Lol! I can see why you'd think that, but my name's really Mel.

Hello!

Awe! you are people of my own heart! I watched Mirromask 4 times in a row- over four days of course, as a student teacher you don't get that much spare time!

I've always like Neil Gaiman, the story is similar to Coraline? I love Valentine! The way he uses his hands and towards the end with the fruit pips.
I love those illustrations so much, I much check out the picture books that Neil and Dave have made together- in the pulp(not online, you lose the quality of lovely paper pages).

Yay!
Maybe Dave McKean could direct a Thursday Movie, would make for nice look. I'm still not keen on idea of a thursday movie despite my love for them!

*hides pointy stick mk2(tm) and waves hello to www*

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Boring old list of mine, but here goes:
Pratchett, Rankin R, Some Tom Holt, LOTR ( every year, once a year, from 1970 for 12 years then got sick of it, but re read it this year and feel it is less than it was. Maybe I'm growing older?)

Niven L
A C Clarke both fiction and his technical books to see what predictions have come true.
The early Saint stories
A book titled 'The Middle Temple Murder' written in 1910, by a J E Fletcher. Not published until after WW1 but its set around Then Temple , Ludgate Circus, Fleet Street, etc., where I used to work and it brings back memories.
The Ascent of Man by Bronowski
Poul Anderson
Some Heinlein - the early short stories but not the novels after Glory Road.
Asimov -for some unknown reason - both fiction and nonfiction.
Cordwainer Smith
Biggles
War of the Worlds
The Time Machine
20,000 leagues in an octopus's garden
Agatha Christie
The Greek Legends by Graham Greene (I think- it is still all packed away after our last move.)

The Walt Disney comics drawn by Carl Barks - they were the best in art work and strength of story (I would like a copy of the one where Scrooge Donald and the nephews go off to different stars and planets to indicate the sizes of those othe rstars. Drawn 1960/61 I guess.)

Eric Frank Russell
Shakespeare

Phantom comics

Asterix - all of them although some of the later ones are a little weaker. Bit like then Carry On movie series.

Old technical magazines, esp car and plane - for predictions of what 'Year 2000' will be like. Funniest things on the planet. Also saddest in some ways.

Asterix is ossum. :) Love those, but agree. Also, the ones based on movies are bad.

Hmmm.... Should find some old technical manuals.

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

I read after Jasper used him, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I quite enjoyed it, Did take a little to get into it. Haven't re-read it though! Nor Perfume... I think Old Patrick doesn't need reading more often that every five years or so.

The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. A fascinating writing experiment but ultimately a failure. A multi-layered book series, I get something different out of them every time.

You should check them out. It's the same story each time from a different POV. The first book in the series is "Justine." And you never learn the name of the protagonist until the second book, "Balthazar." Then "Mountolive," and then "Clea" finally moves the story forward and the POV jumps back to the original protagonist from the first book. I can't recommend them highly enough.

And of course I've read Fforde's Thursday Next novels a few times. I don't like his nursery cryme stuff quite as much.

sic

LOTR, every year, my own private ritual.
Anne of Green Gables series, again every year.
Fforde, just finished the first re-read, will do it again when the Next Next book comes out no doubt.
A few diff sci-fi books, got to be funny tho to make me want to read them again.

Terri

Do you read right through to Rilla of Ingleside and the one right before that (something about a valley, I think)? I had the first three in a box set and thought that was all there were, then discovered Anne's House of Dreams and the one after that and then began to worry that I'd never finish them all, so stopped. Might have to give them another go if you say the latter ones are worthwhile.

House

There are 8 Anne stories, not included the short story collections. Some have rehashed story lines in them, but Rilla is excellent, i cry every time, pathetic, but hits close to home for me. I have a frightening collection of LM Montgomery novels, some are stand alone stories (The Blue Castle is just brilliant) others are series. Any questions, feel free to ask, i love her work.

I was given those books as a kid, but couldn't ever get into them. I really tried too. Which was the best of them?

I really like the first 2 or 3 but after that I think the series falls off considerably. There's quite a bit of 'injured bird' plots:

1. Damaged individual introduced
2. Power of Anne's Smile invoked
3. Damaged individual learns to hope/love/forgive again
4. Rejoicing

I still love the character though. She kicks Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm a**.

Interesting point OC Not,

Why do we constantly have to be told to read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm or Anne of Green Gables or other stories like these by people whose width of literary awareness is the school reading list for English 101 of 1964?

And 'Lord of the Flies' which was atrocious science fiction, very poor morality propagandaising (sic, and sick) and poor literary quality. Written by a religious bigot with more time on his hands than he could cope with.

Why cannot the literary establishment realise that the world has moved on and there are better books written?

Biggles was the most read when I was young, but I never saw a Biggles book on a reading list at school or univesity or college anywhere in the world or outside it, where I spent several years after head injuries. similarly with the Saint, Bulldog Drummond, etc.

You may have your own list of writers who were/are completely ignored by modern education authorities but the principle will be the same.

Slightly skewed, I know, but those of us who studied scientific subjects at uni decades ago had to also take 'art' subjects, but the arty types never had to learn the scientific subjects. this bias of ignorance is still with us.

Rant no3 completed.

Hmmmm, given that overanalysing a book can kill your pleasure of reading, maybe they stick books you wouldn't read for fun on there intentionally. That way when you find an old good book, it won't be one you've done to death and now hate.

Probably not, but hey. Probably it's because they've arbitrarily been defined as "classics" and hence can be bought in bulk cheaply.

-------
Turn the silliness to eleven!

Got to disagree with Bunyip about "Lord of the Flies", but accept that it has dated.

<Hopes the younger posters don't forget that not everything old is worth ignoring, nor that their tastes may well change later.>

<Agrees with younger poster that most things old are worth ignoring>

<Offers to share a fine 40 year old Port with the older members of the Fforum>

"not everything old is worth ignoring"

Darn right! That's why I listen to Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter--nobody after them can even compare!

<Accepts offer of port>

My son recently brought home his 'recommended' reading list. The list is generated by the school's library computer and is based upon test results and certain 'genre' preferences as indicated by the student (I did not know you were only supposed to read books that are at your 'level' but that is a rant I will save for later).

The earliest published was Gulliver's Travels. After that, we leap something like 250 YEARS to A Separate Peace.

I didn't recognize any of the other titles. That's kind of fun, because now I get to investigate them. But it's funny that the 19th century didn't even get a mention, isn't it?

I would like to take that test and see what I am supposed to read.

Hmmm.... I think I tend to stick to newer SF, simply because most SF dates horribly....

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

As someone who is temporally enhanced, I would accept 40 year old port. Funnily enough I was at a friend's house last night and she asked me to get down the dusty wine and spirit bottles from the top of a cupboard which had been left behind when he walked out on her a few weeks ago. The sod had drunk nearly all of them dry, but we opened one dusty box and found it had an unopened Para Liquer port from 1971 in it. It was hurriedly put into the lingerie drawer and covered up an we know nothing about it.

As for reading old books- there are at least two good reasons to do this. [1] is that they are often better examples of the use of English language, and strange as it may seem, to read good quality writing is less of a strain than to read second rate writing, as it all falls together so well. Which is one reason I like Jasper's work; and [2] it often offers a viewpoint on something which we no longer find ourselves thinking. For example, I have books written towards the end of the 1800s and early 1900 which look forward to the age of horseless carriages, as estimates made indicated that Sydney would be by 20' (6 Metres) of horse garden product by 1940 if the use of horses continued at the then current rate.

As for old sf - what is Gulliver's Travels, or 20,000 leagues under the sea, or Well's War of the Worlds? Concepts dated in detail, but the main ideas still hold.

As the old adage goes: 90% of sf is crap, but then, 90% of any thing is crap.

Also the old saw that those who forget their history are doomed to live it over again.


All this from an even more temporally enhanced individual.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2007 06:49AM by bunyip.