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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

ramonmercado said:
Stillill said:
I haven't read 'Homage to Catalonia' yet but I do have a copy. Will definitely read it this year.
I always thought 'Aspidistra' would make a great film, not sure who I'd pick to play Gordon though. Helena Bonham Carter would be great as Rosemary.

It did make a great film! With Richard E. Grant as Gordon.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/merry_war/

I think any film with Richard E. Grant in it would be a great film.
 
gncxx said:
Hudson Hawk?

He did a fine job there.
Wasn't his fault that the film bombed.
 
I really didn't know that 'Keep the aspidistra flying' had been made into a film. I chose Helena Bonham Carter as Rosemary and she was in the film! Have just ordered it, hope it's good.
 
Mythopoeika said:
gncxx said:
Hudson Hawk?

He did a fine job there.
Wasn't his fault that the film bombed.

Seeing this is the good reads thread, I recommend Richard's book With Nails where he details what a complete mess Hudson Hawk was to make.
 
According to the blurb hms ulysses by alistair maclean "is in the same class as the cruel sea". According to me it is just a common potboiler, with none of the beauty, tragedy and realism that the cruel sea offers, in fact it reads more like a script for a hollywood action movie.
 
Alistair MacLean used to be master of all he surveyed in the "paperbacks everyone's dad read" world, but now you'd be hard pressed to find anyone under 50 who was still indulging in them, or had done since the eighties.
 
Just discovered this old classic. It's also available as an audio book. I'll just copy my review here:

A wonderful horror book full of psychogeographic details. Comparable to Clive Barker's "Books of blood" and China Mieville's "Looking for Jake and other stories." Recommended if you like "The haunter of the dark" by Lovecraft.

Link: Our Lady of Darkness
 
Second Our Lady of Darkness. Leiber is arguably better known for his fantasy, or even his SF, but he was quite an accomplished horror writer.
 
I read Our Lady of Darkness aaaaages ago, damn good book, really spooky atmosphere.
 
Having noticed markus Zusak's "the book thief" on sale in sainsburys for £3 i decided to risk it, and i am very glad i did.
Hitler using words to bring chaos to the world while a girl uses words to bring happiness to her own little world. I loved it.
Now i need to find me a willing women, pop some blue pills, father a daughter called Liesel and teach her the love of reading.
 
titchagain said:
Now i need to find me a willing women [snip]

So, one woman isn't enough? :)
 
There's a non-limited edition version of the hardback at less that twenty quid, but I've been working hard and I like to own nice books.

This appears to be the only available excerpt to give the flavour of the work:

Beowulf and his men setting sail
Heaney’s translation:

Time went by, the boat was
on water,
in close under the cliffs.
Men climbed eagerly up the
gangplank,
sand churned in surf, warriors
loaded
a cargo of weapons, shining
war-gear
in the vessel’s hold, then
heaved out,
away with a will in their
wood-wreathed ship.

Tolkien’s translation:

On went the hours:
on
ocean afloat
under cliff was their craft.
Now climb blithely
brave man aboard;
breakers pounding
ground the shingle.
Gleaming harness
they hove to the bosom of the
bark, armour
with cunning forged then cast
her forth
to voyage triumphant,
valiant-timbered
fleet foam twisted.
 
Tolkien sounds like one of those Bible translation that stick close to the literal Hebrew. Quite pleasant actually ...
 
Tolkien also understands assonance and key imagery better. "On went the hours, on ocean afloat" is infinitely better than "Time went by, the boat was on water," from the point of view of the original poetic form, if I understand the nature of the poetic form properly.
 
I received it this morning and am just reading through Christopher Tolkien's introduction. The book itself is beautiful: quarter bound in purple with lilac boards sporting a gilt Grendel to the front cover and a gilt copy of Tolkien's monogram to the rear - plus a water-color Grendel on the title page and a ribbon bookmark sewn inside. It's all housed in a hard card slipcase that caused all the grief...

I really must say something about the delivery. I'm overseas at the moment and had the book sent to me abroad. Given its significant weight, I was very pleased to pay only £8.50, I think. Alas, when the book arrived a week after publication it had been dropped and seemingly gouged by something sharp, and the slipcase was badly damaged. I know that it is very fashionable to criticise Amazon, but I really can't fault their response. I phoned some chap in India who pretended his name was James as I played along with trepidation. He apologised, a little too profusely for my taste but the sentiment was right, and promised to dispatch a replacement copy the same day. What's more he had it sent by UPS courier service and so it travelled nine timezones in just five days at significant cost. When I explained that my work schedule made trips to the post office awkward, he dutifully extended the return period for the original to 60 days and promised to reimburse the cost of postage to the UK at any rate I paid.

I buy two categories of book: old first editions for my collection of literature and military history and - far fewer - newly published works. I seldom buy antiquarian books through Amazon, but with a service like that which they have provided I see no need for Waterstones and their fairly useless ilk to exist any longer.

As to Tolkien, I'll post some extracts as I reach them, but the edition itself is lovely.
 
When it comes to delivery, Amazon really has it nailed.
 
I've ordered it, guaranteed delivery for Monday. I always pick up and leaf through Heaney's version when I'm in Waterstones, knowing I'll buy it someday, but I was very impressed with the side by side translations that Yith posted.
 
davidplankton said:
I've ordered it, guaranteed delivery for Monday. I always pick up and leaf through Heaney's version when I'm in Waterstones, knowing I'll buy it someday, but I was very impressed with the side by side translations that Yith posted.

Well, now I'm rather embarrassed.

I, too, enjoyed that snippet - although I didn't buy solely on its strength - but now I find that the clown who posted it online:

http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/exce ... owulf.html

has got it completely wrong! That's not Tolkien's work but that of J.R. Clark Hall as revised by C.L. Wrenn in 1940. Further, Tolkien's translation is prose, not verse!

His version, which I also enjoy, runs:

Time passed on. Afloat upon the waves was the boat beneath the cliffs. Eagerly the warriors mounted the prow, and the streaming sees swirled upon the sand. Men-at-arms bore to the bosom of the ship their bright harness, their cunning gear of war; they then, men on a glad voyage, thrust her forth with her well-joined timbers. Over the waves of the deep she sped by the wind, sailing with foam at throat most like unto a bird, until in due hour upon the second day her curving beak had made such way that the sailors saw the land, the cliff beside the ocean gleaming, and sheer headlands and capes thrust far to sea. Then for that sailing ship the journey was at an end.

...all of which is awesomely immediate.

There are countless pages of Tolkien's elucidatory notes, which I will examine later, plus Sellic Spell, which looks intriguing, and wonderful little work at the end entitled The Lay of Beowulf, which feels perfect for chanting around the fire:

Grendel came forth in the dead of night;
the moon in his eyes shone glassy bright,
as over the moors he strode in might,
until he came to Heorot.
Dark lay the dale, the widows shone;
by the wall he lurked and listened long,
and cursed their laughter and cursed their song
and the twanging harps of Heorot.

All of which could have come straight from Middle-Earth! The rhythm reminds me at once of G.K. Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballad ... hite_Horse

Apologies for having inadvertently mislead you upthread.
 
theyithian said:
Apologies for having inadvertently mislead you upthread.

Don't worry about it, I still think it will make good reading. The translation is only a small part of the book anyway. The notes and other peripheral matter look just as interesting.
 
I'm engrossed in "A New History of Photography" by Michel Frizot, 1998. Most books on photography are shallow coffee-table fare and they turn up in their hundreds second-hand for pennies but the sheer heft of this one drew my attention. As a history, it was not likely to have lost all value in the face of the digital revolution.

Indeed, it turned out to be the English version of a highly-regarded French text which looks at the history of the subject in some forty enlightening chapters. Once you get past the very windy, French-style Introduction, the beauty is in the detail. I can see this will be my bedtime book for quite some time. The trouble is, the weight of it on my legs is a bit numbing after a while!

You will be lucky to find a copy for the money I gave but it is certainly worth digging a bit deeper for such a tome. Even if you skimp the text, the reproductions are sumptuously done, including the naked lady in stereoscopic mode! :)
 
Just started reading this. It is very well written for a philosophy text:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674657618

On the other hand I seem to lack the intellectual luggage to grasp this easily. But it has some great metaphors and it's a very thin book:

http://www.zero-books.net/books/quadruple-object-the

And this one is a very original interpretation of a very original poem. I'm looking forward to reading this:

http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/book-of-numbers-meillassoux-on-mallarme
 
uair01 said:
Just started reading this. It is very well written for a philosophy text:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674657618

On the other hand I seem to lack the intellectual luggage to grasp this easily. But it has some great metaphors and it's a very thin book:

http://www.zero-books.net/books/quadruple-object-the

And this one is a very original interpretation of a very original poem. I'm looking forward to reading this:

http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/book-of-numbers-meillassoux-on-mallarme

The The Number and the Siren : A Decipherment of Mallarmé's Coup de dés looks interesting. Also it has The Starry Plough on its cover.The Symbol and Flag of the Irish Left for over 100 years.

I might also put The Pasteurization of France book on my to dolist.
 
Who suggested Ghosts Over Britain?

Bought it cheaply from Amazon, can't put it down! :D

Exactly what I like - ordinary people's weird experiences, all organised by type so I can easily find the scariest ones. 8)
 
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