Busytown: Holiday reading lust
615 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 19 20 21 22 23 … 25 Newer→ Last
-
Trademe is blocked here (fair enough too!)
Any job I have had which officially blocks innocuous websites gets my most lacklustre and recalcitrant performance. Oh, you thought I'd 'waste time' on that site, powers-that-be? Let's just see, in the nature of an experiment, how much of your time I can fritter away without using them, shall we? Because I bet it's much, much longer than I'd actually spend *on* them if they weren't blocked.
I am petty and contrarian.
-
I am petty and contrarian.
I'm with you. Give me more to do, and make my job more rewarding, and when I take a break to (s)troll through some online distractions, it will enhance my overall state of wellbeing and make me more productive.
Hmm, perhaps that's more utopian idealism than contrarian.
-
I'll throw a plug in for "the lost Cyber Punk novel" Black Glass by John Shirley (a project Shirley and Bill (William) Gibson let slide a ways back, that Shirley has fleshed out)
some similarities to his earlier City come-a-walkin' and to Gibson's work as well - Pattern Recognition, et al... -
Haven't read me a sci fi novel yet but have just finished Sydney Bridge Upside Down the reissued NZ Gothic novel of 1968.
Had to tell people to leave me alone for a few hours so I could finish it. The word that comes to mind is "Freudian".
Phew.
-
Had to tell people to leave me alone for a few hours so I could finish it.
Haha, I almost did that too. Was definitely a "can't stop till finished" book for me.
-
you thought I'd 'waste time' on that site, powers-that-be?
Blocking is a substitute for competent management, and unfortunately that's in short supply
-
Blocking is a substitute for competent management, and unfortunately that's in short supply
Thank you Sacha. Now you have given me a justification for my indifference to the whole thing.
The fact is, if people were spending all their time on Facebook and it wasn't obvious, then what the hell am I doing? Sitting in the back room with the Beehive security guards? Well, when I'm not playing golf.
Must get that Sydney Bridge novel. Need a compelling read after being lost in Earth Sea for a week or two. Funny that, as I read much longer books in much less time, but with those books I wanted to experience the journey, so took my time.
-
Recordari, SBUD is a young adult book. I found it quite irritating at first. It wasn't until I had time to read it without interruption for a few hours that I really got into it.
I can see why Kate de Goldi liked it. She also writes about the adult world through a young person's eyes. Her plots also involve peeling away the layers of repressed feelings to get to a kernel of truth.
IMHO she does it better than Ballantyne (10 pm Question).
-
Yeah, The 10pm question is one of my fav's from last year. Also, which I think I mentioned many moons ago when this thread started, the Eoin Colfer novels appeal greatly to me, and while my twin daughters (7.10) are devouring that Potter stuff, they couldn't get in to Artemis Fowl.
The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time is also brilliant in this sense. The eyes of youth are not as cataract and myopic as us old farts, at least in the literary world.
It's so great that this thread keeps coming back. Thanks to SamF for this latest revival.
-
On the young adult note the other YA novel I read recently was The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - so good, not quite as scary as Coraline but a lot of the same thrills.
-
It's so great that this thread keeps coming back. Thanks to SamF for this latest revival.
Ta muchly - for me it's sort of gone from holiday reading to reading as a mental holiday, in the midst of much grimness in the news. Although oddly I did get a fair bit of apocalyptic reading done over a recent beach break (PD James' The Children of Men in its Black Death-esque eeriness, and Marcel Theroux's Far North, which I can't recommend highly enough).
-
I'm reading Pinocchio to the proles (it means children, people) and finding it more wonderful at each new encounter. Here's an excellent LRB essay by Bee Wilson on the relative merits of the English translations and the credit that the film actually deserves for helping keep the book on shelves.
-
Ops, requires login, nevermind. It didn't use to last time I opened the link. Still, the book is brilliant, do read it if you haven't already and whether or not you have children.
-
Now Gio, this is a book thread. Just so you know ;-) Loved your video link by the way. I always wondered how to turn back a page. I was like 'where's the back button?'
-
"It doesn't open anymore" I thought was quite inspired.
-
I remember thinking this NY Review of Books essay on Pinocchio was quite good too, on the differences between film and original book. Was always my favourite of those early (1930s-60s) Disney films as a kid, for reasons I wouldn't want to psychoanalyse.
Anyway, the essay:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17213 -
English translations
and machines that can help...
and some thoughts on turning over old leaves... -
and machines that can help...
If anybody needs me, I'll be there in the corner, becoming unemployed.
(Great article however.)
-
Translation does not imply causation.
deus ex machina
-
Can I put poetry on the holiday reading lust?
I saw Bright Star today - Ro-man-tic.
Just about to find Ode to a Nightingale which was recited as the end credits rolled. Very effective.
-
Oh can't wait to see Bright Star.
If you like poetic movies, try Pandaemonium, about Coleridge and Wordsworth.Captures the creativity, the drugs and the whole Romantic shooting gallery really beautifully. Great cast too, John Hannah as Wordsworth and Linus Roache and Samantha Morton as the Coleridges.
-
Both movies sound great. Somewhere in our family history is a link to Wordsworth, although not sure how direct. Would be good to learn another side to the history than the bits covered in Eng Lit. Although we first studied Coleridge in form 3. Precocious teacher.
-
I just read Ithaca Island Bay Leaves (at which time I also finally grasped the full cleverness of the title). It's very good. You should all read it.
Oh dear, I'm probably supposed to give some sort of meaningful review too. I'm not sure that I can, but let's see.
You know how sometimes you just don't want to read poetry? So you read a novel instead and the novelist sneaks a poem in and you just skip it because you don't want to read poetry and then you wonder whether there was any exposition in the poem and maybe you missed out but even then you don't want to go back and read it because you don't want to read poetry. It's just too much work, and you're tired today.
Ok, but then what do you do when your friend writes something highly poetic? You just read it anyway, is what. Then you find that it's captivating. Wellington is your Wellington except not through your eyes. Greece is hers and her mother's and her grandparents'. Here is a character. Here they are again. And again, skipping in and out like a Greek god skipping in and out of the Iliad. Sometimes the character is a Greek god, come to that. It's funny. It's sad. It's over too soon.
So, yeah. It's very good. You should all read it.
-
Somewhere in our family history is a link to Wordsworth...
where I grew up in Sydenham, Christchurch literature was a streetwise thang! - all the streets have names like: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Milton, Kipling, Tennyson, Longfellow, Carlyle, Byron, Defoe, Walpole, Ruskin, Barrie, etc...
We even now have a James K. Baxter Place! sadly
I think Manhire Street predates Bill, but future generations may not realise that :- ) -
So, yeah. It's very good. You should all read it.
And the cover is by Marian Maguire isn't it? Her Herakls series is in Titirangi util April 11 and okay it's not a book but it reads like one so go see it.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.