Posted on 02/11/2003 9:49:20 PM PST by Utah Girl
You mean the movie starring "He who should have stayed sunken with the Titanic"? Ironically, that is the only movie I've watched in the last two years. I happened to be up late and it was subtitled into Japanese, not dubbed.
Course, everyone said Vivien Leigh was too British to play Scarlett so I suppose those Hollywood types are thinking history will repeat itself.
I also loved Seabiscuit but fear Hollywood will ruin that story too.
Cool. I'll make sure I get a copy. Thanks for the tip.
You're not missing anything.
This is one of the rare cases where I think the movie is better.
Perhaps it's just as well. The ebola attack that is the main plotline of the book still gives me nightmares. I had a similar experience to yours when reading Debt of Honor and reaching the final chapter. It was in the first week after the first Republican congress was seated.
The first few pages are tough going, but it picks up when he finally gets to the Kurtz story.
For "adventure - true to life" type reading, Jean-Pierre Hallet's, Congo Kitabu can't be beat.
But speaking of best sellers, after three years, I'm still working on finishing Stephen Ambrose's Lewis & Clark epic, Undaunted Courage.
Every home and office has one. But nobody has read more than a few bits and pieces.
I've been through every page and looked at every word of Webster's Unabridged. I was making lists of certain words that rhymed, don't ask me why.
Does that count?
My girl friend has claimed to have read both a dictionary and an encyclopedia.
I love Jeffrey Deaver-his Lincoln Rhyme books are special. Just finished the Stone Monkey and am looking forward to a new one to be released in March about a criminal illusionist.
For mystery buffs, I recommend Elizabeth George. Her series features Lord Lynley and Lady Helen...She is an American author who writes English mysteries...very, very well.
And if you want some really hillarious fun reads, the Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum series is sidesplitting.....
Another author I really really like, and highly recommend is MM Kaye. She wrote The Far Pavilions, Shadow of the Moon, and Tradewinds, plus several mysteries. She is classified as writing historical romantic fiction, but she is spot on in her history of India. Great love stories too. One of my all time favorite authors.
Fixx was a very good writer (by that I mean his books were fun to read), and much of what he wrote was true. I never read "Games for the super-intelligent", but from what you describe, as he did in the Complete Book of Running, he wrote what he wished to be true. He outlived his father, and I believe, extended his life by running. Unfortunately, from the accounts I read of his death, he had several classic symptoms of insufficient blood to his heart, and ignored them. He refused to see a doctor, and insisted that running would cure him. I remember reading the article about how his body was found, and he was out running alone when he had his heart attack.
I felt very betrayed when I read of his death, as I started reading his books at that time of youth when you're looking for something to define yourself as a human. I fell totally into running, and actually owe Mr. Fixx a lot. When I think of some of the other things I could have gotten into at that fragile time of life, it gets pretty scary.
So I'll always have a soft spot for old Jim. In a very real way, he saved me. I was searching for something so badly then, and like most kids, I had no idea what. Spending a few years running, as opposed to running drugs, wasn't a bad way to waste part of my youth. I think I'll pull out the old jogging shoes tomorrow and slog a couple of miles. A fifty year old man sluffing along isn't nearly as impressive a 19 year old running like a gazelle, but I'll take it easy and pretend people aren't laughing at me.
I still have that book. One of the things I found fascinating was the fact that Carroll hated the illustrations used in Alice. He was apparently fascinated by a young girl named Alice Liddell, and wrote the books with her in mind. She was a short, slim brunette girl with bangs, and Carroll was disturbed that the Alice depicted was heavier and had the long blonde curls.
I was disappointed to learn of Carroll's preoccupation with young girls Although there is no evidence he was a child molestor, he used to frequently photograph pre-teen girls in the nude. I am less concerned with the political symbolism than the spiritual symbolism in his books. So many of the sequences make a perfect analogy for situations in everyday life.
Whenever I hear liberals talking, I think of the sequence with Humpty Dumpty, where he states that when he pays words, they mean what HE intends them to mean. Whenever I read accounts of UFOs or ghosts, I'm reminded of the sequence in the store where all the shelves are full, but when she looks directly at one shelf, it's empty. All the other shelves are full around it, but whatever shelf she's looking at is empty.
In the Alice books, I always felt that Carroll's work defined a thought process and a sequence of patterns of reality. It's difficult to describe, because, like the space between the chair arm and a chair, no word has ever been created to describe it. Like most great authors, Carroll, IMHO, had one great book in him. I thought that was "Through the Looking Glass."
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