What 📔book are you reading right now?

[Tyelkormo the Fair]

Finished the first book and started the second one...
Didn't expect to like it this much to be honest,the first 70 pages is a bit confusing and dull for a fantasy series which made me quit reading it two years ago but I gave it another try and it was definitely worth it!
Also a bit of knowledge about the Nordic gods will help you understand it better!

 

[Elthir]

I've just come into possession of a really good, insightful translation and work on the Hebrew/Aramaic of the Old Testament...

I'm wondering what the name of this book is, Sir Ent.

🐾

 

[Ent]

@Elthir
Yo Cat -
It is the below: available on Amazon for those who still do business with them.
The hardcover is a 3 volume set.
Digital (which is what I always prefer) doesn't take up any more shelf space and is far quicker on the research.

Mr. Alter spent many, many years working on it...and he is well qualified in the Hebrew/Aramaic languages including philology - a key to right understanding of course.
I'll be digging it apart heavily, as I work on my upcoming book (along with several other significant resources).

It's going to be very useful.

The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary
by Robert Alter | Feb 5, 2019

Kindle $72.19

---

Hardcover $75.99

Oh - a p.s. - the 'commentary' is not what we usually expect from Biblical 'commentary'... it's commentary on the language itself, why it works the way it works to produce the rendering the way he has rendered it. Most useful. (As always and fortunately, there are many resources available to double-check his veracity and understanding.)

 

[Elthir]

Thanks Ent! I'll need to start saving pennies for that one! Of course, I never really know what I'm going to buy next ("bookwise" I mean), until I do buy (something), but if I get a copy, it'll be the paper version. . . I think my bookcase is sturdy enough!

🐾

 

[Ent]

I'll need to start saving pennies for that one!

p.s. - having checked out some of his other works, one in particular of which provide a little more detail on the perspective and background from which he comes, and the unavoidable approach resulting from it in this particular work, it may end up being a little less 'accurate' overall, if he gives way to his views of the 'interaction of words,' favoring more dynamic results rather than handling the translation based on root and extended word meanings themselves.

We shall see.

Nonetheless, still very worthwhile to deconstruct and reconstruct for my work in future.

 

[Vorondil]

Having really enjoyed King Solomon's Mines, I'm trying Allan Quartermain by H Rider Haggard.

 

[Ent]

Having really enjoyed King Solomon's Mines, I'm trying Allan Quartermain by H Rider Haggard.

don't DO that to me..!! (insert scowley frown here.) I've always wanted to read both of these...
it's not the time of life for me to be tantalized by such gems.

SO... lemme know, lemme know... (on Quartermain. obviously I've already got your take on the mines.)

(re: the mines... were there any dwarves? (kidding.))

 

[Deimos]

I've heard of Ordinary Men, but haven't read it.

How extraordinary!

 

[Deimos]

Having really enjoyed King Solomon's Mines, I'm trying Allan Quartermain by H Rider Haggard.

Not a few people, knowing that I immensely enjoyed King Solomon's Mines, have told me I should read the Allan Quartermain stories.
I think I shall join Aethelwulf and do just that. 🙂

FYI from Wikipedia:
Although some of Haggard's Quatermain novels stand alone, there are two important series. In the Zulu trilogy, Marie (1912), Child of Storm (1913), and Finished (1917. These novels are prequels to the foundation pair, King Solomon's Mines (1885) and Allan Quatermain (1887),
The other series is the She novels: She (1887), Ayesha, the Return of She (1905), and She and Allan (1921).

 

[Vorondil]

Not a few people, knowing that I immensely enjoyed King Solomon's Mines, have told me I should read the Allan Quartermain stories.
I think I shall join Aethelwulf and do just that. 🙂

FYI from Wikipedia:
Although some of Haggard's Quatermain novels stand alone, there are two important series. In the Zulu trilogy, Marie (1912), Child of Storm (1913), and Finished (1917. These novels are prequels to the foundation pair, King Solomon's Mines (1885) and Allan Quatermain (1887),
The other series is the She novels: She (1887), Ayesha, the Return of She (1905), and She and Allan (1921).

You should definitely read Allan Quartermain, I'm enjoying it just as much as I did King Solomon's Mines. (This applies to @Old Ent as well)

 

[Olorgando]

Re-reading German (auto-) biographies I own. After two actors of stage and screen and a TV journalist, I'm now on the second book by / about a musician. All of them absolutely at the top of their craft for decades, but the youngest one (the current re-read) is over 70.

 

[Ent]

German (auto-) biographies

I always knew German autos were smart, but wow... some wrote biographies?

 

[Radaghast]

I read about half of this many years ago. For reasons I can't remember I just... stopped (perhaps because it was such a huge tome and I didn't feel like lugging it around anymore). Anyway, I have started again and this time I intend to finish it as it was given to me as a birthday gift (and it has smaller print so it's not such a large book).

 

[Deimos]

View attachment 23781
I read about half of this many years ago. For reasons I can't remember I just... stopped. Anyway, I have started again and this time I intend to finish it as it was given to me as a birthday gift.

Like Great Expectations, David Copperfield is a "bildungsroman" story. It is also semi-autobiographical.
I like both stories, but definitely prefer DC to GE. (All those "Miss Havisham" conversations and scenes...soooooo depressing 😬)

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

I went on a Dickens tear some years ago, and enjoyed everything. The opening of Our Mutual Friend is as dark as anything I've read. And some of his descriptions of urban London -- no wonder he's considered the father of steampunk.

Here's a quote from critic Northrop Frye:

Mr. E.M Forster speaks with disdain of Dickens's Mrs. Micawber, who never says anything but that she will never desert Mr. Micawber: a strong contrast is marked here between the refined writer too finicky for popular formulas, and the major one who exploits them ruthlessly.

I'd add that the same could be said of Tolkien.

 

[Deimos]

I went on a Dickens tear some years ago, and enjoyed everything. The opening of Our Mutual Friend is as dark as anything I've read. And some of his descriptions of urban London -- no wonder he's considered the father of steampunk.

Here's a quote from critic Northrop Frye:

I'd add that the same could be said of Tolkien.

THis seems like the extreme "either-or" situation: either your totally one side ("never") or completely the other side ("ruthlessly exploit")
Could the situation could be considered as more of a continuum? or perhaps a spectrum?***
Uh...I'm not clear where you are placing Tolkien... in the "never" camp? or the "ruthlessly exploit" club?

***(I prefer the descriptor "spectrum" to "continuum" because a spectrum [typically] has very cool rainbow colors, whilst a "continuum", well, the word brings to mind something like veiwing a rainbow on a Black-and-white TV🙄😉 )

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Uh...I'm not clear where you are placing Tolkien... in the "never" camp? or the "ruthlessly exploit" club?

I'm not clear about your meaning here, as "never" and "ruthlessly exploit" refer to the same device; that is, Forster was criticizing its use by Dickens. But I can see where my comment is ambiguous.

Frye was talking specifically on the question of what makes something funny, in this case the use of unincremental repetition to provoke laughter. I recall how, at age 5, I'd run home to listen to Fibber McGee and Molly, waiting in anticipation for the moment when Fibber would open his closet door. Tolkien uses this technique to a certain extent, in, for instance the Gaffer, and the invocation of "the Rules" at the end of the story.

But in a larger sense, he could be said to have used "popular formulas" in writing in romance mode, with all the tropes associated with it. At the time he was writing, it was seen as an outworn, antiquated, and juvenile form, suitable, as he noted in On Fairy-stories, only for the nursery. That he was able to revive and invigorate it was an accomplishment the groundbreaking nature of which we tend not to recognize, given the flood of fantasy that followed.

 

[Deimos]

I'm not clear about your meaning here, as "never" and "ruthlessly exploit" refer to the same device; that is, Forster was criticizing its use by Dickens.

Frye was talking specifically on the question of what makes something funny, in this case the use of unincremental repetition to provoke laughter. I recall how, at age 5, I'd run home to listen to Fibber McGee and Molly, waiting in anticipation for the moment when Fibber would open his closet door. Tolkien uses this technique to a certain extent, in, for instance the Gaffer, and the invocation of "the Rules" at the end of the story.

But in a larger sense, he could be said to have used "popular formulas" in writing in romance mode, with all the tropes associated with it. At the time he was writing, it was seen as an outworn, antiquated, and juvenile form, suitable, as he noted in On Fairy-stories, only for the nursery. That he was able to revive and invigorate it was an accomplishment the groundbreaking nature of which we tend not to recognize, given the flood of fantasy that followed.

OK... I just didn't really follow you the first time around.
We're good. 🙂

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

I just didn't really follow you the first time around.

I have enough trouble just trying to follow myself. 😄

 

[Vorondil]

I'm about to start The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson, I wonder what if it will be as good as Treasure Island.