Zoe ,'The Train Job'
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 think adults are only supposed to read things that have insightful things about the angst of modern existence. Anything else is trite escapism.
So true. And I'm so over Insightful Angst.
Another way to look at it: If Oprah recs it, it's OK. If not, random co-workers can have judgment about it.
SANDWORMS OF DUNE, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson?!!
Earworms of Dune.
Toni Morrison has been an Oprah rec, though, and I think Toni Morrison is a genius.(Her first book "The Bluest Eye" is best though because she wasn't *trying* be a genius so it is clear and simple.) I'm glad I've outgrown my teenage urge to tell people junk about their reading habits. It doesn't make you look smart...it makes you look like a dick.
No, Oprah has definitely recommended some excellent books; I'm commenting more on the fact that "people" need to have those books recommended by someone like Oprah in order to think they are OK to read.
Is this a holdover from school? That only English-class-books are "real" reading? I don't know. I just know that I talk to everyone about what they read, and as a result have developed appreciation for whole genres (historical romance, for example) that I would never have otherwise.
I mean, I threw "The Bluest Eye" across the room the first time I read it...but then, I wasn't used to books making me unhappy and uncomfortable like that.
For some class or other, I read both Bastard Out of Carolina and Ellen Foster. Shortly thereafter, The Book of Ruth. At some point, I stopped being able to get any real meaning out of the books and started experiencing them much like that kind of fanfiction which describes Mulder being tortured by aliens and then rescued by people who spend a week gang-raping him and leave him for dead, after which he is miraculously rescued by people who heal him up and then torture him in the basement for months before he is reabducted by the aliens. In multiple installments totalling 20,000 words.
Alan Rickman reads Sonnet 130
I so want to click that link, but I only have the one pair of panties with me today.
Alas, I think Jen's spoiled that sonnet for me.
Oh, it ain't the words. It's the voice saying the words.
I have that CD. I don't listen to it anywhere near enough.
Oh, I know. I'd happily listen to him read the phone book. But I can't listen to it without a bit of "yeah, but..."
On the other hand, I can't find anything on the Web to give evidence of what Jen was saying, and I can't remember it well enough to repeat it. So never mind...