The 'Currently reading' thread...

[dks]

Just the fact that you have an Arthurian Knight crush, Credo, makes you a friend o' mine!! That's romantic!!

I'm rather fond of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King"--I'm rather fond of Tennyson, period.

[Credo Buffa]

Just the fact that you have an Arthurian Knight crush, Credo, makes you a friend o' mine!! That's romantic!!

Doesn't every girl. . . ?

I'm rather fond of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King"--I'm rather fond of Tennyson, period.

I am as well. I love his focus on the emotional side of the characters. Arthurian legends have always had a lot of inherent emotional weight, but Tennyson really brings that to the forefront. Arthurian legend in Romantic art is really a perfect marriage of two time periods separated for so long by Enlightenment thought. Yay for Tennyson (and Wagner, and the Pre-Raphaelites, and all those other folks)!

[dks]

Yes...Oh..read chapter 10--all about poor Guinivere...

[Malia]

Gawain and the Green Knight is one of my favorites too. Sir Gawain is my Arthurian knight crush

Gawain is wonderful. He's tied for first (with his honorable cousin Yvain) in my book Sort of off topic here, but i always thought Gawain and Yvain would be great names for cats. In fact, most members of the Round Table have fabulous cat names. Percival, Galahad. . .maybe it's because cats are regal enough to carry such royal names

Oh, Mallory. I spent quite a lot of time with him last year. I was very fortunate to have a professor who is of a select group of English language scholars that is working at disecting 15th century dialect (have I talked about that here on this forum? I feel like I have ). Anyway, I did a small group presentation where we actually read (or rather "acted") some of the original text aloud in class. It's a very interesting time period in the language, because it was well on it's way from becoming Chaucer's Middle English to Shakespeare's Modern English, and all in a span of just about 150 years. Fascinating

That is fascinating! When I was studying in England, one of my professors read part of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the original midlands middle English. It sounded nothing like the English we know today (which is rooted in Chaucer's dialect). It is amazing how language evolves--and will continue to do so as long as people have breath to speak

I've heard a lot about Sedaris as well. Can you recommend a starting place for his work, Malia?

I recommend his collection "Me Talk Pretty One Day". Most of those stories are hillarious. I don't think you could go wrong with that one. Second pick would be "Naked". His more recent collections have a more serious vein to them than the earlier ones. They're still *great*, but I prefer his more out-right humorous stuff.

If you find you enjoy him, I recommend getting a CD of him reading his own works. I have one of his live readings and, I'm not kidding, I was playing it in my car on a road trip to Portland and almost lost control of my car at one point--I was laughing so much! He has a great deadpan style of reading and his high, girlish voice adds *much* to the content of his work.

[Credo Buffa]

In fact, most members of the Round Table have fabulous cat names. Percival, Galahad. . .maybe it's because cats are regal enough to carry such royal names

Ha ha!!! I'm so naming a cat Percival one day. I'll call him Percy for short

And thanks for the rec. I'll add it to my list of "future reads."

[Discovery]

I'm reading Flaubet's Parrot at the moment, which, apart form being great all-round, has some really good stuff on critics. At one point the narrator says 'Does Dr. Starkie's reading of Madame Bovarycontain all the responses which I have when I read the book, and then add a whole lot more, so that my reading is in a way pointless? Well, I hope not. My reading might be pointless in terms of the history of literary criticism; but its not pointless in terms of pleasure. I can't prove that lay readers enjoy books more than professional critics; but I can tell you one advantage we have over them. We can forget'.
Has anyone read Sentimental Education by the way? If not I recommend it as Flaubert's best and my favourite 19th century novel.

[Saturn]

This week I will be mostly reading:


So what about you?

What is firing your imagination at the moment?

[dks]

Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises"--for summer class...he's a great writer, really.

[Malia]

Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises"--for summer class...he's a great writer, really.

Great writer. . .his works are perfect for rhetorical analysis--there's so much burried within the simple language he uses--but I always feel like chugging a bottle of wine after I read any of his novels. I've never read any descriptions of wine that are as lucious as his.

[dks]

Yeah, Hemingway makes you want to drink. It's part of his macho male bonded author's persona.

[Saturn]

He's the John Wayne of authors.

You can practically see the testosterone oozing form the pages of his work.

[Credo Buffa]

Ugh. . . I've tried--I really have--but I can't stand Hemingway.

[Malia]

Credo, I'm not a huge fan of Hemmingway, either. Though he's a great choice for rhetorical analysis--you can really dig into his words.

I've just started a play by David Hare called The Breath of Life. It's a play about two women in their 60's "whose lives are interwoven in ways neither of them yet understands" (so the back cover of the book says ) I have a few friends at the office who are big Dame Judi fans and one of them handed this to me to read. Dame Judi played one of the roles in a production at the thatre Royal Haymarket in London in 2002. So, I figured I'd give it a whirl.

[Saturn]

Ugh. . . I've tried--I really have--but I can't stand Hemingway.

I've only read bits and pieces of him, not anything much but I wonder why he is so revered

[dks]

Well, read "The Sun Also Rises"--it's great work, really--think "Great Gatsby"--all from the same "lost generation" decadent 1920's era...you have to read through his short, terse sentences...anyway, that's how I'm getting through the class.