ThunderPeel2001

Books, books, books...

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Mmmm, bigot is apparently a false friend in French.

I meant to describe fables whose moral call to strong religious motifs; motifs which seem to be there because the author is expected to end on a religious note, rather than because the story requires it.

(i.e. The Selfish Giant or The Young King)

Ah! That's kind of how I felt about Dorian Grey...

Yes, he got his comeuppance, but it felt totally forced

. (I still would love to understand what's supposedly so good about that book. Yes, it's filled with brash witticisms that appear true if you refuse to analyse them, but aside from that...? Anyways, I digress.)

Speaking of classics: Has anyone actually read Moby Dick? I've been struggling with it for months! It feels like pushing a boulder uphill. There's been amusing moments, yes, but Ahab has only just appeared and I'm 157 pages in. Another friend of mine is having a similar experience. Any thoughts? (It's not totally unpleasant, it's just hard to remain gripped.)

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Moby Dick. . .man. Don't get me wrong, I really love that kind of literature (Tolstoy, for instance, Jack London for a lesser example) but. . .Moby Dick is oppressively, needlessly long. And wordy. And prosaic (in the dull sense.) You can finish it if you really feel the want/need to, but it's not anything that you're missing. Chances are you already completely know every reference that will ever be made to Moby Dick.

Though. . .there are some fantastic quotes, a la First Contact.

(Yet I really enjoy Tolstoy, speaking of oppressively long. Odd.)

Edited by Orvidos

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You know what book's a bunch of hot air? Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer; it isn't anything but storytelling gimmicks and kitsch.

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Speaking of classics: Has anyone actually read Moby Dick? I've been struggling with it for months! It feels like pushing a boulder uphill. There's been amusing moments, yes, but Ahab has only just appeared and I'm 157 pages in. Another friend of mine is having a similar experience. Any thoughts? (It's not totally unpleasant, it's just hard to remain gripped.)

Weird I posted about that same feeling a couple of pages ago:

I didn't count Moby Dick in there, even though I've read it halfway through twice so that I could read a good seafaring tale and understand all the references, but both times I gave up at the part where the narrative just completely halts and pages and pages of information become devoted to the anatomy of a ship and the biology and habits different types of whales. It just came off as a spectacularly bad idea for Melville to structure his novel like that. Maybe I'll try again someday, as I'm almost sure it gets really good once it gets past that. It's probably doubtful the narrative breaks again like that in the book as well.

Yeah, so I may struggle with the novel again one day, but I don't know maybe not.

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I'm a fan of both Dorian Gray and Moby Dick.

Moby Dick was to me a wonderful experience, because I had such fun with the story in the miniseries with Patrick Stewart. Then when I read the book I felt rewarded by the extreme breadth of topics and styles of writing. It was one of the most difficult books I read (but not more difficult than Thus Spake Zarathustra or Origin of Species (I had such a hard time getting through that one, I thought it was so dry)), but well worth it. Then after that I felt compelled to adapt Moby Dick in my webcomic Captain August, which was megalomaniacal and fun.

Dorian Grey -I'm sure I said this in this very topic earlier- felt so devious and wicked when I first read it, I couldn't put it down. It felt like I was delving into a tome of twisted morality that tickled me in very strong ways. That alone made the book special to me, but I can easily see that it wouldn't if you've already had a lot of those insights on morality in other places. I can't really judge.

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I didn't count Moby Dick in there, even though I've read it halfway through twice so that I could read a good seafaring tale and understand all the references, but both times I gave up at the part where the narrative just completely halts and pages and pages of information become devoted to the anatomy of a ship and the biology and habits different types of whales. It just came off as a spectacularly bad idea for Melville to structure his novel like that. Maybe I'll try again someday, as I'm almost sure it gets really good once it gets past that. It's probably doubtful the narrative breaks again like that in the book as well.

Must have missed this. It's funny because I think I've hit the exact point you're talking about: A chapter called Cetology. (Which is apparently followed by ones called "The Masthead", "The Forecastle", "The Captain's Table", etc.)

Rodi, does Moby Dick, after laying down all this foundation, ever pick up the pace and become more gripping?

Dorian Grey -I'm sure I said this in this very topic earlier- felt so devious and wicked when I first read it, I couldn't put it down. It felt like I was delving into a tome of twisted morality that tickled me in very strong ways. That alone made the book special to me, but I can easily see that it wouldn't if you've already had a lot of those insights on morality in other places. I can't really judge.

I think that explains what I've been missing perfectly. Maybe I was feeling especially puritanical when I read it, but I really didn't like the message it was giving me. I felt it was using wit to try and justify and morally corrupt existence... It just kind of irked me. Maybe if I read it with a more devilish hat on I'd appreciate it more.

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It's been too long since I read Moby Dick (or Dorian Gray) for me to say anything about it other than generalities. You probably know how the story will unfold, and that's exactly what happens at its own laborious pace. The cetology-chapters are tough, but if you're really not enjoying it you can just put it down and read a book you like better. For me, I love the maritime story, so explanations on how whaling is done exactly are icing on the cake for me. At times hard to digest icing, but it still fits. I think it does pick up the pace eventually. Once the characters are set up there's some interesting stuff going on between Ahab and Starbuck.

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Ah! That's kind of how I felt about Dorian Grey...

Yes, he got his comeuppance, but it felt totally forced

Well, that's not what I meant either.

Literally, The Selfish Giant finishes likes this :

the giant finally allows a kid to enter his garden and it turns out to be Baby Jesus, who promptly invites him to his garden - Heaven - and the Giant accepts. The End.

.:shifty:

I have troubles accepting that the same author also pen the Birthday of the Infanta.

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Though. . .there are some fantastic quotes, a la First Contact.

The line must be drawn HERE! This far, no further!

Classic Trek.

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Yo peeps,

have you ever heard of this kind of website: http://www.betterworldbooks.com/

A co-worker of mine actually gave me that link a long time ago, but I forgot it. She actually ordered some books from there so it seems to be reliable and so on.

They seem to be offering free shipping worldwide and be some kind of good doing company by donating money to poor countries and poor children in general to help them learn read and write.

At some point I will order something from there to test, but I got myself a pile of books to go through for the next 30 years so that's going to take some time.

:buyme:

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Speaking of classics: Has anyone actually read Moby Dick? I've been struggling with it for months! It feels like pushing a boulder uphill. There's been amusing moments, yes, but Ahab has only just appeared and I'm 157 pages in. Another friend of mine is having a similar experience. Any thoughts? (It's not totally unpleasant, it's just hard to remain gripped.)

Yeah, I finished it a couple of months ago. It was a challenge! Not the greatest book I've read, but there's a lot of lovely stuff buried in it.

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I felt it was using wit to try and justify and morally corrupt existence...

But that's exactly what it's doing. Or what Dorian is doing. That doesn't mean the author has the same point of view as Dorian.

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But that's exactly what it's doing. Or what Dorian is doing. That doesn't mean the author has the same point of view as Dorian.

Lord Henry was the most corrupted character and, really, everything about that books smacks of "this is the author's voice", because nothing is ever really challenged, it's only frowned upon by the other characters. If anything, that's kind of the point of the book, to take a little dance with the devil. At least, as I've begun to understand it.

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Just finished George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London - the second part is an interesting exploration of the dreariness and boredom that seems to come from not from being poor and starving , but from, on top of that, having no job and needing to be on the move all the time. Because of the emptiness of this existence, there's less opportunity for good prose, but I guess it serves Orwell's point pretty well.

Anyway, apparently Orwell played a bit with the fact during his Paris escapade and his travel back to England; but overall, 'scholars' seem to agree it's a very honest account of his life at that time.

There's still something that bugs me though : despite being quite humanist toward the tramps and modern slaves in general, Orwell still has very strong racist bias against Sikh, Jews, Greeks and the book end with a very shallow explanation of why the ratio of tramp woman is low.

I'm pretty sure his positions were very progressive at the time, but it's still weird to see a full chapter dedicated to humanizing beggars followed by a small rant about yet aanother Jew pawn shopper not giving enough money for his clothes. That being said, I should probably check the historical background of the period, that's give me a better perspective.

Edited by vimes

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Ive started reading the Robert Jordan series "The wheel of time", 1m only 243 pages in the first book and DAMN its good.......but i heard from a friend that Robert Jordan died without completing the series and i was wondering of it is worth going through if its just gonna stop suddenly......

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The last three books are being completed from Robert Jordan's notes by Brandon Sanderson. There's one more book to go.

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I almost enjoy the Brandon Sanderson WoT books more. :getmecoat

Still an excellent series, however.

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I've always wanted to try it, but the huge pit of despair in the middle of the series has been a turn-off for me. I bought the first book a million years ago, though, so maybe I'll try the series at some point in the future.

I'm reading A Clash of Kings. I have to hand it to GRRM: the man knows how to spin a good yarn. You turn a page wanting - needing - to know what happens to those guys, only to discover the chapter's end and it's time to switch to another POV. I end-up thinking that no-one cares about this character until the same thing happens again. Each sub-plot is more interesting than the next. I'm around halfway in. Sshhh. No spoilers. :)

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Today I read both Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that was a slog. Still, I think reading it all in one go is actually pretty much the only way to enjoy Wuthering Heights - the second half is mostly inter-family political stuff, but if you're still engrossed from the first half, then it's pretty affecting.

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Who suggested MacTeague? I read that. It was interesting, I suppose, but what makes it good enough to recommend?

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Who suggested MacTeague? I read that. It was interesting, I suppose, but what makes it good enough to recommend?

The main character and his relationship with his wife. I read McTeague five years ago, and the thing that still sticks with me is all the greed. It's something I notice in people every day, and the book captured it well.

Looking at it now, there do seem to be some stereotypes I should have warned against, but really, apart from that, I do think it's one of the unsung gems of 20th Century literature.

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I think I most enjoyed the fact that it had a stupid main character. That's pretty rare.

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Today I read both Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that was a slog. Still, I think reading it all in one go is actually pretty much the only way to enjoy Wuthering Heights - the second half is mostly inter-family political stuff, but if you're still engrossed from the first half, then it's pretty affecting.

Was Frankenstein a part of the slog? I remember it being fairly easy to read.

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Was Frankenstein a part of the slog? I remember it being fairly easy to read.

It is, but it's tough to get through all in one go.

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