Return of the Book Thread

[proudft]

Last night's chuckle came from: "Never did any woman better deserve her name, which was Charity—Aunt Charity, as everybody called her.  And like a sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither..."

Ok, the humor IS on purpose.  Oh Melville, you goof!

The big piss-and-moan fest in my high school was from the Grapes of Wrath, but I liked that book too.  Maybe I should give Great Expectations another try. 

[Ingmar]

Maybe I should give Great Expectations another try. 

It's a trap.

[Paelos]

Wuthering Heights was the one that I hated the most in school.

[HaemishM]

Scarlet Letter for me. What a shit novel.

[Paelos]

Scarlet Letter for me. What a shit novel.

That doesn't count. Nobody has read that novel and ever thought it was good. It's a scam.

[Strazos]

Maybe I should give Great Expectations another try. 

It's a trap.

Eh, I actually got through it unscathed my Freshman year of HS.

[Engels]

Loved Wuthering Heights. Its the perfect exemplification of Nietzschean philosophy. If you don't understand that you're not one of the ubermen.

[pxib]

Imma take this opportunity to link one of my favorite essays evar: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now...

[WayAbvPar]

My hated high school assigned reading was  The Stranger. Just fucking depressing. High school kids really don't need any assistance learning to be depressed.

[Ingmar]

My hated high school assigned reading was  The Stranger. Just fucking depressing. High school kids really don't need any assistance learning to be depressed.

Ha, we read The Plague instead, which wasn't really an improvement cheer-wise.

[Paelos]

Loved Wuthering Heights. Its the perfect exemplification of Nietzschean philosophy. If you don't understand that you're not one of the ubermen.

 

[Khaldun]

The Stranger may not be a bucket of rollicking fun but there's some pretty awesome writing going on there.

Scarlet Letter is a better plot outline than it is a reading experience. It's definitely one of those books where you're better off just knowing the basic tropes of the story and never actually reading it.

[stu]

Imma take this opportunity to link one of my favorite essays evar: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now...

One of my favorite things about that was Twain pointing out guy-stepping-on-stick-alerts-hero and I always chuckle when it happens in any medium.

[Sky]

Great Expectations. In the same year we were to read that, A Tale of Two Cities AND David Copperfield. I couldn't make it through Great Expectations and skipped the rest. The teacher (who I dubbed Ms. Havisham, to her towering ire), did make some amends later that year by introducing Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is still one of my favorites. That was also the year I dropped most of my scholarship classes (except sciences), so I hang blame on her for fucking up my entire academic life. Her, and Charles Dickens. My fiancee (an English major) doesn't mention Dickens around me...anymore.

edit to add: "They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others." 

[WayAbvPar]

The Stranger may not be a bucket of rollicking fun but there's some pretty awesome writing going on there.

I can't disagree, but it was largely wasted on me (and the rest of my advanced Lit class) at 16. I would probably get a lot more out of it reading it now.

[HaemishM]

My hated high school assigned reading was  The Stranger. Just fucking depressing. High school kids really don't need any assistance learning to be depressed.

Don't be dissing Camus. Them's fighting words. 

But yeah, really any Camus is not high school reading - there's almost no way to appreciate something like that so early in life, especially not if it's forced on you.

Also, I have always had an abiding hatred for Charles Dickens.

[naum]

Yes, high school aged reading of Albert Camus is like teaching calculus to chimpanzees…

[Paelos]

Dickens sucks in print. The movie adaptations remove most of the tedium.

[Chimpy]

... Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is still one of my favorites.

Did you figure out that it rolls almost perfectly with the tune to the theme from Gilligan's Island ?

Also, seconding the awesomeness that is the ancient mariner. I ended up reading the whole thing out loud to our English class in a gravelly seadog style.

[proudft]

Up to chapter 43 or so of or, the whale.   Best line from last night was the Spanish sailor talking to the African harpooner: "Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark side of mankind -- devilish dark at that. No offence."    Snerk.

[Samwise]

Thanks to this thread I too have downloaded a free ebook of Moby Dick (having just finished Huck Finn for the umpteenth time).

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

 

[proudft]

That's a life lesson, right there!

[Sky]

Did you figure out that it rolls almost perfectly with the tune to the theme from Gilligan's Island ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7zk4as9kzA

And Ms Havisham really redeemed herself with that one. We read it the year Powerslave came out and she let me bring the album in. She had been wondering how I knew the main quotes from the Rime  The whole (scholarship level) class had to sit through a long Maiden tune.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Did you figure out that it rolls almost perfectly with the tune to the theme from Gilligan's Island ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7zk4as9kzA

And Ms Havisham really redeemed herself with that one. We read it the year Powerslave came out and she let me bring the album in. She had been wondering how I knew the main quotes from the Rime  The whole (scholarship level) class had to sit through a long Maiden tune.

Hahahahahaha!  I thought I was the only one who'd done that!  Although, my teacher didn't seem too impressed, but I figure it was because she was an uptight bitch of a nun and I went to a Catholic HS.  I simply could not get her to understand why I thought it was so freaking cool that the poem effected Harris enough to write a goddamn song about it. 

[bhodi]

My hatred in high school is reserved for that fucker Faulkner and As I lay Dying. It's made me hate "The Great American Novel" in all it's various forms, especially "stream of consciousness" writing, also known as caustic butt splatter on a page. Written in 6 weeks with absolutely no edits? You don't say.

Everyone else can lap up his shit all they like; I don't care about some crazy fucking family from the south and their complete bitch of a grandmother. I'd have dumped that hag into the nearest river on day two of the journey; fuck her and her dying wish too. I'm getting angry just thinking about it.


I really wish I had been introduced to great stories in high school; I ended up loving reading in spite of what the school system did. Nothing but Shakespeare, Dickens, and Faulkner.

[Hoax]

Beloved was the book I felt most bothered by in HS. Wuthering Heights was ok and I loved Camus even though I'm sure I wasn't fully understanding it.

Fear and Loathing was my favorite assigned HS read.

[HaemishM]

They let you read Fear and Loathing in HIGH SCHOOL?

I had to discover that one in college. Most of the English teachers I had in high school except one would have had a heart attack to read that book.

Finished up Lathe of Heaven - liked it, but not as much as The Left Hand of Darkness. It definitely felt very 70's - not a knock, btw. Haven't really thought about the book too much but there's a lot to digest in there. May be one to reread in a year or two with some perspective.

Started on and am close to finishing J.G. Ballard's The Crystal World. Very confusing but I do love his writing style.

I went out and bought Game of Thrones in paperback. Figured I'd rather have the physical copy at hand to flip around in while reading it.

[Quinton]

The thing that I hated the most about reading books in high school English classes was being forced to read at the pace of a chapter or two a week, which just struck me as insanely slowly.  But if you read ahead, you risk forgetting about some trivial detail that would be used in the weekly quiz to determine that you're following along or the instructor getting pissed at you because for being ahead, etc.  That's no way to read a book.

[Hoax]

They let you read Fear and Loathing in HIGH SCHOOL?

It was a Catholic school no less.  San Francisco.

[bhodi]

The thing that I hated the most about reading books in high school English classes was being forced to read at the pace of a chapter or two a week, which just struck me as insanely slowly.  But if you read ahead, you risk forgetting about some trivial detail that would be used in the weekly quiz to determine that you're following along or the instructor getting pissed at you because for being ahead, etc.  That's no way to read a book.

We always used to have to read aloud in class. I honestly never saw the point in doing it, or what it's supposed to accomplish. We're in english class, not drama class. And there were always awful orators (including myself) that everyone would have to cringe through. A pretty miserable experience, all in all. Like everyone else, I read much faster than I can speak, so it was really an exercise in frustration. I'd get bored and either read ahead or start another story. Then, inevitably, I'd get called on, have no idea where we were, and get in trouble.

Bah.


So, current outpile:

Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space
Patrick Rothfuss - Name of the Wind & Wise Man's Fear
China Mieville - Perdido Street Station

I very much enjoyed Rothfuss's stuff, but I wish I had known it was a trilogy that wasn't complete before I started. I'd have waited. Also, not sure how he's going to finish up the story in only one more book. Things move slow.

John Scalzi said on his blog that Perdido Street Station was the best science fiction book of the decade. I'm afraid I can't agree. It's got great visuals, and an interesting world (kind of) but the story itself just sort of... ended. And it ended on a fairly strong down note. I don't read books to be depressed, dammit.

I didn't care for revelation space that much either; it's sci-fi but without a good world foundation that I enjoy. The Sci-fi elements seem to appear haphazardly on an as-need basis, more as plot devices than bricks of a functioning universe.

[HaemishM]

They let you read Fear and Loathing in HIGH SCHOOL?

It was a Catholic school no less.  San Francisco.

Fucking hippies. 

Finished Crystal World. Very confused. The author didn't seem to know what he wanted to say and neither did I.

I'm into Game of Thrones. 9 pages and I love it already. I may spend the next year just catching up on this series.

[Abagadro]

If you read all of the Revelation Space books it builds a pretty interesting universe. I like Reynolds' stuff quite a bit though so take my opinion with a grain of whatever.

[Strazos]

If one wanted to start on the Culture stuff from Iain Banks...what would be the choice books to start with? I'm a bit hesitant to simply buy the 9 books outright.

[Sheepherder]

But if you read ahead, you risk forgetting about some trivial detail that would be used in the weekly quiz to determine that you're following along or the instructor getting pissed at you because for being ahead, etc.  That's no way to read a book.

My last English teacher in HS was, I think, genuinely surprised that a class full of students on the track to attend university couldn't fucking finish The Old Man and the Sea in three days.

[tar]

If one wanted to start on the Culture stuff from Iain Banks...what would be the choice books to start with?

While Consider Phlebas is 'first', it's also a bit incongruous with the rest of the books so I sometimes recommend starting with The Player of Games. I found it a bit more accessible. I'd read Phlebas before going too much further with the series though, if you like Player.