Reading Tab

Tools    





Save the drama for your Mama
I just finished "The Future Homemakers of America" by Laurie Graham, a fun little read about forty years of friendship between 6 women. Begins in 1952 at a Norfolk, England Air Force base, and goes on from there.

Got it out of the "three for a dollar bin" at the Book Shelf. I like to pick up stuff that I eventually send on to my sister in Rome. She's always hungry to read stuff in English!
__________________
Mess with mama and meet a toothy death!



Thursday Next's Avatar
I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
You know that series is never getting finished, due to the author's death, right?

Aside from that, the series falls apart after book 6, and I stopped reading after 8... What started as a tightly written epic, devolves into to stuttering mess by book 7,

George R.R> Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series is MUCH better, and if you haven't read that yet, I would grab a copy of the first book, A Game of Thrones, ASAP.
Yeah, I had heard that. I got lent the first couple of books by a friend who is a couple further ahead than me, and so long as they're good I'll keep reading...but I am prepared for it to take a downturn later on.

Thanks for the recommendation, I will check out the Martin series after I make a bit more headway with the pile of books I got for Christmas...



RIP www.moviejustice.com 2002-2010
Whether it be a novel or an essay or a magazine or a play...

If you're reading instructions on how to program your new HDTV then make a seperate thread for it.

I'm going to try to get back into my reading before going to sleep habbit to help me wind down at night.

I have literally hundreds of books, mostly classics, books I've never even touched and have read that I've found over the past couple of years at book sales, garage sales, and other bargains. I've never paid full price for a book.

I digress... What are you reading at the moment (besides this post at MoFo.

Right now I'm about to sign off and pick up Saul Bellow's Herzog.

__________________
"A candy colored clown!"
Member since Fall 2002
Top 100 Films, clicky below

http://www.movieforums.com/community...ad.php?t=26201



Welcome to the human race...
Don't we already have a thread like this somewhere?

In any case, I'm currently trying to finish James Joyce's Ulysses. For the record, I'm about ten pages into the Cyclops chapter.

__________________
I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0



Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright
I'm currently reading (and almost halfway through) The Battle of Corrin. Its the last of the prequel books in the Dune series

If you are a fan of the original Dune books, and you haven't done so yet, I really recommend going through all the prequel books. There's a lot to read, but its worth it.

Just to give an idea of the scope of the Dune "universe", here are all the books published (in order of publication, and probable best reading order, even though they won't chronologically be correct).

Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emporer of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse Dune

House Atriedes
House Harkonnen
House Corrino

The Butlerian Jihad
The Machine Crusade
The Battle of Corrin

(I haven't read these last 2, which take place after Chapterhouse Dune, but I have also heard that they aren't so good... I may end up reading them, just so I can say I've made it through the approx. 9,000 pages in the Dune books):

Hunters of Dune
Sandworms of Dune


There are also rumors of there being a final book called Paul of Dune, but I don't know if that will happen.
__________________
The Divide by Zero Foundation - Where the real world ends... and mine begins



A system of cells interlinked
Cool. Again, I think the first six books in the series are really great, and worth the read. The guy was a master at creating an epic and believable civilization.
__________________
“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright
Cool. Again, I think the first six books in the series are really great, and worth the read. The guy was a master at creating an epic and believable civilization.
Most definitely, those original books, and Asimov's original Foundation trilogy are, to me anyway, some of the best sci-fi works of all time in their scope and the writing itself...

...just in case there is someone out there interested in the Dune books, particularly other than the original 6, make note that the actual authors are Frank Herbert's son (Brian) and Kevin Anderson. According to what I've read, they did use notes that Frank Herbert had left behind as a basis for their writings, but the books themselves weren't written by him.



The Adventure Starts Here!
I'm reading Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, and I'm also in the midst of Love in the Time of Cholera (which I put down to read Pillars). I'll also be starting A Sweet, Far Thing (Libba Bray) any day now in order to finish out that trilogy and also New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (gotta love a YA vampire series!).

Tomorrow a shipment of 11 books arrives from B&N.com that were all on huge discounts, so I might dig into at least one of those. I'm back in my habit of curling up in the wing chair at night before bed and reading ... as long as I use the dry-eye drops first. (Apparently I have chronic dry eye and might need a 'scrip for it -- which at least explains the burning itching eyes every day. It is a bummer to try to read like that, though.)



RIP www.moviejustice.com 2002-2010
Ahh yes, sorry. I didn't see it. I looked back a couple pages, but didn't do a search.

As far as Ulysses I probably couldn't read it. I've tried reading The Portrait of a Young Man as an Artist and it was so tedious.



You're a Genius all the time
I just got through Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind and was so crushingly disappointed by it. Everything from interviews with the guy to the Onion AV Club calling it the best novel of the year got my expectations high enough that it was kind of inevitable I'd be let down in the end. I was hoping for one of those immersive fantasy yarns that don't come along too often, but when they do, the only thing you want when you finish reading is to revisit it again. Instead I got this overlong, poorly written "meh" of a book that I'm already pretty tired of writing or thinking about.

C



The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

Finished it, didn't enjoy reading it, but I find myself thinking about it quite often. Overall, glad I read it.

Consider the Lobster - David Foster Wallace

A bunch of essays about random things. Not really impressed so far.

Flying Home: and Other Stories - Ralph Ellison

Flying Home is a collection of short stories by one author, Ralph Ellison. There's only one more story I have to read before I'm done with it. So far my favorite story has been the first one, A Party Down at the Square, which is a story told from the perspective of a young white man going to see the murder, by fire, of a black man at the town's square. It's very visual and filled with insane dialogue. Highly recommended.
__________________
MOVIE TITLE JUMBLE
New jumble is two words: balesdaewrd
Previous jumble goes to, Mrs. Darcy! (gdknmoifoaneevh - Kingdom of Heaven)
The individual words are jumbled then the spaces are removed. PM the answer to me. First one with the answer wins.



The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

Finished it, didn't enjoy reading it, but I find myself thinking about it quite often. Overall, glad I read it.
I had to read that for summer work Freshman year, nearly died. I ought to try Hemingway again.

As far as Ulysses I probably couldn't read it. I've tried reading The Portrait of a Young Man as an Artist and it was so tedious.
I love that book. I haven't read "Ulysses", but I've read most of '"Dubliners" (my favorite being 'Araby'). You have to be pretty alert though.

I am reading/attempting to read a few.

"Essays of E.B White" came in the mail last Saturday. I've read a few already, and I love his writing.

I need, need to finish Norman Podhoretz's "World War IV" before school starts up again. One of my professor's reviewed it, and I would love to be able to talk about it with somebody.

And Goethe's "Faust" is staring me down as we speak on top of "Joe Gould's Secret" by Joseph Mitchell.

Last week I read most of "Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, to Churchill and De Gaulle" by Paul Johnson. I haven't enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed "Creators: From Chaucer and Durer, to Picasso and Disney", but I also haven't read the Lincoln chapter yet. The chapter on Wittgenstein was particularly useful for me though ('Cerebal Heroism: Ludwig Wittgenstein'), as I am taking a class this term that relies primarily on his work.
__________________
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
T.S Eliot, "Preludes"



Aye boy don't spit in my drink!


I'm a huge Gaiman fan and the only reason I haven't finished this amazing series is because I'm one poor bastard. I'm in the middle of "World's End" right now and it's great great so far.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
This could be B.S., but I seem to recall reading The Old Man and the Sea in one day and crying.
__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page



mark f, you might enjoy The Sun Also Rises if you like the old man and the sea..its also a hemingway creation.
__________________
Δύο άτομα. Μια μάχη. Κανένας συμβιβασμός.



Chicks dig Lord of the Rings, Randal
Reading Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman.

Great Book! I love Klosterman's writing.

Summerland by Michael Chabon
__________________
"I know, honey. Look at the map. We go your way, that's about four inches. We go my way, it's an inch and a half. You wanna pay for the extra gas?"



Finished two more plays by Wallace Shawn: Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Fever. They were decent but I'm glad to get that volume of four of his plays over with. Aunt Dan and Lemon was my favorite and The Fever was my least favorite.

I also read Adrian Tomine's new graphic novel about a sullen, caustic group of Asian-Americans: Shortcomings. Tomine seems really deliberately against giving his characters any false sense of closure or progress. I think that's his goal because he starts out with a few panels that are in stark contrast to the rest of the story: the end of a movie at a film festival, with the narrator wrapping the story in a cozy little life lesson using a fortune-cookie metaphor. I guess that's kind of an obvious tactic. It was a decent book but probably not worth the $20 cover-price. Not to me anyway.