KEV67
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Posts posted by KEV67
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I sometimes hear that a book loses something in translation. For instance, that War and Peace, great book that it is, is better in Russian. Mind you, War and Peace contains a lot of French, and I can read most the French. I did suspect The Brothers Karamazov lost something in translation. When a book is written in verse, I cannot see how it can be translated accurately. I think a bigger problem is when you have characters who speak colloquially or with accents, or have mannerisms of speech. In Huckleberry Finn, Jim speaks with southern, black accent. Huck speaks with a back woods accent. Most the characters speak with, what I read was, a Pine County accent. A Brazilian on another book forum said these accents were translated into standard Portuguese.
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They used to sell several books by Ira Levin. I was not aware he had written so many famous books. I did not know he'd written The Boys from Brazil, Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives. They are all more famous as films. I read Stepford Wives. I did not think it was as good as the film.
I also bought The Talented Mr Ripley and White Teeth from there. I don't like all their range, but it is quite interesting what they think will most appeal to their customer base.
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I think I might put the Ballad of Halo Jones on my TBR list. It is repeatedly cited on the 2000 AD forum list. That and Chopper, and both those stories were written over thirty years ago. I understand Halo Jones was written by Alan Moore, who seems to be the greatest comic writer who ever lived, despite his eccentricitities regarding royalties.
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I generally found the BookTubers I followed pretty straightforward. Quite a few of them were undergraduates. Some of them work in publishing. I wondered if a big reason for starting their channels was to get into publishing, because I expect that is a difficult industry to get into. Some of them did review books they were sent. I suppose it is difficult to be brutally honest about a book when you have had contact with the author, but if they declare that they were sent the book, you can take that into account. I rarely read a book because I see it reviewed on YouTube.
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I used to watch quite a few nice, young ladies on YouTube talk about books. I don't watch so many now. Sometimes they discontinue their channels. Sometimes they move into topics I am not so interested in. My favourite was Katie from Books and Things, who discusses Victorian literature a lot. She reads quick, she thinks quick, she speaks quick. I occasionally watch Becky M for science fiction book reviews.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNBgyHiLdu0lVN9Hr-xTLLw (Books and Things)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwpMfAT2jtdZ2VFH56nE6bg (Becky M)
I have come across Ellie Dashwood recently. I am not sure she really counts as a BookTuber. She discusses subjects related to Jane Austen. She must be some sort of educator because she is so professional.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0AnXj-FmgHRtDcFMd_kFyQ (Ellie Dashwood)
Another young lady whose content is amazing is Nerd Cookies. I don't think she really qualifies as a BookTuber, either because she discusses topics relating to LotR, Dune.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXYIDTytNEO3NgDVwdOKjWw
There are quite a few YouTubers who interesting explore topics raised in Lord of the Rings.
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I quite like seeing which books are in sale in my local branch of HMV. Strange that the vinyl is so expensive, but the books are so cheap. Also strange is that whenever I try to re-buy a truly great record, which I used to have, they don't have it. What sort of record shop doesn't have Beck or The Violent Femmes? Anyway, getting back to books. I am often intrigued by their offerings. They have a lot of sci-fi, music memoirs and modern classics. They also sell books like Naked Lunch, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and The Men who Stare at Goats. I am delighted that they continue to sell A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell. Orwell disowned the book himself, but I thought it was great.
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What's the ending of Kes like? I never watched the end of the DVD, because I was worried some spiteful scrote would poison the bird. The football match in the film was great. I remember our English school teacher reading out that section of the book, although we did not study the whole book. There was also an interesting bit in the film where the boys were caned. I don't think they told the child actors they were going to be caned for real.
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I was interested in Project Hail Mary, a sci-fi book by Andy Weir. I can't find it in any of the local bookshops.
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I read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge Taylor. That's a seafaring poem. I try to avoid those sort of nutters myself. The wedding guest had more patience than I have. I'd have told him to get lost.
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I don't like reading a book where the two romantic leads don't get together at the end. It's not that I really into romantic fiction. Sometimes I think an author thinks he can't give the readers what they want because where's the artistry in that? Unless it is a really great artistic ending, I would rather have the happy ending.
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Oh yes, Big Brother, CCTV, mobile phones, everything being connected to the internet, deep surveillance. There was that side to 1984 too. 1984 is often classified as science fiction. When I read it, I wondered where the science fiction was. The only bit of technology that was not available when the book was written were two way screens and cameras. In the Cold War era, Communist countries such as East Germany and China encouraged the population to denounce their neighbours if they suspected they were not ideologically pure. I think if you had to constantly worry you might be denounced to the secret police by a colleague, friend or neighbour for not showing enough enthusiasm for the political system, that would make you more unhappy than the thought that the state was looking through your old social media posts.
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I started to read it when I was 15 or 16. I got about three-quarters of the way through, and realised there were not enough pages left for Winston Smith to escape, join and maybe even lead the counter-revolution. I was disappointed and stopped reading. I should have read Fahrenheit 451 instead. When I was forty I read 1984 again and I thought it was brilliant. It has so many ideas you can see being acted out around us and around the world. The re-writing of history to suit a political agenda; the abuse of language to control thought; thought crime itself; double-think, which is the cognitive dissonance you put yourself through when you force yourself to believe what you know not to be true, because it is unsafe not to. I think that is partly why George Orwell is admired so much by the right in America and other places. It is a book about the deep cynicism of certain political leaders who manipulate social revolution to gain and maintain control of a state. If you read Orwell's later books and essays from Homage to Catalonia onwards, you can see that 1984 is a culmination of all his later political ideas.
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On 06/07/2021 at 5:41 PM, Raven said:
In part, this came about after reading Mark Kermode's book, Hatchet Job.
In the book Kermode argues that the place of critics is ever more important in the days of social media when everyone can say what they feel about a subject. If you have a well know critic give a review - whether you agree or not with their comments - you have a yard stick to judge their comments and ratings against.
I like Mark Kermode. His film reviews on the radio with Simon Mayo are hilarious.
That said, I regard these sort of review programmes as entertainment in themselves and very often do not agree with the professional critics. Barry Humphreys always used to go on about how great Babette's Feast was. I think it was about a Danish cook who comes into some money and spends it all on cooking a feast for her guests, because she used to work in a fancy French hotel or something. Yeah, that's just the sort of film Barry Humphreys would like. Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian loathed Joker. I thought it was the best film in 2019. Mark Kermode does not like The Big Lebowski. That was my favourite film for a long time.
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7 hours ago, Raven said:
I was just agreeing with your comment that one star seems harsh! (personally, I would probably give it a 3, but it is a long time since I read it so that's not a given).
The book, like many other science fiction novels that have been written by respected authors, seems to be widely lauded, but I've read other books that tackle the same subject better, but are consigned to relative obscurity because of the sci-fi label.
Yes, I was surprised to find it in the literary fiction section, because it definitely seems like science fiction.
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10 hours ago, Raven said:
I read The Drowned World a number of years ago now, and cannot remember a whole lot about it, but I wouldn't classify it as a one star book, even though I remember it as being hard going.
Yes, but I don't like it, which according to the guidance means I should five it one star.
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- 140 posts
- Location: Reading, UK
Posted June 8 (edited)________________________________________________________________________________________________
| Cruises |
| Moby Dick | Midshipman Hornblower | N**** & Narcissus | Master and Commander| Huckleberry Finn |
| Herman Melville | C.S. Forester | Joseph Conrad | Patrick O' Brian | Mark Twain |
| British Classics |
| Great Expectations | New Grub Street |Tom Jones | Wuthering Heights | Mary Barton |
| Charles Dickens | George Gissing | Richard Fielding | Emily Brontë | Mrs Gaskell |
| British Literary Fiction |
| I Claudius | Nice Work | Winged Victory | Mr American | Lionel Asbo |
| Robert Graves | David Lodge | V.M. Yeates | George MacDonald Fraser| Martin Amis |
| Food for thought |
| Lamb of God | Eating Animals | Alone in the Universe |Why Nations Fail | The Bottomless Well |
| Ralph R. Wilson | Jonathon Safron Foer | John Gribben |Acemoglu & Robinson | Mills & Huber |
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9 hours ago, Madeleine said:
Most of my ratings tend to be fall into either 3 or 4 stars - can't remember the last time I gave top marks to a book! If I don't finish one then it's usually a 1, to show that I did at least read enough of it to give a review, and I try not to be too scathing , just in case the author is lurking. A book which wasn't very good but which I did finish (or maybe skim read) to find out what happened would get a 2.
All the books I gave 1 star to were written by dead authors, except for William Gibson.
I quite like the guidance:
1 star - did not like it
2 stars - it was ok
3 stars - I liked it
4 stars - I really liked it
5 stars - it was amazing
That means I should give The Drowned World one star. Seems harsh. I probably should regrade some of the other books. For instance, I gave Ulysses two stars because there were several bits I did understand and enjoy, but on the whole it either bored me, or went over my head, or irritated me. So overall I didn't like it.
Perhaps a distorting factor is that because the top score is 5, you naturally think the average score should be 2.5, but because the minimum score is 1, the average score should be 3, provided scores are normally distributed, which I don't suppose they are. I don't think null ratings are included in the average ratings, but perhaps they are.
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2 hours ago, Hayley said:
The Admiral Benbow Inn in Penzance (from Treasure Island) is brilliant in real life. It's really quirky inside, with loads of antique maritime artefacts (the table I ate at was at a ships wheel!) and the food was lovely (and, perhaps surprisingly, very reasonably priced!). I'd love to go back.
Interesting, I sometimes go to Penzance for work reasons and have walked past the Admiral Benbow numerous times. It is not one of my favourites though.
In Reading, where I live, there is a bar/ night club called Up The Junction. This is just down the road from Cemetery Junction, so called because of the graveyard. There was also a pop song by Squeeze in the 70s or 80s with the same name. However, before that in the 60s, there was a book by Nell Gunn (need to check). It was a bit grim.
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I am currently reading The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard. I am only going to give it two stars, but I was wondering whether I should give it one. When I rate books on Goodreads I am reluctant to hand out many five stars, but I still award more five stars than one stars. If I am enjoying a book so little, I would probably stop reading it, in which case I would not rate it all, which is like a U for ungraded. Usually I do plough on through a book, even if I am not enjoying it much. The only one I have not finished recently was Riders by Jilly Cooper. I heard it was better than it is usually given credit for, and it still appears on bookshelves and bookshops decades after it was published, so I thought I would give it a chance. However, I am just not in touch with my feminine side as much as I would need to be, and it is a very long book. Out of the 446 books I rated on Goodreads, 42 have five stars; only 13 have one star. This reminded me of school. I expect teachers do not like to hand out too many A's, but rarely give out any E's. I can remember getting some A's at school for my essays, as well as a few D's. I mostly got B's and C's. I don't remember getting any E's. Interestingly, I think there is a statistical bias in Goodreads ratings. Most books fall within the 3 to 4.5 stars range after ratings are averaged. If a book has under 3.5 stars, it is probably not that good a read. If it has over four stars, it probably is a good read.
Thing is, I am not a book critic or academic assessing how good an author's work is. I am a reader reflecting how much I enjoyed the book, and I don't have to justify it, be consistent about my marking scheme, or take considerations of taste or viewpoint into account. Another difference between a teacher marking a pupil's work and me rating an author's book is that usually the teacher would know a lot more about the subject than the pupil, where as books are often written by the very brainy. Thus Virginia Woolf is a very great author. She must be because her books were 2nd and 3rd in the BBC Culture's Greatest British Novels poll. Neverheless, I thought Mrs Dalloway was tedious and To the Lighthouse was underwhelming. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford was awful. Similarly, The Egoist by George Meredith. Don Quixote, is it really that good? I thought the second half was better than the first, but still. Problem is giving books like these one star while giving About a Boy by Nick Hornby five stars probably marks you out as a bit of a philistine, but maybe I should not worry about that.
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I noticed that there was a Wetherspoons pub called The Joseph Conrad in Lowestoft. I don't know what connection Joseph Conrad had with the place.
I wish someone would open a pub called the Hand and Banner. It was the pub in Daniel Deronda in which Dan meets some politically active people through whom he meets other people who become important to him. Pubs play a big part in George Eliot's works.
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On 05/07/2017 at 10:43 PM, Alexi said:
There's a Moon Under Water in Manchester as well. There is also Peveril of the Peak, although it is not named after the Walter Scott novel. Worth a visit though just for how distinctive a place it is!
I have also imbibed a few pints in the Angel, which featured in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.
I think The Angel was mentioned The Pickwick Papers, although, thinking about it, that was The Angel Hotel in Bury St Edmunds.
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Looking around Waterstones today, I saw a graphic novel version of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. I was surprised to see that book turned into a graphic novel. That must have been a labour of love because I doubt they'll make much money from it.
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I have been looking for the book in the shops, but I can't even find it in hardback form yet. That high GoodReads score might be down to fans who pre-ordered a copy.
I hear the protagonist in Project Hail Mary is very like Mark Watney in The Martian, only de does not use profanity, as he is a school teacher.
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I have been watching some fantastic science channels on YouTube recently. In particular Anton Petrov's and Sabine Hossenfelder's. What was I watching today? A vid by Anton Petrov about a pair of galaxies that don't seem to have any dark matter. Yesterday it was about how the Milky Way's rotations were slowing down. Sabine Hossenfelder's vids are more along the lines of why the universe is not a computer simulation, or the granularity of the universe. It's an incredible subject, but I don't think most science fiction writers are very up to speed with science.
Books that make you blub
in General Book Discussions
Posted
This can be a bit embarrassing when in a coffee shop or on the train. SPOILERS I did cry the last chapter of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Moreover, I have always teared up every time I read the last chapter of Watership Down. It's not much of a spoiler: rabbits don't live a very long time.