response 25 of 119:

Sep 5 11:19 UTC 2003

English Lit:  Pride and Prejudice, Lord Jim, Wuthering Heights, Northanger
Abbey.  Conrad in general has thoughfutl tales of expatriots.  The Brontes
and Austen had a wonderful eye for social customs and ironies.  Conrad's are
more adventure/action stories.  The Brontes and Austen are more oriented to
daily life.  

response 27 of 119:

Sep 5 13:25 UTC 2003

By the way, some of the older books people have mentioned here may be
available online from the Guetenberg Project, if you have a comfortable
way to read electronic texts.

response 29 of 119:

Sep 5 15:30 UTC 2003

Jim got out Northanger Abbey in paperback, and a Conrad.  I am not up to
reading things on the computer for long yet. 

What Jim got me from the library in A-M paperback.

And why I am avoiding the 20th century classics as they are rather strong on
death and violence and general misery.

Jack London short stories - all about people freezing to death or killing each
other.
Hemingway stories about people killing each other and making each  other
miserable.
Graham Greene stories which I have no idea of what they are supposed to
accomplish.  Are they funny?

Turn of the Screw/Daisy Miller - Henry James.  We had to read Turn of the
Screw in high school.  Ghost story.

Austen Northanger Abbey.  Will rerea.  Good intro.  Bantam.

Snow Country (Japanese) 20th century about unhappy people.

Jim says he eats 700 calories of popcorn a day (wrong item).

George Eliot Adam Bede 

Sinclair Lewis Main St. (read it twice, nobody tries to kill anyone)

Jude the Obscure (too close to 20th century, everyone unhappy)


Dickens Oliver Twist (Jim liked the movie).  I find Dickens annoying as a
writer and he was a jerk.

Cooper Last of the Mohicans.  I hated this in high school and will get a
chance to remember why.  I don't think I like action novels.

Conrad Heart of Darkness.  Not for reading in the middle of the night when
things keep me awake

Charlotte Bronte Shirley (no other Bronte paperbacks there).

Joyce Dubliners - what should I be getting out of this? 

Wish there were lightweight paperback books on recent science.

The appalachian trail book sounds fun - we hiked part of it for a day, Mount
Jim, and fed fresh potatoes to people grateful they were not freeze dried.
They were fanatics and would not skip any part of the trail even if it meant
backtracking to get back to it after going to the post office to pick up their
CARE packages from home with the freeze dried food.  Some people who wanted
to do the whole trail in one season started in the south and walked half way
north, then flew to the north end and walked south to the middle to avoid the
hot weather in mid summer.  We hiked up to the top with a wok and hiked down
and it got dark and we camped next to the trail and discovered in the morning
we were 100 feet from the road.  People were looking at us funny.

Any recommendations of other good travel books or autobiographies or
biographies?

response 31 of 119:

Sep 5 15:38 UTC 2003

(maybe this should be linked to books?)

response 33 of 119:

Sep 5 16:32 UTC 2003

The Dubliners is probably a good introduction to Joyce.  Its short stories
are not as full of the stream-of-consciousness that characterises Ullysses
and Finnigan's Wake and so are still accessible.  They are about people
living in Dublin, Ireland, at or about the turn of the century.  I should
re-read it.

response 35 of 119:

Sep 5 16:33 UTC 2003

Joe slipped in. The "he" I'm referring to is Dickens.

response 41 of 119:

Sep 5 17:32 UTC 2003

Dickens was paid by the word.....

Maybe this should be linked to humor? Sindi is being given a universal list
of great and not-so-great books from people with a multitude of reading
preferences. She might as well be reading the library card catalog (which
is on line - great characters but not much of a plot). 

response 43 of 119:

Sep 5 18:18 UTC 2003

read some bukowski!

response 45 of 119:

Sep 5 19:17 UTC 2003

Re #42:  I think people expect more from Dickens because he wrote
"classics".  No one is going to be reading "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat
Idiot" in 100 years.

response 47 of 119:

Sep 5 21:23 UTC 2003

Until this century, the "classics" were the books everyone read and 
liked and gave to their children, who read them and liked them.  Mark 
Twain and Charles Dickens and Thomas Mallory and Shakespeare are great 
for that reason.

Nowadays, the "classics" are defined by experts in literature.  They 
give "classic" books awards like the Nobel Prize for Literature, or the 
Pulitzer Prize, on the basis that they can't be understood by most 
people, or enjoyed by anyone.  To the modern experts, the concept of 
the story is old hat; it's outdated.  I have no idea what 
modern "classics" are about or what they're for.  If I could know that, 
they wouldn't be defined as classics.

The stuff I read is stuff even my grandparents, or their grandparents, 
could have enjoyed if they were around now.  I like stories, and don't 
consider post-modern writing to be interesting at all.  I am 
uncultured, because I have not adapted to the definitions of those who 
have redesigned greatness.  

response 49 of 119:

Sep 5 22:15 UTC 2003

Thomas Pynchon is not a jerk.