Book Chatter

Sunday Matters, a latte on a wooden tray against greenery.

Hello friends! How are you? I am doing pretty well. I am officially on vacation now. Nothing huge planned, a short visit with both kids from 12/23-12/26, and a goal for me, to clear out the garage.

If The Girl comes home after graduation for a bit, we are going to need that garage for storage and right now, it’s pretty full of her stuff AND The Boy’s stuff. They are adults now so let’s call them Emma and Evan. 🙂

Right Now:

I am hosting for the online service and then student ministry. My favorite time of the morning. Gosh, I love those students.

This Week:

I’m all partied out. My book club party, two work parties and a christmas light tour are all behind me. This week will be spent lounging, reading and preparing for Evan and Emma’s visit. Did I tell you that Evan is bringing Root Beer, his cat! The last time I saw her was right out of Kansas and she was itty bitty. Looks like she loves Seattle.

Root Beer the cat wearing her sunnies.

Reading:

I’m trying to read all the books before the end of the year. I just finished 1984 for the read-along. Part 1’s discussion is posted. Part 2 and 3 will post before the end of the month followed by my formal review of the book. It was a re-read but man, there is so much to say.

Also reading:

Burn by Peter Heller (love Heller but this one is a little harder to bite into. Kind of episodic at the moment).
The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams (picked this one up off of Hoopla when I was too lazy to go downstairs to get my Kindle. It’s delightful!)
All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall (releases Jan 7th, dystopian, post-apocalyptic goodness).

This might be it before the end of the year as I want to have them reviewed too.

First book of the year?

I have no idea! I’d like it to be a memorable one. Infinite Jest has been on my shelf forever. It’s 1100 pages long. Maybe it will be my first book of the year. It’s a beast.

Watching:

My husband rediscovered his Adam 12 DVD collection so we’ve been watching that, back to back. It’s so nostalgic. The LA streets of that time were so uncluttered and some of those businesses still exist today.

I’m about to breakout my Bob Newhart Christmas collection. Now that’s a really fun time.

Grateful for:

Vacation time. I worked retail when I was younger and never had holidays off. I am so lucky and blessed to be able to enjoy that time off now.
Martha Stewart’s Giant Ginger Cookies that make a handful of people very happy. I make them every year and they are the PERFECT holiday cookie and massive!
I started to write a book a long time ago, right before COVID and lost the file. I knew it was in the Cloud somewhere but not in Google, not in Box, not anywhere which made no sense. But I was testing something for work this week and found it in OneDrive! It’s all rubbish now that I’ve put some distance between it and myself but it has me thinking about writing again.

What’s going on in your world? Any exciting plans? Books that you are looking forward to?

1984
By George Orwell
Written in 1948

Schedule (optional)

It’s in three parts, and I SWORE I would not make a schedule but some readers like to have a little structure so here is a brief, brief plan.

~~Read Part 1 by 12/13~~
Read Part 2 by 12/20
Read Part 3, finish by 12/31

Okay, so we should all be done with Part One today. I’ve spent a lot of time highlighting.

Here are some questions for week 1:

*Why does Winston keep a diary? Given the presence of the Thought Police, the constant surveillance, and the like, is it not dangerous?

It makes absolutely no sense that Winston does this. If it were me, maybe I’d do it for historical purposes to keep track of what was happening but only if I felt sure that I’d come out okay on the other side. Winston doesn’t have that confidence and yet he does it. There is a line in there about why he does it, but for O’Brien?

*What do you think of when you are first introduced to the ministries?

Ministry of Truth (news and entertainment, education)
Ministry of Peace (war)
Ministry of Love (law and order)
Ministry of Plenty (economic affairs)

The Ministries terrified me to be honest. There are a lot of similarities to what is happening right now with certain cabinet picks. The idea that a ministry could be called PLENTY when in fact it’s there to ensure that you are poor. Ministry of Peace? Nope, all about war and making sure it never ends. Ministry of Love? No love, just punishment and torture.

*What about this motto? How does it compare to what we are experiencing today?

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

The last one, Ignorance is Strength practically slapped me across the face. Keep people stupid so they don’t know what is actually happening around them, or to them.

*In 1984, the language spoken is Newspeak. It’s a language that is designed to limit the range of human thought. Also called Double Think. It’s a paring down of meaning, for example Uncold instead of warm. It also uses excessive abbreviations. Can you detect hints of this in today’s world? Provide an example.

Acronyms in texting come to mind. The LOLs, the TTFNs, and the LMAOs. Our vocabulary, especially amongst the younger generations is waning. They lapse into cuss words to explain what they want to say for lack of a better word. This makes me think of the “dumbing down” of society.

*The purpose of the Two Minutes Hate in George Orwell’s 1984 is to channel the citizens’ frustrations and emotions towards a common enemy, ultimately ensuring loyalty to the Party and preventing any rebellious thoughts or actions. In relation to our media sources today, is this something that is actually happening now?

Two Minutes of Hate. Would that be enough for us in today’s world? Two minutes to bash, and curse, and hate a particular person. In the book, that person is Goldstein. The idea is that if everyone directs their hate to this one person, then others will not be the target of their hatred.

Does this happen today? In a sense, the media controls what we see and what we feel. It picks and chooses and depending on the channel, your hate will be directed to individuals or parties that are not the same. I think most people can pull themselves away when it becomes too toxic, but what happens to the ones who can’t?

*Who is Big Brother?

Big Brother, the eye in the sky. In the book, Big Brother is always watching and listening and all for nefarious purposes. This is how the citizens are controlled. In our society today, we have a form of Big Brother. If you own a phone or an Alexa or Echo, someone is always listening. If you like a post on Instagram, someone is keeping track of that like and pushing content to you based on your clicks. Will they storm through the door and imprison us? No, but they could depending on what we choose to look at or post. Right?

Read Part 2 by 12/20. I will post questions on that date.

Chatting with friends about books and life…