Posted on 02/03/2014 2:13:32 PM PST by jocon307
Have you ever lied about reading a book? Maybe you didn’t want to seem stupid in front of someone you respected. Maybe you rationalized it by reasoning that you had a familiarity with the book, or knew who the author was, or what the story was about, or had glanced at its Wikipedia page. Or maybe you had tried to read the book, even bought it and set it by your bed for months unopened, hoping that it would impart what was in it merely via proximity (if that worked, please email me).
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
Eh, my friend in those conversations, if I recall correctly, did not have an anti-Christian bias. She would never be anything other than Jewish (and a big lib!), but I don’t remember her saying that to me with any socio/political angle.
5.56mm
Josephus isn’t flattering to the Jews. At least partly because he needed to justify, if only to himself, his desertion to the Roman side.
There is also the option of deciding for yourself what you are going to read or not read and not lying or apologizing for not reading what other have decided you should read. Do I need a D’uh here?!
I won’t read Pynchon, Clancy, Rowling, Rand or Tom Wolfe’s Three Stooges (of East Coast lit).
(I can recommend great literary writers what I’d bet readers of the above never heard of.) No apologies tour.
i understand... and that is why i like Mr. Knightly! no--i love Mr. Knightly!
“The only Russian author I have had success in reading is Ayn Rand, who is #10 on the list.”
How about Solzhenitsyn? A Day in the Life of Denisovich and Cancer Ward are fine books and very readable.
I don’t think Andrew Lloyd Webber had anything to do with Les Miz.
If you love Les Miserables (I did until I listened to the unabridged audio version) you will also love The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I love the detail he puts into both, especially the architectural.
Well, in school, I hated ANY book I was FORCED to read. I would deliberately substitute Dostoyevsky for “Cheaper by the Dozen”, “A Separate Peace”, and “Goodbye Mr. Chips”. The mere fact that I was being forced to read these books was enough to make me NOT want to read them. But I always substituted a much more difficult (and LONG) book, so the teacher wouldn’t get mad at me. That was when i read, Dr. Zhivago, The Brothers Karamazov, et al.
It was just me. I was a rebel and hated school, but got all A’s.
I love the Bible and have read it through three times. Now passages seem to happen to me daily whether on this board or in other books I’m reading. But you should totally read Paradise Lost. I actually listened to it and I hated the first few chapters but once I got into the rhythm of the prose I grew to love it. I highly recommend it.
When my younger son was in third grade I read to him. He wasn’t into recreational reading like my older son. I would start a book and then sternly tell him to go to bed. I would sneak down later and find him reading it. I did read all of Huckleberry Finn to him, with full dialect.
We went to see Colm Wilkinson in what I think was his last tour with the show. It was amazing.
Have you read the Master and Commander series by Patrick O’Brien? Wonderful books.... about 20 of them about the British Navy during the Napolianic wars. One was made into the movie of the same name. Also well done.
I have read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose but I prefer Foucault’s Pendulum which I have read twice. So there. :-P
I have read Thomas Wolfe (not Tom Wolfe of Bonfire of the Vanities fame) but I can’t remember the titles of his books. arrrggg.. getting old.
I am the same way, I trend now towards biographies and history, with some informational books (political and otherwise) mixed in.
I have to do a lot of audiobooks now. My eyes completely suck, and reading more than 15 minutes makes them water.
That is a bit depressing for me, because I used to take four or five books on vacation, and would finish them. Now, it takes me a month to read a real book. I have tried all kinds of glasses and bifocals, but nothing works. Darn it.
Great movie! Best. Sailing. Movie. Ever!
And another thing to remember is that most books, and if you’ve ever bought from or through Amazon, they’ll e-mail you feelers, ads and Best Books of the Month lists, all of those containing those most books I’m talking about, which consist of, to borrow a phrase, not so much writing as typing.
“I can recommend great literary writers what I’d bet readers of the above never heard of.”
Don’t hold back, lay them on us!
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