My favorite books at the moment.
Siddartha
The Silmarillion
The Subtle Knife
Wuthering Heights
The Stranger
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Life of Pi
Godel, Escher, Bach
The Complete Poems of Sylvia Plath
Invisible Cities
How the Universe Got Its Spots
Paradise Lost
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I've read all these, and most quite some time ago.
Most made sense at the time, to some degree.
Now they all seem to make more sense,
The more I think,
And see.
33 comments:
Siddhartha - great one
Silmarillion - too much detail, but glad I read Children of Hurin
The Subtle Knife - wish I had one, and whole series is good
Wuthering Heights - saw movie, must read
Zen and the Art....will read at your command
Life of Pi - YES
Godel, Escher, Bach - you read that years ago!! I should try it
Sylvia Plath - only if I need encouragement to be depressed
Invisible Cities - sounds interesting
How the Universe got it's Spots - I always wondered about that
Paradise Lost - saw the movie (doesn't count, I know).
Good mix.
Thanks - just took what came into my head as quickly as possible. That way I couldn't think my way into the "right" choices.
Try Sylvia's "juvenialia" - the poems she wrote before the age of 18. Not only are they strikingly written for one so young, they have the same sensory drunkenness and vitality as her later stuff without being as hopeless.
You just might like them.
Invisible Cities... This is my favorite because it's so unique, but anything by Italo Calvino is worth the read. Especially since they are very brief! But extraordinarily imaginative. Translated from the Italian but you'd never know; the language still flow like poetry even though it is prose.
*"juvenalia"
Silmarillion - a bunch of stories like Children of Hurin once you get past the "Genesis" part in the beginning. When the tales switch from the Valar and Melkor and Feanor's precious jewels and Yavannah's lamps, and goes into Middle Earth (Beleriand) and tells the individual tales of men and elves, such as Tuor and his extraordinary journey to Gondolin, the fall of that great city, the all-time classic love and adventure tale of Beren and Luthien; it is more like Children of Hurin, the Kalevala in spots, or Beowulf - even some bits of the Lord of the Reads, without comic relief by any Hobbits - than like the Bible. I feel like you were just getting more to the narrative stuff when you stopped listening to the audiobook, but it's your call.
Wuthering Heights - good movie, great book. Dated but strangely modern, like Pride and Prejudice. The social more and outward customs change, but people inside do not.
Godel, Escher, Bach - a real trip to read. I'm strongly recommend just skimming it and looking at the artwork (most by the author) and reading the aside stories about Achilles and The Tortoise the first time around, or you will give up. I can say that without offense because I gave up and I think I'm a pretty intelligent fellow when it comes to philosophy and holism and linguistics, logic, patterns. But I literally had to age and expand my thinking skills before I could understand the majority of this.
Note I said "majority" - I dunno if anyone on this earth aside from Hosfstadter himself gets the whole thing. It's a puzzle within a puzzle... like the Escher drawing he's dicussing, the Strange Loops in logic and mathematics that drove Kurt Godel to starve himself to death, and the incomprehensible genius behind the work of Bach. This book is about all that, but it itself is a self-referential loop, just to prove a point I suppose.
How the Universe Got Its Spots - A cosmologist with a very human tale, she alternates between explaining her professional work (topology or "the shape" of space), and writing and letting us in on letters back to her mother, which show how a female scientist lives in this world like the rest of us, breaks up with a boyfriend, can't cook to save her life, and faces compromises between her ideals and the lure of money from various universities and institutes. Surprisingly excellent.
Paradise Lost - a big long poem. Tough going until you really get into the flow, like Chaucer or Shake-a-Spear or anyone who speaks in the archaic form of our language, but the story it tells is timeless and was (the author admits) the primary influence on "His Dark Materials," as it has been on much of Western Literature. Perfection. The Fall. Redemption. War. All the layers of the Christian faith, yet somehow not really trying to convince you of the truth of christianity! Just telling a story almost disinteredly, like a heroic Greek tragedy. Heady stuff but great.
Paradise Lost -
I spent an entire semester in an English Literature class in my senior college year studying that "poem" (EPIC) and it's full meaning is still well beyond my full comprehension.
I would have had great difficulty with it without the help of the very distinguished professor (Chair of the English Department)
I salute you for completing it.
Thank you - I agree, it IS an agonizing read. But fascinating too...
That's funny. I haven't read Siddharta but it keeps coming up and I was thinking last week that I really must find a copy.
The Stanger? You're referring to Camus aren't you? My copy is 'The Outsider', which I think is a better translation, although I haven't read it in ages, maybe I should. The same goes for the Persig. It's been neglected for too long since the first read.
Wuthering Heights - an old favourite, I get somehting new from it each time I read it.
The Subtle Knife - such temptation, I'm not sure I could be so restrained as Will and Lyra.
Paradise Lost should be on my TBR list, I need to work myself up to it, and I may now add How the Universe got its Spots.
I tried the Silmarillion years ago, around the age of 14 and failed to get past the first few pages. Hmm, I may try again.
Fancy a little challenge? I compiled this from a few favourites of my own, just before being lured here by the promise of a quiz - which, I might add, failed to materialise (but don't worry, I'm not going anywhere).
Opening lines from books. Name the author and the title.
a)The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village.
b)Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.
c)At the beginning of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards evening, a certain young man came down to the street from the little room he rented from some tenants in S___ Lane and slowly, almost hesitantly, set off towards K___n Bridge.
d)1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.
e)The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everyone seemed sorry.
f)They’re out there.
g)He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Sam-Zammeh on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher – the Wonder House, as the natives called the Lahore Museum.
h)The play Рfor which Briony had designed the poster, programmes and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red cr̻pe paper Рwas written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.
i)I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning.
j)The Salinas valley is in north California.
Oh man, you're really putting me on the spot here. Let's see...
a) Chestnuts, my dear, chestnuts. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the late Douglas Adams, a good friend of Richard Dawkins by the way.
b) Hmm. I don't recognize that one. Maybe I haven't read the book or I just don't recognize the opening.
c) I'm starting to feel insecure now. I don't recognize this one either, though I'm sure it must be famous because it's so long.
d) Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte. Chestnuts, chestnuts. Have you read her poetry by the way? It's so marvelously dark and perfect.
e) I'm not so sure of this one but I'm going to take an educated stab and say Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. I only read it for the first time less than a year ago, and it sprang to mind instantly when I saw the line. But I could be way off. I'll go with my first guess though, as they say you should.
f) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Where's my Xanax bottle...
g) Hmm, lots of place-name clues but it doesn't ring a bell. Must be one I haven't read, though Lahore has been used in several books I've read including one by HP Lovecraft. But I'm sure you don't go to those places in your mind, you're a nice girl. So: Dunno.
h) Again being revealed to be an illiterate cretin, I don't know.
i) Aha! Toying with me! Why it's my very own fave Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Persig.
j) Chestnuts. It's certainly Steinbeck, and I'm pretty sure it's East of Eden. And I could well be wrong but it seems to me he says "northern" Cali, not "north." No one here where I (and he) live would ever say "north California." It would be like saying "North Ireland".
Ok, how'd I do? (squints and makes odd faces waiting for the answer).
I'll ask you some questions, or just possibly post a new QUIZ post (yes, you read that right), shortly, hopefully tonight, unless I rupture my spleen or get really tired or something.
~META~
Ok, a quick ten for you:
a) "In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the river bank by the boats, in the shade of the sallow wood and the fig tree, ___________, the handsome Brahmin's son grew up with his friend Govinda."
b) "Mother died today."
c) "It was love at first sight."
d) "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
e) "Who's there?"
f) "When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."
g) "Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery."
h) "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
i) "Kino awakened in the near dark."
j) "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
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Hopefully that's a fair mix of easy and hard for ya. If you get them all I'm not playing with you anymore, though you can still be my best friend and each lunch with me at recess under the birches. I like your mum's homemade jam and I'd hate to do without that!
New thought: Hey... Where's the flowing ale that should be accompanying these quizzes? I want a pint of Guinness cellar-cool and straight from the oak for every one I get right. You get a glass of 1993 Robert Mondavi Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, properly decanted, and served in a Roemer crystal wine glass. Don't fuck up!
Six out of ten, and I´ll throw an extra Guiness in for my misquotation.
b) was Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin. If I was forced to name just one favourite book, this would be it
c) Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment. I had trouble with the first 100 pages or so and then couldn´t put it down.
g)is Kipling´s Kim. I read it a couple of years ago and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
h) Another modern classic, Ian McEwan´s Atonement. My favourite of his is actually Enduring Love, but I thought this one would be easier.
Right then, my turn.
a) I know I haven´t read this one, it´s defitely not Rushdie or any other I know. I give in, what a dreadful start.
b) This is frustratingly familiar but I just can´t pin it down. I think I´m the one being toyed with now.
c)Heller - catch 22. Once glass for me, cheers.
d)Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye.
e)Another annoying one. I know it, I know it. Bloody brain, work damn you.
f)Harper Lee - One Flew Over the Cuckoo´s Nest.
g) I was almost going to fake not knowing this, such is my embarassment at admitting I have read The da Vinci Code. However, there´s a glass of wine at stake here.
h) The name is familiar but it´s another one I´ve not read. Hmm, I don´t think it´s Burroughs´ Naked Lunch....
i)Eeek.
j)A-ha, an easy one to finish off with and I think if I can make them big glasses I can polish off the bottle and get all of the wine anyway. Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice.
Where´s this quiz then? You´ve whetted my appetite. Do we get drinks with that too - I´ll settle for Guiness this time?
OK then, your excellent choices forced my hand. I like that you're mining your own comments for these, by the way:
a. I've never actually finished Siddhartha. I am a cretin.
b. The Stranger
e. Genius, William, pure genius. I can only counter with "Heads."
h. I don't think that's quite the line, or maybe my memory of Kafka is as bad as I fear...
i. And that's a lovely piece of Steinbeck.
Woo hoo! Six pints ought to do me up a treat. Better than I'd hoped for actually, I actually got Jude the Obscure right.
I'm ashamed to say I haven't read Crime and Punishment, nor anything by Ian McEwing or Margaret Atwood (I know...), not that particular Kipling tale. That would explain why I missed those questions at least!
Now to grade the teacher...
Miss Rachel,
a) Siddhartha, Herman Hesse.
b) The Stranger (The Outsider), Camus
c) Correct!
d) Correct!
e) Hamlet, Shakespeare.
f) Harper Lee, yes. I know you meant To Kill a Mockingbird. I'll give it to ya, you were tired.
g) Correct! (& lol)
h) The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka.
i) The Pearl, Steinbeck.
j) Correct!
You get five glasses of wine out of a possible ten, not bad at all especially considering your lack of sleep. Plus wine is stronger than beer, and you weigh less than I, so we should be about equally pissed when we leave the pub. Maybe you even more so - I can hold my beer like a champ =D
Fun game! Thanks.
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Anonymous (4th of July Guy):
You've never finished Siddhartha? What the fuck, that book is only like 4 pages long.
William, it was really nothing.
You really think the Kafka line is incorrect? Maybe there are different translations...
a, b, e, h, i: Good on ya. Thanks for filling in the gaps.
Write me some time you smart old geezer.
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We should do more things like this on this blog. I'll have to think up some fun interactive stuff rather than just trying to make people wince or cry with my posts.
Raelha, I thought this would tide you over but I see you're still hungry for a true quiz. Well seeing that it's Friday and therefore the beginning of the weekend, and the sun is out after I began to doubt its existance pretty seriously, I will have to cook up something.
Look for it this weekend. I won't let you down! (unless I don't do it).
~M~
Anonymous, your reference just now registered.
"Heads again? How many in a row is that?"
Hah, brilliant. You should be the one writing these damnable things.
OK, while we're running along this line:
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor with-out a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.
Damn, I just don't know. Master and Commander?
While I wait for you tell me, here's one:
"Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John."
Oops, yes, of course, I was incredibly tired.
Now I know why b) sounded so familiar - I'd picked the book up and looked at the first page after I posted my first comment here.
When are we off to the pub?
Why, right now, dear! Got your coat?
That was our-man-Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
I don't know "Call me Jonah," but I suspect you're going to club me with it.
Rather than lob increasing obscurities at you, have you read Haruki Murakami or Kazuo Ishiguro? The Ian McEwan reference earlier (especially to Enduring Love, which I love) made me happy, but then I got all frowny to think you hadn't read it. And, after all that, what about Mr. David Mitchell? It may all be fiction in the same vein (except Murakami, who is a total wackjob), but I love it.
Murakami, Ishiguro, Mitchell... what fine recommendations. Never Let Me Go was my favourite read of last year.
Jeez, get a room why don't you?
You guys make me feel like some retarded, juvenile cretin, when I'm no longer a juvenile dammit! I have a confession to make - as smart as everyone seems to think I am, I don't really read much current literature by good authors. I read old literature by good authors (the classics) and newer books by people like Crichton or the chick who wrote The Historian or something pulpy but vaguely scientific or historic, or even some fantasy that isn't aimed at teens who play D&D, but have something unique to say, like LOTR, Dark Materials, The Foundation...mostly as a way to pass time, like watching the telly in a way, which I don't do at least. But I readily admit there is a hole in my education where recent modern literature should be.
Instead I read an incredible amount of nonfiction, in a ratio of at least 10 to 1, but probably more like 20 to 1, of nonfiction to fiction. I read books about every scientific, sociologic, linguistic, historical, or mathematical topic I can get my hands on. I'm not talking original research like white papers submitted to Nature obviously, but the whole category of "science for the average (intelligent, scientifically literate) person," the field that people like Isaac Asimov helped create and which has boomed in recent decades. 'Popular science' I suppose it's called, but much of it is not written by journalists who dumb it down for the public, like Discover magazine or so many documentaries do, but very challenging original material written by leading scientists in their fields (Pinkerton, Chomsky, Dawkins, Dennet, Gould, Rees, Gribbin, Margulis, E.O. Wilson, R. Leakey, Goodall, and on and on) who also have the ability not only to publish those technical papers in their specialized journals and maybe contribute to some university textbooks, but can write compelling accounts (less technical and more conceptual) of what they do and what they think it means so that reasonably rational and curious secular minds like mine can gobble them up and expand my understanding of the REAL universe we live in just a tiny bit more.
I like old fiction because I love the language of yesteryear with all its fineries and romance. I suppose if I knew of authors who still wrote with that kind of poetry and flair to their prose, like Calvino and Yann Martel, I would read more current/recent fiction. I'll start with the three or four names you two mentioned (and Mags has previously) and give it a go, because I always feel like such an imbecile when "literature" comes up and it turns out to be stuff from the last 20 years, like those book clubs at people's houses and everyone's reading Running With Scissors (which actually I did read) or the Lovely Bones, or books like that. Without the test of time, fiction is harder than nonfiction to judge quickly, and there's nothing worse than reading what a fat novel that is immensely popular and is dominating the bestseller lists only to realize it's not a Rolls or even a Cadillac, it's a red wagon full of frog shit written not by Tom Wolfe or Thom Yorke but by Tom Thumb. I need reliable people like you guys to steer me to the wheat and help me avoid the chaff. There's so much chaff these days, and not just in literature. In general.
I guess if there's one point I wanted to get across in this long response on my own blog it's this: I'm a modern-day neanderthal about literature, and that most of the world is chaff. Thank you very much, please mind the gap.
Oh, and I suppose I should have gotten the Heart of Darkness line, but it was a hard one. Not much to relate it to the main story in that first sentence. Damn good book though.
In fact I fall asleep each night whispering "the horrors!" over and over again until I can reach nighty-night land.
Cat's Cradle, eh? Had to use the google magic to find it. Excellent good reference.
You guys make me feel like some retarded, juvenile cretin, when I'm no longer a juvenile dammit!
Not my intention. How do you think your top Scrabble score makes me feel?
And we don't think you're smart. We know it. Really. It's not always what you read, or necessarily the amount you read, it's the understanding of it and what you do with the knowledge you gain that reflects your intelligence. But you know all this, surely.
Librarian vampires - that was inspired.
Raelha:
Never Let Me Go is like a dream. I can't say it's one I want to keep having, but I certainly can't keep its atmosphere out of my head.
Do you happen to have seen the movie "The Saddest Music in the World" for which Ishiguro wrote the screenplay? I have not seen it, although the title is enough to pique my interest.
And McEwan's The Child in Time is enough to do me right in.
Aww...ok, that's more like it. Thanks Raelha :)
Heh.
Nonymous I'm gonna go get and read that book and watch that movie. Sounds like something I need to be in on.
Anonymous,
Yes, a good way to descibe the book. It certainly stays with you long after reading.
I've not seen the film either. I shall investigate.
And 'A Child in Time' is one of the few McEwans I haven't read. Meta's not the only one who will be brushing up! I often prefer his earlier work - I find it easier to relate to the characters. Amsterdam, I didn't enjoy, but The Cement Garden is irresistable, if only I could write a first book like that.
Like I said, get a room.
Meta, but then you'd miss out on all the heart-felt compliments we pay you when you get grumpy.
What I meant was, get a room for ALL of us!
Lol, now that would be truly Bohemian. We could read Kerouac and Ginsberg and Burroughs cooped up in the Chelsea Hotel in NY and listen to Leonard Cohen on an old hi-fi.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet...
Excellent good reference and taste for not quoting a few further lines.
And something that popped into my head this morning and I so wanted to talk about:
Mikhail Bulgakov, Master and Margarita
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