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Lanky Lady - Mistakes make you aware of a careless writer, instead of keeping you absorbed by the story.
In one book (can't remember the title) two men went into a house. A woman came out of a bedroom upstairs and said she was surprised at how late in the morning it was.
The men walked into the kitchen to make coffee and spoke 18 words (I counted them!) between them - and suddenly the woman was there with them.
She wouldn't even have had time to go into the bathroom, but it said she'd showered and dressed very quickly - at the speed of light? - and presumably she then came downstairs at top speed via a fireman's pole!
It would have been so easy to write a few words to show that some time had passed.
Jennifer...Sorry I didn't respond - I've been so busy the last few weeks that I've barely had time to look at the posts here let alone reply to them! I hope you're exam went well, I always find the best way to learn a text for a closed-book exam is to learn key quotes from the text and how you can use them. It's never failed me - in fact, I only learnt 3 of them for THT and still got a good grade hehe
I have now started a new course in my degree - Renaissance Tragedy so am just beginning The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd...I couldn't possibly comment on it yet!
phoenix- had my exam. in fact all january exams all out of the way now WOOT!! question i chose was much nicer (extract question), but im not sure how it went. you know it goes with english exams, you never really know how you did until you get the results. pretty confident i did better than last time, got a U =S.
now need to concentrate on memorising blake's 'songs of innocence and songs of experience' and shakespeare's 'othello'- closed-text books are pointless!!
anyhoo...still working my way through le guin's 'earthsea'. got a book called 'searching issues' i have to read for the alpha course the CU at college is running soon. im a discussion group leader =S=S.
Glad all you're exams are done and out the way - you probably will find it went better than before so fingers crossed for you. It does sound as if you're doing the exact same syllabus as I did...Blake and Othello...I couldn't stand Blake but Othello was good and its coming up as part of my course in a few weeks too. If you need any help with anything, please don't hesitate to email me, I think my address shows up on my profile?
I am reading John Mead Faulkener's Moonfleet. I have been promising myself this for ages, having meant to read it years ago. I know it is a young person's book but if you like old tales about smuggling and derring do or fancy having a go at writing such a novel, what better way to do some informal research. Carol Folley often suggests fiction as a means of doing such research as well as the factual besides being a dammed good yarn. Regards Woll52
I'm currently reading Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled, re-reading Richard Bach's Jonathon Livingstone Seagull & a book on self hynosis that I've had for years. After that I will ensconse myself in Waterstones for a good lengthy browse-bliss.
Waterstone's have been dishing out books of money off vouchers recently - some to be used by a particular date and some for particular types of books. Worth looking out for!
I'm reading The Surgeon of Crowthorne, at the mo, by Simon Winchester - one I've had on my bookcase for ages and never got round to reading - it's fascinating. Madness, murder and Victorian London, all mixed in with the OED - excellent, right up my alley!
I have just finished reading 'Friends, Lovers, Chocolate' by Alexander McCall Smith, bought (a) because it was signed and cheap in a sale and (b) I enjoyed his '44 Scotland Street' but mainly because running the novel is the notion of cellular memory, which works on the premise that transplanted organs carry with them some memories from their previous body as it were. Some research has been done into this in America, working on heart and also kidney transplantees, noting any inexplicable changes and so on, and they believe that this cellular memory could be fact and not fiction.
I do have a vested interest in that I am a kidney transplant patient of nineteen years, who had a transplanted kidney from an Italian man. I have developed in recent years an interest in most things Italian, learning the language now... but unfortunately I still hate pasta!
I'm currently reading Dean Koontz' "Cold Fire". I must say although i tend to shy away from anything even slightly broaching the subject of religion, i'm finding his book thoroughly gripping (although i must admit a slight prejudice as the last two or three books i've read have been by him. Koontz is a relatively new discovery for me even though i bet you're all thinking "Oh my God. More Dean Koontz mumbo, get with the times dude.". Definately worth a read if you haven't read any of Koontz' material although my favourite to date is "Dragon Tears"...very spooky.
I just (today) finished reading The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, and will be reading the entire series, without question. Anyone with an interest in literature should read the adventures of Thursday Next, who has a pet dodo called Pickwick and has the ability to jump inside novels. His treatment of Jane Eyre is pure genius!
Kangaroo, it says on the blurb (so I'm not giving anything away!) that Jane Eyre is kidnapped from the novel, and Thursday must rescue her before all hell breaks loose!
There's an invention by one of her crazy relatives that allows someone to open up a portal, add the bookworms (you have to read it!), and step through a door into whatever piece of prose or poetry is in the portal.
Basically, a book for bookworms :)
I'm ploughing through "The Redemption of Althalus" by David and Leigh Eddings at the moment. I'm trying to write a fantasy book so i'm reading a lot of that genre at the moment to get a feel for what's being published. It's pretty entertaining actually, i'm thoroughly enjoying reading it.
ooo another eddings reader!! for some reason they are quite rare. ive just bought redemption of althalus and got told off by mother (i didnt actually have the money). you should the belagriad cinquet by david eddings. excellent!! then the sequel cinquet, the mallorean. also excellent!!
another good fantasy book if the earthsea quartet by ursula le guin. eys im still reading it, but ive also got to read birigl's aeneid for classics, also very good.
I love the Earthsea books. I first read the original 3 books in 1968 when I was 10 and have read them almost every year since. The fourth book came out quite a bit later, didn't it and I haven't got around to buying that one yet...mental note to self...add it to my loooooong list of books to but.
I love the Earthsea books too, but the fourth one, Tehanu, is quite different from the first three, and I don't think I'd give it to a child to read, considering the suffering that one of the main characters goes through. The land of the dead in the original trilogy was enough to give me nightmares as a young teenager.
Ursula le Guin has also written some very good short stories set in Earthsea. Look out for The Other Wind.
I've got the belagriad quintet as well, I went on a mad book shopping spree and bought 16 fantasy books, but the redemption of althalus is the first one i'm on, hope the rest are as enjoyable.
I have just finished 'Sphere' by Michael Crighton
the author of Jurassic Park.
It's sci-fi at its best. Like all the best of sci-fi writers, he does not expose the little green man with horns, or the flashing saucer coming down for a killing of earthlings.
This is an entity story on the sea bed of the Pacific, plausible, believable and truly frightening.
Karl.
At the mo I'm reading Lee goes for Gold by Keith A Charters what a funny book, Ok it's a childrens novel, but that's what I love and if any of you just give it a go you would agree( Psst! Try his other book Lee and the Consul-Mutants, equally funny) Byeee!!
I've just got a book of Medieval Welsh Poetry out of the library.
One of the other re-enactors expressed doubts that court bards/harpers were common in our period (13thC Wales) and I can't wait to show him that the answer is a resounding Yes!
It also has a lot of Dafydd ap Gwilym's poetry in it. He was famous for his nature poetry, usually written when he was waiting for a pretty girl to show up to a secret meeting. He could also be very funny - there's one poem where he's feeling his way across a dark tavern and falling over stools in an attempt to get to the barmaid's bedroom!
i was getting so stressed and frustrated with my history coursework last sunday that i ended up deciding to have a bath with a book. i ended up in the bath for four hours and read the whole of erica james' 'a breath of fresh air'. i then went on later that evening to read the entire sequeal 'time for a change'. 'earthsea' was a bit heavy for me to unwind with, so a couple of light romances helped me feel a wee bit more ready to attack the crusades!!
I have just read Memoirs of a Geisha for the second time. Read it a few years ago and then saw the film recently, so wanted to see how the book differed, but also I wanted to check my pronunciation of the Japanese words from the book. (I have been learning the language).
At the moment I am reading two books. The one I read during my work half-hour lunch is 'Hanna's daughters' by Marianne Fredriksson. It's a short family saga, very interesting particularly because it's set in foreign countries (Sweden and Norway), but at times I get a bit confused with the similar sounding names: Hanna, Anna, Johanna...
The other book which I usually read before bedtime is 'Lennon-the definite biography' by Ray Coleman. I also read various magazines in my spare time.
Definitely on a non-fiction kick at the moment - I'm still dipping in and out of the Medieval Welsh poems, while also reading Gwenllian, the Welsh Warrior Princess by Peter Newton, and The Holy Maid of Kent by Alan Neame, both fascinating in their various ways.
Woll52 has definately inspired me to look out Moonfleet. I want to finish The Courtesans Revenge, which I started last year and haven't had time to get back to. I've been reading Mills and Boon Historicals for market research purposes. They are trying to update their image all the way round. May not be everyones idea of literature but they do have a following.
I'm going to start seriously reading some French literature, soon, in the original. I have plenty to choose from, as I spend a lot of time in Swiss bookshops, and have read a few that were originally in English, but now I don't know where to start... There's a book by a young writer called Lolita Pille, who was 19 when her debut 'Hell' was published - apparently it's a tough read, but that's just an invitation, surely...? I also have a Maupassant ('Le Horla') and a Zola ('Germinal') on my shelves, both recommendations from my other half as a start in classic French literature. Pffff....
That's very impressive Taffeta. I bought the French version of Les Miserables a couple of years ago and I still haven't read it all. But it has been a good exercise, helping me with my study of the language as well as enjoying the book.
By the way Taffeta, I have only just realised that your are TaffetapUnk and not PINK! Think I linked your name with a very pretty dress my sister once had in pink taffeta - I was only a little girl at the time and really envious that she had such a lovely dress and vowed I would have one myself some day. Still waiting!
No problem, lucyq - I found the name in book of Shakespearean insults, and it jumped out at me - it suits me, somehow, especially as friends have started calling me Taff :o)
Meanwhile, I've finally finished A Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett. My God! That woman must have had diagrams all over the wall to work out what was going on!
Intrigued by the depth of detail in the history, I've started on Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser, which covers the same period - in the Dorothy Dunnett, little Queen Mary is five years old. How she could cope with all that historical plotting and counter-plotting, and add in her own fictional strand that linked up with real events - well, I couldn't do it!
well thanks to me nearly failing my english retake on 'the handmaid's tale' again, i am retaking the exam again but with a different book. this time it's 'spies' by michael frayn. thankfully my english tutor thinks i'll enjoy it a lot more.
and for anyone who love old tales of heroes and myths and legends etc, try virgil's 'aeneid'. im studying it for my A2 clasical civilsiations and am really enjoying it. same for homer's 'odyssey' from my AS course.
I'm engrossed at the moment in Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga, which is a collection of essays on all aspects of Viking life and the world they lived in, collected by the Smithsonian for the millenium. Being an American publication, it isn't so Anglocentric as many books about Vikings, where you get a lot about Coppergate in York but next to nothing on the Russian trade routes, for instance. This is much more balanced and centred, rightly, on the archaeology in Scandinavia.
Since I'm portraying a Viking this year, as a re-enactor, the information is invaluable to me.
I'm in the middle of Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters - I watched two episodes of the TV adaptation on BBC Prime in Switzerland, then came to the UK for Saul Festival when Bluehorses were recording - and missed the last one. So I got it to find out what happens!
I've finally taken the plunge and started "Gone With the Wind". This isn't the first time I've begun it, but it's always been far too roundabout for my taste - most of the characters are introduced with a two-page biography, for example, and accordingly I couldn't work out where it was supposed to be going. However, I watched the film last week, and that gave me some idea of the direction the book would take. Now that I'm a quarter of the way in, it's completely addictive!
Fion, I remember reading it when I was in my late teens. It is a big book, and I agree with many of the things you say, but we are looking at it from current standards;there was more freedom in how writers constructed their work, in the past. There were not the same demands for it to be a commercial success, possibly it meant it was appreciated more by the reader, as the author produced a book they wanted to read, not read it because it's on the latest prize list or got good publicity.
I wonder if Margaret Mitchell could have produced anything else, or if this was her ' one book in everyone'?
I am reading "The hills is lonely" by Lilian Beckwith, an amusing book about her life in The Hebrides. Actually, sounds just the sort of place to be if you want to concentrate on writing!!!!Bit cold though I expect.
Gone With The Wind is a great book and excellent film too. I first read it as a teenager as my mother and grandmother raved about it for years. Normally men don't fancy it, but its a good read with plenty about the US Civil War in and slavery, as well as the rmoance side.
I've probably read it half a dozen times now, and would recommend it to anyone. Enjoy.
I'm currently working my way through the Routledge edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales - the originals, where people die horribly (not the white-washed versions where everyone lives happily ever after). They really can be quite gruesome. I've been wanting to read them for years, but the only copies I could find were hardback and expensive - this one was £9.99 - a snip.
I am reading "Labyrinth" by Kate Mosse, which is a Da Vinci Code-esque sort of book. I have read a few like that recently as it seems to be the in-thing to publish. I have read Atlantis and The Messiah Code in the last couple of months, and have borrowed The Lucifer Code to read next. Who would have thought there were so many codes knocking about??
Right now I'm reading 'Newton's Madness' by H.L.Klawans and I've just started 'No Name' by Wilkie Collins. Klawans is a Professor of Neurology who "turns medical detective to unravel some of the strangest cases he has encountered in history and in his own consulting room" (as it says on the back cover) It's fascinating stuff. "No Name" is about two sisters in Victorian England who discover after the death of their parents that the said parents were not married when the sisters were born. They become disinherited by law, thrown off their estate and left to fend for themselves. It is described as "a novel of outstanding social insight."
I picked up a couple of books today that just had to be bought - a VERY DISTURBING account of the supermarkets' domination of British society, called SHOPPED by Joanna Blythman, and THE REVENGE OF GAIA, subtitled 'Why the Earth is fighting back - and how we can still save humanity' by James Lovelock - the sort of books I devour, which is kind of a pain, as I still have several with bookmarks in. Ho-hum...
Wonderful book you are reading 'Hush Puppy' and it was interpreted well on the small screen starring John Duttine. I am well into 'The Zimmerman Telegram.' And Robert Dallek's Book, 'Kennedy- an unfinished life.'
For a change I'm reading some contemporary vampire romance books. Bought a number of books by Shannon Drake,the set began in the late 90's, and I read one of the more recent ones, and wanted to find out the back stories. Surprisingly I'm enjoying them. May not be high literature, but it is a way of relaxing.
Comments
In one book (can't remember the title) two men went into a house. A woman came out of a bedroom upstairs and said she was surprised at how late in the morning it was.
The men walked into the kitchen to make coffee and spoke 18 words (I counted them!) between them - and suddenly the woman was there with them.
She wouldn't even have had time to go into the bathroom, but it said she'd showered and dressed very quickly - at the speed of light? - and presumably she then came downstairs at top speed via a fireman's pole!
It would have been so easy to write a few words to show that some time had passed.
Jennifer...Sorry I didn't respond - I've been so busy the last few weeks that I've barely had time to look at the posts here let alone reply to them! I hope you're exam went well, I always find the best way to learn a text for a closed-book exam is to learn key quotes from the text and how you can use them. It's never failed me - in fact, I only learnt 3 of them for THT and still got a good grade hehe
I have now started a new course in my degree - Renaissance Tragedy so am just beginning The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd...I couldn't possibly comment on it yet!
now need to concentrate on memorising blake's 'songs of innocence and songs of experience' and shakespeare's 'othello'- closed-text books are pointless!!
anyhoo...still working my way through le guin's 'earthsea'. got a book called 'searching issues' i have to read for the alpha course the CU at college is running soon. im a discussion group leader =S=S.
xxx
Glad all you're exams are done and out the way - you probably will find it went better than before so fingers crossed for you. It does sound as if you're doing the exact same syllabus as I did...Blake and Othello...I couldn't stand Blake but Othello was good and its coming up as part of my course in a few weeks too. If you need any help with anything, please don't hesitate to email me, I think my address shows up on my profile?
Love Phoenix xx
I'm reading The Surgeon of Crowthorne, at the mo, by Simon Winchester - one I've had on my bookcase for ages and never got round to reading - it's fascinating. Madness, murder and Victorian London, all mixed in with the OED - excellent, right up my alley!
I do have a vested interest in that I am a kidney transplant patient of nineteen years, who had a transplanted kidney from an Italian man. I have developed in recent years an interest in most things Italian, learning the language now... but unfortunately I still hate pasta!
Anyone else have any views on this subject?
Yay!
There's an invention by one of her crazy relatives that allows someone to open up a portal, add the bookworms (you have to read it!), and step through a door into whatever piece of prose or poetry is in the portal.
Basically, a book for bookworms :)
another good fantasy book if the earthsea quartet by ursula le guin. eys im still reading it, but ive also got to read birigl's aeneid for classics, also very good.
Ursula le Guin has also written some very good short stories set in Earthsea. Look out for The Other Wind.
A very honest autobiography I think.
Slopey.
the author of Jurassic Park.
It's sci-fi at its best. Like all the best of sci-fi writers, he does not expose the little green man with horns, or the flashing saucer coming down for a killing of earthlings.
This is an entity story on the sea bed of the Pacific, plausible, believable and truly frightening.
Karl.
One of the other re-enactors expressed doubts that court bards/harpers were common in our period (13thC Wales) and I can't wait to show him that the answer is a resounding Yes!
It also has a lot of Dafydd ap Gwilym's poetry in it. He was famous for his nature poetry, usually written when he was waiting for a pretty girl to show up to a secret meeting. He could also be very funny - there's one poem where he's feeling his way across a dark tavern and falling over stools in an attempt to get to the barmaid's bedroom!
The other book which I usually read before bedtime is 'Lennon-the definite biography' by Ray Coleman. I also read various magazines in my spare time.
Intrigued by the depth of detail in the history, I've started on Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser, which covers the same period - in the Dorothy Dunnett, little Queen Mary is five years old. How she could cope with all that historical plotting and counter-plotting, and add in her own fictional strand that linked up with real events - well, I couldn't do it!
and for anyone who love old tales of heroes and myths and legends etc, try virgil's 'aeneid'. im studying it for my A2 clasical civilsiations and am really enjoying it. same for homer's 'odyssey' from my AS course.
Since I'm portraying a Viking this year, as a re-enactor, the information is invaluable to me.
I wonder if Margaret Mitchell could have produced anything else, or if this was her ' one book in everyone'?
I've probably read it half a dozen times now, and would recommend it to anyone. Enjoy.
Shame.