Well , thank you for being so kind , dar512 . I am packing up my books at the moment because I am moving from France to the Caribbean . I have given many books away , and I am now packing what I really want . It is an interesting thing to do , but very slow too , because I keep stopping .

I am flicking through Thoreau ( Walden) , also The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane . I am trying to remember certain lines so that I can attack you all when you try to justify guns .

I'm within 30 pages of finishing Catcher in the Rye. I've got Scarlet Letter lined up (just visited Hawthorne's grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetary), Return of the Native (T.Hardy) and A Farewell to Arms(Hemingway). Went to the library today to p/u The Sun Also Rises (didn't have it!) and got DaVinci Code and How the Horse Shaped Civilization instead.
hh

How ironic. You're gather ammunition for your argument. :lol:

No , I just like fine American ideas .

....and oh , hoof-hearted , do not think that I have not seen you . The Scarlet letter , well how can you understand Miller without Hawthorne ?

As for Hemingway , he is part of my life because I love him and because he NEVER really understood Pamplona .

Hardy is a bucolic old fart .

Voilà , I cannot be expected to talk about everyone all of the time .

Salinger was de rigour at my old school: however, my old english lit. teacher was a contempary of and actually know George Orwell, so all of his books were naturally on the menu. These days I tend to read only sci-fi (the hard stuff, not yer pansey pratchet whimsy) and at tne moment am re-reading Haldeman's The Forever War

I love George Orwell , and unlike you I have never had the privilege of being taught by a teacher who knew him .

I did however live in Barbastro in Spain at one time , where Orwell was in hospital during the Spanish Civil War . I tried to contact the old boy one night via a home-made ouidja board . Olive oil on a pane of glass . He did not reply , alas .

That explains a lot about you. You're possessed by a greasy Spanish demon.

If it's Lope de Vega , I don't mind .

Hm, I'm itching for something to read. Anyone have any suggestions? Since Amazon takes weeks, then I'm lookin' for something well-known enough to Torrent.

I think you'd really dig Neal Stephenson, Ibram. You should definitely start with "Snow Crash," and then do either "Diamond Age" or "Cryptonomicon."

I'm currently reading "A Feast for Crows", the latest book in "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R. R. Martin. This volume is OK, but it doesn't follow some of my favorite plots in the series at all. Not a whole lot has happened so far, and I'm almost done with the book. Hopefully this series doesn't go where people tell me the Wheel of Time series ended up going.

Double hopefully the next book doesn't take as long to come out as this one did.

It shouldn't--the only reason there's a "next book" yet at all is the draft for book four became ridiculously long, and the publisher insisted he cut it into two books. That's why "A Feast for Crows" ignores some characters entirely; their story arcs all got shifted to the second book (by which I mean the fifth book, don't know if it has a title yet or not.)

I admit it - I'm reading Dance, Dance, Dance

Cool. I knew it felt incomplete in some way.

The new SoIaF is out?!

Damn, I GOTTA get it, I've been waiting so long I stopped checking.

That being the case, Buddug, then take a look at the later pages of the gun threads over in Current Events. I just posted a reading list of fine American ideas there myself.

PSST, buddug's been gone for months, theres no need to point her towards your neocon wishlist.

I'm reading Wolfblade, one of those wonderful fantasy books. I read lots of fantasy... I'm tired of The Wheel of Time Series though I think they have pretty much lost any sense of suspense or "OMG I can't believe that just happened!" Because the plots are just so slooooow, and the author throws in way too many frivolous details. The last "substance" book I read was The Grapes Wrath a couple of months ago, good literature piece with wonderful historical insight.

If you want those, the Song of Ice and Fire series has them - and big ones. Only one in this latest book so far, but it's a doozy.

Thanks I might try that...my local library has a fairly poor stock, normally they'll have the 2nd book of a series but never the 1st, I really need to get cards to some of the larger libraries around...just been laze.

Robert Jordan, right? True, that guy seems to have an utterly Swedish sense of dramatic pace. I'm a voracious reader, but trilogies that would stop an elephant gun are things I avoid picking up except to improve my muscle tone. Too many pages for not enough literary virtue -- kind of like the Shannara shelf-full. Though better written, which in the Shannara case isn't saying much.

Wheel of Time is Robert Jordan. A Song of Ice and Fire is George R. R. Martin.

Just checked out A Feast Of Crows from the school library!

Islands in the Stream- Hemingway It was actually edited after he died. It isn't as riveting as his other stuff but still interesting.

Just finished my parallel read V. Pretty dark stuff.

Cool! Good library.

Brand new library, just opened yesterday. It's been closed for remodelling, and its waaay cool now.

Currently making my way through Heimskringla. Yes, the whole thing. Yes, it's fucking massive.

Grabbed the version from Project Gutenberg. 500+ pages. Uff da! Formatted it into two columns, 10 point font, horizontal page layout. The printed 2-up (two pages side by side on a single piece of paper) to a PostScript file. 192 pages 8-) I can upload the file if anybody wants it.

The Time Traveler's Wife.

damn good.

I just finished "The Sun Also Rises". Much preferred "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and I would like to read "Death in the Afternoon".

I read a short story in college, "The Short and Happy Life of Francis MacComber(sp)" and can't recall if Hemingway wrote it...but I remember I loved the story for all its' hidden meanings and symbolism.

Just finished "Ghost Force- The Secret History of the SAS". If half this stuff is true, or even if it isn't, it's a great book.

If you liked that, Guyute, you might like 'the phantom major' by Virginia Cowles..... the story of David Stirling and the founding of the SBS/SAS

I just found a book called Vamped in my office, by David Sosnowski--"Author of Rapture." Anyone ever read it? Is it total crap?

I just finished the worst book ever...The Hidden. Lucky it was a library freebie.

I finally gave in and decided to read some of the Heinlein books we have around the house. (Generally I don't like hard sci-fi, so though it obviously came highly recommended I kept putting it off.) I started with--don't ask me why--"Job: A Comedy of Justice," and this almost stopped me from reading any of the others at all. What a retarded book.

But then I moved on to "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," which I definitely enjoyed but wasn't blown away by. I think it would have been better if I could appreciate firsthand how revolutionary it was at the time it was written. As it is, I can intellectually know it was an amazing book for its time, but it didn't awe me. I felt the same way about J.R.R. Tolkien.

Now I've just started "Stranger in a Strange Land." This one I'm liking the best by far, and I have high hopes that it will help Heinlein live up to all the recommendations everyone gave me. :)

Early Heinlein was very good. The Moon.. and Stranger... are probably his two finest works. 'Time enough for Love' is also not bad, but by this time he was letting his politics show. Check out his early stuff 'the puppet masters', The man who sold the moon, orphans of the sky.

I just finished Dance Dance Dance, having found out about it here. I was not really impressed.

I just started Going Postal, having heard about the Discworld books here. I hope it's a good one to start with.

I'm not too influenced by you guys, am I? Just don't tell me how good it is to jump off a bridge, kay?

diskworld?
Here ya go.

Wow, it looks like I've chosen the absolute last one to start with. Are they all independant? Or should stop on page 20 and start with the color of magic

Based on the chart, it looks to me like you'd want to pick up "Moving Pictures" first, then "The Truth," and then you could jump back into "Going Postal."

http://cellar.org/2006/movingpictures.jpg

Good idea.

Theyre almost all standalone novels in their own right, but colour of magic is the first one. I'd say finish Going Postal, then grab Colour of Magic.

Pratchet has never done it for me, though the Current Wife and Wicked StepDaughter are great fans. Still, he does help solve the Christmas present issue.

I just wish I could write to deadlines like that......

Tess Gerritsen "Vanish" My 1st by her so far ok.

Yes, 'The Short Happy Life of Francis MacComber' was written by Hemingway. It's one of my favorite stories. Like you, I didn't find "The Sun Also Rises" great, but I was also probably too young when I read it. Doesn't mean I'd like it now, though - what I can remember, I don't much like.

I just finished "The First World War" by John Keegan. Great book, very detailed. It made me both sad and furious, reading about the rigid thinking and ineptitude of the generals that resulted in casualties I could hardly comprehend. More than 250,000 just at Gallipoli! Agghh! Keegan stresses that they didn't use the communications technology available, i.e. radio. Unbelievable.

Currently I'm working through a number of P.D. James's novels. She's marvellous. And she's in her eighties and still writing the best crime fiction out there!!!

Wow, I've not been keeping up with my posting here ... okay, not on any thread, but I'm clearly behind on listing my recent literary choices. Luckily, I have kept a chronological list since 1984.

FINISHED
Doppelganger - Marie Brennan
The Bone Collector - Jeffrey Deaver
The Coffin Dancer - Jeffrey Deaver
Gods and Myths of Northern Europe - H.R. Ellis Davidson
The Sentinel - Gerald Petievich
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Being Psychic - Lynne A. Robinson and LaVonne Carlson-Finnerty
The Wire in the Blood - Val McDermid
Love is the Bond - M.R. Sellars
All Acts of Pleasure - M.R. Sellars
Divination for Beginners - Scott Cunningham
The Sinister Pig - Tony Hillerman

ONGOING PROJECTS
The Old Testament
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brother's Grimm, All New Third Edition
I like fairy tales before bedtime

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
this is a very, very long book. Not a lot happens. But these things don't happen in very interesting, nicely described ways.

Do As I Say, Not as I Do: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy - Peter Schweizer
I get so mad reading this I can only do a little at a time, so I keep it in the bathroom.

The Robin Wood Tarot - Robin Wood
I love this tarot deck, and recently learned that the artist had written a book about it's creation, and gives details regarding the symbolism she chose for each card. So far I think it's a much better guide to the deck than Tarot Made Simple, which uses her cards also.

What did you think about this one?

I bought it on your recommendation, and actually really liked it, for the most part. I think that the loss of dramatic tension after the ... you know, big thing that's a major plot point that I won't reveal out loud in case someone else wants to read it ... didn't serve the story well. But overall I liked the characters, I liked the world, thought the richness of the backstory was a very good thing.

I look forward to more from her.

In that case, I should tell you that the sequel just hit stores a couple of weeks ago. :)

Oooooh. I'm surprised that amazon didn't send me an email telling me about that.

The Forest by Edward Rutherfurd.


The Footprints Of God by Greg Iles.


I havn't started either of them.

There is a memorial site at the Library of Congress for Hannah Arendt. There are tons of beautiful manuscripts 1st, 2nd, and 3rd drafts etc. of her work there. She was a great philosopher and had an extraordinary writing skill set. She redefined the art of thinking. She was a student of Heidegger, Husserl, and Jaspers. Yeah, she's the real deal. Here's a link:http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/arendthtml/arendthome.html

"Team Of Rivals" Goodwin. A great book.

Jay, the man's politics always showed. Even his first juvies from the very late forties and early fifties, Red Planet, Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, Farmer In The Sky, all include their Heinlein Lecture at some point. It's perhaps easiest to spot when you read a fistful of them one after another. Some of his later material conceals the Lectures more invisibly and smoothly, usually by spreading it throughout the plot and dialogue. Starship Troopers and Tunnel In The Sky come to mind, both of which have a coming of age as the backbone of their plots. The Lecture hits several points: liberty is good; competence also, and the more varied the better; maturity is essential; skill at arms can save you when nothing else will do; discipline is accomplishment's handmaiden; government should be minimal, for a government that governs most governs worst -- and that was the essential plot of more than one of his novels. It's all through Time Enough... with its hero who sticks around long enough to take a very long perspective -- personally. I'd call that one his masterpiece. You can run your life around his Lazarus Long's Notebooks entry on "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Some Heinleinery, including other links

I have managed to reach an approximate halfway point (page 500ish of slightly over 1K, the book is in my briefcase and I'm too lazy to look.)

I will only recognize the Old Testament and Grimm .


I am APPALLED , Wolf . Truly APPALLED .

Stop reading crap .

Come and look at my books .

Is it concieveable that buddug is...drunk?

I'm reading 12th Night; finished a four-week study of Austen's "Emma" and have really grown to hate that uptight wench. (Austen, that is. Well, Emma, too.)

No Brianna, Buddug being drunk would be too easy. She obviously doesn't understand the edit button.

Right now I'm reading the anthroplogy of religion. Can I slit my wrists now?