Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Golden Notebook, Week 1


The online Golden Notebook project began yesterday, and so far there is marginalia added for about the first 100 pages. They are planning to read around 100 pages a week, and so the project will run for 5-6 weeks. The seven women participating write their comments "in the margins" of the online text (so you can read along there quite easily), but there are also then forums in which everyone can discuss both Lessing's text and the comments posted. So far I've only read 50 pages in my 1973 edition (pictured here) so perhaps I will find something to say about the first section of the book...for the moment I'd like to share with you a wonderful quote from Lessing's own introduction to the book:


There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice-versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

5 comments:

  1. Love that last line - Don't read a book out of its right time for you.

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  2. I know, isn't it marvellous? That's what really caught me too.

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  3. I love Lessing's advice, too. And I also love the Golden Notebook project, though it totally intimidates me! I read The Golden Notebook in my late twenties, and I wonder how I would feel about it now, with a few more years under my belt...

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  4. I've had this in my library for years and never got to it, although I've read others by Lessing. I really love her non-fiction but I should give this a go. I'll be interested to see your thoughts on it.

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  5. Thank you for posting about this project. I bought "The Golden Notebook" at the library book sale last summer, but it's been lying around ever since... maybe its time is approaching!

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