what are you reading?

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Iskanderia

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It's one book per season. The show is good and you should find a way to illegally view it.
 

Cerceaux

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Hmm cool.
I'll try and watch it eventually. DVD doesn't come out until March unfortunately. ::hora::
 

PureElegance

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Wahhhh, A Dream of Red Mansions is so good ::squee:: I know I'm barely touching the surface of the book and that it's very complex, but I'm enjoying it.
There's even a study of the book called "Redology" XD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Red_Chamber

I can't believe this is a "romance" though, it's so... abnormal. I've already read a bunch of good Chinese romances and many of them are about the guy getting into trouble while on the way to the civil examinations or about lovers being parted and all, but this is waaaay different ::batsu:: It's even against Confucianism *gasp* I also like how real it is, I mean, everyone sounds and acts like normal people.


71941_max.jpg

Hmm, I wonder why Baoyu and Daiyu are nearly always depicted reading a book together...

I don't know what it is about Chinese literature that I love. OMG there's a TV series for the novel ::batsu::
 

Cerceaux

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"American Gods" extended 10 year anniversary edition, by Neil Gaiman. 2nd attempt, gonna finish it this time. ::coke::
 

flowersofnight

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Just picked up today:
Secrets of the Shopping Mall by Richard Peck.

To quote the back cover:
Trying to escape the vicious King Kobra gang and troubled life at home, eighth graders Barnie and Teresa flee the city. With only four dollars between them, they hop a bus, hoping to find a new life at the end of the line. Destination: Paradise Park. But Paradise Park turns out to be a cement-covered suburban shopping mall--not quite the paradise they had hoped for.

With no money and no home to return to, they are forced to stay. And paradise park takes them in--in more ways than one. Barnie and Teresa spend their days and nights in the climate-controlled consumer paradise of a large department store. And just when they think they can live there unnoticed forever, Teresa and Barnie find that even Paradise Park has its secrets.

It sounds awesome XD The same guy also wrote "Bel-Air Bambi and the Mall Rats" ::meev::
 

PureElegance

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A Marriage of True Minds by George Spater and Ian Parsons


I'm barely though the first chapter and I'm loving it. I mean, they actually have Leonard Woolf's writings when he was 8 years old! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. ::squee:: He totally wrote just like the rest of us when we were first learning cursive XD

I'm honestly surprised this book is out of print (I got this on ebay) because it's very readable, has tons of photos/letters (many of which I haven't seen), and it's not very long but full of information. And the writers actually knew the couple. I think that any Virginia Woolf fan interested in her life would like this book. But the main goal was to cover the marriage, a marriage which is still a mystery even now XD

It's the first edition from the 1970s and it was kept in a airtight plastic bag so I'm definitely making sure to take care of it ::batsu::
 

faith

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This is actually a request for suggestions.
My French teacher says I should get a French book by a French author to get better at French...

Are there any French writers anyone can suggest? I don't like romance or roman policier, or non-fiction (for the moment).
A nice fantasy or horror might be good.
Le Jardin des Tortures seemed maybe ok assuming it gets out of the political blah of the first part but for a class...well... :P
 

Cerceaux

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^Alexandre Dumas ::meev::
Cerceaux wrote:
"American Gods" extended 10 year anniversary edition, by Neil Gaiman.
Okay I finished it and it wasn't bad, but I still don't get what all the fuss is about.
 

PureElegance

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faith wrote:
This is actually a request for suggestions.
My French teacher says I should get a French book by a French author to get better at French...

Are there any French writers anyone can suggest? I don't like romance or roman policier, or non-fiction (for the moment).
A nice fantasy or horror might be good.
Le Jardin des Tortures seemed maybe ok assuming it gets out of the political blah of the first part but for a class...well... :P
Here are my nerdy suggestions!

You should definitely try to read Victor Hugo since he's such a big influence and a literary giant, and the stuff that I've read of his can be interesting, funny, depressing all at once. Jules Verne would be fun to read if you're into adventure/science fiction. Gaston Leroux for The Phantom of the Opera.

My friend has been getting me into Albert Camus and what little I've read of his I've liked (The Stranger, Reflections on the Guillotine), so I'd suggest him too. Samuel Beckett, Charles Baudelaire...

Man, I wanted to suggest this book, The Heptameron by Margueritte de Navarre, which is all about courtly love and has these really great (sometimes ridiculous) love stories told by noblemen and women trapped in a house in the Alps. XD It was pretty entertaining, especially since most of the men were pigs!
I had to read it last year and I really enjoyed it but I'm sad that it was never finished. The author was a queen and seemed like a cool lady IRL.


ALSO: Les Liaisons Dangereuses sounds so interesting, I never read it though.
It is the story of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two rivals (and ex-lovers) who use sex as a weapon to humiliate and degrade others, all the while enjoying their cruel games. It has been claimed to depict the decadence of the French aristocracy shortly before the French Revolution, thereby exposing the perversions of the so-called Ancien Régime. However, it has also been described as a vague, amoral story.
Cooooool ::batsu::

Unfortunately I think I can recommend French artists more than authors XD;
 

Berserk

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@faith: Look into Gabriel de Lautrec. I picked a couple of his poèmes en prose for my French translation class project last year. Some of his stuff was written under the influence of hashish (which he later swore off of, but it's interesting nonetheless) and a lot of it is just very strange/scary/mind-bending/whimsical (depending on the poème) stuff. If you like horror, fantasy, occult, E. A. Poe-style, or H. P. Lovecraft-type stuff, he's a good one to look into. (I translated La forêt and, my favorite, Le bocal vert. He has a lot of material though, and people more familiar with him often recommend La vengeance du portrait ovale, which I've never read. You can probably tell from the title that it's a Poe reference, though.)

My only disclaimer is that he uses flowery, literary language which can take more effort to understand than plainer, more contemporary French. IMHO, it's very worth it regardless.

Currently, I'm reading... way too much XD. I've been slowly but steadily working my way through LotR (much the way that our favorite protagonists are currently working their way through the Mines of Moria ::kisaki::), and I've been reading the books I got for Christmas which include: Life Itself, a Memoir by Roger Ebert (great stuff for anyone who's a fan), Gaia's Garden, a Guide to Homescale Permaculture, Back to Basics, and Guitar World magazine (I got a subscription, yayy!!). Then I checked out a book about strawbale construction from the library called More Strawbale Building. It has very good, detailed information and it isn't afraid to get right down to the technical aspects of it and building code considerations. It's a refreshing contrast to the dirty hippy woo-woo you normally come across when looking for info on the topic :P
 

faith

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PureElegance wrote:
Here are my nerdy suggestions!

You should definitely try to read Victor Hugo since he's such a big influence and a literary giant, and the stuff that I've read of his can be interesting, funny, depressing all at once. Jules Verne would be fun to read if you're into adventure/science fiction. Gaston Leroux for The Phantom of the Opera.

My friend has been getting me into Albert Camus and what little I've read of his I've liked (The Stranger, Reflections on the Guillotine), so I'd suggest him too. Samuel Beckett, Charles Baudelaire...

Man, I wanted to suggest this book, The Heptameron by Margueritte de Navarre, which is all about courtly love and has these really great (sometimes ridiculous) love stories told by noblemen and women trapped in a house in the Alps. XD It was pretty entertaining, especially since most of the men were pigs!
I had to read it last year and I really enjoyed it but I'm sad that it was never finished. The author was a queen and seemed like a cool lady IRL.


ALSO: Les Liaisons Dangereuses sounds so interesting, I never read it though.
It is the story of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two rivals (and ex-lovers) who use sex as a weapon to humiliate and degrade others, all the while enjoying their cruel games. It has been claimed to depict the decadence of the French aristocracy shortly before the French Revolution, thereby exposing the perversions of the so-called Ancien Régime. However, it has also been described as a vague, amoral story.
Cooooool ::batsu::

Unfortunately I think I can recommend French artists more than authors XD;

OMG nerd XD

Kidding. I'd love to read Victor Hugo, etc but it's way to advanced for me. Same with Baudelaire and Beauvoir. sigh.

But dude, Beckett's not French...?

@Beserk - I've heard of Gabriel de Lautrec...he seemed interesting. I'll see what my teacher says. Like, I really am only intermediate level.
 

PureElegance

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faith wrote:
But dude, Beckett's not French...?
Of course not, but he wrote much in French and that is enough for me ::meev:: What's good about him is that you can read the English translations alongside the original French. You can do that for other authors too I guess, but I think for Waiting for Godot he made his own English translation so it'll be cool to see him writing in both English and French.
 

Iskanderia

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I just wanted to pipe up and say that Camus' The Stranger is in my top ten of all time list though I've only read it in English.
 

PureElegance

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Iskanderia wrote:
I just wanted to pipe up and say that Camus' The Stranger is in my top ten of all time list though I've only read it in English.
You're a nerd too! ::meev:: My friend *loves* him to pieces and has everything he ever wrote and is pushing his stuff on me in the meantime XD

Oh, and I also got that "Ten Days in a Mad-House" for Christmas so I'll be sure to let you know if it's good :D

Then I'll read:
Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot by Carole Seymour-Jones
Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse by Red Pine.
The Village in the Jungle by Leonard Woolf
4 out of 5 volumes of LW's autobiography

But I think I'll start with (after I finish A Marriage of True Minds) the Chinese poetry book, then the Ten Days in a Mad-House, then The Village in the Jungle.

@Faith: Yeah, I guess VH would be too advanced ::kisaki:: It'll be really cool once you start reading all the old authors!

EDIT:
Berserk wrote:
I've been slowly but steadily working my way through LotR (much the way that our favorite protagonists are currently working their way through the Mines of Moria ::kisaki::)
The nerdiness... IT BURRRNSSS
 

Mikal

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PureElegance wrote:
I don't know what it is about Chinese literature that I love.

Do you read in Chinese? If so I'm jealous, I love the extra dimension hanzi/kanji adds to Chinese/Japanese writing... I have no desire to learn how to speak Chinese, but one day I would like to be able to read Chinese literature via kanbun (classical Chinese read with Japanese pronunciation). But that day's a long way off X'D
 

PureElegance

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Mikal wrote:
PureElegance wrote:
I don't know what it is about Chinese literature that I love.

Do you read in Chinese? If so I'm jealous, I love the extra dimension hanzi/kanji adds to Chinese/Japanese writing... I have no desire to learn how to speak Chinese, but one day I would like to be able to read Chinese literature via kanbun (classical Chinese read with Japanese pronunciation). But that day's a long way off X'D
Oh no, I've only finished the Elementary Chinese level and I'll be starting Intermediate when I study abroad (I don't know how I'm EVER going to start studying that again, ahhhh XD)

I think the most I can do right now is understand bits of movies/shows in Mandarin Chinese and hold not-too-complicated conversations.
For reading, I can read pretty quickly, but it depends on the characters used. And I always liked writing essays in Chinese because (when I knew the characters/grammar structures) I was amazed that I can actually *tell a story* in Chinese! I actually acted in a play in Chinese with a few of my classmates for extra credit for the First Annual East Asian Studies Night. I still can't believe I *ACTED IN CHINESE* XD wtf. And we got second place! ::batsu::

You know, now that I think about it, Chinese wasn't that hard, but I never was able to develop a good study system in time for the weekly quizzes. I did great on the homework, character writing, and essays, but I just never did as well on those friggin' quizzes XD

For the Chinese poetry book I just got it'll be fun to learn the poems in Chinese characters ::kisaki::
 

Mikal

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PureElegance wrote:
I think the most I can do right now is understand bits of movies/shows in Mandarin Chinese and hold not-too-complicated conversations.

Well that's impressive, I've heard the hardest part about learning Chinese is understanding the various tones, and pronouncing them correctly.

And the retroflex sounds... even the pinyin pirate couldn't teach me them ._.
 

Taku

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faith wrote:
This is actually a request for suggestions.
My French teacher says I should get a French book by a French author to get better at French...

Are there any French writers anyone can suggest? I don't like romance or roman policier, or non-fiction (for the moment).
A nice fantasy or horror might be good.
Le Jardin des Tortures seemed maybe ok assuming it gets out of the political blah of the first part but for a class...well... :P

I'd recommend "tous les hommes sont mortels" by Simone de Beauvoir, it's kind of fantasy and propably a little horror so it might fit
 
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