The Forsytes are great. I really love them.
I don't know if all editions have a family tree as a frontispiece, but mine does, and, while it comes in handy initially, it also reveals some plot turns that I would rather not have known about in advance. It reminds me a little of when I read War and Peace: years before I read it, I had happened upon just the shortest snippet of the movie version, with Audrey Hepburn, and a major plot element had been revealed in just the seconds I saw. I was flipping channels, or it was in a documentary or something. I had forgotten it entirely for years, but then when I got into the book and became attached to the characters whose futures I had inadvertently learned about years before, I had this eerie deja-vu feeling about them. It actually made the experience all the more poignant. Kinda made me love them more because I knew something they didn't know. Sniff. I can imagine having had an eerie forefeeling with Brokeback Mountain, but in fact I didn't.
Oooh, oooh, Del, that is a killer list. I can tell we have a similar taste.
I was just re-reading The Perfect Storm last night as I was going to bed. I'm staying at my aunt and uncle's cottage up on Lake Huron while I'm studying for my exams, and the wind was blowing furiously off Georgian Bay, hitting the house like a sledgehammer.:o
The Perfect Storm is just so wonderfully atmospheric - even without the real-life sound effects, it was comforting to be inside and under the duvet while reading about the wild world outside.
I definitely want to read Issac's Storm now.
Agreed, The Coming Plague is an excellent read. If I'd been inclined towards the sciences, I've always had fantasies about being an epidemiologist. You know, tracking viruses, following the trail.
Only, I wouldn't look very sexy in one of those biohazard suits. The tailoring is all wrong for me.
Did you read Ackroyd's London before you went? How long were you there for, anyway?
Speaking of Into Thin Air, have you ever read any of Joe Simpson's books? He's a Brit, and a hell of a mountaineer, and writes some truly magical, fascinating stuff, like Into the Void and This Game of Ghosts. Highly, highly recommended.
Wasn't Smilla's Sense of Snow fabulous? In the U.K., it was sold as Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, which is less alliterative, and much more twee. I prefer the American title. Hey, did you ever see the movie of it? It was a bit so-so, but I loved Julia Ormond as Smilla. It's such a shame she gave up acting in big movies. I thought she was starkly, uncomprimisingly talented. Also, she had the most beautiful nose I've ever seen.
I think The Coming Plague mentioned one scientist whose courage failed him on the hunt for Ebola/Marburg and he got off the plane before it even left the States.
Speaking of London,
I was in London for an academic year, experiencing depression. The second apartment I lived in -- after I moved from a nicer one to save money -- was truly squalid: no heat; little furniture; fleas; a human poo right in front of the door downstairs one day. But only just that once. And of course I'm not sure it was a human poo. But I'm kinda sure.
I was in London for an academic year, experiencing depression. The second apartment I lived in -- after I moved from a nicer one to save money -- was truly squalid: no heat; little furniture; fleas; a human poo right in front of the door downstairs one day. But only just that once. And of course I'm not sure it was a human poo. But I'm kinda sure.
The part about books: the only thing I liked about this apartment was that in the kitchen there was a cupboard crammed with books. The previous tenant had left them. During the winter I got the flu -- of course I got the flu. So for a week I was so feverish and achy and miserable that I skipped all my classes and didn't leave the house, but I read and read of the books of the magic cupboard, huddled by the space heater in the kitchen.
1984 (Orwell)
A Thousand Acres (Smiley)
Moo (Smiley)
Breathing Lessons (Tyler)
A Patchwork Planet (Tyler)
The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year, The Handmaid's Tale, West with the Night and Out of Africa, Rabbit, Run, The Corner, Wicked Women, Horse Heaven.
Moo is such a delight.
1984 wasn't such a good book for me to read then. I was totally creeped out by scary futuristic London and how it didn't seem all that different from the London I was in.
Sebastian Junger was on the Colbert Report the other night and he is HOT. Movie star hot.
Del: (Or Ms Rain or Dela, or Lluvypie, or whatever. I haven't yet found a diminutive that feels right for you. What should I go with? Can you think of one that you like?)
Well, when you move to London, you know where my house is. Cross the Abbey road crosswalk so you're facing the studio, and turn left. Keep walking for about thirty seconds, and you'll be there. Number 24. Watch out for the cat, she bites.
I forgot to write before about how much I loved Robin Lane Fox's book on Alexander. It makes me laugh because every weekend in the Financial Times in the U.K., he has a column on.......gardening. It's so great. This erudite, tweed-wearing old fellow happily nattering on about aphids and bindweed, and debating the merits of Rosa Rugosa and Rosa Rugosa Alba. Long live the English eccentric.
You can call me whatever you like. [blushes] I have to admit I prefer calling you Chan despite knowing your real name because it’s easy for me to remember. In the world of slash fanfiction writing, the word ‘chan’ refers to the type of story where an adult has sex with an underage person.
One landmark in my pictures of that area show a sign that says ‘Abbey House’. What is that and is that close to your place?
I read Clancy's Hunt for Red October and Sum of All Fears before Clancy got egomaniacal and ruined his Jack Ryan character.
Thanks for all these wonderful recommendations. I'm printing out this thread for my next trip to the bookstore!
Also, any of the books of Alexander McCall Smith, particularly those set in Botswana, are excellent to listen to.
So wait, you grew up in St. John's Wood? I can just hear the Jubilee line lady saying it in her tight-ass little voice. The next stop is St. John's Wood! This train terminates at: Stanmore.
One landmark in my pictures of that area show a sign that says ‘Abbey House’. What is that and is that close to your place?
Yes, isn't that the sensationally ugly block of flats on the corner? I seem to think it's a blue sign, right? Go past that and hang a right. There's a little street called Garden Rd. that you'd never notice if you weren't looking for it. A few steps down there, you'll find a quiet, leafy little enclave away from the business of Abbey Rd., called Hamilton Gardens. Ours is the one with the crimson door. Knock, and come right in.
I ain't religious, but I am evangelical about the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books. You can't tell me that Mma. Ramotswe doesn't exist. Of course she does! To anyone who hasn't read them, run, don't walk to the nearest shop and get the first in the series, the above mentioned Number One Ladies Detective Agency. Your world will immediately become a cheerier, better place. You will also develop an unhealthy addiction to redbush tea, but I can't be held responsible for that.
I just squealed with appreciate laughter when I read this:
So wait, you grew up in St. John's Wood? I can just hear the Jubilee line lady saying it in her tight-ass little voice. The next stop is St. John's Wood! This train terminates at: Stanmore.
You've got it exactly! Word perfect! I'm so impressed. How long ago were you there? If it was in the last six years, then that enormous Sainsbury's you shopped at is our local supermarket/eyesore. Before then, there was a seriously crummy little Sainsbury's I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. This is so funny. I like to think of you patrolling the bread aisle. I feel like we're connected through so many things, supermarkets being least among them.
ChantieQuoteI ain't religious, but I am evangelical about the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books. You can't tell me that Mma. Ramotswe doesn't exist. Of course she does! To anyone who hasn't read them, run, don't walk to the nearest shop and get the first in the series, the above mentioned Number One Ladies Detective Agency. Your world will immediately become a cheerier, better place. You will also develop an unhealthy addiction to redbush tea, but I can't be held responsible for that.
I read the first one on my way home from London. Sad to say, I was very disappointed. I had saved it specifically to read on the plane so the atmosphere of the book could take me away. While it was very people-oriented and a lovely set of new morality tales, the atmosphere I was looking for to immerse myself in was lacking. :(
ChantieQuoteI ain't religious, but I am evangelical about the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books. You can't tell me that Mma. Ramotswe doesn't exist. Of course she does! To anyone who hasn't read them, run, don't walk to the nearest shop and get the first in the series, the above mentioned Number One Ladies Detective Agency. Your world will immediately become a cheerier, better place. You will also develop an unhealthy addiction to redbush tea, but I can't be held responsible for that.
I read the first one on my way home from London. Sad to say, I was very disappointed. I had saved it specifically to read on the plane so the atmosphere of the book could take me away. While it was very people-oriented and a lovely set of new morality tales, the atmosphere I was looking for to immerse myself in was lacking. :(
Well that's it. We can't be friends. No, look, I'm sorry, but it's just not on. There are some lines I cannot cross. Delalluvia! You're a woman of such taste! How can you say such things? Where is your heart? I'm going off to pout in the corner now, and when I get back, you'd better have changed your mind, or our love affair is over. And that would be sad, indeed.
:D
I just noticed this thread for the first time and skimming through it I noticed that several of you mentioned liking The Perfect Storm . When I read it several years ago I became really interested in what it was like day-to-day on a sword boat, not realizing at the time that Linda Greenlaw had written such a book. If you remember, Linda is the captain of the Hannah Boden, the sister ship to the Andrea Gail.
I have since read The Lobster Chronicles, which tells of life at home on Isle au Haut, Maine, where she returned to learn lobstering after she tired of the sword boats, and All Fishermen Are Liars, which was fun to read but wasn't a book that I kept when I was finished with it. She has a wonderful way with words and a great, dry sense of humor.
I seem to have a somewhat different taste in books than most of you, but if you liked the Perfect Storm I think that you would also enjoy The Hungry Ocean, at least.
The Charioteer by Mary Renault (published in the 1950's).
A memorable book, one of the handful about gay men from the first half of the twentieth century, and one of the ones most worth reading.
Many people who have read her later historical novels of Greece must pick this up and assume from the title that it's going to be another in the series. In fact, it's her last novel of contemporary British life before she got impatient with having to write about people living under such heavy social restraints, and switched to a different style and a different period, when she believed gay men at least were more accepted.
Besides being extraordinarily convincing as a story and a presentation of the characters, it's unusual among earlier gay novels in not being primarily about homophobia. The main characters do have to hide parts of their lives, but they don't feel they have to marry and they are not the victims of violence, nor do any come to a bad end.
While much in the historical novels comes from her scholarship, this novel comes from her direct knowledge of the society she lived in, with her experiences as an army nurse during the war giving verisimilitude to all the parts in the hospital. It's as much a period piece (giving an intense sense of wartime life) as her later novels.
It's also unusual in involving a male triangle of sorts and a choice, but without a Mr Wrong and a Mr Right.
Some American readers will find parts of certain chapters difficult, like the one telling of Laurie's time at a private school, simply from our not being totally familiar with the cultural expectations which are so obliquely alluded to. Rereading some chapters afterwards gave me more confidence that I was picking up the meaning she intended, here and there. But you can have some doubts and questions and still be swept along. Eventually context explained a lot of things. And a lot of people with quick intuitions will have no trouble at all.
Peter Pan makes his first appearance in this book, which was later revised and shortened as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, my next read.I once, as a child, owned a facsimile edition of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham, and loved it to itsy bitsy pieces. I cherished this incarnation of Peter even more than in the more famous stage variation; the book captured a child's fancy for seeing the magical and fantastic in the midst of our everyday world. Kensington Gardens became a hoped-for pilgrimage site for me, a journey which I have yet to commence. Your mention of the book brought back a swell of fond memories; I look forward to your thoughts on it as you choose to share them.
I will look up Wives and Daughters, Andrew, as soon as I'm done with The Time Traveler's Wife. It's very entertaining (the main character is the time traveler, a guy, LOL)
Here's some info on it:
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Wife-Audrey-Niffenegger/dp/015602943X
I guess this was the first novel of Audrey Niffenegger, who next wrote The Secret Life of Bees. The film rights were bought up by Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. I wonder who owns them now? The film is slated to come out in 2008.
Does anyone recommend a particular edition of Walt Whitman's poetry?
Here's Jeff Wrangler in front of the Robert Gould Shaw monument in Boston near Boston Common. It's from when he was here for the Boston Brokies get together in September.
(http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c112/youbetjack/IMG_0036.jpg)
Whenever I find a really good book, I usually try to read it on more than one level. First of all, I enjoy the story for what it is: a romance, an action yarn, a coming-of-age piece, or whatever. Secondly, I make note of the historical and geographic aspects of the book and what it tells me about time and place. Next, I pay attention to the symbols introduced by the author and what they mean. Finally, I read the story for its theme or meaning, and try to understand what the story and those similar to it are saying about the human condition. This last is called the "mythical" or "archtypical" aspect of the story.
Yes, I do that too, della. For instance, today I read a little of The Last of the Mohicans, and decided I didn't want to read it. Ditto with The Book of Ruth. But then I picked up The Red Badge of Courage, and enjoyed it. And then, I started reading Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, and that was best of all. It's special books like this one, that I start reading on multiple levels.
Here's a Link to The Last of the Mohicans online:
http://www.americanliterature.com/LM/LMINDX.HTML (http://www.americanliterature.com/LM/LMINDX.HTML)
by James Fenimore Cooper
Let me know what you think of it. I had slow going with it. As for contemporary novels that delve into feelings, this is a somewhat difficult area because it is rather out of fashion to expound on feelings and motivations these days. But I would recommend Memoirs of a Geisha, Like Water for Chocolate, The Corrections and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
Speaking of London,
I was in London for an academic year, experiencing depression. The second apartment I lived in -- after I moved from a nicer one to save money -- was truly squalid: no heat; little furniture; fleas; ...the only thing I liked about this apartment was that in the kitchen there was a cupboard crammed with books. The previous tenant had left them. During the winter I got the flu -- of course I got the flu. So for a week I was so feverish and achy and miserable that I skipped all my classes and didn't leave the house, but I read and read of the books of the magic cupboard, huddled by the space heater in the kitchen. I read five books in five days and they were:
1984 (Orwell)
A Thousand Acres (Smiley)
Moo (Smiley)
Breathing Lessons (Tyler)
A Patchwork Planet (Tyler)
Other cupboard books I remember were Couples (Updike) and a dated, sexist nonfiction book about sex... And a book of stories by Katherine Ann Porter which I left on a train. I read so many other books in London, not necessarily cupboard books. The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year, The Handmaid's Tale, West with the Night and Out of Africa, Rabbit, Run, The Corner, Wicked Women, Horse Heaven.
Moo is such a delight. Speaking of Updike, I also recommend In the Beauty of the Lilies.
Someone was asking what ONE book a global person could read to give them an understanding of the US. The one I would choose would be the excellent book with a gay theme, among others, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. The reason is because there are actually at least four Americas: the South, the Midwest, and the two coasts. If you read a book set on one of the coasts, then you don't understand the other three. The South is rapidly becoming just like the other parts of the country, losing its distinction. But the Midwest is the true melting pot of the US, and that is where The Corrections is set. It's about a midwestern family, a chef daughter who is gay, a schoolteacher son, and a mother and father who go on a misguided cruise.
What would be your choice for the one US book the rest of the world should read? How about Canada?
I'm a little late with this but I'm just now reading Moo and loving it! A friend of mine met Jane Smiley and stayed at her house. She has a winning style of writing, pithy insights, and a rapier wit!!
Someone was asking what ONE book a global person could read to give them an understanding of the US. The one I would choose would be the excellent book with a gay theme, among others, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. The reason is because there are actually at least four Americas: the South, the Midwest, and the two coasts. If you read a book set on one of the coasts, then you don't understand the other three. The South is rapidly becoming just like the other parts of the country, losing its distinction. But the Midwest is the true melting pot of the US, and that is where The Corrections is set. It's about a midwestern family, a chef daughter who is gay, a schoolteacher son, and a mother and father who go on a misguided cruise.
What would be your choice for the one US book the rest of the world should read? How about Canada?
A few weeks ago, when BrianR stopped in Boston as part of his big tour, he and Paul and I went to the Boston Public Library to hear Michael Cunningham read from his new novel, By Nightfall. Paul and I got inscribed copies at the end of the reading. I have since read it and actually could not believe how much I came to like it. I had read the first part of A Home at the End of the World (1990); I had not read The Hours (1998). Frankly, the first chapter of By Nightfall even as read by the author was not strongly inclining me to read it, but following an instinct I re-read that chapter myself, persisted with the rest and was rewarded with a story that kept drawing me in more and more. Now that I have finished it, I am at the stage where I am going back to reread different places and think about how concentrated it is, how he makes everything contribute to the whole, how there is a new thought or effect on every page, how involving and plausible and thought-provoking it all is.
The story of A Home at the End of the World was spread over years, and I know from reading about it that The Hours is juxtaposing the lives of three women in successive generations. Cunningham is attempting something new with each novel, and By Nightfall is short, unified, and linear. It takes place in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Greenwich CT over just a few days, with only three central characters. His subject is a kind of experience many middle-aged people go through, though Peter Harris' version of it is very specific to who he is as an individual, and what he is expecting (and not getting) from life. I was at page 50 before I got in tune with the theme and started to see how every part of the novel was connected, how all the symbols drove the story into a single course while being completely ordinary, realistic parts of his life at the same time. In the end, the story was only limited by the realism of the outcome, which is no limitation at all.
This is the kind of story Ang Lee has such a genius for turning into unforgettable films. There are so many projects I wish he would do, darn it! But the book has some remarkable passages which, even if they inspired the director to come up with some amazing visual/aural equivalent, also need to be appreciated just as writing.
Love his name. Is it Säl-jö, or Sälj-ö? :laugh:
Andrew, I will definitely try By Nightfall. Buffy, are you going to be studying Sherlock Holmes in your detective fiction class?Hi Lee, No, nothing by Doyle. Are you a fan?
Yesterday I had lunch with the proprietor of the bookstore who sold me the Sherlock Holmes set of books. When I emailed to invite him out to lunch he responded "Thank you for knocking me up." That's a Holmesian expression that I love! We went to a place about a block from his store called GB Fish and Chips, an authentic Brit place. It was fun, but I was somewhat too intimidated to really get into the Sherlockian discussion.
Cool! Then, do any of these photos ring a bell?(http://www.divshare.com/download/13233089-df8)
(http://www.divshare.com/img/midsize/13233089-df8.jpg)[/url]
(http://www.divshare.com/img/midsize/13233088-4c7.jpg) (http://www.divshare.com/download/13233088-4c7)
Sorry I went awol for a while. Had to kill an exam dead. And now that I've slain the beast, I'm back to reveling in this thread. I love the stories that come out when people talk about their favourite books. Like pieces of music, I guess we all associate certain novels with certain places, or certain times in our lives, and the people who were with us then. We talk about the books we love, and in doing so we are telling about ourselves.
...I ain't religious, but I am evangelical about the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books. You can't tell me that Mma. Ramotswe doesn't exist. Of course she does! To anyone who hasn't read them, run, don't walk to the nearest shop and get the first in the series, the above mentioned Number One Ladies Detective Agency. Your world will immediately become a cheerier, better place. You will also develop an unhealthy addiction to redbush tea, but I can't be held responsible for that.
...Books: to sedately celebrate having demolished my first exam, I am tucking myself up tonight with an old copy of The Sign of Four, a little Sherlock Holmes mystery courtesy of Herr Conan Doyle. I anticipate fog, jangling carriages, ingenious solutions and dastardly villains. Maybe a rabid dog in there somewhere.
Interesting facts: Sherlock Holmes never wore a deer-stalker hat, never smoked a pipe, and certainly never, ever uttered the immortal phrase "Elementary, my dear Watson." Filthy lies. It's all ornamentation by the movies. Like cats, you just can't trust them.
I am listening to a series of lectures given by Robert Thurman for the second time. It is called "Liberation Upon Hearing In the Between." "In the Between" is his way of translating the title of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. THe latter title is wrong, he says, because there are no dead, there is no such thing. It is an immensely interesting and enlightening series of lectures, and I will write some highlights here. I don't know if the lectures exist as a book, but he has written many books on Tibetan Buddhism.
One last thing, Buddhism is not a religion. It is an educational system. THere are no gods to be worshipped in Buddhism, only ordinary people like you or I who have become enlightened.
I've now begun another Wyoming-based novel, Where Rivers Change Direction, by Mark Spragg. It is set at a dude ranch east of Yellowstone and west of Cody, so you can imagine my interest rising, since I've been to a dude ranch there (Goff Creek) three times.