What are you currently reading?

[Borislav]

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Hi Parallel,
Although the topic is old, I remember it because today I read the The Great Gatsby. The book is short but I revised it earlier and found out so many portrayals. There are many adjectives and adverbs that I've never seen before as well.

[Bagheera]

Hi everyone! Thanks for introducing this topic. It's great to be here discussing our latest reading experiences. Well, what can I add?! To tell you the truth I read quite a lot. The last books that I've read were 'Hannibal' by T.Hardy and 'One Flew Over the Coockoo's Nest' by K. Kesey. I like both of them & strogly recommend you to read them. 'Hannibal' is quite an addictive popular novel, actually the third part of a well-known bestseller & blockbuster 'The Silence of the Lambs'. Wheareas 'One Flew...' is a well known classics; Mr.Kesey is a representative of the so called beat generation, who used to pose a personality-against-the-system question. The novel is pretty provocative & difficult to read, though it gives you food for thought.

Borislav, 'The Great Gatsby' is great and I take my hat off to Sir Fitzgerald who is one of my favourite writers. In my pointview Fitzgerald is a superb novelist with a pefect style - his well polised English makes you appreciate the beauty of English, a uniqe polisemantic language. 'The Godfather' is also an excellent choicce, if you feel like discussing it, you're welcome!
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[Parallel]

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Hi bagheera,
They have made the story of Hannibal a film, haven't they? Quite an epic piece of about four hours, as far as I know. Real life lacks a bit of glorious characters, dangerous missions and the like, so we all like to indulge in adventourous books once in a while...

I take it that Hannibal is not as cruel as The Silence of the Lambs. Because in that case, you couldn't lure me into reading it! I once saw that film and hardly couldn't stand watching till the end. I'm afraid, but horror stories are really not my cup of tea!

I have just finished my second book written by Virginia Atwood. It's epic too. Starting at a time around 1900, it tells the story of two sisters - a theme which must be very close to Atwood's heart, something autobiographical maybe, if I am guessing right.
Despite it's tragic tune, there are lots of carefully written dialogues to find. She is a real master of describing people in different social positions, and the way they speak, something which she probably has experienced in her own life, brought up in an educated family of the time, I think. But I have not yet tracked her down on google or Wikipedia, maybe I should!

Urs

[Borislav]

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Hi Bagheera301,
It is good for me to know people who read quite a lot because that makes me feel I'd better read more. The two books that you strongly recommend are more famous like movies.Even though I didn't know there are books which the movies are based.
If the "Hanibal" is the third part which are the first two parts ? I've read some material about the "One flew over the Coocho's nest" and the story happens in the prison,doesn't it ?
Parallel, maybe you told in some previous page, but how is the name of the book you read ? As I see here we are mainly adventourous books lovers :D Your last book is exception from the adventures but maybe your next would be :)

[Parallel]

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Hello Borislav
The title of my recent book is "The blind Assasin". There are adventourous parts in it, like the fiction about the inhabitants of a planet called Xycronia. But the story, placed in a small town near Toronto, mainly is about an industrial family living through the first world war, the depression of the Thirties and the second world war. The main character, After finishing her down-writing of the family story, the main character dies at the age of 82. Her sister, Laura, which had always been of a fragile mental disposition, had committed suicide much earlier, after finding out, that a young man she had worshiped had died in Spain in 1939, but no one had told her so, and on top of that, that her elder sister had had a relationship with the same man over some years. The fiction seems to be what the man had invented when they met secretly, "underground" so to speak, to make love. Because he was a wanted rebell, and had to hide. The first book from Atwood I have mentionned before, is written in a more up to date manner. So I would rather recommend that one, called "moral disorder", given that you are interested in a slightly criticism of the modern way of live. The dialogues and descriptions in this book made me chuckle quite a deal, and it's really written in a good style.
If you are fond of detective storys, I could recommend Ian Rankin. His main character is DI Rebus and the storys are placed in Edinborough. You can find Elements like in the Silence of the Lambs in these books but he mostly just hints at things instead of describing them in detail. That's the difference, I think, to the Movies: reading a book allows you often to picture the story in your imagination to the extend you feel fit, sparing yourself the most threating parts...
Urs

[Bagheera]

[Bagheera]

[quote="Borislav"]Hi Bagheera301,
It is good for me to know people who read quite a lot because that makes me feel I'd better read more. The two books that you strongly recommend are more famous like movies.Even though I didn't know there are books which the movies are based.
If the "Hanibal" is the third part which are the first two parts ? I've read some material about the "One flew over the Coocho's nest" and the story happens in the prison,doesn't it ?

Hi Borislav,
Reading is my profession, because I'm a teacher. I had to read a lot at the university, mostly it was classics Joice, Wolf, Lawrence, Milton, Kipling, Mailer, Dos Passos, Bronte, Austen, etc. A now, after I have graduated, I can indulge whatever I want. So it happens that some books I read are famous as motion pictures. I enjoy this freedom of reading whatever I like, not thinking about stylistics, syntax or other scientific details. I just read to start thinking in English, to learn new words, as language is always changing - some lexical items get obsolete, some disappear at all.

The other two parts of 'Hannibal' are 'The Red Dragon' and 'The Silence of the Lambs'.

The events of 'One Flew... ' develop in the mental hospital, which resembles the prison, where the cruel nurse resembles a police officer. Freedom is the most valuable phenomena in life, but who has never been behind bars never appreciates it.The main idea is 'all of us in here are rabbits of varing ages and degrees, hippity hopping through our Walt Disney world'

How is Gatsby going on? For me Fitzgerald was quite difficult to read.

Yesterday bought 'Twilight', again a popular movie-novel. The critics write not only good about the style of the authouress. On reading few pages I'm neither impressed nor disappointed.
_________________
I'm a natural blonde, please speak slowly ;-)

[Seaman18]

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hi

[Prezbucky]

I'm reading The Jungle Books by Kipling.

I love Barnes & Noble's old/classic paperback
section -- classic novels at (relatively) low prices.
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Bagheera]

Hi there,
The more matture we get the more we start understanding books we were supposed to be reading as children. When I re-read 'Jungle Book', 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Gulliver's Travels', I find more and more depth in them and realise they're true to life. In my view classicss is really worth reading.
_________________
I'm a natural blonde, please speak slowly ;-)

[Borislav]

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Hi everybody,
I write you this post because it will remind me to answer you( Bagheera and Parallel and the others of course) after I get back home. Now I'm going to my village for the day.

[Parallel]

Hi Bagheera
Thanks for giving me some more insight into Hannibal. The point that Dr. Lecter hunted down "the fat cats of the society, the bribetakers & perverts whose only law is corruption and thirst for money", as you described it, completely escaped me while watching the film - my eyes must have benn blurred with horror!
Actually, one scene is stored in my mynd as if I had seen it yesterday: right at the beginning of the story, I think, when Dr. Lecter is visited by his lawyer, I can't recall her name: you could almost feel the tension she was exposed to when she met that cruel, but very powerful client of hers for the first time, caged behind the black bars of his prison, quiet but very alert, like a predator hungry to kill, hypnotising her...
One of the last scenes out in that country house was so cruel, that I even can't remember the details now. I hate it, when the music dramatically rises, making the effect of horror overpowering. Surely, Hitchcock introduced such techniques long ago but he didn't show all the details in such sharp and shrill coloured pictures.
I have become a bit fussy about films over the last years, my whife and I prefer films showing live as it is or at least as it could be. But reading and listening to Audio Books, and the forum of course is my favourite pastime.
Have a nice evening!
Urs
Urs

[Parallel]

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Hi Bagheera
Thanks for giving me some more insight into Hannibal. The point that Dr. Lecter hunted down "the fat cats of the society, the bribetakers & perverts whose only law is corruption and thirst for money", as you described it, completely escaped me while watching the film - my eyes must have benn blurred with horror!
Actually, one scene is stored in my mynd as if I had seen it yesterday: right at the beginning of the story, I think, when Dr. Lecter is visited by his lawyer, I can't recall her name: you could almost feel the tension she was exposed to when she met that cruel, but very powerful client of hers for the first time, caged behind the black bars of his prison, quiet but very alert, like a predator hungry to kill, hypnotising her...
One of the last scenes out in that country house was so cruel, that I even can't remember the details now. I hate it, when the music dramatically rises, making the effect of horror overpowering. Surely, Hitchcock introduced such techniques long ago but he didn't show all the details in such sharp and shrill coloured pictures.
I have become a bit fussy about films over the last years, my whife and I prefer films showing live as it is or at least as it could be. But reading and listening to Audio Books, and the forum of course is my favourite pastime.
Have a nice evening!
Urs