What 📔book are you reading right now?

[pipin]

the star stone

 

[Rhiannon]

After making false starts on My Antonia, Jim the Boy, and...something else that slips my mind at the moment, I've started Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. So far so wonderful--I think this one will stick.

I also recently read Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett--I love Vimes. There's a very good reason that he's my brother's favorite character.

 

[Lantarion]

'Kiss of the Spider Woman' by Manuel Puig.

 

[numen]

ohh me

I am reading "Waterland" By Graham Swift...and i just finished "The Monk" that was great, i reccommend to all.

 

[Rhiannon]

'Kiss of the Spider Woman' by Manuel Puig.

Wasn't that made into a Broadway musical?

 

[Inderjit S]

For any fans of surrealist works, I recommend, Albert Camus's 'The Outsider'; BRILLIANCE! Though I daresay it would depress Mrs. anti-Kafka Rhiannon. (hehe) it is better then 'The Castle' and 'The Trial' though 'The Trial' gives it a close run. Also need to read 'Love In The Time of Chorea'.

Craig, as for political books, I think you should trudge through some of the classics, Marx and Engel's The Communist Manifesto, J.S Mill's On Liberty, Rousseau's The Social Contract and it's Discources, Machiavellia’s The Prince and of course Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.

On German history, I recommend The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich (William Shirer) and Alan Bullock's Hitler a Study In Tyranny though there are lot's of other books on Hitler, which would be better then you buying the incoherent paradigm's of that idiot. Though of course if you really want to read Mein Kampf then do so.

And I deplore anyone who hasn't read 1984---what is wrong with you?

Currently going through 'Vanity Fair' pretty good so far.

 

[Ireth Telrúnya]

I'm currently reading the Silmarillion and understand a great deal of more of Tolkien's "Eä" and "Arda".
I've been wondering the name "Silmarillion". I see it's Quenya and means "About/on the Silmarils"..(right?)
It's this word "silmarilli" that sounds quite familiar to me. (I don't have a clue how Tolkien would pronounce Silmaril or Silmarilli...) You see, "Silmärillit" means eyeglasses (spectacles) in Finnish.(though a bit archaic word used by older people since they are usually called "silmälasit". "Rillit" refers to the frames of the glasses while "lasit" are literally glasses.
It's kinda nice to think this particular word had something to do with the invention of the Silmarils in Tolkien's head..true or not, who knows..

 

[Asha'man]

I'm reading Tom Clancy's "Teeth of the Tiger" right now, it's pretty good. Just got past a very good reason to carry concealed.

"If you kick the tiger in his ass, you'd better have a plan for dealing with his teeth."

Ash

 

[Rhiannon]

And I deplore anyone who hasn't read 1984---what is wrong with you?

A big TBR stack and a mild aversion to dystopian lit?

 

[Aiwendil2]

Inderjit wrote:

For any fans of surrealist works, I recommend, Albert Camus's 'The Outsider'; BRILLIANCE!

This is the same book as The Stranger, right? Just a different translation of the title? If so - I agree, it's brilliant. One of a relatively small number of books that I read for high school and really liked.

I think you should trudge through some of the classics, Marx and Engel's The Communist Manifesto, J.S Mill's On Liberty, Rousseau's The Social Contract and it's Discources, Machiavellia’s The Prince and of course Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.

If you really want to understand the history of political thought, I think you've got to go back to ancient Greece and read at least Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics. Frankly, I don't think that either of these is very good in itself, but they did form the basis of a lot of later political thought.

I'd actually recommend certain other works by Marx in place of the Manifesto. His early "economic and philosophical manuscripts" are very good. And the later Capital is I think a much more serious and profound work than the Manifesto.

Also, I think that Hobbes's Leviathan should be read to see the starting point taken by Locke, Rousseau, and others.

 

[Inderjit S]

This is the same book as The Stranger, right? Just a different translation of the title? If so - I agree, it's brilliant. One of a relatively small number of books that I read for high school and really liked.

Yes, they are one and the same.

On Plato's 'The Republic' I will be soon reading 'The Iliad' but I think all the archaisms give me a headache. If it is anything like More's bore 'Utopia' then it will be put down quickly.

 

[celebdraug]

I'm reading Spiderman! (Based on the first movie), All my comics have been confiscated!

 

[Niniel]

'The king's buccaneer' by Raymond E. Feist.

 

[Lomendanar]

I'm currently reading LotR (again ) and The Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer. What about you guys?

I just finished "A Tolkien Miscellany" and am about to start 'Unfinished Tales". Just ordered a used first edition of "Letters of J.R.R Tolkien"

 

[Dengen-Goroth]

Just finished Love in the Time of Cholera, one of the most satisfying and engrossing novels I have ever had the pleasure and, daresay, honor of coming across. Marquez is a genius! Moving on to Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, though admittedly I'm a bit reserved about it.

 

[Inderjit S]

Reading Homer's 'The Iliad' it is well and truly epic..but there are too many names to remember.

Finished 'Vanity Fair' a briliant, beautiful satire, a bit dry in parts esp. in the middle but the first and last 100 pages are amazing. And hooray for William Dobbin!

Hoping to move on to 'Don Quixote' next.

 

[joxy]

To Ireth: Tolkien was very keen on Suomi, and that word for glasses is near enough, so there's little doubt he used it - I haven't seen anything in the works to confirm that, but it's too close a coincidence not to be correct.
To all of you reading Kafka and Camus - and enjoying them!!??: You must be in a tiny microcosmos of your own - but congratulations!
To who's reading Thackeray - and who's reading Spiderman!: Congrats for staying in THIS world!

 

[Inderjit S]

To all of you reading Kafka and Camus - and enjoying them!!??:

Some can sense some similarities between Kafka, Camus and other surrealists, or Orwell and the _REAL_ world, you just have to be cynical enough.

About half-way through 'The Iliad' and Zeus and his lackey Opollo are annoying me, I want a fair fight! Plus the Akhaian's are a lot better/cooler then the Trojans. Aias, Aias, Meriones, Patroklos, Antilocho, Agamemnon, Achilles, Diomedes, Oddyseus.

 

[Ireth Telrúnya]

Joxy, this "silmärillit" is a plural form (since we usually need a glass for both eyes) and "-t" is the usual plural ending in Finnish (though in many cases the stem of the word changes too.) So, "silmärilli" is a singular form in Finnish, while in Quenya it's the plural form of these Silmaril gems. And "silmä" means "eye".

Inderjit S: I've thought for a long time that I should get familiar with the gods of Olympos and read Ilias and other Greek myths. Though I remember I read some illustrated book about them as a child...

 

[Inderjit S]

I too am very much a Greek lit. virgin.

My next read/s should be either 'The Leopard' and 'A Hero of Our Time' by Lampedusa and Lermontiov, anyone got a opinion on these novels? And then the much-celebrated 'Don Quixote' what does everyone thing of this novel?