8 Comments
Sep 10, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

I would not have read Moby Dick, The Betrothed, To The Lighthouse, and Middlemarch...without Book Post. I’m very grateful to you. Although I found Middlemarch the hardest to get through, especially since the issue of women’s inferiority was so front and center in the book, and so little explored in the comments. Reading those four was quite an accomplishment. I’m looking forward to the next, maybe a contemporary novel by a woman in which those issues are treated with more respect and knowledge.

Expand full comment
author

Hi Liz! I'm not sure we can take credit for all these, but happy to be in this company! It's interesting that you experienced the book as hostile to women. I wonder how much of that is Eliot and how much of it is her time, as she was certainly more of an advocate for women's liberty and expression than most. For me these constrained expectations of women are a given in work written in her time, but probably internalizing these expectations has done me some harm! Did The Betrothed depict women in a more advanced spirit? Anyway I hope we can keep you reading with us! Thanks for joining!

Expand full comment
Sep 10, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

I voted for the Victorians but would be delighted to read most anything you put on the table in front of me.

Expand full comment
Sep 10, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

Same as Ted. I voted for Victorians, but count me in for anything you propose.

Expand full comment

Thank you for your post, Ann. I was also missing Mona's post today! As well as missing reading Middlemarch with everyone.

I am very much looking forward to reading Commitment. Would be great to read/discuss with others especially with Middlemarch in mind.

Whatever comes next, count me in for being a part of it!

Others would like to keep on with the Victorians - I do not feel especially strongly about that myself. I don't say no though!

Thank you again for making this happen, Mona and Ann. Middlemarch will always be close to my heart after this reading : )

Expand full comment
Sep 11, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

A gigantic bit of nonfiction like Power Broker by Robert Caruso.

Expand full comment
author

There's an idea! Did you see the running joke during the pandemic of how every major politician and political journalist had to have that book on the shelf behind them? See the "Robert Caro in the Background" Twitter account! Erroll Louis figured out what was going on and moved his copy into the frame from another room.

Expand full comment
Sep 12, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

Ha ha. What a comical way to brag.

Expand full comment