What Are You Reading Now?

[Coastal Ute]

In college, I took a class on Dickens. We were required to read a Dickens novel a week; a near impossibility. It gave me some good insights on Dickens and his writing, but I did not enjoy the class. In recent years, I have reread some of his novels and find them much more palatable. By the way, if you want to read a tome, try the unabridged version of Les Miserables. I read it in French and it took me months, but what an interesting book.

Sounds like a fun class I would take, granted I would want more than just a week to read a Dickens novel.

Unabridged Les Miserables? I took a stab at it once. Once.

[LA Ute]

In college, I took a class on Dickens. We were required to read a Dickens novel a week; a near impossibility. It gave me some good insights on Dickens and his writing, but I did not enjoy the class. In recent years, I have reread some of his novels and find them much more palatable. By the way, if you want to read a tome, try the unabridged version of Les Miserables. I read it in French and it took me months, but what an interesting book.

Yikes! What a horrible way to read Dickens. I think all those quirky characters and complex stories would just become a big jumble.

Les Mis is on my list. I tried to read it in 8th grade for a book report but my teacher vetoed it. She was probably right.

[New Mexican Disaster]

Many classics are classics because their very existence represents a heroic triumph. They stand for opposition to oppression. They represent truth in a way wholly apart from their literary merit.

I have mixed feelings about this pheonomenon. Many Nobel Prizes for literature have been handed out on this basis alone.

I don't know about Things Fall Apart's literary quality, but the factors I mentioned are a big part of its stature. If you or I wrote that book, it wouldn't be the same.

Well put. I guess what I am trying to get at is if anyone really likes this book or if they think it is important? I read it, appreciated the fact that it is the locus classicus of West African literature, at least to American and European audiences, and was non-plussed. I would compare it to the poems of the early American settlers, which were not always the greatest quality but are held to representative of an entire emerging genre.

I also wonder if Things Fall Apart has a way of crowifning out excellent African fiction as it is the "token" that we get from an entire continent. The thing I really did not like about it though is thatI think the context fo the book shoots over the head of many of the readers in that it is about the death of a lifestyle-but it lnds itself to the idea that Africa is monolithic (because it is the only African fiction many of its readers will ever read) and that it is antiquated and "savage".

Perhaps I protest too much.

[Surfah]

In college, I took a class on Dickens. We were required to read a Dickens novel a week; a near impossibility. It gave me some good insights on Dickens and his writing, but I did not enjoy the class. In recent years, I have reread some of his novels and find them much more palatable. By the way, if you want to read a tome, try the unabridged version of Les Miserables. I read it in French and it took me months, but what an interesting book.

When I was a kid I got into the Beauty and the Beast show starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman as the beast. Anyway, I always thought it was cool how the beast would read Great Expectations and thought that book must be awesome because the beast reads it. I was disappointed when I finally got around to it.

[Flattop]

I remember talking with my father in the early to mid-90s about books. In addition to the WWII non-fiction I was reading, he thought I was reading some fiction that was low grade stuff. The only fiction he read were leather bound classics like Ulysses and Dickens. I was reading WWII fiction and "techno-thrillers" by Tom Clancy and Larry Bond. I also read Herman Wouk's Caine Mutiny, Winds of War, and War and Remembrance, and I told him once that I thought those books would be considered classics one day.

A few years later, my father started reading some of the books he had considered low brow only a short time before. Now, he reads a lot of this popular fiction, including books I'm not sure even I would read (Vince Flynn?). Meanwhile, I have broadened my horizons to include more than just WWII non-fiction, but I still haven't picked up a leather bound classic.

[LA Ute]

Meanwhile, I have broadened my horizons to include more than just WWII non-fiction, but I still haven't picked up a leather bound classic.

Dickens is widely available in paperback, and a a lot cheaper that way.

The trick to appreciating old Charles, IMO, is that you need to invest a little time and effort. With every one of his novels that I have read, once I am 50 pages in I am hooked. The Victorian writers are like that.

I love me some Tom Clancy too, but I've read all of his stuff already.

[falafel]

I love me some Tom Clancy too, but I've read all of his stuff already.

All of Clancy's new material is available in video game form. You should check it out!

[LA Ute]

All of Clancy's new material is available in video game form. You should check it out!

I like to read.

[Flattop]

Every August I go to a bookstore hoping to see a new Clancy book, only to be disappointed.

[falafel]

I like to read.

There are usually subtitles at the bottom of the screen.

[LA Ute]

There are usually subtitles at the bottom of the screen.

How big are the letters?

[falafel]

How big are the letters?

At least as large as the text in your large-print scriptures.

[John McClain]

Every August I go to a bookstore hoping to see a new Clancy book, only to be disappointed.

I share your disappointment. I recently reread The Sum of All Fears. Amazing how the movie they made had nothing to do with the novel. The novel was much better BTW.

[creekster]

In college, I took a class on Dickens. We were required to read a Dickens novel a week; a near impossibility. It gave me some good insights on Dickens and his writing, but I did not enjoy the class. In recent years, I have reread some of his novels and find them much more palatable. By the way, if you want to read a tome, try the unabridged version of Les Miserables. I read it in French and it took me months, but what an interesting book.

Unabirdged Les Mis is my favorite book, but in English. I speak a little Frnch but not enough to enjoy Hugo.

DIckens is wonderful. I think Copperfield is my favorite but no one does characters like Dickens.

[Flattop]

Here is Your War by Ernie Pyle.

"There are really two wars and they haven't much to do with each other. There is a war of maps and logistics, of campaigns, of balistics, armies, divisions and regiments -- and that is General Marshall's war.

"Then there is the war of homesick, weary, funny, violent, commen men who wash their socks in their helmets, complain about the food . . . and lug themselves and their spirit through as dirty a business as the world has ever seen and do it with humor and dignity and courage -- and that is Ernie Pyle's war. He knows it as well as any one and writes it better than anyone."

-- John Steinbeck about Pyle's book Here is Your War.

This is Pyle's first book based on his WWII newspaper columns. It covers the war in North Africa. Excellent.