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Read any good books lately?

Middle-aged_Ball_Coach said:
Yes, I like your definition, but Salinger would be too early for the label. To properly loathe the Deconstructionists, you have to read someone French, snobbish, and with an unnecessarily complicated syntax and vocabulary that is designed to obscure the fact that their ideas are basically the same as the pot-smoking ravings of spoiled anti-establishment teens who are coming up with reasons for why they're not more popular with the ladies. Like a shipment of broken cuckoo clocks, they're occasionally correct, usually by accident, but always obnoxious and a shining example of the impractical. Derridas is the most famous, but pick a random page with Amazon previews of him or Roland Barthe and see what you think. If you read someone else quoting them, you'll be skipping the cacophony of the cuckoos to see examples of those times when they were accidentally right, but it's more interesting to jump into the middle of their babblings to see how unnecessarily difficult they make it.
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I was aware of Derridas, but I can honestly say I've not read anything from him though I know he's an inspiration for a lot of writers. I like the Amazon previews idea. It sounds like it will educate me without forcing me to want to swallow battery acid.
 

Mack The Shark said:
I was aware of Derridas, but I can honestly say I've not read anything from him though I know he's an inspiration for a lot of writers. I like the Amazon previews idea. It sounds like it will educate me without forcing me to want to swallow battery acid.
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You're not missing much. He's a shining example of the triumph of "clever" over "wise."
 
But what's the point? Writing poetry, for example, the poet usually is using mutiple meanings of words, phrases, ideas, etc. and often in novel ways to make simultaneous different points.

Novels often have such use of words, phrases images etc. particularly mystery novels, spy noveles, and even romance novels. I've always thought those that thought otherwise didn't write (and to an extent I excuse from that declarative writers, such as lawyers, historians, scientists, etc., although each of these occasionally steps over the line)

Now some modern "serious" music deconstructs music in a way that is distrurbing to most ears. You have to listen to a lot of it to find it at all enjoyable. and what do we call the Pollacks of the world, or the Picassos.

So I don't get his point or how it made any difference to the good creative artists. Munch didn't need him to teach him how to think of and then paint Scream did he.
 



Mack The Shark said:
The Catcher In The Rye is the worst book ever written. I agree with you on Jane Eyre though.
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Have you ever read Cannery Row by Steinbeck? I think I have finished reading every book I have ever started with the exception of Moby Dick and Cannery Row. Cannery Row was so bad and actually made me angry reading such drivel that about halfway through the book I got up and slam dunked it HARD into the trash bin while uttering a few choice words.
 
Taste is different for different people. I really liked Gravity's Rainbow, but found that most of my friends could not finish it, and though the Pulitzer literature committee recommended it for a Pulitzer, the board chose to not have a selection rather than give it to Pynchon.. I found Moby Dick boring. I liked Cannery Row and Catcher in the Rye. I can't stand any of the victorian romances other than Jane Eyre, but really liked that and the Lady in White. One of my favorites is Two Years Before the Mast, but I hardly meet anyone any more that has read it, or the other great tale of sea adventure, Sailing Alone Around the World. I have read large segments of the Diary of Samuel Pepys, but it seems as though no one else has.,

I think I have read all of Toslstoy and Dostoevsky, but many of my friends are put off simply by the names in the novels. I thought the Sorrows of Young Werther and Manon Lascot were wonderful, as was The cloister and the Hearth, but no one reads those anymore either. I like everything of many, many latin American writers, but some people simply can't follow what is happening in them.

So De Gustibus non disputandum est, I say.
 
EastOfEden said:
Taste is different for different people. I really liked Gravity's Rainbow, but found that most of my friends could not finish it, and though the Pulitzer literature committee recommended it for a Pulitzer, the board chose to not have a selection rather than give it to Pynchon.. I found Moby Dick boring. I liked Cannery Row and Catcher in the Rye. I can't stand any of the victorian romances other than Jane Eyre, but really liked that and the Lady in White. One of my favorites is Two Years Before the Mast, but I hardly meet anyone any more that has read it, or the other great tale of sea adventure, Sailing Alone Around the World. I have read large segments of the Diary of Samuel Pepys, but it seems as though no one else has.,

I think I have read all of Toslstoy and Dostoevsky, but many of my friends are put off simply by the names in the novels. I thought the Sorrows of Young Werther and Manon Lascot were wonderful, as was The cloister and the Hearth, but no one reads those anymore either. I like everything of many, many latin American writers, but some people simply can't follow what is happening in them.

So De Gustibus non disputandum est, I say.
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Tolstoy, especially, but also Dostoyevsky, will be better with a Kindle version that has links for the names. Even a simple explanation in the introduction/preface of how Russians use patronymic names when addressing one another goes a long way. Most authors from the 1800s and earlier (as well as a few like Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe from the 1900s) would be well served if their texts would be modernized for syntax and vocabulary. There will be many who think that it's something close to blasphemous, but if a story is worth reading, yet isn't being read because of syntax and vocabulary, it's not going to improve as we get further in time from those authors. If it's the style of writing of the author that has made the book a classic, people will still read the originals for that reason. Some would not be interested without that first introduction. If the story can't stand on its own, it was never much of a story. This is also why I'm grateful that the BBC and others make period piece movies and series that are authentic to the text because the story comes through, and it isn't a 1,000 page investment in time.

You're not the only one with copies of Pepys or Dana, but I have run out of time to read them because ... children. Same for Dante, Cervantes, et al. I rarely read contemporary literature because so much fails the test of time that I purposefully use time to winnow out the fads and fluff.

Speaking of Dana and Melville, have you read In the Heart of the Sea?
 
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No. Tell me about that book

Inciddentally, I have some pride in having a first editionof the Dana book. It is the plainest looking book you ever will enouconter except foir a couple of first ediitions I have of Prufrock and Wasteland. Plain lookin nothing type books.
 




EastOfEden said:
No. Tell me about that book

Inciddentally, I have some pride in having a first editionof the Dana book. It is the plainest looking book you ever will enouconter except foir a couple of first ediitions I have of Prufrock and Wasteland. Plain lookin nothing type books.
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It's a 2002 historical account of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a wounded whale, and the survival of its crew at sea in open boats afterwards. It was the inspiration for Melville's Moby Dick, as that is believed to be the first time that a whale ever attacked the ship that was hunting it, and Melville heard all about it as he was going to sea at the time that the survivors were coming home.

If you've read anything else by Nathaniel Philbrick, he has a smooth writing style that gets out of the way of his stories. I like him a lot. Here's the Amazon link to the book, which is available on Kindle:


Come to think of it, I own it on Kindle, so if you want to borrow mine, let me know, and I can send it to you.
 
EastOfEden said:
middle age - I read the Heart of the Sea today. It is a very good read, and presents a good feel for the community of Nantucket whalers. I very much enjoyed it I'm not sure how I got this old and never had read it before.
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I'm glad you liked it. He's a good author. If you look over his other books, if any strike you as interesting, you'll probably like it.
 



I am now 3/4 of the way through the pulitzer prize winning biography of Frederick Douglas. It's massive and has a major fault of mainly being a serises of quotations from various of the Douglas-authored books. Not much original in the 750 page book, so I would not recommend it. If you know nothing about Douglass, then I guess it'd worth the effort.

I am not usually guided by the selections of the Pulitzer group since they gave no prize for literature in the year that the panel of authors and critics voted unanimously for them to give it to Pynchon for Gravity's Rainbow. I've always th.ought that book was one of the most fascinating reads I have experienced. Fie on them!
 
I just picked up a copy of American Sniper by Chris Kyle, I am curious if any of you have read it, and is it worth my time to trudge through it? All I've read is the Authour's Note, and he does make some disclaimers about certain facts in the name of national security. Anybody have any thoughts about the book itself?
 

HUSKER HOT SAUCE said:
I just picked up a copy of American Sniper by Chris Kyle, I am curious if any of you have read it, and is it worth my time to trudge through it? All I've read is the Authour's Note, and he does make some disclaimers about certain facts in the name of national security. Anybody have any thoughts about the book itself?
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I think its rectangle-shaped, and full of pages.
 
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