Reading any good books? II

[Earniel]

The title says it all, really. Original thread-starter was anduin. The first thread can be found here.

[Aikanáro]

I just read Native Tongue in one sitting. It's dystopian SF, by Suzette Haden Elgin, who is both a linguist and a feminist, and combines both in her writing.

It was brilliant. Easily one of the best books I've read in a long time.

[Bombadillo]

Dystopian sci fi is the greatest. I usually go for the TVs shows a bit more than the books, though, sadly. The new Prisoner with Sir Ian McKellan as Numbah 2 -- great.

I wanna reread Brave New World soon. I always thought it deserved more attention than 1984.


Two good true stories:
Alive - about how a Uruguayan rugby team survived a plane crash in the Andes, way above treeline, on the bodies of their friends, for over a month
Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aaron Ralston, expert mountaineer and certified badass, crushes his hand with a giant boulder at the bottom of a canyon in the middle of a god-forsaken desert all by himself, and nearly starves to death before chopping off his own hand with a dull pocket knife and scaling his way to safety.

Nothing makes me so proud to be a human being like these kinds of stories do. We can be some strong SOBs.

[Valandil]

Just started reading Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

[Valandil]

Oh - and I made it! I read through The Bible in 2009!

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by Valandil

Oh - and I made it! I read through The Bible in 2009!

Including all the begats?

[Midge]

I've recently been reading through the Left Behind series. That's kind of like... almost 15 years old, but I was LITTLE when they first came out.

I've also read a book recently called "Meet Mr. Smith" which was very good. It put a new spin on purity and holiness. Very enjoyable and it actually helped me to change undesirable behaviors. Yay!

[Comic Book Guy]

P.G Wodehouse - World of Jeeves
James Joyce - Dubliners

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by Comic Book Guy

P.G Wodehouse - World of Jeeves
James Joyce - Dubliners

I love Dubliners- "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" is my favourite, one of the best stories on politics ever written, though "The Dead" is the best overall story in the bunch.

[cee2lee2]

Last Sunday I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It is epistolary in form and I enjoyed it so much. Left me smiling.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

I've just started Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex. So far, it's a great mixture of comedy and evocative classical references.

[GrayMouser]

I've never heard of Robertson Davies, but he sounds like a fascinating individual. Sounds a bit like Roger Scruton. Anglo-Catholics are always so much more interesting than us poor Romans.

Beloved in Canada, and shorted for the Booker...maybe a bit more, um, lively than Scruton.

Though in all fairness, all I've read of Scruton is his "Short History of Western Philosophy" and his part of "German Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietszche" (he wrote the Intro and the section on Kant) which, while both being excellent, are not exactly the liveliest of subjects.

I watched the BBC series on Beauty you posted, and am going to reply in the next week when I've got a bit more time to re-view it (end of term, very busy), but it did bring a bit of Davies to mind.

In "What's Bred in the Bone" he deals with an artist who would have been hailed in previous ages for his skill, but is forced to become an art forger in our age when only "shock" and "imagination" count for anything.

When being appprenticed to one of the last of the Old School Masters, his first test is to draw a perfectly straight line - freehand, of course- down the middle of a page; the point being if you can't do that you're not even fit to be a beginner.

[GrayMouser]

Special shout out to inked- have you read this guy? I think you'd love it.

Start with the Cornish trilogy- while I think the Deptford trilogy is on the whole is a little better the opening may be a little rougher for non-Canadians- though any small town North American may appreciate it.

[mithrand1r]

I just finished The Count of Monte Cristo.

Interesting story, but it is long.

Takes place during the early 1800s. Primarily in France and to a lesser extent in Italy.

At times the story gets bogged down in details, but over all I thought it was a good story.

I would recommend this for others to read. I think I may see the film and see how it compares to the book. The story could be streamlined without losing much of the essence of the story, although it would lose much of the richness of detail and background material.

[Lotesse]

Gwaimir, Middlesex was AWES0ME. I love Eugenidies & so far, this is my favourite of his novels. LOVE.

[Lotesse]

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Twice in a row, literally back-to-back. I'd begun the book several years ago when my life & mind were too fractured & scattered to really pay attention, & so set it aside, indefinitly. But this time, I very literally could NOT put it down until I'd devoured it all, and the very next day, read it once again, cover to cover, without interruption, first page to last. An absolute literary masterpiece work of art.

My Life in France, Julia Child with Paul Prud'Homme.

Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain (third reading)

Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl

A Day in the Life of Ivan Desinovitch, Alexander Solszhenitsen. Read this book. And then quit bitching about how awful your life is. A page-turning, eye-opening masterpiece.

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner. He's a weird mf, but boy howdy he got the spirit & truth of the deep south right, & his mastery of poetic realism is crazy-real.

O, Pioneer!, Willa Cather. A. Freakin. Mazing.

Run River, Joan Didion. Her first novel; another amazing pageturner whose characters & their stories will stay in your permanent consciousness long after you remember you'd read the book. Brilliant.

I did an awful lot of reading this summer...

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by Lotesse

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Twice in a row, literally back-to-back. I'd begun the book several years ago when my life & mind were too fractured & scattered to really pay attention, & so set it aside, indefinitly. But this time, I very literally could NOT put it down until I'd devoured it all, and the very next day, read it once again, cover to cover, without interruption, first page to last. An absolute literary masterpiece work of art.

Yes,it's hard to adjust to the style- it's been called one of those books "more bought than read"- but once you get into it, just wonderful.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Desinovitch, Alexander Solszhenitsen. Read this book. And then quit bitching about how awful your life is. A page-turning, eye-opening masterpiece.

Again, absolutely- that final sentence just kicked me in the gut; when you realize everythig he's gone through has been just one day, with so many more to come.

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner. He's a weird mf, but boy howdy he got the spirit & truth of the deep south right, & his mastery of poetic realism is crazy-real.

Appreciate the genius of his longer works, but takes a lot of concentration.

I actually enjoy the Yoknapataphaw short story cycles more- easier to follow

[Snowdog]

A couple world war 2 novels...

The Willing Flesh by Willi Heinrich
Wheels of Terror by Sven Hassal

[Valandil]

Start of this week I picked up The Virginian, by Owen Wister. About a fourth of the way in, and I'm enjoying it.

I believe this is considered the first "Western" novel.

[Attalus]

Originally Posted by Valandil

Start of this week I picked up The Virginian, by Owen Wister. About a fourth of the way in, and I'm enjoying it.

I believe this is considered the first "Western" novel.

Only if you disallow Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales." But, admittedly, they are a totally different ethos than The Virginian and Zane Grey.

WOWWWW. So I'm reading Dragon Flight from the Pern series and I have to keep reminding myself it was written in a different time with a different world in mind... the female protagonist and male protagonist are killing my modern sensibilities of what I expect for female leads.

]Don't worry about little Lessa. She gets her own back and then some. One of the strongest female leads in a SciFi (Anne McCaffrey's work is *not* fantasy, worse luck) that I know of. By The White Dragon she has become downright scary. Don't forget that she had been beaten and scorned while she was "undercover" at Ruatha Hold, so she starts out less than assertive.