In the spirit of the other two threads, here's one more... what books/authors do you guys like?
My favorite of all time is the Hitchhiker's Trilogy and indeed anything by Douglas Adams, but I range in my tastes from the Dune series to Kafka to Dostoevsky to Calvin and Hobbes (hey, just because there's pictures doesn't mean they aren't books), to Ayn Rand to Terry Pratchett and back again. Oh yes. And I love the book "The Neverending Story," as always seems to be the case, its worlds better than the movie.
I'm mainly a lurker here, but if i've noticed one thing, I don't think anyone on this NG is going to attack you for liking Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin (who is, in my opinion, the greasteset philosopher ever known to man second only to Christ) is my hero. If i ever get a tattoo, it's gonna be on my back, my left shoulder blade, of Calvin. And no, he's not gonna be pissing on some logo (those car stickers make me sick). Most likely, he'll be making an evil plotting face. Or, i want one of him as Tracer Bullet. Man, I loved Tracer Bullet. Spaceman Spiff was OK, and Stupendous Man was pretty good too, but my favorite was always Tracer Bullet. My fav Calvin plots were when he was as Tracer Bullet, when he was playing with his Transmognifier, and the snowman ones. I ALWAYS love Calvin's snowmen, and I've tried, unsuccessfully, to reproduce several of them.
Sorry to get OT.
~po
"Pectans? I LOVE pectans!!" -Jake
My most disappointing moment was when... ...I flew too close to the sun and my wings melted.
Y'know, my parents used to swear Calvin and Hobbes was based on me. . mostly because I had a stuffed polar bear, (Named James Bond) that I thought was a living, breathing creature. . .
Wow, I'm surprised Calvin and Hobbes didn't make it across the Atlantic. Well, Calvin and Hobbes was a great comic strip that lasted from 1986 to 1995 about semi-obnoxious child genius (well, this is questionable) Calvin and his best friend, walking, talking stuffed tiger Hobbes, who had a bit more sense than Calvin and never seemed to walk or talk when Calvin's parents or anyonw other than Calvin was present. It had a great philosophical feel to it, as well as a real sense of imagination; not to mention a great sense of humor. Its creator Bill Watterson quit drawing it a few years ago, as he wanted to try other things and was impatient with a number of restrictions and deadlines that the cartoon syndicate put on him. He also didn't liscence Calvin and Hobbes to appear on those "pissing Calvin" window stickers, or for any other product (except for books), for that matter, which is pretty respectable, really, as much as I would like a Calvin and Hobbes poster or something. Incidentally, Calvin and Hobbes were on my high school's Class of '97 T-shirt, but I didn't buy it because it said something like "It's been a wonderful time" or something along those lines, and looking back on it, Watterson could sue my school for doing that if they really wanted to. (Why do I have the feeling ms. Li was somehow involved?)
Yeah, it's strange. I'm sure he has the money to go after colleges and merchandise printing houses, or at least enough to make the rest stop being assholes, but he doesn't.
In article , [email] (CrtoonDude) wrote: . If i ever get a tattoo, it's gonna be on my back, my left
Worse than those are the plethora of T-shirts with a "Calvin and Hobbes drunk-at-a-frat-party" theme. I mean, I don't drink, and I don't care if other people drink, as long as they aren't puking on MY carpet, but I think things like that ruin their characters. Not that I'm against seeing cartoon characters as drunks...just the good ones. I would personally pay to own a T-shirt featuring a drunken Family Circus.
Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, George Orwell, typical Gothic stuff like Anne Rice and Poppy Z Brite, any comic books from X-Men to The Maxx. My all-time favorite book is "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, probably because I love the looks I get when I tell people that.
"It [happiness] is only momentary, unless you live your life in a protected bubble, oblivious to pain, disgust, disillusionment, restlessness, loss." - Siouxsie Sioux
I read everything I can get my little claws on. This includes Shakespeare, (Hey, just 'cause he's been dead for a lotta years doesn't mean his plays aren't good) J.R.R. Tolkien, Philip Pullman, (I want a daemon, darnit!!!! And I already know what mine would be, too!!!! (A cat)) Patricia C. Wrede (The Enchanted Forest books are like a fantasy version of the Hitchhiker's Guide books) Douglas Adams, etc. etc. etc.
In between all the stuff I have to read for school, I like to read PG Wodehouse, Tolkien, Mark Helprin, Sharon Kay Penman, and others. I am currently reading the Simarillion by Tolkien.
Allison "Start everyday with a smile and get it over with." (W.C. Fields) http://members.xoom.com/frabjousgirl/
Stephen King. I am addicted ;) --Daria<br> http://welcome.to/loonietoon.com<br> DC, SP, Deborah Gibson, Daria and more!<p> ****************************************<br> "I don't have low self-esteem. I have low esteem for everyone else." -- Daria Morgendorffer
*Mervyn Peake ("Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast" are my two favourite books of all time) *Tanith Lee (the woman is a goddess) *Tolkien *E. R. Eddison *Greg Bear *Ursula LeGuin *Octavia Butler *Kurt Vonnegut (everything up to and including "Breakfast Of Champions") *Sylvia Engdahl *Gabriel Garcia Marquez *Isabel Allende
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
make GEORYN disappear to reply
"It is not an obscenity to be free. It is a divine right." --Annette Peacock
N.P.:"Scarecrow"- R u p e r t H i n e / P i c k U p A B o n e
I just joined this newsgroup... anyhow I definitely think Kurt VOnnegut is great...
Did you see on Daria once (on the episode where she had to write a short story and it had the whole "Graduate" thing with Jane & Kevin...) that "Breakfast of Champions" was up on the board for part of a reading list? I thought that was funny, esp. considering the wide open beavers inside :)
Right now I'm reading "Catch-22"
Dagny
Visit The Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697 Monty Python, Spike Milligan, Marx Brothers, and more...
"You got a light, mac?... No, but I got a dark brown overcoat"- Viv Stanshall
Douglas Adams
Dave Barry
Harry Turtledove
Peter David
JMS (if you count me watching B5 has his writting).
Walter M. Miller(ok he only wrote two book,s but I have them both)
Neil Gaiman
Mervyn Peake
H.P. Lovecraft
William S. Burroughs
Hunter Thompson
Robert Jordan
Orson Scott Card
Tad Williams
Terry Pratchett
Evan Dorkin (A Carton of Hate! A Wedge of Spite!)
somehow, I feel my tastes run more in the direction of Jane than Daria... Our Heroine doesn't seem much of a fantasist, whilst Janie would read the first four just for the imagery!
Clive Barker
Anne McCaffrey (why should I be guilty?)
Anais Nin
Arthur C. Clarke
Robert Silverberg
Kate Chopin
William Faulkner
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Anne Rice (sometimes)
Carrie Fisher
J. D. Salinger
authors I dislike:
Ernest Hemingway
John Grisham
Stephen King (unless it's 'Salem's Lot)
John Grey (that Mars and Venus guy)
I haven't had time to read much voluntarily since school started again, but this summer I read all the J.D. Salinger books I could find, as well as Ayn Rand's "Anthem". On the less intellectual side, I read a couple Agatha Christie mysteries (which make you think, but not in the same way, really). I also love comic strips and sometimes draw them whe I'm not too busy.
this summer I read all the J.D. Salinger books I could find, as well as Ayn Rand's "Anthem".<<
Here's an inducement to psychosis:
Try reading "Anthem", Huxley's "Brave New World", Wells' "The Time Machine", and Bradbury's "Farenheit 451" in immediate succession. A full menu of future dystopias!
Peace Kevin
"You know how they always said there's no future? Well, this is it." - Blank Reg, "Max Headroom-20 minutes into the future".
Yes, by all means, read it. However, do *not* allow a 11 year-old to even get within 20 feet of it. My parents let me read it, and thus, I have been scarred for life from being dragged to the principal's office for reading "adult books" in school. . . . . .
Yep, sounds like school to me... you could have mentioned it being part of a number of high school curriculums.... not that logic and school can have connection, esp. with the administration
Dagny
Visit The Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697 Monty Python, Spike Milligan, Marx Brothers, and more...
"You got a light, mac?... No, but I got a dark brown overcoat"- Viv Stanshall
Well, to bring this back to topic somewhat, I think Daria would find BNW more hellish. "1984" is rather like the world she lives in already. BNW, on the other hand, is like a planet of Quinns. :-{)>
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
make GEORYN disappear to reply
"'Where do you get your ideas from, Ms. Le Guin?' From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?" --Ursula K. Le Guin
I find both equally Godless, thus, equally hellish. I think BNW may ultimately turn out to be more prophetic. Especially when I read that 13% of the students in one local school district are on Ritalin.
I didn't include 1984 in my original "future dystopia" message, because, although it certainly qualifies, that's not really what it's all about. It's a satire on the acquisition and maintenence of power. It belongs along side Machiavelli more than it does Huxley.
Incidentally, I read all of the books from that post, 1984, and The Prince in 1970, when I was 12. They were part of the optional reading list at the (Catholic) junior high I attended. Most of them are still there. Maybe all is not lost, yet.
Sad, but true. However, my parents weren't upset by the whole thing, so it wasn't too much of a problem. . . the irony of this is, not twenty feet away from me, the teacher was reading one of those racy romance novels. . . .
Are you serious? *shakes head sadly* some schools are REALLY messed up. When I was 11 and 12, i was already reading mroe adult books like Jurassic park(it's frightning in the dark/ all the dinosaurs are running wild) and practicly anything by Morgan llWelyn I could find. The later proborly had more 'adult content' in it then Brave New World, not in sexuality but in other areas. *smile* also my 11 year old cousin is reading 1984, and Canticle for Leibowitz. Perhapse my school is jsut more Liberal...that idea scares me, considering my school
Last year (7th grade) my English teacher caught me reading a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses and told me I was wasting my time in school... it's so nice when they admit it.
(it's frightning in the dark/ all the dinosaurs are running wild)
"...Getting disembowled always makes me kinda mad..." We actually got to watch Jurassic Park for English a week ago... the scary thing is, I'm in the "Advanced Placement" classes. Is it just me or should we be *reading* it instead?
No, you shouldn't even be reading it in class, let alone watching it. You should be reading things like Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, Sophocles, Chaucer, you know, the Biggies. The kind of fiction that teaches you something, or maybe even changes your perspective on the world. The fact that you read Ovid on your own is reassuring, but I fear for your classmates. You shouldn't be forced to watch some pulp airplane book that got turned into a multi million dollar special FX movie with a derivative formulaic plot. Mr. Crichton is a very entertaining author, but I wouldn't bet that anyone ever remembers him as a writer of *literature* even 15 years from now. There's a biiiiig difference. (Which I'm sure *you* already know, but I doubt your "teacher" [and I use the term very loosely] gets.)
The "lesson" that Crichton tries to express in Jurassic Park is merely an infantile rejection of science as a positive force. Just because something can be done doesn't always mean that we'll do it, or, if we do do it, that we will do it incorrectly or stupidly. It's a reactionary, "know-nothing" stance toward all of the benefits that progress can bring, *when used rationally and intelligently.* It's just another stupid "monster book" that doesn't really tell a new story (Mary Shelley told it better in Frankenstein), and just wastes everyone's valuable time. (Sorry, but unimaginitive reactionaries always get on my nerves, and Crichton is one of the worst offenders in this case.) :-)
Sorry about the rant, but Crichton is one of the few authors I despise. (The others are John Grisham, Tom Clancy, and Scott Turow, for various disservices done to readers everywhere, mostly for blatant underresearch in the cases of Grisham and Turow, and dogged, relentless overresearch in the case of Clancy.) I *do* hope you do well in spite of your surroundings, though. :-) Keep reading the brainy books written by the dead folks. It'll keep you one step ahead, trust me.
done ranting, rich.
Jane: You know, I don't know why people say we have a bad attitude.
Well, since Crichton has been producing his anti-technology crap for MORE than 15 years already and his stories have been in movie theaters for at least that long as well, I wouldn't risk the grocery money on that bet. Of course if you're going to require that the writers be dead, how about Ian Fleming? He's dead. Of course the reason I even ask is I remember an Al Capp satire in 'Lil Abner on that subject. Of course Al Capp is dead toom how about his stuff? I guess newspaper comics don't count. Might count as much as Jurassic Park though.
Who's to say which is more significant? An alternative strategy would be to allow/require the students to read BOTH and ask them to evaluate the literaterary value of each. A student's decision about the relative value of literature, arrived at by actual experience, would be far more meaningful than the mere assertion of an instructor.
I remember this from a college English instructor <from memory, not necessarily verbatim>: "I'm telling you people, when you get to Heaven St. Peter is going to ask you, 'Have you read Walt Whitman?' and you're going to say, 'Oh Goddamn!'..." <inturrupted by laughter in the classroom>"...who was that overweight college instructor who told me I should read Whitman?..."
And why not? Crichton has been running the same simplistic theme into the ground for over twenty years. Technology bad! Technology evil! Technology de-humanize! It's probably as a reaction to that sort of backwards thinking that forced Ray Bradbury into writing "I Sing The Body Electric!" Well, at least that's my hypothesis, and I'm sticking to it. And I still get a vicarious chuckle every time I see "Disclosure" filed in the Fantasy/Science Fiction section. ;-{)>
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
make GEORYN disappear to reply
"The only completely consistent people are dead" --Aldous Huxley
N.P.:"Trash Man"- T h i r s t y M o o n / Y o u ' l l N e v e r C o m e B a c k
Yeesh. You shouldn't be *reading* it, either...at least, not for an AP English class. I suppose I'm a bit biased though -- I just have a visceral reaction to science done *that* badly. I can't comment on Crichton's use of chaos theory, but his molecular biology is all gollywog in this book.
Jim "it's not as bad as the *movie*, but, still..." Loats
Hehe.... sounds like something that would happen to me. My elementary school teachers were always yelling at me for reading too much... school is definitely a waste of time on most parts, I think reading "Metamorphoses" is a better use :) .... now, to convincing the teachers. Although that would assume they care about logic.
This is a new thing in school, caused by the fact that teachers are lazy.... We've already watched two movies in my American Lit class this year.
Dagny
Visit The Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697 Monty Python, Spike Milligan, Marx Brothers, and more...
"You got a light, mac?... No, but I got a dark brown overcoat"- Viv Stanshall
Actually not ... I was in high school in the 80's and we saw plenty of films ... but at least they were adaptions of Shakespeare and Dostoevski and Hemingway, not top-grossing adaptions of current popular writers of dubious worth.
Yeah, I remember in 8th or 9th grade (1984-ish) we watched the movie version of "Romeo & Juliet" (No, not the recent movie-- it was the one done in the early 80's), but other than that, we actually had to *read* the books. (Cuz isn't that why it's called "Literature," and not "Film?")
As for my opinion on Crichton, well, yes, some movies of dubious critical worth have been made, and, yes, he has lingered on bookshelves for about 20-odd years, but you still have to ask the question, is it entertainment, or is it enlightenment? That's always been the Literature acid-test for me. Yeah, I like to read trash as much as anyone else, but I don't consider it "Literature," and I don't hold it up as such. It's merely light entertainment. There *is* a difference.
Shakespeare, Dostoyevski and Hemingway all deal with Big Issues-- how individuals respond to the same universal conflicts and problems that we all encounter. (Well, okay, not everyone is a murderer like Raskolnikov, but you get the idea.) But Crichton in a class that's supposed to introduce students to the biggies of American Literature? Please. That's an insult to everyone's intelligence.
off of his soapbox, rich.
Jane: You know I don't know why people say we have a bad attitude.
Oh, yeah, we had to watch that! It was just before the recent version came out, (The one with Leo and Clare Danes) and by the time that came out I was so fed up of Romeo and Juliet that I couldn't bring myself to go see it. Mind you, I don't think I missed much; we watched it in Spanish class last year (as a Christmas "treat") and I fell asleep after about 10 minutes.
Well, I have no idea who that is, maybe because I'm not American, or maybe because our school's idea of literiture is contemporary and pre-20th century love poetry by unheard-of poets (we have to write four-page "compare and contrast" essays on their different views on love) and this insane old Welsh woman who writes poems that compare harvest time to the war in Bosnia and go on about some old warehouse being destroyed.
It's like, you're in math class and you already know how to do the work, but most of the class doesn't so the teacher starts explaing it as if you're all totally dumb, and yells at you when she catches you just getting on with it because you aren't listening, even though you already know it. I HATE school!
actually, I'm new here. After about a year on Usenet, and about three months of Daria, I put two + two together (got 2 pi) and realized there was probably a newsgroup for it. one quick search later, hereiam.
B (not your average AOheLLer) (and proud of it)
Racism is being blind and thinking you can see...
Please cc: all replies to me by email. (remove "SPAM" from the address up top) I have a lot less time to follow groups now that I'm in sch again.
No, that is me in history class :) Last year we ahd an agreement: If you got over 90 percent on the last test you had to do no other work for the next test. out of 36 chapters I only had to do the work abotu 3 or 4 times. this lead to me almsot getting mobbed after such conversations as Class mate: what did you get dan? Me: ohh 96 Class mate: WHAT!? I got a 74!!! ME:really this was an EASY test! I didn't evne study..well nto that I ever do them: thats it we're goign ot kill oyu :)
math class ,on the other hand, is my weakness. I almsot fail is over quarter, jsut squeeking buy most of the time, when the rest of the lcass gets it perfectly
Hmmm. Our history class is useless. We have this idiot teacherwho doesn't do anything if you don't do homework, so whenever there's a test everyone fails 'cos noone has made them do any work. In the year 10 exams, where you could get grades A* to G (or U for ungradable, if you totally fail) the entire class got downwards of a C (except me, I got a B). And of course, noone has to do the work again, everyone just moves on to the next topic.
Ahh, that happens to me in spanish class. The rule seems to be:the less I revise beforehand, the higher my grade is.
There's this one girl in my math class who never gets _anything_. It's quite funny sometimes. The real irony is that they moved her up from set 2 because they thought she was smart enough for set 1, which is, if you've ever spoken to this girl, quite ridiculous.
How about when the teacher marks down *correct* answers cos you didn't "show your work" - and you did it in one step in your head & couldn't come up with any "work" to "show" if you tried?
I know! I hate that! Teachers treat their students like real idiots. Of course, I guess they do have some excuse, there's always one loser who doesn't get it, and they have to teach to the lowest common denominator, or only some of the class would pass. Having said that, half the class couldn't get any lower grades anyway.
Right Now I'm Reading: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. (Jury's still out on this one.) Fundamentals of Human Anatomy & Physiology by Martini. (yeeha.) Molecular Biology of The Cell by Alberts, et. al. (wahoo.)
Okay, here's my list of authors I like (in no particular order. I know I'm forgetting a few, but, c'est la vie.): Isaac Asimov (The Foundation series kicks butt.) J.D. Salinger (Catcher In the Rye-- nuff sed.) Aldous Huxley (Just finished rereading BNW.) Dave Barry Lewis Grizzard (The McKibben Funeral Home joke still cracks me up.) Melville Hawthorne Dickens (More gruel?) Wilkie Collins Orwell Shaw (Damn funny.) Douglas Adams (Ditto.) Shakespeare Milton (Paradise Lost still kicks butt.) Homer (Of the Iliad, not Springfield) Hemingway (Yeah, it's macho BS, but it reads well.) Twain (A master of the snide comment) Oscar Wilde (Ditto.) Eddings (Guilty Pleasure) McCaffrey (Guilty Pleasure) Ibsen Hawking (Mind-blowing fun.) Heinlein (Interesting ideas.) Voltaire (Candide...) Larry Niven (Ringworld's a classic.) Petrarch Machiavelli (Ah, Nicky, m'boy, you made Senior year SO much fun...) Le Carre (Depressing, but good.) Frank Herbert (Good, but sometimes loses focus.) The folks at Suck.com (Great commentary-- check it out.) Terry Pratchett (Funny stuff.) Piers Anthony (Some good SF.) Loius L'amour (Yeah, I'm a fan of the Sacketts... go get those nasty ol' Bigelows!) Robert Aspirin (Funny stuff as well.)
And, of course, Authors I'm not too keen of: Faulkner Joyce (they're called periods! use them! incomprehensibilty doesn't equal genius.) Tom Clancy (I liked his stuff once, a long time ago, then I realized it was like reading an instruction manual for a VCR, over and over and over again. That, and his characters had about as much depth as a teaspoon of water.) Scott Turow. (One-L is the worst book for an aspiring law student to read. Ever.) John Grisham (Unbelieveable at best. Annoying at worst.)
curmudgeonly, rich.
Jane: You know, I don't know why people say we have a bad attitude.
Kurt Vonnegut Douglas Adams Hunter Thompson Oscar Wilde
and some other stuff. Everyone recently has been telling me books to read, Jim Yoakum gave me a long list, and then so is my father, and my German teacher, and... y'know....
Authors I'm not fond of: anyone who writes romance novels.
Dagny
Visit The Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697 Monty Python, Spike Milligan, Marx Brothers, and more...
"You got a light, mac?... No, but I got a dark brown overcoat"- Viv Stanshall
perhaps not.. i read Catcher in the Rye and i didn't think it was all that good. nothing happened. Holden Caulfield bitches about a lot of stuff.. and that's pretty much it.
is there some deeper meaning to this book that i'm missing? because i honestly can't understand why everyone keeps going on about it.
(p.s. please don't flame me about this.. i dont mean to offend anyone by this post.)
~po
"Pectans? I LOVE pectans!!" -Jake
My most disappointing moment was when... ...I flew too close to the sun and my wings melted.