Kolinahr

I used to subscribe to National Geographic, hardcopy, but never renewed for some reason, though I enjoyed it a great deal. Just forgot, I suppose, or maybe the huge pile of NG's grew too cumbersome. I'll occasionally buy an issue still. I also sometimes buy some of the scientific magazines, like many people here, and the occasional fashion magazine, though the last one I picked up two months ago I still haven't read for some reason. I read the newspaper online, as well as one magazine called 'Emirates Woman,' but it's pretty lightweight. The articles are quite short and often frustrating, but good enough to see what might be going on in Dubai, and it's nice to read something local.

The Rowling would probably fly by, given it's a script, so I guess it depends on if you're looking for a quick read or no.

I'm not familiar with the Seducer's Diary but I would definitely agree with your second statement. But the worst part isn't necessarily that the book inspired such offspring, but that the modern examples seem largely ignorant to the irony of Nabokov. Reminds me very much of the famous ending to the film The Graduate, in which a bride leaves her intended at the altar to run off with the main character. A lot of movies after have partially copied this, but seem to completely forget the deep ambiguity that followed that scene. After jubilantly jumping on a bus together, the two characters sit in awkward silence, the sudden awareness of the profound social transgression they committed seeming to dawn on them along with a complete inability to determine what happens now, what happens next. Like the movies that copies this scene in a far less ironic and self-aware fashion, the successors to Lolita seem to largely take the story at face value. In fact, I would posit that the entire 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' genre (you're probably familiar with the term, but if not it refers to that quirky, flighty, sort of larger than life girl character who comes along in so many films to 'save' the male main from his own ennui) is predicated on a completely unironic view of the Nabokovian girl seductress (though usually lacking the overt manipulative element that Humbert imagines). The play/movie I mentioned before, Closer, breaks with this trend in the character of Alice, because while she seems to fit the mould, we can actually see how completely she's taken advantage of by her partner, who uses her as inspiration and saviour until someone more "serious" comes along, only to return to her again and repeat the initial behaviours. Additionally, despite the abusive sexuality most of the characters display in this story, Alice, though interpreted by the men around her as a flighty ingenue, is the only character in an immoral universe to practice sexual honesty.

Love this. Absolutely spot on. Like musicians, most writers cover the same territory again and again with small variations. It doesn't have be to be a bad thing as long as there is new material along with the old. I mean, even Homer did it.

Temps finally starting to drop a bit. Mostly only going up to 40 these days and humidity much lower. Hurrah, we can breathe, and the AC bill will go down!

Happy to be of help.

Ah, yes, The Shack. Never actually read it but heard a lot about it and had someone gift me a copy to read, too. Claimed it was so amazing, but I was very wary of the look of it. Seemed to have 'preach' written all over it in invisible ink, and didn't seem to have much of a story besides. I did read A Wrinkle in Time and enjoyed it. I don't remember it having any religious themes. I mostly recall fun diagrams of a tesseract and some fairly convincing dimensional travel, but it's been a while, so who knows. I actually don't mind religious themes in novels at all, but what bothers me is when it's coded. Either tell me what you mean or don't include it because being ambushed feels very sneaky and underhanded and makes me angry. Proponents of racist themes in particular do this a lot, like the writers are hoping that if you just whisper bigotry enough people will simply absorb it--unfortunately true historically in the case of a good deal of propaganda (and well, presently, too, to be honest). So the worst thing is that you can't say the technique doesn't work, which gives the writers a good reason to continuing doing it, and makes it all the more upsetting.

That's the one. Actually, I recently saw the show and liked it, which prompted me to re-read the book. They're very different stories; the novel definitely focuses a lot more on exploring the philosophy and science of what happened, and doesn't include any of the more sensationalist elements of the show like the conspiracy theories, or FBI investigations. Moreover, almost all of it takes place in Europe rather than the U.S. But as much as I generally like the book more, I'm not fond of the short third part at the end, which I think could have been left out entirely and bangs on a bit on one of the author's habitual fixations. In that sense the show was a bit more grounded. But I'll leave that you to judge when you get back to reading.

I was recently re-reading a couple of authors whom I enjoyed a great deal when I was younger. One in particular really pushed some underlying themes I was able to blithely remain ignorant of as a child, but which have now become painfully obvious to me as an adult reader. I won't name names because I'd rather not focus on any one author or theme in particular, but I was wondering to what extent the rest of you feel comfortable navigating author agenda. If an author is in favour of a particular philosophy or life-view, or seems to want to inspire certain action in the reader that you disagree with, are you able to largely ignore this if the writing is enthralling enough? Or does the issue ultimately become too distracting? If so, which books did this happen with?

I find that listening to short stories in audio format is entertaining and side-steps this issue. I got involved with this because there is actually an audio listening bank online, which I made use of when I was moving overseas, just after I had to discard almost my entire physical book collection. The audio books kept me sane in that time. There aren't any current best sellers there; all of the books are out of the copyright, and there are a lot of great, hidden or lost treasures, a lot of them zipped collections of different genre novels, stories, poetry, and non-fiction. It's also a collective project, so if you want, you can eventually contribute your own vocal performances. If you want to give it a try, the site is here: https://archive.org/details/librivoxaudio

Hmm, I've listened to some audio books before and enjoyed them, particularly is the vocal performance is good. If it's monotonous or the performing reader makes no effort to differentiate between characters, then I lose interest. I have a theatrical background, and I take particular note of that sort of thing, though. That said, like many people here I prefer reading with my eyes because I can absorb the material very quickly, in blocks rather than word by word. In fact, my tablet can produce an audio double of any ebook on it, and I've been amused by playing around with it in the past because even at the most almost inaudibly advanced speed (which I have read that blind readers often become very adapted to and hear perfectly clearly) my eyes can still absorb the material with greater alacrity.

I haven't read his entire body of work, but I do enjoy Shakespeare. That said, while his technique is wonderful, the style and format in which he writes is very far removed from the modern novel, or even much of the poetry of the past three hundred years, and I can see why a lot of people might be disinterested in reading him recreationally. Even screenplay format stories written in modern language often disinterest the habitual novel reader, and frankly, the bard's work really is much more engaging in the theatre, the sphere for which it was clearly intended (sonnets and other stand along poetry excepted, of course, because they really should be examined on an individual basis).

I remember that slogan, yes. As far as I can recall, though, it referred to the industrialist hero of the novel, who became a mysterious, prophet-like figure, leading the people to defiance against government crafted market regulations. I was also compelled by your question to wade into the wiki article for the novel, and it seems that there is an earlier, capitalist-themed novel that Rand may have taken inspiration from, called The Driver (by Garet Garrett, 1922), which also had an industrialist protagonist, this one by the name of Henry Galt. Both Garrett and Rand's novels also address the railroad industries, their significant contributions to society at the times of these novels, and their struggles to resist being collectivised by the government. About James Earl Ray, though, maybe he took inspiration from the book? After Atlas Shrugged was published, Rand became something of a mascot for the far right with her 'Objectivist' philosophy. So it might be possible.

Hello, Autumn. I'm new here myself, but I would like to welcome you aboard (if you'll excuse the pun!) I have an idea of what you mean. I don't have exactly the same problem, but I've recently lost most of my access to physical books and have to rely on my tablet and laptop for reading. Ebooks just aren't the same, and I'm find the hassle of booting up, etc, to be discouraging enough that I read much less than usual. That said, there have also been times when I've picked up books and put them right back down for the same reasons of ennui that you mentioned, and I think it has something to do with the predictability of stories after a while. Once you've read a few thousand, they become almost as mundane as the world you're trying to get away from for a few hours. When I was a child, any book was amazing, all books were amazing, but I've had to become a lot more discerning and actively look for something different. That said, maybe try out a new genre. You mentioned you don't usually read sci-fi. If you're willing to give it a try, the author I'm reading now is very good. Robert J. Sawyer is a Canadian writer whose stories tend to be fairly well based in hard science while also developing his characters and plots in a way that seems beyond a lot of hard sci-fi authors (whose books tend to read like engineering manuals). So his work is probably a great entry point into the genre for someone like you who largely reads stories set in this world. I'd try out Flashforward (a experiment at the CERN particle accelerator causes the entire human race to black out for one minute and forty three seconds, during which time they have true visions of what they will be doing 21 years in the future. Chaos is the scene upon waking as countless people have died in accidents during the blackout, and more chaos follows are people rush to change or confirm their futures); Rollback (a rejuvenating procedure is performed on a man and his wife, but fails to work on the woman. The man rediscovers his youth while his aged wife creeps towards death); Mindscan (a dying man has his consciousness uploaded into a cyborg replica of himself in a now-common procedure meant to capture a kind of immortality. Afterwards, the mortal man is sent to a corporate moonbase to live out his last days while the cyborg carries on his life and legal identity. Confrontations between the cyborg and the man's loved ones follow, as the cyborg, which has a perfect recall of all of the man's memories and feels he is the same being, is largely rejected, before meeting and falling in love with a fellow cyborg. Just when all seems well for the new replicate, the man on the moon, still living, has a change of heart and demands the return of his legal identity). Have a read if anything sounds intriguing. Hope I could help.

The Hannibal Lecter books by Thomas Harris focus on food a lot (not just people as food, but food in general) and do a great job of exploring both our literal and psychological consumption of food.

Well, I can't disagree with that particular adjective!

Definitely arch conservatism. Rand originally came from USSR and after emigrating to the U.S. decisively embraced the most extreme variant of capitalism in all of its brutal, every-man-woman-and-child-for-themselves glory. Atlas Shrugged might as well be sub-titled "the capitalist manifesto." I found it an extremely grinding and rather traumatising read. Sorry for the late response here, btw. Still getting used to manually searching the boards.

Agreed. I usually enjoy his fantasy works and short stories a lot more than his horror novels, and I think this has a lot to do with why. He doesn't tend to set up the Americana atmosphere quite so densely when he's working with fewer words or in an alternate universe of some kind. I'm a bit torn on this issue, though, because I do feel that his efforts to write about the lives of the working poor are entirely laudable, and of course that's where a lot of the American settings and attitudes come in. In theory, I should appreciate his bold attack on classism, but in practise it can be a bit grating.

I'd definitely recommend The Hours by Michael Cunningham. Very poetic writing exploring an existentialist theme.

Looks like great fun, very traditional theatre.

I originally come from a region I used to think of as humid, generally about 60% humidity in summer, but UAE is far worse, typically between 85% and all the way up to 100% humidity. On days like that, people actually walk around with scarves thrown over their heads, and I breathe into my sleeve for a few minutes when I step outside so that I don't vomit from inhaling the moisture--which has literally happened. I'm not asthmatic, and I can't even imagine what life would be like here with breathing problems. Breakfast out followed by bookshop sounds like a great morning. Hope you made some good finds!

The television movie of this book was one I really enjoyed in my teens, and I recently decided to read the novel, but only got about one third through the Uncut version before abandoning it because it was seriously beginning to disturb me. The only part I remember being actually frightening in the film was the walking trip through the corpse-riddled New York tunnel, but there were many more disturbing moments in the book, and the sheer quantity of death was truly depressing. I was a bit surprised by my own reaction because I also typically enjoy end of the world scenarios, but I think it was actually the humanising touch that King handles so deftly that made this story different. So many people were given real, three dimensional characters before being killed off. Anyway, kudos to Mr. King for so convincingly and authentically handling the subject matter, because it truly deserved the title of Horror.

Never heard of this author before, but I checked out his wiki entry and his work sounds original and fiascinating. I think I'll definitely be trying him out soon, maybe starting with Shadow Forest, because I've been re-visiting some of my favourite children's works recently, particularly those that deal with darker themes, and this sounds like a good modern addition to that genre.

Heh, yes. Take my 'cool and breezy' with a grain of salt. But your weather sounds great, actually. I love the cold, and there's something so comforting about a brisk summer day. Dutch weather is usually nice and windy, too, which is always fun.

Hi, Athena. Hope you don't mind a newbie posting on your list, but I was just reading your list of book titles in Dutch and noticed that a number of the characters' names had been changed. Quite a few years ago, I used to live in Nederland, so I know this happens frequently in Dutch translations, but thinking of it now reminded me of the funniest encounter I had with this. Though my mother tongue is English, my first reading of Harry Potter was in Dutch. I read at least Harry Potter en de steen der wijzen and maybe geheime kamer before reading the originals (or having any idea how popular they were). The funny thing is that I started talking about the books with people who had read them in English (and not in Dutch) before I did, and we were both very confused because most of the names were different. In particular, I recall people having trouble with who Perkamentus might be, and to be honest it was years before Dumbledore sounded like his real name! Maybe one of the reasons why he's always seemed like such a fraud to me (though there are other reasons...). Anyway, I'm sure you've encountered this issue fairly frequently!