Yeah I heard many young men committed suicide in emulation of the book's main character.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ser Nevarc
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Yeah I heard many young men committed suicide in emulation of the book's main character.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ser Nevarc
It also influenced the fashion style! Felt hat and brown jackboots were all the rage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
Richard III. I was ifluenced by this latin quote "ars longa, vita brevis".
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl. I bought it for my niece.
Nana (Emile Zola)
La Pianiste (Elfriede Jelinek)
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
I bought it because I'd read all the other appealing classics on the shelf of my local book store already.
Gone With The Wind, by Margaret Mitchell.
When I walked up to the checkout counter at my local bookstore with an armload of books, somehow this one made it into the pile. It's a pretty nice 75th anniversary edition.
I'd always avoided this book, thinking it was racist, but it turns out it's mostly just a romance novel. Also it takes place right around where I live. The Flint River runs near my house, and so does Tara Boulevard, which was named for the plantation in the book not vice versa. Mitchell's descriptions of the landscape around here are fabulous.
As for her depiction of plantation life in the South in the 19th century, uh, I donno, man. It's written from the perspective of the Southern Landed Gentry and I suppose they may have had a romantic view of their lifestyle. But I'm continually finding myself trying to figure out how much of it is what those people thought of themselves and how much of it is what Mitchell, writing in the 1930s, imagined them to be.
Anyway, back to the checkout counter at the bookstore: a sweet young black girl was ringing up my books and we were laughing and chit-chatting with each other right up until she got to that book. She took one look at it and gave me a malignant stink look.
I said, "Sorry about that one. I guess I really just wanted to know what's in it."
She said, "Alright then."
I suppose I should've bought Michelle Obama's book as a counterbalance.
That's funny Sancho. It reminds me of when I ordered in a textbook on psychopathy. The look that clerk had as I spelled out the title was pretty funny. "Yeah it's called Without Conscience: The disturbing world of psychopaths around us." I wanted to say "It's not a self help book!"
Got the following at a used book sale today:
Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon
Parade's End - Ford Madox Ford
Winterwood - Patrick McCabe
an Irish Literature Anthology
The book sale was to raise money for scholarships as the university I work at. At $1/pound, I couldn't resist.
Haha!Quote:
Originally Posted by Grit
Always a good idea to have an excuse ready when you're purchasing something embarrassing: "Uh, those right there are my art magazines."
"I Have Manners" its a little picture book published by Scholastic part of the Best I can be series. Why? Because my class is drives me round the bend sometimes with their 'bad manners' (shouting over each other, talking with food in their mouths (licking my face but there is sadly no reference to that in the book) so I thought why not have some extra reinforcement?
The last book I bought was 'Sweet Tooth' by Ian McEwan. I'm plodding stoically through it, but not enjoying it that much. I wish I'd spent the money on A.S. Byatt's 'Ragnorak' instead...
I just went to a book market, for the second time since it opened, I bought 14 books the first time but only 4 yesterday. I was very happy to find an old copy of Praxis by Fay Weldon, I have wanted it for years. I also got a history book and a book on literature here on the ice around 1500 and one by Susan Sontag. I'm gonna try and get Praxis into my reading schedule now but it will take me awhile to finish I think.
There's no earthly reason for apologising to anyone for buying or reading Gone with the Wind. It's one of the great American novels, up there with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick--all of which contain racial prejudice. The fact that they were all written in the 19th century merely illustrates the racial prejudice of that time. Along comes the 20th century, and the invention of films. One of the best color films (1939) won an Academy Award for a black actress; and as for greatness--Gone With the Wind still is being read by white students, but black students are taught to fear or to disdain it. The same with ...Huckleberry Finn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sancho