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Books Nikki read while in prison; unknown [orig Jun 5, 2005]
Topic Started: Jun 1 2006, 05:23 PM (3,563 Views)
badgirlnuts
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Hi Kirsty, Here's what i wrote regarding "Oranges.......

badgirlnuts PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 6:56 pm

Hi there, I got the "Oranges....... from the library and tried to read it but had a difficult time understanding the religious undertones in the novel not being christian and couldn't finish it either, as I just gave up.


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Kirsty
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badgirlnuts
Aug 11 2006, 04:47 PM
Hi Kirsty, Here's what i wrote regarding "Oranges.......

badgirlnuts PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 6:56 pm

Hi there, I got the "Oranges....... from the library and tried to read it but had a difficult time understanding the religious undertones in the novel not being christian and couldn't finish it either, as I just gave up.

Well, I clearly wasn't intelligent enough to find that :P Thank you :)
I suppose I'm on the Agnostic/Atheist borderline myself, so I don't know a lot about religion from my day-to-day experiences, but I loved GCSE RS and had a tiny, awesome class so I got a lot out of that which I think aided my understanding of it. I'd say give it another try, if you've got the time or the inclination :lol:
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abzug
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Kirsty
Aug 11 2006, 11:32 AM
I'd love to know what anyone makes of 'Sophie's World' and it's relation to Helen and Nikki. I haven't finished reading it yet, but I did find something interesting whilst I was reading it the other day. One of the chapters (page 129 in my copy) is called "The Postcards", with the sub-title of "I'm imposing a severe censorship on myself", which I think reflects hugely on Helen writing to Nikki, both in what she could say which Nikki would understand but couldn't be understood if intercepted, and also on what she feels she is able to say to Nikki, what she herself is ready for. *SPOILER-ISH IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT* In the middle of that chapter (page 133 in my copy), Hilde's father says that he is sending her postcards via Sophie, which reminded me of the situation where Barbara offers to have Helen send Nikki's letters to her, so they are intercepted.

Again, just ideas. :)

I haven't read Sophie's World, but I think you are on the right track with the kinds of connections you are making between some of the imagery in the novel and the imagery on the show. The stuff you've mentioned is similar to some of the associations people have made between BG and Middlemarch and Romeo & Juliet, which along with Sophie's World are probably the three most emphasized literary allusions on the show. Anyway, I'd love to hear more of the connections you see between SW and BG, as would lots of the other folks on the board. :D
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Jeanna
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I said SIT IN THAT CHAIR
I just rewatched the 6 pt. BBC adaptation of "Middlemarch" and one moment that struck me...that I felt Nikki reading in her cell might've taken a breather to reflect upon was this little exchange between Ladislaw, the hero rebel of the piece who is in love with Dorothea, the married heroine, proper and living by the rules, tho a would-be reformer and do-gooder.

L: I suppose one gets a habit of doing without happiness or hope... What I care for more than I can ever care for anything else is absolutely forbidden me.

D: I have never done you any injustice. Please remember me.

L: How can you say that? As if I were not in danger of forgetting everything else.

I've checked it against the novel, and the dialogue is almost verbatim.

And from the novel itself:

She was ready to say that it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those strange particulars of their relation which neither of them could explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying too much.
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ekny
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Jeanna
Aug 23 2006, 02:36 PM
She was ready to say that it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those strange particulars of their relation which neither of them could explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying too much.

Nice.
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Flutur
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Hi Kirsty,

Quote:
 
I'd love to know what anyone makes of 'Sophie's World' and it's relation to Helen and Nikki. I haven't finished reading it yet, but I did find something interesting whilst I was reading it the other day. One of the chapters (page 129 in my copy) is called "The Postcards", with the sub-title of "I'm imposing a severe censorship on myself", which I think reflects hugely on Helen writing to Nikki, both in what she could say which Nikki would understand but couldn't be understood if intercepted, and also on what she feels she is able to say to Nikki, what she herself is ready for.


I hadn't thought about that, but I like your comparison. I am about halfway through this one as well (I've gotten a bit distracted from the Nikki Wade reading list by a grammar book and a travel book...but I'm finishing those and coming back).

For me, Sophie's World is ideal for Nikki and Helen because it is a novel about the ideas, or the importance of using thought to discover something beyond one's immediate situation. Often the analogy is made in the novel between most of mankind dwelling down in the fur of a rabbit while the philosophers want to crawl to the edges of the fur and see what is outside. Nikki refers to her mind as being free and the only thing Fenner/the prison can't get at. Helen understood Nikki well enough to intuit that. Being an observant woman herself who enjoyed just such a contemplative book, Helen figured it would be just the thing to endear the highly intelligent Nikki Wade to her...even if it worked a little better than she intended.

Cheers,
Flutur
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abzug
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I had a thought about Middlemarch, while watching the BBC adaptation of another Eliot novel, Daniel Deronda. I've never read DD, and it's been a while since I read MM, but there did seem to me to be a common theme of Eliot heroines getting into bad marriages because it's the right thing to do. Which strikes me as very Helen-like, in terms of her relationship with Sean.

Then I asked myself, why do I assume that the MM reference has to be about Helen? I mean, Nikki is the one who's reading the novel, after all. But then I was thinking, well, Nikki reads a lot of things which aren't exactly her cup of tea, right? She reads them because there IS no "Juliet and Juliet" out there for her to read. So she reads the classics, and in her head she makes the changes she needs to in the story so that it becomes her cup of tea.
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ekny
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abzug
Sep 26 2007, 10:54 PM
Nikki reads a lot of things which aren't exactly her cup of tea, right? She reads them because there IS no "Juliet and Juliet" out there for her to read. So she reads the classics, and in her head she makes the changes she needs to in the story so that it becomes her cup of tea.

Which is, in terms of real life, consistent with lesbian reading practices. :)
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abzug
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ekny
Sep 27 2007, 01:05 AM
Which is, in terms of real life, consistent with lesbian reading practices. :)

Indeed! And one other Eliot thought, which is that her heroines (at least the moral ones) after making the bad marriage decision, tend to find a way to wind up with their correct match, the person who isn't appropriate, but who they love.
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ekny
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oh groooan! I'm really gonna have to read more of her, ain't I?! GROAN. Please miss, I'll take all me medications, I'll be very quiet & ever so good...
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ekny
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Well well well.

Sorry, couldn't resist. All credit for this highly intelligent bit of guesswork goes to JAMBF; we were talking & wondering, again, what book Nikki was reading before her escape in ep 2.13.

It's the Well of Loneliness. No kidding.

When I asked her how on earth she came up with the idea or matched the covers, she replied:

JAMBF
 
I didn't look for look-alike covers, I considered what books that were likely suspects and then checked them for look-alike covers, not the other way around. The Well of Loneliness was one of the first ones that I looked at because it seemed like a logical step. [Nikki] clearly has a history of reading more than one book by the same writer - there are 3 James, 2 Eliots - close together, so I thought if she was reading To The Lighthouse perhaps she might follow it up with another Woolf, so I thought Orlando would be a likely suspect in terms of content although it wasn't really thick enough (the book she's reading seems reasonably thick). I had a look at covers for it anyway - in case she had a copy with larger type and thick paper! ;-) Theoretically she may have read it though without us seeing it - although she was only halfway through To the Lighthouse the ep before, but they are obviously confined to their cells a lot more than they appear to be, and she would probably have been off work because of her hand, so it was possible. Then logically the next book for her to read after Orlando was The Well of Loneliness. [...] they were both published in the same year, so you often see them written about together and compared, and given its subject matter it was logical Nikki would read it surely?


We had a bit of a time finding the exact match for the cover--the current Virago edition has the cover shot reversed from the cover we see in Bad Girls, but it turns out the older (green-spined) Virago edition which would have been in print at the time is the exact match.

So how's about them apples!!! :)


Cover art is from 'Le Amiche' (1924) by Ubaldo Oppi ('The Friends').


current (2008) incarnation of Virago cover:

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older ('green spine') Virago cover:

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When things got difficult, Nikki turned to her bible...

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(book shot, rotated):

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'Le Amiche' (1924), Ubaldo Oppi:

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abzug
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Oh. My. God.

First of all, you guys are crazy. Second of all, thank god you are, because this is the most delicious find, of all the what-is-Nikki-reading musings! I am enamored of this. Someone should write a thank you note to the set dresser, or whoever it was who decided what Nikki should be reading in various scenes.
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Jeanna
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I said SIT IN THAT CHAIR
WOW WOW WOW!!!

THAT IS FABULOUS!!!!

I'm hopping up and down here.

I love you guys.

:giveheart

That's brilliant that is.

And it so figures.

JAMBF...you are another mad bad fan!! But hardly just another. Have a pint on me. :drinkies

And that cover is Sooooo Wayyy much better than the dreadful posed cover on my 70s era paperback copy using...live models. *choke* Done up as someone's very bad idea of lesbians of the era.

Now, I must find a copy of that edition.

Oh Nikki. I want to hug her all the more now. :prisonbars

Delicious find is right, Abzug.
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sounder
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You guys are real fanatics, just like me when I first discovered this series. Wonder how the US BG will be like when it airs.
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Just Another Mad Bad Fan
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Quote:
 
First of all, you guys are crazy.


Ahem! Well in that regard I think we are perhaps in quite good company on this board! After all, I seem to recall that there was one crazy person who actually sat down and worked out a Timeline for the show! And there was another one who flew across the Atlantic not once, but twice to see Bad Girls The Musical...Oh no hang on - come to think of it, that was one and the same person. So clearly we're dealing with a fairly high level of craziness here! :lol:

Quote:
 
And that cover is Sooooo Wayyy much better than the dreadful posed cover on my 70s era paperback copy using...live models. *choke* Done up as someone's very bad idea of lesbians of the era.


That wouldn't by any chance be this rather dodgy one would it Jeanna?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9...Pocket_1974.jpg
The woman in front reminds me a little of Trisha! :eek
Oh, and thanks for the pint! :)






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