Comments on: Summer reading ideas: Not!

By: Art Scatter » Battle royal: Books v. movies

Art Scatter » Battle royal: Books v. movies — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:50:35 +0000

[...] the past few weeks we’ve talked about movies and we’ve talked about books, specifically books we were embarrassed to admit that we hadn’t read and then a little later movies that moved us to the max. Reading David Barnett’s book blog in [...]

By: Martha Ullman West

Martha Ullman West — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:36:48 +0000

You folks are too funny; since when is NOT reading something a competition, unless of course you are running for president and sort of getting elected on the grounds that you’ve never read anything and are proud of it. Laura of course gets the first prize for wittiest confession, no surprise there. And like Bob, I have read the Bible, both books as well as the apocrypha but then I had to, having been a religion major in college. Where I also read Moby Dick in one weekend and can’t remember anything about it at all, except that there was this white whale and this guy with a harpoon, and a book and a half of Temps Perdu in French if you please, in which language it is considerably better than in its various lousy English translations, though I say this without having read any of them. But speaking of the French…we were, weren’t we? the novel I’ve never been able to finish is Madame Bovary, ever. Anna Karenina makes a hell of a lot more sense to me, I read it every five years or so. (That ends Barry, since you ask, with Anna’s suicide; you may have seen the ballet?) At the moment I am finishing Penelope Fitzgerald’s At Freddie’s, which I commend to the attention f all who are interested in the theatah, dahlings (very funny) and re-reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, which is very funny indeed.

By: David Loftus

David Loftus — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:09:58 +0000

I read the Bible cover to cover the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college; it was a nice break from my summer job, which was scraping the rust off the interior of ocean-going barges for Sause Brothers in Coos Bay. I’d been a congenital nonbeliever, but felt I should be up on what everybody else raved about, and Bob is right, there are some great stories, although there are some slow parts. Favorite book has to be Ecclesiastes, of course. Favorite verse? Deuteronomy 10:16, which in the King James version is rendered “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked.” My knowledge of the Greeks — theatrical and philosophical — however, is woefully bleak, despite having acted in two productions over at Keith Scale’s Classic Greek Theatre.

By: Bob Hicks

Bob Hicks — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:52:26 +0000

I, on the other hand, have read a barrel full of Bible. Them’s great stories, and they really are crucial to understanding Western art and thought. Plus, there’s a big fun factor. When I was a kid my Baptist church had a dapper little preacher who sported a pencil mustache and played the saxophone. He was a hell of a performer — used to stand at the far side of the dais and start marching to the other side, yelling, “I’m going to Hell! I’m going to Hell! I’m going to Hell!” (I capitalize “Hell” because in these circles Hell was no metaphor; it was a real place.) Then, having reached the far end, he would “convert” himself by turning on his heel, marching back the other way, and shouting, “I’m going to Heaven! I’m going to Heaven! I’m going to Heaven!” Great stuff.

And remembering my teenage self, I can’t say enough about Wednesday night baptism ceremonies, which were full immersion and often featured young ladies dressed in nothing but loose white gowns. It was wet T-shirt contests before we’d ever heard of wet T-shirt contests, and my, did it bring out a keen sense of holiness in the horny young toads of he congregation. The Bible’s great for that sort of thing.

One day the saxophone-playing preacher hopped in a car with the honky-tonk church pianist, leaving his wife and kids behind, and headed off into the sunset, never to be seen in our town again. A few years later I read “Elmer Gantry.”

As I say, the Bible: Great stuff. And I mean that truly. Even beyond the sex.

By: Laura

Laura — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:33:00 +0000

Yeah, Rachael wins. David, you had me worried at first that you misunderstood the assignment. But I’m with Chelsea on the Bible. Except for reading parts of a bad translation when I was a teen. I think I was trying to find out what all the fuss was about. Thankfully, it helped in that I was only slightly more than clueless come Western Civ class my freshman year of college. So how does someone brought up in a secular household and public schools begin to understand the very basics of all things Western thought? Architecture, paintings, music, philosophy? Literature? War AND peace? I worry about my boys in that the only bible story they know is from a hand-me-down book of David and Goliath, and really, what little boy wouldn’t like the story of the little guy who nails a giant with a rock between the eyes? What teen doesn’t want to do that to a parent? Come to think of it, I have read Oedipex Rex. But only seen a play version of Medea. God help me.

By: David Loftus

David Loftus — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:34:04 +0000

barry wrote “I like the idea of switching back and forth between ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ — two pages here, two pages there….” Actually, Gibbon is pretty neglected these days: I’m switching between W&P and Daniel Martin (for my book discussion group’s meeting in August) right now — 50 pages to the former per 20 pages of the latter. But does anybody remember when Snoopy assayed to tackle W&P by reading one word per day? I remember that series, but I don’t remember how it ended up.

By: Barry Johnson

Barry Johnson — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:30:39 +0000

Rachael, that is GOOD: To have taught a book you haven’t read? I think we may have a winner!!!

By: rachael

rachael — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:30:18 +0000

I have two copies of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Crossing” sitting on my bookshelf. I taught passages in a class about the US/Mexican border and even gave the book as a gift(twice). Read it? No.

By: Vernon

Vernon — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:28:23 +0000

I’m pretty much used to the idea of switching back and forth between war and peace.

By: barry

barry — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:08:37 +0000

I like the idea of switching back and forth between “War and Peace” and “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” — two pages here, two pages there…