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Daveski posted:Definitely stick with it, it becomes much easier to read after the first section. There really is a plot in there, I swear. I think the best way to read Gravity's Rainbow for the first time is just to give up on trying to make sense of it and let it wash over you. Just keep swimming!
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Jun 23, 2010 05:50
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7 y.o. bitch posted:It's called loving The Sword of Truth. And it's about a sword, that has the word "TRUTH" written on it, in all capital letters.
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Jun 27, 2010 16:10
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7 y.o. bitch posted:Frye is one of the clearest writers in literary criticism, and I think it's sad that his style and method have gone so out of favor. The polemical introduction is the most controversial part of the book, the rest is pretty much a repetition of the same general structure of analysis. If the book is anything, it is over-rigorous, but I think that intensity of rigor provides illuminating moments that might be overlooked by literary historians (for two examples, the importance and definition of the masque in symbological terms, and the same for the anatomy work). His final sections on non-literary speech are wicked in their disgust, and I think pretty visionary (and I think that section as well can be too-easily dismissed by our media-studies obsessed academic practice nowadays, particularly when such an influential critic as Kristeva built her entire theory of feminine ecriture around the notion that literary speech was a special place that can locate itself outside of politics. I find Butler at fault for this one.) For literary criticism, I find it's hard to beat this one: http://www.amazon.com/Pooh-Perplex-Freshman-Casebook/dp/0226120589 He did a follow-up volume for more modern lit-crit schools, but it unfortunately isn't as funny.
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Jun 29, 2010 16:18
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7 y.o. bitch posted:That you have nothing but disdain for lit crit? Please explain. A little of all of those; closest with this, though I wouldn't go that far. It's difficult to explain, hence the comic detachment. The best summary of my view on lit-crit generally (and, yes, it's an enormous field) would probably be that I think it can provide a lot of useful analytical tools when considering artistic works, but that those tools are generally used as a substitute for original thought rather than a facilitator of it; that many of said tools exist primarily to push assorted socio-political agendas more than anything else; and that those socio-political agendas, in turn, often have more to do with the churning drive towards tenure than they do with actual individuals experiencing real problems in the world outside academia. In other words, Terry Eagleton's an extremely perceptive writer, and you can learn a lot by reading his books, but he's trying to sell you on Marxism, and more specifically, he's trying to sell you on Marxism so you'll buy his textbook. That said, two essays in particular in the Crews book -- "A Bourgeois Writer's Proletarian Fables" and "A. A. Milne's Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathtubcomplex" really are wonderful send-ups of Marxist and Freudian literary analysis, respectively. The Crews book has value because it 1) presents decent examples of various schools of literary analysis, familiarizing the reader with those ideas, and 2) is also funny, a marked advantage. So it's hard to beat because it gives a good basic education while also having the wisdom to not take itself too seriously, which most literary critics avoid more assiduously than Dracula would avoid a cross made out of holy-water-grown hydroponic garlic. Of course, any general statement I make about "lit crit" is going to have at least one, if not a hundred, exceptions -- as you say, the field's enormous, and enormously varied. For every Eagleton there's an Eco. But still -- in my personal experience, at least, the weeds have overgrown the yard, and it's best to approach any lit-crit text carefully, with gloves on and trowel well in hand. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Jun 29, 2010 |
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Jun 29, 2010 21:36
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Has there ever been a Patrick O'Brian thread here? I was reading the Naomi Novik Temeraire series and I had to migrate over to Aubrey/Maturin just to get my head clear.
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Jul 1, 2010 19:16
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freebooter posted:Are they any good? I've been meaning to read them. I couldn't loving stand Temeraire. The Patrick O'Brian books are absolutely brilliant -- pretty much perfect. The characters and setting are *perfectly* drawn. O'Brian did his historical research and it shows -- not just getting the dates of his battles right, but all the characters speak in period voices, using period language, etc.; the sailors use period nautical terms, the ship's doctor uses period medical terminology, etc. Plus, on top of that, the series has immensely compelling characters. The basic "engine" is the relationship between Jack Aubrey, a ship captain in the Royal Navy, and his surgeon, Stephen Maturin. Aubrey's optimistic, brave, friendly -- sortof a golden retriever of a man, a drat-near genius of a fighting ship captain but absolutely hopeless at just about anything on land (career politics, economic/business decisions, etc.) Maturin, by contrast, is pretty much hopeless at sea, but an expert on land -- academic physician, secret agent, expert naturalist and scientist, etc. So the typical cycle of the books is 1. Aubrey and Maturin are both poor. 2. They go to sea and, through Aubrey's brilliance, take prizes in roaring sea battles. 3. They go back to land and Aubrey fucks up somehow and loses everything. 4. Maturin pulls off some machinations and gets Aubrey back into a boat where he can't get in any more trouble. 5. return to #2. As an example, my favorite scene in the whole series might be in the second book, when Aubrey's being chased by tipstaffs (bailiffs from the Debtor's Prison). To legally arrest him for debt, they have to touch him with their staffs, their symbol of office. SO he's been hiding out on his ship, where they can't get to him. It's docked in port, though, and he sneaks off to go to a party at a local inn, just a few hundred yards away from where his ship is docked. Halfway through the party, the bailiffs break into the inn, so his friends & crew brawl hold them off while Aubrey runs to the window - only to see that the bailiffs have stationed men below the window, too. So he shouts out to his crew, they send the press-gang ashore, impress the bailiffs, and sail away. It's an incredibly great scene, and one that could only be written by an author who'd researched Napoleonic era debtor's law *and* maritime/press gang law. Overall, I can't recommend them highly enough. It does help to buy the "Sea of Words" book from Amazon -- it's a dictionary of all the nautical terms, etc., so when Aubrey orders someone to "mouse the horses" you can figure out that he's ordering them to tie the footropes more securely in the rigging, etc. I think I'm on my third or fourth read-through of the series right now and there are long passages I'm only now beginning to understand, with the help of said dictionary. All the battles in the series are based on actual naval battles of the period -- basically, Aubrey is a heavy rewrite of Lord Cochrane -- so there's an incredible amount of realism in every word, with the added joy of reading something that you know is fairly close to actual historical battles. So much better than Temeraire. I mean, hell, I like dragons as much as the next guy, but if you're writing historical fiction, make your characters live in that era, don't just transpose modern individuals back 300 years >_<. (Susanna Clarke's Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norell is another example of a book that did historical napoleonic-era fiction right, with characters who speak and think as if they're from that era.) Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Jul 3, 2010 |
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Jul 3, 2010 14:24
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Dan Simmons is really hit or miss: some of his stuff is amazingly good, some of it's amazingly bad. I've avoided Drood because I don't want to read The Mystery of Edwin Drood since it's unfinished and I'll never know who dunit =(
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Aug 19, 2010 20:29
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7 y.o. bitch posted:
poo poo, but where do I catalog The Time Machine? Perhaps I'll just have to perpetually move it around the library. I can set up a little steam-driven model railroad for it.
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Aug 20, 2010 18:26
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Timefortea posted:Hope this is the right place to ask this. I've been asked to write a review on Hawking's "The Grand Design" for a friend's philosophy blog. Book is now finished, and I'd like tips on review writing. The biggest thing in good review writing is to keep in mind your (potential) audiences. Think about what your readers want to know; conversely, though, make sure to communicate your own personal reaction(s) to the work, just do it in a way that also tells your audience what their reactions might be. Stay away from controversial topics that don't directly relate to the work, like race and politics and religion.
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Oct 27, 2010 02:59
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Bonaventure posted:Hot tips for reviewing books: don't talk about anything interesting!!!!! Just saying that if it ain't relevant to the work, don't bring it up, because you'll piss *somebody* off. If you have to mention it to write an effective review -- i.e., if the book is just flat out racist and the criticism needs to be made -- go for it. Most of my experience is from writing Amazon reviews, and over there if you mention politics, religion, or race unnecessarily you'll pay a *huge* price in negative votes even for making generic, innocuous statements (see, e.g., the reviews of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue, here: http://www.amazon.com/Going-Rogue-American-Sarah-Palin/dp/0061939897 ). If it isn't directly relevant to the work, if you're not bringing it up for a reason, there's just no point -- you'll piss off readers and won't gain anything by it. The main thing though is just imagine who your potential audiences for the review are and make sure you include all the things they'll want to know.
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Oct 28, 2010 14:26
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Kieselguhr Kid posted:Your problem seems to be mistaking 'writing a review that most people on Amazon will find inoffensive' and 'writing a good review.' Don't really think I have a problem, but thanks!
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Nov 3, 2010 17:07
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http://www.archive.org/details/texts and google books.
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Nov 4, 2010 04:47
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Dr Scoofles posted:I noticed midway through the High Level Lit Chat thread some discussion on Medieval literatre and Old English, with some mention on how it is possible to learn enough in a month to read Beowulf comfortably. This was the standard text we used back when I took Old English in college: http://www.amazon.com/Biography-English-Language-C-M-Millward/dp/0495906417/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293120199&sr=8-1
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Dec 23, 2010 17:04
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Back when I was in school, I remember the libraries being divided into social areas and quiet areas. I generally did most of my studying in the social areas just to be around people -- I find I focus better if I'm around others, if only so I don't start going all OHMYGODSOLONELY.
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Apr 13, 2011 22:54
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deety posted:In the US, things published before 1923 are public domain, that includes some Lovecraft stories but I'm pretty sure there's nothing by Howard in that time frame. I think there's *some* stuff by Howard but not the Conan stuff, or rather, the copyright status on the Conan stuff is ambiguous: quote:The name Conan and the names of Robert E. Howard's other principal characters are claimed as trademarked by Paradox Entertainment of Stockholm, Sweden, through its US subsidiary Paradox Entertainment Inc. Paradox copyrights stories written by other authors under license from Conan Properties Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_the_Barbarian#Copyright_and_trademark_dispute
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Aug 25, 2011 20:08
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dmccaff posted:I signed up to the reddit secret santa this year and this arrived yesterday. Wow, that's a great collection. It's basically all "first novels" in long fantasy series. Looking at that stack actually makes me sad because I've read most of them and I'll never get to read them for the first time again =( All depends on what you like -- there's a really wide assortment there and they're all very different.
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Dec 9, 2011 20:28
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Herr Tog posted:Can someone tell me about this tome? Is it like some sort of joke? I got the book from a co-worker and I tried to read it but it was unbearable and when I tried to give it back he wasn't concerned with it and told me that I can 'pass it along.' All I know is from reviews of the RPG: http://jrients.blogspot.com/2005/07/wraeththu-report.html
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Dec 10, 2011 15:04
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pakman posted:I have a very odd request. Earlier in the week my friends and I were talking about running an RPG of some sort on the email list that we are a part of, and the discussion got sidetracked. What happened was one of my friends started writing a story completely in jest, and here are some excerpts: Maybe some of the Doc Savage stuff, but even that's a bit of a stretch.
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Dec 12, 2011 04:39
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blue squares posted:I want to slowly read the Lord of the Rings between sessions with other books. Can I read it on my kindle or are the illustrations essential? The kindle screen is often too small to make out fine details in maps. I've seen the movies several times so I'll probably be using those to visualize. You can probably do just fine on the kindle. You can always pull up a map online if you get confused.
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Dec 21, 2011 04:22
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crankdatbatman posted:
It depends. As mentioned, there's stuff like C.S. Lewis and Chesterton's Father Brown stories, which are explicitly Christian allegories. The Narnia books I find especially grating now, reading them as an adult, because I feel like I'm getting hit with a LOOK ITS JESUS hammer every time Aslan shows up and it irritates me that I didn't grasp it all when I was a kid. The best literary Christian writer I'm aware of is Graham Greene. Try The End of the Affair. Explicitly catholic christian, but intelligent as all hell.
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Mar 12, 2012 15:20
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Oh, and if you want christian works with a more popular sci-fi type style, try A Canticle for Liebowitz.
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Mar 16, 2012 14:26
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You could claim Poe as the most *influential* writer, if not the most famous, for essentially inventing the detective genre.
Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Mar 29, 2012 |
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Mar 29, 2012 21:01
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bigperm posted:I have to do an oral presentation in my English class. Basically it's reading a sonnet or 14 lines of another work by Shakespeare. I feel everyone in the class is going to just read the first 14 lines of 'To be or not to be'. I am totally unfamiliar with Shakespeare was was looking to solicit some suggestions. Oh, there's always Sonnet 20. Freak out your teacher by convincing the class Shakespeare was gay! For bonus points, point out that many of the love sonnets, including Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a Summer's Day") were addressed to a man! Alternatively, this might be a good site: http://www.shakespeare-monologues.org/
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Apr 30, 2012 04:05
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timeandtide posted:Is anyone else sick of Dan Simmons? I tend to like the first book or two of each of Dan Simmon's series, where he sets up intricate and original worlds, interesting narrative concepts, intriguing characters, and enthralling puzzles. I always hate the last book or two, where it always turns out the answer to those enthralling puzzles is Space Jesus.
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May 16, 2012 14:34
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Quandary posted:I loved the play Les Miserables and am thinking about reading the book, but it's long as gently caress (1800~ pages). Is it worth the read for the length? Short answer: Yes. You could try an abridged version if it's all you can find. Long answer: do you read a lot of long books? It's a really long book. It's also an amazingly good book, so it's worth the read for the length, but if long-as-gently caress books aren't your thing period it's not going to be your thing, period.
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Jul 9, 2012 15:04
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EricBauman posted:Baudolino. It's pretty accessible because it's only set in one time frame, isn't shooting back and forth in perspective and doesn't have a first quarter that's explicitly written to scare of people (like The Name of the Rose). It's a medieval adventure novel, basically, but written in Eco's usual smart and playful manner. Yeah, but The Name of the Rose is his best book by far. I'd say leap right the gently caress into Rose knowing that he meant parts of it, especially the description of the Abbey door (get it?) to scare off readers who weren't able or willing to hack it. Lord Lambeth posted:And how accessible would you say it is generally? Is it harder to read than, say, Moby Dick? If you could handle the long whaling description sections in Moby Dick you can handle Rose easily; they're actually pretty similar in a weird way. Eco just threw in some deliberately complex and intimidating passages at the beginning to scare off readers who fear intellectual texts. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Dec 12, 2012 |
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Dec 12, 2012 17:13
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That drat Satyr posted:Could anyone recommend a good book on Greek deities (and perhaps their respective cults)? Alternatively, something that digs into the the theological beliefs of lesser-known religions - say, for example early Mesopotamian religious beliefs? Edith Hamilton's Mythology is the place to start for greek stuff, unless you want to get really really classical and read Ovid's Metamorphoses. Alternatively, D'Aularies Book of Greek Myths is pretty good too if written for children, as is their Book of Norse Myths. For Celtic mythology I'd recommend Gods and Fighting Men by Lady Gregory. For early Mesopotamian it's actually fairly hard to find something written for popular audiences. Checking my bookshelf all I have is "Myths of Mesopotamia," Oxford's World Classics, Trans. Stephen Dalley, but it's a really scholarly translation of source texts, not "here are the stories". For study of cults you have to get a little more in-depth; most sources are just "her are the stories." I've got a really neat book titled Cults of the Roman Empire, by Robert Turcan, which covers Isis cults, Mithraic cults, etc. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Dec 27, 2012 |
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Dec 27, 2012 15:39
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Octy posted:Has anyone read this chap? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plunkett,_18th_Baron_of_Dunsany He's brilliant and one of the greatest pre-Tolkien fantasy writers and you should read him. Start here: Idle Days on the Yann. He's been a big influence on pretty much everyone (Neil Gaiman's Stardust is very much inspired by Dunsany's work). The problem with him is he's got a pretty affected style that works for him but that other writers sometimes try to imitate with disastrous results. Here's Ursula K. LeGuin on Dunsany: quote:On the map of literature, I see Dunsany as a small, walled city in a desert, with opal walls and spires of bronze, and strange little streets, and a great gate made from a single tooth. The lord of the city is a generous host. It is not on the beaten path, but it is worth visiting.
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Jan 22, 2013 15:38
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Cheekio posted:I'm looking for an Asimov short story where a scientist is talking to a therapist, explaining how the earth/sun is like a test tube and mutually assured destruction is like the proverbial bounds of a petri dish. He's working on a nuclear shield that would prevent global destruction. If it's the story I'm thinking of it's titled "Breeds There a Man?" At least from what I've found in a quick google search.
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Feb 26, 2013 18:28
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Inudeku posted:Just sort of bought Watership Down blindly. I've seen the trailer for the movie and it looks brutal as gently caress. Is the book also this brutal? I'm not one for super violent stuff. I'm sure it has it's moments but that trailer makes me think it's Killing Rabbits: The Book. You're in for a real treat, it's one of the great novels of the twentieth century (I think so, anyway). The movie is actually much darker than the book, which is really weird considering it's Disney. The book is as dark as it needs to be and no darker.
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Apr 18, 2013 17:29
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iostream.h posted:I was finishing On the Beach (again) in my favorite little restaurant today and the waitress, who has been working to improve her English took a few moments to sit and talk with me (I'm a regular, this isn't weird, I also bring the owner bottles of bourbon regularly because 'You are from Alabama, you know what good whiskey is' I love the place) and was asking me about it. On the one hand that's awesome. On the other I'm not sure if you could have possibly given her a book with a sadder ending.
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Apr 21, 2013 13:33
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Arg can I buy hard copies of ebooks though
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Sep 3, 2013 21:18
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spidoman posted:Apologies if this ends up being a recommend me a book post. No suggestions but I'd add Scooby and Shaggy from Scooby-doo to the trope, as positive cowardly figures.
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Sep 10, 2013 16:22
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Josh Lyman posted:I finished listening to the audiobook of Fifty Shades of Grey. I remember when people said it was basically Twilight fan fiction, but I didn't realize they were being literal. Pretty much every thing about the book is awful, just like the Twilight movies. At least the ending is the logical conclusion. The characters were explicitly Twilight characters in the first draft.
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Sep 12, 2013 13:54
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Tom Tucker posted:Hey everyone, I am not sure where the best place to ask this would be, but I saw the 'general discussion' so I thought I'd go for it in here. If anyone knows a better thread or resource please let me know. http://www.biblio.com/search.php?author=joyce%2C+james&title=&keyisbn=&format=&first=on&signed=on
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Nov 4, 2013 00:41
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spacemost posted:I ordered a book from Amazon recently because I thought I was getting an older printing that would have matched the spines of other books by the same author, and instead I got the small awful reprint that came out with the movie adaptation. I even paid $20.00 extra for rush delivery. Write to amazon and complain. Maybe they'll send you a free book.
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Nov 5, 2013 02:41
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You could also try Amazon's "other ways to buy this book" amd biblio.com, though I didn't see any in a quick look.
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Dec 5, 2013 23:58
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Millions posted:Bit of an odd question that has to do more with destroying a book than reading it: Would you mind sharing the edition information for that book? I've got a similar collecting habit going in a small way and have been looking for an Earthsea map suitable for framing like that.
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Dec 19, 2013 02:07
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Millions posted:Thanks for all the suggestions, I guess I've got some work to do. Thanks! You could try maybe steaming it lightly, like you would to take a seal off a letter. With some books where I've wanted to get sticky stuff off of it, the simplest thing is just to stick it on a shelf and wait a few years while the glue ages and dries. I've used both those techniques to get things like old library tags off of old books. A lot depends on the type of glue used. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 02:48
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Tenacious J posted:A question for the English Lit people. Ok, my brief and uninformed analysis of this is that the key sentence is "Only that day dawns to which we are awake." The idea is that there are good and beautiful things beyond our comprehension, but that still exist and are still beautiful, and (perhaps? possibly? potentially?) that by expanding our comprehension we can expand the range of good options which will open before us. In the context of Walden as a whole this probably means things like (for example) living out in nature is pretty awesome but most people aren't going to realize how awesome it is because they'll never know to go check out a wilderness pond in the early dawn. It's not just that they don't know how awesome Walden Pond is, it's that they don't even know that they don't know how awesome Walden Pond is -- they're blind to their own blindness. Expanding our horizons expands the range and breadth and depth of our joys. I haven't looked at the passage in context, just the snippet you quoted, but based on the quote I'd be hesitant to read too much literality into it -- saying that Johnathan is "Americans" rather than just "typical people," or that the passage is referring to religious experience specifically rather than the nature of experience generally.
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Jan 8, 2014 22:03
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