Women's Classic Literature Enthusiasts discussion

Just a question I wanted to posit to the group, do you find the books you read influence you in real life?

For example, I started drinking more tea last year and it's kind of become my go-to destressing drink. I realized recently that this is similar to a book we read last year by Barbara Pym, tea was always the answer to the problems in the book lol.

Does anyone else pause one day and find stuff like this too?

I haven't noticed it that much. But in the case of tea, most of my family are tea drinkers. So that may not be as big of an influence.

But I will admit that I picked up the Barbara Pym cookbook just to see what Mildred would have made.

Yes, definitely, it influences my interest in food and drink, and in travel. I'll seek out a recipe for a dish or a movie based on a spark of interest started by a book. To me, though, it's all part and parcel of being intellectually curious. Everything I encounter offers me the possibility of closing a door or kicking it wide open, depending on interest. People are more influential for me than books, though, unless the book are connected to people, e.g., I'm interested in reading Polish and Persian literature because of people I know from and living in those countries and immersed in their culture.

I like to travel and books have a great influence in my decisions as to where to go. I love Jane Austen, so my first overseas trip was to England where I visited her home. A few years ago, I read a mystery by Louise Penny that led to a visit to Quebec City.

☯Emily wrote: "I like to travel and books have a great influence in my decisions as to where to go. I love Jane Austen, so my first overseas trip was to England where I visited her home. A few years ago, I read a..."

Exactly!

I've been involved with community theater for the last couple decades, and have been amused by the way the director (most often my older daughter) uses real foods in productions of plays and musicals. . . . for instance, the starving student Perchek (spelling?) is handed a genuine hunk of cheese by Tevye the dairyman, and eats it hungrily, in every performance of her staging of Fiddler on the Roof. When the local theatrical circle has a get-together, very often someone will bring cucumber sandwiches, a la The Importance of Being Earnest. I teased my daughter about how she staged the "This Was a Real Nice Clambake" number from Carousel (sans real clams and/or chowder!) Once, she made Horace Van Der Gelder do a prat fall on a banana peel, in her production of "Hello Dolly" (tossed out by the truant Cornelius from under the table in the milliner's shop where he was hiding. She has whumped up some goofy little bits of stage business to 'punch up' the shows she directs.

Mizzou wrote: "I've been involved with community theater for the last couple decades, and have been amused by the way the director (most often my older daughter) uses real foods in productions of plays and musica..."

That's so awesome and hilarious haha. Sounds like your daughter is quite an artist!

Anastasia: Not all the funny little bits of "show biz" my daughter has contrived for the community theater were about food! But yes, she has a nice talent for livening up things for the amateur actors who have a lot of fun while contributing to the arts scene in this central Minnesota town.

(I gave her a copy of The Tevye Stories by Sholom Aleichem before the Fiddler production. I really believe in PREPARATION , you see. In her production, she gave all the Annatevka villagers NAMES. I was so proud of her...…)

I've been enjoying a 'hybrid' book, these days. The author is a Canadian academic, a sociolinguist, who also does travel writing. Glenn Dixon's book, A Pilgrim in the Palace of Words, combines his fortes, and is a particular pleasure for me, a former newspaperwoman and ESOL teacher. He travelled around the world to see and hear for himself some of the 6000 languages used on this planet. I love getting some insights into the cultures of the quixotic places he visited, and reading his takes on the nuances of their languages. The reader begins to understand how the translation of their words into English is simply impossible, and how it is equally impossible to turn English speech into those languages. No wonder international diplomacy is so touchy!

I think they do. When I was young I would try to imitate characters from books. I knew the character traits I appreciated both in literature and in life. I often look at people I know and imagine how they could variously be described by authors. It is largely a spontaneous exercise in compassion.

I do not think they will turn little kids gay like the book banner seem to think when they want to ban books with gay characters. Because if that were the case, I would be a detective, drive a roadster, change my own tire, be very brave in the face of all sorts of nefarious criminals a la Nancy Drew. Alas, I am a mild mannered accountant.