This is a continuation of the “What Book Are You Reading? - Part V”, which can be found here.
yes, i’m on to Vonne- Von-
…i’m on to finding a book of Kurt’s.
and, yeah, people tend to mistake things. i suppose it’s quite trivial for a person leading a boring life in a boring town (oh my, now i have Less than Jake playing in my head) to have Kerouac change their lives. and people also tend to think what changed their lives ought to change everyone’s lives, and then world literature. of course, it’s all much easier when you don’t know much about world literature, but since that was perhaps the case with Kerouac himself, who only read absolute classics from European literature nicely translated into french, —and he was in a literature college!— i can only imagine what are the chances a person leading boring life in boring town (♪ and the same old crowd, woa-oh! ♫) knows how much of an impact Jack must’ve had on world literature.
while i’m recommending things, buy Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography. i’m not going to say read it because, well, that book seems to have some weird magnetic field thing going on around it. it’s a freaking Virginia Woolf. you look at it, there’s this whole “ooh” going on around it, so you open it up, flick some pages and skim it. then you put it aside. then you read a book. when you go put it on your shelf, there’s Orlando, nicely standing out with its red binding calling to you, “ooh”. so you get it. you start it. boring! what language was that woman speaking in, at any rate? this ain’t English! so you drop it and go make some biscuits …but you come back running and start reading again because you fear that book will eat you at night if you don’t keep reading it. and then, whoa. and it’s like that. that book is a tremendous piece of wow.
i always wanted to read Zen & Motorcycle, but it’s not much available in Brazil i’m afraid. perhaps i’ll buy a penguin edition while i’m in London …then again, i’ll probably spend my London money with pubs. we’ll see.
Virginia Woolf is a writer i’ve steered clear from for the most part. Not because of her views, just because i can’t SEE her being very interesting. I cannot recall the title, but i believe a short story by her is about Shakespeare’s supposed twin sister who was equally good but was never recognized because she was a women.
I read that and thought “how is that interesting?”
It wasn’t, to me. I didn’t MIND the story but it seemed to me like basically a fanfiction of… history.
also my friend was outraged by it. He thought it was the dumbest idea for a plot ever
basically the fountainhead set 100-200 years back with a girl lead. heh.
with the difference that Joyce is just plain boring. believe me. i read both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. the former was just rather interesting because i was studying the Odyssey for Classics I, so it kind of made sense & all. Finnegans Wake is boring and confusing and that’s it. oh, and it doesn’t make any sense. whatsoever. all in all, neither is any worth reading. i don’t recommend unless you’re a liberal arts major.
Orlando is different. it’s fantastic. it’s great. it’s gorgeous. read it. read it, read it, read it. it’s so mindblowing. ah, Woolf; that woman was such a freak genious.
is that what you’d like to think? ;p
oh? really, that sounds more like Jane Austen. but yeah, english speaking female modernists tend to be awfully obsessed about feminism in the most tetrical way. i wish people read more of brazilian modernism, or hell, even argentinian modernism, our female modernists weren’t annoying. they just stood up for their lives, there was no need to write frustrations & accusations in their literature.
well descriptions of stories by Borges, Cortázar or, hell, that guy who wrote Fight Club tend to all be rather uninteresting, and still the stories are great. Clarice Lispector, there’s another writer with some pretty weird plots. “it’s the story of a family who buys a chicken for sunday meal, and then the chicken runs away and they chase it”. and it’s one of the finest stories i’ve read. another one: “a woman who walks around in the zoo and kind of falls in love with a buffalo”. that one gets in my top 10 short stories list.
but yeah, Woolf might’ve written some boring stuff every once in a while. she was too much of a weirdo, a bit.
…like the late Harry Potter books look like cheap Harry Potter fan fiction!
sigh I’ve wanted to read that so bad, but my public library is lame and doesn’t have it. (It also doesn’t have the books I really really want to read, like Brave New World and other books you’d think a library would have…)
Massive cutbacks. It is a public library after all. They rely totally on volunteers and very few employees (who have worked there, for the most part, for some 12+ years, as long as I’ve lived in this city). They aren’t even open on Fridays, a recent change due to “lack of interest,” and the high cost of leaving the lights on when no one’s there.
The western, mystery, and sci-fi sections combined don’t even fill the whole side of a shelf.
The computers haven’t been updated for about 10 years now.
There are only about 3 copies of Animal Farm in the county, and two of 1984. I know we’re a small county, but there are 5 branches!
It’s a shame. I would donate if I had money. (And the library is perfect for broke people like me.)
So for the first time in over a year, I’ve picked up a book and started reading tonight! Not just any book, it was Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix. I stopped reading the series after the Goblet of Fire, but now I want to take it back up.
I forgot how much of an escape it is to read a good book.
lots of travel guides, and On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems by Kurt Gödel. liberal arts student reads math on his holidays.
I’m reading The Stand by Stephen King it’s supposed to be one of his best books and so far it’s very good, but i’m not sure if any book can contend with the Final Dark Tower book in my Heart . I’m also reading Small Gods by Terry Pratchett so far it’s good too. Unfortunately I got to bed so late these days tht I takes me forever to go through a book.
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. The hero of the book is a unique individual and level of integrity he has in his pursuit of excellence in his field is quite motivating. What I really like about her books is she incorporates philosophy into her stories, it makes for not just an entertaining novel, but a thought provoking one as well.
Alright, been a while since I posted in here. Finished a lot of books since I last posted, but I’ll stick to what I’ve finished recently.
I just finished the Narnia series (excluding The Magicians Nephew), which I thought was really good. I thought the parallels in it of Christianity and Islam were rather interesting. I looked that up on wikipedia, and of course there’s charges of “racism” about Lewis, which I thought was pretty typical of the politically correct
Just getting to work on a bunch of others. I’m continuing reading the Day of the Jackal, which is challenging but very well written. I’m trying to get into the Count of Monte Cristo, but finding it a little hard to get into. It’s bloody long as well, so that isn’t helping the motivation.
Oh… I tried to read The Fountainhead before… I enjoyed Anthem for the same reasons as you enjoy The Fountainhead, but it’s such an intimidating book. I think I got to chapter 4. I mean to pick it up again someday, as I own it.
Ah yes, Anthem was the first of her books I read, it was definitely a great book, short but sweet. While The Fountainhead is a bit more intimidating, once you just pick it up you’ll start reading. I read about 337 pages in 2 days about 10 days ago, just picked it up again today and finished it off and thought what took me so long!
. I’m also reading Small Gods by Terry Pratchett so far it’s good too. Unfortunately I got to bed so late these days tht I takes me forever to go through a book.
I mean to pick it up again someday, as I own it.
goood . altough the previous parts have been terribly abridged so ill read them again later …