You are imprisoned for three years without reason, but you get five books.

[Winklehurt]

You will be given enough food and drink to keep you healthy, but you will be in total isolation with only a bed, toilet, and a small rectangular barred window to let the sun in until your sentence ends. Luckily, you are allowed to take in five novels/plays/poems of your choice to sustain you for those three years. An extensive English dictionary has also been provided for you. What are your five choices?

Mine are as follows:
1. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
2. Ulysses by James Joyce
3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (quite fitting)
4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
5. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

This is not the most intriguing book list, but these are the works I would take.

[Lykren]

This has been done to death. That's because it's so fun.

Ulysses
In Search of Lost Time
The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson
The Tale of Genji (Tyler translation)
Complete Plays of Shakespeare

I think the appeal of this game is that we get to fantasize about having no distractions, and, we hope, would thereby gain more pleasure from our chosen books.

[mortalterror]

1.King James Bible
2.Complete Plays of Shakespeare
3.The Iliad
4.The Divine Comedy
5.A Moveable Feast

[mona amon]

Five is difficult -

1. OK, Ulysses for me too.
2. The Bible
3. Complete Works of Shakespeare
4. Villette (no point taking Jane Eyre since I know it by heart)
5. Pickwick Papers? Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Don Quixote?

[Winklehurt]

Great choices, quite a lot of stuff here that I want to read such as In Search of Lost Time and even the King James Bible. I should have clarified when I wrote this post that collections and anthologies were excluded, but now that I think about it, what would be the fun in a single Emily Dickinson poem? My new provision nobody has to follow but pretty please do, is that a maximum of two collections are allowed, just to keeps things interesting.

I have revised my own list like this:

1. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
2. Moby-Dick
3. Ulysses
4. Anna Karenina
5. The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka (extremely appropriate given the situation)

[Marcus1]

Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann
Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis
A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

[KJMarin]

Moby Dick, Melville. This, for me, is an almost perfect accompaniment to imprisonment: eclectic, thoughtful and suitably long-winded.

The Satanic Verses, Rushdie. To remind me how beautiful the English language can sound.

Pale Fire, Nabokov. To ensure that - during my incarceration - my appreciation for structure isn't suddenly muddied by a fawning appreciation for plot.

The Yellowplush Papers,Thackeray. Iron bars require iron wit.

A Perfect Spy,Le Carre. For a bit of bedtime reading.

[LayedBack]

King James Bible
Don Quixote
Lord of the Rings
The Norton Shakespeare (this one book includes not only all of his plays but also his poetry, the rest of you guys just totally shot yourselves in the foot by saying "Complete Plays" because you just lost extra material for no reason, so I win... err j/k ^^)

and I have a very hard time deciding on a fifth. I feel like it should be a book of poetry, but short of an anthology of my favorites I'm not sure I'd be satisfied. Not to mention there is also the Complete Essays of Montaigne, and epics like the Illiad and the Divine Comedy, and several other books like Beowulf and Moby Dick which I should sorely miss.

Perhaps it would actually be most worthwhile to get enormous works like In Search of Lost Time or even the Mahabharata. I've read neither but I gather one could simply read the whole thing and just start right from the beginning, repeating the cycle for a lifetime because they are so ridiculously long. I wouldn't dare choose something I haven't already read though over a confirmed favorite masterpiece if this was a forever scenario, but just for 3 years, I might take one of these.

[Clopin]

Full Shakespeare
Biggest annotated Bible I can find
Full Plato, or preferably a giant anthology of early Greek philosophy
Entire Encyclopedia Set
Unabridged OED (20 volumes)

So I can study for the entire three years and not waste my time.

[Winklehurt]

The point of the game is that you can only choose five books, not fifty! They also must all be works of literature. Come on, if you're going to post at least play along.

[Pierre Menard]

I have three choices on my list that will overlap with three others, which is actually pretty cool in the sense that these works are powerful and touch people deeply:

1. Collected Fiction - Jorge Luis Borges
2. Complete Works of Shakespeare
3. King James Bible
4. Moby Dick
5. Collected Poetry of W.B. Yeats

Because of the overlap, I'll do a backup 5:

1. Leaves of Grass - Whitman (I was going to choose a collected Wallace Stevens book of poetry, but Whitman got me into poetry, so I felt a loyalty towards him for such a life-and-death sort of scenario)
2. The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
3. Essays - Montaigne
4. Anatomy of Melancholy - Robert Burton
5. Dubliners - James Joyce

Honestly, it'd be extraordinarily hard to choose just 5, and I could probably even do a third or fourth or more list. Runners Up:

Aforementioned 'Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens'.
Suttree- Cormac McCarthy
The Iliad - Homer
The Theban Plays - Sophocles
Lolita and Pale Fire- Nabokov
Collected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
Lord Jim- Joseph Conrad
Waiting Ford Godot- Beckett

Okay, there's like a hundred runners-up so I'll stop there. This is really hard.

[KJMarin]

Waiting Ford Godot- Beckett



Gads! Would this one not be a bit of a harrowing read while locked up in prison for three years?

[Helga]

1. complete Shakespeare-Shakespeare
2. Metamorphosis- Ovid
3. Flowers of evil- Baudelaire
4. Any work by Milan Kundera
5. The Icelandic Sagas

[FrankMarcopolos]

You'd almost have to pick all "Complete Works" I would think...

1. Complete works of Shakespeare
2. Complete works of Hemingway
3. Complete works of Mark Twain
4. Complete works of Ambrose Bierce
5. Complete works of Edgar Allan Poe

But I'd also consider a massive anthology, something that captures, "The best English language poetry of all time" or "The 100 best short stories ever written" or something like that.

I'd also consider Infinite Jest, too.

[Winklehurt]

You'd almost have to pick all "Complete Works" I would think...

I specified in an earlier post that you're allowed to take a maximum of two Complete Works collections, and even that goes against my original intention of banning collections altogether. This is to avoid boring lists.

[FrankMarcopolos]

Oh yeah, you're right. Sorry, was just skimming and didn't read all the rules. My bad.

[Winklehurt]

I shall never forgive you for this treachery.

[Poetaster]

1) Mason and Dixon
2) The Divine Comedy
3) The Iliad
4) The Odyssey
5) The Elder Edda

[FrankMarcopolos]

Ahhhhhh, nooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

[kev67]

You will be given enough food and drink to keep you healthy, but you will be in total isolation with only a bed, toilet, and a small rectangular barred window to let the sun in until your sentence ends. Luckily, you are allowed to take in five novels/plays/poems of your choice to sustain you for those three years. An extensive English dictionary has also been provided for you. What are your five choices?

Mine are as follows:
1. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
2. Ulysses by James Joyce
3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (quite fitting)
4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
5. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

This is not the most intriguing book list, but these are the works I would take.

I think I'd go for a similar list, since they're all big chunkers, none of which I have not got around to reading yet. I might substitute the Canterbury Tales for Infinite Jest.

[stlukesguild]

The Collected works of William Shakespeare
The Divine Comedy- Dante Alighieri
The Bible- King James Translation
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire- Edward Gibbon
One Thousand and One Nights (unabridged)

[WICKES]

If I can have single volume complete works:

1. William Blake complete works
2. Shakespeare collected plays
3. Wordsworth collected poems
4. Evelyn Waugh: The Sword of Honour trilogy
5. P G Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster novels

If I can't have any collected editions, but only individual works:

1. Aldous Huxley's Chrome Yellow
2. Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall
3. P G Wodehouse, Right Ho Jeeves
4. Dickens, David Copperfield
5. Shelley, Selected Poems

[Ecurb]

In order to make my reading relevant to my situation, I'd pick:

1) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich -- Solzhenitsyn
2) Papillon -- Henri Charriere
3) In the Belly of the Beast -- Jack Abbot
4) The Birdman of Alcatraz -- Gaddis
5) Ballad of Reading Gaol -- Wilde

[millwallbill]

You will be given enough food and drink to keep you healthy, but you will be in total isolation with only a bed, toilet, and a small rectangular barred window to let the sun in until your sentence ends. Luckily, you are allowed to take in five novels/plays/poems of your choice to sustain you for those three years. An extensive English dictionary has also been provided for you. What are your five choices?

Mine are as follows:
1. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
2. Ulysses by James Joyce
3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (quite fitting)
4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
5. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

This is not the most intriguing book list, but these are the works I would take.

I assume collected works are not allowed. And nor are biographies. So...




1. The King James Bible
2. Paradise Lost
3. War & Peace
4. The Aenid
5. Code Of The Woosters

[Pike Bishop]

The Collected Works of William Shakespeare would be number 1 if collected works were allowed. If not, my five would be:

1. Absalom, Absalom by Faulkner
2. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
3. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
4. The Ambassadors by Henry James
5. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

[North Star]

Kalevala (in Finnish, of course)
The King James Bible
The Collected works of William Shakespeare
The Penguin Book of English Verse (ed. Paul Keegan)
The Complete Calvin & Hobbes

[Lykren]

Kalevala (in Finnish, of course)
The King James Bible
The Collected works of William Shakespeare
The Penguin Book of English Verse (ed. Paul Keegan)
The Complete Calvin & Hobbes

You speak Finnish? Neat.

Pretty clever to hip up your list with C&H there.

[North Star]

You speak Finnish? Neat.

Pretty clever to hip up your list with C&H there.

I am Finnish. :)

[Lykren]

Oh, haha, I just saw your location. And I assumed if you know Finnish you were Finnish, isn't it incredibly rare for natives of other countries to learn it?

[North Star]

Oh, haha, I just saw your location. And I assumed if you know Finnish you were Finnish, isn't it incredibly rare for natives of other countries to learn it?
I imagine that there are very few of those who speak Finnish and have never been in Finland, aren't married to a Finn or whose parent(s) aren't from Finland. I have some distant relatives in North America, and the generations born there don't speak Finnish.

[jennyg]

Marginus Morius, Stelios Chalkitis
Ulysses, James Joyce
Crime and punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes from underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Lord of the rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

[Bartlebooth]

Underworld, Don DeLillo
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Daniel Deronda, George Eliot
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

I was thinking of putting in Holy Sonnets instead of A Connecticut Yankee, but that book has just too much personal significance and is too entertaining for me to give it up.

[Pike Bishop]

Middlemarch should have been on my list; it's the greatest non-experimental novel in the English language.

[mtpspur]

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini (all time favorite novel)
She and Allan by H. Rider Haggard (get his two most famous characters in one book--bonus)
Dracula by Bram Stoker (mostly for the castle scenes at the beginning)
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (D'Artagnan and company at their finest before it all starts catching up to them by the final book)
The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper (last written but earliest in chronology featuring the woman Hawkeye SHOULD have fallen in love with--sigh)

[tonywalt]

catcher in the rye - jd salinger
After Dark - haruki murakami
disgrace - jm coetzee
summertime - jim coetze
wide sargasso sea - jean rhys

[ennison]

I think I'd need big big books to last me five years. I'd take a Bible in two languages and risk conversion. Tangentially, my daughter asked me a puzzle the other night about three hats and three prisoners. It was late in the evening. I started working out combinations and probabilities but gave up. I went to bed shortly after but woke up at three with the answer as clear as day in my head. How odd. Had I worked it out in my sleep? What had seemed a difficult Maths puzzle turned out to be barely mathematical and simple!

[ajvenigalla]

The King James Bible, Blood Meridian, The Lord of the Rings, Les Miserables, Moby-Dick

[Eiseabhal]

E Dantes: Tunneling and Excavations

[ennison]

Ha ha pal. I think I'd take as much of Rolland as this Guantanamo jailer of ours will not count as complete works.

[Eiseabhal]

I think I'd take Dwelly and something big to translate - I'd have to ask permission for the necessary academic impedimenta. If this is a jail run on Western lines I might be allowed it. If it's one of these People's Republic of Abkazistanibadia type jails I reckon a wad of currency buried in the mud floor might be better than any book.

[TheLastBirds]

There's a Snake at Alem Mountain by Sait Faik Abasiyanik
Human Landscapes from My Country by Nazim Hikmet
Üvercinka by Cemal Süreya
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov

[Watch-Dog]

1. KJ Bible
2. Riverside Shakespeare
3. In Search of Lost Time
4. Don Quixote
5. Divine Comedy

Runners Up:
a. Boswell's Life of Johnson
b. Leaves of Grass
c. Walden
d. War and Peace
e. Ulysses

[entropic island]

bump

if collected works aren't allowed, then
hamlet
ulysses
sound and the fury
pale fire
under the volcano

[entropic island]

man that list is really sad beneath watch dog's vastly superior list

[SongsOfOrpheus]

1. The Border Trilogy - McCarthy -- My favorite author and his best set of works.
2. In Search of Lost Time - Proust -- I haven't read it yet and it seems to be a pretty good novel, from what I hear.
3. Don Quixote - Cervantes -- Same as above.
4. Complete Poems - Rilke -- Tied with Keats as my favorite poet, he simply produced more.
5. Faust Part I and II - Goethe -- I feel like there is a lot more to this than it has previously let on.

[chrisvia]

1. Complete Shakespeare (Norton)
2. In Search of Lost Time
3. Don Quixote
4. Dante's Commedia
5. KJV Bible

[waltzinmathilda]

I see why most of you went for long books; in particular, I find the choice of The Count of Montecristo very appropriate (given the situation). However, I couldn't do without Heart of Darkness. The other titles would probably be:
Effi Briest by T. Fontane
Moby Dick by Melville
Julius Caesar by Shakespeare
The Trial by Kafka

[Vota]

Five books. Wow that's a tough one.

1. The Iliad
2. War and Peace
3. Complete essays of Montaigne
4. The Book of the New Sun Omnibus
5. The Bible

[Vota]

On reflection I'd probably swap the bible out with Plutarch Lives.

[Pompey Bum]

On reflection I'd probably swap the bible out with Plutarch Lives.

Good thinking, Vota. I read Parallel Lives (and the Moralia) earlier in the year. It took forever, but it was so enjoyable that in the end I wished there had been more. I wouldn't lose the Bible, though (as long as it was a KJV). Can't New Sun Omnibus wait a scant three years?

[Vota]

My first love was science fiction and fantasy, so to not have at least one book representing that genre would be pretty rough going. That, and I don't subscribe to what The Bible says. I'm not a Christian, and am familiar with the book, so why bring one? Montaigne and Plutarch can provide sufficient edification, and they are better reading to boot.

My list is severely truncated because I didn't include anything that can't be fit into a legible omnibus. It would be a lot different if I could place a collection of works for each entry, maybe something like this:

1. The Iliad and The Odyssey
2. The Complete Plays of George Bernard Shaw
3. The Essays of Montaigne
4. Plutarch Lives and Moralia
5. The Night's Dawn Trilogy or one of Peter F. Hamilton's other epic space romps.

I hate not having any Tolstoy or Shakespeare in there, but I'd be in pretty damn good company with those books. As much as I love sci-fi, I don't think there exists a sci-fi book or series of books that are comparable to any of these choices, excepting #5 obviously.

[Pompey Bum]

Well, the great majority of the Bible wasn't written by or for Christians (or Jews as we would understand the term today), and if you take a worthy translation, it's easily as impressive as anything in Shakespeare. But suit yourself; the prison chaplain probably has to bring you a Bible if you ask for one (although you run the risk of getting an eisegetical translation).

I wonder why it's important that you are imprisoned "without reason." It's an old-ish joke on the site's (many) prison/desert island booklist threads, but it seems like a book on legal appeals (if not jailbreaks) would be in order. And isn't it nice of your Kafka-esque oppressors to let you out after only three years? :)

[Jackson Richardson]

It’s tempting to go for long worthy books (Proust, Clarissa, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy) but I don’t really enjoy them.

I would want to say the daily’s offices, Morning and Evening Prayer, which would give structure to my day. The Anglican office needs a Bible and the Daily Prayer volume. The Roman Catholic Daily Prayer is in one book (in three volumes but I hope that is OK) and gives me something to do seven times a day. (It has embarrassing gender specific language though.)

Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – I love its style and it can keep me on my toes as I disagree with much of Gibbon’s sexist patrician attitudes.

Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.

A short comic work which if need be I can learn by heart. Toss up between Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate and Barbara Pym’s A Glass of Blessings. Probably Pym. I have read Wodehouse when I was seriously anxious and it did not cheer me up.

Rather than Shakespeare, Dickens' Bleak House. I did read that a chapter at a time when I was seriously anxious, and it made things so much better to bear.

[Pompey Bum]

Have you read Boswell, Jonathan? I haven't, but I love Gibbon and Fielding, and I enjoy 18th century prose style rather more than 19th century; so I should probably read Boswell (and Pepys, too, for that matter--I'm surprised actually that he hasn't been on any lists so far).

[prendrelemick]

Ok I've read everybody else's choices and been reminded of stuff I haven't read yet. Perhaps that is the way to go, choose something you have always meant to read but haven't got round to it. So some Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury.
Next, a comedy and my favourite, Pride and Prejudice - There will be fresh nuances to discover.

Something to study, perhaps A Brief History of Time - I haven't read it, so its another risk, it may be rubbish.

Then some very light reading for days when I have a headache , a Terry Pratchett, once again one that I haven't read Mort.

Finally, in case three of the above are duds I'd want a fail safe to keep me sane, a three year banker. Herodotus or Homer would do, but I'd probably choose War and Peace.

[Twenty Nine]

1) RSV Holy Bible
2) The Brothers Karamazov
3) The Great Divorce
4) The Odyssey
5) Crime and Punishment

[Pompey Bum]

Welcome to the site, 29. I advised Vota to take a KJV along on the basis of beauty of language, but the RSV is a certainly a serviceable translation of the Bible (I've read both). The NRSV pushes PC a bit, in my opinion, but I suppose that's another matter. Anyway, the RSV's a good choice. So are Dostoyevsky and Homer, in my opinion. The Great Divorce is C.S. Lewsis, isn't it? That's an interesting choice. I haven't read it so I can't say more. Welcome to the site in any case. :)

[Jackson Richardson]

Have you read Boswell, Jonathan

I’m not sure I’ve read it cover to cover, but I’ve certainly browsed it, although not for some time. (Something browsable strikes me as a good idea.)

Just a comment on War and Peace. I haven’t been in prison, but eighteen months ago I spent a week at my favourite monastery – nothing to do except silent meals, long walks, going to church and reading. I took War and Peace with me and read about a third of it.

So in solitary confinement it would probably take a week.

The Great Divorce is C S Lewis, a writer I have ambivalent feelings about. My choice from him would be The Screwtape Letters, Lewis allowing the *****y Oxford don in him full play.

[Pompey Bum]

Just a comment on War and Peace. I haven’t been in prison, but eighteen months ago I spent a week at my favourite monastery – nothing to do except silent meals, long walks, going to church and reading. I took War and Peace with me and read about a third of it.

So in solitary confinement it would probably take a week.

It's an interesting point, Jonathan. Of course, the Bible (and Plutarch, too) are made up of many discrete sections that lend themselves to contemplation (Plutarch a moralist); and Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is at least five times as long as War and Peace, neither of which would suffer on multiple readings. But maybe a better solution to the time problem would be to take textbooks instead of fiction or histories or sacred literature. In three years you could teach yourself to read French, German, Latin--who knows? Or maybe teach yourself calculus or physics. I imagine that would be more stimulating than fighting the Battle of Austerlitz for the 1001st time! Come to think of it, Arabian Nights would be good, too. You could read one a night and still have a few left when they let you out.

[Jackson Richardson]

The Great Divorce is C S Lewis, a writer I have ambivalent feelings about. My choice from him would be The Screwtape Letters, Lewis allowing the *****y Oxford don in him full play.

I am mortified to think LitNet should find my language offensive. The word I used is defined in the OED as "malicious, catty".

[Clopin]

I'll give Lewis some love by taking the Complete Chronicles of Narnia for one, Complete Shakespeare for two, KJV Bible, Essays by Montaigne (which I haven't read but comes widely recommended by pretty much everyone), the Oxford English Dictionary and sure, Gibbon, which I haven't read either but I may as well knock off in my cell.

[Pompey Bum]

I am mortified to think LitNet should find my language offensive. The word I used is defined in the OED as "malicious, catty".

Don't worry about it. I recently had to speak of a swan twisting its head to one side because the censor wouldn't let me say what apparently constitutes "the C-verb." And don't get me started on Apuleius' The Golden, um, Donkey. :-/

[Clopin]

Maybe I'll sneak in Hark a Vagrant too when she publishes the next collection.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yw3M4OlSfe4/U__cJrTSM6I/AAAAAAAAANY/9yDJmJs-QBE/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-08-28%2Bat%2B9.48.09%2BPM.png

[Pompey Bum]

Heh heh. That's pretty good, Clopin.

If you have your books on your IPad, of course, you already have an OED; but maybe they put your tablet in a box when they throw you in prison without reason for three years.

[Clopin]

That's the one thing which makes me consider an e-reader. I spend a lot of time writing down words and then looking them up later and writing them down again with their definitions. Tragically I retain nearly nothing.

[Pompey Bum]

It's great. You just press the word in the book and you get a short definition, with an optional full definition (including etymology). Sometimes I press words I already know just to understand the nuances better. It hardly interrupts the reading,

[Pompey Bum]

And okay, since we kind of hijacked the thread, my list (for reasons mostly mentioned above) would be:

KJV Bible
Plutarch's Lives (pretending I didn't just read it)
Shakespeare's complete plays
Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
German for the Complete Dummkopf

[Jackson Richardson]

Actually I get the OED online as part of my membership of Croydon Library (and also access to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

Come to think of it the ODNB would keep me in reading material and gossip for years, but I don't think it is published in hard copy now.

[Jackson Richardson]

I am now going to post the name of a particularly dreary industrial town in north Lincolnshire, noted for steel production. It has upset message boards in the past.

Here goes.

S****horpe.

[Jackson Richardson]

I guessed that would happen. It is rather odd in that it is in a overwhelmingly rural area.

[Pompey Bum]

As always, Jonathan, you are a liberal education. :)

There's a perfectly lovely area on Martha's Vineyard called Gay Head. There are even Gay Head Indians, and a big sign where the ferry docks that says: "GAY HEAD ------>" I'll bet the censor doesn't mess with that, though. Poor S****horpe.

[Eupalinos]

Odes of Pindar
Complete Greek Tragedies
The Anatamy of Melancholy
Hegel's Science of Logic
In Search of Lost Time

[Pompey Bum]

Welcome to the site Eupalinos. My favorite Pindar story is that when Alexander went Assyrian on Thebes he gave special orders that Pindar's house was not to be destroyed. A Ghengis Kahn wouldn't have do that.

[Ecurb]

I can't quite buy the notion that all of you reprobates, felons, and scofflaws are in prison "without reason". OK, one person might be imprisoned "without reason" -- but this is an epidemic. Do you expect anyone to believe that each of you has been falsely imprisoned? And even if you have, wasn't there perhaps some motive (or "reason") behind such imprisonment?

Take what books you will into your confinement, but unless you confess your crimes and ask for forgiveness, I support extending your sentences to more than three years!

[Pompey Bum]

Careful, everyone. I think it's a trick.

[Duikboot]

Is this a rendition of the uninhabited island question? Where people tend to forget that once someone resides on an uninhabited island it becomes inhabited.
**** this question. It serves no other purpose but to steal time from reading books and please the topic starter...masturbating to my answer probably. Get out of my face! If you can not be inspired helplessly to grasp 5 books to read you are seriously lazy or retarded.

[prendrelemick]

I am now going to post the name of a particularly dreary industrial town in north Lincolnshire, noted for steel production. It has upset message boards in the past.

Here goes.

S****horpe.

I wonder if you can say " Sunny Scunny", as the locals like to call it.


edit: Yup.

[Vota]

Pompey Bum, I'm gonna have to disagree with the King James Bible being equal to Shakespeare in beauty. I've read that version cover to cover, and I realize it wasn't just written to Christians, though the New Testament is basically where Jews and Christians break away. I think the book has a lot to offer with its wisdom, but I also can't help but remember it comes from a people that were essentially massively ignorant of the world around them when it was written. Imho, Plutarch makes for a much more interesting read, and it is edifying.

[Pompey Bum]

I think the book has a lot to offer with its wisdom, but I also can't help but remember it comes from a people that were essentially massively ignorant of the world around them when it was written.

How does that effect the beauty of its language? The Mesopotamians knew even less about "the world around them" when Gilgamesh was redacted, yet Siduri's advice remains one of the most beautiful things ever composed (even through the veil of translation), as does Gilgamesh's lament for over Enkidu's corpse. It sounds like you like Plutarch more than the Bible, which is fine with me. To each his own. But from what you say, it doesn't sound like beauty of language is the issue.


Imho, Plutarch makes for a much more interesting read, and it is edifying.

I agree that Plutarch is interesting and, for me, morally edifying in places; though not so in others (his famous admiration for the abuse of children in Sparta, for example). Plutarch was a Middle Platonist, and to some scientific thinkers his works may be no more meaningful than the Bible; but I admire much of his Platonism. Plutarch also has an interesting sense of physical courage. For him, the contemplative life is not superior to the life of virtuous action (in a martial sense). When he examines the life of the horrific and bloody despot Sulla, for example, he is careful to balance Sulla's faults against his unquestionable bravery and success as a conquering general. Edifying? Not for me. Interesting, though, and in fact fascinating that an ancient moralist would have seen it like that.

[Ecurb]

Is this a rendition of the uninhabited island question? Where people tend to forget that once someone resides on an uninhabited island it becomes inhabited.
**** this question. It serves no other purpose but to steal time from reading books and please the topic starter...masturbating to my answer probably. Get out of my face! If you can not be inspired helplessly to grasp 5 books to read you are seriously lazy or retarded.

"Prepare torpedo tube #1"

"Aye, Aye, sir."

"Fire torpedo #1."

"Torpedo away."

"Up periscope. Report."

"The 'fish' appears to have struck the tanker, sir, but there was no explosion. The torpedo was a dud."

"*****!"