KEV67
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Posts posted by KEV67
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On 02/06/2021 at 11:00 PM, Raven said:
I like the idea, but I have been a bit distracted with some moderation issues over the last day or so, so please don't take the lack of a thoughtful reply personally!
(I'm only in the market for drive-by pithy posts as things stand!)
So no change from usual, really...
I meant that I saw there was a challenges forum and I posted this in General Book Discussions, not that no one had replied. Is there any chance it can be moved?
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Looks like I posted this in the wrong sub-forum.
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I am going to put Lamb of God by Ralph F. Wilson on shelf 4. I think that is the book I read. I went through a phase of reading origins of Christianity books. This is not one of those, but it is a beautifully researched book. Also religious and spiritual.
I have decided seafaring books are my favourite genre, so that is going to include Moby Dick, Midshipman Hornblower, and I am not sure what else.
The pre-20th century literary fiction shelf is going to include Great Expectations, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Jones, probably Wuthering Heights.
I am not sure what my third shelf is going to be. It might be 20th century British, in which case it would include I Claudius, Nice Work by David Lodge and something by George MacDonald Fraser. Might include Winged Victory by V.M. Yeates.
Edit:
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| Seafaring |
| Moby Dick | Midshipman Hornblower | The Sea Wolf | Master and Commander| The N****** of Narcissus |
| Herman Melville | C.S. Forester | Jack London | Patrick O' Brian | Joseph Conrad |
| Pre 20th Century |
| Great Expectations | Huckleberry Finn |Tom Jones | Wuthering Heights | Mary Barton |
| Charles Dickens | Mark Twain | Richard Fielding | Emily Brontë | Mrs Gaskell |
| 20th Century British |
| I Claudius | Nice Work | Winged Victory | Mr American | Watership Down |
| Robert Graves | David Lodge | V.M. Yeates | George MacDonald Fraser| Richard Adams |
| Food for thought |
| Lamb of God | Eating Animals | Homicide |Why Nations Fail | The Bottomless Well |
| Ralph R. Wilson | Jonathon Safron Foer | David Simon |Acemoglu & Robinson | Mills & Huber |
I am bit worried that my bookshelf is a bit British and on the male, pale and stale side. But then I am British, male, pale and stale.
Edit: Pity the Mississippi isn't salt water. Then I would move it to seafaring. Then I could add New Grub Street to Pre-20th Century.
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This game/challenge is inspired by what they used to do in branches of Waterstones. They would be about four bookcases, in which a different member of staff would have put on display about twenty of their favourite books with a little blurb on why they thought it was so good. Each shelf tended to hold a different genre or type of book. For instance, you might get a member of staff who liked science fiction and had an interest in travel, so the top shelf would be sci-fi, the next shelf on literary fiction possibly with a dystopian tendency, the third shelf might be graphic novels, and the fourth, travel writing.
So the idea is you display twenty books on four shelves, each shelf representing a different genre or type of literature, and a short blurb to go with each one. You don't have to do them all at once. Take as long as you like.
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War and Peace has started interposing more German, as the Russians and the Austrians were allies against Bonaparte. Quite large chunks are still in French. One of the Russian nobles even thinks in French. It is mad. I never thought I would be able to read Tolstoy in the original language.
Despite George Orwell having written an essay on the use of plain English, he did used to use Latin phrases in some of his earlier books. For some reason I do not understand, I find Latin a much harder language to understand than French, German or even Italian. Why should Italian be so much easier than Latin? I have been studying Latin for about a year, and it is still not getting much clearer. I read Waverley by Sir Walter Scott last year, which was a great book. There was a character in it called Baron Bradwardine. He was always quoting Latin. I do not know if Scott thought at the time that anyone who might read Waverley would have a classical education. I don't think girls were taught Latin.
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On 26/08/2019 at 10:18 AM, jbob40919 said:
I thought Faulkner´s "A Light in August" is not only extreme stream of consciousness but so impressionistic that the words jump right into your face! The book is like someone whispering in your ear. "The Sound and the Fury is the pronto- type of the stream of consciousness . I thought it was an easy reading book. Try reading Finnegan`s Wake by James Joyce if really want to read something complicated!
I have not read any Faulkner. I hear he's good, but I have concluded I do not like stream of consciousness books. I can put up with a bit of free indirect discourse. Is there a book of his you could recommend so I could tick him off the list?
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I just posted it as seafaring books before.
I like seafaring books. If they have a failing is that they tend to be a bit female light. Moby Dick is the best.
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Oops, I see I have posted this thread before.
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I have read:
- Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
- The Master and Commander series 1..20 (Patrick O' Brian)
- The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
- Lord Jim (Joseph Conrad)
- The Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
- The N****r of Narcissus (Joseph Conrad)
- HMS Ulysses (Alistair MacLean)
- The Horatio Hornblower series 1..6 (C.S. Forester)
- The Sea Wolf (Jack London)
- Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)
I still have a few Hornblower books to read. So far I think Moby Dick's the best. Are there any other good ones?
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One of my favourite books ever is Winged Victory by V.M. Yates. It is mainly about an RFC Sopwith Camel pilot. He is having a hard time keeping it together as his friends keep getting killed. What makes it different was that the author was an RFC pilot, although the book was written in the 1930's.
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On 24/05/2021 at 5:22 PM, Raven said:
Would I be right in saying that you have pulled back from your previous view, above, that science fiction needs to contain hard/plausible science?
I suppose I have a bit but not much. Thinking of Dune, that is science fiction because it has space travel, cultures devoted to industry, carefully designed desert suits, and alien lifeforms. OTOH, the giant worms could be dragons, the Bene Genesset sisterhood could be witches instead of experts in body control, and so on. It is difficult to call it fantasy, but it is not exactly science.
I have not read it, but Never Let Me Go by Kasuo Ishiguro is often described as science fiction, because of the clones. However, it is not what you think of as science fiction. I wondered whether Ian McEwan's book Solar could be described as science fiction because its science is quite strong.
When watching Star Trek and its various iterations and series like it, I remember that Gene Roddenberry was supposed to have sold the concept to the TV channel as like Horatio Hornblower in space. I have read some Hornblower books, and it struck me that Hornblower's captaining of his ship was much better described than anything a captain of a starship might do. How a sailing ship reacts to different weather and geography is well understood. The technology is understood. In space that all has to be invented and laws of physics distorted so as to make it dramatic. Space travel would probably be very boring. What form would space combat take? For example, in on Hornblower book, Hornblower's ship was being chased by a larger French ship which was making up distance because it was less effected by rough seas. Just as the French ship was about to overtake, Hornblower feinted to tack to starboard, but then doubled back to port, which was made quicker by moving all the cannons to one side of the ship. Writing something like that set in space would just seem very contrived.
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12 hours ago, lunababymoonchild said:
Why don't you try China Miéville? He's very difficult to categorise but he's a great read. I started with The City and The City then went on to read Perdido Street Station, first of a trilogy. You won't be able to relate either of those to existing stories, imho.
Alright, because you say so, I'll give him a go.
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I read one of her books, Broken Ground. She seems to be an equal opportunities crime writer. The goodies may be male or female; so might the baddies, whether they be the right side of the law or not. Unfortunately she's an SNP supporter so I won't read any more of her stuff.
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I would like to like science fiction more. 1984 and Brave New World can both be classified as science fiction and they are both superb. They are both classic dystopias too. If the function of SF is to extrapolate current sociological fears then perhaps it does not matter if the science is credible. After all, if you need a PhD in quantum gravity from the Max Planck Institute to assess the plausibility of the science, that makes for a small readership, and maybe it's missing the point anyway.
Another good SF book I read was Flowers for Algernon. It was about this educationally subnormal man who given some treatment to improve his intelligence. It was a bit pedagogical, but a good book.
I have read some of Kurt Vonnegut's books. I found them political. In Cat's Cradle a scientist discovers another state of water, i.e. not ice, water, water vapour, but something else. It ends badly. Slaughterhouse Five was even more political. Despite the aliens and the time travel, it was not really scientific at all.
I have read all four of H.G. Wells's Victorian science fiction books. The Time Machine was an extrapolation of contemporary scientific thinking and social fears. The War of the Worlds was about invasion. War with Germany was in the air. The Island of Doctor Moreau was about playing God and the division between humans and animals, if there was one. I don't know where that came from. The Invisible Man was about a mad scientist whose experiments got out of control. Think Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Think Frankenstein.
I have been watching Nerd Cookies on YouTube and her analyses of Dune are incredible. Frank Herbert's world building is amazing, but it is not really scientific. I have watched other YouTube analyses of Lord of the Rings, and they are equally amazing analyses of the world building, but LotR does not pretend to be scientific.
So over all it is a genre I don't know what to make of.
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Watched the Pasolini film. If the book is like the film then it's pretty horrible.
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I have started reading War and Peace. It's the greatest novel in the world by reputation, or maybe Ulysses is, but I read that last year and did not understand it. I was rather surprised to find so much French in War and Peace. The translators have translated all the Russian, but not the French (well, they have, but as footnotes). I understand most of it, so all those evening school courses were not in vain. Ulysses had quotes from Latin, Italian, French, and a sentence in Irish. I had particular difficulty with the Latin.
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I've updated my preferences:
1) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
2) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
I wanted to pick The Adventures of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Richard Fielding at 3, but in honesty I had difficulty in picking between Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick for 2.
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4 hours ago, France said:
I'm sure he had an effect, just like Charlotte Bronte did apparently with Jane Eyre and her description of Lowood School (I think that's the name!) which highlighted the conditions for so-called charity cases and they were much improved.
Interesting. Elizabeth Gaskell got in a bit of hot water, because in her biography of Charlotte Brontë, she repeated her criticisms of the school on which Lowood School was based (Cowen Bridge). When Jane Eyre came out former pupils quickly recognised the school and some of the staff. One of the problems was that the school was located in an unhealthy place. Another problem was the cook was very bad. IIRC, the reverend at the school wrote a defence, and I think his son-in-law did too.
Jane Eyre contained a feminist outburst at one point. She complained about the lack of opportunities for women. I wonder if that had an effect.
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11 hours ago, Raven said:
I've managed a mere 5 from that list! (although I probably have another 10 or more on the shelf to read, or on my Kindle).
Personally, I would rate The War of the Worlds over The Time Machine. The class commentary in the latter isn't very subtle and wears a bit thin after a while, and I just don't think it is as well written.
I disagree with you there. I found War of the Worlds strangely dull. I preferred the concept album. Still, there must be about a 100 alien invasion films that are basically the War of the Worlds.
The Time Machine was written ten years before Albert Einstein published his theory on special relativity. So the idea of time being a dimension in space must have been gaining traction. People were still absorbing Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and how that applied to humans, eugenics and such like. I read a book by Jack London called The People of the Abyss written about 1902, which was a bit of reportage on the East End of London. He said people looked misshapen and threatening, owing to the poverty, malnourishment, pollution and disease no doubt. I think middle class Londoners were trying not to think about them. So if you think science fiction is interesting when it is really about commenting on what is worrying contemporary society, then it is a very interesting book. And it's short.
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I was thinking more along the lines of improving welfare for orphans, reducing legal corruption, reducing institutional bureaucracy, improving factory conditions, improving education. He usually criticised some area of society in his books. As he was so popular, I wondered whether he had any effect.
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Not a bad list. I have read fifty of them. Better than the BBC Culture top 100 British novels if you ask me.
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I have often wondered how much Charles Dickens' books influenced society. Robert Tressel's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was credited with winning the 1945 general election for Labour. 1984 by George Orwell must have been very influential.
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In some books the authors inserts phrases from foreign languages. French, Spanish, German, Italian and Latin phrases are the most frequent I suppose. Personally, I did not mind when it was French or German as I could have a stab at translating those. I did not like Latin phrases so much. I rarely understood those, which annoyed me as I attended Latin classes for three years at school.
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Why are there so few westerns in bookshops these days? The only ones I generally see are True Grit by Charles Portis, the Lonesome Dove series by Larry McMurtry, and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. It is odd, because it used to be such a popular genre. I think maybe Hollywood killed it. My theory is that when anyone wrote a good western it was immediately turned into a film, so everyone remembers the film but not the book.
Best seafaring books
in General Fiction
Posted
I would almost consider Persuasion by Jane Austen a seafaring book. Alright, I wouldn't really, but it is the most naval of her books. It is like when Captain Jack Aubrey is back on shore leave and trying to negotiate his romantic, domestic and financial difficulties, but written from Sophie's point of view. I think Jane Austen had two brothers in the Royal Navy and one ended up Admiral of the Fleet.