'Serenity'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
I loved The Hobbit, but I couldn't get into The Lord of the Rings.
This is me. I got through Fellowship of the Ring, and then lost the book under the couch in the middle of The Two Towers and realized that I didn't care, since I already knew how it would end and the writing just wasn't interesting enough to me.
I have LotR on my Nook, it was my 51st birthday present to myself. Dwarvish poetry is my beautiful cake. I can haz nerd points?
I think I finished the Hobbit but thought it was terrible. I could only get through the first chapter of the first LoTR books. I did love the movies though!
I haven't read Thomas Hardy in years but loved him when I was in high school.
I have had to read a lot of Henry James. I hated it all. I feel the same way about Thomas Hardy.
On the other hand, I love Melville, and he seems to be cilantro.
I loved The Hobbit, but I couldn't get into The Lord of the Rings.
This is me. I got through Fellowship of the Ring, and then lost the book under the couch in the middle of The Two Towers and realized that I didn't care, since I already knew how it would end and the writing just wasn't interesting enough to me.
This is basically me! In junior high, I loved The Hobbit, and I read Fellowship, but then the library didn't have Two Towers (or maybe ROTK), and I never finished and apparently didn't really care that much. When the movies came out, I read the books again and, man, it was a slog to get through that last book.
t sits with Ginger
I really dislike Hardy and James. I rather like Hemingway, though, despite the hypermasculinity. He can tell a story, and his sentences don't go on for pages.
Jilli, you will be happy to hear that my book club, in honor of Bradbury's death, is reading Something Wicked This Way Comes this month. And I must admit that I'd forgotten how fabulous his prose could be. The small calliope inside the carousel machinery rattle-snapped its nervous-stallion shivering drums, clashed its harvest-moon cymbals, toothed its castanets, and throatily choked and sobbed its reeds, whistles, and baroque flutes.
How splendid is that, after all?
sighs happily
It's such a wonderful, lush book!
I think one of the reasons I cherish Something Wicked This Way Comes so much is that Charles Halloway has always, always reminded me of my dad.
How splendid is that, after all?
'Tis splendid. But horribly inaccurate! The musical instrument in a carousel isn't the calliope, but a band organ, which is basically like a giant player piano/organ with added percussion and tootling horns. It runs off a giant, folded up piece of paper (like the paper rolls on a player piano).
I'll guess we'll let this one slide, Mr. Bradbury what with you being a genius and all and the book being so awesome, but a little research didn't hurt anybody.
A proper calliope (pronounced Kally-ope) is a steam driven organ - usually (though not exclusively) on the circus train that's so loud it can be heard five miles away. It's there to announce the arrival of the circus and drum up business. It can also be on a large truck with an attached steam power.
t /circus geek
A proper calliope (pronounced Kally-ope) is a steam driven organ - usually (though not exclusively) on the circus train that's so loud it can be heard five miles away. It's there to announce the arrival of the circus and drum up business. It can also be on a large truck with an attached steam power.
Or a steamboat. And I can attest that you can hear it from quite a distance, but that one also has the river to bounce off of. [link]
Sorry, didn't mean to be a Bradbury buzzkill
But somebody was wrong on the internet in the fantasy canon!