What's everyone reading?

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grdSavant
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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by grdSavant »

Wabbles wrote:I'm very close to death with my workload, and somebody has to finish the deed. :wink:
I have to stop and rest when I simply think of it.

One of my own: I didn't much like Tolstoy (stories, Resurrection, Anna Karenina...), and for the last of my his books I finally (almost) read War and Peace, but quit when I had 45-pages remaining. I had read most the Russians, Lermontov, Pushkin, D., Turgenev..., and enjoyed them immensely, but Mr. T. I did not. With disgust at myself for reading so much of him, I just stopped after 1,380 pages. A couple years ago I told that bit to someone and it made her noticeably angry. I wasn't really sure why, unless it was because she hadn't wanted her twelve year old daughter to have heard the obscenity of it.
words are such a poor representation of reality. please listen to what I mean, not what I say.

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by Lex »

grdSavant wrote:One of my own: I didn't much like Tolstoy (stories, Resurrection, Anna Karenina....
I've read somwhere that everybody is either a Tolstoy person or a Dostoyevsky person; that nobody really loves both. I'm more of a Dostoyevsky person myself.
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Re: What's everyone reading?

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Lex wrote:I've read somewhere that everybody is either a Tolstoy person or a Dostoyevsky person; that nobody really loves both.

Can you hate both? I read both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky a long time ago (10 years) . I recently tried picking up Crime and Punishment and became very impatient with it. I do not know what it is, but I have become nearly incapable of reading novels, especially sprawling Russian ones. And yet, I remember the joys of reading the sick narrator of Notes from the Underground......
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. ~Swift

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Lex
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Re: What's everyone reading?

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paulusnb wrote:Can you hate both?
Apparently so! :lol:

I read War and Peace many years ago, and thought it was just too ... well, your word "sprawling" is a good word. He tries to capture so much of Russian life, that there seemed to be no real depth to the characters. Crime and Punishment was the opposite; he tries to delve too deeply into Raskolnikov, who was completely neurotic, if not worse, and that can be painful to read. But at least Crime and Punishment wasn't as boring.
paulusnb wrote: ...I recently tried picking up Crime and Punishment and became very impatient with it. I do not know what it is, but I have become nearly incapable of reading novels, especially sprawling Russian ones.
I recently tried to read Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, since I was curious about why Austen is so highly regarded. I still don't get it.

Maybe the cliche about the pace of modern life is true, and I'm just too much a part of the ADHD generation to be able to adjust. Certainly, if the pace of life in Northanger Abbey is any reflection of reality, life back then was much slower paced.
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Re: What's everyone reading?

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Lex wrote:Maybe the cliche about the pace of modern life is true, and I'm just too much a part of the ADHD generation to be able to adjust. Certainly, if the pace of life in Northanger Abbey is any reflection of reality, life back then was much slower paced.

I like to think that my tastes have been refined by classical literature. :lol: I hate the wasted words in the European novel. I mean, who even complains when 600 pages get chopped from Les Mis.....


And it is funny you mention Jane Austen. A few years back, I was teaching at an all girls school. To prep myself I tried reading Pride and Prejudice. I made it 10 pages in. I am told it is a sign that I am a barbarian. ........................Yawp.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. ~Swift

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Lex
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Re: What's everyone reading?

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paulusnb wrote:I mean, who even complains when 600 pages get chopped from Les Mis.....
Or Atlas Shrugged. You could read nothing but John Galt's radio speech, and not really miss anything. Actually, you could even say with fairness that just Galt's speech is about 90 pages too long! :lol: One person condensed it to 964 words!
paulusnb wrote:....I am told it is a sign that I am a barbarian.
Well, the classical authors were pagans! :wink:
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Re: What's everyone reading?

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Lex wrote:I've read somewhere that everybody is either a Tolstoy person or a Dostoyevsky person; that nobody really loves both.
I wanted to love T, but his stuff is, as paulusnb said,

"...sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling sprawling...."
paulusnb wrote: Can you hate both? I read both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky a long time ago (10 years) . I recently tried picking up Crime and Punishment and became very impatient with it. I do not know what it is, but I have become nearly incapable of reading novels, especially sprawling Russian ones. And yet, I remember the joys of reading the sick narrator of Notes from the Underground......
At least I wanted to (35 years ago) see how Dostoevsky presented his insights, even with his largesse and generosity of words; except his stories were short and sweet.

Although I could have done without one of D's images (in Brothers K, I think?). Someone was visiting someone in a typically sad, dirty, and poorly lit rooming house hovel, and the guest mentions that the host was unclean and had an odor of feces emanating from his nether region. Unhappily, at unexpected times that image pops into my mind, no more pleasantly than it did back then.

Of course, "...banging one's head as hard as one can against the stone wall," is a universally suffered image of D's, but it is not nearly so painful as that other image he has bequeathed.
words are such a poor representation of reality. please listen to what I mean, not what I say.

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Re: What's everyone reading?

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We probably can't call Michener's "Hawaii" great literature, but for pure pain it takes at least the first twenty-five pages to even get the islands born. At least Dickens got paid by the word.
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Re: What's everyone reading?

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Hmm... If Tolstoy is considered "sprawling", I am afraid to even go near Balzac's "La Comédie humaine"...

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by Estoniacus Inoriginale »

Herman Hesse. He was so very genial. It seems he might have had some influence from Jean Gebser. BTW, I think Jean Gebser was right... with his integral stage of consciousness and culture... Herman Hesse was integral in very many ways.
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Re: What's everyone reading?

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grdSavant wrote:We probably can't call Michener's "Hawaii" great literature, but for pure pain it takes at least the first twenty-five pages to even get the islands born. At least Dickens got paid by the word.
I haven't read Hawaii. I'm not the one to decide what is great literature and what isn't but I have read Chesapeake (Mitchener) and enjoyed it. I also read The Covenant by the same author and enjoyed it immensely.
(I finished Pride and Prejudice but it did take some willpower. :D )

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by vir litterarum »

Fiction: Ulysses (FINISHED AT LAST), Watchmen, House of Leaves

Philosophy: How to Do Things with Words

Greek: Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus

Latin: Tacitus' Annals bk. 4

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by jaihare »

I'm reading Harry Potter now.... in Hebrew and English. :">

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by Helena »

Some Menander comedies for my phd....

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by mingshey »

I'm hacking into Einstein's 1916 paper on "Foundations of General Theory of Relativity," partly because I wanted to live up to my profession, a physics teacher, but largely because I want to understand it while I live.

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by NathanSmith »

Reading:
Idiom-Book of NT Greek by Moule
The Kingdom of God is Within You by Tolstoy

In the queue:
The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry
The Armageddon Rag by George RR Marin
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Open Scriptures - Platform for the development of open scriptural linked data and its applications

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by alismith »

I'm currently reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Not really Greek or Latin related at all, but certainly a short and wonderful read!

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Re: What's everyone reading?

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Comic Books :oops:

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by IreneY »

Comic books are fun! Currently I'm not readint any (unless you count some web-comics I follow). I am re-reading T. Prachett's "Thief of Time" for easy, fun reading, but mostly I'm enjoying a true classic, the Outlaws of the Marsh

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by Bert »

Colson's Greek Reader.
Stories and Legends. A First Greek Reader.

I am only in the first section which appears to be mostly from Aesop's Fables. These stories range from comical to absurd. Some obviously were intended to convey some lesson but for for others this seems to be absent or at least obscure.

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Re: What's everyone reading?

Post by dlb »

annis wrote:We've not had one of these threads in quite a while...

On the fiction front I recently read Neal Stephenson's most recent door-stop, Anathem. If you like Stephenson already, this book will please you. If you like philosophy you will also probably like it a lot. He imagines a world where similar developments in philosophy have taken place (masked by different names). He even manages to have his characters have a rather lengthy debate about Husserl's phenomenology of all things. As is his habit, Stephenson ends the book in a way I find annoying, but I'm used to this by now.

On the classics front, the Cambridge green-n-yellow library added Lucian last month, so I just got that. I've always liked Lucian.

Actually, most of my recent book purchases — aided by gift certificate holiday gifts — have been methods and tune books for 5-string banjo (clawhammer style), but that's probably a matter for a different thread.
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