Book Nerd’s Comments (group member since Dec 20, 2018)

Book Nerd’s comments from the Never too Late to Read Classics group.

Yeah, it was a little rushed.

Kip from midwest Centerville USA works the summer before college as a pharmacy soda jerk, and wins an authentic stripped-down spacesuit in a soap contest. He answers a distress radio call from Peewee, scrawny rag doll-clutching genius aged 11. With the comforting cop Mother Thing, three-eyed tripod Wormfaces kidnap them to the Moon and Pluto.

The thing is he didn't keep butterflies, he killed them. And ultimately he killed her.

Glad you liked it. It actually does feel pretty modern.

The total is actually 406,567.

The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides by Aeschylus

336 pages

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

1074 pages

Group Total: 407,977

I finished Atlas Shrugged. Still trying to put together some coherent thoughts about the good and the bad of it.

I finished The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides. I liked it. It was interesting how it showed the beginning of trials by jury.

James wrote: "Having finished The Collector (1963) by John Fowles (1926-2005), I am now reading The Monk (1796) by Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818). I have just completed page 128 of 442, end of Volume 1 of 3."
What did you think of The Collector?
There are threads for both:
The Collector
The Monk

Lesle wrote: "Book Nerd youve done much better than me!
A couple of yours I havent heard of either.

The Tombs of Atuan
The Dark Is Rising
The Grey King"
I've read those fairly recently.
Call It Courage and My Side of the Mountain were books I read numerous times as a kid and Johnny Tremain was something we read in school. The Rats of NIHM was one of my favorite movies.

I've read:
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
Mr. Popper's Penguins
Call It Courage
My Side of the Mountain
A Wrinkle in Time
The Black Cauldron
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
The Tombs of Atuan
The Dark Is Rising
The Grey King
Johnny Tremain

Lesle wrote: "Book Nerd wrote: "Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood by James Malcolm Rymer


Not a novel but a..."
It was a popular penny dreadful published one chapter at a time for years. It's supposed to have had a lot of influence on the vampire genre. But it is very weird and inconsistent.

Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood by James Malcolm Rymer


Not a novel but a long, goofy serial. It was one of the first pieces of vampire literature.

Luís wrote: "Os Meninos do Brasil by Ira Levin"
I want to read that. I've been liking Ira Levin's books.

Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein

210 pages

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

426 pages

Gilgamesh: A New English Version

290 pages

The Birds of Aristophanes by Aristophanes

99 pages

Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood by James Malcolm Rymer

809 pages (Big pages. Should be at least twice that!)

Group Total: 381, 093

I just read The Birds by Aristophanes.
It's really dificult reading a play with no real description of the action, especially when new characters are just popping up out of nowhere.

Rosemarie wrote: "I've just finished The Birds by Aristophanes.
It was fun but it would so much more entertaining on the stage, since it's a very visual play."
Definitely. All the bird costumes would be fun.

Yeah, I did really love this. It's not a sensational apocalypse but a melancholy bittersweet story of death and rebirth.

Another thing that occurs to me is how much more screwed we'd be today. There are no paper phone books. Who has paper maps? And even if your local library has useful books the card catalogue is all electronic.

I don't think you need my vote but I'm always up for some Dostoevsky so I support The Adolescent.

On the back of my book Stephen King is quoted as saying this book was a huge influence on The Stand. I can definitely see the similarities but I needed to stop comparing this to The Stand.
This is not much of a story and more theorizing about what the world would be like if most humans were gone.

It was pretty unbelievable that people could catch this illness even when completely isolated like Ish was. It said they probably traveled on dust particles. I looked that up, apparently there is some evidence that that's possible but there's no way a virus would just blanket the world like that.

I also found it odd that there's little evidence of panic or looting. Or of bodies.

The part about lice probably going extinct was amusing. The only insect that would care at all if we were gone.
The whole plague of ants didn't seem realistic. Overall humans are almost irrelevant to ants.

I started it. Not exactly hooked yet but we'll see.