What Are You Reading Now.

Discussion in 'Discussion of Published Works' started by Writing Forums Staff, Feb 22, 2008.

  1. dbesim

    dbesim Moderator Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Twenties Girl, by Sophie Kinsella.

    A light read with a humorous tone. Exactly what what I needed.
     
  2. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    That is actually one of my favourite books of all time. LOVED it. It's a lot better than Bill Bryson (and more accurate as well.) I've read it several times.
     
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  3. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    They get better as they go along, as Laura gets older. However, they were written for children ...children in the middle of the last century. I grew up with these books and they informed a lot of my attitude towards the Old West. These are some of the books that got me interested in the 'settler's west' ...in other words, the history of what actually happened to real people as the west was settled. As opposed to the gunslingers/bad guys/good guys TV/Movie myths.

    As Laura herself put it, later in life, 'the books are true, but they're not the whole truth.' This applies to her family's makeup and situation as well as some of the other things that happened.

    For example, the Little House on the Prairie was actually chronologically the first event in her own life, and she was far too little to remember much of that time period at all. The Little House in the Big Woods happened after they returned to Wisconsin, after their adventures in the Indian Territory. Then they moved on to Minnesota, where On the Banks of Plum Creek happened. I think that's actually the start of the better books—probably because her own memory of these events was a lot clearer. But even then, lots is fictionalised, but based on true events. She did live through these times, and it's one of the things that made her want to write about them, in later life. She sensed it was an important period, and that she'd been lucky, in a way, to 'be there.'

    One very interesting factoid I didn't know till much later on. Ma's brother actually married Pa's sister ...and one of Pa's brothers married Ma's sister! So the two families were connected via three marriages.

    Reading about how these books came to be written is fascinating in itself. Laura didn't just sit down and churn out a memoir! It was a crafted project, aided by her own daughter, and it took various forms before it finally emerged as it is today. I'm delighted that she got the benefit of not only the sales of her books, but the recognition for them as well.

    She has come under fire recently for her non-depiction/negative depiction of native Americans, which has been seen to be 'racist' although I don't entirely agree. She was a product of her time, and I think she tried her best to be even-handed in later life, when she wrote the books. There weren't actual native American characters in her books, but they didn't figure in her actual life either—fictional or otherwise. She makes it clear that her mother didn't like 'Indians,' but she also makes it pretty clear that her father did, and that Laura herself was interested in their culture.

    One thing that always bothered me about the books. WHERE did they go to the toilet? There was never any mention of an outhouse or anything similar. Even as a child, I remember asking 'where did they 'go?' I guess Laura was enough of a product of the late Victorian era to be reticent about such things as bodily functions! But it's certainly a gap. :)

    Anyway, the books were anything but boring for us kids at the time they came out. Our successive teachers read the whole series out loud to us, at the start (or end) of every day, and we were glued. But we were also the right age for them.
     
    Last edited: Jul 20, 2020
  4. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot & rereading The Divine Comedy, the C.H. Sisson translation.

    I've read Four Quartets before, but this is the first time I've really tried to understand it. I recently reread Lycidas by John Milton - before I really disliked that poem because I thought it was insincere. Now I think it's a masterpiece, and one of the strangest poems in the English language - Four Quartets is the same. Early T.S. Eliot (Prufrock and The Waste Land) I instantly understood and enjoyed, and later Eliot, Four Quartets, was something I just couldn't get into. Like Lycidas, I simply didn't read that poem well enough first time. Four Quartets - it's a masterpiece too, and while I don't understand all of it, I have been trying. It requires a different frame of mind from the one I had, and there are points that I'm sure you can't understand unless you are a Christian.

    Also, I love Dante. Found my old university copy with some good notes and am diving in again. It's fun to hang out with Dante and Virgil again.
     
  5. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    Yeah, when I was searching for road trip novels it was in every list I found, and always near the top. But I want road trip fiction, and of a very specific type... the type I fear would only exist if I wrote it myself.
     
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  6. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Well, I hope this gives you a similar buzz. I like that Least Heat Moon had an objective, albeit one that just kind of jumped into his head. His purpose was to take what the Brits would call 'only the B roads' to complete his journey around the USA.

    Think how much more you would see and do, if you traveled around the UK like that. No motorways or 4-lane traffic. Just two-lane traffic. It's an interesting way to travel. I'm the sort who goes for that sort of thing anyway (I'm a fan of slow travel), so I was intrigued right from the start.

    The thing is, he's amusing without trying hard to be. Bryson annoys me a lot, to the extent that I really can't read his stuff because I don't believe it. I do believe Least Heat Moon, because he writes about places I have been, and gets it spot-on.
     
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  7. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Ever read Travels With Charley by Steinbeck? He's not usually my cup of tea but that was a great memoir.
     
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  8. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    Yes, that was another one that turned up in all the lists I found. But again, non-fiction.
     
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  9. Teladan

    Teladan Contributor Contributor

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    Currently reading The Forest in Folklore and Mythology by Alexander Porteous. It's an odd one as, though it's highly in-depth, it reads more like an author's notes. It was published in the 1920s and there is no information on the author himself. It's like a miscellaneous collection of nature lore incorporating literary excerpts and the like. It's good, but there is sometimes almost no explanation, just a few sentences for each item. No synthesis whatsoever. I knew that going in though. I'm reading a lot slower than I thought I would, and since I get my sense or progress partly from reading, I've just in the last few minutes bought Phantastes: A Faerie Romance by the master George MacDonald. This is an 1858 fantasy story, one of the first.
     
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  10. HarrySTruman

    HarrySTruman New Member

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    Thanks for the thoughtful reply and the added context! My daughter read all of the books in the series and absolutely loved them, so Laura still has an audience even today. I apologize for my sour grapes. :)
     
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  11. Dogberry's Watch

    Dogberry's Watch Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Contest Winner 2022

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    I'm reading the book club book, Watership Down, and I've never been so invested in rabbits.
     
  12. Friedrich Kugelschreiber

    Friedrich Kugelschreiber marshmallow Contributor

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    Is it not excellent?
     
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  13. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Is Watership Down the one where there rabbits never ask "where"?

    Or is that a chapter from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH?
     
  14. Friedrich Kugelschreiber

    Friedrich Kugelschreiber marshmallow Contributor

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    There's a warren like that in one or two of the chapters.
     
  15. Dogberry's Watch

    Dogberry's Watch Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Contest Winner 2022

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    I should be sleeping, and yet... It's charming and I feel like I'm gonna be upset by something soon. It's building up for someone not making it. I hope it's not Fiver. That little guy's my buddy. I did get pretty worked up over Bigwig and the thing that happens to him.

    Also, yes, Iain there is a warren like that and it is the creepiest thing. It's like walking down a dimly lit street at night in a neighborhood you know is safe, but there's a fog and a man under a streetlight playing with a lighter, so you just hope for the best. He stops playing with the lighter when you pass.
     
  16. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    So we have met before IRL :)
     
  17. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    That Forest in Folklore book sounds like it's exactly what I'd like to read just now. I'll put it on my list. I love reading about folkore.
     
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  18. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Oh, no need to apologise. I have no idea what I would think of the books if I'd only just read them for the first time. And I have to admit, the first two in the series are not the best, in terms of engaging adult interest. But as a child, I was glued. I remember them being read out loud by two successive teachers. And guess what? I was off school with a bad cold the day the teacher read the final chapter in the series! I was SO upset—after nearly two years, I missed the last installment. My best friend at the time had to tell me, over the phone, everything that had happened! I didn't actually own the books myself until they came out in paperback as a box set, when I was in my early twenties. That's when I actually read them all myself for the first time.
     
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  19. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    Funnily enough I fancied this, too, but it was more than I’m willing to pay for a book when I checked on amazon.
     
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  20. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Oh, I haven't checked yet. Yikes. I see what you mean. Over £8 just for a Kindle copy. Paperbacks are running around £20. That's a lot, when you're not sure if the book will be any good. I'll still probably order it, but I'll wait till payday. :)
     
    Last edited: Jul 21, 2020
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  21. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    I don’t know what’s going on with books (proper books) on amazon. There seems to have been a mad surge in prices of late. I used to go on there whenever I wanted a book, safe in the knowledge I’d get it new for under a fiver, and more often than not used for pence.
     
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  22. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Yeah, there is some crazy pricing going on, especially for Kindle. Some Kindle prices are what you'd expect, while others are damn near the price of the printed copy. In this case, as the author isn't even alive, so I don't know what's going on.

    It's kinda gone back to the days where I have to want a book pretty badly before I just order it. Fair enough. Authors and book producers do need to get paid. But still, it's a bit off-putting, especially as the old fall-back of being able to get the book from the library isn't working that well.
     
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  23. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    If this had been happening at the height of the e-reader boom I’d blame them for the price increase of real books, but we’re well beyond that now and the two formats (thankfully) seem to be co-existing quite nicely.
     
  24. EFMingo

    EFMingo A Modern Dinosaur Supporter Contributor

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    After reading a fair amount of Elizabethan, Caroline, and Restoration era poetry, including a sizable chunk of Paradise Lost again, I'm finally back to reading a novel. I'm taking on Gulliver's Travels this weekend. Surprised I hadn't gotten to it until now, but I can finally knock it off the list of classics.
     
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  25. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I wonder if I've ever properly read that? I know I read it when I was in elementary school, but I'm not sure if it was the real deal or one of those kiddified versions. Either option is possible, my family read after dinner rather than watching TV so I got exposed to some pretty heavy stuff for my age.
     
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