BookJumper

Limiting myself to living writers for the sake of plausibility, I'd say: Neil Gaiman, to beg him to stop writing the books I want to write Terry Pratchett, to beg him to introduce into his amazing books that amazing invention: the chapter Jasper Fforde, to share witty literary innuendos and chuckle at our own brilliance Stephanie Meyer, to terrify her with classic tales of vampire lore

That's true also. Imagination is quite the double-edged sword, is it not?

I always found Louis a bit insipid; I think him being played in the film by Brad Pitt (who I detest with several passions) didn't help. I love Lestat both on page and screen (me and him share a sense of humour), couldn't care less for Marius and have quite a soft spot for Armand - although I'll never forgive them for casting Antonio Banderas to play him. He's meant to /rant

I believe there is one instance in which small type is not only excusable, but advisable from a practical point of view. It is the instance of extremely long classics: Hugo's "Les Mis

As soon as I was taught to read in English (11-ish), I stopped reading books translated into Italian: most Italian translators were and still are appalling, especially the ones working for the biggest, most commercial publishers. There is only one edition (the fairly expensive Garzanti) I will look for when I am unable to read the original myself (i.e. Hugo's French or Dostoevskij's Russian). If I have to buy a book translated into English, I will try and get hold of the Penguin edition, they are usually pretty decent (I am currently reading Michael Ende's "The Neverending Story" in Penguin and it's rather good). I might further investigate the translators for Vintage; I am reading Walter Moers' "The City of Dreaming Books" (translated from the German) and it is so well done I wouldn't have guessed the book was translated without reading the author's bio. That's an absolute first for me, and confirms something I have always instinctively suspected: a good translator is an invisible translator, someone who is so good at what they do you barely know they're doing in. Such a translator indeed requires credit. On the other side of the scale, I can give the example of the murderous translator of Harry Potter - who went as far as changing 95% of all character names, including those that are not words with a meaning. Atrocious examples include: Dumbledore = Silente, Snape = Piton, McGonagall = McGrannit. Thus, communication re: the books with friends who'd read it in italian became nigh on impossible.

A weekend with my ever-stitching mother and gran has inspired me: am on the hunt for pretty designs to cross-stitch onto bookmarks of my very own making. I haven't stitched seriously in about four years, I was then in the middle of a huge design that university committments got priority over; however it is an extremely relaxing hobby and bookmarks only take a couple of evenings each so... we shall see. If I find some pretties and succeed in realising them on canvas, I shall let you all peek.

To be honest I am likelier to be disturbed by graphic violence in a war novel than graphic violence in a horror novel - there's nothing realistic about zombies losing putrefied limbs and vampires making a mess of their super, hence my mind is not disturbed in the slightest; on the other hand descriptions of bloody wounds in a war account upset me majorly, as they are real things that either have happened or could happen to real people.

Easily HP for me. Though I wasn't keen on OtP, disliked HBP and couldn't even finish DH, the first books were so full of enchantment, I read the first three in a day and GoF in another and loved every minute; I wasn't fond of Harry even then, but the Weasleys (especially the twins), Hermione (from whom I think I may have been separated at birth) and Snape (loved his dry wit, especially as interpreted by Alan Rickman) - as well as an irrational adoration for Oliver Wood - made me simply not care: there was so much more to it than just Harry, Harry, Harry. It was magical, and occasionally even made me well up ( ). "Twilight", on the other hand (please don't kill me, this is just my humble optinion), got abandoned on page 120 of book 1. I found the writing juvenile and insipid, and the characters laughably unblievable - especially Bella, who is portrayed as both a clumsy girl constantly reproaching herself, and a stunner who is desired by every male student who crosses her path. Excuse me? It sounded to me like the author had never been to a real high school, or in any case like she's never been a or fraternised with any real clumsy girl. Again... please don't kill me.

A relevant and extremely well-written book to be sure; however not one I could say I enjoyed reading as such. It was the same with Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange". You could say I'm thematically squeamish - disturbing dystopias aren't really my cup of tea (even more so if they're well-written, as that only makes them play more vividly in my head-movies) I'm afraid.

Unless I'm looking for something I haven't read by an author I particularly like, I'm drawn to pretty (such as William Heaney's "Memoirs of a Master Forger", I saw it in Foyle's months ago and still crave its shiny purpleness) or unusual covers (such as Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" books, which look like old and mangled volumes but aren't), intriguing book design (such as Gregory Maguire's "A Lion Among Men" with its bright yellow page edges or Walter Moer's books, which are about three times the size as any other paperback I've ever seen). The most recent winner on all those counts was "Deep Trouble" by Debi Gliori, a glorious, black-velvet book with gold stars. If the book stands the prettiness test, it will get picked up if it's got a suitably interesting title (such as "The Horrific Sufferings of Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Bearefoot, His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred"), and the blurb on the back will get read. If that grabs me, I'll usually read the first page, a page in the middle at random, and (if I'm feeling particularly sinful) the last page as well. If I like all of the above, the book will be acquired. Believe it or not, even after having been submitted to such rigorous testing, occasionally books get bought that don't agree with BookJumper...

It's alright. I bring up this objection a lot (as it's put me off a lot of books recently, it's the main reason I've picked up children's lit again) but it's difficult to explain I'm not just randomly closing myself off from a large, possibly quite good section of fiction without going into details that I don't want to disclose and people don't want to hear. As I was saying on another thread re: the fact that I get disturbed by books a lot more easily than by films, I suffer from a hyperactive imagination. That's why reading books that relate to unpleasant events in my past, no matter how vaguely, is not a good idea as it can trigger nausea, nightmares, prolonged depression spells. The wrong sentence can do that, nevermind a whole plotline. Back on track, I do intend to read Nabokov at some point. Just not this particular tit

LOL just googled the poster you mean and I must say, it looks like a cross between Sweeney Todd, Interview with the Vampire and I'm not sure what else. It could either be good in a very trashy sense or irredemably terrible, I cannot say for sure...

I don't think we should judge the poor boy from Narnia, the movie was pretty bad regardless of his presence and that silly accent they made him put on didn't help his credibility; in the first five minutes of Stardust (where he plays young Dunstan Thorn), minus the silly accent and the bad movie, he seemed alright so I'm willing to give him a chance. First, however, I should probably bump "Dorian Gray" up my TBR pile... *ashamed, reaches for "The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde"...*

Don't you even dare going there. This is not an argument against anything; this is me trying to explain that, because of certain disturbing and upsetting personal experiences which haunt and make unliveable my everyday existence, it is physically impossible for me to deal with books/films/songs that confront certain themes. I search in books an escape from a life I find hard to bear, not a replay of the worst bits. I am a selective student of Shakespeare; I have not yet read Titus and don't intend to, for the same reasons outlined above. However, I don't feel this is such a crime. The body of work produced by Shakespeare is so immense and varied, you couldn't possibly adore it all indiscriminately; I remember talking with my coursemates over lunch once and it turned out that only one of us had read every single play (and that only for professional reasons, as he's a stage actor) and that everyone had ones they liked less than others because of the themes involved.

I'm the opposite; I find that no movie director can present me with images more disturbing than those I can conjure up in my mind under the influence of skilful writing...

I remember watching those as a child, they were on English television as well, really faithful adaptations too (the vampire even looked like the vampire in the drawings from the series) so if you liked the television series (as opposed to the horrific hollywood remake which Americanised everything), you'll love the books .

Hello and welcome. If you're German and like children's books, have you ever read (possibly as an actual child, I'm more or less your age and they were being written when I was little) Angela Sommer-Bodenbur's "Der Kleine Vampir" (for the rest of you out there, "The Little Vampire")? It's sixteen books in all (two series of eight books each) following the unlikely friendship between a child vampire and a normal kid. Do recommend!

I've heard of that. So sad if it is, plugging for the sympathy vote through deceit is not cool, and neither it is understandable because he easily had the voice to go through and get far - sympathy vote or no; just like Susan Boyle was better than the professional Fantine I saw onstage at Her Majesty's Theatre, so Jamie Pugh was better than the Valjean of the same production. On a lighter note, what did people think of Gregg Pritchard - the young hotel waiter with a silly hairstyle and and even sillier goatee whom I was expecting to sing some whiny pseudo-rock song, and who instead sang "Nessun Dorma" and turned out to have a beautiful soprano (highest voice in opera, usually female!!) voice?

Went to see this with the OH as a reward for my newfound essay freedom, we both had mixed feelings about it and found lots of inconsistencies between it and the other three "X Men" films but all in all, we understood what was meant to be going on... Except in the first scene, before the credits, when young Jimmy/Logan/Wolvie is sick, taken care of by his father and loathed by young Victor/Sabretooth. Then Victor's father starts shouting downstairs, the other man goes to try and calm him down, we hear a gunshot, Wolvie runs down, sees his father dead, claws Victor's father to the wall and is told, while he dies, that he was really Wolvie's father as well. Now, the reason this doesn't make sense is that, when apologising for killing the man that Wolvie thought was his father, Victor's father said "I needed to know", which I took to mean "I needed to know if he was a mutant who would regenerate" or similar. But if he was the father of two mutants (Victor and Wolvie), why would he shoot another mutant; and also what was Wolvie doing living with this other man and his wife, and not Victor? Me confuzzled. Please help.

Had to give it up for all sorts of reasons and now it's been so long that I think I've gone off it almost completely, I now even hate Guinness which I used to adore... I'm still partial to a spot of sweet red wine but it makes me too wobbly for comfort now, I've turned into a lightweight I think... But I digress. Notebooks don't make you panicky, sad, physically ill and hospitalised so I think I'll keep notebooking, thank you ever so much !

London, Oxford St by any chance? I am very well aware of their evil, tempting ways. They even have a mini-one inside Euston station... there's no escape from the prettifulness!!

Easy "Dracula" isn't. Worth the effort? If you've got more than a passing interest in vampires (which seems to me to be the case...), then unquestionably.

I certainly do intend to read some Nab at some point; I find his literature criticism quite insightful and (just as I tend to like the criticism of authors I like, i.e. Coleridge and Auden on Shakespeare) I am willing to give any good critic a chance as an author. I'm afraid however my acquaintance with him will have to be negotiated via another work; my problem does not regard the authorial moral stance, but is rather a quite sweeping personal problem with explicit content: I just find it difficult to deal with certain themes as they always end up upsetting me more than any book should.

The smallest of the new ones I'm using to neatly transcribe my short stories ideas off the dreary black nonetbook I always carry in my bag due to its amazing slimness - that way the new one gets used, and I don't feel guilty about crisscrossing angry arrows all over the old one. As for the huge Leonardo one, it's asking me to write my memoirs in it. Jeizus, I'm not even 24 years old...

After reading Inderjit's post, any smidgen of intention I may have had to pick up this book found a cliff to jump off of. If I feel sick just reading this, I've probably got too delicate a little soul for the book. Sorry, Nab. Any other works of his I might enjoy (i.e. minus the disturbing sexual content)?