Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2007 10:09 am Post subject: Your Favourite Books
I swear that we used to have a discussion thread dedicated to bibliophiles of this little community. I searched high and low and ploughed through the archives with little to show for my effort. Alright, we probably talked about it in the previous Langcafe forum, so how about doing a Lazarus by resurrecting this topic?
I have always been an avid reader and never more so in the last week when I dragged myself to the local bookshop and bought a few books.
So I have just finished the final installment of the Adrian Mole diary series. For the uninitiated, Adrian Mole is a fictional invention of Sue Townsend who is a brilliant mistress of comedic parodies as far as I am concerned. I remembered first reading Adrian Mole when he was a pimply 13 and a half year old angst-ridden teenager growing up in the late seventies in a severely dysfunctional family when I was still in primary school. Adrian Mole taught me that groping at girls while going out on dates was not only socially acceptable, but vociferously encouraged as a sign of asserting nascent manliness. Of course, even at the precocious age of 12, I knew that it was a naff idea and I never tried to implement any of Adrian Mole's advice in my entire life. This is not to say that I wouldn't in the near future, though.
Basically, I am recommending 'Adrian Mole and Weapons of Mass Destruction' to anyone whose idea of a great weekend is listening to the wireless while perusing a book on the balcony with occasional sips of a cup of Darjeeling.
I have also finished ploughing through a remarkable book called 'Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets' by a most remarkable man called Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This is a book for anyone whose idea of a great weekend is spending time in intense bouts of melancholic self-introspection; alternatively, it is also useful to stockmarket traders who wonder why the shares they buy always almost seem to plunge in value.
And that's what I have been reading in the past week. A rather congenial way to spend time, don't you think so? _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
I also like reading ever since I was a child. Here in Peru, a common system is this. Sometimes there are special promotions in which you buy certain newspaper and you get a ticket, with that ticket and some extra money you can obtain a good book. That's very common here and usually the books you can get are part of a collection of 10 or so.
Well what I have been reading lately was a precious book called "The Golden Age of Science Fiction II" and a little collection of "Dangerous Visions" divided in three parts. I know it's a bit old-fashioned. But reading those books I discovered I am a Sci-Fi fanatic.
Regards _________________ 'Romance language learning campaign'.
You speak a Romance language? You can learn all the others! It'll be a beautiful and exciting experience!!
Already speak: Italian, some Portuguese.
Learning: French
Excellente idée, loic ! Pour ceux qui lisent le français, je recommande un bouquin assez intéressant, mais il s'agit seulement de linguistique... Donc parfait pour s'endormir sur la plage.
L'ouvrage est court (155 p.), percutant et provocateur. Son titre : « Le français ne vient pas du latin ! (Essai sur une aberration linguistique) ». La thèse centrale de l'auteur, Yves Cortez, est qu'aucune des langues romanes ne descend du latin. En revanche toutes proviendraient d'un cousin du latin qu'Yves Cortez désigne du nom d'« italien ancien ».
Ainsi Cortez remet en question l'intégralité de l'étymologie française qu'il qualifie tout bonnement de « fantaisiste ». N'allez surtout pas croire que Cortez soit un adepte de la "créolisation germanolatine" qui fait périodiquement florès sur Antimoon. Non, l'auteur se gausse des prétendus emprunts prétendument germaniques : « (...) imaginer que nous ayons pu absorber 1.500 mots d'origine néerlandaise est une bêtise san nom ». Cortez prétend que si nombre de mots ressemblent à leurs équivalents germaniques, c'est que l'« italien ancien », dont le français actuel n'est qu'une des nombreuses évolutions, possédait des vocables très similaires à ceux utilisés par les langues paléogermaniques. Cortez explique ce phénomène par l'héritage indo-européen.
Enfin, l'auteur tord le cou au « concept passe-partout » de bas-latin (ou latin vulgaire) qu'il assimile à « une fiction ».
Oh, I love sci-fi. I used to read practically nothing but as a child. There, I've admitted it.
You're right, loic; we DID have a book thread once. And it was in this forum, since I think Pauline contributed to it, and she wasn't on any of the other versions. It was in some weird place, though. And then we had another one on Yann's forum, which greg started and gave a lovely Latin name to. Ars something. _________________ An apple a day....
I find the idea of French not being a Romance language a bit disturbing. It may have had influence from non-latin speaking people, but
Hi Pete ! Cortez says that French — like Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Potuguese etc — is actually a Romance language. He just claims that no Romance language (including all above mentioned) derives from Latin. They all descend from « Old Italian »— another name for it could be Old Roman —, a "cousin" of Latin.
Currently I am reading "Selected Short Stories" by Guy de Maupassant - in English. Why in English? Well, my French is not good enough to cope with XIX century French and the second reason is that I take the opportunity to improve my English as much as I can.
I like G. de Maupassant for his pessimism (I'm also a pessimist), irony, for his showing the dark side of life. On the other hand, his stories are filled with humour. I especially like the stories about noble, distinguished, respected and strait-laced men who happen to unintentionally get drunk and wake up on the following day with a harlot in his bed ("His Confession") or completely naked in a studio of an extravagant painter in Monmartre ("Night out").
However, the story that struck me the most was a short, three-pages story I read once in Polish. I forgot the title - it was about a man had never married and who had lead a regular and orderly life full of routine. One day, while walking in the park, he came across a young couple who were behaving in a way young people usually do when in love.
He understood he lost something very important in his life and within a minute he made a decision to hang himself.
I see also how much Maupassant's works were influenced by the French-Prussian war in 1870.
I like the classical XIX century literature. Boleslaw Prus is my favourite Polish novelist, known especially for his "The Doll" and "Tha Pharoah". I don't know if you ever heard of him but he was marvellous! Another one is the Russian Anton Czekhov. Interestingly, I am not very keen on Dostoyevsky.
Two first-class masterpieces of the XIX century literatury are still to come:
Victor Hugo: "Les Miserables".
Lev Tolstoy: "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina"
I like Dostoyevsky very much, probably more than Tolstoy.
Others:
Thomas Mann (almost everything he wrote)
Alfred Döblin: Berlin - Alexanderplatz
Oscar Wilde
Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
Graham Greene
Martin McDonagh's plays
I also like Nabokov's Lolita (regardless of the content)
and several Hungarian writers whom I don't think you know _________________ Az alvástól megéhezem. Az evéstől elálmosodom. Az élet szép.
I like Dostoyevsky very much, probably more than Tolstoy.
Others:
Thomas Mann (almost everything he wrote)
Alfred Döblin: Berlin - Alexanderplatz
Oscar Wilde
Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
Graham Greene
Martin McDonagh's plays
I also like Nabokov's Lolita (regardless of the content)
and several Hungarian writers whom I don't think you know
It's strange to write that.
Another point of view...
Well, Latin America... Why "Latin", so?
South America never was conquered by Romans from Latium... As well, few Amerindians knew Latin...
Many people of USA assimilate Latin civilisation from the Hispanic one.
You will not find many Romanic church in Latin America, not many Aqueduct and Roman arenae either...
While even in Austria or in Great Britain (which are "Germanic" lands), there are vestiges of the Roman civilization.
Me, too. Have you read it in Polish? I love the English title - "The Paul Street Boys". LOL! _________________ Az alvástól megéhezem. Az evéstől elálmosodom. Az élet szép.
Greg: Thank you for your recommendations. I would probably struggle quite a bit if I were to read it in French. I already think Le Point is slightly difficult; I much prefer the glitzy Paris Match when it comes to 'French literature' - a picture tells a thousand words after all!
Compared to the hoary tastes of Ksa and Liz (Frederik will like her a lot for reading Thomas Mann), I am really a very uncouth reader. I think I'd read Enid Blyton's The Secret Seven series all over again than touch War and Peace. Somehow, gloomy introspective books only make me more depressed and pessimistic.
When I was in secondary school, I was obliged to read many of the great Chinese classics as part of our curriculum. I worked my way through Journey to the West, a popular tale about a Buddhist reverend, a Monkey God, a Pig in the shape of a human as well as an irascible monk making a pilgrimage to the holy Buddhist centres of India in order to secure religious literature so that Buddhism could be properly disseminated in China. I enjoyed it immensely; you could say that it appealed greatly to my juvenile imagination.
Journey to the West has an outstanding impact on Chinese folk worship. Some believe that it is real; more enlightened individuals see it as a religious allegory. But even today, you can see shrines dedicated to the Buddhist reverend (my mother once loftily said that he is a minor god in the Buddhist pantheon but a major player in the Taoist hierarchy) as well as Monkey God.
Another familiar Chinese classic is A Tale of the Three Kingdoms. I have largely forgotten the plot of the story, but it is basically a story about intense brotherhood forged in an uncertain era where China has broken up into many competing states. Three remarkable men got together to swear a vow of kinship to one another; one of them has been cannonised as a God of Justice and War and he remains a very popular deity till today. In fact, there is an altar dedicated to this particular deity in every police station of Hong Kong (fans of HK cinema would know what I mean).
The classics were written in classical Chinese and that is akin to a foreign language as far as I am concerned. My grasp of classical Chinese or wen yan wen is atrocious: if Confucious were to return today, I would have trouble communicating with the great sage.
Guan Yu, one of the three sworn brothers now venerated by the Chinese as the patron saint of the police force and also ironically, the Chinese gangsters. _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
(Frederik will like her a lot for reading Thomas Mann)
Yeah. I miss him - we could discuss Tonio Kröger and the Hans Hansens of this world. _________________ Az alvástól megéhezem. Az evéstől elálmosodom. Az élet szép.
Greg: Thank you for your recommendations. I would probably struggle quite a bit if I were to read it in French. I already think Le Point is slightly difficult; I much prefer the glitzy Paris Match when it comes to 'French literature' - a picture tells a thousand words after all!
Absolument ! Match's motto : « Le poids des mots, le choc des photos ».
À ce propos, Genestar, l'ancien directeur de Match a été viré par ton copain Sarkozy pour avoir osé publier des photos de sa bourgeoise avec son amant. Pire qu'en Russie, je te dis...
Mais la politique n’a rien à voir avec notre littérature préférée. Tu sais, j’ai l’impression que Sarkozy est en vacances pour le moment. Je suis sûr qu’il s’en fout de toutes les rumeurs concernant sa femme. Tu crois sincèrement que Sarkozy a le pouvoir de virer n’importe qui? A quoi ça sert la démoratie, alors?
Si ce que tu disais est tout à fait vrai, Paris Match devrait cesser de bénéficier de ce qu’il faut considérer de la complaisance du gouvernement. Toutefois, je crois que tu exagères un peu la situation de la presse. Je fais toujours confiance à la liberté de la presse. Je me sentirais con si je croirais autrement.
Ok, on retourne à parler des livres susceptibes de plaire au grand public. Ça c’est de l’essence dans cette discussion! Donc, à ton avis, quelles sont les plus grandes classiques françaises que chacun doit lire à l’école?
PS: On ne peut pas toujours croire les conneries que l’on entend dans la rue. C’est ce qu’on appele, si l’on ose dire, l’incrédulité voltairienne, non? _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
First, I loved the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels. Douglas Adams was a genius. What I really like was how he phrased things, for example, the Nutri-matic device produced a substance that was "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea." Or even better, in the book Mostly Harmless, after an explosion totally destroys the courtyard outside the Hitchhiker's Guide office building, it says "where there was once..." (insert lavish description of the statuary, bushes, etc.) "...there was now a bit of a pit with nasty bits in it." There's plenty of other memorable quotes, such as "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." And there's also the matter of the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything being "42." I could go on forever but I think I'll change subjects now...
Moving on, the other series of novels I've willingly gone through is Dune, six books written from 1967 (I think) to 1986 by Frank Herbert. Some might tell you that only the first book was any good. I liked all six. The best way to describe them is, novels in the form of sci-fi, not sci-fi in the form of novels. (Get it?) But, I've never bothered with the prequel books written by the late author's son.
In the realm of non-fiction I've recently been reading The Story of English. This is a great book which goes through the history of the English language, showing all the influences on it and all the different varieties of it. It starts with the Anglo-Saxons, continues through the Viking invasions, the Norman invasion, Shakespeare's effect on the language, the Highland Scots, the Lowland Scots, the Scots-Irish, the Irish Irish, Black English in America, American English development and all its influences (from Yiddish-speaking Jews in New York City to cowboys in the wild west) and then back to England where we learn about Cockney, and after that on to Australia and New Zealand and it's around here that I last stopped.
Finally I've also got books on how to write novels. Yes, I'm planning on writing something myself and maybe in a few...years we can talk about it here.
I read all of the Hitchhiker books when I was a kid. (Shows you how old I am!) I got through Dune and maybe as far as Children of Dune, although I lost interest and don't remember much about them any more.
I don't know if any of you have read Charles de Lint? A Canadian writer who sets his novels in contemporary Canadian cities, but always has some sort of Celtic magic going on. Interesting juxtaposition. Emma Bull's War For The Oaks was another book in a similar vein, about a fairy war between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts being fought in Minneapolis. Complete with a big ol' supernatural throwdown at Minnehaha Falls. Main character is a guitarist for a mediocre bar band.
Jhereg and Brokedown Palace by Steven Brust are interesting in that he is a Hungarian-American and feels that all of his characters should have Hungarian names and as many diacritical marks as possible. Oh, and if the ahem, older folks here recognize "Brokedown Palace" as being lifted from an old Grateful Dead song, you'll also be amused to know that the fairy tale takes place in the Kingdom of Fenario ... sadly there are no dire wolves, although it could be argued that one of the characters is a friend of the devil. Is the taltos horse (magical talking horse) a real Hungarian myth?
Speaking of childhood books, has anyone else read A Cricket in Times Square or Bunnicula (yes, about a vampire rabbit)? I still love The Genie of Sutton Place (again, a modern-day -- well, probably '70's -- tale of a boy who finds a real genie locked in a rug at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Which I think was also the setting of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, in which a brother and sister run away from home to live in the museum and become embroiled in a mystery involving a small statue which may or may not be a lost Michelangelo.
Books I remember but did NOT read as a child: Across Five Aprils (I guess about growing up during the Civil War) and Bridge to Terabithia (now a movie). Has anyone read those? _________________ An apple a day....
Jhereg and Brokedown Palace by Steven Brust are interesting in that he is a Hungarian-American and feels that all of his characters should have Hungarian names and as many diacritical marks as possible.
Believe it or not, my name doesn't contain a single diacritic, still no-one can pronounce it!
Uriel wrote:
Is the taltos horse (magical talking horse) a real Hungarian myth?
I don't know whether it's specifically Hungarian, but it appears in almost all Hungarian fairy tales / legends. And it doesn't necessarily talk - it's a silent but powerful companion of the youngest prince or the youngest son of the poor man, it's not like the donkey in Shrek. If it was the case, the youngest prince (or even poor guy) would lose his trademark sang-froid in no time! _________________ Az alvástól megéhezem. Az evéstől elálmosodom. Az élet szép.
I never read the Hitchhiker's Books although one of them, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was on our compulsory reading list when I was in secondary 2 (age 14). My rebellious streak (indolent one, more like) ensured that I never touched it.
But from the way Bashar recommended it, I feel as if I might have missed out something by being so obstinate. The pithy descriptions quoted by Bashar exemplify the authoritative magic which Douglas Adams weave into his prose. I think his use of alliterations is awfully clever. Maybe, just maybe, I might be prompted to pick it up.
Most of the books I read as a child are primarily of British vintage: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, all the short stories as well as the Famous Five and Secret Seven canons by Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Robert Louis Stevenson (every boy is weaned on 'Treasure Island'), etc. The few american writers I remember include the authoress of the Babysitter Series (I am rather sheepish to admit that I read them), The Three Investigators series and a few other titles whose names temporarily escape my mind. _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
Jhereg and Brokedown Palace by Steven Brust are interesting in that he is a Hungarian-American and feels that all of his characters should have Hungarian names and as many diacritical marks as possible.
Believe it or not, my name doesn't contain a single diacritic, still no-one can pronounce it!
Uriel wrote:
Is the taltos horse (magical talking horse) a real Hungarian myth?
I don't know whether it's specifically Hungarian, but it appears in almost all Hungarian fairy tales / legends. And it doesn't necessarily talk - it's a silent but powerful companion of the youngest prince or the youngest son of the poor man, it's not like the donkey in Shrek. If it was the case, the youngest prince (or even poor guy) would lose his trademark sang-froid in no time!
Sorry to hear that you've been gypped on your birthright when it comes to your name!
As for the taltos horse being silent, I remember this one being sarcastic, but yes, it was the mysterious companion of the youngest prince, Prince Miklos. His oldest brother was the king, and the owner of the titular palace that they all lived in, and rather obsessive about its upkeep (in the form of being in complete -- and sometimes violent -- denial of its actual state of imminent collapse. Turned out there was a tree trying to grow up through it.)
Loic, I think you of all people would love Hitchhiker, as it is very, very British. Although more in the breezy, playing-with-words manner than in the proper, stuffy manner. It's not unlike Terry Pratchett's contributions, like the very funny Last Continent and Good Omens -- the first of which deals with a wizard trying to make the best of being trapped in a thinly-veiled version of Australia, along with a truculent and unmannerly piece of luggage; the second deals with the question of what if Satan really did drop his son in England to precipitate the End of the World, but that goal was complicated by the devil's offspring being accidentally adopted by the wrong couple and one of the minor demons entrusted to help matters along deciding that he (along with his best friend and rare book collector, who also happens to be an angel) really likes the world just the way it is.
Other American authors who also loved to make books out of (and using) silly plays on worlds are Piers Anthony, whose pun-filled Xanth series kept me in stitches as a kid (Xanth is a magical place that looks mysteriously like Florida, where everyone has a magical talent, and those who are born without are exiled to boring Mundania), and Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series, in which a grad student from Earth is accidentally transported to a magical land full of talking animals while smoking a joint (the magician who conjured him up was looking for an engineer; the grad student's part-time university job was as a janitor ... or sanitation engineer. His hobby is playing the guitar, which he was never that great at until it turns out that his renditions of Beatles standards and Beach Boy favorites cast magical spells in this new world -- although never without an unfortunate twist. (His attempt to conjure up a boat using "Sloop John B" goes very well until all of his companions appoint themselves to various shipboard tasks, leaving him, by elimination, as the first mate -- "the first mate he got drunk" -- and spends the rest of the voyage in a violently-ill, alcoholic haze, despite never having touched a drop).
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Oh, and if the ahem, older folks here recognize "Brokedown Palace" as being lifted from an old Grateful Dead song, you'll also be amused to know that the fairy tale takes place in the Kingdom of Fenario ... sadly there are no dire wolves, although it could be argued that one of the characters is a friend of the devil. Is the taltos horse (magical talking horse) a real Hungarian myth?
Believe it or not, my name doesn't contain a single diacritic, still no-one can pronounce it!
