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Hedrigall posted:Why on earth hasnt this idea caught on in UK or US?
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Mar 17, 2010 16:22
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 17:45 |
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This forum has terrible taste but here goes nothing. I'm on a cross-country bicycle trip and would appreciate recommendations for actual good books relevant to the places I'm riding through. For example, so far I have read:
What literature do you recommend for going through those parts of America? Keep your lovely science fiction, fantasy, airport books, milporn lit and all similar recommendations to your goddamn self, you worthless loving teenagers. I swear to Christ I will ride to your house and stab you with my spare spokes if you even think about posting that poo poo at me. I will tear your limbs off and beat you with them. I will kick a hole in your torso with my ironwoon legs. I will use your entrails as handlebar streamers. Why is this forum so obsessed with bad literature. It's like you are actually retarded, unable to read anything without a spaceship or elf babe on the cover, unable to think about words and sentences and paragraphs and narratives beyond "That was a cool fight/sex scene." God drat every single one of you. (Also, I've read a ton of Mark Twain, which is what I'd recommend first to someone asking me this question, so don't bother recommending him. Thanks in advance!) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 19, 2010 23:44
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post-feminist rimjob posted:This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but have you tried A Song of Fire and Ice by George R. R. Martin? Zoccoli posted:I can think of nothing more appropriate for a long bike trip than Up In The Air by Walter Kim.
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May 19, 2010 23:51
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therattle posted:Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon for your Pennsylvania portions. Anamnesis posted:A bit on the older side (1900), and it deals with many places you have not listed: you could try Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. A sizable amount of the 'drama' happens in NY. It just popped into my mind, thought I'd suggest it if you haven't found anything else. I think a requirement to be a mod of a book forum is to actually enjoy reading books that aren't directed solely at teenagers or assigned by a teacher, but maybe that's crazy!
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May 20, 2010 18:21
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Nearing St. Louis, I stopped in Hannibal, Missouri, which avid readers will recognize as the hometown of Mark Twain himself. A goodly amount of business in Hannibal is Twain-related; the downtown area has several preserved and renovated buildings from his era, and Twain's mustached and white-suited image is everywhere. I lunched in a dinette, looked on by a poster on the wall where Twain sat, proper and cool; underneath him a quotation, attributed to him, admonished, The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them, and I thought to myself, Yes, Yes, This is true. Anyway, thank you for the recommendations, Book Barn denizens.
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May 28, 2010 23:24
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Pale Fire.
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Jul 24, 2010 00:18
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Alternatively, if you are less inclined to extreme anal-retentiveness, read what you feel like reading when you feel like reading it. Sometimes I want a break from fiction so guess what I do! I read a non-fiction book! It works the other around too. Try it out maybe.
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Jul 25, 2010 05:46
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If you need a desk grammar reference, Rules for Writers will likely cover most of what you're looking for. I have the fourth edition but apparently there are now six. It's not as prescriptive as some other grammars I've used, which I like.
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Aug 15, 2010 04:41
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Jive One posted:This probably has a simple explanation, buy why does Edgar Allan Poe use only the first letter of certain proper nouns, excluding the rest with a dash? For example... Apart from whether or not obviously enigmatic scribal practices actually conceal anything, they certainly lend a sense of veracity to a piece of fiction. When Camus opens The Plague with, "The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194- at Oran," the novel takes on a sly air, making no effort to hide its concealment of identifying data. Camus even uses the word chronicle instead of novel, which I'd argue heightens the sense of a reporter respecting source anonymity, while publishing the truth. Ploys of verisimilitude in fiction go back a long way. In Moll Flanders (1722), Defoe begins the novel by having Flanders state: quote:The author is here supposed to be writing her own history, and in the very beginning of her account she gives the reasons why she thinks fit to conceal her true name, after which there is no occasion to say any more about that. quote:I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this Royal Slave, to entertain my reader with adventures of a feigned hero, whose life and fortunes fancy may manage at the poet's pleasure; nor in relating the truth, design to adorn it with any accidents but such as arrived in earnest to him: and it shall come simply into the world, recommended by its own proper merits and natural intrigues; there being enough of reality to support it, and to render it diverting, without the addition of invention. Or consider the most famous piece of fiction, the Bible, 
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Aug 16, 2010 01:14
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polyfractal posted:Sorry, I wasn't clear in my question. Literally no amount of money would convince me to do this.
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Jun 25, 2011 22:02
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polyfractal posted:Because of the indie/self-pub or the principle of receiving money for reviews? quote:most self-published ebooks are garbage.
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Jun 26, 2011 00:00
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barkingclam posted:It's really cool the book of the month club is literally about books that nobody wants to read. What's October's category? In-Flight Magazines? Furniture assembly instructions, actually. We'll be choosing from Ikea, Pier 1, Target, and WalMart. You don't have to be a jerk about it. 
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Aug 27, 2011 01:06
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I teach high school English and I'm having my students read the Inferno this spring. We're using Durling's translation, which is the best one in my opinion. It's easy to read and the notes are great.
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Nov 12, 2011 20:14
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 17:45 |
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Encryptic posted:A while back, I snagged a copy of the original Longfellow translation that has all the awesome woodcuts done by Gustav Dore in it along with notes. How well-regarded is that translation compared to the others out there? I've read a little bit of it so far but I definitely have zippo familiarity with Latin so I have no idea how much it loses in Longfellow's version. Keep it for the woodcuts, read a modern translation, imo. Longfellow is wordy and his syntax is tortured because he desperately wished he were European. Basically he overtranslated the text (and this comes from an Italian speaker). The Durling best keeps the sense of vulgate.
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Nov 18, 2011 23:09
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