39 posts tagged “books”
Book, magazine, catalog, nutritional information, billboard, website, newspaper... What are you currently reading and would you recommend it to others?
I'm actually reading two books right now. (Well, technically 3 but I haven't picked one up since Christmas.)
First up, London by Edward Rutherfurd. This is the third "saga" book I've read by him and so far (I'm only 300+ pages in and not quite up to 1300 AD yet) I'm enjoying it. The book is about the history of London from when Julius Caesar came to sometime in the mid to late 20th century. The paperback edition I have is just under 1200 pages long so if you want to read it (and I do recommend it if you enjoy historical fiction, London, English history, etc.) make sure you have plenty of time.
Next up is Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. This book has been on my list of books to read ever since I started watching "Dexter" the show (2 weeks ago). They had a copy in the campus bookstore so I picked it up when I was in there yesterday. I'm only 3 (4?) chapters in but again, I'm enjoying it. The place I stopped last night is probably a quarter of the way through the first episode of the show. Having watched the show before reading the book it's nice to see things more clearly in my head while I'm reading it. I've heard the show kind of veered off from the books at some point so it'll be interesting to see when and where that happens.
I was getting ready to shut everything down on my computer and I happened to scroll down to the bottom of my Vox and came across an ad for Cliff Notes. Except, it wasn't any ordinary ad for Cliff Notes. It was an ad for Shakespeare: The Manga Edition.
So far they have "Hamlet", "Romeo & Juliet", "Macbeth", and "Julius Caesar" available. I mean, I'm all for getting kids to read but manga? Wow. Wasn't really expecting Shakespeare to show up in that form. Although it kind of makes sense. They're plays that are meant to be watched not read so putting them in comic book/manga form seems like a logical step. And who knows? Maybe they really will get kids more interested in Shakespeare.
Over winter break I read An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (which I loved). I read it for the math aspect (don't worry, the main plot is non-math related) but, as I was reading it, I became intrigued by the anagramming the main character does. To kill time between classes today I decided to see what my name was anagrammed (the title of this post) and came across the Internet Anagram Server. On the site they have the Anagram Hall of Fame where words or phrases are anagrammed and the anagram describes, or is connected to, the word or phrase. Here are some of my favorites:
Clint Eastwood = Old West Action
Evangelist = Evil's Agent
The Meaning of Life = The fine game of nil
Tom Cruise = So I'm Cuter
Mother-in-law = Woman Hitler
Snooze Alarms = Alas! No More Z's
A Decimal Point = I'm a Dot in Place
The Earthquakes = That Queer Shake
Salman Rushdie = Read, Shun Islam
Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one
The Titanic disaster = Death, it starts in ice
Claustrophobia = Car, ship, loo - tabu
The astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus = Space motion: our Earth circles Sun, no?
Actor Silvester Stallone = Very cool talentless star
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution = Soul of vital, narrow, chosen heredity
Great Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' = or Versed Italian man's 'La Gioconda'
'The Simpson' cartoons = Spastic Homer, snot son...
The President of the United States of America George Walker Bush = A gangster from the White House undertakes debate-free politics
William Henry Gates = Get a share in my will!
Quote by Oscar Wilde:
There is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about. = Wilde died broken, beaten 'n' total nut. Hate being sunk in that rotten gaol. Shh, gay is taboo.
Why shouldn't America go re-elect President Clinton in Ninety-Six? = He has a prime or cunning tendency to wildly solicit Internet sex.
George Bush = He bugs Gore
"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Neil A. Armstrong = A thin man ran; makes a large stride; left planet, pins flag on moon! On to Mars!
If you've seen the movie but never read the book (or vice versa), the two are very similar. Since William Goldman wrote both, he knew what he could change in the book to still make the movie work - which is a lot better than having some stranger come in and write a horrible screenplay based on a good book. In the movie we get little snippets of what the characters were doing before the story started but in the book you learn the whole story behind those snippets. Take for instance Vizzini's comment in the movie to Fezzik about finding him living in Greenland. In the book there's quite a few pages on how Fezzik got to Greenland but I kind of liked how random that comment was in the movie - that we had no idea why Fezzik was living in Greenland.
Another plus about having William Goldman write both the book and the screenplay was that when a passage in the book was also in the movie, I could picture that scene in my head (the Inigo-Westley duel for example) and get a better sense of what was going on. Of course it also made me want to pull out the movie and watch it but that's to be expected.
So yes, I enjoyed the book and will probably read it again at some point - it made me laugh and at the end of Buttercup's Baby I even choked up a little bit - but I still like the movie more.
What's the best book you read this year?
I finished this book 4 days ago and I already want to read it again. Too bad I had to return it to the library.
Book: Show us a book you've read more than once.
Way back in May there was a Vox Hunt that asked about a summer reading list. Since summer is officially over for me today I thought I'd take a look back and see which books from my summer reading list I actually read. Out of the 6 books I mentioned in my original post, I only read 3 of them. However, I did read some other books instead. My actual summer reading list:
The book I'm currently reading:
Show us a book you wish you had written.
From Grave Peril by Jim Butcher:
"Wow," Bob commented. "I hadn't realized that they grew hellhounds that big. And look, Harry, it's your godmother! Hi, Lea!"
If Bob had a body, he'd have been jumping up and down and waving his fingers at her. "Don't be so enthusiastic, Bob. If she catches me, I get to join the pack."
Nevertheless, I did enjoy this book. Like the previous two books, it took me a while to get into it but once I did I was reluctant to put it down. (I was a little wary to read it alone in my apartment at night but that mainly had to do with the ghostly aspect of the book.)
There's been some talk lately on a few message boards about whether or not Jim Butcher found religion between the second and third books. (Jim Butcher supposedly showed up on one of them to defend his writing and got a little tl;dr.) Sure the book had some religious undertones but, to me, it didn't read like a "religious tract" which is what some people are saying it is. It's certainly not going to stop me from buying and reading the rest of the books in the series.
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