I've read "1000 Years of Solitude"
Ten times better than One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Maybe I've always been here.
Early ,'Objects In Space'
We're Literary 2: To Read Makes Our Speaking English Good
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."
DavidS - Jun 17, 2005 8:26:12 am PDT #7931 of 10002
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
-t - Jun 17, 2005 8:27:08 am PDT #7932 of 10002
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration
While I was reading Moby Dick, I heard someone on the radio read his favorite passage out loud. It was a stirring and beautiful. I had just read that passage myself a few days before and gotten not nearly as much out of it.
DavidS - Jun 17, 2005 8:37:47 am PDT #7933 of 10002
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
In his writing books John Gardner talks a lot about the shear majesty of Mellville's prose.
Personally, I am love the fact that Mellville made his living with risque islande-exotique potboilers. Also that he lived in Manhattan.
Also, I love that Nabokov wished he could have seen the night that Melville visited Hawthorne and arrived in the middle of a thunderstorm looking wild, wet and biblical and scaring the hell out of Mrs. Hawthorne.
Fred Pete - Jun 17, 2005 8:51:29 am PDT #7934 of 10002
Ann, that's a ferret.
Moby Dick is up there with Ulysses in the category of "Books Required for College Classes that I Suffered Through." But, they are both trumped by Fielding's Tom Jones, which is the only one in the category of "Books I Dropped the Class Rather Than Read."
I've tried all 3. Couldn't finish Ulysses. "Finished" Moby Dick, if you can call skimming-the-last-600-pages-in-a-day reading. Loved Tom Jones the second time around, once I got some grounding in English of the pre-20th century variety -- it's actually pretty racy once you let your imagination fill in the gaps left by Fielding.
brenda m - Jun 17, 2005 9:09:29 am PDT #7935 of 10002
If you're going through hell/keep on going/don't slow down/keep your fear from showing/you might be gone/'fore the devil even knows you're there
I'm not laughing at *you,* Jim. Just the question. Because answering it seems to get me in all kinds of trouble.
Heh. I had the same reaction.
It's on my list of things to pick up, and the comments I'm reading here are actually making that more likely than not. So, um, go y'all.
Polter-Cow - Jun 17, 2005 9:28:05 am PDT #7936 of 10002
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
I really liked Moby Dick. I read it for my American Lit class in college, which was focused on captivity narratives. Strangely enough, my favorite parts were probably the long digressions, because, as Hec points out, they deepen the metaphors. "The Whiteness of the Whale" is fucking brilliant.
P.M. Marc - Jun 17, 2005 9:31:34 am PDT #7937 of 10002
So come, my friends, be not afraid/We are so lightly here/It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear
I have not read the whale book. I should. I've read other Melville.
Kathy A - Jun 17, 2005 9:37:11 am PDT #7938 of 10002
We're very stretchy. - Connie Neil
I liked Billy Budd. I might have to revisit MD, just to give it a read outside of the classroom requirement.
Matt the Bruins fan - Jun 17, 2005 10:11:16 am PDT #7939 of 10002
"I remember when they eventually introduced that drug kingpin who murdered people and smuggled drugs inside snakes and I was like 'Finally. A normal person.'” —RahvinDragand
I have not read the whale book. I should. I've read other Melville.
Having lost many hours of my life that I can never get back to the quintessential boredom of Billy Budd and Bartleby the Scrivener, I can't imagine this encouraging you to read more rather than conditioning you against it.
Nutty - Jun 17, 2005 10:46:07 am PDT #7940 of 10002
"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."
I've read "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "My Kinsman Major Molineux." I always meant to get to Typee and haven't; I think it's in the queue right after the rest of Joseph Conrad.
I saw the 1960s movie of Billy Budd, and am reliably informed that the book version can't possibly compete with Terence Stamp's girlish loveliness.