And if anybody wants to join the Freeper Reading Club (over 100 members strong) please let me know and I'll put you on the Freeper Reading Club Ping List. The pings are low level since I usually never ping more than once or twice a month, just to let you know when a book discussion has started and to give the next book assignment.
BTW, the next Freeper Reading Club book discussion will be From Here To Eternity by James Jones. This book is probably the GREATEST American novel ever written. Because i want as many Freepers as possible to read this book (Peggy Noonan even wrote a column on why this is an IMPORTANT book to read), I am giving two full months and several holidays to complete From Here To Eternity which will be due on Monday, January 13.
If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)
Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.
I purchased "From Here To Eternity" over the weekend and started Chapter 4 last night. Looks to be a great read already. I'll be back here tonight.
I don't know how long you've had the Freeper Reading Club....but it's something I've been thinking would be a great idea....just now saw this thread. Would you please put me on your ping list? Thanks.
I want to a Catholic prep school and to be left wing was cool, we had alot of assigned reading, "Black Like ME" for example. I was given the "Invisibe Man" by a protohippy and was told that I might find I interesting, it was.
Yes, the book is much different - and better - than the movie. Why does Peggy Noonan stress this is an important book to read. I agree with her, but if you can point me in the direction of her article, I would appreciate it.
Last year I read Black Boy - I forget the author but it was a great read. Sort of like reading about the Nazi attrocities during WW II. Very evil things happened to blacks in the south during the Jim Crow era - and some of those people are still alive who did those things.
I would appreciate it if you put me on the ping list.
I'm an avid reader... when I'm not online reading FR. I remember the first book that had a lasting affect on me. I read "The Ugly American" when I was about 14. I credit that book with starting me down the long road toward the Vast Right Wing.
Is there a non-fiction book report section in FR?Seems like there should be. Sometimes there are books that seem important, and worth discussing here. I guess a fellow could post a review of a book as an article, then comment on it directly . . .
Švejk: A Hero For Our Time
“In both civilian and military life, Josef Švejk lives by his wits. His chief ploy is to appear witless to those in authority. In fact, he is fond of pointing out that he has been certified to be an imbecile by an official military medical commission, a fact also included in the first sentence of the novel. Consequently, he reasons, he cannot be held responsible for his questionable actions because he’s a certified nitwit! His method of subverting the Austrian Empire is to carry out his orders to an absurd conclusion.”
” “Unlike K., fellow Czech Franz Kafka’s stunted stand-in for modern intellectual man, the rascal Švejk belongs to the men and women of the workaday world — the bartenders, cleaning women, gamekeepers, petty larcenists, lathe operators, janitors, drunkards, office workers, shopkeepers, undertakers, adulterers, nightclub bouncers, butchers, farmers, cab drivers and others who populate Hasek’s imagination as they stumble through the lunacies of the first World War.”
Let me assure you: all those people and many like them populate our world today. The increasing number and burden of absurdities they deal with is putting them in a position to relate to and viscerally understand Švejk, i.e. the book, the character, and the method. Untold hundreds of thousands and perhaps even millions of Americans experience and operate in “švejkárna”. This is a relatively new, younger derivation of the original term “švejking”. “Švejking” is the method for surviving “švejkárna”, which is a situation or institution of systemic absurdity requiring the employment of “švejking” for one to survive and remain untouched by it.
Švejk is indeed an ascending hero for our time. Not because we desire it or prefer it on the basis of some intellectual abstraction, a result of scientific endeavor, or any other sublime exercise of reason. It is a matter of survival in the inhospitable circumstances of the ever more complex and absurd entanglements of the postmodern society we have become. Survival, after all, is not sufficient, but the first necessary condition for realizing other, higher order goals, lofty or otherwise. And Švejk represents one of the most unique survival strategies ever conceived by man. “
NYPL’s list of 100 most important books of the 20th Century contains this modern classic which most Americans haven’t heard of, let alone read: Commonly known as The Good Soldier Svejk its full title is The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War. It is the most famous, beloved and reviled Czech book.
This Chicago
woman believes you
won’t be able to put
the book down, and
here she tells you
why: http://www.zenny.com/svejk/Ruth Cooper.mp3
I thought you might be interested in these Švejk-related projects:
1) a new English translation at http://zenny.com
2) the SVEJK CENTRAL at http://SvejkCentral
3) a GENUINE ŠVEJK’S FACEBOOK PAGE at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Good-Soldier-Svejk/133349009873
4) Jarda Šeráks tri-lingual web site at http://www.serak.cz/Svejk/b1_en.htm and
5) Jomar Hønsi’s Google Maps application http://honsi.org/literature/svejk/?page=7&lang=nn charting Švejk’s progress which you can find at his Norwegian language sitehttp://honsi.org/literature/svejk/