Angury
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Posts posted by Angury
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I watched the movie earlier this week.....highly recommended.
Was just going to write a post asking if anyone had seen the film, and whether it is worth watching.
I read this book over a year ago, yet it has stayed with me. I was hoping the film had done it justice - particularly the narrative from the child's perspective.
I guess I'll give the movie a go.
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Edgar Allan Poe's stories. Throughout his unexpected and meaningful stories you can truly witness the depth of human mind/soul. As I read the only thing I have constantly on my mind is that I would really love to have just a drink with him and a small talk at a local, small pub. Of course I wouldn't let him have more than two whiskeys!
Tell me your thought about his stories, if you've ever read any, or his poems and in general what do you think about him..!
Are there any particular stories or poems that you would recommend? I am curious about his works, but as with any new author, I generally become a bit daunted and unsure about where to begin.
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Apropos essays versus plots, I recall reading at one point that many of these lengthy Russian novels actually are meant to be consumed much like philosophical and political tracts. Apparently 19th century Russian government often didn't permit a great deal of social criticism from its literati, so instead of writing straight up analyses of current events, people would often write coded novels addressing the issues in a round about sort of way. The drawback of course is that for us, removed from social context, the lengthy philosophical passages may induce drowsiness, while a contemporary of the author would instantly be aware of the real subject under discussion.
That is very interesting. It certainly provides a different perspective to Dostoevsky's writing style. I have his novel, The Idiot, sitting on my bookshelf, so I might give his works another try. Perhaps having read, and been so influenced by Notes from the Underground, I will have a more sympathetic view of his other novels.
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I can look up the names of my college texts when I go home? They were meant for study by 21/22 year olds. Not sure they're any less dense! But otherwise, afraid not!
That'd be great thanks (no rush though!).
I've been finding the Coursera philosophy course very helpful as well. It's set at a good pace, and encourages you to think and analyse outside of the videos and texts. I'd definitely recommend it if anyone else is interested in learning more about Philosophy.
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Very interesting discussion about free will to which I feel I am unable to contribute as an amateur philosopher.
I studied Philosophy in college for my minor subject and I freaking loved it. I still have my books on philosophy of mind, morality, ethics and free will. A bunch of that ties in interestingly to psychology, if you have any interest in that - or maybe not ties in, but they provide two different views of questions, like how if we don't have free will how does that affect our moral responsibility to do things, and given that science shows physiologically we don't have free will, then why psychologically do we feel like we do, etc. I've been meaning to do that Coursera Philosophy course for a while to refresh my memory.
Do you have any recommendations for books on philosophy, particularly linked to psychology or morality, which would be easy to read for a lay audience? A lot of the books I have come across are very dense unfortunately.
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I've been trying to learn more about Philosophy just through videos on Youtube. I've found the School of Life and Wireless Philosophy channels to be very useful - they make short videos which break down famous philosophers works into digestible chunks. They in no way cover everything there is to know, but they have certainly encouraged me to look deeper into the topics.
I've just come across an Introduction to Philosophy course on Coursera which sounds rather interesting. I'm planning on enrolling later today - it'll be a nice way to spend the summer.
I've tried reading some philosophical works myself, and while there are some authors I'm glad I've stumbled upon such as Sartre, a lot of the theories go over my head. I feel something like Coursera will give me more of a foundation first.
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I used to be a big fan of A Song of Ice and Fire - I enjoyed the writing style and thought the story lines were very well done. It re-sparked my interest in Fantasy, and I was really looking forward to The Winds of Winter.
Since the TV series has outpaced the story lines within the novels however, I am not sure if I will read The Winds of Winter when it is eventually released. As much as I enjoy reading Martins work, I already have an idea of where each characters storyline will be heading, and I feel that the TV series is such a a good adaptation of the books, that I don't think I would get much out of reading the rest of the series. I may as well just watch the TV episodes.
I think it is a pity the release of The Winds of Winter has been delayed for so long. However, I guess it has given time for the fan base to grow from the TV series, which seems to be doing incredibly well. Personally, I can't remember much of the books any more as I read them so long ago.
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I don't read non-fiction unless I am very interested in the author. Non-fiction books are a nice change from time to time and I have read some great books by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or George Orwell but still they are a small part of my reading. I used to read mostly engineering and math books in college so I maybe I could count those years as reading non fiction.
What are your thoughts on Hitchens books? I have a collection of his essays which is currently stacked on my bookshelf. I know he is a good speaker and was interested to read his writing and explore more of his ideas.
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At the start of 2016 I said to myself that this year I will finally read some of Dostoevsky's works and in late April I started reading The Idiot. I followed that with The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, all in about one month. I know I am in minority when I say this but for me Dostoevsky didn't click.
First of all, he is a bad/average writer. Tolstoy imo is a much better writer and I am referring here strictly from a literary view (Tolstoy and Nabokov also thought the same thing apparently but Nabokov was a weirdo, especially when it comes to the stuff he told his students so don't take his word for it). Of course one could say that the language barrier is one issue and probably translating a Russian novel in any language makes it lose its charm but this does not happen to good writers like Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf.
People usually talk about his "psychological" writing as well but that's really an overstatement. Read any existentialist philosopher and see how easily he can dismiss Dostoevsky's ideas, especially the ones on religion. Some characters are interesting though and the interaction between them is great (he does this especially well in The Brothers Karamazov) but that's not enough to grant him the literary status he now holds.
I'd take Tolstoy or Bulgakov any day over Dostoevsky.
I would recommend Notes from the Underground if you haven't read it yet. I felt the same way as you about his works, but I found Notes from the Underground to be very in depth.
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I'm reading Jodi Picoult - Nineteen Minutes. I like the book so far. I'm not that far into it yet, page 114 out of 596, but so far I'm really enjoying it.
This is a brilliant book - it stayed with me long after I had finished it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, I found it sad but incredibly moving.
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I love this book beyond words. Which other books by this author would anybody recommend?
I would definitely read The Breaking Point - it is a collection of short stories by Daphne du Maurier, and the stories are just as mesmerising as Rebecca.
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Really glad I found a thread on this book.
I read it a few years back and felt it lived up to its reputation. It's unique but not too pretentious. It does take a while to get into it but I think it is worth the effort. It's a nice break from your everyday reading.
Has one read his latest book, The Familiar? I have a copy lying somewhere that I need to dig into. Some of the reviews on Goodreads are hilarious.
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I had no idea Marquez had also written Love in the Time of Cholera - I feel a bit silly now. That's another book that has been on my TBR pile for quite a while now.
Do you guys think it's worth giving a go? As much as I enjoyed One Hundred Years of Solitude, it's not the type of book I normally read, nor do I think it's the sort of book I'd read again. So I'm not sure how I'd feel reading another of Marquez's books - although I don't know how different each of his works are from one another.
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Just articles about reading speed and my own experience and talking with people I know. Most people re-read unnecessarily. I had a problem with this maybe five years ago or so. Every sentence is surrounded by context, you can power on without going back and it will be perfectly fine 99% of the time, and you'll retrain your brain to absorb it better the first time by doing it. And If it's the meaning behind the words that matter, stopping to re-read a sentence you understood the meaning of but didn't process fully (I.E. exact sentence structure and word choice), doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's why most people stop and re-read most of the time. That was certainly the case with me, anyway.
Anybody looking to read faster should first see if they are either re-reading sentences a lot or sub-vocalizing.
Interesting.
I used to be the type of reader who read very very quickly, to the point that I would skim passages just to get to the action (I used to read a lot of Fantasy).
However since I started reading genres outside of Fantasy I found myself going back to passages that I felt had been particularly well written. I find it interesting to see how the author has constructed a sentence so beautifully that it has stuck in my mind.
As I've recently become interested in writing myself I find it helpful to look at the different words, rhythms and metaphors that are used as inspiration, and often also as admiration of an authors talent.
Anyway, going slightly off topic - sorry.
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Has anyone read Gravity's Rainbow? I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts. It has received a lot of very positive reviews but I'm wondering whether it is worth it - and also whether it lives up to its reputation of being ridiculously difficult. I want to give it a go, but am put off by its reputation.
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I can't believe it's July already. Scary.
I am currently reading the second of six books of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time called Within a Budding Grove.
It's a fantastic series, I would highly recommend his work. His writing is different to any other style I have read before. My goal is to get through all six books, although I suspect that will take me many months.
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This is an interesting thread - I enjoyed reading through the responses.
I decided to give Audiobooks a go a few months back when I heard Stephen Fry mention them - he used to listen to them when he went for a walk and managed to lose a significant amount of weight as a result. I tried to do something similar but found that I just couldn't multitask in that way. If I was listening to an audiobook I had to stay focused on what the narrator was saying - I wasn't able to go for a nice walk or do some housework while listening at the same time. I found that my brain had to really concentrate to take in every word, weigh it, understand it, retain it and then join it up with every other word in the sentence to create an image.
I think this is a very personal thing - I have many friends who love listening to Audiobooks, far more than reading, and use them to relax after a long day. I however find I have to work much harder to draw a mental image of the characters and their settings when someone else is speaking the words into my ear. When reading a book I feel I have much more freedom to expand upon each sentence and weigh it carefully with the rest of the story. I am able to step inside a story with more ease when I I read the words on a page.
Also, I'm a pretty slow reader so it takes me a lot longer to finish a book myself (running my finger along the bottom of each word, sounding them out
)Recently I have found myself having to use my finger to follow the sentences as I read a book - I feel like I am regressing into a child.
I really like audiobooks in some situations - for example aeroplanes, I simply cannot read for any length of time on a plane, but I have spent many a 10 hour or so flight listening to a book for 9 hours of it.
This is a very interesting idea - I might give this a go. I also find it difficult to read on a plane - even on a short one-hour flight. Audiobooks may be my saviour in this case.
but for most fiction I never re-read passages anyway (this is a harmful habit most people could do with breaking, imo)
What makes you say this?
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I have had this image for the past five years now.
This is my dream bike.
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What an incredible, in-depth reading log. It must be nice to look over your past reading logs and reminisce about books you'd read in previous years. I like the way you have set everything out in an organised fashion.
I was particularly struck by one of your aims to concentrate on certain authors, as this isn't something I've done myself. I generally concentrate on the more well-known books by certain authors and ignore the rest of their works. This thought only came to me recently when I thought about my favourite writers and how much fun it would be to read through their collected works and watch as their writing grows. Your log has certainly encouraged me to give it a go.
I was also wondering what it is about Jane Austen that makes her one of your favourite authors? She is one of those famous writers who I have not read, and indeed am not sure if I should read, as her stories sound too 'romantic' for me, but I'm not sure if I'm merely being stereotypical. I suspect there must be something in her works to make her so well known, and I'd love to hear what it is about her that reaches out to you.
Also, are there certain non-fiction books that you gear towards? I had a quick skim through your list and can't say there were many titles that I recognised so I was just curious.
Anyhow, best of luck with your reading and with this fantastic log.
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I had to do it for my school project, a long time ago, and done it halfheartedly as I wasn't ready for it. Now I'm ready, but deliberately delaying inevitable...It's hard read.
What do you think makes it a hard read?
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Hi All,
Half my degree was Psychology but that was a while ago and not a field I ended up in.
I'd like to share a recommendation, The Examind Life by Stephen Grosz. It's been some time since I read it, but I remember finding it fascinating and recommending it at the time. It shares stories from a psychoanalyst's couch and I seem to remember thinking the book told me something about myself, through it's tales, examples and people it 'examined'. I've picked it off my shelf to flick through again!
Unfortunately, I haven't read any forensic psyc to recommend :/
That sounds like an interesting book - I just looked it up on Goodreads and realised it was already on my TBR list.
It reminds me of a similar book called Love's Executioner by Irvin Yalom, a psychotherapist. It's a collection of ten stories about his patients and gives you a rare glimpse into the relationship between therapist and client, as well as the impact of therapy on a persons life. I found it particularly interesting as regardless of the clients background or their own personal story, I was always able to relate to their difficulties on some level. It shows how we all face the same difficulties in our day to day lives and how we are all connected in some way through our hardships and sufferings.
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I love his vlogbrothers channel, but I've never enjoyed any of his books other than The Fault in Our Stars. I love his writing and the wit he brings to his stories, but I can never find myself caring about the characters. I've tried Paper Towns, Abundances of Katherines and Looking for Alaska and none of them clicked for me.
I feel the same way. I think he is a good writer and his plots sound very interesting on the surface, but as I have tried to read more and more of his work I just feel like I'm not really getting anywhere. I can't get into the depths of his characters, and a lot of the time I finish his books feeling like nothing has really changed for me as a reader.
Kudos to him for his Crash Course Videos though. I find them easy to watch and have learnt so much about topics that I never realised held any interest for me. It's a great way to encourage learning for learning's sake and not for the acquisition of grades.
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I avoided it for years, for all the reasons already mentioned. When I
finally got round to reading it, I loved it! Well written characters with
realistic (for the period) dialogue, and on heck of a plot. Complex,
yes,but not mind blowingly so. I have read it three times now,and
find something new in it at each reading. Must disagree about the
2016 TV version though; I thought it was dreadful. Six episodes was
way too short to do the book any kind of justice. So I got hold of the
older series from the seventies, twenty episodes long. Much better!
Anthony Hopking gave his all in that version as Pierre (Yes, I know
that in the novel Pierre is a giant of a man,and Hopkins to be polite,
...isn't!) But the seventies version filled in so many of the gaps that
(to me) were blindingly apparent in the newer version.
Interesting take on the BBC Adaptation. I didn't really notice the scenes that were left out from the book as I felt the cinematic nature of the series, particularly the locations and the background music made up for a lot of the story that was missing. I felt that as the audience we weren't left feeling overwhelmed with the different character arcs as they were woven in between the chapters in the book, but that the important plot points were left in and we were expected to draw our own conclusions about the characters and their relationships.
I haven't heard of the older version, I will certainly look it up.
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I'm glad that I have managed to persuade some of you to check out her works. I really hope more people come across her work as time goes on - I was really quite lucky as I stumbled across her name accidentally whilst on Goodreads and have since become a big fan.
Just to give an example of her writing, below is one of her more popular short stories entitled 'The Thirteenth Woman:'
In a town of twelve women there was a thirteenth. No one admitted she lived there, no mail came for her, no one spoke of her, no one asked after her, no one sold bread to her, no one bought anything from her, no one returned her glance, no one knocked on her door, the rain did not fall on her, the sun never shone on her, the day never dawned for her, the night never fell for her; for her the weeks did not pass, the years did not roll by; her house was unencumbered, her garden unattended, her path not trod upon, her bed not slept in, her food not eaten, her clothes not worn; and in spite of all this she continued to live in the town without resenting what it did to her.
What I find particularly interesting about this short story is how it is really just composed of two sentences. If you look at the second sentence, it is full of commas and semi-colons - it almost feels as if the words are running into each other.
In one of her interviews, Lydia Davis stated that after writing this piece she believed that the story revolved around quite a young woman and conveyed that feeling of being invisible at that age.
It is this type of enduring yet common day emotion that I feel Davis captures particularly well, in such simple yet almost poetic sentences. I myself feel inspired to pick up the pen and write every time I read some of her works. Rarely have I come across an author who has encouraged me to do just that - a lot of the time I read a writers work and feel like I will never be able to write that well. Her work has taught me how powerful a word can be if it is used correctly - that we don't all need to have struggled through life's difficulties in order to be a good writer, but that ideas can be found from all around us, and the most mundane chores that make up our day to day lives can have a deep and insightful message when put upon paper.
Have you ever visited a book fair ?
in Book Buying
Posted · Edited by Angury
Not so much a book fair, but I visited the Hay Festival last year which is a literary festival set in Hay-on-Wye. It's filled with talks from various authors, poets and philosophers. It has been described by Bill Clinton as "the woodstock of the mind."
I really wish I could go again - the entire atmosphere was fantastic. It's so nice to be amongst book lovers - you'll be standing in a queue and randomly start chatting to the person next to you about your favourite genres etc. Everywhere you look people are reading. To me it seems like such a rarity to see people sitting around in public with a book - the entire experience was a breath of fresh air.
Hay-on-Wye itself is known as the book town of Wales. It is packed full of little book shops, many of them with a vast array of novels. You could get spend ages just admiring the bookshelves. Below is a photo of Hay on Wye:
If anyone gets a chance, I'd highly recommend visiting the town - it is a very beautiful, quaint little town that is a book lovers dream.