Comments for Blogging Woolf

Comment on Bloomsbury exhibit opens July 18 at Cornell by Smith College course features Woolf and friends « Blogging Woolf

Smith College course features Woolf and friends « Blogging Woolf — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:02:38 +0000

[...] addition, students will be able to view the traveling exhibit, “A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in America Collection,” which will be at the Smith College Museum of Art April 3 to June [...]

Comment on What book changed your life? by Vara Neverow

Vara Neverow — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:39:46 +0000

While it’s not a book and not the only literary text that changed my life, Virginia Woolf’s short story “Lappin and Lapinova” was a revelation about interactions and tensions between newly-weds….

Comment on What book changed your life? by Toni McNaron

Toni McNaron — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:08:25 +0000

Of all Woolf’s works, I believe Mrs. Dalloway remains the one that has had the most profound effect. I’d read it several times and even taught it a couple of times BEFORE I registered the key scene early on when Clarissa and Sally are walking after dinner and Sally kisses Clarissa. I’d simply read past it until the crucial moment when I suppose I was “ready” to take in the radical nature of the scene. Like all people, I’d been conditioned to value opposition and heterosexuality in literature, never mind that I was a lesbian. Well, when I finally “saw” that scene, it changed my whole mode of teaching, reading and theorizing. I went on to posit that sameness can be every bit as exciting as opposition and never again did a scene of homoerotic desire escape me. Of course there are many other aspects of this novel that make it a favorite of mine and many others, but the nub for me is what I’ve just written.

Comment on What book changed your life? by federico sabatini

federico sabatini — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:45:18 +0000

1) THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett: as a child, it is one of the best books which introduces you to the marvellous and misterious world of literature and literary recreation by fuelling your imagination, by giving you a shelter against which the real world disappears, and by making you feel the delicacy and the strength of human emotions and desire of knowledge.

2) MRS DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf: As a late teenager, it is the first book that revealed the amazing possibility to explore human consciousness and to recreate it with words. And a book which, at that age, leaves you with the feeling that you have to go back to it in order to comprehend more. As an adult, I realised that all of Woolf’s books need to be re-read at different times as they offer you new insights which always change and grow according to each phase of your life you are going through.

3) ULYSSES by James Joyce: The first book which surprisingly shows how the fictitious world of literature could (and should) be more “realistic” than the real world itself. By moulding and shaping his vibrant language, James Joyce is still a great lesson to us all. And, despite the well-known and mostly debated rivalry between Joyce’s and Woolf’s critics, we should realise that their attempts and amazing achievements (some of them still unsurpassed) are rooted in the same heroic need to understand, explain and artistically recreate the unsolvable misteries of our identities.

Comment on What book changed your life? by Martha

Martha — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:30:36 +0000

Although there have been many books that have evoked a powerful response in me, without a doubt, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf changed my life. Because of the relationship between Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe and what their private thoughts revealed about them (through Woolf’s writing), I am, in the middle years of my life, currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English with women’s issues as my focus.

Comment on What book changed your life? by Paula Maggio

Paula Maggio — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:32:04 +0000

Wow. Great answer. Thanks for your response.

Comment on What book changed your life? by inthemainstream

inthemainstream — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:23:26 +0000

I have three answers that I always give:

1) Paula Danziger’s The Pistachio Prescription – when I was ten, the first book I read where everything wasn’t okay
2) Jeanne Marie Laskas’s Fifty Acres and a Poodle – when I was seventeen, the first book that sounded like the inside of my head
3) Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts – when I was twenty, the first book I read that so gracefully delved into the things people don’t say to each other.

Comment on When reading Woolf: Read. Think. Repeat. by Paula Maggio

Paula Maggio — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:05:05 +0000

Thank you. Please come back!

Comment on When reading Woolf: Read. Think. Repeat. by Kevin Neilson

Kevin Neilson — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:03:14 +0000

I’m pleased to have found your blog.

Regards,
Kevin

Comment on A mental map to Woolf’s imagination by Sad33

Sad33 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:02:07 +0000

Look, I’m clearly never going to be able to settle on anything for this. ,