Posted on 02/03/2014 2:13:32 PM PST by jocon307
Have you ever lied about reading a book? Maybe you didn’t want to seem stupid in front of someone you respected. Maybe you rationalized it by reasoning that you had a familiarity with the book, or knew who the author was, or what the story was about, or had glanced at its Wikipedia page. Or maybe you had tried to read the book, even bought it and set it by your bed for months unopened, hoping that it would impart what was in it merely via proximity (if that worked, please email me).
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
It's more of a description than a suggestion, though in the book it follows directly after the epithet that meowmeow guessed. IIRC, the "rah" attached to a name (or word) attached a "royal" meaning, or at least a Japanese-style honorific. So the translation of "u embleer rah" is "The Stinking Prince" (kinda-sorta).
I dressed as Miss Havisham one halloween. Great costume - I actually went to a thrift store and bought an old fashioned wedding dress. Covered it with cobwebs and spiders. Grey makeup and a veil and I was ready to go.
Goodness - why can't I retain useful things, like where I put my car keys?
Doyle has the clarity required of a good adventure writer. His historical novels were his first love - he wrote Sherlock Holmes to pay the bills. There is also a 'prequel' - "Sir Nigel", and several other novels set in the Regency period in England and France. The "Brigadier Gerard" stories are a hoot - Gerard is a vain, thick-headed, valorous French hussar who (like Harry Flashman) always comes out smiling.
It's the Hundred Years War - the big conflict between England and France - not the Thirty Years War, which was mostly Protestants v. Catholics, with various groups trying to take advantage of the general conflict.
In Georgette Heyer’s “An Infamous Army”, there’s a good deal of discussion about many of Wellington’s best troops being “in America.” In fact, Harry Smith shows up at the last minute from the War of 1812.
Interesting how much the whole world was at war in 1812!
Different theaters, different fronts, even different enemies!
“It’s the Hundred Years War...not the Thirty Years War”
Right, thanks! I knew it had “years” in it!
I still have it on my kindle, so I’m pretty sure I’ll get around to it again. My friend and her sister were great fans, their dad read it to them when they were little.
Fantastic.
An amazing character. Loneliness so potent that all men should suffer.
The Haunted Mansion ride has a Havisham/Lizzie Borden thing going on at one point in the ride.
I have read both #8s (Les Miserables/A Tale of Two Cities), or at least most of each. I always seem to bog down about 2/3 of the way through Les Miserables, put it away, and wind up starting over.
#7 (1984) I read the unabridged version in high school, as well as Animal Farm.
#4 (Moby Dick) I’ve read an abridged version, at the very least, as a “tween”.
#3 (The Art of War) Read it. Or, at least one translation/interpretation of it, for there are many.
It really is a great book. The wrestling match between Hordle John and Sam Aylward - the flight through the forest from the Socman of Minstead - the sword fight on the banks of the Garonne - Sir Oliver Buttesthorne - the tournament - Roger Club-Foot - not to mention the climactic battle. Great stuff.
And sometimes still fighting even after the war was officially over (see Battle of New Orleans). Pakenham was killed and the Highlanders were decimated - all for nothing (but bragging rights, I guess).
Yes, an important book. Legend says that when Harriet Beacher Stowe met President Lincoln, he remarked to her: “So, you are the lady that started this damned war”
The book was read and enraged many by its depiction of slavery and its abuses and Uncle Tom, a slave, played an important part in the book. He is truly a Christ-like character because of his Christian charity and forgiving spirit, much like Christ forgave those that killed and tortured him, so did Tom.
That is why it is an insult to the book, to Uncle Tom, to drag down his spirituality and turn it into some sort of terrible racial turn-coat.
Havisham was the dark side of the whole culture. We see some of it in the Jane Austin novels where it is clear that marriage is the only option for well born ladies. I read some biography of Dickens (a very strange person) and evidently there was someone generally known who was like her. The only part of the costume I didn’t try to copy was the one shoe. She learned that she was jilted as she was dressing and had not yet put on both shoes. I was going to a costume party and so I did wear both shoes. One person at the party knew who I was. I won first place.
I’ve read “1984”. I own copies of two or three of the other titles, and frankly, any novels or other fiction on the list should be struck off. The only Dickens I’ve read was “Great Expectations”, and that was for lit class in high school. I’d rather walk barefoot through broken glass than read any more purportedly classic novels by any novel-writing blowhards past, present, or future.
PJ O’Rourke did a book *about* Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” that I borrowed as an unabridged audiobook, and mp3’d the whole thing for when I do laps. EXCELLENT book, highly recommend it, probably would not say the same about Adam Smith’s original, with the proviso that I’ve never read it (just relatively small excerpts).
Summary of Jane Austin’s plots — probably frigid golddigger lives by the motto, get it in writing before you do the dirty.
Man. Thank God for Free Republic. I learn a lot here, but it also makes me smile when it doesn’t sometimes make me laugh aloud to myself!
(btw...nice thread, jcon307!)
(btw...nice thread, jcon307!)
Thank you very much, it really was a lot of fun!
Of the 10 on the list, Ive read Atlas Shrugged and Ulysses. I’ve started Moby Dick. I was supposed to read it in college and when I dropped out. I kept a lot of my books, something I don’t regret. One thing that bothers me is their persistence in calling the whale a fish. I know that should t bother me but it does. I was amused when a direct descendant of Melvilles said in an interview that he could have used better editing.
I read Anna Karenina a few years ago but have been having a hard time with War and Peace.
Some so-called old classics are barely readable, IMO. Pilgrims Progress comes to mind.
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