Up Front: The Classics Are Rubbish Too
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I can assure you that I never will, but it's called the passion of the Christ, fair warning.
I got it out thinking it was a love story.
Man.
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<quote>Continuing with Huysmans, I love this quote from Arthur Symonds (found on Wikipedia, natch):
Barbaric in its profusion, violent in its emphasis, wearying in its splendor
What a great quote. And yes, Joris Karl Huysmans, not Adolph Huysmans, I hadn't looked at Against Nature in years and had the author confused with the artist Adolph Huygens.
All the authors that are a little nut-ball on closer reading - Sir Walter Scott, Daniel Defoe, Johnathan Swift, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain, Mary Shelley, Cervantes - authors for whom plausible story lines weren't a priority - I was lucky enough to have these and dozens of other books read to me at a very early age before I had critical faculty whatsoever, so it was easier to enjoy. Mind you, I heard Don Quixote too early, and spent the whole book thinking I must have slept through the parts where that Donkey named Hotey featured. I figured Hotey the Donkey must be a friend of the horse Rocinante.
I was very taken with books that dealt with horrible themes, and particularly enjoyed Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Year of the Plague Year and Ralph Lapp's Voyage of the Lucky Dragon, the true account of the slow and agonising death of Japanese sailors who were too close to a US test bomb in the Pacific. My Mum was not aware of the concept of "age appropriate" so I was able to enjoy these accounts of gruesome deaths at age while my contemporaries heard The Cat in the Hat. This is not to say I understood everything I heard (clearly the case with Cervantes) but it did make me seem extremely well read when I started school.
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I meant to mention this before, in terms of Austen and lending books and never seeing them again... Being Elizabeth Bennet.
It's a Choose Your Own Adventure through Austen's books. You can choose to marry Mr Collins, or Mr Darcy the first time he asks (but only if your intelligence score is low enough). A rip-roaring read I haven't seen since I lent it out months ago.
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Emma, this has been the best blog ever. It has kept me amused for a couple days of otherwise mindless activity at work.
DWJ is the best. A pity libraries and book shops can't agree whether to put her under J or W, or both, or in the case of whitcoulls for a long time, neither.
Signed, Grateful reader.
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I can assure you that I never will, but it's called the passion of the Christ, fair warning.
I got it out thinking it was a love story.
Man.
Well, if PotC was a disappointment on that score, maybe you should try 'Apocalypto'. It totally showcases Mels more gentle and sensitive side as a director.
I recommend it as the perfect accompaniment for a romantic evening in for you and your partner.
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DWJ is the best. A pity libraries and book shops can't agree whether to put her under J or W, or both, or in the case of whitcoulls for a long time, neither.
Signed, Grateful reader.
You could try here - the shop manager assure me there MAY be a few in the shop.
Their stock isn't online, but you could call them is you're really keen -
I think it's appaling how the Catholic church in particular has got away in recent decades with concealing and sanitising its proud (and oh so recent - collusion with the Nazis, anyone?) history of sadism, brutality, antisemitism and torture.
If there really is a generous Catholic God then there ought to be a lot more Catholics like Flannery O'Connor. While it's difficult to name a Best Short Story Ever, Undulant Fever would have to be a contender.
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Going back to Dickens, I bought A Christmas Carol for my children, and was pleasantly surprised how readable it was. We found it a really good addition to our collection of Christmas stories.
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. . . Undulant Fever would have to be a contender.
Um, also known as The Enduring Chill. Fortunately it's never been re-titled Brucellosis for audiences outside the US.
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Well, if PotC was a disappointment on that score, maybe you should try 'Apocalypto'. It totally showcases Mels more gentle and sensitive side as a director.
See, I quite enjoyed that as a movie. But yes, not exactly happy families.
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Emma, this has been the best blog ever. It has kept me amused for a couple days of otherwise mindless activity at work.
Cheers for that Dinah. Though I'd like to give most of the credit to the brilliant comments thread.
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And if anyone knows about Enduring Chill it’s the Groke...
I recently got through the Moominvalley collection with the kids – mixed bag really, and not as 'genius' as I remembered despite the new cover endorsement from Phillip Pullman. I think they should have retained the first translator, who gave it the feel of a quirky nature-child Bjork video. Still, it’s nice to see promiscuous mothers, absent fathers, sleep-over girlfriends, pipe-smoking yoof etc presented as simply part of the landscape, rather than as Issues.
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My problem is with books by American men. I really have no interest in the lives and concerns of middle-aged divorced English professors. Just like I have little interest in a 20-something BA grad and her musings while on OE in Europe. (Thank god for The Vintner’s Luck. And Bill “Write about something you don’t know” Manhire).
I’ve started but not finished two each from Richard Ford and Don Delillo, and although Paul Theroux may slag us off for our ignorance of his Great Works, I think his travel writing is hard enough to stomach.
The problem is I’m more into the Mills and Boon thing, as long as it’s wrapped up in literary pretentiousness - eg. magical realism and recipes (__Like Water for Chocolate__); Hansard papers and sheer weight (__A Suitable Boy__); academic piss-taking (__Persuasion__); Mediterranean history and war (__Captain Corelli’s Mandolin__) etc. The closest I’ve got from an American was Cormac McCarthy, but of course the love story involves an under-age prostitute, gruesome knife fights, and no happy ending. Where is the love, America?
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academic piss-taking (Persuasion)
Possession? The AS Byatt? Which is one of my all-time favourite books.
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And if anyone knows about Enduring Chill it’s the Groke...
Ha!
I think they should have retained the first translator, who gave it the feel of a quirky nature-child Bjork video.
Agree. Don't know why they brought in Elizabeth Portch - there's a lot of scope for license with Jansson's inventive use of language, and as far as I can gather Thomas Warburton, the earlier translator, seems to have carried across more of the meaning of the characters' original Swedish-language names.
Thomas Teal and Kingsley Hart seem to have done a pretty good job on her later adult stuff. The Summer Book and the autobiographical Sculptor's Daughter are real favourites of mine - life portrayed from both ends, childhood and old age, like nothing I've found elsewhere. Very funny too. I finally got to read her last novel, Sun City, earlier this year. As it's set in an old folks' home in Florida, a long way from the Gulf of Finland, I rather doubted that she'd handle such a setting convincingly. It's a little gem.
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[the bible was] made over centuries
I have a theory it was hacked together in a few years by scribes working for the Emperor Constantine who wished, in an attempt to bring the declining Roman Empire under control, to replace pantheism with a rigorous and prescriptive state religion based loosely on Judaism.
But with bacon sarnies allowed.
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I have a theory it was hacked together in a few years by scribes working for the Emperor Constantine who wished, in an attempt to bring the declining Roman Empire under control, to replace pantheism with a rigorous and prescriptive state religion based loosely on Judaism.
But with bacon sarnies allowed.
Your theory provekes my intellectual curiosity, and also a bitchin' hunger for bacon sarnies. Well played.
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Gah. Provokes. When do we get an edit button, overlords??
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I have a theory it was hacked together in a few years by scribes working for the Emperor Constantine who wished, in an attempt to bring the declining Roman Empire under control, to replace pantheism with a rigorous and prescriptive state religion based loosely on Judaism.
But with bacon sarnies allowed.
I believe it was created in 1982 by a group of publishing magnates, led by Bob Guccione, and marketing gurus in an attempt to drum up sales for a bunch of worthless cross shaped pendants they had purchased by accident.
I'm a Young Bible Creationist. :)
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When do we get an edit button, overlords??
I've come to the conclusion that the PAS edit button is like the Island competition, on The Island which was on TV the other week.
They dangle in front of us by editing posts as moderators, but it'll never come for us.
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Perhaps. I like to think of it as PAS' own __Duke Nukem Forever__.
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Possession? The AS Byatt? Which is one of my all-time favourite books.
Er yeah. That one. Of course - as with LOTR - I skipped anything that didn't look like prose...
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I believe it was created in 1982 by a group of publishing magnates, led by Bob Guccione, and marketing gurus in an attempt to drum up sales for a bunch of worthless cross shaped pendants they had purchased by accident.
I'm more into the George Lucas interpretation.....Anyone want to help with the prequel?
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Jon-
"In the beginning-
nothing...After the end,
nothing..."NB: copyrighted!
(I' sure as shit even Lucas' couldnt develope that scenario!)
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Islander...Congratulations on correctly detaling the Copyright enforcement process. I hope that the tapestry is a bit richer for that new anthem.
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