"The Yellow Wallpaper" is one of the few things I read during my vacation that wasn't a graphic novel or manga. I downloaded it via Project Gutenberg. I think I saw a review of it on Booklikes, but I couldn't remember a thing about it. I wasn't even sure what genre it was and, since I didn't bother to look it up before getting started, I thought it might be a mystery. It's actually more psychological fiction (psychological horror?).

An unnamed woman stays at a fancy house with her physician husband and their baby. She's supposedly there for her health. Her husband says there's nothing physically wrong with her - she's suffering from hysteria/a nervous condition and must receive as little mental stimulation as possible. The woman feels she'd be better off elsewhere, but her husband insists that she stay in the horrid former nursery with torn yellow wallpaper and barred windows. The story takes the form of secret journal entries written by this woman,

I wasn't expecting this to be so unsettling. When I first started reading, I wondered whether the woman's husband had malicious intentions. The room was objectively awful, and the woman's request to spend a bit of time elsewhere didn't seem like a big deal. I think the husband probably did have good intentions, though. He just had terrible ideas about what might help his wife. I wonder if it finally dawned on him, too late, that he'd gone about everything all wrong?

I wondered whether the room was really an old nursery, or if it had once held someone else very much like the narrator. It was such a sinister place.

All in all, this was an excellent and quick read, and this is coming from someone who generally prefers novels over short stories.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Tentatively for an October launch, I've set up a group/bookclub (discussion room) and some reading lists to do possibly monthly buddy reads.  You don't have to join reading lists or the group in order to participate in any buddy reads of interest.

Suggest books and categories on either (or on any of these posts tagged "Project Gutenberg Buddy Reads").  Just because I put one book in the reading list doesn't mean that will be the buddy read book (just means I had to stick one in to create the list or that someone already suggested it).

Discussion Room is at http://booklikes.com/groups/show/710/project-gutenberg-buddy-reads 

Reading Lists are by category/genre (feel free to suggest others):

Classics - http://booklikes.com/apps/reading-lists/705/project-gutenberg-buddy-reads-classics 

Horror - http://booklikes.com/apps/reading-lists/706/project-gutenberg-buddy-reads-horror 

Mystery - http://booklikes.com/apps/reading-lists/707/project-gutenberg-buddy-reads-mystery 

Romance - http://booklikes.com/apps/reading-lists/709/project-gutenberg-buddy-reads-romance 

Science Fiction / Fantasy / Speculative Fiction - http://booklikes.com/apps/reading-lists/708/project-gutenberg-buddy-reads-sf-fantasy 

This post, http://libromancersapprentice.booklikes.com/post/1461394/buddy-read-the-yellow-wallpaper , (from Libriomancer's Apprentice on a buddy read of The Yellow Wallpaper) reminded me about Project Gutenberg's free downloads that we could use to do some favorite genre buddy reads.  

Oh, who am I kidding.  I'm old enough that some books by favorite authors sitting on my TBR wishlist because hard to find are now available for free download from Project Gutenberg.

I was tentatively thinking maybe once a month starting October or November, interested readers could choose a book from there to buddy read.  Not everyone likes reading the same genre; I was thinking have multiple buddy read books chosen from a handful of popular categories (tentatively horror, literary classics, mystery, "other," romance, and SF/Fantasy but to be determined by whatever participants vote on).  No prizes, no big organization beyond a tag to find your buddy posts, just some buddy readalongs for the social aspect of it -- and the fun of exploring down the rabbit hole of Project Gutenberg offerings.

Any interest?  Any category/genre suggestions/preferences?  Any public domain book would be okay, not required to download from Project Gutenberg just that it be there (or at least eligible to be there and widely available free to readers).

Please feel free to reblog.

are you "old" enough to recall Bert and Nan, who were 12 years old, and Flossie and Freddie, who were six? they were the two sets of fraternal twins born to Richard and Mary Bobbsey. today, many of the younger generation of readers are not even aware of them. 

the series was quite popular way back then and although a New Bobbsey Twins series came out in 1987 to 1992, the charm of the original books could never be matched. 

oldies and noobs, here are classic 15 Bobbsey Twins books by Laura Lee Hope from Project Gutenberg in epub and prc (works on Kindle) formats that you can read - either for the first time or all over again:

1. The Bobbsey Twins
2. The Bobbsey Twins on the Deep Blue Sea
3. The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island
4. The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat
5. The Bobbsey Twins in Washington
6. The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West
7. The Bobbsey Twins in the Country
8. The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City
9. The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore
10. The Bobbsey Twins at the Country Fair
11. The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge
12. The Bobbsey Twins at School
13. The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook
14. The Bobbsey Twins at Home
15. The Bobbsey Twins at Cedar Camp

all files are available for download at 

http://www.4shared.com/folder/9t5f0hQI/Bobbsey_Twins_Collection_Epub_.html