What is your current "read"?

Whitman...every American kid has to read Whitman during their teen school years. I think sometimes literature class is designed to make kids hate literature. :)

LissaC said:
and re-read everything again when I'm older and no longer remember the plots :D
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I'm at that point now! We watch a lot of classic British murder mysteries on TV, two or three each week, and I've nearly always have already read the books, more than once, and have likely even seen the episode at some point, and still can't remember the ending to most of them. :laugh:
 
LissaC said:
I've also been reading this these last months, slowly. I really like poetry.
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And I got this gem last week. A portuguese guy who couldn't speak english wrote a portuguese-english phrase book, he used a french dictionary to translate from the portuguese and then into english. It's hysterical, every single translation is wrong :D
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Do you like José Saramago? I think that Blindness is one of the best novels I've ever read. With what is happening in the world right now, it seems more relevant that ever.

I visited Lisbon a few years ago and one of the places that was a must was Saramago's house.
 
Duck59 shamefully, I don't like Jose Saramago. I had to read Baltasar and Blimunda for school and I just can't do with the lack of punctuation. Stream of consciousness is another one of my literary pet peeves.

I'm not usually one to say this, because I feel like movie adaptations are usually nothing like the books, but I did watch Blindness the movie, and agree that sadly, it's still relevant today.
 
LissaC said:
Duck59 shamefully, I don't like Jose Saramago. I had to read Baltasar and Blimunda for school and I just can't do with the lack of punctuation. Stream of consciousness is another one of my literary pet peeves.

I'm not usually one to say this, because I feel like movie adaptations are usually nothing like the books, but I did watch Blindness the movie, and agree that sadly, it's still relevant today.
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I had a similar problem with Thomas Hardy - I had Far from the Madding Crowd battered into my thick skull at school when I did my O-level English Literature.

Imagine, then, my sheer delight when this novel came up when I was studying for my degree. I've managed, over the years, to shrug off my fear of Hardy and I've read a few of his novels now. Admittedly, they are not the kind of thing to cheer one up, but to give Hardy his due, he is one of the few 19th-century authors who shows you the lives of ordinary people.
 
TastyReuben said:
Whitman...every American kid has to read Whitman during their teen school years. I think sometimes literature class is designed to make kids hate literature. :)


I'm at that point now! We watch a lot of classic British murder mysteries on TV, two or three each week, and I've nearly always have already read the books, more than once, and have likely even seen the episode at some point, and still can't remember the ending to most of them. :laugh:
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Same thing over here with Alessandro Manzoni. Every school has I Promessi Sposi as Italian literature program, every kids (or at least most of them) hated and still hate it.
I have to admit that only now at my age I’ve re-found out how beautiful is I Promessi Sposi, how much good it describes the very important historical events that happened mostly in Lombardy (as it is set in Como Lake and Milano) like the Famine in 1628, the Milanese insurrection and life of Monaca di Monza.
 
Finished my book yesterday, and with it my Goodreads reading challenge of reading 30 books in 2020. Had I known we'd be spending all this time at home I would have been more ambitious.

I've been kind of in a reading slump, the last 4 or 5 books I've read none got me excited so I'm back to basics.
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LissaC said:
Finished my book yesterday, and with it my Goodreads reading challenge of reading 30 books in 2020. Had I known we'd be spending all this time at home I would have been more ambitious.

I've been king of in a reading slump, the last 4 or 5 books I've read none got me excited so I'm back to basics.
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I’m a huge fan of Agatha Christie.
I have particularly loved “Ten little Indians” ( the movie as well), “Murder on Orient Express” ( the movie as well, the Sydney Lumet ones with Albert Finney as Poirot, Lauren Bacall, etc), “Evil under the sun” (and yes, movie included again - I’ve laughed so much watching Maggie Smith), and surely many others that now don’t come to my mind
 
MypinchofItaly the books you mentioned are some of my favorite Agatha Christie books! "Ten Little Indians" is my absolute favorite and I played the computer game as well. "Evil Under the Sun" is another one of my favorites. I have yet to watch the movies or the tv series though. I have a very clear idea in my head of how the characters look and of course they will look different on screen. Maybe one day...
 
LissaC said:
MypinchofItaly the books you mentioned are some of my favorite Agatha Christie books! "Ten Little Indians" is my absolute favorite and I played the computer game as well. "Evil Under the Sun" is another one of my favorites. I have yet to watch the movies or the tv series though. I have a very clear idea in my head of how the characters look and of course they will look different on screen. Maybe one day...
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Ten little Indians is such a masterpiece. When I was a little girl, our English teacher at elementary school taught us the nursery rhyme “10 little 2 little 3 little Indians....” and I still remember it.
(Well, maybe slightly dark teaching it to kids)

I usually am used to read book before watching the movie, the only exception has been for “Night train to Lisbon”; I’ve watched the movie first (oh, incredible!)

I think you’d like the Murder on Orient Express movie version I’ve quoted. Agatha Christie’s book deserved that cast.
And so the others
 
I've just finished reading Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Mixed feelings. It is, on the one hand, quite an amusing satire on journalists and the press in general, but on the other, it makes for uncomfortable reading. While I fully understand that there are words that were in common usage at one time that are completely unacceptable now, a lot of it comes across as blatantly racist.

I know that writers like Mark Twain, Harper Lee and Joseph Conrad have been singled out for their usage of certain words, but you never get the sense with any of these authors that they are racist. Indeed, if I recall correctly, Harper Lee has Atticus Finch tell his daughter not to use a certain word. Twain and Conrad have characters that know nothing else. With Waugh, it seems casual and unpleasant.
 
My attention span is dropping so I mainly read poetry now.I revisit Auden's poems frequently when in the mood, Self medication at its best.


Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love


Spike Milligan
Say Bazonka every day
That's what my grandma used to say
It keeps at bay the Asian Flu'
And both your elbows free from glue.

So say Bazonka every day
(That's what my grandma used to say)

Don't say it if your socks are dry!
Or when the sun is in your eye!
Never say it in the dark
(The word you see emits a spark)
Only say it in the day
(That's what my grandma used to say)

Young Tiny Tim took her advice
He said it once, he said it twice
he said it till the day he died
And even after that he tried
To say Bazonka! every day
Just like my grandma used to say.


Now folks around declare it's true
That every night at half past two
If you'll stand upon your head
And shout Bazonka! from your bed
You'll hear the word as clear as day
Just like my grandma used to say!
 
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