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Post by KoNeko on Nov 24, 2006 20:56:39 GMT -5
"Consciousness: New Philosophical perspectives".
Hooray philosophy of mind!
I haven't read a "for fun" book in AGES, which is so sad.
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Post by Me on Nov 29, 2006 3:23:56 GMT -5
Currently putting my personal reading on hiatus. Tear. But B&N keep on sending coupons so this weekend I will be loading up on books and coffee. ;D
I'm currently reading Skin Tight by Carl Hiassen for class. It's hilarious. These are my type of hack doctors, killers, and cops. It is sad that I haven't read anything personal in a while. I'm always reading texts and serious stuff. Hopefully I'm make some progress over winter break.
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Post by vinny on Nov 30, 2006 12:47:58 GMT -5
Im currently about half way through 'The HitchHickers Guide to The Galaxy'[/b]. Its my second time reading it, and its still funny.
It just... has a way of drawing me in...making me read more and more.
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Post by hermoine on Dec 2, 2006 5:21:41 GMT -5
I'm currently reading a book by my Maltese lecturer entitled "Chemistry" in English. It's a collection of short stories and I thought since he teaches me and all, I might just check them out. Some of his stories have also been translated to foreign languages.
On the other hand I've finished Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Awesome book, with romance merged so perfectly in the story, it just makes you smile. And Malta was mentioned a couple of times. ;D I also found perfect quotes for when writing poetry essays on Wilfred Owen (any of you guys like his writings by the way?).
What I didn't quite get, and maybe En may shed some light for me here, is the significance of the very last paragraph. I didn't quite get the significance of those girls. Was Corelli thinking back in the times of La Scala?
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Post by Fluffy on Dec 3, 2006 11:21:41 GMT -5
I recently bought the first British paperback edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide for the shop... and it's definitely on the list of things I don't really want to sell I love that book. Pity American humour is so banana-peelish, you know?
Zeph, I'm so glad you liked Corelli's Mandolin! I did think of you when I read the lines about Malta, yes
On that last paragraph - I think part of it was that he was thinking about La Scala and about driving around with Pelagea in the old days, but I also think those three girls were symbolic. One was facing forward, right, with her feet on the fuel tank, which I think represents the fuel-driven and mechanical future toward which we are heading; one was touching up her makeup, being totally involved in the present; and the third was reading the papers, which I think represents the past, and our efforts to understand ourselves better through connecting events of now with what has already happened. And this inspired him with an idea for a song, a song that was partly his and Pelagea's story - a narrative - against a backdrop of the passage of time, as represented by these three beautiful girls, the equal beauties of past, present and future. At least, that's how I interpreted it
Still working on Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell here... but I'm getting near the end, and it's finally starting to come together and make sense. It seemed so meandering on the way through, but I'm beginning to understand how everything is connected. No wonder Neil Gaiman liked it
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Post by hermoine on Dec 9, 2006 6:05:50 GMT -5
Zeph, I'm so glad you liked Corelli's Mandolin! I did think of you when I read the lines about Malta, yes
On that last paragraph - I think part of it was that he was thinking about La Scala and about driving around with Pelagea in the old days, but I also think those three girls were symbolic. One was facing forward, right, with her feet on the fuel tank, which I think represents the fuel-driven and mechanical future toward which we are heading; one was touching up her makeup, being totally involved in the present; and the third was reading the papers, which I think represents the past, and our efforts to understand ourselves better through connecting events of now with what has already happened. And this inspired him with an idea for a song, a song that was partly his and Pelagea's story - a narrative - against a backdrop of the passage of time, as represented by these three beautiful girls, the equal beauties of past, present and future. At least, that's how I interpreted it Yes that does make a lot of sense and I agree with your view. I should be practising my skills in crit more or else I'll be screwed in my exam.
I've finished the book in Maltese, which was one of the few which I actually enjoyed reading - doesn't happen too often. I'll probably buy other books by him in the future.
In the meantime I've picked up Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Had wanted to get ahold of Pride and Prejudice but they didn't have it, and since this was quite cheap I thought I'd might as well add it to the lot and experience Austen's well-known pieces of literature.
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Post by Fluffy on Dec 10, 2006 10:22:01 GMT -5
I actually like Sense and Sensibility better, personally. It's the dynamic between the sisters, and the humour - I never fail to laugh with almost every scene involving Margaret - she's such a riot.
Don't worry about your crit skills, dear, I've watched you analyse HP and fanfiction and other books for years, and you catch a lot more than the average person
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Post by Simply Panda on Dec 28, 2006 4:48:09 GMT -5
I definitely recommend 'The Book of Lost Things' by John Connoly. I'm not done with it yet... but it's definitely an interesting mix of genre.
About a boy who has ocd and is trying to cope with the death of his mother. Eventually he is transported to a new world where he encounters characters from fairy tales... but with a sort of twist. Definitely check it out!
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Post by hermoine on Jan 17, 2007 10:48:47 GMT -5
So last Sunday I finally finished Sense and Sensibility. I admit I found it rather, monotonous at times. But then I actually found it interesting coupled with stuff going on in my personal life. I could actually appeal to the characters much more and that was good.
I've now started the book I've been quite dying to read. The Catcher in the Rye and yes I'm LOVING it. I always love such texts which are pretty much the thoughts of the protagonist.
Books to follow now are mainly ones I need to read to be able to cross-reference throughout essays for my English A' Level exams. This means reading: Grapes of Wrath (to cross-reference with Of Mice and Men, The Power and the Glory(reread though but to cross-reference with 21 Stories by Graham Greene yet again), Hamlet, Macbeth(I ADORE that play...shame on me for not having read it yet ), to cross-reference with King Lear. And I also got my hands on Shakesperean Tragedy by A.C.Bradley! *drool* Not to mention the novels in French I haven't started yet. XD
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Post by Will on Jan 17, 2007 14:35:54 GMT -5
Oh Oh! Catcher in the Rye is definitely a fantastic read, yet I come across people who absolutely hate it. Oh well.
Novels in French? You amaze me, 'Moine.
Has anyone stumbled upon Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs? It's kind of insane and disturbing, but fascinating nonetheless. A friend of mine recommended it/let me borrow the book and I finally sat down to read it. Finished it in a half a day because it was difficult to put down even though I was shocked most of the time. I think I was reading it with my mouth open, eyes wide and everything.
Now I'm moving on to Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. I also need to finish Wuthering Heights some time in the future. I started it months ago be got distracted and never picked it up again since then.
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Post by hermoine on Jan 17, 2007 16:57:25 GMT -5
Novels in French? You amaze me, 'Moine. It's nothing too fantastic really. In another thread I know you said about vocabulary and such...well I picked up most of my Italian vocabulary from watching Italian television since a young kid. I started studying French at 11 though and let's face it, the French speak too fast to understand anything they're saying on TV. So I need to pick up my vocabulary from somewhere. I'm actually going to buy Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in French because that's a storyline I already know, so I don't need to actually focus on trying to understand what the hell is going on.
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Post by Fluffy on Jan 18, 2007 11:27:19 GMT -5
I've had copies of Running with Scissors several times here, but people keep buying them before I get a chance to look at the book. Oh, the perils of having books you can't read
Haha Zeph... I too have bought HP in multiple languages to help me build my vocabulary in those languages. Hart has it in Latin, because he studies Latin, but I've got it in Italian, French, Spanish, Czech (which I can't read, but I want to), Chinese (thanks, Gen) and about four others... I need to find it in Hebrew though. And Gaelic, but Hebrew first.
I also need to start reading more of my books in French again. I can understand it when I read it, but I'm starting to lose the ability to construct intelligent-sounding sentences, so it's time to brush up. But I still have about 7 books that Hart got me for the holidays to read first. Whee!
Grapes of Wrath is one of my old favourites - I love Steinbeck's natural imagery (such as the turtle bit near the beginning) and his occasionally King-James-Bible-ish diction. Did you know he was trained as a botanist? Explains a lot. Personally, I always liked The Pearl best of his work, but GoW is amazing too.
Hart has finally talked me into reading Lord Jim, though I haven't started it yet - I often find Hart's choice in books rather dark for my taste, and there were a couple of other books I wanted to tackle first, including:
The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue. I came across this in a typically bizarre fashion: a former customer had a copy inscribed to me by the author, then shipped it from her new home out west. No idea what to expect, other than the vague notion that it involved a ghost, but wow, this book has been totally underrated. The tone is excellent. The research is excellent, and the historical placement of the scenes is beautifully understated - so many books with historical settings feel the need to drop names and events, you know, like a character picks up a newspaper with a famous headline ("A Day That Will Live in Infamy!") or votes for a particular politician or loses a friend in a famous disaster - and that's just silly. This book is partly set in the 1920's in New Orleans, and it's totally subtle about it. The occasional mention of parties getting raided for having alcohol (that was during the USA's quintessentially stupid experiment with prohibition), of having to wear a wedding ring (real or fake) to be able to buy contraceptives (yes, that was a law for a while), that sort of thing, but it's blended smoothly into the text, and that makes the first-person narration so much more believable. I mean, who really tells their personal histories by peppering it with contemporary brand names and "I remember reading about [event] in the papers that morning"? Our personal stories only include things like that if they changed our lives, which most of them don't. So I really appreciated that.
But more to the point, it's a fascinating story. There's a bit of a mystery; though you know exactly how the narrator died (accident) and generally what happened in her life from the beginning, there are some unanswered questions about what it all meant to the people involved, and the ghost's story is the story of her discovery of the answers to those questions. Meanwhile, she haunts a modern family, and she's so funny about it - she moves stuff around, usually just because she was looking at a book or whatever, but sometimes she does it to make a point to the people she's haunting - and she talks about the causes that matter to her (she's a total Gryffindor), and about her experiences teaching other ghosts how to control their electromagnetic potentials (she has a ghost-gay-best-friend for a while).
There were about four cliches and two minor structural problems (says the former writing consultant) - but this author is one to watch, if she's got this incredible sense of tone already (it's her first).
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Post by hermoine on Jan 21, 2007 8:52:12 GMT -5
I also need to start reading more of my books in French again. I can understand it when I read it, but I'm starting to lose the ability to construct intelligent-sounding sentences, so it's time to brush up. But I still have about 7 books that Hart got me for the holidays to read first. Whee!
Grapes of Wrath is one of my old favourites - I love Steinbeck's natural imagery (such as the turtle bit near the beginning) and his occasionally King-James-Bible-ish diction. Did you know he was trained as a botanist? Explains a lot. Personally, I always liked The Pearl best of his work, but GoW is amazing too. Same here. I keep mixing up French verbs with Italian ones.
Actually I was thinking of Grapes of Wrath because I'd like to cross-reference to it in my Of Mice and Men essay. Since you've read it, do you happen to recall whether there were certain similarities between the two novels? So that if there weren't, I could just as well buy a different book and buy Grapes of Wrath later on.
I finished The Catcher in the Rye today. Stellar book! Got me right in the mood to read again so that was uber great for me. When I finished it I was rather wondering the actual meaning of the title most of all. Because in the novel Holden speaks of how he wishes to save the children going over the hill. Personally I thought that rather than he was the Catcher, the others around him were, especially Phoebe. I mean it is through Phoebe that he didn't go live on his own and that he continued his education. And even though people like Mr Spencer, Mr Antolini, his parents etc weren't portrayed in the best of light, in the end the whole matter lies in the fact that they all wished to help him. The problem is that like the rest of the world they were all corrupted and prone to sin, if that's the best word for it.
But the style of writing makes you agree with Holden all the time. It was only when I was about three-quarters into the novel(mainly when he met Sally) that I started realising that he was being rather cynical and pessimistic often enough, not to mention a tad bit conceited. At least that was my impression. I might have interpreted things completely wrong of course.
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Post by Me on Jan 24, 2007 18:10:55 GMT -5
Wow, here I am having trouble reading in English. My Spanish and French are okay, I can read them although it takes me a while. I haven't tried to read anything in French in a while. Sometimes I read Spanish newspapers though.
(I just told my roommate she should get Harry Potter in Latin. At first she wouldn't believe it exists. Now she thinks it's a good idea though. )
Currently I am reading The Prince. Hurrah. I'm actually having trouble committing myself to the book which is detrimental to me because I need to read it for class. I'm also reading The Republic by Plato. I like it. I started it last night, I would have kept on going but I was tired.
For my own pleasure I'm reading Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Hurrah. I'm making good progress, but I haven't read it for a couple of days now. I'm trying to stay on top of all my school reading.
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Calavera Diablos
Ravenclaw Alumni
Draws grown men wearing underpants outside their trousers
Posts: 1,547
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Post by Calavera Diablos on Jan 30, 2007 2:31:36 GMT -5
My friend Zach made me become addicted to The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Any fan of Fantasy and Noir will adore this series. It focuses on Harry Dresden, the only Wizard listed in the phonebook. He works as a supernatural P.I. with a spirit of intellect inhabiting a dried out human skull as a companion. The Sci-Fi channel has also made a tv series out of the books, but I have yet to watch them since I missed the premiere while I was in Portland, OR.
I haven't found a piece of decent Lesbian fiction in awhile, but Flaming Iguanas by Erika Lopez is a witty, illustrated tale of one woman riding a scooter across America. I'm definitely going to read her other novel, Lapdancing for Mommy in the future.
While I was romping through the four story bookstore in Portland (Powell's, check it out, all you bibliophiles), I also picked up Fugitives and Refugees by Chuck Palahnuik. It's a guide to the hot spots and weird sights of Oregon's smallest, but loudest city. I had fun reading about all of the places I had visited during the train ride back to L.A.
The Dissapointment Artist by Jonathan Lethem is a collection of essays the author has written about different aspects of pop culture. It's incredibly humorous to read about someone who obsesses over movies, music and comics as much as I do.
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