What 📔book are you reading right now?

Finished Sharpe's Escape yesterday. Excellent as always from Bernard Cornwell. I'm reading the parody of The Hobbit, called The Soddit. It's funny, but I can't take a lot at once, so that one's taking a while! Next up is The Game Of Thrones by George RR Martin, book 1 of A Song Of Ice And Fire. But I won't start reading that until after my maths exam tomorrw

English Lit is much much much much better then Russian literature.

Inderjit S said:

Wuthering Heights was a fantastic, brilliant, beautiful books...most of the characters in it were maniacs....which suits me just fine, the crazier the better whether he be a Yossarian or Raskolnikov or a complete Karamazovian like Heathcliff or a savage with a fetish for Shakespeare, trapped in a soma induced utopian-dystopian future or the hapless Josef K.

Emma and P&P were good books but, IMO, a tad "dry"

"Look it's that hot hottie duke of Kent"
"Huzzah, I must marry him"
"Yes, you must so you can fall in love with him only for him to dump me for some perfidious little woman from Derbyshire"
"Huzzah! And to think you were in love with that silly little farmboy. I'm you're good friend, but if you married him then well....I couldn't visit you it would be beneath me, instead I will set you up with a whole host of morons"

The female characters are odious and annoying, if they had a fetish for homicide or bigamy then they may have been a tad more interesting.

Started 'A Tale of Two cities' by Dickens.

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I hated Wuthering Heights. Eish. I don't think I have ever hated a book so much before or sense, unless it was Kafka's Metamorphosis. Wuthering Heights was so full of overblown, obnoxious, shrieky people....*shudder* I did not want any of those people to live. Were they real people, I would have go to great lengths to stay very, very far away from them. I much prefered P&P, where everyone sliced each other up neatly with conversational paring knives as God intended. Jane Austen's novels are about the daily idiosyncrasies associated with members of the human race. Emily Bronte's novel was about what happens when idiosyncrasies go terribly horribly wrong. Ooooh, Heathcliff was such a drama queen. Urgh.

"Dry" is good. Charis likes dry. Charis likes dry British humor. And wit. And metaphysical poetry. None of this icky Romantics nonesense. Wordsworth, egh. Oh yeah, and Charis particularly dislikes Dickens. Dickens, Bronte, Wordsworth, and Shelley--eeeeeew. We hates them, we do. I got halfway through Anna Karenina once--and 400 pages out of 800 is a pretty solid start--realized that I did not care what happened to any of the characters, and returned it to the library. Pfft, they can all get run over by trains for all I care. Real people. Fictional people that can be cared about as much as if they were real. *nods*

Beleg said:

English Lit is much much much much better then Russian literature.

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I often think so. I mean, I open the Russian book, get a few pages in, then realise I don't understand a word of it

Well, ....(have to defend the neighbours.... )....English literature is also extremely different from Russian lit. What's more, from the lit. of the Balkans, including Bulgaria.
A very very big part of our literature as well as the Russian one is devoted to war. We have suffered great wars and an intolearble slavery of 500 years...That certainly has influanced our culture. The Russians saved us...and they have gone through many wars as well...severe wars. They are a people of the Balkan...different history, different characters.
Our (I mean Balkans' ) literature is a bit more laboured |hard| and is filled with numerous historical events and wars that are of a great importance to the people of the country. Bulgarians adore their literature and so do the Russians.
If you want to try Bulgarian literature, try our titan Ivan Vazov. Start with a poem...finish with the incredible Pod Igoto (Under Slavery). It's an amazing book but very very endeavour-taking...

Finduilas said:

The Russians saved us...

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Well, I'll admit I know nothing of Russian or Balkan literature, except Tolstoy (he was Russian, wasn't he?). Perhaps I should read War and Peace, any good? So I won't get involved in any discussions on that.

And my knowledge of Bulgarian history isn't quite up to scratch either... You say there the Russians saved you. I'm guessing, and I really mean guessing, you mean that when Bulgaria became part of the Soviet Union, you were being saved from something else? What was that?

I'm genuinely interested in that. I'm a history student (well, come September I will be), and I find far too many historical things interesting...

What I said hid no shady metaphor. It was as literal as you can say it.
I meant that the Russians saved us from the Ottoman Slavery of V centuries. It was one of the and even the most horrible periods of our history. The Bulgarians were deprived from their own Church, traditions, rights...they were treated as animals even worse. Women were raped, men were slaughtered, children were converted to Mohamme-danism. It was a nightmare we seemed would never wake up from. Europe, Asia, America....everyone just stood, watching, doing nothing. But we are Slav. We have brothers...the Russians, the Macedonians, the Chezhs etc... And they did think of us. But the Russians were powerful. They had built and Empire that could opose the Turkish.
We had done a lot for our freedom, we fought as lions, as noone has fought before. But how can a tortured people fight back an empire of beasts? The help of the Russians was most precious to us, and we had used it in the most useful way - our complete freedom... I don't mention the post-slavery slavery we had experienced. Our heroes won a victory we desired and the politicians after that enslaved us again... (this is mataphor..)
We have many heroes but the most legendarium is Vasil Levski. Levski comes from "lav" in Bulgarian which means "a lion". He was betrayed and hanged and while trying to escape his enemies, he had done a huge jump which could only be compared to a lion's jump.
Well, can't explain it in more details...not a history student...
But if you wish to read something more you can visit this page:
http://www.bulgaria.com/history/bulgaria/
There's a lot information there...more than I can offer.
I hope I've been of any help.

Thanks, I never knew any of that. Seems a pretty harsh time (that's me, master of understatements... ), and I thought we had it hard with the English! But yeah, anyway, I shall definitely give that page a look at some point

I've finished A Game Of Thrones, and it was most excellent. Easily one of the best novels I've ever read, and it was only part one Very adult, though, and I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but there is perhaps too much sex I know, shocking But I can't wait for the next part to come into the library for me.

Next up is Echoes Of The Great Song by David Gemmell, but not till next weekend, because if it's half as good as A Game Of Thrones it will distract me from my revision that I do little enough of as it is!

CraigSmith said:

Perhaps I should read War and Peace, any good?

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You must be living twenty five hours a day, but to read War and Peace you'll need twenty six!
Let yourself in more easily with Anna Karenina.

Just finished reading The Illiad and The Odyssey.

Now I'm stuck, there's nothing to read! I probably have to go make rounds at the local bookstore again, they've got classic books there on sale for 1 euro and up. Last books that I bought from there were "Peter PAn" "Count of Monte Cristo" and "Little Women" all great books.

joxy said:

You must be living twenty five hours a day, but to read War and Peace you'll need twenty six!
Let yourself in more easily with Anna Karenina.

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Ah, ok. We shall see then, when I have some more time

I'm reading Dance Macabre by Stephen King. It's non-fiction and it's about the horror genre in general: Tv, Movies, Books...

Ol'gaffer said:

Just finished reading The Illiad and The Odyssey.

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YOU READ THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY?!?!
I have a copy of 'The Odyssey', it's something like 400 pages long, with a small font; and the language is really archaic and beautiful.. How long did it take you to read both?? Wow.

Right now I'm reading through a poetry collection called 'Favourite Verse', with works from most well-known poets from the last 200 years or so. It's very nice, the 'chapters' are divided by the theme of the poems, like 'Death', 'Nature', 'Love' and many many others.. Very good poetry in there.

So you read The Illiad and The Odyssey in original?
Have only read them in Bulgarian... probably during the summer in English too...

I'm sorry for the double-post...

Ol'gaffer said:

Just finished reading The Illiad and The Odyssey.

Now I'm stuck, there's nothing to read! I probably have to go make rounds at the local bookstore again, they've got classic books there on sale for 1 euro and up. Last books that I bought from there were "Peter PAn" "Count of Monte Cristo" and "Little Women" all great books.

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Just wanted to ask...am...have you read The Hours (yeah..not the movie)? It's very interestingly structured...curious...and the book is good.

Speaking of movies...just wanted to reccomend one......since you have time.......Requiem for a Dream...if you haven't watched it, you really should....perfect....

Well, I am trying to find the time to read The Road To Middle-earth by Shippey... but since it's the end of term I have to study... Right now I am finishing an excellent book on the religion of the Slavic peoples (no translation to English since it's a fairly new book).

*sigh* have reverted to 'junk' literature these days... reading 'Queen of the Damned' by Anne Rice

I am reading the Sil for the second time.

Right now I am reading The Glorioous Appearing by Tim Lahayne & Jerry B. Jenkins the last book of the Left Behind books!!

I just started Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye". Now that it's summer and I have lot of free time, I can finally read what I want. Yay! And the book is good, so far.