Picked up 'unregistered' the BC Meetup in York at the end of June. Am now doing the honours...

releasing as part of January 2009's 'erotic' themed Meetup...

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

releasing, as promised...

This book was doing the rounds on the very first meet up I came to, so when I saw it here tonight I thought I should give it a go.

I am glad that I picked this one up, even if it was a year and a half after I first saw it! Ok, so I was told originally that it wouldn´t mean so much to me because I wasn´t around in the 70s, so I haven´t experienced the impact it made when it first came out, etc etc, but I did really enjoy the story, and I think there´s still a lot in it that we can relate to today.

It´s the story of Isadora Wing, 29 year old poet and academic, who is in her second marriage, with a Chinese-American pyschologist and is feeling restless. She is distressed by the fact that she is attracted to other men and by the pressure of her family that she should really be quitting writing and having babies. They go to Vienna for a big conference and she ends up having a bit of a mad adventure travelling over Europe and loosing her fear of being with herself (ie. alone). Quite jealous of the travelling all over Europe. Feels so long since I have been travelling - boo hoo!

Ok, so times have moved on, and women aren´t told everywhere they go that their purpose is to have babies; this awful idea that there is no such thing as rape has gone, etc etc. But I think some of what she writes about is still true today, and I don´t know whether it is still "problems" with society, or just human nature which we have to learn to deal with by growing up. Certainly the fairytale ideas we have when we´re growing up about marriage and happy ever after, and then the reality of relationships and the fact that long term you will be attracted to other people as well (whether you act on your impulses is another matter) but this isn´t abnormal or cause for major freak out. And the whole thing about women and babies and how you´ve not lived until you´ve had one; opposed to this awful fear of loosing your own person/interests/identity if you do go down that road... all of that is still kicking around.

It is also a fun story. Very frustrating that you don´t find out how it´s all going to work out in the end, but then, that is real life.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Am going to send this to a friend in Iceland.

Thanks so much for this surprise:) look forward to read this one:)

I´m sorry but I just could not get into this book which is a shame! Perhaps I´m giving up too quickly? but it´s been here with me for 2 years which is way too long so I just want to get it moving again!!

A wishlist book for BerlinBookworm:) Hope you will enjoy it!!!

Thank you so much, Björg, for this RABCK! This book has been on my wishlist for quite a while. It sounds quite exciting.

Phew, finally read the book! I'm so sorry for hogging it for an eternity! I will pass it on as an RABCK as quickly as possible - just waiting for the address.

My feelings about the book are quite mixed. There were a few passages that I found fantastic. I even took a few notes. In general, I felt, though, that the book was too long and repetitive and the constant whining of the author simply pathetic (I read about the context of the book and found out that it's autobiographic).

Conclusion: An interesting read but if you're not religious about these things, just skip a few pages here and there, you won't miss a thing and won't be frustrated with its sheer endlessness.

Geht als RABCK an litrajunkie.

Just back from picking up the parcel at the "Packstation" during lunch break. Thanks for granting this wish.

A quote on the cover advertises the book as "uninhibited, erotic, delicious ... a winner" - this from John Updike, an author who knows a thing or two about uninhibited, erotic, and delicious writing. Who am I to quarrel with one of my favorite authors? No, it's true, there are many, many pages of exuberant, uninhibited, and erotic text in this book.

As a teenager, I read parts of it in fits and starts - in public libraries as well as in book shops. That was the German translation of course, and back then I had only theoretical knowledge about love, sex and marriage. Nowadays, as an old campaigner, so to speak, I'm grateful to have read the original thanks to BookCrossing.

Since I don't want to spoil the plot for other readers, I'll have to phrase my remarks a bit cryptically. Still young Isadora is an angst-ridden, over-analytical mind in a lecherous body whose urges she wants to satisfy and yet dares not to make her dreams of the "zipless fuck" - a spontaneous sexual encounter without previous planning and no further obligation afterward - come true; at least not right away. Her inability to just "be there", go with the flow and live in the moment was rather exasperating for me. In a way because I used to be like that myself, and only after years and years of training (from books and the school of hard knocks, not on a shrink's couch) got myself to loosen up enough to enjoy the journey of life a lot more than as a young man, in another way because I cannot stand people who always miss the cheese but can give a precise description of all its holes. Life is not perfect, but one can emphasize the positive without turning into a naive Pollyanna.

To me, the book begins strong and confident, starts to waver after the congress in Vienna is officially over and fizzles towards the end during the description of the previous marriages and/or relationships. The quotations I took down into my notebook are all but one from the first half of the book. There's lots of psychological jargon and some of the lists made up by Jong seem almost as tedious as the ones by Melville - is she paying hommage to that great author or trying to impress her readers with her knowledge?

As a German, I was wondering why she kept referring to her viennese adventure as "going back to Germany". Also, once she describes a trip from Munich to Heidelberg as "going north". To be sure, Heidelberg IS a little closer to the pole than Munich, but in my opinion, Heidelberg is very much still in southern Germany, the cultural and geographic difference is that it is situated considerably west of Munich. Heidelberg's charm does not seem to have enthralled her, apparently there are no fond memories of her stay in the city of lovers.

Memorable Quotation
"'I think we have too little genuine permissiveness,' I said, 'and too much bureaucratic disorganization masquerading as permissiveness. Real permissiveness, constructive permissiveness is another story altogether.'" (p. 333)
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2 Bookcrossers like this JE.

During today's lunch break, I mailed the book to ritao. The book will travel a record-breaking 898 miles (1.445 km) to reach its next reader, obliterating my old record of 590 miles (The Catcher in the Rye).

It wants to travel on to Boekentrol.

Thanks to © OpenStreetMap contributors for the map.
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Update 2016-08-08: Peyton Place arrived today, so the exchange is completed. Thanks!

The book arrived already on Monday. Thank you very much, litrajunkie, for sending it all the way up here! ;)

I am currently reading another ray book but will start reading this beauty as soon as I'm finished with the previous one.

I knew about this book's reputation beforehand and actually thought it would be more erotic than it turned out to be! That's alright though, it was a fun read, and also very educational in many senses. I just turned 30 myself this summer, so there were many things I could identify with in the main character - moreover, it was interesting to see how times have changed (and in some ways really haven't). I didn't feel bored for one second with Isadora, even though I do agree with the previous readers that the stories of exes could've been better somewhere else, a bit earlier in the story.

However, I believe that this was a ground-breaking book in its time and as such I have high respect for the book and its author. I'm happy to have read the book and will now send it onwards to the next reader. Thanks to litrajunkie for the RABCK and for an exhilarating reading experience to the feminist within me!

Sent the book to its next reader in the Netherlands.

The book has arrived a few days ago, only now I had the chance to call it in.
Thank you for sending it on, ritao, along with a great postcard! :-)

I really struggled reading this book. It has nothing really that appeals to me.
The form of feminism that's described, the sex, the first-person story. Didn't find it hilarious or interesting, just very annoying.

While reading, I just kept asking myself, ehy on earth this book has ever landed on the 1001-list and why it hasn't been removed. It must have something to do with the uproar it caused when it was first published. Otherwise, for the life of me I couldn't think of one...

At the book buffet.

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Released somewhere in Bordeaux.