So... what are you reading right now?

[SW01]

Irish Land Law by JCW Wylie and Modern Land Law by Martin Dixon

 

Actually, the first one isn't that bad...

 

The last book I read for pleasure was The Art of the Advocate by Richard du Cann, an insightful, and at times humourous, look at how a barrister operates in court. He presents some of the best examples of wit and theatrics (barristers throwing their papers down and storming out of court, making the witness look like a total twit, etc.), and some of a barrister's worst nightmares (expert witnesses...).

 

I still have a pile of Roman history books waiting to be read, though. I'll probably get around to those after graduation!

[adamqd]

Just Finished LOTF: Invincible, for the 2nd time, started NJO: Star by Star, again last night.

[Salzella]

reading new Iain M Banks book - Matter. pretty awesome so far, as you'd expect

[jawathehutt]

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Its 736 officially but if it were printed like a book it would easily be less than 300. Also writing a sparknotes type guide to it about whats in it, whats missing and what makes no sense at all. In return, I basically get a free A in AP euro.

[jrrtoken]

I'm re-reading The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, of course. I'm reminded yet again that he's one of the greatest 20th century novelists. Even though he was a bloody drunkard.

[LordOfTheFish]

A certain Markus Zusak, my wiki says. How is it that you have come to read a book without knowledge of its author, this technique I find most intriguing.

 

 

Yeah, yeah. That was it. In response to your question, I don't really know... I just don't feel that it's necessary to researching the author, if that is what you mean.

[jrrtoken]

I don't really know... I just don't feel that it's necessary to researching the author, if that is what you mean.

I'd disagree. By knowing who the writer was, the more the work is understood. Take Fitzgerald; he was a socialite during the 20's, and as a result, all of his works deal with high social issues of that time, therefore, most of his works are semi-autobiographical, to an extent.

[Samuel Dravis]

I just finished reading Shakespeare's Othello. It was very good; now if I could just see an actual performance of it...

[DarthAve]

I'm re-reading The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, of course. I'm reminded yet again that he's one of the greatest 20th century novelists. Even though he was a bloody drunkard.

 

I'm supposted to read that sometime over the summer for Academic Challange...I fell asleep through Red Badge of Courage...

[LordOfTheFish]

Started reading Ivanhoe a week or so ago. Man... is it slow. The teach promises that if I can make it past page 75, I'll like it.

[Kuuki]

http://www.twilightlynk.com/forums/t222/

[Bee Hoon]

I'm re-reading The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, of course. I'm reminded yet again that he's one of the greatest 20th century novelists. Even though he was a bloody drunkard.

I hated the ending >:[ The idealist in me was screaming when I put the book down and shoved it into my bookshelf, where it shall remain until the end of days.

 

I am currently rereading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and Reader's Digest (my fount of knowledge of everything American!) for light reading

[Darth InSidious]

I am also re-reading The Great Gatsby... if you can call it that. I hate this book. This is the first time, in ten years, ten years, I've got to the end of chapter one.

 

Stylistically anodyne, with a suffocatingly self-righteous narrator, vacuous characters witter onto and off stage with little to say and less impact. And yes, I'm aware of what he's tilting at with all this; nevertheless, this book is a miserably pale reflection of Evelyn Waugh's sublime Vile Bodies.

 

Taking similar themes, VB sparkles with wit, savagely undercutting the glamour of the so-called 'roaring twenties' while at the same immersing the reader in the mood of the day, glitz and all. Avoid the film like the plague, however. Fry managed to totally eviscerate the book.

 

Erik Hornung's Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt is a wonderfully concise and clear assessment of... well, read the title. Accessibly translated by John Baines, its easy to get into, and a book that, when I first read it, blew my mind, quite literally. Both academically sound and easily accessible, it manages to strike the balance for both the layman and the academic well.

 

Brian Davies' Aquinas: An Introduction is a relatively small book, but nonetheless tricky. Taking the reader through the basics of medieval philsophical thought and then on a fast-paced, but nonetheless illuminating, zip through the major thought of the Doctor Angelicus, once you get your head around some of the concepts, it is a great aid to understanding arguably the greatest of the medieval philosophers.

 

Personally, I'm still stuck in chapter two, IIRC. Its been a few months, but I intend to pick it up again soon. The last time, IIRC I was trying to grasp form and its relationship with essence.

 

John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua was originally written as a defence of his conversion to Catholicism, and, by proxy, Roman Catholicism, following an article written in an 1863 edition of Macmillan's Magazine by Charles Kingsley, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, and a popular novelist. Kingsley's remarks bear quoting:

 

Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue within the Roman Catholic clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so.

 

Newman prepared his defence in early 1864, and on March 20th, Kingsley wrote an angry pamphlet entitled What, Then, Does Dr Newman Mean?. Newman's diaries note that he began work on the Apologia on April 10th. It was published as a sequence of pamphlets on consecutive Thursdays, starting on April 21st, and is a defence of his disillusionment both with his evangelical background and the Church of England, and his eventual conversion to Rome.

 

I've go as far as the preface, but given the number of books I have on the go right now, I find I've got little time for each of them.

 

The Coptic Apophthegmata Patrum is a collection of sayings and stories relating to the early desert monastic fathers, living in the desert in Egypt. Currently, I'm reading the tale of Apa Makarios and the Devil. Makarios, also known as Makarios the Great, founded the monastery at what is now the Wadi el-Natrun, or Scetis, in around 360 AD, which still exists today. Makarios is one of the great saints of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

 

Stylistically, the tales are often parabolic, with a "moral", or kernel of wisdom at the centre of the story, though this can sometimes be a little difficult to see. They do, however, give an interesting insight into the thinking of the early monks and their thought and traditions.

[GeneralPloKoon]

I just started reading Artemis Fowl, a book i've had for 9 years but never read. The book isn't set for my age group, i'm a little too old, but I enjoy it so far.

[Kuuki]

I'm reading this thread

 

and wikipedia pages >.>

[Jae Onasi]

I'm still reading Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind. I also read a good portion of Dante's Inferno to find a passage that was a good example of imagery in writing. There's nothing like reading about demons throwing sinners that they had hooked by their heel tendons into boiling pitch for a good visual.

[Da_man]

I'm reading Beowulf with Old Engilsh, and a new English translation. The old english is really wierd, but it sounds so awesome when you hear someone say it to you.

[Sabretooth]

I'm still reading Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind. I also read a good portion of Dante's Inferno to find a passage that was a good example of imagery in writing. There's nothing like reading about demons throwing sinners that they had hooked by their heel tendons into boiling pitch for a good visual.

I've always enjoyed ancient descriptions of hell; that's one moment where creativity went both depraved and insane, probably because no one can complain, it is after all, hell.

 

And now, from ancient Vedic texts, here's a description of the Vaitarna River, an obstacle sinners have to cross before they can go to Yama's Realm; aka Hell.

 

This river is very frightening and when seen inspires misery. Even hearing an account of this river arouses fear. It is a hundred yojanas in width and it does not contain water. It is a river full of blood and pus with heaps of bones on its banks and mud of blood and flesh. It is impossible for a sinful soul to cross this river as he is obstructed by hairy moss and the river is filled with huge crocodiles and crowded with hundreds of flesh eating birds. When a sinner comes near the river in an attempt to cross, it seethes and becomes overspread with smoke and flames like butter in a frying pan. It is also covered with dreadful throngs of insects with piercing strings and vultures and crows with metallic beaks. In addition to crocodiles it also contains leeches, fishes, turtles and other flesh eating water animals. It is said that the hungry and thirsty sinful souls drink the blood flowing in the river. The sinners who fall into it wail with pain and fright. There is no rescuer for them. The hundreds of whirlpools in the river takes the ones fallen in to the lower region. They stay for a moment in the lower region and then they rise again.

 

The river was created only for the sinful. It is extremely difficult to cross and the other bank cannot be seen.

[Pavlos]

I'm reading Beowulf with Old Engilsh, and a new English translation. The old english is really wierd, but it sounds so awesome when you hear someone say it to you.

The version by Mitchell and Robinson (Blackwell Publishing) is very good; they lay it out in a similar manner to the Arden Shakespeares, with the notes at the bottom of the page in two columns. It allows for fluent reading or, at least, semi-fluent in my case...

 

Milton beats all other Hell descriptions:

 

[...] Him the Almighty Power

Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie

With hideous ruine and combustion down

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,

Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms.

Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night

To mortal men, he with his horrid crew

Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe

Confounded though immortal: But his doom

Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought

Both of lost happiness and lasting pain

Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes

That witness'd huge affliction and dismay

Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:

At once as far as Angels kenn he views

The dismal Situation waste and wilde,

A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round

As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible

Serv'd onely to discover sights of woe,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell, hope never comes

That comes to all; but torture without end

Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed

With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd:

Such place Eternal Justice had prepar'd

For those rebellious, here thir Prison ordain'd

In utter darkness, and thir portion set

As far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n

As from the Center thrice to th' utmost Pole.

O how unlike the place from whence they fell!

There the companions of his fall, o'rewhelm'd

With Floods and Whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,

He soon discerns, and weltring by his side

One next himself in power, and next in crime,

Long after known in Palestine, and nam'd

Beelzebub. To whom th' Arch-Enemy,

And thence in Heav'n call'd Satan, with bold words

Breaking the horrid silence thus began.

 

Paradise Lost I.44-83

[Astrotoy7]

Thanks to Pavlos recently pointing me towards some material about Virgil's "The Aeneid", I was lead towards "I, Virgil" by David Wishart [1995].

 

A fictional autobiography of the famous Roman poets life. Wishart has spent quite alot of time writing in first person in Rome, with his Marcus Corvinus Mysteries series the most popular.

 

I really like it, easy to read. Whilst being familiar with the history of the Augustan period is handy, its far from essential when reading this book.

 

For those interested..Read Ch1 from the Author's site.

 

cheers Pavlos

 

Before this, I had most recently read, "Gallipoli:The Turkish Story" Co-written by Australian and Turkish historians, its a non fiction book describing Turkish soldiers experiences defending The Gallipoli Pensinsula from The British/Australian/New Zealand/Indian invasion force in 1915. Recommended if you are interested in military history, especially the perspective much less heard of in Western nations. Here's a more detailed sample from google books.

 

mtfbwya

[CommanderQ]

I am currently reading, Antigone by Sophocles, and it is definately a tragedy...I'm finding the play rather depressing in it's first few acts. But other than the depressing parts of it, I'm finding it as an excellent source of literature, though I do not think I will read such a depressing story ever again:D

[Da_man]

The version by Mitchell and Robinson (Blackwell Publishing) is very good; they lay it out in a similar manner to the Arden Shakespeares, with the notes at the bottom of the page in two columns. It allows for fluent reading or, at least, semi-fluent in my case...

 

Nah, I got the Sean Hearney (I believe) for a English project. It's actually very interesting, compared to the Aeneid and Odessey, Which made me fall asleep.

[Darth InSidious]

Yes, but then Aeneid is the ancient equivalent of the modern fantasy novel.

 

Long-winded, boring, clichéd trash, but inexplicably hugely popular.

[EnderWiggin]

Fahrenheight 451... Ugg. Boring. I wish school would give me something I'd enjoy to read, like a starwars or startrek book. But then there's the other students, so of course they've got to choose something neutral. Some kids like sci-fi books, others drama books, others well written classics...

 

But I suppose that I am learning at least a few things through being required to read this book. I've got to try to be appreciative of learning... Even if it is sometimes rather dull and boring.

 

*runs around in circles screaming*

 

You, my friend, are a disgrace. Fahrenheit 451 is one of my all time favorites - I have 2 separate copies (one that I wrote in and one clean) and I periodically reread both. The fact that you're complaining about such a book is just a tragedy in itself. I wish at some point in High School that I would have been told to read it.

 

 

Have you even finished reading it?

I'm re-reading The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, of course. I'm reminded yet again that he's one of the greatest 20th century novelists. Even though he was a bloody drunkard.

 

I didn't like it. I found every character to be poorly conceptualized, (except Gatsby in the first 2 chapters, but after that he becomes a twit) and the plotline to be rather annoying.

 

If you disagree, I'd enjoy having a debate on the book Perhaps a thread in Kavar's?

 

I am also re-reading The Great Gatsby... if you can call it that. I hate this book. This is the first time, in ten years, ten years, I've got to the end of chapter one.

 

Stylistically anodyne, with a suffocatingly self-righteous narrator, vacuous characters witter onto and off stage with little to say and less impact. And yes, I'm aware of what he's tilting at with all this; nevertheless, this book is a miserably pale reflection of Evelyn Waugh's sublime Vile Bodies.

Oh, I know why we're friends, Darathy

 

_EW_

[Arcesious]

Alright, I finished reading Fahrenheight 451... Okay, yes, it's a great book. Wonderfully and masterfully written. But the english teacher ruined it for me. (Yes, the teacher.) She told us (the class) everything about the book before we read it. There were no surprises whatsoever due to the her revealing every plot detail the day we got it so that we could 'learn'. I would have enjoyed it she hadn't told me everything there was to know about the story before I read it. That's why I was bored reading it- because there were no surprises for me.

 

So it generally went like this: "Okay class, this is a great book for you to read. It's about a dystopia in which books are illegal and firemen burn books. One fireman learns the truth about books and rebels. He then gets caught, but he escapes. I want you to be able to understand the abstract language in the book, so let's go to page 85 first and read about Faber..."