;>)
Posted on 02/03/2014 2:13:32 PM PST by jocon307
Obviously, one of the must-haves for Newlyweds is a good translation of Homer! :-D
;>)
I read “Kidnapped” quite a few years ago. Not only Alan Breck Stewart but the Captain and the ship’s drunken brute of a quartermaster or whatever his title was, have dual personalities.
Even David Balfour’s miserly Uncle isn’t all bad. I liked all the Disney movies based on Stevenson’s books. Of course Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the ultimate dual personalities.
“Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations are actually good reads if you read it like it was written - they were serials.”
Yes, still a great concept. I imagine people must have been on the edge of their seats waiting for the next installment. Like I am about the TV Show “nashville” now!
Of Dickens I’ve read “A Tale of Two Cities”, but years ago I’d really have to read it again; “Great Expectations”, “A Christmas Carol” both of which I liked; “Pickwick Papers” which I loved, a few others I started by never got anywhere with them.
Now wait, I might be lying about that, lol! I don’t know if I started any of the rest of them...I might be thinking of seeing movies and reading the “Classic Comic Books”.
Those were pretty good, btw. Didn’t someone on this thread say they got a way with a book report based on one of those?
You’d think we could revive them in this age of the “graphic novel”.
O loved the Silmarillion. I read it twice because I couldn’t get enough of the LOTR world. In hoping that book becomes the next set of movies made.
I got my first pair of eyeglasses at six, and the world was my oyster (I was blind as a bat and doing really, really poorly at school...so my parents took my for a eye exam, and voila! I was already too far behind in math to ever catch up, though)
The first book I remember reading was about the Mercury 7 astronauts which I don’t really remember all that well what was in it, but the SECOND book I read has stuck with me my whole life: “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo”.
I distinctly remember getting my first library card...that was really important!
Heh, funny how things go. My whole life, I have been able to read nearly everything, and I think I have skill at writing. But I was a dunce at math. Never got higher than a “C” in all my years of public education, and only once. Went to summer school for math year after year, with no visible effect.
But I could read anything, spell nearly anything and express myself well on paper. When I was in the Navy, I took the SAT tests to apply to colleges when I got out, and got great verbal scores and lousy math scores. Eh. So what did I go into, Literature?
No. Chemistry. Eh. Go figure.
Yep. I first read "Literary Offenses" at my dad's behest, just after I finished reading "The Last of the Mohicans" in high school.
One day in study hall, I was smiling and nodding in agreement as Twain ticked off the eighteen literary devices that Cooper had mangled. When I got to this one, I busted out laughing in a dead-quiet room. Naturally, one of the room monitors came to chastise me. I simply shrugged and pointed to this paragraph:
7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the "Deerslayer" tale.
I also love how Twain's indignation starts out hot, rises to a crescendo and then tapers away, as though he were physically spent. He really put a lot of himself into his writing style.
I own Gravity’s Rainbow (I think I’ve seen it somewhere on the shelf). I haven’t read it, and haven’t bought it. A couple of months ago I found a copy of Mason Dixon by the same author that someone was giving away, and I couldn’t get through two pages of it. Unreadable gibberish, just like the Hairy Potty books that got me in trouble here yesterday with the fanatics of the penny dreadful literature who follow the nation of sheep in their reading choices (ugly personal attacks using tired cliches, just like their beloved semi-literate author - 6 cliches per page of Hairy Potty.) The other day I read somewhere on the Web and interview with some author, I forget his name, I forget where I read it, I only remember that he said he was currently reading Anatole France. Hmmm, I’ll have to check out ole Anatole. I admit, I haven’t read Joyce, but I read James Fenimore Cooper, and attempted to read Louis L’Amour (not his real name, that’s fer shore, Shirley!), and I once saw on the street Sidney Sheldon, when he was still alive, (tried to see him after he was alive, but no luck!) emerging from a very small chain bookstore, Waldenbooks, I think it was, where he had been signing his masterpieces. I recommend John Burnside, and Kent Wascom.
Hehe...nope. And...I still have the book. It belonged to my dad, a big, thick hardcover one. When he died, I got it from his library with a few others that I had read.
I don’t think my dad ever read it, though...:) I suspect he liked having it on the shelf. He was more inclined to military books and murder mystery stuff than the classics!
"There was a name your clerk mentioned," I went on: "Hoseason. That must be my man, I think: Hoseason, of the brig Covenant. Would you set your trust on him?"("the doctor" would be Archibald Cameron, brother to Locheil)"He didnae behave very well to you and Alan," said Mr. Stewart; "but my mind of the man in general is rather otherwise. If he had taken Alan on board his ship on an agreement, it's my notion he would have proved a just dealer. How say ye, Rob?"
"No more honest skipper in the trade than Eli," said the clerk. "I would lippen to Eli's word--ay, if it was the Chevalier, or Appin himsel'," he added.
"And it was him that brought the doctor, wasnae't?" asked the master.
"He was the very man," said the clerk.
"And I think he took the doctor back?" says Stewart.
"Ay, with his sporran full!" cried Robin. "And Eli kent of that!"
"Well, it seems it's hard to ken folk rightly," said I.
"That was just what I forgot when ye came in, Mr. Balfour!" says the Writer.
I have “Duty” by Gates languishing on the table. I have yet to finish the first chapter.
Of your list I have read THE PRINCE, MOBY DICK, 1984 (and Brave New world). Plus the Homer version of Ulysses (The Odyssey, The Illiad, and Virgil’s The Anead.
I don’t care much for Victorian novels. Silas Mariner broke me of that in school. I HATED that story. Dull,dull, dull!
I loved the Rafael Sabatini novels, the P C Wren (Beau Geste) trilogy, and the novels of C S Forrester (Beat to Quarters)trilogy. Reading these novels kept me sane in high school.
Which is why I gravitated to Heinlein, Azimov, Ian Fleming, Clancy, Tolkien Fun, sex, shootem up. Quests No need to dwell for ages on relationships.
I embrace fictional non-boredom
I have read 8. There were actually eleven including Les Miserables in which I have no interest and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which I do want to read.
I tend to read more autobiography (often fictionalized too) or historical/research.
It's like Pickwick but grittily realistic.
Handley Cross. Illustrated by the great John Leech (of Punch fame).
It was a foul world into which he peeped for the first time--a heavy-eating, hard-drinking hell of horse-copers, swindlers, matchmaking mothers, economically dependent virgins selling themselves blushingly for cash and lands: Jews, tradesmen, and an ill-considered spawn of Dickens-and-horsedung characters (I give Midmore's own criticism), but he read on, fascinated, and behold, from the pages leaped, as it were, the brother to the red-eyed man of the brook, bellowing at a landlord (here Midmore realised that he was that very animal) for new barns; and another man who, like himself again, objected to hoof-marks on gravel. Outrageous as thought and conception were, the stuff seemed to have the rudiments of observation.
- Kipling. An absolutely hilarious short story, btw, read it here: My Son's Wife
You are going to love this thread!
"Pronounced 'Chicago', I think."
From the list I have only read 1984 which I would recommend. I did attempt Ulysses but like many here only got a little bit of the way into it. The book that I did read not on the list that I consider a pretty big accomplishment at the time it was released was the Gulag Archipelago. Very tough slogging especially the first volume. I was just out of high school at the time and was in university when I read it. It was published in 3 volumes at the start. I knew this book was important and it remains imho one of the monumental works of the 20th century. I would recommend it with some caution that it is not for every type of reader.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.