Proposal for new reading group

[elettaria]

As eye_of_a_cat has mentioned, neither of us has the time to take on the behemoth that is running Dracula again this year, and my plans for running Clarissa, an even huger job, got put on hold. It might happen next year (it's a January start), but meanwhile there are six months to go

Comments

[ganeshotaku]

I would love to do Mansfield Park, mostly because I had Jane Eyre shoved down my throat in school by an incompetent English teacher, but have never had the chance to read Mansfield Park...

[thelican]

Mansfield Park would be fun.

Your idea to do a Collins novels at some point in the future would also be warmly received by me!

[rachel2205]

I'd definitely read - not a big fan of MP at all but this way I might fall for it by reading other people's thoughts! :) (I have, of course, read a fair amount of criticism of MP, but there's something more inviting about just hearing enthusiastic readers' comments in this setting!)

I am pondering: can voice posts be made to communities? Because an interesting addition to the comm might be to have an occasional chapter read aloud by volunteers. I'd be happy to read, for instance. Or perhaps we could just post in our journals and link to the comm so people could listen in. It would add an interesting dimension to the reception issue, and might provide extra meat for discussion. Or just a bedtime story vibe, at least! :)

[elfbystarlight]

That was where the idea to tie in with Librivox came from - they've got MP available for free in audioformat, chapter by chapter, read by volunteers. We can were planning to link to them with every chapter posting. The amount of fiddling and recording and editing it takes to produce a reasonable recording is too high to really make it worth the effort of duplicating what Librivox has already done, especially given the length of the text in question. :)

[rachel2205]

Ah, yes... I just thought it might be an interesting aspect of the communal reading, if you see what I mean, to have actual members of the community voicepost - but I can see that it would add to administrative issues! :)

[elfbystarlight]

You're right, it would be, but have you ever recorded anything like this? I have - and it's way harder than it looks. :) If you read it straight through without pause, it's full of stops and bloopers, and people rarely have time or ability to read a chapter through in one go so you have to go back and edit bits out, then edit the sections together... it's do-able, and it could be an idea to leave it open in case anyone wants to do so, but I don't think it's practical to have it as a regular feature. Especially when we already have an audiotext available :)

[apocalypticbob]

Hmmm...for a name, how about serial_reader? It's not being used yet.

[akycha]

I am an Austen fan and would love to read Mansfield Park again with a community. Also, the text of Lover's Vows! Clearly, not to be missed.

I am quite the Collins reader/scholar and would also be an avid reader of any text by him. Let me recommend some of the lesser-known texts as well as Moonstone and Woman in White, as there are some excellent and little-known books out there (I personally favor No Name, and perhaps Hide and Seek, although Man and Wife certainly is likely to provoke as lively discussion).

Lastly, should like to propose Mary Elizabeth Braddon of Lady Audley's Secret, as if the community had not enough to do.

[mansfield1814]

I'm currently going through a Collins binge myself (on Armadale at the moment), and will probably be musing on the way he tackles disability and gender in victorian_novel when I get around to it.

If we do 3 posts a week, which we could probably manage, we'd be through the novel in 4 months, and we could do some Collins then. I was thinking of those two because they're the most popular, although the less popular ones can actually be more interesting sometimes. That said, being able to present the novel by audiobook as well may turn out to be quite an advantage, so we may as well do the Austen first and see if the Librivox people get one of the Collins novels finished by then. And perhaps some other Victorian novels after that, like the Braddon.

I've not read Man and Wife, what's it like? I'm quite fond of No Name, though it gets a shade weird (OK, Collins is always weird) and depressing, and really enjoyed rereading The Law and the Lady last week. Another this-is-your-idea-of-a-happy-ending? one, that.

(elettaria in disguise)

[akycha]

Man and Wife is another of his Strong Female Character novels, only in this one she gets to sacrifice herself. It's all about the baroque marriage laws of Ireland, and about what horrible brutes (some) men are. (No, really, there are all sorts of nice men in it, it's just they're rather overshadowed by the garishly drawn Brutal Husband.)

Collins also trots out a particularly interesting hobbyhorse in regard to health and exercise (being an athlete is BAD for you!) which is clearly aimed against the Games-Madness of the day. I found this particularly entertaining.

He does do quite good job of keeping the tension up in Man and Wife, especially as the first denouement comes about halfway though the novel, and he then has to heighten the tension. In the hands of another author the subject would be treated as a comedy -- who is married to whom? But Collins treats the matter in deadly earnest, and indeed, if such a situation could obtain, it would be a matter of deadly earnest for the women involved

[elettaria]

Marian was always going to be tricky, considering they have a nice little incestuous menage-a-trois going on there. Especially since the actual wife is barely compos mentis by this point. I was quite unnerved to find she was bearing him kids, she didn't seem remotely up to anything of the sort. I'm noticing that women who are ill or disabled in Collins (and probably in lit in general, alas) never seem to be the strong-minded, charismatic sort, the fun ones like Marian. You can have the nice, feminine, but rather weak-minded ones such as Laura or the deaf girl in Hide and Seek (oh look, incest again), or the bitter warped ones such as the working-class lesbian pair in The Moonstone. Not to mention the men, who tend towards being feminised and either weak and waily (e.g. Mr Fairlie or the chap Magdalen goes for) or just plain bonkers (e.g. Miserrimus Dexter), though there was that blind chap in The Dead Secret who was relatively normal as I recall. Then there's the whole terror of hypochondria you get in 19th c fiction generally, I