Language & Grammar discussion

Comment about the books you're reading, thinking about reading, giving up on reading, or read recently or long ago. A clearinghouse for opinions on the books of the (or your, or someone else's) moment, in other words.

I just finished 2666 by Robert Bolaño, all 800+ pages of it. It won the Book Critics Circle Award I think it was last year. What an experience. You need to put your hiking boots on for this one, but I never once considered putting it down.

We're discussing the first half over on Constant Reader right now. We'll start discussing the entire book on the 15th.

Maybe this summer. Every summer I tackle one giant -- though usually it's a classic I've neglected to read but want to read. I'd like to sample some Bolano short stories before I dive into the deep end of the pool.

That sounds interesting Gabi.....I have been rereading all the Gabaldon's. I had bought the last one and realised a few pages in that it had been so long that I had forgotten many of the characters and sub-plots, so I started again from scratch. Bought the book in Oct or Nov and have finally started reading it after ploughing through the previous 6! It all makes sense now!

Ruth it was an experience. I don't want to tackle it again, but in a few years maybe.

I had to stop reading THE SHACK...it just didn't mesh with me...too bizarre.

I am now almost finished with THE BOOK THIEF and it's a very interesting read!

I liked The Book Thief, but the kiddies seldom read it. Big books (unless they're cotton candy big books like Twilight) seem to scare them off.

My DIL gave me Gregory's The Virgin's Lover for xmas a few years ago. I only lasted a few pages. It was beyond awful.

I loved The Book Thief. Gabaldon is a little bit of a bodice ripper, but with tongue incheek and good humour. I like her books for relaxing with.

I've purchased my first Jane Austen yesterday. 'So when have you started reading female literature?', my fiancé commented. 'If you're looking for the latest issue of Glamour, I think I left it next to the toilet.' Is she right?

Right about Austen being female literature, I meant. I know almost no English classic literature apart from what they made me read in class ages ago, so I thought I'd just scan through some authors famous enough to be published on Penguin Classics, starting with the letter A.

I read her in high school under duress (read: orders from the teacher). Mark Twain has some great quotes about wanting to dig her up and whack her upside the head with her femur. Or something like that.

(Doesn't sound like you're earning any points with your fiancè, either, so abandon at will if you hate it. But who knows? Maybe you'll like old Jane? She's chatty as a women's book group discussing the neighbors.)

The book was only 3,50 €, after all. My fiancé is rather indifferent to what I'll read next, as long as I mount the kitchen shelf before. Anyhow, I'll keep you updated on how the ménage à trois between my fiancé, Jane, and the shelf is going.

Carry on, gebrim, I don't think Jane Austen an author that should appeal only to women.

I will Ruth, I will.

Right. Only some authors are "one sex only" authors. Not that I can name any off the top of my head, but I know they're out there and the smart money is on women as an audience if it's fiction they're writing because wimmins read a lot more fiction than manunkinds.

Barbara Cartland.

Danielle Steele

Oh, yeah. Romance. Now there's a word that was stolen from us. Used to be that Romance was a foil for Realism and meant something. Now it's a buxom maiden running from a castle (or perhaps melting into the arms of a shirtless poster boy for steroids).

Thanks to Dame Barbara. and a few others. Why was she named a Dame I wonder?

In England, everyone's a damn Dame: Barbara Cartland, Agatha Christie, Elton John, You Name It....

Elton deserves his title well, however.

So, I've just finished Fry's "the Liar", which you will love if you love Stephen Fry,have to do some work now and then it's the kitchen shelf and then Jane.

Jane? Tarzan?

I'm almost done with the Foodie book I've been reading (thank God). Why does non-fiction slow me down?

No, Austen of course. Tarzan is another one on my to-read classics list, though.
Sorry to hear your book is a little difficult to digest, NE.

Spare yourself Tarzan. The Constant Reader group here on GR read it as a kind of lark. The majority of us were appalled by how bad it was.

As a kid I loved the Tarzan movies,but I never read the book.

My elementary school banned the Tarzan books from our library because Jane and Tarzan weren't married!

And YES, this was in southern California!!!

Who was supposed to marry them in the jungle, then? A bonobo?

Cheeta remember he was smart.

There's a suburb of Lost Angeles called "Tarzana." How many literary characters can make that statement?

"In 1915 or 1919, Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known as the author of the Tarzan stories, purchased Otis’s land and built a large home on it, which he called the Tarzana Ranch. Burroughs subdivided and sold the land for residential development, and the neighboring small farms were also converted to residential areas. In 1927 or 1928, local residents renamed the town Tarzana in honor of Burroughs and his famous storybook character." --Wikipedia

Is that where they filmed a lot of the Tarzan movies? I know it was at an arboretum somewhere,I just can't remember where it is.

The early Tarzan films were shot in the Lake Sherwood area. Other exterior shots included Sherwood Forest, where aerialist Alfredo Codona doubled for Weissmuller swinging through the trees.

Woodland Park near Pico-Rivera in Whittier (Swamp), Big Tujunga, China Flats, the Arboretum in Arcadia, and Iverson's Ranch, specifically the Garden of the Gods site, were also used. The remaining filming was done on the MGM lot.

The Escarpment (a.k.a. Tarzan Rocks) was located at the west-end of lot one, as were the river/lake and sound stages. The top of the escarpment was on lot two and in Sherwood Forest.

The completed tree-house was first seen in the released version of Tarzan Escapes, and was built at Crater Camp, in what is now the Malibu Creek State Park, and duplicated on a stage at MGM. The interiors were on another sound stage.

When the filming of Tarzan Finds a Son! was nearing completion, it was decided to send Weissmuller and Sheffield to Silver Springs, Florida, to get some underwater footage. The waters there were crystal clear, and afforded some splendid sequences. A Florida resident was used to double for Maureen O'Sullivan, who remained in California. Additional footage was shot at Wakulla Springs for Tarzan's Secret Treasure.

For Tarzan's New York Adventure, the Hagenbecker-Wallace circus was hired and put on the MGM backlot. Some second unit shots of New York City were done on location without the cast.

That's funny, grebrim (the "digest" bit, I mean). That joke would go over especially well in Pleasantville, NY, home of Readers Digest.

I loved the old Johnny Weismuller films on Saturday mornings. Also loved him in the Jungle Jim movies -- only those aren't shown anymore. I wonder why. Are they politically incorrect or something?

I have 40 pp. to go in my non-fiction task. Must... finish... my... asparagus.

I only have about 1150 more pages to go in War and Peace. I got side tracked with two other books. Now it will be just me and Leo.

40pp. is quite exactly the amount of Pride and Prejudice that already lies behind me.

Happy reading.

Same to you!

My new read is proving to be a fast starter. YA, but one of those dark vs. light brothers psychological things (named, aptly, Split). Reminds you of other "Brother Books" like, oh, East of Eden and The Power of the Dog and... um... I'm no artist but I'm drawing a blank.

Brother Books for $300, Alex. Anybody?

Genesis, of course. Raising Cain when you're Abel.

OK, I'm writing my review of SPLIT this a.m. Check it out. The book, not the review. I would recommend it to "all" of my "friends," but then around 23 of them would e-mail me to stop the spamming. Hmn. I once tasted it and can't believe it's still on supermarket shelves. "Mommy, what the hell IS in spam anyway?"

I finished Pride and Prejudice yesterday evening. Quite liked it, especially the depiction of Mr. Collins, arguably one of the most formidable twits in fiction. The romantic 15-page happy ending was a little too much for me, though.

No, I haven't yet had the pleasure to.

Hmn. The Good Wyfe, too, seemed to develop a case of the "slurpies" watching said Firth (a field of moss, ain't it?) in that movie.

"What's he got that I haven't got?" I asked.

Wait a minute -- that question belongs on another thread here.

That's another fine mess you have gotten us into.

I've read Maeve Brennan's The Visitor yesterday, primarily because I'm in this 50-books-a-year challenge and I'll never make it without resorting to novellas every now and then.

Rain, beautiful language, despair, rain, lack of love everywhere, no fear of a happy ending, and more rain. Just what I needed.

Hmn. Never heard tell of this Maeve. Irish? I know there's a Maeve Binchy running about. Specializes McChick Lit, I think.

I'm reading in interesting hybrid of vampire and ninja fare, called Blood Ninja. Wastes no time in getting to the blood. The boys will love it, as they are hard-wired for such truck. Set in feudal (or, as I imagine it, futile) Japan.

Yep, Irish, but came to ny aged 17 and wrote a lot for the New Yorker. Later she went mad and spent the rest of her days in a broom chamber in the editor's building or something.

Ooh. Coming out of the broom closet. Something of witch I had not heard (bubble, bubble, boil and trouble).

(I had to read that twice to get it.)
By coincidence, I started reading Nietzsche's Zarathustra right afterwards.
Maybe, I should stay a while with authors who spent the end of their lives in aberration, does anyone you know any other than Maeve and Friedrich?

Novellas or other books that have a similar story line?