I just started MAGNIFICENT SEVEN: THE CALL today…it's geared towards younger readers, but MAN it's been a blast.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
What books are you reading?
I'm reading "Unemployed" because it's written by a former co-worker about where I currently work. She was in an entirely different department than me – and apparently it was a horror show.
So she didn't hold back, but to avoid ramifications, she did use a nom de plume, changed all the characters names, and changed the work that our group does making a nonprofit org into a commercial manufacturer of designer suppositories.
I just finished reading "Les Assassins de l' Ordre" by Jean Laborde (I guess in english it's "Murderers of Order' which is about a bunch of cops beating some suspect to death and trying to cover it up after, and a prosecutor kind of giving them trouble about it. It's a realistic book, and pretty well written :) I think it was written sometime in the 50s or 60s or something.
ozoneocean wrote:So why don't you skip that and start immediately with the poet appealing to the muse to help him say the story right, and Telemachus' plights? :P
I'm STILL not into the Odyssey proper yet. Still going through the great long, long prologue where they talk about the history of all the translations, Homer, the attribution of the poems and the history of writing and epic poetry in Ancient Greece according to the opinions of all these different people.
SO DULL! T_T
Tantz Aerine wrote:Reading that now… it's worse than the intro section T_T
So why don't you skip that and start immediately with the poet appealing to the muse to help him say the story right, and Telemachus' plights? :P
The underlying story sounds pretty fascinating but its just SO hard and awful reading it through the lens of the horrible doggerel poetry that this Alexander Pope translation has rendered it into. It's extremely ironic that the original "poem" would've used techniques like rhyme in order to help the orator and the listener more easily remember the words and understand the meaning (because it was only spoken originally and not written) and that's probably where the whole "poetry" thing comes from, but Pope has actually tried to turn the Odyssey into a more traditional English style poem and that's actually made the story HARDER to understand and remember.
It'd be better as a more direct translation without any stupid contrived English rhymes! I'll have to look for a better version >_<
Well I have read the Greek adaptation (plus some of the old original ancient text) and I can tell you that the rhyming is relatively subtle (not 'in your face' so to speak) and it ensures that there is a certain cadence to it when spoken. It's like the 'Jaws' theme, when crescendoing to a dramatic or suspenseful point, the cadence speeds up, when it goes into a lulled part it eases up. Maybe having it read to you, like in an audio book, will be better?
But of the two (Illiad and Odyssey) the Odyssey is the more 'PG' one and milder one of the two. Maybe you should start with the Illiad. Because in the Odyssey, the actual action/speeding up of story won't start before Telemachus gets to Sparta and so on. :) Also, the Odyssey is like the sequel to the Illiad. (but I'm sure you know that already)
I'm just discovering Robert E Howard as a writer, rather than a creator of iconic characters. Reading the whole Solomon Kane series and it's great.
But mostly I read comics. Before finding Drunk Duck, I had spent nearly 20 years *not* reading comics. Hotwire, Sixth Gun, Usagi Yojimbo, and The Unknown. Awesome stuff.
Allyndn wrote:Yeah! He's a great writer! I was just thinking the other day that his style, when writing for most of his iconic heroes, is very much like the characters portrayed by Clint Eastwood in his famous western roles.
I'm just discovering Robert E Howard as a writer, rather than a creator of iconic characters. Reading the whole Solomon Kane series and it's great.
I just finished The Bravest Man: the story of Richard O'Kane and the USS Tang which is all about the US submarine war against Japan in WW2. Those guys were real heroes in what they managed to pull off.
Now I'm into The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet a novel about the building of a cathedral during the 12th Century during the Time of Anarchy also known as the reign of King Stephen of Blois. For a medievalist like me it's a joy and I have trouble putting it down. Now I'm aching to see the Starz mini series.
If you changed the names, made the monks into mages you'd have your average epic fantasy.
@bravo - that is a great read! and there's a sequel (in the life of the cathedral), too - so you can really get immersed.
I enjoyed the mini series, too, which is saying something – frequently when I read the book first and loved it, the subsequent dramatization is disappointing. The worst complaint I had about the series was some of the casting choices – but liveable.
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So it's three months later and I'm trying to re-tackle The Tale of Genji. I'm on the 30th? page of the intro. Fascinating stuff, certainly is helping to get this reader up to speed on typical 11th century Japanese court, but so far it's a history lesson rather than a novel.
And here it is 18 November and I finally finished Pillars of the Earth. Every single trope you'd expect a long novel to have this one does and you find yourself not caring because Ken Follet tells such a good story. After reading War and Peace and Gone with the Wind there is NOTHING new I can read in a novel.
Now I'm reading Phillippa Gregory's The Constant Princess about Katherine of Aragon back when she was first married to Arthur and was one tough hyper cutey.
I'm still reading the Odyssey… I only read it while on the train so it's sloooooooow.
Bravo talks about tropes in those older stories and that got me thinking about the Odyssey- I don't really recognise any tropes in that story so even though its extremely old, it still feels fresh and new to me. Sorta funny that, eh? :)
And even though I've read and seen many adaptions of parts of it before, this long 16thC version is so much more full and better fleshed out (once you get past the horrible rhymes) , more convincing, realistic and original…
One slightly frustrating thing- the story almost seems to happen in REAL TIME. T_T
Yes, I know the Odyssey lasts 10 years, but the story doesn't go through the whole journey from beginning to end, we start off right towards the end where Ulysses is starting to finally make his way home (for real this time) and all his adventurers are really just flashbacks. But during this journey back all the action happens during the day- people experience stuff or tell a flashback story, then it's time for dinner, then time for bed, then sleep, then they get up, have breakfast, do that day's action or tell some stories, then eat, then go to bed and so on and so on…
There's no logical jumps ahead in time like you have in more modern stories (I dunno, 19thC onwards?), the only jumps in time you get are with flashbacks because they're more like small anecdotes.
ozoneocean wrote:In a well told story everything is feels fresh no matter how old and worn out the tropes may be in another writer's hands. That is especially true in the Odyssey.
Bravo talks about tropes in those older stories and that got me thinking about the Odyssey- I don't really recognise any tropes in that story so even though its extremely old, it still feels fresh and new to me. Sorta funny that, eh? :)
Always liked how the narrative in epic verse often has a pattern (besides the rhyme and meter) to assist in memorization. Then there is the often interchangeable nature of episodes so that they could go in random order to further help out the story teller. I'm one of strange types who actually recited it aloud when I read it for school to get a feel for it. (Song of Roland, several versions of Le Morte D'Artur and other romances.) I did the same when reading Shakespeare, even acting out the parts to understand the text.
At work the sequel to Pillars of the Earth showed up last week along with the follow-up to Phillipa Gregory's The Constant Princess; the Other Boelyn Girl. So my reading program is set for a while.
The Temeraire Series, a book that takes place in a alternate Earth during the Napoleanic Wars………..and it has giant talking dragons, every military contains dragons in it.
It's awesome.
i also like that the Main Character teamed with the head dragon isn't a teenager or kid (hes a middle aged dude)
its a great series, Peter Jackson seems to like it as well.
I'm currently reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.
It's starting off pretty interestingly so far, reminds me strongly of The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndam… But that's probably because Wyndam was directly inspired by Verne. :)
It's very different to the old pop-up version I used to have!
I've read other Verne books before though, so the style isn't new to me. Verne's a good writer, a god mix of fantastic tech, political implications and human reactions to it all. Very clever guy.
I finished A Clockwork Orange a couple weeks ago, and loved it. I'd been meaning to read it for ages, and I don't think I could have enjoyed it any more than I did. I think this was a good point(in my life) for me to read it.
Right now I'm reading a graphic novel called Petrograd.
I went out and bought myself Catcher in the Rye and Tender is the Night, as I'm currently going through my list of "books I've meant to read for ages," but I can't decide which one I want to read first.
Getting into The Other Boleyn Girl and this book is scary how sexual politics in 16th Century England was perpetrated by teenagers. No wonder court life was such a tangled mess. We have a 30ish Henry doing 14-17 years olds.
It's good to be the king especially if you're a selfish spoiled ass like Henry VIII. This book is written like an adapted screenplay so I wonder what came first the screenplay or the book. There are lots of little scenes that cry out for dramatization. Probably will see the movie now.
Imagine the worst High School YA romance in gowns and trunk hose that is actually deciding the politics of an entire nation… that's life in the Tudor court.
I finally got around to reading classical Greek theater over the past month. I started with the drama of Sophocles. I enjoyed it because I've been a nerd for ancient Greek mythology since I was a kid. At the same time, however, it did come off as a bit dry. If I wasn't already well-read in the epics of Homer I doubt that I would've gotten anything out of it.
I much preferred reading the work of Aristophanes. When I first came across the name I was told that he was the spiritual godfather of the humor of Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, and the South Park guys. I thought that the gentleman who told me this was just being pretentious, but it turns out that he's completely on the ball. Aristophanes' comedic approach is to blend socio-political commentary with generous amounts of toilet humor and scatalogical gags.
I never thought that I'd encounter so many poop, dick, fart, and rape jokes in a piece of literature composed several hundred years before the birth of Christ.
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