I've never read Great Expectations, but would second your recommendation of Bleak House. One of my very favorite novels. Our Mutual Friend is pretty damn good too.pophead2k wrote:Even if it isn't assigned, read Dickens Great Expectations or Bleak House. I wish I could read those all over again for the first time.
books, books, books
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Who Shot Sam?
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Mother, Moose-Hunter, Maverick
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mood swung
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mood swung
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StrictTime
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Meatmorphosis was a great great book. I finished it today (after all, it is only about 60 pages). The ending was excellent, to say the least. I'm also looking forward to dissecting it in class. We started that today, and figured out exactly why he used a bug. I'm thinking about reading something more by Kafka. Suggestions?
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spooky girlfriend
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StrictTime
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'Who are you?'
'I'm from your mom's Elvis forum.'
That's most definitely one of the strangest ways to begin correspondence with someone...I mean, there are stranger ones, but I won't go into them here. Around here the school English program is: Sophmore Year: American Lit (The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter, Cat's Cradle, etc.), Junior Year: Brit Lit (The Collector, Equus, 1984, Lord of the Flies, etc.) and Senior Year: World Lit (Only one I know so far is Metamorphosis and some play called....The Dollhouse or something like that). Is that how it worked in Jess' school? Curious.
And back on the subject of books, Vonnegut suggestions are welcome as well. I've already read Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five. I'm thinking about Breakfast of Champions.
In fact, any suggestions are welcome. I miss reading stuff that's actually interesting outside of school. And I'm rambling, as usual. To bed!
'I'm from your mom's Elvis forum.'
That's most definitely one of the strangest ways to begin correspondence with someone...I mean, there are stranger ones, but I won't go into them here. Around here the school English program is: Sophmore Year: American Lit (The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter, Cat's Cradle, etc.), Junior Year: Brit Lit (The Collector, Equus, 1984, Lord of the Flies, etc.) and Senior Year: World Lit (Only one I know so far is Metamorphosis and some play called....The Dollhouse or something like that). Is that how it worked in Jess' school? Curious.
And back on the subject of books, Vonnegut suggestions are welcome as well. I've already read Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five. I'm thinking about Breakfast of Champions.
In fact, any suggestions are welcome. I miss reading stuff that's actually interesting outside of school. And I'm rambling, as usual. To bed!
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bambooneedle
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StrictTime, what about (from the back of a Penguin book):
The Trial
Kafka elucidates some fundamental dilemmas of human life in this account of the perplexing experience of a man arrested on a charge which is never specified. The story reads like a transcript of a protracted
implacable dream in which reality is entangled with imagination.
The Castle
Here the world of Kafka is further illumed; the individual struggles against ubiquitous, elusive and anonymous powers determining and yet simultaneously opposing his every step.
The Trial
Kafka elucidates some fundamental dilemmas of human life in this account of the perplexing experience of a man arrested on a charge which is never specified. The story reads like a transcript of a protracted
implacable dream in which reality is entangled with imagination.
The Castle
Here the world of Kafka is further illumed; the individual struggles against ubiquitous, elusive and anonymous powers determining and yet simultaneously opposing his every step.
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miss buenos aires
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StrictTime
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I'll have to make a list and hit the library! And ice, I didn't like Slaughterhouse as much as Cat's Cradle. It was a fun read though. I got it right after Vonnegut died and reminded me of his existence and my interest (albeit in a sad way). To the library, awaaaay! (Actually, to bed, but the library first thing Monday!)
Summer train reading:
The Canon, by Natalie Angier-- science for non-scientists. Very funny lady.
The Letters of Nancy Mitford-- Very funny lady.
Brideshead Revisited-- Lush, and snobbish, and intolerant, and misanthropic, and drop dead funny (Charles' father had me in stitches), and most of all, lush.
Evelyn Waugh and his group (or something like it), by Humphrey Carpenter--All about Waugh and his "pals".
The Letters of William James-- Very serious guy. Knowing that father gravely ill, he wrote him the kind of letter one can only dream of writing to one's father. My favorite philosopher (I don't know squat about philosophy, though).
Shakespeare, IN FACT, by Irvin Leigh Matus-- More about the controversy.
God is not Great, by the Hitch--He may have been wrong about Iraq, but he's not wrong about this, I think (er, I hope).
The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene-- Third time through this book in the last two years. Why do I reread it? It took me two times to get it, and then I forgot the details.
The Canon, by Natalie Angier-- science for non-scientists. Very funny lady.
The Letters of Nancy Mitford-- Very funny lady.
Brideshead Revisited-- Lush, and snobbish, and intolerant, and misanthropic, and drop dead funny (Charles' father had me in stitches), and most of all, lush.
Evelyn Waugh and his group (or something like it), by Humphrey Carpenter--All about Waugh and his "pals".
The Letters of William James-- Very serious guy. Knowing that father gravely ill, he wrote him the kind of letter one can only dream of writing to one's father. My favorite philosopher (I don't know squat about philosophy, though).
Shakespeare, IN FACT, by Irvin Leigh Matus-- More about the controversy.
God is not Great, by the Hitch--He may have been wrong about Iraq, but he's not wrong about this, I think (er, I hope).
The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene-- Third time through this book in the last two years. Why do I reread it? It took me two times to get it, and then I forgot the details.
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mood swung
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Otis Westinghouse
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Yeah, is that the best you can do?
I spent WEEKS reading a good book: Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett. The Guardian's Madrid correspondent. Has lived in Spain a good long while and is very much immersed in the life, language and culture. I think it's an excellent book, and I could identify, from my nearly 5 years there, with a lot of his perspectives, whilst at the same time being filled in on a lot of stuff that's happened there and I've not followed closely since 1991 whn I left. Shocking thing was it's a Faber book and RIDDLED with errors: typos, sloppy grammar, inconsistencies. Faber really, really should no better. As someone who works in the Editorial side of publishing, I'm appalled. Apparently he is too (a friend of his wife tells me), and the corrections he sent in were corrected in the American ed but not the UK reprint. Crap. One example: notorious, corrupt banker Mario Conde is introduced in one paragraph alongside some other guy named Javier, and mistakenly named Javier too. Further down the page his correct name Mario is used. The indexer cites Javier only - surely they must have seen and been confused by this? It's inept on every level. Recommended read, though. Very good on March 11 (aka 11-M), and lots of other aspects of recent history.
Re-reading Touching From a Distance by Deborah Curtis again, first time properly since it came out. As Control is based on it to some extent, I wanted to remind myself. Not the world's best-written book, but it's totally compulsive for me.
About what? The non-greatness of God? Why would you hope that?alexv wrote:God is not Great, by the Hitch--He may have been wrong about Iraq, but he's not wrong about this, I think (er, I hope)
I spent WEEKS reading a good book: Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett. The Guardian's Madrid correspondent. Has lived in Spain a good long while and is very much immersed in the life, language and culture. I think it's an excellent book, and I could identify, from my nearly 5 years there, with a lot of his perspectives, whilst at the same time being filled in on a lot of stuff that's happened there and I've not followed closely since 1991 whn I left. Shocking thing was it's a Faber book and RIDDLED with errors: typos, sloppy grammar, inconsistencies. Faber really, really should no better. As someone who works in the Editorial side of publishing, I'm appalled. Apparently he is too (a friend of his wife tells me), and the corrections he sent in were corrected in the American ed but not the UK reprint. Crap. One example: notorious, corrupt banker Mario Conde is introduced in one paragraph alongside some other guy named Javier, and mistakenly named Javier too. Further down the page his correct name Mario is used. The indexer cites Javier only - surely they must have seen and been confused by this? It's inept on every level. Recommended read, though. Very good on March 11 (aka 11-M), and lots of other aspects of recent history.
Re-reading Touching From a Distance by Deborah Curtis again, first time properly since it came out. As Control is based on it to some extent, I wanted to remind myself. Not the world's best-written book, but it's totally compulsive for me.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
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mood swung
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Otis Westinghouse
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Fuck, fuck, fuck. Guilty as charged. Well that's the kind of error you'd find in their book! I can't be arsed to proofread all the crap I post to this place, I spend too much of the working day worrying about the printed word!
There is consolation, though. At least I no, sorry, know someone is reading closely.
There is consolation, though. At least I no, sorry, know someone is reading closely.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
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StrictTime
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Goody2Shoes
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A few things that have kept me busy the last little while:
Thanks to pophead's and So lacklustre's encouragement, I finished John Irving's Until I Find You, and I'm glad I did, for I ended up liking it a whole lot. The tattoo/stalking and the St. Hilda's sections nearly killed it for me, though.
A Life In Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm, about the SOE officer who sent agents, many of them women, into France to aid the resistance, and her efforts to discover the whereabouts of those unaccounted for when the war ended. Excellent and fascinating. She spent much of her life defending her decision to send women behind enemy lines and was supposedly the model for Ian Fleming's Miss Moneypenny, who worked at the SOE the same time Atkins did. Fleming, not Moneypenny.
How To Cook A Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher. God, I want to be her when I grow up, or at least know as much about as many things as she did.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. Liked it. Liked it better than his A Long Way Down, I think it's called.
Thirteen Moons: A Novel by Charles Frazier. Set in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, prior to the Civil War, much of it centered around the Cherokee's Great Removal from their lands there. It is just okay. A little too sentimental for my taste. So many bad things happened to the main character, one wonders how he survives to narrate the story.
The Soul Of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski. Again, maybe a little too sentimental, but it's hard not to get sentimental about old guys and baseball. This man should be in the Hall of Fame.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Excellent, excellent, excellent, best book I read all summer, and maybe all year, so far. It tells the story of a boy trapped on a lifeboat with a tiger in the middle of the Pacific, but it's about much more than that. Read this book.
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. Also very good. 2 novellas that tell the stories of several, unrelated groups of Parisians during the Nazi occupation. It was originally intended to be, I believe, a collection of 5 novellas, but the author sadly and tragically died in Auschwitz before she wrote the remaining 3. The manuscripts were found by remaining family members some time after the war.
Falling Man by Don DeLillo, about a man who survived the collapse of the WTC on 9/11, and how his life changed, and his family's life changed, and indeed how we are all changed by it. Very, very good.
I feel like I'm missing something. Oh, yes, Harry Potter. That's all I can remember right now. And Go, Dog, Go by P.D. Eastman, about half a million times. Best book ever written! Seriously!
Thanks to pophead's and So lacklustre's encouragement, I finished John Irving's Until I Find You, and I'm glad I did, for I ended up liking it a whole lot. The tattoo/stalking and the St. Hilda's sections nearly killed it for me, though.
A Life In Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm, about the SOE officer who sent agents, many of them women, into France to aid the resistance, and her efforts to discover the whereabouts of those unaccounted for when the war ended. Excellent and fascinating. She spent much of her life defending her decision to send women behind enemy lines and was supposedly the model for Ian Fleming's Miss Moneypenny, who worked at the SOE the same time Atkins did. Fleming, not Moneypenny.
How To Cook A Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher. God, I want to be her when I grow up, or at least know as much about as many things as she did.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. Liked it. Liked it better than his A Long Way Down, I think it's called.
Thirteen Moons: A Novel by Charles Frazier. Set in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, prior to the Civil War, much of it centered around the Cherokee's Great Removal from their lands there. It is just okay. A little too sentimental for my taste. So many bad things happened to the main character, one wonders how he survives to narrate the story.
The Soul Of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski. Again, maybe a little too sentimental, but it's hard not to get sentimental about old guys and baseball. This man should be in the Hall of Fame.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Excellent, excellent, excellent, best book I read all summer, and maybe all year, so far. It tells the story of a boy trapped on a lifeboat with a tiger in the middle of the Pacific, but it's about much more than that. Read this book.
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. Also very good. 2 novellas that tell the stories of several, unrelated groups of Parisians during the Nazi occupation. It was originally intended to be, I believe, a collection of 5 novellas, but the author sadly and tragically died in Auschwitz before she wrote the remaining 3. The manuscripts were found by remaining family members some time after the war.
Falling Man by Don DeLillo, about a man who survived the collapse of the WTC on 9/11, and how his life changed, and his family's life changed, and indeed how we are all changed by it. Very, very good.
I feel like I'm missing something. Oh, yes, Harry Potter. That's all I can remember right now. And Go, Dog, Go by P.D. Eastman, about half a million times. Best book ever written! Seriously!
It's a radiation vibe I'm groovin' on
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mood swung
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strangerinthehouse
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Currently reading the Phil Spector Biography "He's a Rebel" by Mark Ribowsky. I don't Know but I find this guy very fascinating besides the great songs he created/produced he's a typically tragic character, solely confined to his own self without any regard for others.
The stories about the how he used the Crystals and the Ronnettes are documented but at a very fast pace. Ribowsky went through Spector's golden era (1961-1963) relatively fast but he seems to have talked to everyone except for the reclusive Spector.
The edition I'm reading is the 2006 so he has also researched the current trial as it was happening. From the outset Ribowsky seems to imply that he saw this coming. or at least that his book foreshadowed the murder of Lana Clarkson.
Next I wanna read the book by Ronnie and another biography that was released this year.
The stories about the how he used the Crystals and the Ronnettes are documented but at a very fast pace. Ribowsky went through Spector's golden era (1961-1963) relatively fast but he seems to have talked to everyone except for the reclusive Spector.
The edition I'm reading is the 2006 so he has also researched the current trial as it was happening. From the outset Ribowsky seems to imply that he saw this coming. or at least that his book foreshadowed the murder of Lana Clarkson.
Next I wanna read the book by Ronnie and another biography that was released this year.
Get yourself some Haruki Murakami. A Wild Sheep Chase is a good place to start after which I would recommend The Wind Up Bird Chronicles and Kafka on the Shore... if David Lynch were an author, these are the books that he would write.StrictTime wrote:any suggestions are welcome. I miss reading stuff that's actually interesting outside of school. And I'm rambling, as usual. To bed!
I can recommend "Cider with roadies" by Stuart Maconie. He used to write for NME and Q and now does loads of tv stuff. Book is about his love of music and is a dead easy red an very funny in oarts.
Also recently read The Damned United which is a "fiction" based on football manager Brian Cloughs 44 day reign at the helm of Leeds United in the seventies. Im not a fan of Leeds or Clough but its a fantastic , descriptive read.
Also recently read The Damned United which is a "fiction" based on football manager Brian Cloughs 44 day reign at the helm of Leeds United in the seventies. Im not a fan of Leeds or Clough but its a fantastic , descriptive read.
...I want him to hurt...