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gerund
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Discoveries
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May 6 23:00 UTC 1994 |
Have you ever come across a book you never planned on reading or even giving
a second glance at, but then suddenly 'Discovered' it?
This has happened to me on a few occasions.
Probably the most notable for me was with _War and Peace_.
I'd always heard how it was a 'great book' and had much to offer someone if
they took the time to read it. Unfortunately I was put off by the size of
the book, not to mention I didn't have much of an interest in the war of
which much of _War and Peace_ took place.
Somehow I started reading the book. Then it got pushed aside after maybe
about the first fifty pages. I don't know what it was but months later
I came back to the book.
This occured several times, until probably about the mid section of the book,
when I finally started reading it regularly until I finished it. It took
me over one full year to read that book, and in the end I had 'discovered' it.
There are indeed many treasures in its pages which, simply by not planning
to approach the book, I might have overlooked in the end.
I'm wondering if anyone else has had this experience, and come to love a book
simply because they didn't plan on it.
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| 39 responses total. |
davel
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response 1 of 39:
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May 7 00:57 UTC 1994 |
This has happened to me innumerable times. In fact, there are a lot of books
I acquired by marriage and which looked uninteresting to me but proved
*wonderful*. None come to mind at the moment ... what *does* is something
a little different. Around 20 years ago I was with some friends (at a
party), & they all decided to watch a segment of a TV special on the
Holocaust. I didn't want to - I was already feeling somewhat depressed
with no outside help - so I browsed on the bookshelves at the house we were
at looking for some light reading. Aha! There was a book by C.S. Lewis
that I'd been meaning to read for some time. Well, it was _That Hideous
Strength_. To this day I'd maintain that it's a reasonable candidate for
Lewis's best book, but I think that TV special would not have been more
depressing.
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rcurl
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response 2 of 39:
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May 7 06:44 UTC 1994 |
That happened to me with Gibbons' _Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_. It was always touted as the ultimate *unreadable* book, but
for reasons I can no longer recall, at age ca. 22, I picked up volume
1 (of 12), and was trapped. Gibbons is both witty and wry, keeps
historical personalities in the fore, loves the ironic, and doesn't
get lost in the details (often....). My hero became Belisarius (505-
565), general to Justinian, as unlikely as that may sound. But Gibbons
treated him with great sympathy. Would I read it again? Uh oh....
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gerund
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response 3 of 39:
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May 7 06:54 UTC 1994 |
Heh.... interesting you should mention that. I've had the notion of
someday reading those 12 volumes. Maybe I might make a discovery.
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carl
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response 4 of 39:
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May 7 13:48 UTC 1994 |
One of my favorite discoveries is Cully Gage. A friend once mentioned
_The Northwoods Reader_, and I was completely fascinated by the stories.
I could easily picture myself sitting around a campfire up north
listening to a native Yuper reminisce about the "old days."
I liked it so well, I got _Tales of the Old U.P._, _Heads and Tales_,
_The Last Northwoods Reader_, and _What? Another Northwoods Reader_.
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rcurl
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response 5 of 39:
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May 7 19:18 UTC 1994 |
"They laughed when I said, read Gibbons."
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jdg
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response 6 of 39:
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May 7 21:29 UTC 1994 |
I was floored, some years ago, by the power and beauty of essays on trout
fishing that Zane Grey wrote back in the '20s. They were simply
terrific.
I ended up fishing for Steelhead with fly rods, because of Grey.
(I *never* understood War and Peace.)
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gerund
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response 7 of 39:
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May 7 21:48 UTC 1994 |
Did you read the whole thing? What translation?
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jdg
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response 8 of 39:
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May 7 23:45 UTC 1994 |
Yes, I read the whole thing. No, I have no idea which translation, but
it must have been very poor. I kept getting distracted by all the weird
variations on diminuitive names -- so I never knew who was speaking
or who was being spoken about. It was many years ago, but I remember
thinking, "This is supposed to be good. Surely, it will get better."
It never did.
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orinoco
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response 9 of 39:
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May 7 23:47 UTC 1994 |
You mean somebody else here has read more c s lewis than that unreadable
mess he calls the chronicles of narnia? That hideous strength is my
*favorite* (try perelandrea and out of the silent planet too)
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alfee
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response 10 of 39:
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Jun 5 21:38 UTC 1994 |
I've made discoveries like those above through lit classes when I was in
school--I'd think "great, another dry book to dissect", and end up loving
it and re-reading it. Not every time, of course, but often. I discovered
Wuthering Heights that way, and also the whole wotks of Dorothy Parker,
who's since been my favorite author to read when in a bad mood--I always
laugh at her sarcasm. I remember one English class, too, where everyone
but me "discovered" Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. I still can't get
through it!
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kentn
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response 11 of 39:
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Jun 5 22:25 UTC 1994 |
My experience with Story of 2 Municipalities was ruined by whomever
wrote "Gaspard killed the Marquis" inside the front cover of my book.
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dc
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response 12 of 39:
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Jun 6 04:23 UTC 1994 |
_A Tale of Two Cities_ was too long for me, so I listened to
it on cassette. Is that cheating?
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md
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response 13 of 39:
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Jun 6 13:29 UTC 1994 |
I had a free afternoon on a business trip to Chicago a few years
ago, so I walked over to Rizzoli's book store in Watertower Plaza
and browsed around. There was one book with a picture of a glass
of wine sitting on a table outdoors, with a wasp crawling up the
glass. The book was called _Love Always_ by Anne Beattie. On a
whim I bought it and took it back to the Drake where I was staying.
I've been a Beattie fan ever since.
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alfee
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response 14 of 39:
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Jun 7 02:09 UTC 1994 |
dc--If memory serves me, I bought the Cliffs Notes and watched the movie.
For a bookworm like myself, that's an indicator of a really bad book.
Are there any Dickens fans out there? If so, why? I'm not being
sarcastic or anything I would just like to know what is appealing about
his writing.
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wjj
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response 15 of 39:
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Jun 8 03:21 UTC 1994 |
One of my professors did his dissertation on the plays of Caryl Churchill
(a contemporary English playwright). He had been talking about her one
day in class, and a week later I found one of her plays (_Serious Money_)
in a bookstore. So I picked it up and read it and loved it, as with the
rest
of her work. But I probably never would have read her if my professor
hadn't mentioned her in class
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rcurl
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response 16 of 39:
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Jun 8 05:37 UTC 1994 |
I read a lot of Faulkner for the same reason: the prof was a Faulkner
authority, and made Faulkner's work come more alive.
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mwarner
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response 17 of 39:
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Jun 10 01:58 UTC 1994 |
Speaking of Faulker, here's a minor find:
"The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer" by Tom Dardis, 1989.
This well written book has essays on Faulkner: "Civilization begins with
distillation", Fitzgerald: "Bluer skies somewhere", Hemingway: "I'm no
rummy", and O'Neill: "Turn back the universe, and give me yesterday". The
subject of these long essays i s apparent from the title, and amount to
short biographies that try to give alcohol its due in each author's life.
From the introduction: ..."many American writers were convinced that
they had benefited richly from their early pact with alcohol and remained
asssured that it had been a necessary ingredient in the brief yet golden
period of their youth. This, despite the fact that the muse of alchohol
became increasingly deaf to the pleas of these writers as they aged."...
..."That Faulkner drank heavily all his life is no secret, but the
effect of it on both the man and the books he wrote after 1942 is not well
known. His continual hospitalizations, the blackouts and the electroshock
therapy he received did little to curb his thirst. The immense body of
work he created between the late 1920's and the beginning of the 1940's is
amazing considering the intense physical handicap he labored under because
of his drinking. One may well ask, When and how did he find the time to
write the books?
Faulkner's principal biographer, Joseph Blotner, ascribes his
subject's heavy drinking to his need for temporary oblivion from the world
around him. Blotner views the prolonged binges as experiences that
Faulkner chose of his own accord, something *willed*. Yet it is clear
that Faulkner did *not* will his binges - they were far too painful and
damaging for that. He was always surprised to find himself back in the
hospital. The bouts of drinking were, in effect, the inevitable results
of a disease over which he had little or no control. Faulkner drank
alcoholically for nearly fifty years and remained confident to the end
that his extraordinary powers derived, at least in part, from alcohol.
When Faulkner remarked that "civilization begins with distillation," he
was not joking but stating what he believed to be self-evident: a writer
requires the liberating infusion of whiskey in order to reveal the nature
of the world around him. Sadly, nearly all the best American writer of
this century have agreed with him.
In his early days Faulkner made no bones about his drinking, once
telling an interviewer that he always kept his whiskey within reach as he
wrote. He seemed invulnerable to alcohol in the great early period of "The
Sound and the Fury" and "As I Lay Dying", but by the mid-1930's his body
began to revolt against the huge amounts of liquor he consumed daily.
When only thirty-eight, he discovered the other, unfriendly side of
alcohol, the destructive side that produced confulsive seizures, a score
of hospitalizations and, in time, an erosion of his talent."...
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greenops
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response 18 of 39:
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Jul 21 05:20 UTC 1994 |
My mother is a juvenile (brittle) diabetic, and she often talked
about Banting and the discovery of insulin. She is sort of
science-phobic, and I always said I would try to find out
more about it, but didn't really pursue it. Last year I finally
got around to doing what I said I would do and read a book
titled (surprise) THE DISCOVERY OF INSULIN. It is an excellent
book about scientific discoveries, using the discovery of insulin
as a case example. Along the same lines, another book titled
A CONSPIRACY OF CELLS is very good (Rane knows about this one).
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alfee
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response 19 of 39:
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Jul 23 01:04 UTC 1994 |
Who is the author of these books, Jill? And can you recommend any other
good ones on diabetes in general? My fiance is a diabetic as well, has been
for 25 years, and I am always on the lookout for good, readable info as
opposed to the tomes aimed at doctors. Anyone's insight on this would be
appreciated--if you'd rather mail than post it, that's fine with me.
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greenops
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response 20 of 39:
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Jul 23 18:15 UTC 1994 |
I'll get the citations for you. THE DISCOVERY..... is not a book
about coping with/controlling diabetes on a daily basis, if that's
what you're looking for. However, it is very readable history of
science.
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greenops
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response 21 of 39:
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Jul 24 04:13 UTC 1994 |
Here's the cit. info.
Bliss, Michael.1982.THE DISCOVERY OF INSULIN. Univ. of Chicago.
ISBN:0-226-05897-2 (also available in paperback)
Gold, Michael.1986.A CONSPIRACY OF CELLS.SUNY Press, Albany.
ISBN:0-88706-099-4 (also in pbk.). I have seen this one
in the med. section in the Dawn Treader on South U.
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alfee
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response 22 of 39:
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Jul 25 03:20 UTC 1994 |
Thanks, Jill! I am taking my diabetic to the doctor tomorrow, and I think I'll
swing by the library and pick it up for some waiting-room reading.
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greenops
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response 23 of 39:
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Jul 26 03:59 UTC 1994 |
Gold's book is not about diabetes, it is about a very hardy
group of cancer cells named HeLa that are giving (were
giving, I don't know what the situation is presently) the
NIH and cell labs fits. I found the book exceptionally
interesting (this terminal is giving *me* fits).
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rcurl
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response 24 of 39:
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Jul 26 06:21 UTC 1994 |
_Conspiracy of Cells_ belongs in the mystery-thriller category. I
would think they can now scan routinely for HeLa cells. Sort of like
the _Andromeda Strain_, for a while.
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