrote: "I usually never read introductions, unless it's non-fiction and even then I sometimes leave it until after I've read the book. I can't count how many times the plot of a book has been spoiled for m..."

That's definitely good advice. I will pay more attention to it in the future. I guess I am a bit too trusting at times. ;-)

Pink wrote: " I can't count how many times the plot of a book has been spoiled for me in an introduction, or even on the back of the book. Spoilers such as revealing which characters end up together or if somebody dies."

Yeah, I really don't know why they aren't at the end of a book. As a casual reader they're the kind of thing that are interesting to read afterwards when you're thinking about what you've read. Especially if they draw on a wide range of criticism on the book.

On the other hand, unless its something particularly plotty i.e. genre fiction. I don't mind too much if there are spoilers, there's just so many different things you can get out of reading a book that sometimes having thematic or biographical or technical stuff flagged up for you in an intro pays off more when reading, than knowing he's dead, he's Kaiser Soze, and it's a sledge detracts.

Nice to see that many of us will be starting in the next couple of weeks. I too have been trying to read fewer books at the same time.

How's everyone doing with this? I still haven't got past the introduction, feeling a bit swamped with all my books at the moment and I keep reading different unplanned things!

Pink wrote: "How's everyone doing with this? I still haven't got past the introduction, feeling a bit swamped with all my books at the moment and I keep reading different unplanned things!"

Pink, I haven't started it yet - I'm shooting for August - for ALL the same reasons plus unforeseen personal stuff. It sounds like we have the same life. ;-)

I'll be starting today I think. Maybe Monday.

Pink wrote: "How's everyone doing with this? I still haven't got past the introduction, feeling a bit swamped with all my books at the moment and I keep reading different unplanned things!"

I'm thinking I can start Monday.

This introduction is definitely worth reading. Part of the reason I wanted to read this one is that she did the intro in my edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover. She's quite a passionate writer from what I've seen.

I agree that both intros are really interesting. In the 1993 introduction, she hinted that lots of this was based on real life. I loved this, about her thoughts while attempting a memoir: “I have to conclude that fiction is better at ‘the truth’ than a factual record. Why this should be so is a very large subject and one I don’t begin to understand."

I sadly never got to Bleak House and put off finishing Uncle Tom's Cabin to make room to start this. I got about 50 pages in and can report that it goes pretty fast. I won't be able to read much for the next week, so hope to finish Jane Eyre and this one in August. (You didn't need to know all that but it helped me to put it in writing!)

Can't wait to get into discussions on this one--gonna be fun stuff.

Pink wrote: "How's everyone doing with this? I still haven't got past the introduction, feeling a bit swamped with all my books at the moment and I keep reading different unplanned things!"

I'm at 245 pages (38%). I stopped about a week ago because it sounded like lots of folks weren't quite ready to start yet. I'm enjoying it very much. Anna is a smart, complicated character. Lessing did a wonderful job creating her. The structure of the book takes a little bit of getting used to, but I love the way the sections of the the different notebooks play off each other to form another greater narrative.

I plan to pick this up again sometime this weekend.

I'm on the home stretch, about 180 pages left to go. Really enjoying it.

I also found this amusing footage of Lessing getting the news of her nobel win: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBOD...

Haha, I love that footage of her! Her reaction to the news was brilliant.

I'm at 400 pages and really enjoying it. I finds it interesting that many of their interactions with men, especially the ones with tender egos, are virtually identical to things that could happen now. It's been 50 years! Things should be more different.

Examples are men who get pleasure from getting a woman into bed rather than the sex itself, the delicate way they have to tell them they don't want to see the guy anymore, the knowledge that them doing this will lead to anger and verbal abuse. And of course, all of the men who are cheating on their wives and complaining they don't get enough sex at home.

All of these - every single one - is something I've seen happen in my own life. That kind of amazed me.

I sometimes find the switches between Anna and Ella confusing on the audio, especially because Paul exists in both. And they're both first person if I remember correctly.

Sarah Anne wrote: "I sometimes find the switches between Anna and Ella confusing on the audio, especially because Paul exists in both. And they're both first person if I remember correctly. "

It's confusing on the page too. But I think that is deliberate; the Ella-novel-within-the-novel kind of deals with aspects of Anna's life fairly directly (it's in the notebook with the stuff about her shrink as well, isn't it?).

The very first conversation in the novel has Anna telling Molly about how Anna thinks other people see them as interchangeable. Getting near the end, that feels like a warning to the reader: some people are gonna be hard to separate while others individual will separate out into totally different people.

To take your example of the two Pauls, with the 'fictional' Paul representing a third 'real' character, instead of being a fictional version of the 'real' Paul. Compare that to Max/Willi who has different names between the notebooks, while being the same 'real' person. I can't exactly put my finger on what the point being made by those details are; but they definitely have an effect, all adding to the patterning of how identity is split up in differing ways throughout the book.

BOOM! I have finished it. I'm gonna have to digest it a bit and come back with my full thoughts on it later.

How's everyone else getting on with it?

I finished a few days ago.

I'm 250 pages in. I found myself thinking "So strange how I keep turning pages--not to find out what happens next really, not because I am so fascinated with Anna. What is it?" This novel is unique in so many ways. I'm really enjoying it.

Thanks for sharing that footage Jon. Made me remember why I loved interviews with her before I ever read any of her work. What a character. And something about that artichoke and bag of onions ... too funny.

I'm so hoping everyone will find time to read this! So much to talk about!

I'm definitely scheduling time in August for this, July was a bust for me. It looks like quite a few of you are finished already, so I'll look forward to hearing more of your thoughts and I'll join in later :)

Hello, everyone.

I got invited over here to read The Golden Notebook, which is my first Lessing and probably the longest book I'll finish this year. I'm a few pages into the first chapter – it's thoroughly establishing the relationship between Anne and Molly – I am looking forward to the notebooking. (I love notebooks almost as much as books.)

Will read the thread more thoroughly when I have read more.

Alia wrote: "Hello, everyone.

I got invited over here to read The Golden Notebook, which is my first Lessing and probably the longest book I'll finish this year. I'm a few pages into the first chapter – it's t..."

Welcome to the read Alia! Now I have got to get started myself so you are ahead of me!

So glad to see you'll both be reading this!

I'm 3/4 of the way through and have to say it varies from page-turning to tedious, but the variety of the structure keeps me going (and keeps me in awe--this is quite something she has put together). I am amazed that this works at all, but it does, and I hope you enjoy it!

I'm glad you've joined Alia! Like Kathy, I'm still yet to start. I've been finishing off some other big books and so I keep pushing this one back in my schedule.

Well, I finished, and am still sort of recovering. I want to encourage everyone who is still reading to stay with it, but I certainly had mixed feelings while I was reading. I can already tell though it will be one I enjoy more having read than I did while getting through it.

I'd be really curious if anyone knows of another novel with a similar framework. I've never seen anything like it. Surely someone has tried to copy the idea, do their own spin on it?

My review has some spoilers, but in case anyone who has read it is interested, it's here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Kathleen wrote: "I'd be really curious if anyone knows of another novel with a similar framework. I've never seen anything like it. Surely someone has tried to copy the idea, do their own spin on it?"

It depends a bit how similar you mean but some books with similar formal devices might be something like Watchmen which uses in world documents a little like the notebooks (about half of the graphic novel is made up of them) to tell parts of the story.

Or a highly formal book like Ulysses, where each chapter is written in a different style and you get a sense of the narrator being a character outside the piece (almost as if you only get the notebooks and the Free Women chapters were cut).

Or Will Self's The Book of Dave: A Revelation of the Recent Past and the Distant Future in which two separate stories hundreds of years apart are linked by a document which is created in one of them.

Or Plato's The Symposium where the narrator tells us a story in which he meets a friend who tells him about a party at which all the guests gave speeches or told stories about the nature of love. He then recounts each of the speech/stories and that kind of functions a bit like the various notebooks coming at the a problem (love/life) from various angles (people/notebook) in different voices.

I can't think of something that has a kind of one to one equivalence but it is definitely a form that has a place within a tradition.

What excellent examples, Jon! I'm not sure exactly what I was looking for, but you gave me some great ideas for exploring. I think particularly The Book of Dave sounds fascinating, and I must go back and read The Symposium.

I guess the specific structure device that made this stand out for me was the examining of a character's life in the form of separate stories. I loved the part where in one of the notebooks she (view spoiler)[writes pieces of her life as different story possibilities. Short story: ... Novel: ... (hide spoiler)]

Of course the story within a story idea is common, but the way it is used here to fragment the character seems special for some reason.

I just thought of two I haven't read yet that might also be similar: Cloud Atlas and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (which I hope wins the October poll!)

Thanks Jon!!