BookJumper

Thanks for the info; probably not for me then !

I did indeed read it but five years ago at the very least so all I'm left with is a memory of how much I enjoyed it and how many tears I shed; however if if got space in my bag to take it back here from when I go home for Easter and time to re-read it after that then I might reading circle it !

I bought "Illusions" at about the age you read it, only read it late last year (at 23) and thought it was incredible...!

Oh, I thought the half I read was brilliant also, that was the whole problem - i.e. if the whole business hadn't been so well described I might have been able to finish the book, instead I wasn't because it felt too painfully read. I've got the same problem with Shakespeare's Othello, for example: I find his depiction of the way obsessive love can be steered through insecurity into domestic abuse so spot on that I find it physically difficult to read/watch.

Could you please qualify the disturbance? i.e. are there limbs falling off all over the place, is it very sexually graphic, or...? Thanks you.

I don't even think it's a small detail to be honest; it is pretty key to the understandability of the whole plot of "The Prisoner of Azkaban" - had I not read it, I would have sat in the darkened cinema thinking, wha? is going on here... which is why I find it ridiculous that a director would cut it in favour of showing us pretty views of the CGIed English countryside.

Once upon a time I bought a second hand copy of Richard Bach's "Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" because I though the title was pure genius, but for some reason it never seemed the right thing to read so it sat there gathering dust for about five or six years - until I picked it up last year, finished it ultraquick and thought, "wow that was beautiful and inspiring and just what I needed, why didn't I read this before?" And the answer was quite probably in my question, i.e. that I didn't read it before because it was a book destined to change my life at a later moment when I would most need it.

I find musical OSTs are great to listen & create to - it's like working with music on, just the music's got a more unified structure than usual... I find this can be very conducive to bouts of inspiration, because you find yourself as it were surrounded by narrative. So when I sit down to write I usually stick on Les Mis, Jesus Christ, Phantom and their power of story helps my stories... if that makes sense?

I like your way of thinking, Binary_Digit: enough book lovers handing their love for worthy tomes down to their children (or where unavailable, other people's children) have, together, the power to ensure that those tomes will in time come to be regarded as the classics they always were. Very true and hopeful message there.

I've only seen the second half of the film, and resolved to try and avoid the book - the ending of the film made me cry so hard that I think reading the book (books always make me cry even more than films, which is saying something) might actually rupture my tear ducts or something.

Oooh the "Hunchback of Notre Dame" is a beautiful book - Hugo does go off on ever so slight tangents every so often but he does it so skilfully you scarcely mind. Enjoy and, don't forget the hankies!

... I know! After buying "Something Rotten" under the mistaken assumption that it could be read as a standalone book (which obviously didn't work), that was put on hold indefinitely as I could not and stress not find "The Eyre Affair" anywhere; bookshops only seemed to stock the last one or two in the series! Then thankfully a friend managed to get me a copy for Christmas, and since then I've read that, "Lost in a Good Book" and (after some more trial and tribulation) managed to acquire "The Well of Lost Plots". Surely it shouldn't be this difficult?! It angers me how Katie Fforde's opera omnia takes up three shelves while her cousin's rather worthier works (which are not half as numerous) are never fully represented! Oooh, jealous!!

Blake is indeed quite, quite exceptional; I believe Milton would have been quite proud. Oh, what I'd give to hear those two discuss theology! Both managed to make religion so gripping... but then again, maybe it's not meant to be "gripping" in that sense and I'm just being weird. I remember suggesting Milton to a CU person from my uni once (I was following the sign saying "free coffee", then got so engrossed in debate I forgot about my freebie entirely) and he was horrified to think that someone might take bits from the Bible and freely elaborate on them. I tried telling him "Paradise Lost" was a piece of genius that made a lot of lost sheep think about their immortal souls bit more, and that moreover if what Milton wanted to say was so heretic then he would never have been as divinely inspired as he clearly was - alas, it didn't work.

"High School Musical" is so ridiculously terrible it ends up being actually quite enjoyable in a paradoxical sort of way, provided you get pretty drunk first and have lots of cheetos at hand.

Precisely in the order they're in: 1. The Beatles & their solo careers 2. The Divine Comedy 3. Queen 4. Bob Dylan 5. Bruce Springsteen

Dinner will be another Chigago Town Cheesilicious garlic bread (you'd think I work in their advertising department, which sadly I don't, or I'd get these babies for free...) accompanied by a nice malt superdrink and topped off with a BagOfLollies. How healthy am I?

Hello. Cookies and cream?

I wish I could do that as effectively... I find it really hard to concentrate on anything for more than two minutes, even if it's a book I'm enjoying, so unless there's near absolute silence I won't get past the first sentence...

There's too many to pick just the one. Am I allowed four? If so they'd be William Shakespeare, John Milton, Lord Byron, Walt Whitman.

True. True also that a horrible cover increases the risk of the book being horrible !

I thought the first two Harry Potter films were quite good. Trouble starts with "The Prisoner of Azkaban", where the new director cuts many vital plot devices to save time which he then uses for pretty but not-really-contributing-to-the-narrative endless landscape sequences. I would not have known what was going on with the map had I not read the book.

Rocky Horror I used to see at least once a year back home, it was glorious to see live. Once went to see it on Halloween so me and my mates were all dressed up but in Halloween rather than Rocky Horror outfits - I was Death, with a pretty big and realistic scythe. Surprising they let me in the theatre, really. Hairspray is definitely on the list to see onstage, if only because Michael "Marius" Ball is playing the mum and I want to pester him for his autograph! Singing in the Rain is one of my favourite films of all time, period. Especially the diction classes bit - "Moses supposes his toeses are roses but Moses supposes erroneously, Moses he knowses his toeses aren't roses, as Moses supposes his toeses to be" LOL and of course, "Eeend I cen't stan' 'im!"

I seem to be having my lunch backwards: just had two bramley apple pies, the oven has just gone "ping" on the crumpets and cheese, which will be followed in about 40 minutes by pre-cooked Thai sweet chilly chicken... I am odd aren't I?

It is indeed beautiful, Sara. John Hanna does a very moving reading of it at the funeral in "Four Weddings and a Funeral", too - that's how I personally discovered the poem.