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02-23-2010, 04:53 PM | #1 |
Best Ex-Administrator ever
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Ireland
Posts: 60,547
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P.G Wodehouse - World of Jeeves
James Joyce - Dubliners |
03-20-2010, 10:08 AM | #2 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Ilha Formosa
Posts: 2,068
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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.
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Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill |
03-25-2010, 09:49 PM | #3 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: 2nd star to the left.....
Posts: 566
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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.
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06-18-2010, 11:41 PM | #4 |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA
Posts: 10,820
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I've just started Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex. So far, it's a great mixture of comedy and evocative classical references.
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
06-27-2010, 01:58 PM | #5 | |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Ilha Formosa
Posts: 2,068
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Quote:
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.
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Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill Last edited by GrayMouser : 06-27-2010 at 02:09 PM. |
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06-27-2010, 02:06 PM | #6 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Ilha Formosa
Posts: 2,068
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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.
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Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill |
04-20-2011, 09:58 PM | #7 |
Cyber Elf Lord
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Left of Rock, Right of Hard Place
Posts: 986
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The Count of Monte Cristo
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.
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Sincerely, Anthony 'Many are my names in many countries,' he said. 'Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Drarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.' Faramir What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation? Cicero (106BC-43BC) |
10-07-2012, 05:41 AM | #8 |
of the House of Fëanor
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 6,150
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Gwaimir, Middlesex was AWES0ME. I love Eugenidies & so far, this is my favourite of his novels. LOVE.
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Few people have the imagination for reality.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
10-07-2012, 06:05 AM | #9 |
of the House of Fëanor
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 6,150
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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...
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Few people have the imagination for reality.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
10-08-2012, 09:21 AM | #10 | |||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Ilha Formosa
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I actually enjoy the Yoknapataphaw short story cycles more- easier to follow
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Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill |
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10-08-2012, 09:37 PM | #11 |
of the House of Fëanor
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 6,150
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Ciao, GrayMouser! Yes, that's absolutely true about the experience of reading 100 Years of Solitude. When I first picked up the book, I guess I read about a third of the way through & it wouldn't "stick," for whatever reason, it wasn't resonating with me and I couldn't get inside the fantasy at all. Now, several years later, it DID stick, and then sucked me so intensely intside the fantasy that I couldn't leave it & had to instantly re-read it. Marquez, what a writer!!what a GENIUS!!
I read a book about Julia & Paul Child and a few close friends of theirs during the early days of their work during the early War Years (WW2) with the CIA's predecessor the OSS, & then later through the McCarthy era & a long Cold War. Wonderful, engaging writing and an absolutely fascinating true story. Plus, many great photos. 2 thumbs up! ~A Covert Affair, by Jennet Conant
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Few people have the imagination for reality.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
10-10-2012, 04:22 AM | #12 |
of the House of Fëanor
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 6,150
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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers.
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Few people have the imagination for reality.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
06-17-2014, 06:12 AM | #13 |
Dúnedain Ranger of the North
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: The Ruins of Arnor
Posts: 892
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A couple world war 2 novels...
The Willing Flesh by Willi Heinrich Wheels of Terror by Sven Hassal
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"I am an outlaw, I was born an outlaw's son. The highway is my legacy, on the highway I will run." |
01-15-2015, 11:24 PM | #14 |
High King at Annuminas Administrator
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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.
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My Fanfic: Letters of Firiel Tales of Nolduryon Visitors Come to Court Ñ á ë ?* ó ú é ä ï ö Ö ñ É Þ ð ß ® ™ [Xurl=Xhttp://entmoot.tolkientrail.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=ABCXYZ#postABCXYZ]text[/Xurl] Splitting Threads is SUCH Hard Work!! |
10-07-2015, 02:01 PM | #15 | ||
Swan-Knight of Dol Amroth
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"What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions are not beyond conjecture." - Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial. |
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10-10-2015, 08:59 AM | #16 |
High King at Annuminas Administrator
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Yes - I consider "Western" to be from what is now about the western US, with "Leatherstocking Tales" (all of which I read some years back) to be more "Frontier". If that makes sense to others. Have only read one Zane Grey book, and that was way long ago!!!
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My Fanfic: Letters of Firiel Tales of Nolduryon Visitors Come to Court Ñ á ë ?* ó ú é ä ï ö Ö ñ É Þ ð ß ® ™ [Xurl=Xhttp://entmoot.tolkientrail.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=ABCXYZ#postABCXYZ]text[/Xurl] Splitting Threads is SUCH Hard Work!! |
11-03-2015, 04:46 PM | #17 |
Elven Warrior
Join Date: May 2015
Location: A nice studio in the Pelóri
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Ooh, if you read just one Zane Gray, let it be Riders of the Purple Sage
Susie
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“Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons; it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.” - JRRT. "On Faerie-Stories" |
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