So... what are you reading right now?

[jrrtoken]

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.

I disagree, to a point. Gatsby was meant to be a sort of pseudo-playboy, and not of one of considerable fancy. That explains his virtual anonymity among most of his guests, along with the realization that his father was nothing more than a lower-middle class Midwesterner.

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

Then it shall be a challenge, indeed!

[Astrotoy7]

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

 

Buts thats the beauty of them CQ! You go through those gut wrenching emotions, and when something gut wrenching happens to you in real life, you are a bit more familiar the intensity of such emotions and are a little bit better prepared to deal with them.

 

I love the Greek Tragedies. Some of the film adaptations have been interesting, like Zafirelli's Oedipus and Pasolini's Medea, though the latter has more Pasolini in it that Euripides it could be easily argued

 

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

Hmm... I must read more modern fantasy novels then... a modern fantasy novel that combines ancient myth to serve the agenda of a ruling Emperor, and written in dactyilic hexameter to boot

 

Long-winded, boring, clichéd trash

hehe. Please tell me which translation you read. I will avoid it!!

 

but inexplicably hugely popular.

 

If you find its popularity inexplicable, you perhaps need to ponder more vigorously! Were Virgil not so revered by Dante Alighieri, The Aeneid would perhaps be just another Latin poem under the purview of scholars and students of ancient verse.

 

We will always like something others dont(and vice versa!). If such diversity did not exist, life would be quite dull

 

mtfbwya

[correllian_thug]

I am currently reading The Snow by Adam Roberts, it unfortunately is the first book i've ever had trouble to keep focused on, and not that it's a hard read, the style and the main character annoy me, im trying to get through it so i can get to reading, To kill a mocking bird, one flew over a cuckoos nest, Star wars: Betrayl, A brave new world, clear and present danger.... okay i buy books quicker than i have time to read, i buy them more than movies and games. i loved fahrenheit 451 and Children of the dust.

[Samuel Dravis]

The past couple of weeks I've been reading the John Locke Lectures given by O.K. Bouwsma at Oxford in 1951. They're about what he calls the "flux", a way of seeing ideas in philosophy that Bouwsma believes creates problems. The flux is exemplified by things like "No one steps into the same river twice", in the "sense-data" of Russel or Moore, and in William James' philosophy of mind (where the mind is likened to a river and is without distinct form). A summary is available here (search for "flux" and you'll find it). The papers aren't available online unfortunately-- they were never published and I got them from the University of Texas' archives.

[jawathehutt]

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..."

I despise when teachers do this, it wasnt until I got to AP classes that teachers stopped simplifying stuff so everyone would understand the very basic plot, I remember reading All Quiet on the Western Front 3 times in english and about a third of the way in german before the class finished reading it, and I did not spent a ton of time reading it every night

[Hawkstrong16]

I am currently re-reading Hair to the Empire by Timothy Zahn.

 

And last month I read the Belgariad by David Eddings, then read the Malloreon, Then Belgarath the Sorcerer. Thats 11 books good sized books in a month. And I was vary slow to learn how to read and write. So I'm proud of myself. lol

[Astrotoy7]

I am currently re-reading Hair to the Empire by Timothy Zahn.

 

Once youve finished that... if you havent already checked out the comic book versions of these, make sure you do! They are awesome! Co-written by Zahn too.

 

mtfbwya

[Samuel Dravis]

Once youve finished that... if you havent already checked out the comic book versions of these, make sure you do! They are awesome! Co-written by Zahn too.

 

mtfbwya

I'll second that. The comic versions are good too.

[ForeverNight]

I just finished up Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, pretty good book about the Lewis and Clark Expedition... definitely worth the read if you're interested in that sort of thing.

 

Then, I also just finished Star Strike by Ian Douglas... I don't know what to make of this book but if you enjoy John Ringo and/or David Weber than you'll enjoy this book about Mankind's future.... that's about all I can say about it...

 

Then I'm starting Pillars of Creation by Terry Goodkind... a friend of mine made me read Wizards First Rule and then I just started going through the series... from the looks of it its going to be a good book...

[Hawkstrong16]

Once youve finished that... if you havent already checked out the comic book versions of these, make sure you do! They are awesome! Co-written by Zahn too.

 

mtfbwya

 

I never even knew that there was a comic book version. Do you know where I can find them online for free?

 

Zahn has to be my favorite star wars author. He gave us the amazing Mara Jade! And the marriage between Luke and Mara. That could not have been better

 

None star wars I have to go with either David Eddings or John Flanagan. They may be an easy read but I like the Rangers Apprentice books.

[Darth InSidious]

hehe. Please tell me which translation you read. I will avoid it!!

I didn't use a translation.

 

The only Roman literature of much worth is a couple of the Epodes, Thyestes, and Mostellaria. Tacitus can be good, too, but almost all the translations gut his work.

[jawathehutt]

I've started to read some Kafka, talk about trippy stuff.

[Admiral Buttercrust]

Well, I was recently reading the dragon heir, 3rd and last book of the heir series, I really recommend buying the Warrior Heir (1st), the Wizard heir (2nd), and the Dragon heir (3rd)

[Lantzen]

Dexter in the Dark, the third book in the Dexter series.

[Cygnus Q'ol]

Globe hopping with Evans and Kenner in Crighton's State of Fear.

 

 

 

 

 

Remember:

GLOBAL WARMING IS FICTION

[Pavlos]

Tacitus can be good, too, but almost all the translations gut his work.

By adding the verbs back in?

 

Tacitus is the only thing worse than Virgil to set a class as translation; the moaning would destroy even the strongest teacher's soul. Virgil may have done weird things with his verbs but at least he used them...

[Astrotoy7]

Pavlos & Insidious.. I envy your ability to read these texts without having to rely on translations, like us poor plebs There is no truer phase than 'Lost In Translation' especially into a mongrel of a language such as English. I wonder if Latin verse makes a less torrid journey when translated into Italian, French or Spanish...?

 

The only Latin I learnt in my line of work are the names of the muscles in the body

 

mtfbwya

[Pavlos]

Pavlos & Insidious.. I envy your ability to read these texts without having to rely on translations, like us poor plebs There is no truer phase than 'Lost In Translation' especially into a mongrel of a language such as English. I wonder if Latin verse makes a less torrid journey when translated into Italian, French or Spanish...?

Trouble with Latin is that at a basic qualification like GCSE (students of age 16) you're studying Virgil and he can be so mind-bogglingly weird both in construction and in content (the ships turn into nymphs in one of the books, don't they?) that it can put you off for life. I don't think most 16 year olds care about the dramatic tension of Polites's death (Aeneid, ii.526-529) with its hectic, staccarto sounds, odd metre, and delaying of the critical word "saucius" (mortally wounded) until the end.

 

GCSE students of German don't read Goethe... they'd probably end up in the Hotel Asylum if they did. You might as well ask a non-native speaker of English to read Carlyle with his achronological plots and compound adverbs as get someone with a Latin vocabulary under the 2000 words required for A-Level (one step up from GCSE) to translate Virgil.

 

But the discussion of the teaching of Latin is probably best reserved for another thread...

[Miltiades]

I must say I actually enjoyed reading parts of the Iliad and Odyssey in Greek (not actually reading, to be honest, but translating directly from Greek). Reading a translated version is a lot more difficult, though.

 

And, yeah, Tacitus is hell.

 

I've started to read some Kafka, talk about trippy stuff.

Haha, yeah.

[Astrotoy7]

...so mind-bogglingly weird both in construction and in content that it can put you off for life....

 

But the discussion of the teaching of Latin is probably best reserved for another thread...

 

This brings me to some of my perennial queries about the Aeneid, as I am more interested in its aetiology and historical context.

 

*Would a reader/listener in late 1st century BCE have felt it was weird as well, or is there something that hs gone missing in teaching of Latin over the centuries. The decription of Marcellus apparently moved his mother Octavia to tears, which if true, would have been unlikely if it was written it in a truly mind boggling way.

 

*Why did Virgil choose the datylic hexameter? Is listening to it in Latin 'pleasant to the ear', as rhyming verse can be in English. The Dryden translation, has significnt addenda, and is a sure departure from a pure translation, but is still admired by many because it is a pretty piece in English.

 

*One final query.. when speaking Latin, is it right when people pronunce the letter "I" as "eye''?

 

eg.(using a term i know from anatomy) 'digiti minimi' (little finger)

some people pronounce it ''digit-eye minim-eye'' or is it more correct if its pronounced the way a modern Italian would say it, with the 'i' making an ''ee'' sound?

 

mtfbwya

[Ctrl Alt Del]

*One final query.. when speaking Latin, is it right when people pronunce the letter "I" as "eye''?

 

eg.(using a term i know from anatomy) 'digiti minimi' (little finger)

some people pronounce it ''digit-eye minim-eye'' or is it more correct if its pronounced the way a modern Italian would say it, with the 'i' making an ''ee'' sound?

Nope, it should be pronounced as "ee", as in modern italian, spanish and portuguese.

[Pavlos]

*Would a reader/listener in late 1st century BCE have felt it was weird as well, or is there something that hs gone missing in teaching of Latin over the centuries. The decription of Marcellus apparently moved his mother Octavia to tears, which if true, would have been unlikely if it was written it in a truly mind boggling way.

It's not mind-boggling in and of itself, the syntax is highly poetic; Virgil relies an awful lot on hyperbaton which isn't a sort of electronic baton which does the washing-up for you and tells you the time of day in any part of the world you care to ask for, it's the rearrangement of word order beyond usual sense to achieve poetic effect. English isn't an inflected language and its sense is tied not to word-ending but word position so it's more difficult to do but essentially we're talking about Yoda-speak but to achieve drama, or bathos, or something.

 

The problem comes when you're facing unseen translation in an exam. A load of small birds bursting out of the roasted hog at Trimalchio's dinner (cena trimalchionis from Petronius's Satyricon, if you're wondering) perfectly amusing and we understand the humour of it when represented in English. But add to that an uncertainty in your ability to read or translate the language and things that seem to defy the laws of logic can throw you off. I seem to remember everyone an exam involving Trimalchio's dinner deciding that sweets came out of the hog because it made much more sense than birds. It's only mind-boggling to someone who can't read Latin fluently.

 

*Why did Virgil choose the datylic hexameter? Is listening to it in Latin 'pleasant to the ear', as rhyming verse can be in English. The Dryden translation, has significnt addenda, and is a sure departure from a pure translation, but is still admired by many because it is a pretty piece in English.

He chose it because that happened to be the established form for epic poetry in Latin. The generation of epic poets before him had established it by hacking up parts of the Greek metre. You can rap Virgil if you want; the stresses of the lines are quantitative which means that they're worked out mathematically. Virgil doesn't sound like speech at all; the natural stresses on the words are all messed up by the metre. In English verse we rely on both accentual and syllabic metre (because its a truly weird language even in terms of poetic traditions which we derive from French and from Old English) which means that it sounds (even when highly lyrical in the case of Dryden, Marlowe, or Tennyson) like speech. The stresses fall where they would naturally if you were speaking (the syllabic part purloined from French) and also on alliterative or rhyming syllables (accentual).

 

Byron tried writing some quantative stuff in English but the language just won't allow for it. Virgil can sound both very dramatic and very cold as a result of its mathematical verse but English verse (provided it's done well) always sounds organic and natural on some level:

 

Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt that the sun doth move.

Doubt that truth be a liar:

But never doubt, I love.

 

*One final query.. when speaking Latin, is it right when people pronunce the letter "I" as "eye''?

There's a fascinating book (well, fascinating to people like me...) called Vox Latina printed by the Cambridge University Press which details the way in which Latin words should be pronounced and the methods some very old, dusty people from Cambridge Colleges used to derive that pronunciation.

 

I wouldn't worry about it too much but the basic rules to keep in mind are: sound every syllable and that all consonants are hard.

 

i: ee as in "flee"

ae: like eye

oe: oy as in "coy"

iu: "y" as in "yes"

 

Bearing in mind that this sort of pronunciation is like speaking English in Received Pronunciation and if you do find yourself in ancient Rome, it's likely to get you beaten up by the Roman equivalent of chavs.

[Darth InSidious]

*Would a reader/listener in late 1st century BCE have felt it was weird as well, or is there something that hs gone missing in teaching of Latin over the centuries. The decription of Marcellus apparently moved his mother Octavia to tears, which if true, would have been unlikely if it was written it in a truly mind boggling way.

No, it wouldn' have been at all unlikely. Pav means by that that it was stylistically radical, not that it was totally incomprehensible. Consider the difficulty a non-native English speaker might have, say, with Finnegans Wake, or another such work.

 

*Why did Virgil choose the dactylic hexameter?

Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are dactylic hexameter. Virgil is attempting to produce the Roman epic. What are the two archetypal epics?

 

*One final query.. when speaking Latin, is it right when people pronunce the letter "I" as "eye''?

No.

 

'i' = 'ee'

ae = 'eye'

oe = 'oi'

 

All consonants should be understood as 'hard' consonants, with the exceptions of 's' and 'v', which should be used as a 'w'. In fact, there was no division between 'u' and 'v' in Latin. Similarly, if you see a 'j' in the text, that's meant to indicate an 'i' being used more like a 'y'; i.e., "jam" for "iam". 'h' should be treated as an aspirant.

[Da_man]

I got the first book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I get to reading that tonight.

[Astrotoy7]

Pavlos & Insidious! In all my 7 years here, I have never learnt as much from two single posts! Thank you very much for you time and patience with my 'noob' queries

 

I have one more. In the movie 'The Passion of The Christ' If either of you have seen it - they apparently went to some sort of effort to have the Roman soldiers speaking a mode of Latin appropriate to Roman soldiers. If you have seen it, how did they manage? As an untrained ear, it sounds like Italian in meter , as opposed to the stiff sounding Latin that you hear in a church.

 

@Pavlos.. that book does sound interesting indeed Im quite interested in how spoken languages change and evolve. From my own perspective, modern Turkish has changed phenomenally in the last 30 years. My Cypriot Turkish accent and dialect keeps me at that circa 1970s meter. Unless I actually live in Turkey, theres no way Im going to pick up the quick and interwoven modern style that has developed. I can understand it, but I cant reproduce it, most Cypriot Turks cannot. Apparently Greek Cypriots have similar issues too.

 

mtfbwya

 

edit - w00t = 9000 postage