Which Book Are You Reading Now? Volume XII

[yung.carl.jung]

had a conversation with a colleague and he talked down moby dick and said that it's only verbose because melville was paid by the word

ever since that day I dread the book, it really sucks. I was loving it up to that point. we had a talk about American lit and he gave me his copy of "The Girl with Curious Hair", by David Foster Wallace, which I've been meaning to read for a while. It's a collection of short stories.

Also I'm almost done with Thus Spake Zarathustra and it's been both enlightening and utterly confusing. will probably revisit that book a lot

Recently finished Chronicles of Narnia.

so you make a thread about which great works of art are low hanging fruit and then this is your reading list

thanks however for the post about the witcher. I've been meaning to play that and you tipped me over the edge

will report back with how I liked it, I'm still currently doing morroblivion (it's great) and skyrim (it's okay.. if its heavily modded)

 

[Mouthwash]

so you make a thread about which great works of art are low hanging fruit and then this is your reading list

I actually have more in common with Lewis than almost any other writer (The Screwtape Letters got me started with him).

thanks however for the post about the witcher. I've been meaning to play that and you tipped me over the edge

According to reddit, reading the books first improves the game experience. So I'm trying to knock them off before I start Witcher 3.

 

[Takhisis]

had a conversation with a colleague and he talked down moby dick and said that it's only verbose because melville was paid by the word

ever since that day I dread the book, it really sucks. I was loving it up to that point. we had a talk about American lit and he gave me his copy of "The Girl with Curious Hair", by David Foster Wallace, which I've been meaning to read for a while. It's a collection of short stories.

So you shouldn't read 19th-century literature at all.

 

[Cutlass]

had a conversation with a colleague and he talked down moby dick and said that it's only verbose because melville was paid by the word

ever since that day I dread the book, it really sucks. I was loving it up to that point.

I dunno why he was like that. But he certainly never used one word when 8 would get the job done instead.

 

[Traitorfish]

they're SO good you guys.

 

[Cutlass]

they're SO good you guys.

Have read whole series.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

So you shouldn't read 19th-century literature at all.

19th century German literature doesn't strike me as unnecessarily verbose. Didn't feel that way about Faust or really any Goethe nor Schiller. I don't think Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights were bad in that department. Even some of Melville's other stuff.. Bartleby was totally okay in terms of verbosity.

 

[Zkribbler]

Bernard Cornwall's Winter King,

I'd forgotten how funny this is. The MC is describing the room where Merlin sleeps. There's a crucifix on the wall with mistletoe wrapped around it to counteract its evil influence.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

For the first time ever I'm going to stop reading a book intentionally, much less one I've spent a dozen or more hours reading. It's so bad I can't even remember the name or the author.

It's probably not objectively bad, it's just not my cup of tea. It's about the history of development of the world's nuclear arsenals up through the eighties and I think the right term for it would be that it is a historiography. The author goes into excruciating details about personal correspondences and meetings between Roosevelt, Churchill and the people in their orbit on the nuclear issue. I'm a hundred and fifty pages in and still not to the actual use of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At some level it just isn't useful for a laymen to have this level of detail to understand the narrative he has put together of the events.

Really it's a collection of primary sources all in one place which is great I assume for historians to use as a reference piece but just terrible as an engaging story.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Just finished 'The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God' by GBS and now on 'The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl' by Brigid Brophy which is a very amusing collection of short stories as well as the title novella. Much her most accessible fiction work.

 

[Zkribbler]

had a conversation with a colleague and he talked down moby dick and said that it's only verbose because melville was paid by the word

Bah! it's like trying to wade through hip-deep Jello. I'm always amused when Hollywood want to show a really smart kid, the kid's favorite book is Moby Dick.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Brown is about "What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone)", according to the author Kamal al-Solaylee. After an introduction to some basic social science definitions, it moves to the author's experiences and interviews with various "brown" people in Asia and North America, mixed with reflections on the issues faced by brown people in their lives. The book can be praised for the fascinating and accurate information it has (I decided to buy it after it mentioned that shopping is a national pastime in the Philippines. That is correct, for the record.).

It is not without issues, however. The definition of who is "brown" seems arbitrary: a member of a group of which there is a "crisis" about their presence in their host country and isn't white, East Asian, African, or indigenous native. You could make a case for including or not including Filipinos, for example, under these criteria. The other major issue is mainly portraying brown people as a group that is oppressed. The author has much to say about Western/European/Anglo values contributing to the oppression of brown people or brown people oppressing those who are darker. Strangely, when it's brown people oppressing other brown people these ruminations and pontifications are nowhere to be found, like in the chapter of Qatari treatment of their foreign workers.

 

[JollyRoger]

 

[Cutlass]

Spoiler :

Moderator Action: Spoiler inserted for huge image. ~ Arakhor

 

[Smellincoffee]

Just finished Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from a Crematory, starting on Fly Girls.

 

[JollyRoger]

 

[tjs282]

Just finished this decade's re-reading of LOTR: it's my habit after (re)watching the movies, to remind me of the definitive version of the story (and purge the butchering of Faramir's character, the only part of the movie-scripts that I really dislike).

 

[JollyRoger]

 

[Zkribbler]

... the butchering of Faramir's character, the only part of the movie-scripts that I really dislike.

Did you see the interview with one of the writers, which is a special feature to the extended version of the Two Towers DVD? She explains why that modification was necessary. I totally buy into what she's saying.

 

[Takhisis]

Terry Pratchett's Raising Steam.