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<  The Third Eye Reading Room  ~  What's On Your Bookshelf?

Kate
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 11:48 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1397 Location: Pacific Northwest
Melody,

I compulsively buy books as well. I have to restrain myself from purshasing the hard copy upon publication. My book shelf is knee deep in to be read books.

I am always impressed by those who can read more than one book at a time, I need to fully concentrate on one at a time.

For those of you who liked Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood is one of my favorites. I loved Alias Grace, you canadians probably know the story. The book is truly wonderful.

I am off to return home, long plane ride, but would like to pick up the CPatW discussion when I get back to Seattle.

Cheers.
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lulu
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 12:29 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 83 Location: Alexandria
I just cannot get my nose out of this book, except for looking up (out of curiosity) the Opeis Dei, Knights Templar, the Opeis Dei Building, corporal mortification, the cilis (sp?) belt on google. What a wild and wooly ride. And for those who are anti-religion, this is fuel for the fire. Now I want to read Angles & Demons.

I've just finished reading Mistress Anne about Anne Boleyn and Jean Plaidy books which are fascinating reading about Tudor and Plantaganet history. I'm a history buff, but especially English history concerning Plantagantet history from Henry II to Richard III but going off somewhat into the Tudors.

However, DVC has me very hooked and he's mixed so much fact with fiction that I'll be chasing after the facts after I finish the book and who knows where that will lead me. Shocked
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tirebiter
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 12:34 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4011 Location: not far away
You may wish to start with one of the six books recently marketed by Christian publishers. They share a message: "The Da Vinci Code is a BAD, SINFUL, UNTRUE book. Everything Brown says about Jesus is WRONG."

On the other hand, you can probably just skip those books...
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lulu
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 12:40 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 83 Location: Alexandria
I think I'll just skip those books. Very Happy
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chillywilly
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 1:10 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 8250 Location: Salt Lake City
my reply to McBain from the other forum... just thought I would put in in the right place.

Thanks for the correction on the Handmaid's Tale. I am looking forward to finishing this book.... as well as Al Franken's book, which I am 80% done. So far, I've been very impressed.

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yambu
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 1:18 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
...... I started DVC two days after finishing Anna Karenina.....

I read DVC, and then A K. It's so amazing that he could fully develop one character after another. The horse race will be with me forever. In my post-enthusiasm, I ran out and purchased War & Peace. And there it sits, on the shelf.
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yambu
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 1:23 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
Someone mentiond John le Carré's latest. I would like to hear more. I just gave Tinker, Tailor to my daughter-in-law. The best of that genre, IMO. And not a bad TV series, either.
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bocce
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 1:39 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
lshap...

you and i are going to have to disagree on this one. perhaps it's snobbery, but i've got to have some prose with the premise. dan brown is a mediocre writer on the level of grisham. his storyboard may be great as in a jacquline susann novel but there is little color to it in my opinion. like what's a salad without tomatoes?

there are lots of films that are and have been wildly "popular" i'm sure you wouldn't sit through. i've never considered popularity as defined by the best seller list or by boxoffice to be any criterion of artistic merit.

while we're all dropping names, i'm friendly with pat conroy who is three times the writer brown is, just as popular and, unfortunately, sometimes just as boring. at least there is generally some meat with the potatoes.

all that said (and to further qualify myself as an elitist pig), i don't like much of television either. seeing people sitting slack jawed and riveted by the flickering image (clipped into 1/2 or one hour bites) in and of itself despite the quality of content reminds me that the general public will always take the path of least resistance toward the lowest common denominator.

one thing we certainly can agree upon is that "the da vinci code" is a fast and easy "read" which is a premium for a lot of modern day readers. it just wasn't my idea of good literature. i don't dispute, but ratherlament, its popularity.

yo! bill cosby, hold up...these stones are getting way to close!!!
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lissa
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 1:58 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 2148 Location: my computer
Quote:
In the name-dropping department, Julia Cameron is a good friend of mine. She's awesome.


billy,

*GASP* Julia Cameron is a friend of yours?? I've done The Artist's Way twice, in online courses with fellow artists of mine, and unblocked as an artist and as a writer...Artist's Dates are my favorite times of the week...and I had to restrain myself (not easy *weg*) from buying Walking In This World till it was out in paperback (easier for transporting, which I do with her books). I own all of her incredible books, and she has changed the way I've seen my creativity, but more than that, she's also taught me, through the processes she outlines, that no matter WHAT it is in life, it just takes practice and belief in oneself.

Her books are therapeutic, and the tasks and exercises are things I tackle with glee and delicious anticipation. Could you...could you please...could you tell her I'm a fan..? *groupie eyes* (j/k, you don't have to do that, but when you do, tell her she is one of my most-recommended-to-friends authors *g*)

In the "to tackle" department:

I have finally bought Atlas Shrugged and it will be my summer project.

One thing I discovered last summer was books on tape. Not that I discovered their existence, but I rediscovered their fun. I'd subscribed to BOT when they first began doing the mail order thing, but it was too much of a pain, so I gave it up. Now I am a member of a library with two municipal branches, each 2 minutes from my house, and each with different selections. Last summer, I'd bought Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, finally to own it (I'd read it already but needed to have it). That day, at the A/V section of my library, the librarian there (who's become a friend of sorts) suggested I listen to the taped version. Unabridged (as I'll have it no other way) and 26 hours of reading. I took it out, as my library allows for 6 weeks' borrowing in the summer. I savored it. The reader, Carol Boyd (of the 1999 version - there is one narrated by Bernadette Dunne) is spellbinding. In her own lovely rich voice, she does the voices of the characters, the inflection, and her own accent, along with her perfect pronunciation of the Japanese words and names I'd struggled over upon my reading the book for the first time, just charms. It is like listening to a play. Her taking the main character from a child to a woman is perfection. And because it was the first book-on-tape I'd truly enjoyed, it shaped my experience.

From there, I "read" "Holes" (delightful book by Louis Sachar, read by Kerry Beyer, and am up to the 3rd Harry Potter book (to get the 4th this summer). Because I've got long days in the summer, kids at camp all day long, I have the time to savor "reading" as I do either my walking or my groceries or just housework. It's also handy when I get into bed in the wee hours and I don't have to turn on the light in order to read before bed.

And because the libraries I frequent have such a great selection, I am discovering a whole new world. It hasn't, nor will it, replace print reading, but it is a new dimension.

One caveat: Stephen King does NOT a narrator make. And in listening to a book of his on tape? I realized just what a mediocre writer he is too! He might be warped in his imagination, and his earlier stuff still grabs me, but his use of simile and metaphor is way over the top. He uses similes like a seal trainer uses raw fish. His metaphors are ants on a discarded chocolate bar. Well...you get the picture.

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yambu
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 2:23 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
My grandson is 1 1/2 yrs old, and so I dabble in baby books. I like Babyhood, by Penelope Leach, but it's 1974. Can anyone recommend something more recent?
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lshap
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 3:38 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 12 May 2004 Posts: 4246 Location: Montreal
Yambu - This is hilarious. Should we talk about kids books or Tolstoy?

When my boys were 1 1/2 their favourite book was "Goodnight Moon", which has been around for ages, I think. I loved, loved, loved reading it to them every night and they loved hearing it.

And about Anna Karenina -- holy cow, I doubt any current writer could equal that unbelievable level of writing inner dialogue. The 'secondary' characters like Stepan and Karenin are infinitely more developed than the main characters in practically any other book.

Apparently, Tolstoy was not thrilled with the story and considered the entire subject matter of adultery to be trite and uninteresting. My guess is he compensated by adding layer upon layer upon layer to his characters, thus, maybe unintentionally, creating a classic.
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pedersencr
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 3:43 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 921 Location: New Orleans
Lshap,
Not to be too impressed with the stack of books! It is the stack that I have (as a result of compulsive book buying, a disease we seem to have in this forum), not the stack that I have read Smile . I have dipped into most of them, but finished only a few.

Re the family history project, it has turned out to be never-ending, as I must have a thousand or more photographs from my parents', grandparents' and great-grandparents' generations, and also because I have been unable to limit the outline of the narrative I'd like to write. The software people among us have heard of "scope creep." Well, a family history project has it also. Sad

My advice to anyone even remotely thinking of writing a family history would be to start early, while people and their memories are still around! Get straight who all the relatives are -- for the family tree -- and collect every old picture you can find and write down who they are pictures of. This factual data base will only dwindle with time, and once gone it is gone forever.

I would recommend such a project to anyone. It will make you ponder who you are and where you came from.

End of off-topic,
Charles
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pedersencr
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 3:57 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 921 Location: New Orleans
Yambu,
Yes, I mentioned "Absolute Friends," the recent Le Carre book.

He has lost none of his skill whatever. The same slow development of a complicated story with an always perfect ending. It is in his post-Smiley genre and ends with a politically oriented rant, like the one before if I remember correctly, but it is nevertheless as satisfying as all the others I have read.

In all of his books, I have always had the feeling that he was writing the near-reality of the spy wars from very close insider knowledge. Tinker Tailor, for example, always seemed to me exactly like an actual episode that did lead to the downfall of Kim Philby.

Hope you get to read them all if you haven't,
Charles
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pedersencr
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 4:07 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 921 Location: New Orleans
Marilyn,
You mentioned an interest in reading about terrorism.

I would mention "Onward Muslim Soldiers" that might interest you. I would also appreciate anyone's "take" on it who knows much more than I do, because it straighforwardly presents a thesis about Islamic terrorism that I don't sense to be reflected in any significant way in any discussions on the tube or anywhere else.

So I'm still making up my mind about what it says, however convincing it really sounds.

Charles
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lissa
Posted: Fri May 28, 2004 4:18 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 2148 Location: my computer
Charles,

Your family will bless your heart for generations to come - what an undertaking that is, and one I should do as well. Definitely a treasure for those who will carry forth our names and genes. Kudos to you!

*soft sighs, nods and raises hand*

Hi. I'm Lissa. I'm a compulsive-book-buyer.

(All: Hi Lissa!)

*slaps on the badge* Brother can you spare a dime or 29.99 for the latest bestseller?

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