Book Nerd’s Comments (group member since Dec 20, 2018)

Book Nerd’s comments from the Never too Late to Read Classics group.

This was quite a bit different from most of the others, about a boy adapting to different ways of life and working to abolish slavery.

It's definitely a good read and pretty short.

Yeah, I found the male and female characters in The Fountainhead really annoying and unlikable. I don't agree with all of Ayn Rand's philosophy but some of it, and it seems more clear and less whiny in Atlas Shrugged, but like I said, it's been 25 years.

Enjoy

Oh, a million characters. Even that seems too high.
I didn't find it a hard read, just a long, sprawling historic epic. I enjoyed it.

Yeah, maybe a better ending was planned.

Welcome new members.

I started reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, a book I thought I started and abandoned 25 years ago but nothing in it is familiar so I figured out that the book I was reading was The Fountainhead. So now I have to read that too so I can say no book has ever defeated me!
Oh well, Atlas Shrugged is a lot longer but so far seems like a better book.

The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' by William Hope Hodgson

132 pages
Group Total(adding in The Metamorphasis form Abigail): 364,783

I enjoyed this overall. WHH goes a little far in technical descriptions of naval things I really don't know enough about to understand but it doesn't drag a lot like The Night Land.
The horror was really cool though. I loved the trees. And people were so afraid of octopus suction cups back then lol.
I had thought this would be about terrors on the open seas after their ship went down but the majority of the action takes place on weird islands.

Anisha Inkspill wrote: "I've read the intro of my abridged version and was amused when it said the full version has a 1 000 000 "
Apparently like Arthurian legend, it's complicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance...
But I don't think there could really be a version with a million chapters!
The one I read had 120.

Barbara wrote: "I finished it too and I loved it till I got to the ending. Comparing to all the effort put into showing the bizarre world around the city the sudden rushed explanation felt very disappointing."
I agree. And it didn't really make sense. See my last post.

If so I'd like to suggest for horror the first two books in Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories series:

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981)
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1984)

Those were my childhood! It's weird that my favorite childhood books are classics but whatever, I'm old.

In a distant galaxy, the atrocity of slavery was alive and well, and young Thorby was just another orphaned boy sold at auction. But his new owner, Baslim, is not the disabled beggar he appears to be: adopting Thorby as his son, he fights relentlessly as an abolitionist spy. When the authorities close in on Baslim, Thorby must ride with the Free Traders — a league of merchant princes — throughout the many worlds of a hostile galaxy, finding the courage to live by his wits and fight his way from society's lowest rung. But Thorby's destiny will be forever changed when he discovers the truth about his own identity...

A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.

Being an account of their Adventures in the Strange places of the Earth, after the foundering of the good ship Glen Carrig through striking upon a hidden rock in the unknown seas to the Southward. As told by John Winterstraw, Gent., to his Son James Winterstraw, in the year 1757, and by him committed very properly and legibly to manuscript.

Michelle wrote: "And suggest Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner for fantasy.
"
We read Lolly Willowes in December.

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

132 pages

The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington by Leonora Carrington

212 pages

Group Total: 356,069

Pam wrote: "If it is not too late, I would like to suggest Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick."
Sorry I missed this one before. Got it now.

Greg wrote: "Can I also suggest the classic fantasy Phantastes [1858] by George MacDonald? Tolkien and C. S. Lewis acknowledged it as an influence, and I'd like to read it."
Looks good.

Annette wrote: "and anything by Clifford Simak ."

Rosemarie wrote: "I support books by Clifford D. Simak and Stanisław Lem."
Any specific books?

Greg wrote: "Thanks Rosemarie - it seems like a good group! Can we give support to any of the books we're interested in? Or do we need to restrict it to a certain number? Just curious.."
Good question. I've never thought it matters.