Where oh where has my ogre gone?

Rhino 7 wrote:

>>Anyone else have Good Books that they failed to finish the first time and
>>mean to try reading again?
>
>
> Oh probably more Mark Twain. The travel novels and such that I was
> too young to "get" before now.
>
> <glances over at the library shelves>
>
> Kipling and Ogden Nash for poetry.
>
> The full-length version of Les Miserables. I did not like the edited
> down version, and I was told that the full book is much better.

Errr. There's an edited version of Les Miserables? How long? (I.e., if I
read a 700-800-ish length version, umpteen years ago, was that the full or
edited version?)

Ogden Nash is worth giving a go to. I read a "best of" book of his work. :>

--
Megan
Journeyperson Dancing Barbarian
Keeper o' the FAQ: http://home.earthlink.net/~m_thomas3/abml/
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Kat Hein wrote:

> m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage] wrote:
>
>> Edna wrote:
>>
>>> In article <13qmrb43i0vht51.TakeThisOut@corp.supernews.com> wrote:
>> <snip - reading Dune>
>>> I read all six as a teenager, but haven't gotten back to them since.
>>> I try not to see movies based on books I actually liked, since
>>> they're never as good as the book.
>>
>> By that logic, I'd never see any movie adaptations of Austen novels.
>> Instead, I try to see them alllllll...
>
> That's exactly what came to my mind. Okay, it helps that my first brush
> with Austen was the A&E mini-series of Pride and Prejudice. Man, was I
> missing out before then! Luckily, it was so well-done that I quickly
> made up for the gap in my reading immediately. The Hollywood version of
> Emma, with Gwynneth Paltrow is extremely well done, as well, as is Sense
> and Sensibility. Heck, I even love Clueless! LOL

The fact that PBS (the USA public TV station) has been doing Austen movies
every Sunday for the past few weeks probably makes them spring to mind a
bit faster than usual. :>

And that P&P miniseries has converted more women to Austen fandom than
anything else in recent years. A friend of mine organized a public viewing
of it in a UCBerkeley lecture hall, years ago -- mass conversion of people
into fans! (Shown over multiple Thursdays. Not all one night!)

The "Mansfield Park" that came out a few years ago is good, too. Though
they worked in some of Austen's own life, and tweaked the plot a bit more
than would have been tolerable in another Austen novel. (They pepped up
Fanny, the heroine, who is extremely passive by modern standards.)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0178737/

>> (Mind you, with many Austen adaptations, once is enough.)
>
> Yes, some of them have been a little... dry. Which is sad, because
> Austen is not dry, at all. And then there's the version of P&P with
> Olivier... I couldn't get past the costuming in that one, let alone the
> changes, and gave it up after about 15 minutes. Ugh.

Indeed. I made it all the way through that version, but have never felt
the urge to repeat the experience.

If memory serves, BBC made a version of "Emma", starring Kate Beckinsdale,
that I didn't like at all. Chicken thieves kept popping up at odd moments
-- that was just weird.

>> Did you not see the LOTR movie trilogy?
>>
>> And, yes, I agree that mostly movie adaptations are a severe
>> disappointment. On the other hand, when the movie is good it can be
>> Very Very Good.
>
> Like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe! Or the most recent version
> of Little Women- with Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, etc. What I loved
> about that movie was that where it deviated from the book- and I admit
> it added some things- it did so in a historically accurate way. The book
> was semi-autobiographical, and they took things from Louisa May Alcott's
> real life, or at least conversations that I could totally believe her
> having taken part in.

I love that version of "Little Women"! One of the movies I like to take
out and watch in wintertime. So nice to see a movie about young sisters
who love each other (most of the time).

Unlike real sisters, who spend most of their childhoods trying to tear out
one another's hair. :>

--
Megan
Journeyperson Dancing Barbarian
Keeper o' the FAQ: http://home.earthlink.net/~m_thomas3/abml/
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m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage] wrote:
> Bookwyrm wrote:
>> Rhino 7 wrote:
>>
>>> The Bookwurm (who did finish War and Peace but not Anna Karenina)
>>
>> Bookwyrm had never read (nor plans to read) War and Peace nor Anna
>> Karenina.
>> (But the movie of AK isn't *too* bad -- except for the wet kleenex of
>> a actress who plays AK...)
>
> I've never read either.
>
> But my mother's reading group made it through both. Perhaps the support
> group was necessary to motivate them... on the other hand, they are very
> tough readers. Ovid, Faulkner, James Joyce, Marcel Proust... Maybe
> Tolstoy wasn't so much of a leap.
>
> She's been in the same reading group for 20+ years. Pretty cool.
>

Wow, even though they continue to torment her with such dreck?

Daughter just finished _The Great Gatsby_ for school. We agreed it was
full of whiny characters who never did anything but complain.

SAMK
(whose college degree is in English Lit. Really.)
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m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage] wrote:
> Anyone else have Good Books that they failed to finish the first time
> and mean to try reading again?
>
> (I'm not talking about the ones you tossed down in disgust and wouldn't
> touch again if paid to. I mean the ones you would -- if you had
> infinite spare time -- give another try at reading.)
>

Actually, I have about a dozen of those scattered about. The latest
was _The God of Animals_ that my mom recommended to me, and I often
like books she recommends. However, with this one, it might have been
well written and a very true look at what the western life is really
like, but it is so *()& grim. And I have enough problems in my life.
Why would I want to take on someone else's in my free time?

Also, the last Darkover books, after Marion died. Still planning to
get back to those. Have to find the first one and re-read it, though,
because I couldn't remember who anyone was when I started the second,
and, frankly, I didn't care, either.

SAMK
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m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage] wrote:

> Anyone else have Good Books that they failed to finish the first time and
> mean to try reading again?
>
> (I'm not talking about the ones you tossed down in disgust and wouldn't
> touch again if paid to. I mean the ones you would -- if you had infinite
> spare time -- give another try at reading.)

von Clausewitz' _On War_. The first book of the set ("On the Nature of
War," which he revised) isn't too bad, but as you get into the later books
which he didn't revise it becomes more and more opaque. I've never been
able to get through the remaining books except in significantly condensed
summaries.

The material is (with good reason) still studied at military academies, and
some of our current leaders would have been well-advised to consider
Clausewitz' exhortations before entering into our current conflicts...but I
just can't get through the original version.

And Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_. I've tackled it a couple of times but
never managed to get enough traction to be comfortable with spending more of
my limited time on it. I *think* that there's something in the material
that would help me understand the world better...but if it's there, it's
hidden under a ton of literary concrete.

My introduction to the book, although not to its actual contents, was
through a science fiction story I read in my early teens. It was one of the
(very good) series known as "The Science Fiction Library" and was published
in the early to mid 1950s; I'm not sure of the title - maybe "The
Basilisk" - and one of the characters has a wonderful characterization of
the material, saying something along the lines of

"I'm reading Kant and by maybe a quarter of the way into it I
think that I've got a handle on what he's saying...then he
seems to change all the underlying ideas and I'm left thumbing
back to the first page."

I suspect that my problem with both works is their late 18th/early
19th-century German origin, which to my modern ear seems to be largely
characterized by ponderous tomes like these. Even a modern summary of Kant
in English sounds like a cure for insomnia; for example:

"According to Kant, a "judgment" (Urteil) is a kind of "cognition"
(Erkenntnis) - which he defines in turn as an objective conscious mental
representation (A320/B376) - and is the characteristic output of the "power
of judgment" (Urteilskraft). The power of judgment, in turn, is a cognitive
"capacity" (Fähigkeit) but also specifically a spontaneous and innate
cognitive capacity, and in virtue of these is it is the "faculty of judging"
(Vermögen zu urteilen) (A69/B94), which is also the same as the "faculty of
thinking" (Vermögen zu denken) (A81/B106)."

The above is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, at
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-judgment/

Joe Morris
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Bookwyrm wrote:
> Rhino 7 wrote:

>
> Gone
>> with the Wind got the same treatment. Might be a message in that ....
>> must ponder.
>
> GWTW was probably the second-most hated, irritating book I have ever
> attempted to read. (Red Badge of Courage being #1)
> I wanted to take Scarlett O'Hara and beat her head against the ground of
> her beloved Tara until she passed out (that was *after* snatching her
> bald...). Rhett Butler should have dropped her in the ocean -- about 20
> miles offshore.
>
> 'wyrm


Now, I loved GWTW. Maybe it helped that I was 13 when I read it? *GGG*

Kat
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Kat Hein wrote:

> Bookwyrm wrote:
>
>> Rhino 7 wrote:
>
>>> Gone
>>> with the Wind got the same treatment. Might be a message in that ....
>>> must ponder.
>>
>> GWTW was probably the second-most hated, irritating book I have ever
>> attempted to read. (Red Badge of Courage being #1)
>> I wanted to take Scarlett O'Hara and beat her head against the ground
>> of her beloved Tara until she passed out (that was *after* snatching
>> her bald...). Rhett Butler should have dropped her in the ocean --
>> about 20 miles offshore.
>>
>> 'wyrm
>
> Now, I loved GWTW. Maybe it helped that I was 13 when I read it? *GGG*

Hey, me too! It was a Grown Up novel!

(Or 12. Or 14. But most probably 13.)

I did have to quiz my parents a bit on who Sherman was, etc.

--
Megan
Journeyperson Dancing Barbarian
Keeper o' the FAQ: http://home.earthlink.net/~m_thomas3/abml/
 >> Stay informed about: Where oh where has my ogre gone? 

m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage] wrote:
> Bookwyrm wrote:
>> Rhino 7 wrote:
>>
>>> The Bookwurm (who did finish War and Peace but not Anna Karenina)
>>
>> Bookwyrm had never read (nor plans to read) War and Peace nor Anna
>> Karenina.
>> (But the movie of AK isn't *too* bad -- except for the wet kleenex of
>> a actress who plays AK...)
>
> I've never read either.

I did start Anna Karenina a couple times. Just like I started A Tale of
Two Cities at least 5 times.
>
> But my mother's reading group made it through both. Perhaps the support
> group was necessary to motivate them... on the other hand, they are very
> tough readers. Ovid, Faulkner, James Joyce, Marcel Proust... Maybe
> Tolstoy wasn't so much of a leap.
>
> She's been in the same reading group for 20+ years. Pretty cool.
>


I sometimes wonder who decides books are "classics". I mean, do you
think a book *HAS* to either bore you or make you want to kill yourself
to make it to "classic" status, or is that just coincidence? *GGG*

Kat
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Kat Hein wrote:

> m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage] wrote:
>
>> Bookwyrm wrote:
>>
>>> Rhino 7 wrote:
>>>
>>>> The Bookwurm (who did finish War and Peace but not Anna Karenina)
>>>
>>>
>>> Bookwyrm had never read (nor plans to read) War and Peace nor Anna
>>> Karenina.
<snip>
> I did start Anna Karenina a couple times. Just like I started A Tale of
> Two Cities at least 5 times.

Really? A Tale of Two Cities, I've read. Enjoyed it, in fact. Kudos for
one of the most poetic opening paragraphs I can recall, and closing
paragraph, too.

It may have helped that I had a summer job with a lot of down time, that year.

>> But my mother's reading group made it through both. Perhaps the
>> support group was necessary to motivate them... on the other hand,
>> they are very tough readers. Ovid, Faulkner, James Joyce, Marcel
>> Proust... Maybe Tolstoy wasn't so much of a leap.
>>
>> She's been in the same reading group for 20+ years. Pretty cool.
>
> I sometimes wonder who decides books are "classics". I mean, do you
> think a book *HAS* to either bore you or make you want to kill yourself
> to make it to "classic" status, or is that just coincidence? *GGG*

Not all the books Mom's group have tackled have been the densest of the
dense, though the names of the less thumping escape me at the moment. N.
Mafouz, an Egyptian Nobel Prize winner, was one.

I admit, many of the novelists they've picked, they picked from some kind
of "authors Megan avoids like the plague" list. But Mom *likes* them. She
*enjoys* reading novels like that.

I think she even enjoyed James Joyce's 'Ulysses'.

OTOH, even Mom, with her hardened-to-thick-books nerves, doesn't exactly
recomend 'War and Peace'.

--
Megan
Journeyperson Dancing Barbarian
Keeper o' the FAQ: http://home.earthlink.net/~m_thomas3/abml/
 >> Stay informed about: Where oh where has my ogre gone? 

m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage] wrote:

>
> Anyone else have Good Books that they failed to finish the first time
> and mean to try reading again?
>

LOTR? People here have assured me that it gets better after the 3rd
or so chapter, where I stopped reading in my 2 previous attempts. I just
have so many other things that I actually want to read, that I never get
to it.

Kat
 >> Stay informed about: Where oh where has my ogre gone? 

On 2/8/2008 4:09 PM, Kat Hein wrote:
> m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage] wrote:
>
>>
>> Anyone else have Good Books that they failed to finish the first time
>> and mean to try reading again?
>>
>
> LOTR? People here have assured me that it gets better after the 3rd
> or so chapter, where I stopped reading in my 2 previous attempts. I just
> have so many other things that I actually want to read, that I never get
> to it.
>
> Kat

I might give the other Middle-Earth stories a go. It took about four tries
(over about fifteen years, give or take) to finish _The Silmarillion_......

Lessee......I'm sure there are a bunch I thought "maybe I'll try again
later"
about.....

--
victoreia [Warning! Book list overload!]
Goddess of Dark Chocolate
 >> Stay informed about: Where oh where has my ogre gone? 

On Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:56:52 -0800, "m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage]"
<"m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage]"@earthlink.net> wrote:

>Rhino 7 wrote:
>
>>>Anyone else have Good Books that they failed to finish the first time and
>>>mean to try reading again?
>>
>>
>> Oh probably more Mark Twain. The travel novels and such that I was
>> too young to "get" before now.
>>
>> <glances over at the library shelves>
>>
>> Kipling and Ogden Nash for poetry.
>>
>> The full-length version of Les Miserables. I did not like the edited
>> down version, and I was told that the full book is much better.
>
>Errr. There's an edited version of Les Miserables? How long? (I.e., if I
>read a 700-800-ish length version, umpteen years ago, was that the full or
>edited version?)

Didn't like the 600-pager ... have a copy of the 1500-pager for later.
<wink>

>Ogden Nash is worth giving a go to. I read a "best of" book of his work. :>

Favorite poem so far: "Custard the Cowardly Dragon".

The Bookwurm
--
Goddess of Libraries ™,
Pedant in Chief
Keeper of the BotRoM
Sister Hand Grenade of Sweet Reason
Believer, Church of the Cosmic Muffin
<spam trapped - remove the fish from address>
 >> Stay informed about: Where oh where has my ogre gone? 

>> I recently got into it with a fellow who was recommending a list of
>> manly movies including Casablanca. I took issue with this choice.
>> I'm fine with many many Humphrey movies, but did he have to recommend
>> the one with the drip-dry "heroine"? He called me a communist.
>> <hehe>
>
><vbg>
>You're slipping, my dear.
>Check the cast list for the 1997 version of AK.....

Ah ... well i've neither read nor watched AK. Saw the synopsis and
decided it wasn't for me. <g>

>>I did finish Hawaii, but threw it across the room.
>
>Read Hawaii. Parts were interesting. That's about all I remember from
>so very, very long ago.

It started with the geological formation of the islands ... this
should have been a hint.

> Gone
>> with the Wind got the same treatment. Might be a message in that ....
>> must ponder.
>
>GWTW was probably the second-most hated, irritating book I have ever
>attempted to read. (Red Badge of Courage being #1)
>I wanted to take Scarlett O'Hara and beat her head against the ground of
>her beloved Tara until she passed out (that was *after* snatching her
>bald...). Rhett Butler should have dropped her in the ocean -- about 20
>miles offshore.
>
>'wyrm

Loud Cheers for my hero!!

Let us not forget to barbecue Ashley over his own oak woods. If the
man had just once taken Scarlett aside and in short words forcefully
pronounced tell her stupid self that he was NOT INTERESTED, it would
have been a much shorter book.

The Bookwurm
--
Goddess of Libraries ™,
Pedant in Chief
Keeper of the BotRoM
Sister Hand Grenade of Sweet Reason
Believer, Church of the Cosmic Muffin
<spam trapped - remove the fish from address>
 >> Stay informed about: Where oh where has my ogre gone?