Social 📖 What are you reading?

sup42 said:
I checked out the TV series yesterday.

I find it hard to adapt from the minds eye of the written word to the Screen.

Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher is obviously ridiculous given he is meant to be towering over people.

I found the TV show a bit hard going with the lead actor being a bit one dimensional, physically obviously is a lot closer to Childs Reacher, but he is a bit too Gym bunny for my liking and not a strong actor.

It would be very difficult to find the right specimen for that role, I always pictured Reacher as more tall wiry hard kinda Norse like no gym weights type.

More of a Sean Bean than an Arnold.

The books are really easy to get into. That is always a sign of good writing imo rather than being easy because they are simplistic.
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I'm a Reacher fan, of the books anyway. Don't like this current guy, way too big and like you say not a great actor. I always thought Brad Thorn looked the perfect Reacher lol
 
Worried2Death said:
Read some JA and George Elliot. Middlemarch was a long slog, Silas Marner is the one of hers I remember liking the most, recommend that to anyone.
Never thought I'd see chick lit on a league forum Sup, we're growing and evolving since Webby got here.
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For English Literature I have read
P&P
The Return of the Native
Shakespeare: (Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth)
Frankenstein
A Tale of two cities
The scarlet pimpernell
David Copperfield
Great Expectations
Wuthering Heights
DH Lawrence (Women in Love, The Rainbow, Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterleys Lover)
The picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Tess of the D'ubervilles - Thomas Hardy

Russian Literature
War and Peace
Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina

American Literature
The Razor's edge
The Catcher in the Rye (disturbing book)
The Great Gatsby
The Call of the Wild
The Old man and the Sea (Features an arm wrestle that lasts 4 days non stop)
South of No North Charles Bukowski Short Stories

Canadian Literature
Margaret Atwood MadAddam trilogy
The Life of Pi

New Zealand
Barry Crump a Good Keen Man
Owls Do Cry Janet Frame
Witi Ihimaera (BulliBasher Pounamu Pounamu)
NZ books on my bookshelf to be read K Mansfield complete works of Short Stories. The Bone People K Hume.
 
Citygirl said:
I'm a Reacher fan, of the books anyway. Don't like this current guy, way too big and like you say not a great actor. I always thought Brad Thorn looked the perfect Reacher lol
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Ever read any Jane Austin? I had a childhood just like @sup42 by the sound of it, staring out of my state house window over the Aranui ghetto, just making out the Bexley sewerage plant in the distance, reading my Jane Austin novels and dreaming of one day having a NZ team in the Winfield Cup. And here we all are.
 
Citygirl said:
I'm a Reacher fan, of the books anyway. Don't like this current guy, way too big and like you say not a great actor. I always thought Brad Thorn looked the perfect Reacher lol
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Yeah Brad Thorn is the right look for sure.

Funny how we picture these characters and then the movie makers who hopefully read the same books settle for dumb grunt lookalikes despite the books making it really clear that Reachers main weapon is his mind.

Or as in the use of Tom Cruise they completely ignore that Reacher is meant to be a giant that his fast of mind and fast of hand and foot....

I think these books are waiting for someone....for the big screen, someone who dose not exist on the acting landscape yet.
 
Wrighty said:
For English Literature I have read
P&P
The Return of the Native
Shakespeare: (Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth)
Frankenstein
A Tale of two cities
The scarlet pimpernell
David Copperfield
Great Expectations
Wuthering Heights
DH Lawrence (Women in Love, The Rainbow, Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterleys Lover)
The picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Tess of the D'ubervilles - Thomas Hardy

Russian Literature
War and Peace
Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina

American Literature
The Razor's edge
The Catcher in the Rye (disturbing book)
The Great Gatsby
The Call of the Wild
The Old man and the Sea (Features an arm wrestle that lasts 4 days non stop)
South of No North Charles Bukowski Short Stories

Canadian Literature
Margaret Atwood MadAddam trilogy
The Life of Pi

New Zealand
Barry Crump a Good Keen Man
Owls Do Cry Janet Frame
Witi Ihimaera (BulliBasher Pounamu Pounamu)
NZ books on my bookshelf to be read K Mansfield complete works of Short Stories. The Bone People K Hume.
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Love Janet's novels. On Russians, read any Aleksander Solzhenitsyn Wrighty? I recommend Cancer Ward, set in a cancer ward and asking the eternal Russian question "What does a man live for?" Can't remember the answer now, it's been 10 years since I read a book.
 
Wrighty said:
For English Literature I have read
P&P
The Return of the Native
Shakespeare: (Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth)
Frankenstein
A Tale of two cities
The scarlet pimpernell
David Copperfield
Great Expectations
Wuthering Heights
DH Lawrence (Women in Love, The Rainbow, Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterleys Lover)
The picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Tess of the D'ubervilles - Thomas Hardy

Russian Literature
War and Peace
Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina

American Literature
The Razor's edge
The Catcher in the Rye (disturbing book)
The Great Gatsby
The Call of the Wild
The Old man and the Sea (Features an arm wrestle that lasts 4 days non stop)
South of No North Charles Bukowski Short Stories

Canadian Literature
Margaret Atwood MadAddam trilogy
The Life of Pi

New Zealand
Barry Crump a Good Keen Man
Owls Do Cry Janet Frame
Witi Ihimaera (BulliBasher Pounamu Pounamu)
NZ books on my bookshelf to be read K Mansfield complete works of Short Stories. The Bone People K Hume.
Click to expand...
You are widely read in the classics.

I hated the Great Gatsby but I am a bit of an Anglophile who too readily dismisses what I call Americana attempts at grafting a culture out of thin air.

That aside, Janet Frame is a serious thinker and mad respect from me at you reading her.

Witi I know in real life, some of his work I admire, other bits not so much, he is a character.

The bone people I thought was not too bad at all. Well I actually really liked it a lot.

Shakespeare gives me a headache, I have to research every line because even for a study of archaic English like me, his lines are like sitting an exam at every reading, none of it clear and relatable without back notes, still, that is why braniacs like that shit.

Dickens is like the modern fairy tale writer for grown ups, detailed character arcs, the promise of a happy ending, twists and turns along the way.

Great expectations is my favorite of his, a tale of two cities is brilliant but too maudlin for me.

As for bloody Wuthering heights, I hated it when I read it. A tale of torment and torture. Woe is me the reader.

Kate Bush oddly enough twisted it in such a way I went back and read it again...just because of her bloody song....and because of Kate....I ended up oddly satisfied I survived that shitty story twice.

My favorite Bronte book is Jane Eyre, because despite being fkd up it has a happy ending.

I hated the old man and the sea the first time I read it. Years later I read for whom the bell tolls and started to understand the feel of a Hemingway novel, as you probably know he was an ex journalist and was trained in creating imagery from very short sentences like the following:

Baby shoes: never worn for sale.

A six word sentence that conveys much pain in why parents would end up listing a pair of baby shoes unused for sale.

A simple way of telling the reader a baby died.

I will leave it there.
 
Worried2Death said:
Love Janet's novels. On Russians, read any Aleksander Solzhenitsyn Wrighty? I recommend Cancer Ward, set in a cancer ward and asking the eternal Russian question "What does a man live for?" Can't remember the answer now, it's been 10 years since I read a book.
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What lead you to read Russian Novelists bro?
 
Worried2Death said:
I think it was Lou Reed, he named his must-read novels and Dostyevsky and Chekov were up the top. I was a pretty weird kid at 14 now I think about it, something had gone wrong if Lou Reed was my mentor.
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Cool reference.
No one from that era would side wise glance at a kid into Lou Reed, quite the opposite, you probably could have started a teen cult for the troubled thinkers.

The reason I asked is that Russian Literature is usually the purview of academics and philosophers, to be into it at fourteen is remarkable anywhere but something else entirely in the antipodes.

I have never read Russian literature despite enjoying Russian culture and history.

I was tempted to take on War and Peace for no other reason than pop culture and saying Ï read a really really long book.

Respect.
 
sup42 said:
No one from that era would side wise glance at a kid into Lou Reed, quite the opposite, you probably could have started a teen cult for the troubled thinkers.
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I think Lou Reed actually did have a cult like that down here, there were hundreds of us in Chch in the 80s, he was like our leader in the church of the velvet underground. Maybe I was in a cult now I think about it, we met every Friday night at this record store in the Square and discussed Lou's lyrics and book lists. That's where I met my first gf, a goth who thought bob dylan was a prophet, and within weeks I'd switched from the Lou Reed life to a full-time Dylan fan.
 
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Wrighty said:
For English Literature I have read
P&P
The Return of the Native
Shakespeare: (Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth)
Frankenstein
A Tale of two cities
The scarlet pimpernell
David Copperfield
Great Expectations
Wuthering Heights
DH Lawrence (Women in Love, The Rainbow, Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterleys Lover)
The picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Tess of the D'ubervilles - Thomas Hardy

Russian Literature
War and Peace
Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina

American Literature
The Razor's edge
The Catcher in the Rye (disturbing book)
The Great Gatsby
The Call of the Wild
The Old man and the Sea (Features an arm wrestle that lasts 4 days non stop)
South of No North Charles Bukowski Short Stories

Canadian Literature
Margaret Atwood MadAddam trilogy
The Life of Pi

New Zealand
Barry Crump a Good Keen Man
Owls Do Cry Janet Frame
Witi Ihimaera (BulliBasher Pounamu Pounamu)
NZ books on my bookshelf to be read K Mansfield complete works of Short Stories. The Bone People K Hume.
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And here I was thinking you were new to reading 📖
 
sup42 said:
You are widely read in the classics.

I hated the Great Gatsby but I am a bit of an Anglophile who too readily dismisses what I call Americana attempts at grafting a culture out of thin air.

That aside, Janet Frame is a serious thinker and mad respect from me at you reading her.

Witi I know in real life, some of his work I admire, other bits not so much, he is a character.

The bone people I thought was not too bad at all. Well I actually really liked it a lot.

Shakespeare gives me a headache, I have to research every line because even for a study of archaic English like me, his lines are like sitting an exam at every reading, none of it clear and relatable without back notes, still, that is why braniacs like that shit.

Dickens is like the modern fairy tale writer for grown ups, detailed character arcs, the promise of a happy ending, twists and turns along the way.

Great expectations is my favorite of his, a tale of two cities is brilliant but too maudlin for me.

As for bloody Wuthering heights, I hated it when I read it. A tale of torment and torture. Woe is me the reader.

Kate Bush oddly enough twisted it in such a way I went back and read it again...just because of her bloody song....and because of Kate....I ended up oddly satisfied I survived that shitty story twice.

My favorite Bronte book is Jane Eyre, because despite being fkd up it has a happy ending.

I hated the old man and the sea the first time I read it. Years later I read for whom the bell tolls and started to understand the feel of a Hemingway novel, as you probably know he was an ex journalist and was trained in creating imagery from very short sentences like the following:

Baby shoes: never worn for sale.

A six word sentence that conveys much pain in why parents would end up listing a pair of baby shoes unused for sale.

A simple way of telling the reader a baby died.

I will leave it there.
Click to expand...
Yes the most famous 6 word short story ever. Apparently there is a legend to go with it. He was in a bar and boasted he could write an entire short story in 6 words for a $100 bet. He obviously won the bet.

If you are liberty to say how you know Witi I would love to hear. I am a fan of his and went to see him give a reading in Wellington and was basically gushing towards him the whole time and he was like a hollywood celebrity to me.

I also hated the Great Gatsby. Another american book I read was "As I lay dieing" by Faulkner.
There is a book store in Wellington called Unity books that sells all of these types of books and I feel I am in book heaven when I walk in there.

If you like Dickens there is a 1960s book you would like by an American Jacqueline Susann Valley of the Dolls
The critics hated it as it was written by a trashy romance writer who was popular in her day but it sold millions and milions and millions as it is such a good read following someone's adventures much like all of Dickens novels were following someone's life adventures.
 
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Wrighty said:
For English Literature I have read
P&P
The Return of the Native
Shakespeare: (Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth)
Frankenstein
A Tale of two cities
The scarlet pimpernell
David Copperfield
Great Expectations
Wuthering Heights
DH Lawrence (Women in Love, The Rainbow, Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterleys Lover)
The picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Tess of the D'ubervilles - Thomas Hardy

Russian Literature
War and Peace
Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina

American Literature
The Razor's edge
The Catcher in the Rye (disturbing book)
The Great Gatsby
The Call of the Wild
The Old man and the Sea (Features an arm wrestle that lasts 4 days non stop)
South of No North Charles Bukowski Short Stories

Canadian Literature
Margaret Atwood MadAddam trilogy
The Life of Pi

New Zealand
Barry Crump a Good Keen Man
Owls Do Cry Janet Frame
Witi Ihimaera (BulliBasher Pounamu Pounamu)
NZ books on my bookshelf to be read K Mansfield complete works of Short Stories. The Bone People K Hume.
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Any playboy wrighty?
 
How does everyone read. Are you still reading traditional phyical books or moved to electronic?

The last books I brought I was thinking it was good as I got the bigger editions as I usually get the smaller hand sized books which are good for travelling. I was looking at the bookcase thinking man they take up a lot of room. They were both books from different trilogies so I was thinking do I get the other 2 at the same size. Buying them on line they just happened to be that size and a price point I was okay with.

I've started getting more electronic as I was getting comic sets and it was easier to get an entire run. Also got a few books digitally and it is just a case of organising the collections instead of different sized books in a book case.

Travelling it means taking the tablet and trying to ensure it has enough battery. The smaller books might get a re-read for travelling.

The other advantage like buying video games online. If you need something or want a book to read while on holiday or finished a story that leads to another one. You can get them pretty much instantly.
 
snake77 said:
How does everyone read. Are you still reading traditional phyical books or moved to electronic?

The last books I brought I was thinking it was good as I got the bigger editions as I usually get the smaller hand sized books which are good for travelling. I was looking at the bookcase thinking man they take up a lot of room. They were both books from different trilogies so I was thinking do I get the other 2 at the same size. Buying them on line they just happened to be that size and a price point I was okay with.

I've started getting more electronic as I was getting comic sets and it was easier to get an entire run. Also got a few books digitally and it is just a case of organising the collections instead of different sized books in a book case.

Travelling it means taking the tablet and trying to ensure it has enough battery. The smaller books might get a re-read for travelling.

The other advantage like buying video games online. If you need something or want a book to read while on holiday or finished a story that leads to another one. You can get them pretty much instantly.
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For what ever reason I just can't enjoy reading books electronically.

I run in to that same issue you mention though with fitting books on the shelf. Have ended up donating many books over the years which I struggle with. It's difficult narrowing down to a selection.

Love a good fiction novel but the other thing I have just bought is a book that has a collection of action comics. Used to read them as a kid and still enjoy them.
 
Wrighty said:
Yes the most famous 6 word short story ever. Apparently there is a legend to go with it. He was in a bar and boasted he could write an entire short story in 6 words for a $100 bet. He obviously won the bet.

If you are liberty to say how you know Witi I would love to hear. I am a fan of his and went to see him give a reading in Wellington and was basically gushing towards him the whole time and he was like a hollywood celebrity to me.

I also hated the Great Gatsby. Another american book I read was "As I lay dieing" by Faulkner.
There is a book store in Wellington called Unity books that sells all of these types of books and I feel I am in book heaven when I walk in there.

If you like Dickens there is a 1960s book you would like by an American Jacqueline Susann Valley of the Dolls
The critics hated it as it was written by a trashy romance writer who was popular in her day but it sold millions and milions and millions as it is such a good read following someone's adventures much like all of Dickens novels were following someone's life adventures.
Click to expand...

Me mum worked with Witi at Auckland Uni in the English dept.
He can write, no doubt about it.

The Valley of the dolls is famous eh, Sharon Tate was in the movie of the same name, before those helter skelter nut jobs killed her and her baby eh.
 
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