Vanwa

Hi and welcome

Hi and welcome Julia

Put a Hitchhiker's jacket over it?

I had a really nice stainless steel plate engraved with 50 must read books. And I can't find it

Twilight - I fully understand that it might very well be an entertaining read for most people. In my own opinion, without wishing to raise discussion on the issue, it holds no literary value for me (personally). Secondary to this, my sister has confirmed that it is very similar to LJ Smith's series, which I read many years ago. My sister has also told me, knowing my reading tastes, that I would not enjoy Twilight one iota. On a tertiary level my own image of vampires is very distinct and reading Twilight would be a betrayal to both Dracula and Lestat. The Time Traveller's Wife - On two counts. Firstly that I watched Goodnight Sweetheart religiously as a kid, and therefore the lovelife of a time traveller is no original concept. Secondly, Mum also knows my reading tastes very well, and advised me not to bother. The Lost Symbol (Dan Brown) - I read his other novels a few years ago, and though I enjoyed parts of them, I was not immensely impressed. Finally: Tudor Mania - any of the fictional releases about the Tudor era. It was a period in history I studied lovingly both in school and out. Historical inaccuracies for the purpose of jazzing it up would simply annoy me There are others. I didn't realise I was this opinionated....

Vice versa for me (Fforde is RM dependent, and I will be rereading Jane Eyre)

No problem Michelle

Gah, Libri, you could have mentioned ten minutes or so ago...blah blah. To be honest I don't see that it's vitally neccessary (erm, not actually sure those two words work in conjunction like that...) for people to respond, but it would be nice if people did . I think rather I should just mention that anyone interested needs to have finished reading the two books by the dates I mentioned in the first post in order to participate in the discussion. Fab, it'd be great for you to join us then . @ BookJumper: Look at me go! I multi-quoted

A couple of us have come up with the idea of comparing literature for fun. The general idea is to take two novels (or other works), read both pieces and then discuss any possible points of interest. These might be how a classic piece inspires more modern works, differences and similarities in language, structure, themes, symbolism, and this kind of thing. As I've mentioned to Michelle, this is to be entirely a seperate thing from the readers' circles and is in no way intended to hijack the (valuable) efforts of the team who run those circles. It came about whilst discussing how fun it would be for us to look at the kinds of things listed above, and also to look at different types of works, such as poetry and drama. My partners in crime on this one are BookJumper and Libris Vermis, but the reason for the thread is to open up the idea and discussion to anyone else who might be interested. So for our first go at this, we've agreed on Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair in comparison with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. We would be looking to finish reading the books by the end of the first week in December (around the 5th, so approx. 2.5 weeks per book) and then follow that up with a fortnight of discussion.

Waiting for delivery of new books, so trawled around the market stalls today (whilst I was supposed to be working - I love my job sometimes), didn't find anything worth picking up though. Having finished my latest reread of Northern Lights, and seeing as I currently have nothing else that takes my fancy, tonight I'll be settling down with plenty of tea and The Subtle Knife, my favourite chocolate and a hot water bottle. Lady Muck I am

Curry Yum yum.

Hi MH and welcome

Gah, I'm soooo busted I read the Satanist's Bible and another book about Satanic ritual. At the time I was interested in alsorts of occultist ideas and decided to look into this. I was actually much surprised at what I found. An interesting spiritual path, but not the path for me. I care about the environment and other beings (animals and people) too much for that. But that's another thread I think and certainly not a debate for General Book Discussions. So much so infact that I just deleted about 100 words of this post and put "at what I found" instead

I wouldn't say that exactly, it still might be first. One thing you could try, if there is no one you know personally with any expertise on first editions, is take it to the local library or a local bookshop. Generally the people who choose to work in these places love books (at least one would hope) and you may just bump into a member of staff there who could actually tell you one way or the other. Must be worth a shot right?

Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen. Northern Lights Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) again....

I doubt it. Like BookJumper says, it might be the first year of print, but not necessarily the first impression. For example, I've quickly grabbed a book from a nearby stack and....James Herbert, The Rats. "First published in Great Britain by New English Library Ltd., 1974. Copyright @ James Herbert 1974" This might be a first edition. It may not be. How many editions of The Rats were printed in 1974? Did any other publishers print it in 1974 besides NEL? If you can find irrefutable proof that only one edition of the book printed in 1986, that the publisher is the only publisher who published it in 1986, and that there were no prints prior to 1986 by any publisher, then it would be a first edition/first impression. But without this knowledge there can't be any guarantee.

I would honestly say that I read almost no non-fiction at all. I used to, and I have a substantial amount of non-fiction in storage. These are mostly made up of more spiritual books, such as those about Wicca, Paganism, Buddhism, Satanism (this one purely from a curiosity point of view, I assure you) and yoga. I dig out the yoga ones fairly often, to check an asana or something. Other than that I have The Letters of JRR Tolkien which I go through frequently, and a few books about Tolkien to which I occasionally refer. That's about it. Oh, there's the dictionary, and the thesaurus as well, but I'm pretty sure they don't count!

Hi Jaden. Just thought I'd say that you'll find your lessons far more enjoyable if you've read the text. I know that school can be pretty boring sometimes, and lessons somewhat tedious. But not only might you enjoy the lessons more if you read the books, you might actually enjoy the books as well

I completely agree Libri. I have shelves of books and piles of books. The piles are one-off reads, and I'm going to have to find a sensible way to rehome these. The shelves consist of Tolkien, Brooks, Austen, Pullman, King, Jordan, JV Jones, Goodkind, Pratchett, and many others, inclusive of my favourite childhood books, and also Herbert as a new addition, Tolstoy, so on and so forth. All of these are books I consider worthy of rereads. I recently reread Lord of the Rings for about the dozenth time in the last couple of years, His Dark Materials and the entire collection of Austen are bi-annual rereads at the minimum. I often reread my favourite plays as well (Shakespeare, Stoppard, Osborne etc).

Rereading Northern Lights, again. It's a bi-annual thing, and I thought I'd go through the trilogy again while I wait for my latest Amazon spree to arrive

This one escaped my attention somehow, but my mojo is now curious. It's on the list Thanks Noll and Libri