Hi dear readers
I am reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley for the third time.
I decided to read it because my teacher forced to ahaha, but now i thank her because it's a wonderful book.
You have to read it absolutly!!!
Cons: a lot of scientific descriptions that may be boring because Huxley is a writer-doctor
Greetings from Italy
I’ve read a few wonderful short stories by Sadaat Hassan Manto including Kali Shalwar still have to read his masterpieces.
I'm reading Money, by Martin Amis. Which seems to hold my attention despite the nearly unbearable protagonist and his even more painful 80s americanized brit yuppie jargon.
1. Letters for a Spy by Stephen Benatar
2. The author accosted me in Waterstones bookshop. He was selling some copies of a his books. I sort of felt sorry for him.
3. "So then, Anders. Current situation in Sicily... Your viewpoint on it, please."
4. Page 182, chapter 32
5. The story seems to have been inspired by a true event from the second world war, Operation Mincemeat, in which a corpse was dressed up as an army officer and dumped off the Spanish coast with some top secret letters in his pockets. The plot was designed to make the Germans think the invasion was going to happen somewhere other than it did. In this book, a young German spy is sent to England to check out whether the letters are real, but ends up falling in love with the dead officer's supposed girlfriend. It has a very British 1940's feel about it. It's not really my cup of tea, but at least the chapters are short so it is good bedtime or coffee shop reading.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
Finished 'Women' by Bukowski last night and started 'Tropic of Capricorn' by Henry Miller on the subway this morning.
A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens.
I'm reading it because it's famous and I'm trying to read all the famous books.
It begins (of course) 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...'
Page 251/390.
Dickens is not really one of my favorite authors but so far he's kept me mostly engaged. I just don't sense any of that ecstatic glowing sensation which accompanies the books I really love.
if not, winter - Sappho
German army was always short a few troops on the Eastern Front, because Hitler's Abwehr chief (& a leader in the Resistance) Adm. Canaris steadfastly impressed on Hitler that Franco was going to invade. Canaris created an elaborate netw. of false spies & false cables to keep a few 1,000 German troops in the West. A well-dressed corpse packed w/ fake docs sounds like a Canaris scheme.Originally Posted by kev67
I've started rereading Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. I first read it in high school, and now, forty-eight years later, I'm reading it again. What I'm doing is going back and reading all the great books I read as a teenager. I recently reread The Scarlet Letter and was amazed at how good Hawthorne really is. In my opinion, The Scarlet Letter is one of the dozen greatest American novels.
Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein
Amongst Women by John McGahern
Lykren, please don't give up hope on Dickens. While A Tale of Two Cities isn't the best example, one of the biggest things when reading Dickens is the need to get past what seems to be the unavoidable sentimentality of his novels. My biggest issue was the frustration I faced when I realized that "miraculous circumstances" would always be the saving grace of all of his characters; a wealthy, 2-dimensional character would always step in and save the day. However, once I spent some time getting to know who Dickens was as a man, through biographical research, it becomes clear that his shortcomings stem from a constant need to rationalize his inability to create a fully developed human character. So many of his protagonists get stuck in adolescence, which was exactly the problem that Dickens faced in his own life. He spent much of his adult years trying to figure out how to reconcile the abandonment he experienced at the hands of his own father. Thus, most of his novels appear to be an attempt to create a model by which he could progress through his own damaged psyche. When you accept this, it's much easier to empathize with characters like Pip, Copperfield, etc., and it actually becomes quite interesting to see how he explores different possibilities and sometimes fails or comes very close to succeeding in making them work. Then, the emotion he conveys becomes very understandable and absorbing.
Bases y puntos de partida para la organización política de la república Argentina - Juan bautista Alberdi, 1852
<<Bases and starting points for the politic organization of the Argentine Republic>>
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
maxphisher -
I don't understand why we should forgive an author his or her psychological hang-ups, if and when they affect his writing negatively to the degree you say they do. You mention his inability to create a believable character;
where is the compensation for this deficit? I'm not sure I see the value of reading biographically rather than textually.
Note: I don't regard Dickens as a bad author, just one who has enough betters (Tolstoy, Shikibu, Joyce, and many,
many others) who do explore psychology more deeply (and whose plots feel less contrived) to keep me reading them in preference to those who wrote like Dickens.
Although there is one chapter I truly adored in A Tale: Echoing Footsteps. The prose was beautiful, and the loose, open-ended nature of it made for a wonderful break from the tight stricture tradition had on the rest of the book's plot (if that makes any sense).
Last edited by Lykren; 08-31-2012 at 10:13 PM.
if not, winter - Sappho
A Tomb For Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš. I'm about half way through it and like any collection of short stories, some are better than others but I'm enjoying it over all.
the luminous grass of the prairie hides
feet lovely and still as sleeping doves,
porcelain bones strong enough to carry a life,
but weighty and unmovable
As black Dakota hills. ~ Riesa
George Orwell, 1984
1984 is one of the most famous and influential books in the English language. I started reading it when I was about sixteen, but gave up about three-quarters of the way though. I wanted to finish it.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Page 136 (volume 2, chap 8), about half way.
It is better than I remembered it. Some of the writing is very, very good. I especially liked the chapter in which he is pressing an old, drunk prole to tell him whether life was better before or after the revolution, and all the old man can remember were minor incidents that had happened to him. I also liked the chapter in which he is talking to his colleague, Symes, and realises Symes will be vaporised, not because his thoughts are unorthodox, but because he tends to say out loud things that are better left unsaid. However, it is not exactly un-put-downable, and now I am getting to the stage where I found it heavy-going before. Still, I will plod through to the end this time.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
Hi Guys,
I am reading, i don't know why, "Lord of the flies" by William Golding. When i have red for the first time the title i thought "**** book". Now that i am reading it, i can say sincerely
DON'T READ EVER IT!!!
I can't wait to finish it and to start Dubliners by James Joyce :P
Greetings by Italy
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