What are you reading?

NottaSackville

NottaSackville

Valinor
I'm still working through Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Dr. Meg Meeker. You know, kids would be so much easier to raise if they, you know, didn't, like, take so much work!

For those of you that enjoy Pearls Before Swine, I ran across this cartoon in the daily calendar, which pretty much sums up my feeling towards a lot of classics I've read. Caution - that link contains contains cartoon swearing, including the nasty one that requires both a Saturn & a tornado character. I'd put A Farewell to Arms (or frankly, anything I've read by Hemmingway, or even the tour of his house in the Keys which I had the misfortune of taking), The Great Gatsby and Red Badge of Courage all on a list of classics I've read that made me want to grab a megaphone and scream obscenities. (I know, nearly sacrilege to say that in the reading thread!)

How about you? Any "classic" you've read that made you want to tear your hair out?

Notta
 
Written in 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth covering 2000 years in the history of Britain. The translation I'm reading is by Lewis Thorpe, published in 1966.

Thorpe's introduction is fascinating and could stand alone as an important text. As for the story... well at times it reads like the first few chapters of the Book of Chronicles. But at other times (thankfully quite often) the tale bursts to life with a vividness and intrigue that is surprising given when it was written.

Of course over the centuries some of the information has proved unreliable (Google wasn't even in beta back then). But as with the Arthur Legends -- which were inspired in part by HotKoB -- that is part of the story's charm; there are just enough verifiable facts to make the whole history believable and worth reading.
 
I know when I read certain books in high school, I thought they were terrible, but when I reread them for college (or on my own later for pleasure) I enjoyed them so much more. The Scarlet Letter is the one that stands out. In high school I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever read, but in college I loved it.

Anyway, I have discovered one of my favorite mystery authors, Michael Innes, now is available on Audible.com. Not all of his books, but it seems like they're adding to the collection, so I hope eventually most of them will be recorded. At the moment, I'm listening to "Death at the President's Lodging," and I got "Appleby's End" from Audible yesterday. The one I'm really hoping they'll make soon is "Hamlet, Revenge!"
 
The book purports to cover Britain since...*wrinkles brow, squints eyes, counts on fingers*...roughly 850 BC? What an ambitious project! Or maybe, since as you mention there wasn't Google back then, it was not so ambitious - fewer sources to check.

Since Arthur is possibly real, does the book mention him, and if so, what does it say?

Notta
 
as well as Merlin. But I haven't got to that part yet, after which the tale ends (around the 7th century) when the Saxons take over after Arthur leaves(?)

Yes it really reaches back into history but is not a long book. Every so often the author will say something like, "as this was happening, John the Baptiste was preaching in the wilderness" or "around this time Saul was reigning in Judea."

The biggest bit of historical dissonance comes from Monmouth's claim that the British trace their beginnings back to someone named Brutus, himself possibly (who can say for sure?) a mythical character from around 1300 BC. That would be a few generations after the Trojan War, survivors of which Brutus is said to be a descended from.

I'll get back to you when I finish it. Supposedly the story of Merlin and Arthur is the best part.
 
It was really required for understanding what was going on in G. G. Kay's Fionavar Tapestry series. And when I say "brush up on", I really mean "learn about", as Sir Gawain and the Green Night was my only real exposure to Arthurian legend outside of little kid cartoons/fairy tales. They didn't tell us most of the nasty stuff back then.

Notta
 
I wondered how Red Badge of Courage would read now, some 25 years later?

But I don't think either the Great Gatsby or Hemingway stand a chance with me.[mad]

Notta
 
A lively account of a young Englishman brought to Paris by a French company proposing to build a chain of 'tearooms.' Life is complicated by a treacherous boss, recalcitrant employees and a succession of girlfriends. It is purported to be biographical, but it was hard to believe it wasn't a novel. Or maybe I just don't know any French people. He does make the disclaimer that "there are lots of French people who are not at all hypocritical, inefficient, treacherous, intolerant, adulterous or incredibly sexy .. they just didn't make it into my book."

An amusing read.
 
We're building a space elevator! Still waiting to see how this comes together. Clarke is one of my favorite authors, but the plot of this book is just a little too meandering for my taste so far.

We didn't have to read a lot of the classics in my high school and I was such a prolific reader that I'd pretty much finished the book and moved onto something else before I had any time to really digest it. About the only hair-pulling I recall was the test for Huck Finn, which had the most inane questions I've ever seen in my life. Things like is there a beaver in the book? (for the curious, we hear a beaver slap his tail once.) I couldn't help but wonder who was missing the point: the students or the teacher.
 
The Lost Army, by Valerio Massimo Manfredi, a historical novel concerning the 10,000 Greek mercenaries who tried to overthrow the Persian King, working for his brother 80 years after the Battle of Thermopylae.

I'm also almost done with Around the World in 80 Days, crossing USA on train right now.

The third one with the most activity has been The Dream of the Celt, the latest novel by last year's Nobel Price Winner, Mario Vargas Llosa, it's about Roger Casement, a defendor of human rights in Congo and Peru, and ultimately, one of the most important fighters for Irish Independence. Quite good as well.
 
the battle scenes are in some versions. I was going to read Sir Gawain and the Lady Ragnell (basically the story Shrek was based on) to a grade 6 class but there was too much "cleaving of helmets down into the brain" for my advisor (herself a troll or a witch).
 
I'm reading "The hunt for Atlantis" and I have to say that reminds me Cussler's works and I like this kinda books while adventure and action meet history and myth...
 
The book's great, and I like Manfredi's style quite a bit. In fact, once I finish it, I will have broken the tie with C.S. Lewis as the author I've read the most, with 10 books, vs. Lewis's 9. In page count, however, Manfredi is way ahead, with over 4000 pages, against Timothy Zahn's Star Wars novels at around 2800, and Tolkien at around 2200. Lewis is around 1500, even with 9 books, given that these are the Narnia ones, and the first two in the Space Trilogy.

I will be posting some tribute to Manfredi once I finish, so more on that later. Thanks for asking! [:)]
 
by Greg Lamberson.... Second in the Jake Helman files.

New street drug turning addicts into zombies. I give it a B+

Well done enough to make me want to search out volume one of this series.
 
Everyone else has read it, so I figured I would give it a shot. Slow going at first, but I'm starting to get into it around page !00 or so. I'm trying to stick with it because of the good reviews I've read, but I must admit I prefer books that grab me from the first chapter.

I am tempted to re-read Game of Thrones to overcome my angst over being unable to watch the HBO series, but there are so many books on my "to read" list that it's hard to repeat the old instead of embracing the new.
 
I'm about halfway through Terry Pratchett's latest, and loving it very much. In this Tiffany Aching story he addresses one of my deepest core fears: the "rough music" of witch hunts and scapegoating. But I know Tiffany is going to be OK in the end, because she's--well, she's Tiffany. And besides, she has the Nac Mac Feegle on her side, so what could go wrong? Still, it's very scary when her old friends and neighbors turn against her. And as usual, Pratchett doesn't shy away from the dark side of life, including a 13-year-old girl who is beaten by her father so hard she "bleeds from places where no one should bleed." Pretty intense for a volume that continues what started out as one of his young adult sets of novels.

As far as classics that made me want to swear, I recently grappled with Moby Dick just to see what all the foofaraw was about. I enjoyed it for a few chapters, and then it got awfully old, and I gave up about halfway through. I also tried to read Mill on the Floss, and couldn't stand any of the characters and gave it up at last.

In junior high I loathed Ethan Frome. I recently went back and re-read it, and enjoyed it a bit: I think it has adult themes that were way over my head when I was fifteen. And I'm a little more forgiving of the idea of adultery in novels now than I was then: it was a complete deal breaker when I was fifteen and I couldn't stand the main character. Now I can feel some pity for him.

Oh, and I've been trying to get through Malory's King Arthur stories. I am so bored with knights battling other knights for no apparent purpose that I may give up on it too.
 
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in my opinion the third book in his space trilogy is too influenced by Charles Williams, and sexist to boot, though his treatment of King Arthur is thought-provoking. You might like Screwtape Letters or The Great Divorce. For a different sort of novel, read Till We Have Faces, his take on the Psyche myth.

I use Lewis's non-fiction frequently in religious discussion groups.
 
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