Reading for pleasure! What are you reading now?

Ashleigh · Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:44 pm Post subject:

I read the Odyssey for uni last year. I meant to read them in high school as extra reading for Ancient History but I had too much else to read for my other subjects. The Odyssey is really good, by the way. Really interesting.

GentleReader9 · Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:48 pm Post subject:

Hegel1066,

You sound as if you are studying in a department similar to the Comparative Literature Program here in Eugene. (About 15 years ago...) I loved sections in The Dialogic Imagination and I recall in particular a section about laughter and how it can be used to safely question power, to bring an otherwise lofty object close so that it can be prodded and investigated and made free with by the rude and common public. Also just the way that the general argument about multilayering of voices and tones in a text is what makes it novelistic fits in nicely with the theme of Mimesis makes them good to read together. Are they together on a course syllabus or did you create that pairing yourself?

Ashleigh in particular might be interested in the chapter of Mimesis on "Odysseus' Scar," since she's reading the Odyssey. It's books like these that make you realize a text can be a "secondary text" and still a classic piece of writing and thinking in its own right.

About what I'm reading for fun now, on a less nosy note, I had taken out about a dozen books to browse through before going to sleep, but I have set them aside to read the books this site is featuring in this and coming months. I may return them without finishing them. They include My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning. I loved this other book she had written called Chiva about a New Mexican village resisting the international heroin trade. It had a beautiful structure which told about the history of the heroin trade through a nested set of histories in concentric levels of the personal, the community, the country, the world. She tells the story of her partner's heroin addiction and attempts at recovery over a lifetime tying it in with where the heroin was coming from, globally, at each of his phases of relapse. It's really an amazing perspective. And to think I first picked it up and looked at it because she has such a melodious name. Hmm. I'm a lucky reader, like Mr. Magoo in traffic.

geo · Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:49 pm Post subject:

Ashleigh · Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:06 pm Post subject:

Cool! From the sounds of it, your son did the Books of the Great Wanderings, also known as the fairy tale books.

ZachSylvanus · Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 9:02 pm Post subject:

I just finished Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, and am currently reading (as I mentioned in another thread) a biography on England's King Henry I. In between the biography I'm also working my way through the two most recent issues of Analog.

Interbane · Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:46 pm Post subject:

Artemis Fowl, book 5. Light, Harry Potterish reading. Then Brisingr, book 3 of Eragon. Then back to philosophy. Might read Objective Knowledge by Popper again. He goes pretty deep.

Robert Tulip · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:36 pm Post subject:

MichaelBalkind · Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 3:49 am Post subject:

On my nightstand right now are books by a bunch of new authors. As a new author myself, I am part of an amazon discussion forum where new authors help and support one another. We read and review each others manuscripts and books.

Two new books that I just finished and think were excellent are: Soul Identity by Dennis Batchelder and The Samson Effect by Tony Eldridge.

I write sports myteries but i'm not writing this to promote my work.

bohemian_girl · Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 4:24 am Post subject:

I'm reading a few books at the moment.

The Appeal by John Grisham
The Waste Lands (Book 3 of the Dark Tower Series) by Stephen King
IT by Stephen King (I've discovered Stephen King this year LOL

)
and I'm going to start Lolita tonight.

edoaks · Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 8:28 pm Post subject:

I'm a non-fictioner... I enjoy personal finance & self improvement books. Currently working on "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.

Next on my reading list is Missed Fortune 101 by Douglas Andrew:
http://www.netpassiveincome.com/missed-fortune-101

Ashleigh · Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 6:27 pm Post subject:

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

MarkH · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 4:43 pm Post subject:

Flight to Eden by Douglas Hirt. Quite interesting so far.

westburytf · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 5:12 pm Post subject:

Hi edoaks, I enjoy reading self-improvement books as well. Have you read any of Dr.Norman Vincent Peale's books?

Rose Kolarich · Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 1:26 am Post subject:

Three Lives by Gertrude Stein- this is my second attempt to read it and I’m finding it amazing!!! It’s written in three sections, each is a portrait of the ordinary life of three different women: two German immigrants- the good Anna and kind Lena, and an African American- Melanctha. It isn’t the narrative though that’s the attraction of Gertrude Stein’s books- it’s the addictive writing style. Her symmetrical sentences, ear for dialect and rhythmic repetition of words and phrases manufacture a calming writing voice which de-fogs my brain when I read it aloud.

And also: I’d like to read the Bhagavad-Gita, can anybody recommend a good translation? Oh, and a commentary too, please.


	FORUMS	ABOUT	BOOKS	VIDEOS	TRANSCRIPTS	LINKS	BLOGS	DONATE	CONTACT