What is the best book you ever read? | |
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Anonymous Coward User ID: 13227045 United States 05/02/2012 08:29 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut On the Road - Jack Kerouac Anything by JD Salinger The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand (holy shit) The Stranger - Albert Camus Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck For Whom The Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald Animal Farm - George Orwell |
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Anonymous Coward User ID: 1600127 United States 05/02/2012 09:22 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | I just read BEN HUR. There is an interesting history regarding the author Lew Wallace. He was a civil war general who saved Washington from invasion by Gen. Early at the battle of Monancy in Maryland, Gov. of New Mexico involved with Billy the Kid/Lincoln County wars (watch Young Guns 1 and 2), and Ambassador to Turkey. BEN HUR was the first novel that many households in the US owned in the 1870s. It was a stage play and was made in a movie twice before the version everyone knows starring Charleton Heston. Wallace said he wrote the book in order to learn more about his Christian faith. I really enjoyed the story and his version of the quest of the Magi starts the book. It was written in the Victorian style very formal. I enjoyed it. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 1369739 United States 05/02/2012 09:26 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Who has the time to read? Quoting: Anonymous Coward 15131093 And I've never understood why ANYONE would read fiction. What a waste of time. lol, I've always felt that way about fiction. Totally get it. However, I like poetry and Shakespeare. I have read a handful of fiction books. I like anything Mark Twain. James Herriot was good too. |
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Anonymous Coward User ID: 1369739 United States 05/02/2012 09:29 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Moby Dick was loosely based on this story. Quoting: C. 15117120 If I'm not mistaken, "Moby Dick" was largely ignored until after the author's death. On what story? It was based on Melville's own experiences at sea and on stories of some real whales, especially a whale named Mocha Dick (whalers would name especially dangerous and renowned whales), and some other famous events. And yes, Moby-Dick was not especially loved when it first game out. Got some decent but not great reviews, but many simply didn't understand it. It was very ahead of its time. Melville had some hit books before Moby-Dick, but after he never really had much success as a writer and faded into obscurity. It wasn't until the early 20th Century that he was "rediscovered." I have resolved myself to reading this and have just started. Why didn't people "understand" it? Is it symbolic of something? Or is it like how people don't understand Shakespeare or the King James Version of the Bible - the craftiness of the words is too much for 'em? |
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LifeInDeath User ID: 844726 United States 05/02/2012 07:00 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | I have resolved myself to reading this and have just started. Quoting: Keats Why didn't people "understand" it? Is it symbolic of something? Or is it like how people don't understand Shakespeare or the King James Version of the Bible - the craftiness of the words is too much for 'em? Well, yes, there's TONS of symbolism through out the book, but that's not what I meant. People certainly understood symbolism back when it was written, that was nothing new, though they may not have gotten it all or realized just how deep he was going with it at the time. Melville is very loose with structure, it's very experimental in that regard, very modern. There are chapters within the novel that are rendered in the form of a play with characters, dialogue and stage directions. Some chapters run barely a page, while others can be quite long. One of the longer chapters, Cetology, a digression coming right in the middle of the narrative, is mostly just an essay discussing all of the then extent knowledge biologists had about the various whale species. In the 1850's when the book came out, people weren't used to such extravagances in form and structure, or lack there of. I think a lot of people just disregarded it as sloppy or strange. The deeper you get into the novel, the more you'll understand what I mean that it feels very modern in a lot of ways for a book that is more than 160 years old. In its own time I think most people just didn't know what to make of it. Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-Mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" |
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thetrickybigguy User ID: 15409032 United States 05/02/2012 07:35 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | true story about three different smuggling groups one of which was right here in ft laud and this guy donald steinberg made the cover of time magazine back in the mid to late seventies and was bringing one third of all the pot being smuggled into the US. they made so much money they couldn't count it, they had to weigh it. this book is over a thousand pages. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living. ~ Life is about choices, you get to make them each and every day of your life. ~ Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.~ Only in America... do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poloi' in Greek meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures'.~ “When a government is dependent for money upon the bankers, they and not the government leaders control the nation. This is because the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Financiers are without patriotism and without decency.” If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain. Winston Churchill |
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