What Are You Reading Now?

[Surfah]

Just finished The Picture of Dorian Gray. Really liked it. Started Great Expectations last night.

First time? Did you never take an English class in HS or college?

[Jeff Lebowski]

First time? Did you never take an English class in HS or college?

[MarkGrace]

First time? Did you never take an English class in HS or college?

Yep, first time.

[BigPiney]

Finally finished Wolf Hall. Never got into her writing style. I almost gave up half way through, but switched to the audiobook. Am now 10% through Bringing up the Bodies.

In the meantime, I read Wild (http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Found-Pac...65701257&sr=8-) I thought, hey I like books about people doing cool things, sounds good. I hated the author. She was so dumb, she deserved to die (I was kind of hoping...). Synopsis: Young woman has mom die, so she has a very early midlife crisis, cheats on her husband with multiple people, starts doing heroin and then decides to hike the Pacific Crest trail. She is woefully unprepared (never backpacked in her entire life) and doesn't even start at the beginning. :Grrr: Don't tell me that you are hiking the PCT and then freaking start 500+ miles from the beginning.

Also I am almost done with book 1 in the Mistborn series. http://www.amazon.com/Mistborn-The-F...dp_kinw_strp_1 I have not read much fantasy, besides the Game of Thrones series, and the Dark Tower series, but I really like this. Brandon Sanderson has a very bright future ahead of him.

[Surfah]

Yep, first time.

Wow. That surprises me. Those are required reading. As a kid I liked that show Beauty and the Beast that had Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman in it. Vincent, the beast, would read Great Expectations and I thought that must be the greatest book ever if this lion-man-beast would read it aloud. So I picked up a copy and read it and thought this book sucks. I read it again later in HS as it was required reading and my opinion was unchanged. Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow couldn't make it any better either.

[BigPiney]

Wow. That surprises me. Those are required reading. As a kid I liked that show Beauty and the Beast that had Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman in it. Vincent, the beast, would read Great Expectations and I thought that must be the greatest book ever if this lion-man-beast would read it aloud. So I picked up a copy and read it and thought this book sucks. I read it again later in HS as it was required reading and my opinion was unchanged. Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow couldn't make it any better either.

Great Expectations is one of my least favorite of Dickens. My favorite of his is David Copperfield. I really like the Pickwick Papers too, more of a way for Dickens to tell some short stories with a bigger story wrapped around it.

[Eddie]

Just finished The Picture of Dorian Gray. Really liked it. Started Great Expectations last night.

I started Dorian Gray once. I just couldn't get into it. Don't know why - I was able to finish Pride and Prejudice.

[MarkGrace]

Wow. That surprises me. Those are required reading. As a kid I liked that show Beauty and the Beast that had Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman in it. Vincent, the beast, would read Great Expectations and I thought that must be the greatest book ever if this lion-man-beast would read it aloud. So I picked up a copy and read it and thought this book sucks. I read it again later in HS as it was required reading and my opinion was unchanged. Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow couldn't make it any better either.

So I'm the only one here that didn't do the required reading?

I honestly don't think I could tell you what the required books were in HS. I was actually thinking about this earlier, and the only one I could come up with was The Old Man and The Sea. But I had no interest in reading anything beyond baseball boxscores at that point, and I especially wasn't going to do assigned reading for class. In college I only took writing classes, not literature. It really wasn't until law school that I started to enjoy reading for fun, but even at that point I didn't do much of it because I always had texts to read. So the last few years I've been trying to catch up on some of those classics.

[MarkGrace]

I started Dorian Gray once. I just couldn't get into it. Don't know why - I was able to finish Pride and Prejudice.

The actual story is pretty intermittent. I wasn't terribly into the first half, but the last 1/3 or so really hooked me.

[Blueintheface]

Killing Lincoln. No opinion about the book yet but the author makes my skin crawl.

[Eddie]

So I'm the only one here that didn't do the required reading?
...

I wrote what I thought at the time was a pretty good essay on Animal Farm in Jr. High. The teacher was less impressed. I got 0 points and the comment "You didn't read the book, did you." across the top of the paper.

I really enjoy reading - even back then. I just figured if it was something the teacher wanted me to read, it couldn't actually be good - could it?

[Jeff Lebowski]

Killing Lincoln. No opinion about the book yet but the author makes my skin crawl.

You mean the guy listed on the cover as the author? I assume you aren't talking about the ghost writer he hired to write it.

I listened to a fascinating interview on NPR by a professional ghost writer. These celebrities almost never write their own books and in most cases there is no reference to the ghost writer anywhere in the publication. He said most of them are narcissistic a-holes (surprise!).

[Blueintheface]

You mean the guy listed on the cover as the author? I assume you aren't talking about the ghost writer he hired to write it.

I listened to a fascinating interview on NPR by a professional ghost writer. These celebrities almost never write their own books and in most cases there is no reference to the ghost writer anywhere in the publication. He said most of them are narcissistic a-holes (surprise!).

Of course. Bill has no time for such trivialities. Bill did at least mention in his foreword that his "co-author" was instrumental.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I really don't want to start a new thread for this, but I found this article on Lew Wallace, the author of Ben Hur and Civil War general. The author talks about the motivations behind the book and its popularity - at one point it was the most popular novel in the US. More than 83% of all libraries had a copy.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/h..._the_best.html

companion article about some artifacts, including some of his drawings
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/h...ketch_and.html

Thanks for this link. Excellent article.

[SeattleUte]

Finally finished Wolf Hall. Never got into her writing style. I almost gave up half way through, but switched to the audiobook. Am now 10% through Bringing up the Bodies.

I had a similar struggle with Wolf Hall. The writing style is tough, and there's a lot of details in the novel that aren't that dramatic or captivating to me. Also, I really didn't like the protagonist, nor did I find him particularly interesting. Complicated or flawed protagonists are the best, but Mantel's Thomas Cromwell just seemed opportunistic, and I never really got how he became such a spectaclular success notwithstanding his humble roots. Her approach was to make him look good by comparison to Thomas More, but even her More was in many ways more interesting -- a man who had done great deeds cracking under the strain of the protestant reformation and then England's apostasy from Christianity, falling prey to tyranny, his own and then Cromwell's. That's a better story than Cromwell's. Cromwell as an enlightened man before his time didn't do it for me, wasn't credible. Still, the English absolutely LOVE the book. I'm sure it's my fault I didn't. I warned my wife away from it. I'm not sure if I'm going to tackle Bodies.