Inklings

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Well, I haven't read RAH since I was a teenager, but I just HATED what I read then! Sorry to be heretical in my first posts here...

Anyway, is anyone into historical fiction? I just tore through the first three volumes of Turtledove's "Darkness" series, and I can't wait for #4 to show up in paperback. It's teaching me a lot of stuff I must have slept through in high school.

As for non-SF, I'm currently reading a cookbook that's really more of a food science text book. If you ever want to combine chemistry, biology, and physics in one volume - moderated by a healthy dose of humor and pop culture - try "I'm Just Here For The Food" by Alton Brown. Oh yeah, there are some pretty tasty recipes in there, too!

 

pew... i just finished reading a donald duck magazine... the hardest thing ever done...

 

Just finished reading a lot of Early middle English poems. Just amazing how people thought in those days! On one hand you've got the fabliaux -- a story with such explicit sexual contents i won't repeat it here in front of the younger readers -- and on the other superhero's err no wait I mean saint lives! And don't forget the Fox and the Wolf! Incredibly humorous! must read for all people out there.

 

I have a toddler, Aegron. My poetry reading is limited to Dr. Seuss and Sandra Boynton.

 

well read milne to him/her! (ok how many people around here have read this as an adult? it gets even better)

 

I'm gonna get my two-year old some Milne for Christmas. Last night was Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving & Winny the Pooh's Thanksgiving specials.

Good stuff! "My brain may not be very big, but it seems all we need to be thankful is us!"

A local bookstore has a great banner for the anniversery of Narnia ... I'm hoping they'll sell that to me for my daughters room to. It has Aslan dancing with Lucy. She'd love it.

 

Actually, Hubby and I used the Pooh tales as bedtime reading for Arlyn when he first came home from the hospital. We'd sit in the nursery reading, and we'd often keep going after the baby was asleep. I loved the different layers of meaning and humor. When we got to the last story, where CR goes off to school and says goodbye to Pooh, we were both in tears.

I'm looking forward to Arlyn having an attention span that will make those extended read-aloud-together sessions possible again.

 

Today in History
President John F Kennedy, Aldous Huxley, and CS Lewis died in 1963.

Odd combination!

There is a brilliant book Peter Kreeft called Between Heaven & Hell

I highly recommend it!

 

I just finished Terry pratchett's Thief of time.

You can't imagine how happy I was when I found an English version hidden in a dark corner of te library. I started reading, and I kept on reading, and suddenly there was the end, and I felt empty and abandonned.

In other words, it's a great book. Go read it.

 

Dmc- Thanks for the clarification, I have an edition of Starship Troopers that was published around '82 and had thought it was the second edition, using me meager understanding of how the publication process works I had figured that it was originally printed around '70. Hanging my head in shame i allow the flogging to begin. Ah well.

 

I was wondering what people here on SP thought of A Clockwork Orange and Brave NEw World.
I had to read ACO for my english ISU (Independant Study Unit, worth 15% of my final mark) and I thought it was an excellent book. Although only one of my friends expressed any positive feelings for it.
The ending is just terrific, and the title is very clever...of course, I needed a special dictionary to understand this book (a Nadsat Dictionary, taken from the internet of course), but it was worth it. The title pretty much sums up one of the major ideas of the book...consider that "Orange" is invented slang for "human" thus, "A Clockwork Human." I hadn't looked up the meaning for "Orange" until after I had read the book, and when I did, it just blew me away.

On the other hand, in my circle of friends, I've heard several positive remarks about Brave New World, which I found alright up until the end, at which point Aldous Huxley decided to completely ruin the story.
***SPOILER*** (I apologize in advance in case you read my next paragraph and have not yet read the book, but were meaning to)
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The fact that John kills himself at the end is just ridiculous. To think that someone so driven by morality, who knows Shakespeare so well, would kill himself. Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy (Act 3 Scene 1...I just finished studying it in class ) alone should have given him enough to think about not to commit suicide. Sure, after what he did, suicide may not seem to be much worse. But it is, and John would have known that, and I'm beginning to think that Huxley SHOULD have gone back and re-written the book to give John a third option (as he says, although I saw a few more than 2 options).

Anyways, there's my rant for the day.

[ November 25, 2002, 08:49: Message edited by: Faerus Stoneslammer ]

 

I do not agree with you, faerus! I found the ending of Brave New World very good. The only option people had to change back to 'normal' is killed because of their not being normal. It makes the book even more chilling. If such a society will arise there is no returning!

 

Didn't Camus right that the only real question left for the educated and moral man is Suicide?

Just some food for thought (though I disagree)

 

Wow, can't believe I've missed this thread for so long. Shame on me!

Ah well, prompted by the Book-master himself, Mathetais, a few weeks ago, well, more his posts, I went off and got the book set of Narnia. I re-read them thoroughly and utterly enjoyed them. I'm not a Christian myself but I found the symbolism to be utterly fantastic, it blew me away. Sadly in the set that I procured it didn't contain the first in the series, 'The Magician's Nephew' so now I shall go on a grand quest to find it...

On a side note: Did anyone here notivce that in the final book of the series there wasn't just Christianity imagery in there? In fact, there was very little religious content at all, there was more Macbeth imagery than anything else. If anyone wishes to talk about this then I'll converse at length as it seems quite striking to me.

On the subject of Macbeth, we just finished studying it in class, my word that was a bore. I'd already read the book when I was younger, somewhere below the age of 10 and I discovered nothing new in the book whatsoever. All the notes that we were given were useless to me. Pah, daft teachers. It may be a work of literary genius, but to me it's a bore.

I finally gave in to my undesired urges and *gasp* downloaded, yes, downloaded, the Elric series from Michael Moorcock. This may not have been the best thing to do, but with the delight the books have gave me so far I'm extremely pleased that I managed to get them. Considering the whole series is out of print, was it such a bad thing that I done?

Well, I downloaded the books and printed them off at school. I must admit, I read one of them in the wrong order, too late to be exact, and it has quite thrown me off balance. So I'm now on the second book of the series which I thought was the sixth. The series is seven books long in total, can't wait to see how it ends Considering the seventh book is titled 'Elric at the end of time' I don't have to guess much...

If the Elric series proves to be amazing as it has been so far I shall somehow procure a copy of the Runestaff series, also by Michael Moorcock and also out of print. *Sigh*

My girlfriend was given a set of LotR a while ago... Of which she doesn't read. I finally succumbed to the temptation and asked to borrow the FotR, I'm currently about half-way through. Not so bad when you look at the story from a distance. But when I'm reading the book it drags and drags, it's utterly boring yet I want to read on. The mark of a good author I would generally define as making the reader want to read on, but in thise case it's just boring. I'm sorry to all the die hard Tolkien fans out there, but its boring.

Well, thats mostly my reading for the last month.

Oh, today in class we started reading a small collection of plays in a book titled 'Confusions' by alan Ayckbourn. We just finished the first play and I must admit the the farcical and slapstick humour had me rolling on the floor. I can't wait to see what the remaining four plays have in store I'm sure they'll be a wonder to read.

 

What I think is a good book is Bernard Cornwall's Harliquin (not to sure on the spelling). An excellent book if you likr all that medival stuff. The book takes place in France, right before the Hundred Years War.

 

the last book of narnia-series? you mean the last battle? There are loads of christian references in this book! the antichrist-theme (with the ass pretending to be aslan) the new heaven and earth part at the end of the book. and the final battle itself (armageddon anyone?).

 

Okay, here's an off the wall book that I just finished ... "The Testosterone Advantage"

It's pretty much a workout book with some diet tips. My wife got it for me ... how thoughtfull

Some good stuff though. My workouts get real dull real quick, so sometimes its helpful to get a kick in the pants.

 

Anyone ever read any poems written by George Herbert? It's amazing, though they are something like 350 years old, they still are amongst the most powerful statements about what God did for us. Especially Redemption is really good!

 

I don't read.

 

I've just finished Winter's Heart. Finally something important happened, not just some cool fighting in the end.

BTW, does anybody know when the next part of the Wheel of Time comes to the shops?

[ December 01, 2002, 20:01: Message edited by: Frostmage ]