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Post by Knightfall on Dec 9, 2009 3:21:30 GMT 1
I like how the bad guy gets trampled by an entire parade at the very end, and the other guy from Police Squad goes, "My father died the same way."
/cry
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Post by Tillian Panthesis on Jan 26, 2010 4:59:26 GMT 1
I'm re-reading Euripdes again. I love Euripdes. Yes I've enjoyed reading old Greek literature, at your dismayed you Twilight fanbrats.
I'm taking a look at Phoenician Women atm, so far I like Bacchae the most. And Women of Troy is good but it made me feel sad everytime I read it.
One thing I like Euripdes the most out of all the other Greek playwriters at the time was that he's blunt and realistic about the human nature, especially when it comes to women in society. Also I liked how he question about the religeous faith at the time too, about their common sense and their intergrity with Humanity.
Btw, does anyone reckon these Greek play were kinda like the first fan fics ever written in Human history? They don't seem to crate their own characters, etc, etc. Instead, they continue to re-write the tales and legends of the olden greek plays to their audience throughout the era.
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Post by Mister Buch on Jan 26, 2010 17:10:37 GMT 1
I love the thought about greek plays and fan fiction. Makes me very happy!
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Post by Mister Buch on Mar 12, 2010 1:17:39 GMT 1
Now I'm reading 'Life of Pi' (whyyyyy isn't it 'The Life of Pi'.... woes...) by Yan Martell.
It's a Canadian novel about a 16-year old boy who is fascinated by zoology and religion, who gets trapped on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with a tiger. It won the Booker prize a few years back - and quite rightly I think - so far anyway!
It has a great writing style, a believable, rich main character (and the tertiary characters feel just as real), lots of wise bits about religion and a good, simple survival story as the middle act.
And curiously, the author keeps pretending that the story is true (it isn't) and describing his meetings with Pi, the protagonist (he doesn't exist). This technique really reminds me of an old favourite, 'The Princess Bride' in which the author spends nearly half his words breaking away from the story to perpetuate a massive and complex lie about how the book is simply an abridged version of a massive European classic by one 'S Morgenstern'. Just as the bizarre false backstory in TPB made me laugh so much, the very believable one here is fascinating to me. I dunno why I love being lied to by authors.
Has anybody else read this one? I highly recommend it.
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Post by moonlight on Mar 14, 2010 21:40:54 GMT 1
Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland. Fascinating book, actually. It's centered around a massacre in a Vancouver high school, and the skipping stone on how that affects other people in the course of two decades. It's a rough explanation, though I recommend it.
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Post by Mister Buch on Mar 21, 2010 15:48:22 GMT 1
I'm reading 'The Lovely Bones' by Alice Sebold now. It's good, and keeps me interested, but I'm yet to be blown away by it. I'm two thirds in and it just seems very meandering and predictable.
The ending might change all that. I often have this feeling just before the ending. Or it may just not be to my tastes.
EDIT:
I got to the end, and... I still wasn't blown away. It's a good book, and emotional, and nicely-plotted. But not much happens, and what does happen is pretty much what you'd expect.
And in the final chapters there are some extraordinarily unlikely coincidences that just happen, to tie up loose ends.
Good book though, I say! Very moving in parts!
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Post by Mister Buch on Apr 3, 2010 0:28:32 GMT 1
I've really been reading a lot lately. I read the first Dragon Age novel, The Stolen Throne - it was a very pleasant surprise! Much better than it ought to have been! Highly recommended for fans of the games. -- And right now (as part of my mission to become 'well-read') I'm reading Pride and Prejudice, for the first time. But because it's me, I'm also reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at the same time. So what I do is - read a few chapters of the original masterpiece, then immediately read the corresponding chapters in the closely-observed, nearly identical parody. With the original dialogue still fresh in my mind, this really makes the new version much funnier - allows me to 'get' more of the jokes. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies follows along with almost every line of the book, and just adds a few lines or changes some details here and there. When it makes a big change, it's hilarious because otherwise it's Austen's words rote. So far - although it is cracking me up - it's not perfect, and I have to say the humour in the original is making a better impression on me
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mallear
Serviceman 3rd Class
Posts: 7
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Post by mallear on Apr 12, 2010 20:34:27 GMT 1
Ah, yes. Becoming well read is fun. I enjoyed "Pride and Prejudice". That's the only Austen's book I ever read. Currently I'm trying to finish Dostoevsky's"Crime and Punishment" That'd be a good book, if not annoying main character.
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Post by Mister Buch on Apr 13, 2010 13:58:58 GMT 1
I'm enjoying my becoming well-read. Although to be perfectly honest Jane Austen is boring a me a little bit. The quality of the writing and the humour is astounding, but I'm not used to entire chapters given over to 'a slightly meaningful look between two characters'.
I'd love to read Crime and Punishment! I might add that to my list.
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mallear
Serviceman 3rd Class
Posts: 7
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Post by mallear on Apr 13, 2010 15:43:06 GMT 1
Know what you mean. It began to tire me after some time, polite exchanging of glances and so on. Although it was a nice refreshment after reading bunch of my native fantasy writers... It goes like this- Kill, blood, screams, sex, blood, i think he's a bad guy!, kill sex, screams.
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Post by Mister Buch on Apr 14, 2010 0:03:30 GMT 1
That's the entire fantasy genre, right there. But from where I'm sitting it sounds good. I'm getting rather used to- Ball, Middle class manners, ball, mores, slightly tense game of cards, who's using the coach, ball, ball, manners.
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Post by Mister Buch on May 19, 2010 22:46:54 GMT 1
I'm re-reading 'Red Dwarf' (the first novel, AKA 'Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers') for the millionth time. It's fantastic. I realised the other day it must have been a few years ago since I last did. It's still good Also I just got a copy (and read the first two chapters) of 'Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor' - which is a brilliant title! xD So far, I'm very impressed. Matthew Stover writes extraordinarily good Star Wars. His novelisation of 'Revenge of the Sith' was fantastic, too. Really surpassed the original, in my opinion. Here's a review from an unrelated website I've never heard of that deserves your attention- buchnknight.blogspot.com/2010/05/blackhole.html
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Post by Nemonus on Jun 1, 2010 2:29:56 GMT 1
{i}House of Leaves[/i] is the most awesome thing that has happened to me in a while (okay, not really, but almost.) Great, brain-bending, don't-read-it-before-bed-scary book.
Also eagerly awaiting picking the newest Dresden Files and the newest Fate of the Jedi from the library.
Also, Shadows of Mindor? Win. I think that completely unrelated anonymous blog is very right when it says the main story was more like Star Wars than almost all of the EU. That book also seemed to be poking a lot of (mostly) good-natured fun at the fandom. "They're making holos about me now--not documentaries of the Death Star, they're making stuff up! I rofl'ed and made it my fanfiction motto.
I wonder what Stover is doing next in the SW world (if anything). His blog hasn't said much about SW in a while.
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Post by Mister Buch on Jun 1, 2010 2:43:18 GMT 1
I just now finished Shadows of Mindor.
I have to say, it was good but not alllll that good. I found the main plot a bit silly. Flying volcano, melting rock men. And I found the inclusion of Kar Vastor, Nick and Geptun kinda forced.
But yeah, like the unrelated and very talented blogger says, it feels JUST like the classic Star Wars trilogy. And the sense of humour is fantastic. Every single nudge-nudge reference made me laugh out loud- 'I don't like redheads,' 'Jedi don't even TAKE revenge!', 'Han Solo and the Rapid Response Task Force,' 'Mindar, Mindor, whatever,' and my favourite - 'I did NOT cut his arms off with my lightsaber!'
Great book - but I honestly preferred Stover's other SW books.
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Post by Nemonus on Jun 1, 2010 3:05:58 GMT 1
But the entire thing at the end was that it wasn't a true story--it was a fabricated, over-hyped thing the reporter wrote. It's making fun of early Star Wars stuff, and I think he found a nice balance between mocking and actually writing good camp-style adventure. (I liked the inclusion of Shatterpoint characters, but I am fond of Matthew Reeves- style interconnected cameos. However, Vastor's demonization did take away from his character in Shatterpoint.) "I don't like redheads." That.
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