Topic: Reader's Nook

[smokester]

The Martian first line:

Spoiler (hover to show)

"I'm pretty much bent".

A bit like Beagle 2.

[Nobby]

Just watched several versions of 'The/An Egg'
 

[tarascon]

The Martian last line:

Spoiler (hover to show)

"See? I just knew it".

Around the middle he wonders to himself:

Spoiler (hover to show)

Will they make a movie about me called Robinson Crusoe on Mars?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynGx8XlJUWc

[6pairsofshoes]

I saw that movie.  It was pretty bad if memory serves, except for one scene where he eats crawfish.

[smokester]

Spoiler (hover to show)

It didn't say "bent" when Andy Weir wrote it.

It probably didn't say "bent" when you wrote it.

[tarascon]

My Tiny Life by Julian Dibbell. This has been a tough book to find. I've known about it for years and have read one of his other books about life in a virtual community (Play Money). I sort of know Mr. D and not because I inhabit the same virtual space(s) that he does. I knew his mother (who passed due to cancer a number of years ago) and am friends with his sister.

http://www.juliandibbell.com/mytinylife/tinyspiel.html

[tarascon]

A rather shameless bump.

Reading Talking Music by Duckworth: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/306070.Talking_Music

And next up:

On Some Faraway Beach ( a newish bio/analysis of Brian Eno): http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18869115-on-some-faraway-beach

and: Records Ruin the Landscape by Grubb: http://pitchfork.com/features/paper-trail/9370-records-ruin-the-landscape/

[Nobby]

Just read "All You Zombies" by Robert A Heinlein (only 14 pages)
the basis for the Film "Predestination"

[smokester]

I read Jane Eyre to my daughter recently which was... interesting.

Although I was already familiar with the story (seen the film), I'm not sure I actually liked it. I mean, there are so many chance  coincidences that happen to her it's like there were only 10 people living in the entire country.

 

[goldshirt*9]

  prefer dickens and I'm not a classic book lover, period drama doesn't always transfer into the modern world.

4 days in June - Iain Gale.  A interesting enjoyable read

"A remarkable debut novel, ‘Four Days in June’ is an imaginative but accurate reconstruction of five men – all real figures – five points of view, and four days of one of the world's most famous battles.

Four days in June, 1815. Five men, three armies, on the fields of Waterloo. A battle for honour, glory, civilisation. And two great leaders, Napoleon and Wellington, in direct confrontation for the first time, to take their nations to victory."  Amazon

[xtopave]

I read Jane Eyre to my daughter recently which was... interesting.

Although I was already familiar with the story (seen the film), I'm not sure I actually liked it. I mean, there are so many chance  coincidences that happen to her it's like there were only 10 people living in the entire country.

Even when I must've read it when I was about 12 yrs old I never fail to picture Rochester as Ciarán Hinds. Damned movies!!
My view of the book now, at this mature old age: After the botched wedding Jane should have turned her relationship with Rochester into this:

Spoiler (hover to show)

[6pairsofshoes]

Ha!  I must confess.  I've never read it.  Have seen a couple of film versions.

I like Anthony Trollope and Balzac, both have a great black humor to their books and a critical perspective on human nature.

I'm flying through Dune.

[tarascon]

^ 6, is that your first time through?
Enjoy! 

[6pairsofshoes]

Yes.  It's not brilliant, but pretty good.  I'm 3/4 done.  Now have bluebooks to grade so no fun for a couple days.

[tarascon]

  Just finished reading Time and Western Man (1927) by Wyndham Lewis--a shambling brick of a book. Lewis criticizes the failure of Modernism--particularly the "ruffian" influence of Henri Bergson and his Time Theory upon the contemporary literature of the post-war period. He does this in a rather vituperative fashion and one suspects he protests too much... as only an apostate to the faith could. Lewis also takes considerable time exhorting the "congenital idiocy" of Oswald Spengler (and he's largely correct in this). The entirety of the book is too, too much but I persevered with gritted teeth and rolling eyes so that I might put the project behind me and claim that I'd actually read the thing.
  The most worthwhile section of the book has to be the first part wherein Lewis slams Ezra Pound for being a talentless parasite (he was) and does a nice job--coherent in its brevity--of some fresh insights into the writing of Gertrude Stein (comparing her work to the style of Thomas Nashe and also comparing Stein's "little child's chatter" to novels like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes of Anita Loos). And the chapter "An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce" is excellent and something I doubt that many contemporary Joyce scholars have read; or, if they have, it's probably something they'd rather keep secret.