Books

[Walsingham]

Sorry, I didn't mean to start a pseudo-argument about whether Salvatore is a good author or not. Yeah, as you guys have guessed, I'm still in high school, and its better (read: less boring) than what I'm supposed to be reading, so there you go .

 

Fair does, mate. You enjoy what you like.

[Hurlshort]

Sorry, I didn't mean to start a pseudo-argument about whether Salvatore is a good author or not. Yeah, as you guys have guessed, I'm still in high school, and its better (read: less boring) than what I'm supposed to be reading, so there you go .

 

In High School, you are supposed to be reading stuff like Salvatore. Don't let any out of touch teachers tell you different. Trust me, I'm an out of touch teacher myself.

 

Seriously though, what stuff are they assigning you to read? I remember a few pretty good books from my High School Lit. classes, and I just got done teaching "The Giver" for the summer. I try to keep our novels fairly good over the course of the year, although I haven't taught Language Arts in a couple years. I covered A Samurai's Tale, The Giver, and Scarlet and Minivier last time I taught LA for a year.

 

And if you mean textbooks, just know that your teachers don't expect you to read everything, they just want you to develop enough skimming skills to sound like you know everything

 

I think the only textbook I really read regularly in High School was my AP European History one, that was an awesome book of history.

[I want teh kotor 3]

Sorry, I didn't mean to start a pseudo-argument about whether Salvatore is a good author or not. Yeah, as you guys have guessed, I'm still in high school, and its better (read: less boring) than what I'm supposed to be reading, so there you go .

 

In High School, you are supposed to be reading stuff like Salvatore. Don't let any out of touch teachers tell you different. Trust me, I'm an out of touch teacher myself.

 

Seriously though, what stuff are they assigning you to read? I remember a few pretty good books from my High School Lit. classes, and I just got done teaching "The Giver" for the summer. I try to keep our novels fairly good over the course of the year, although I haven't taught Language Arts in a couple years. I covered A Samurai's Tale, The Giver, and Scarlet and Minivier last time I taught LA for a year.

Everything I'm supposed to read is either Shakspeare or a depressing chick-flick-in-book-form (Tuesdays with Morrie, anyone?)

 

And if you mean textbooks, just know that your teachers don't expect you to read everything, they just want you to develop enough skimming skills to sound like you know everything

 

I think the only textbook I really read regularly in High School was my AP European History one, that was an awesome book of history.

Textbooks are more interesting than literature to me. Especially Shakespeare. I really hate his stuff. Romeo and Juliet is the only book I ever fell asleep reading .

Edited July 24, 2008 by I want teh kotor 3

[Walsingham]

Hamlet is better if you imagine them in mechs. Seriously.

[Shryke]

Hamlet is better if you imagine them in mechs. Seriously.

 

holy scuba monkeys!

 

that's brilliant

[Rosbjerg]

I read the Isac Asimov Foundation Series.

 

And now I'm reading:

[I want teh kotor 3]

Hamlet is better if you imagine them in mechs. Seriously.

 

Alright, when I'm forced to read it, I'll try pretending its Gundam .

 

I read the Isac Asimov Foundation Series.

 

And now I'm reading:

 

Surprising, I actually liked that.

[Walsingham]

Hamlet is better if you imagine them in mechs. Seriously.

 

Alright, when I'm forced to read it, I'll try pretending its Gundam .

 

 

I particularly liked the scene where Hamlet kills Polonius. "How now! dead, fora ducat! Dead!"

 

As Hamlet let's rip a whole fusillade of medium rockets, the bang and clink of discarded rounds. The comedic remark from Polonius before the rockets streak home: "Oh! I am slain!"

[I want teh kotor 3]

Hamlet is better if you imagine them in mechs. Seriously.

 

Alright, when I'm forced to read it, I'll try pretending its Gundam .

 

 

I particularly liked the scene where Hamlet kills Polonius. "How now! dead, fora ducat! Dead!"

 

As Hamlet let's rip a whole fusillade of medium rockets, the bang and clink of discarded rounds. The comedic remark from Polonius before the rockets streak home: "Oh! I am slain!"

[Gorth]

Hamlet is better if you imagine them in mechs. Seriously.

 

Alright, when I'm forced to read it, I'll try pretending its Gundam .

 

 

I particularly liked the scene where Hamlet kills Polonius. "How now! dead, fora ducat! Dead!"

 

As Hamlet let's rip a whole fusillade of medium rockets, the bang and clink of discarded rounds. The comedic remark from Polonius before the rockets streak home: "Oh! I am slain!"

All those in favour of a Walsingham re-write of Hamlet raise their hands.

 

*Raises hand*

[Tigranes]

He can load it up with Army references!

 

I have Robert Harris' Imperium (rare impulse buy because I had nothing to do that afternoon). Pretty decent, entertaining enough to finish and reasonably historically accurate (and detailed). I particularly liked the way he decided to characterise Cicero - it's very, very convincing int erms of historical evidence. Rather a sad story, in that way.

[Fionavar]

Culpepper, Alan R. Anatomy of the Fourth gospel: A Study in Literary Design.

 

Sagan, Carl. The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God.

[qt3.14159]

Hamlet is better if you imagine them in mechs. Seriously.

 

Alright, when I'm forced to read it, I'll try pretending its Gundam .

 

 

I particularly liked the scene where Hamlet kills Polonius. "How now! dead, fora ducat! Dead!"

 

As Hamlet let's rip a whole fusillade of medium rockets, the bang and clink of discarded rounds. The comedic remark from Polonius before the rockets streak home: "Oh! I am slain!"

All those in favour of a Walsingham re-write of Hamlet raise their hands.

 

*Raises hand*

 

Actually, that would be an awesome video project for someone to do. Anyone draw anime style art around here?

[Shryke]

where's Aimo or Eisu when you need them?!

[Walsingham]

Never underestimate the power of a reckless imagination!

[Musopticon?]

Hamlet is better if you imagine them in mechs. Seriously.

Sig quote time!

[Walsingham]

Well, the "Too too solid flesh" soliloquoy becomes almost a speech on war, if you imagine him doing it while walking patrol in a massive killer robot.

 

EDIT: Known to the rest of the human race as the "To be or not to be" soliloquoy

 

 

Further edit: I've just checked the soliloquoy in question and I'm talking rubbish. It's not the too too solid flesh one, and neither are to do with war in the slightest.

 

However, reading it did make me wonder: If death is so bad, and live so good, why do so few come back?

[I want teh kotor 3]

Well, the "Too too solid flesh" soliloquoy becomes almost a speech on war, if you imagine him doing it while walking patrol in a massive killer robot.

 

That's going in my sig.

Edited July 28, 2008 by I want teh kotor 3

[Colrom]

I read lots of light stuff - like fantasy - about one or two books of that type a week - sometimes re-read them too.

 

Here is the more interesting stuff:

 

I recently finished

Constantines Sword by James Carrol - Christianity and the Jews - a masterpiece of religious history - wonderfully sourced.

In the Wake of the Plague by Norman F. Cantor - The Black Death - History slightly modified to enhance 2002 terror themes regarding anthrax - presumably to aid in rationalizing the then forthcoming invasion of Iraq. This book is interesting in part for the way in which the history is put in a new perspective and new themes with current resonances are added with very little apparant substance to support them. There are no real footnotes. A non expert will not be able to evaluate or persue points.

 

I'm currently reading:

Bible and Sword by Barbara W. Tuchman - England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour. I think I love Barbara Tuchman. I have read a bunch of her stuff. She is a great historian and a wonderful writer.

The Great Influenza by John M. Barry - The 1918 Influenza Epidemic. Starts out discussing the history of medicine in the same way that "The Building of the Bomb" discusses the history of physics and nuclear chemistry.

 

On deck are:

 

Havana Nocturne by T. J. English - How the mob owned Cuba and lost it to the revolution. For me this links to the book "Nazis in Newark" about the US Nazi movement in New Jersey in the 1930s and how the American Jews and some German-Americans others fought against them. Meyer Lanski (Murder Incorporated) was part of the anti-Nazi movement around Newark New Jersey and New York City.

 

(Here's a review of sorts of Nazis in Newark: Michael Alexander - Nazis in Newark (review) - Jewish Quarterly Review 95:2 Jewish Quarterly Review 95.2 (2005) 418-419 Warren Grover. Nazis in Newark. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003. Pp. xvi + 380. Nazis in Newark is a model local history that reaches well beyond the border of Essex County, New Jersey, to the national and international arenas. By recounting so many sides of the complicated encounter between Nazis and Jews in Newark, Warren Grover has fashioned a world of street politics, boycotts, Nazi louts, and Jewish bruisers that is as compelling and telling in its detail as any grand tome on the supposed failures and successes of American Jewish resistance to the... )

 

Next on deck is:

 

The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin - This is about the mob and criminals

[Tigranes]

Constantines Sword by James Carrol - Christianity and the Jews - a masterpiece of religious history - wonderfully sourced.

 

Sounds interesting - just checked it out on amazon. What kind of writing is it? Historical fictional narrative? History-book style?

[Colrom]

Constantines Sword by James Carrol - Christianity and the Jews - a masterpiece of religious history - wonderfully sourced.

 

Sounds interesting - just checked it out on amazon. What kind of writing is it? Historical fictional narrative? History-book style?

 

The book traces the development of the religious beliefs and behaviors that led to the Holocaust and the erecting of a large cross at Auschwitz.

 

The ideas of important secular-religious figures and institutions are presented - people such as Jesus, Paul, Constantine, Ambrose, Augustine, Anselm, Abelard and Heloise, Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire, the Popes, the Kings, Luther, Alfred Dreyfus and LaCroix, and so on. Some of these represent missed opportunities to do better. There is some discussion of Jewish religious thought and figures.

 

The book does have a narrative aspect as well. Carrol presents the history as an illumination of his own personal religious journey.

 

It is a very good read.

Edited July 29, 2008 by Colrom

[Walsingham]

Constantines Sword by James Carrol - Christianity and the Jews - a masterpiece of religious history - wonderfully sourced.

 

Sounds interesting - just checked it out on amazon. What kind of writing is it? Historical fictional narrative? History-book style?

 

The book traces the development of the religious beliefs and behaviors that led to the Holocaust and the erecting of a large cross at Auschwitz.

 

The ideas of important secular-religious figures and institutions are presented - people such as Jesus, Paul, Constantine, Ambrose, Augustine, Anselm, Abelard and Heloise, Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire, the Popes, the Kings, Luther, Alfred Dreyfus and LaCroix, and so on. Some of these represent missed opportunities to do better. There is some discussion of Jewish religious thought and figures.

 

The book does have a narrative aspect as well. Carrol presents the history as an illumination of his own personal religious journey.

 

It is a very good read.

 

 

That does sound interesting. Maybe I'll ask for it for Christmas.

[Enoch]

I've finally gotten around to reading Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union. About halfway through now. (By the way, thanks to Pop for his endorsement of the novel way back in this thread's early pages.)

 

Chabon's prose is eternally surprising and inventive. And he's clearly having fun playing around with the detective fiction genre here, although in a fascinatingly creative alternative-history setting (short version: Isreal lost the 1948 war, and the American government created a federal district in the Alaskan panhandle to be a temporary homeland for the Jews; the story takes place in the weeks before this territory reverts back to Alaskan control).

[Tigranes]

Thanks for the teaser Colrom, definitely going on my to-read list then. Probably after thesis, meaning October, though.

[LadyCrimson]

A lot of short stories by Richard Matheson, the guy who wrote "I Am Legend" - which I also read, since it was part of the three story collections of his I bought.

 

I didn't like I Am Legend all that much - and it's not because I loved the movie more, because I didn't - I think for me it's that I feel his writing style is more suited to the short story vs. longer ones. His style feels very sparse and a bit abrupt, which isn't enough to completely suck me in over a long haul. But those short stories - they were all kinds of awesome.