What are you reading?

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by Demimonde

"Is this the face that lunched a thousand sheeps and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"

Originally Posted by Lauri D

It was worth it, but there seems to be a virus among writers where they get really rushed near the end and it doesn't have the same quality as the preceding 3/4 of the book.

I call it the Heinlein Syndrome, because he was really bad for that in his later stuff. Gaiman suffers from it greatly as well. It tends to happen with authors that focus a lot on the characters and ideas and less on the plot. They get caught up with what they're interested in and then realize it's time to end the book so it gets rushed.

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. I read the play this afternoon, but haven't finished the book - the other half being commentary and whatnot.

I loved this line:

Originally Posted by John Milton

Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n

But on that note, I got Robert Olen Butler's Hell from the library! today, and I've already decided I don't feel like reading it.

I also got Gayle Green's Insomniac, which I am going to read.

[Ymir's blood]

Milton plagiarized Marlowe!

[livius drusus]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

My AP English teacher assigned The Stranger during my junior year of high school.

In fairness, though, that teacher was exceptionally cool.

Junior year IB French, in the original. BOOYAH IN YO FACE SACK

[Ymir's blood]

I read The Stranger a few years ago because it seemed interesting. The Plague was more to my liking though.

[Nullifidian]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

I call it the Heinlein Syndrome, because he was really bad for that in his later stuff. Gaiman suffers from it greatly as well. It tends to happen with authors that focus a lot on the characters and ideas and less on the plot. They get caught up with what they're interested in and then realize it's time to end the book so it gets rushed.

I feel the same way when reading Philip Roth sometimes. In The Plot Against America, Roth spends most of his book believably building up a fascist groundswell in America, and it's entirely dissipated by a completely unconvincing deus ex machina in the final chapters. I get the sense that Roth, having worked himself into a corner by constructing such a realistic Nazi-like society, didn't want the story to take its logical conclusion because it would be like presiding over a second Holocaust. The fact that Roth worked his own family (and himself as a young child) into the story probably didn't help his unease with where the story was going.

Still I like the book, even though I regard it as a failure, because it's a daring failure. Roth's failures are more interesting than most writers' successes.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

I call it the Heinlein Syndrome, because he was really bad for that in his later stuff.

He was really crappy in his later stuff, period. All that libertarian TANSTAFL crap and the cardboard characters made me gag. Of course I had never heard of libertarianism then (and still wish I never had).

Originally Posted by livius drusus

Junior year IB French, in the original. BOOYAH IN YO FACE SACK

Hehehe, I read them in French too, at least L'étranger and La chute, they are pretty easy to read.

[Sock Puppet]

OMGUS LMUS DRUSUS!


Currently reading listening to Bullfinch's Mythology - The Age of Fable on my mp3, from Nullifidian's LibriVox link. I only ever read an abridged version, so this is rillyrilly nice. With the frequency of poetic excerpts, but also just because of the stories themselves, this stuff lends itself well to being read aloud.

[Listener]

Following my being impressed by Egyptologist David Rohl and his journey to what he convinced me was the geographical site of the original "Eden" I bought his latest book "The Lords of Avaris".

It's about the fortunes and misfortunes of the "Hyksos" - Asiatics who ruled Northern Egypt after what Rohl believes was the Biblical Exodus.

Rohl is a bit of a maverick when it comes to dating Egyptian history and the book reads like a detective story with Rohl weaving in all kinds of date-pointers that conventional chronology just seems to ignore.

As a taster - he points out that saying the Hebrews built Raamses and Pithom (Exodus) is like saying that the Romans founded "York" - which is true but anachronistic as it was the vikings that named it "Yorvic" centuries after the Romans had gone. Nonetheless it is traditional to name Ramesses I as the Pharoah of the Exodus leaving nothing but confusion in conventional chronology.

There's an amusing quote of a folk-tale (written on ancient papyrus) where a Northern (Hyksos) king provokes a Theban Pharoah (his vassal at the time) into war by asking him to keep the hippopotomi quiet. The Pharoah has the unenviable choice of ignoring his powerful neighbour or upetting the "King of the gods" Amun-Re to whom the Hippo was a sacred animal. There was a war in which the Egyptian Pharoah was killed but which, in time led to the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt. Rohl ties in the folk-tale with what seems to have happened in reality.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the book tracing the Hyksos migration to Mediterranean (I think) lands.

[Doctor X]

I read The Stranger prior to high school.

:smug:

I win.

--J.D.

[SharonDee]

Read MetaGame by somebody or other. Don't feel like looking it up because 1) it was a Kindle freebie and 2) it was hard to enjoy because of the glaring and frequent grammatical errors. Not worth the plug, to be honest, but I'm opening up to you people.

Reread Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove because I can't get enough of that thing. This caused me to rewatch the 1989 Lonesome Dove miniseries because I the performances by Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.

Now beginning to reread the sequel, Streets of Laredo, even though I remember being disappointed in it. (I have only read the book once and I can't remember a dern thing about it.)

[freemonkey]

My husband watches the entire Lonesome Dove movie at least once a year, and re-reads most of the books every couple years.

I've read the books once and only recall hating one of the books, maybe the very last one written?

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by Watser?

He was really crappy in his later stuff, period. All that libertarian TANSTAFL crap and the cardboard characters made me gag. Of course I had never heard of libertarianism then (and still wish I never had).

Yeah, I never cared for that part of the later books either. Plus all the insertion of his sexual ideas/fantasies didn't help the stories either. It's a pity because his early stuff - the so called 'juveniles' - was pretty good.

[Doctor X]

Probably the greatest demonstration of all that is good in Heinlein and all that is utterly bad is a comparison between Job: A Comedy of Justice and The Number of the Beast.

--J. "Salute Me When I Fuck You!" D.

[Watser?]

You obviously haven't read the horror that is The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (even the title sucks). That is probably one of the worst books ever written and where my love of everything Heinlein came to a terrible, terrible end. I felt like Kyle after The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

[Kashmir]

I'm fairly close to finishing Dune, by Frank Herbert

It's sooo good.

[Crumb]

So maybe another 6-12 months of good solid reading?

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by Watser?

You obviously haven't read the horror that is The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (even the title sucks). That is probably one of the worst books ever written and where my love of everything Heinlein came to a terrible, terrible end. I felt like Kyle after The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

I remember reading that book, just not any details from it. Probably had Lazarus Long in it, he has that effect on me.

[Doctor X]

The Number of the Beast has Lazarus Dong in it. Utter prat of a character.

Heinlein really should not have tried to write porn.

--J.D.

[Ymir's blood]

I at least remember the premise of Number of the Beast, so it has that going for it.

[Watser?]

It's about magic, right?

[Ymir's blood]

The premise was that someone built a machine that traveled through alternate realities. The characters use it to visit various literary worlds and then one or more of Heinlein's own creation. All I really remember is that they made a rule of not visiting worlds with anything Lovecraftian and that they visited one place that took Shakespeare's line about killing all the lawyers seriously.

[Doctor X]

It was an example of a interesting idea taken to its stupid and self-indulgent extreme.

Sort of like SNL for the last 30-odd years.

--J.D.

[viscousmemories]

I missed the whole Librivox discussion earlier in the thread. I'll probably do some listening and reading m'self. Null.

[Prince Vegita]

Originally Posted by Kashmir

I'm fairly close to finishing Dune, by Frank Herbert

It's sooo good.

Read the next 5 books two or three times and you'll really appreciate them. Avoid any of KJ Anderson's follow-up abortions.