About this title: Timed to coincide with Women's History Month, a new edition of the powerful and liberating feminist novel that raised the consciousness of an entire generation.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780060931407ISBN:006093140X
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Very light edge and corner wear. Light cover crease. No marks. Tight, square book. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 672 p. Perennial Classics (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Date Published: 2/3/1999
ISBN-13:9780060931407ISBN:006093140X
Description: Fine. 006093140X Ships next business day. NEW/UNREAD! ! ! Text is Clean and Unmarked! --Be Sure to Compare Seller Feedback and Ratings before Purchasing--Has a small black line on bottom/exterior edge of pages. May have light shelf wear to cover from storage, if any. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780060931407ISBN:006093140X
Description: Very Good. Paperback, Very Good, clean, tight, unmarked, creasing to the spine, edgewear over all. All orders are shipped by kbooks every business day. read more
Binding: PAPERBACK
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ISBN-13:9780060931407ISBN:006093140X
Description: Good. 006093140X 22850 PB: spine creased, text clean, cover has slight shelf wear w/crease & curl-allow up to 21 business days for standard USPS media m ai l. wt2lbpf. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780060931407ISBN:006093140X
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 672 p. Perennial Classics (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. Large trade paper. Near new. read more
Description: Very Good- As issued No Jacket. Slight spine lean, minor corner bumps, corner crease rear cover, small tear to the right edge of rear cover, some soiling smudging to the rear cover, and other light to moderate shopwear. read more
"When Doris Lessing won the nobel prize for literature, my bookclub decided it was time to read one of her books. We choose The Golden Notebook. And we all started optimistically. 1 month later it turned out that of the 8 members of our bookclub, only 2 people finished the book. I wasn't among them. I started in the book and tried for a week to wrestle myself past the first pages, but i just couldn't do it. I found it very hard to relate to the main character. She's full of selfloathing and a in-and-in mean person now and then. It's not the first time a would read a book with a similar main character. But i also did not find the story all that appealing. I think that mainly the book is very dated. It's a real feministic read, and very much a sixtiesbook. The two members of our reading group that finished it, are a bit older, and told us they could relate to the story, or at least have fond memories of that period. The others, mostly between 25 and 35, could not. So, i am not saying it's a horrible book. But it is very dated!"
"Intelligent, unconventional, heavy (literally and figuratively!). The story revolves around Anna. A woman who once wrote a best selling book, but now struggles with writer's block- which seems to make her a little nuts. It is a book about disillusionment. Disillusionment of politics, humanity, history, love, sex, and self. A book about trying to make sense of the fractured pieces of self that come after great disappointments. At any rate, the book (like Anna) is split into so many pieces (5 separate diaries and another completely separate narrative) that at times it can be confusing trying to figure out the time frame and what, if anything, actually happened to Anna- or is it all just Anna's fiction?
Lessing does a brilliant job of creating enough tension in her writing and characters that the book is not too difficult to get through. Though there are several places where Anna goes into long diatribes about politics, freedom, the nature of sex etc. that at times can be hard to muddle through, overall The Golden Notebook is an intriguing piece of literature."
"While cemented as a Very Important Book with Lessing's Nobel win, it's clearly of a time and place that I don't necessarily relate to. I'm somewhat surprised that Lessing claims in her introduction that the book was received as a novel about the sex war, because it doesn't read that way to me - while there are strong elements of tension between men and women, it seemed to have far more to do with the inherent problems of the characters involved than society at large. Perhaps it's just a sign of the times she was writing in.
Overall it's well-written, but incredibly overlong with a substantial amount of theme repetition that verges on redundant. Ultimately what turns me off is the undertone of bitterness throughout - no one is happy with anything, and when placed against Lessing's introduction it's clear that a good portion of that tone comes from the author herself. I'm not necessarily a "happy book" person, but give me something I can take away as a positive. And no, cynicism that shows that the characters/author are so much more perceptive and in tune with reality than everyone else does not count."
"This book knocked the wind out of me. Don't believe people who tell you this is a hard book to get through. It can be challenging and it is long, but it moves. Once you've situated yourself in the first 150 pages or so, you will zoom right along. I am sad it is over. I miss the main character already. Doris Lessing really put her finger on something that I imagine was stronger a little while back, but I can still feel it in the air. Read this book!"
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