What BOOK are you reading right now?

Do you mean the German Band, Spendius? I heard it once and it made no real impression on me>

Your take on Time and Space is interesting. I found a great deal of great deal of mental stimulation in Hawking's "A Brief History of Time. His conception of the possibility that there are infinitely many universes brings to mind the old science fiction theme that somewhere someplace there is someone just like me!!

I tried to read Stone Diaries. It may be a failing of mine but I found I could not empathize with Daisy Goodwill. She is nothing like the women I know today. But the writing was quite good!

Just finished The Professor by CHarlotte Bronte. She certainly had a lot to say about labor. Her work predates Dickens but it is Dickensian in its outlook.

This is from a Shakespeare web info purveyor:


In the Spotlight
Poll: Is Shakespeare Overrated?
John Dryden wrote that Shakespeare was "the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul." However, many believe that Shakespeare is not...read more

58% of those taking the poll said yes. Remember, this is from a subscription service, implying those who take the poll are interested in Shakespeare.

Stone Diaries seemed interminable to me, but I got more interested as I got toward the end, when I could relate better to Daisy.

I'm a mix in that I like excellent descriptive writing, and weary of the overflow of it. Thus my attraction (differing with many here) with some spare crime writing, or the occasional sparely written mystery. I'll distinguish that from sensational best seller type crime writing, which I pretty much abhore as jerkoff violence thrill mechanics.

I probably didn't mention, in my list of recent reads, Canone Inverso, by Paolo Maurensig - a small mystery centering on the traversings of a violin, it held my interest.

I moved Empire of Dreams aside in my pile of books and took up Afterimage by Helen Humphreys. It's a novel about photography, cartography, and human relationships... a keeper.

Still haven't finished that other novel of photography, The Lost Glass Plates of Wilfred Eng, by Thomas Orton.




I should add that I didn't mean excellent descriptive writing can't be spare.

I've returned to Le Morte D'Arthur and it is awful. One joust after a beheading after plotting to steal a woman after a joust after a beheading ad nauseum. And I'm a Medievalist!

I do feel an obligation to read it, but, it is a late work, written as use of printing press was spreading and just prior to the voyages of Columbus, on the cusp of change.

Scholars have made much of the love potion in the Tristam and Isoud (sic) episode, but it's not worth the ink spilled over it.

The Gareth of Orkney episode is better.

pom wrote-



They do say that if there's any trouble there's a woman in the thick of it.

Sounds quite romantic to me.

spendius -- There isn't much romance. Mostly, it is, "they set their spears and charged like lions at each other. Gareth buffetted the Red Knight passing strong and knocked him off his horse. Then Gareth dismounted. They set their shields and drew their swords. The Red Knight hewed mightily at Gareth who swung his sword down through the Red Knight's helmet and cleaved him in two to his paps."

I was looking for Celtic mythology. As late and as "English" as the book is, there are just traces of it and it is difficult to know whether those traces have any authenticity or not. There may be horse sacrifice; there is the use of colors that takes me back to Cu Chulainn; certainly, there are shreds of water goddesses, aptly connected to worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Gareth episode is at least humorous: Gareth follows a nagging, acid tongued damosel who is under the impression he is a kitchen knave. She credits all of his success not to his superior strength but to luck and presents imaginative versions of the fights she has just witnessed, full of suggestions that the other knight's horse stumbled, etc.

However, Lumiansky's edition runs to 785 pages!

a bit academic, but I'm enjoying it

I usually am reading several books at the same time because I tend to read non-fiction. I'm surrently reading John Dean's new book "Conservatives Without Conscience." Dean really nails the authoritarian mindset of the Bush-Cheney administration and their followers.

BBB

Amazon.com

In Conservatives Without Conscience, John Dean, who served as White House counsel under Richard Nixon and then helped to break the Watergate scandal with his testimony before the Senate, takes a vivid and analytical look at a Republican Party that has changed drastically from the conservative movement that he joined in the mid-1960s as an admirer of Senator Barry Goldwater. Listen to our interview with Dean as part of our July 13 Amazon Wire podcast (along with interviews with Garrison Keillor and Henry Rollins) to hear how he originally conceived of the book with the late Senator Goldwater, and the social science research he drew on to put together his portrait of the "conservative authoritarian."

pom wrote-



Nothing much changes does it apart from a staunching of the blood flow for which, I suppose, we ought to give thanks.

Poor "Plain OLD me" tells of some Shakespearan site but she is clearly attempting to denigate Shakespeare. I don't think( if she has actually read Shakespeare) that she understands his massive influence on the entire body of English and American Literature that comes after him.

Shakespeare is the rock to which the tiny ships of literary works in England and the US are anchored.

I am sorry that Plain Ol me does not understand this!!!

Well, Shakespeare, he's in the alley
With his pointed shoes and his bells,
Speaking to some French girl,
Who says she knows me well.
And I would send a message
To find out if she's talked,
But the post office has been stolen
And the mailbox is locked.
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again.

Bob Dylan -- Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.

There has been a hew and cry on these threads about what is taught in high schools and I thought I would post my town's high school summer reading list -- which means the books the kids have to read for a test or an essay given early in the school year, and not the entire curriculum.

Grade Nine

Kids at the C-2 level chose one of these: Ender's Game by Card; Cut by McCormick, or Monstrous Regiment by Pratchett.

C-1 level students must select two: Speak by Anderson; Ender's Game and Monstrous Regiment.

Honors kids have to read In Our Time by Hemingway, Speak and Kaffir Boy by Mathabane

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Grade Ten

C-2 students read Montana 1948 by Watson and You Don't Know Me by Klass.

C-1 students must read Winesburg, Ohio by Anderson and then an additional selection from the following: Feed by Anderson; Staying Fat for Sarah Burns by Crutcher; The EArth, My Butt and Other Big Round THings by Mackler.

Honors students must read Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck and two of the following: Feed; A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Dorris and SUla by Morrison.

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British Literature

C-1 kids read Picture of Dorian Grey by Wilde; Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Haddon; Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories.

Honors level reading is Tess of the D'Urbervilles by HArdy; Regeneration by Barker; A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. Then they can elect to read either Interpreter of Maladies by Lahiri or White Teeth by Smith.

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American Studies

C-1 kids read Paradise Alley by Baker.
Honors kids read the same plus On the Road by Kerouac.

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American Lit/Speech/Creative Writing

Students select two from the following: On the Road; Sea Wolf by Jack London; Bloody Falls of the Coppermine, Jenkins.

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Shakespearean and Modern Drama

A Midsummer Night's Dream; Crimes of the HEart by Henley; The Piano Lesson by Wilson; Tuesdays with Morrie by Ablom

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Masterpieces

C-1 students chose two, one of which must be Catch-22 and honors students chose three, one of which must be Catch-22:
Catch-22 by Heller; The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood; The World ACcording to Garp by Irving; The Color Purple by Walker.

---------------------------

Humanities

C-1 and Honors both read King Leopold's Ghost by Hochschild; Heart of Darkness by Conrad; The Agony and the Ectasy by Stone.

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AP English

All must read Fagles' trans of The Orestia; Catch-22; Saturday by McEwan.
Then they select one of the following: Jasmine by Mukherjee or Alias Grace by Atwood.

Just finished Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which Esther lent me, insisting I'd read it, one of her all-time favourites. A beautiful book, and a piece of amazing storytelling, with plenty of entertaining Soviet satire interspersed between its core magical realism. But I admit that I have the distinct feeling that I missed something - that I didnt quite 'get' it.

Hue and cry.


(Sorry. I never say anything about spelling cause I misspell lots myself, but this just kinda made me flinch, so I had to.

I'll also have to break it to people that it's "hear, hear", not "here, here", sometime. Thats another one that inexplicably makes me flinch - and it comes up a lot)

Accounting Information Systems - Jones and Rama

that lovely book tries to give some understandings about AIS concepts and practices with a Business Process Approach.
it's different with another books such as Romney's or Galinas'es that using an IT Approach.

May the bird of paradise fly up your nose.