Last Book You Read

[Groggy]

Reading Moby Dick, or The Whale and couldn't be happier about it. I'm now about 120 pages, give or take, in and loving it.

Lucky. I hated that one.

If I can somehow find time to read such a massive tome, I'm hoping to take another crack at Jeremy Wilson's authorized biography of T.E. Lawrence. (Being the busy bee I am though, I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't.) Also got On the Track of Unknown Animals by Bernard Heuvelmans, widely considered the founding work of the wonderfully esoteric field of cryptozoology.

[Whalestoe]

Lucky. I hated that one.

If I can somehow find time to read such a massive tome, I'm hoping to take another crack at Jeremy Wilson's authorized biography of T.E. Lawrence. (Being the busy bee I am though, I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't.) Also got On the Track of Unknown Animals by Bernard Heuvelmans, widely considered the founding work of the wonderfully esoteric field of cryptozoology.

Why did you not like Moby Dick? Just curious.

[Groggy]

The story was interesting and the writing style wasn't bad, but the endless, needless digressions kept throwing me out of it (the chapters on the scientific classification of whales, for instance). Plus Ahab was the only character in the story who seemed fully realized. Maybe saying I hate it is overstating the case - I was, after all, able to get the whole way through it, which can't be said of many another novel.

[Atlas2112]

well for my World Lit class i had the pleasure to read Candide for the umpteenth time and a virgin reading of Ibsen's A Doll's house. I'm supposed to read Kafka's The Metamorphosis but I've read it so many times i might as well memorize it. I'll read it again (truth be told it's one of my favorite short stories/novella) but I'll spend most of the week reading next weeks book, The Stranger.

Whalestoe, you wouldn't happen to be reading Moby Dick as a companion piece to Blood Meridian would you?

[Whalestoe]

The story was interesting and the writing style wasn't bad, but the endless, needless digressions kept throwing me out of it (the chapters on the scientific classification of whales, for instance). Plus Ahab was the only character in the story who seemed fully realized. Maybe saying I hate it is overstating the case - I was, after all, able to get the whole way through it, which can't be said of many another novel.

Hahaha, thank you. I've heard of the chapters that read more like papers from a whaling novel, but am quite looking forward to it nonetheless.

Whalestoe, you wouldn't happen to be reading Moby Dick as a companion piece to Blood Meridian would you?

No, I'm not. Purely out of fun. Which leads to me ignoring my English classes assigned readings for a bit! Why do you ask?

[Atlas2112]

Apparently there are a lot of references to Moby Dick in Blood Meridian and i figured you may of heard of it. I guess now you can keep that in mind when you read Moby Dick, but don't stress yourself looking, I only heard of a couple allusions.

[Whalestoe]

Apparently there are a lot of references to Moby Dick in Blood Meridian and i figured you may of heard of it. I guess now you can keep that in mind when you read Moby Dick, but don't stress yourself looking, I only heard of a couple allusions.

Well, I have heard of those references in Blood Meridian. One so far, that I have encountered, is the idea of a prophet predicting doom for The Kid in Blood Meridian. There is a similar prophet in Moby Dick. I'll keep an eye out for more.

[Groggy]

a virgin reading of Ibsen's A Doll's house.

Have fun with that. I love A Doll's House but I'm pretty ambivalent towards Ibsen's work as a whole, and I HATE An Enemy of the People.

Metamorphosis is one of those stories that's more interesting than good, though it was quite easy to do a Marxist analysis of it for my senior high English class.

[Groggy]

Read the first 150 pages of Wilson's Lawrence bio, a bit dry so far (though I'm waiting for the good stuff and not his childhood and college life). So far he's done a pretty thorough job of quelching the "Lawrence is gay" apocrypha, if nothing else; hope to get into WWI/The Arab Revolt in the next day or so (have a four day weekend in effect due to the G-20). The Heuvelmans book might have to wait.

[marmota-b]

Beowulf, as translated  into more modern English by certain Grimmere or what the name was, from Project Gutenberg.
I was surprised at how quickly I got into it, so that some of the translator's explanations were unnecessary for me. On the other hand, there were other places, especially the complicated kinships, where I got completely lost...
For a reader of J.R.R. Tolkien, it's really fun to pick up the references, such as the dragon on whom Smaug is clearly based, or the name of one of the Rohirs.

[Groggy]

I've read Beowulf a number of times. It's pretty cool.

[dave jenkins]

For a reader of J.R.R. Tolkien, it's really fun to pick up the references, such as the dragon on whom Smaug is clearly based, or the name of one of the Rohirs.

If you enjoy that, you should go through Wagner's Ring. I'm not sure if Tolkien knew Wagner, or if he and Wagner were just drawing from the same sources, but the correspondences are pretty cool nonetheless.

[Whalestoe]

About halfway through Moby-Dick now. Still liking it a lot.

Anyways, I just purchased The Complete Stories and Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor to read afterwards.

[marmota-b]

If you enjoy that, you should go through Wagner's Ring. I'm not sure if Tolkien knew Wagner, or if he and Wagner were just drawing from the same sources, but the correspondences are pretty cool nonetheless.

Maybe both: Tolkien knew it (at least C.S. Lewis did) and they both drew from the same sources.
But I don't think I'll go through it anytime soon. There are many many other things I want to go through...

[dave jenkins]

Maybe both: Tolkien knew it (at least C.S. Lewis did) and they both drew from the same sources.
But I don't think I'll go through it anytime soon. There are many many other things I want to go through...

Yeah, there's not enough time for everything, sure, I understand. Do what I did and read the comic that P. Craig Russell did of it. A fabulous adaptation.