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What are U reading these days? (PART SIX) (2010)
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Nina
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Sep 10, 2010 01:53PM
It's good to have the surgery behind you and that all is well. When I had my eyes done there weren't choices so I don't know the alternative but I thought the colors so bright I had to wear sun glasses until I got used to it. Aren't we lucky that our vision can be corrected and the offending film removed or as in your case, the lens replaced. nina
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Past Times by Poul Anderson was a collection of short stories which I generally do not care for. I prefer my stories more in depth. It was OK, but not good enough to continue at this time. Especially since Scarlet is sitting on my shelf and subtly calling my name. I planned on starting it tomorrow but I'm going to start it right now...Have a great day, everyone, and Happy Reading!
I am now reading Alex Kava's "The Soul Catcher". So far, just average.
I started Scarlet on Saturday, but had no chance to read yesterday or today. So, since Jackie was able to hold off this long (kudos, girl! :-)), we'll still be keeping pace on our buddy read of the trilogy. (In many cases, I don't read all the books of a trilogy back to back, but I'm glad to be doing that with this one.)
I didn't get very far, Anthony came home early from work, a neighbor visited and cooking dinner. But I plan on being caught up later tonight or in the morning.It's such a great story, I was pleased to be able to go back to back on this trilogy.
Mary JL wrote: "I am now reading Alex Kava's "The Soul Catcher". So far, just average."I see that The Soul Catcher (Maggie O'Dell #3) is a murder mystery.
Now reading a science fiction novel by David Drake called "Starliner".
Wow, Mary JL, you're a fast reader! :)Starliner (1992)
One of the GR reviewers said (about _Starliner_ by David Drake) :
"What a great ride this book is. Excellent character work, and a nice plot to go with it, too.
Couldn't ask for more. A good read."
FROM: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Mary JL wrote: Now reading a science fiction novel by David Drake called "Starliner". Ouu, that sounds good. I eagerly await your review.
I'll have to look when I get home, but I don't think I've ever read a novel by David Drake. I've read quite a few short stories by him in collections, usually about Hammer's Slammers. The novel that he wrote with Karl Edward Wagner, Killer, was pretty good, though.
Jim, Drake does good military and adventure science fiction. If you search Gr by author name, you will find dozens of novels by him.The current one I am reading is fast paced and well done.
I'm reading the Time Travelers Wife it's going very slow for me. Has anyone read this and did the find it a bit slow?
Margaret wrote: "I'm reading the Time Travelers Wife it's going very slow for me. Has anyone read this and did the find it a bit slow?"Margaret, below is what I wrote in my review:
====================================================
"I finished listening to the audio version of The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger. It's a strange story about a man (Henry) who moves involuntarily from one time period to another, suddenly disappearing from one location and time period into another location and time period, sometimes many years apart. (The story tells us that Henry suffered from "Chrono-Displacement Disorder").
"The writing is intelligent and thoughtful. I was compelled to keep listening. However, there were parts which lagged for me; I wish they had been edited out (e.g., art work and strange dreams). (I hate dream sequences.) I also wondered where the story was going at times. There were some sad parts that were a bit difficult to get through. All in all, it was a fascinating story.
"I'm wondering how they were able to make a movie out of it. That's one movie I want to see."
FROM: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
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See Robin's comment at my review linked above. She said: "Joy, I had a really hard time with this book. It got so many rave reviews but I just found it confusing and not keeping my interest. Tough to digest."
BTW, I gave the movie 3 Netflix stars out of 5. It was OK, but not terrific. For some reason, it didn't draw me in. The audio-book version had a more "other-world" quality than the movie, as Henry appeared and disappeared. Perhaps, in this case, one's imagination is better than seeing the real thing on film.
I will keep reading and hope that it becomes less challenging.It's interesting but not exciting, I'm still waiting to be drawn in.
Margaret,I didn't find it slow or boring. I have to admit, I expected it to be more scifi-ish but it was good anyway.
Jackie, I think you are more accustomed to reading sci-fi than I am. So you appreciate it more. My brain hasn't been able to adapt to SF.Below is another comment I had made about _The Time Traveler's Wife_:
====================================================
"I'm glad I listened to the audio. I think it was easier to keep my forward momentum with the book. Otherwise I might have bogged down at certain points if I were reading. There were several dry spots.
"It was a bit confusing at times (and a bit annoying) to follow all the the time shifts. There were so many of them interspersed throughout the story. The voices on the audio helped to keep my attention. The male voice (read by Christopher Burns) was very expressive."
FROM: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
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I can see who the time shifts can be an issue for one not used to that kind of thing.
I thought this interesting! One of our local middle school teachers gave this assignment: Students were to read any book that had a movie made from it and compare the differences in the movie from the book. It turned out to be a fun assignment according to the participants and the teacher. nina
I thought this interesting! One of our local middle school teachers gave this assignment: Students were to read any book that had a movied made from it and compare the differences in the movie from the book. It turned out to be a fun assignment according to the participants and the teacher. nina
Nina, I think that's a great assignment!
That would be a good assignment. Lots of fun for all. Some books only have the title in common, it seems. Others are very true to course.
As far as movies made from books are concerned my favorites that are just as good as a movie were; "Dr.Zivago, The World According to Garp, and Pride and Prejudiced(the mini series, not the movie.) And, "To Kill a Mockingbird," and I have forgotten the name of either the book or the movie but one was made from author Farley Mohawt's. I think that is the right spelling, but not certain? Anyway both were equally good. nina
Jackie wrote: "I can see who the time shifts can be an issue for one not used to that kind of thing."yes it sometimes gets a bit confusing going back and forth, but I really like the book It's quite interesting. I can not read it at bedtime because I need to be alert to read it.
Never Cry Wolf : Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves? Never saw the movie, but loved the book.Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, Shogun, The Thorn Birds, The Outlaw Josey Wales, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Sometimes a Great Notion & 2001: A Space Odyssey are all books I liked that got turned into great movies. There are plenty more examples, too.
Usually, I still like the book better, but not always.
Charles Dickens & many of the old 'classics' are much better as movies, IMO. Dickens was paid by the word & writes like it. Sometimes old language gets in the way. For instance, I liked Mel Gibson's version of Hamlet much better than the original. Way back when, I read quite a bit of William Shakespeare's work close together & it was much more enjoyable as I got the hang of the language.
It's rare, but occasionally a movie can be too true to a book to its detriment. I think that was one of the big problems with Destination Moon by Robert A. Heinlein. All the waiting & scientific stuff was fine in a book, but just boring on the screen.
Of course, Hollywood has managed to mutilate quite a few good books. This is so usually the case that I often won't watch a movie if I've read the book. Richard Matheson's I Am Legend was very well done by Vincent Price as "The Last Man on Earth". "The Omega Man" with Charleton Heston bore little resemblance & was SO 70's - campy, but fun. The latest rendition with Will Smith just sucked.
Sometimes movies are fairly well done, but make gaffs that just ruin it. Most movies with horses in them seem to think that all animals look alike, especially horses. Worse, they don't think anyone will even notice swapping a mare & a gelding around. I must admit, it often gets by me, but it NEVER gets by my wife, daughter & mother. To them, horses are more distinctive than people, so I hear about it & notice it.
I remember one movie which actually changed the ending of the book. I can't remember the title but the story was about a girl who was very comfortable with horses (but not with people). I'm not sure if she trained them or not. Anyway, I remember being very disappointed in the ending.
Joy, unfortunately, changing the ending is not all that unusual in movie "adaptations" of books. (And very often the change is detrimental.)
Werner wrote: "Joy, unfortunately, changing the ending is not all that unusual in movie "adaptations" of books. (And very often the change is detrimental.)"Yes, Werner. Somehow it doesn't seem right to change the ending when a book is made into a film. It seems dishonest, especially when they use the same title. It's not fair to the book's author and disappointing to the readers.
I wish I could remember the name of that book and movie. I'm pretty sure the book was a bestseller. If I remember correctly, the girl's mother sent her away to a horse farm where she thrived. There was a romance too.
Joy wrote: It seems dishonest, especially when they use the same title. It's not fair to the book's author and disappointing to the readers.That's how I feel! I don't know why they don't just make their movie and call it something else.
While I loved both the book & the movie of A Clockwork Orange, the movie left just a bit of the end out & completely changed the tone. Anthony Burgess was quite upset, I believe.I read First Blood well before I saw the movie & thought it was great. Rambo dies in the end, though. The movie changed that so they could make sequels & ruined the entire end of the movie, IMO. I can't blame David Morrell for going along with it, though. First, I doubt he had any choice. Second, he made a boat load of money out of it.
;-)
Jim wrote: "While I loved both the book & the movie of A Clockwork Orange, the movie left just a bit of the end out & completely changed the tone. Anthony Burgess was quite upset, ..."Interesting comments, Jim.
Joy H. wrote: "I remember one movie which actually changed the ending of the book. I can't remember the title but the story was about a girl who was very comfortable with horses (but not with people). I'm not sur..."I have found out that the title of the book and movie was The Horse Whisperer
by Nicholas Evans.
BTW, I found out by going to the group named: "What's The Name of That Book???".
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/4...
My memory of the plot wasn't exact but it was near enough.
In the case of A Clockwork Orange (which was first published in England), the real culprits in the changing of the ending were the publishers of the first American edition, who deliberately omitted the final chapter in order to change the tone and the message. To be fair to the filmmaker, he was adapting that version, and didn't know it differed from the original until the movie was already underway. But yes, Burgess was VERY unhappy, with both products.
Oh, that's right. Thanks, Werner. The publisher should have been shot for that - completely wrong.
I've never read or seen "A Clockwork Orange" but I have often wondered about the meaning of the title. The following links provide excellent explanations about the title and the story itself:http://answers.yahoo.com/question/ind...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/ind...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/ind...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/ind...
http://mubi.com/topics/1559
Below are some excerpts from the links above:
====================================================
"A clockwork is an artificial mechanical copy of something, like a robot. Alex became a clockwork when the authorities took away his human impulses. An old british cockney saying 'queer as a clockwork orange' translates as an object 'as strange and useless as a mechanical fruit, that you cannot use or eat' "
"Here is how Burgess himself explained the title:
'by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange--meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.'"
Source: Burgess's introduction to Clockwork Orange
"Burgess thought that the phrase could be used punningly to refer to a mechanically responsive (clockwork) human (orang, Malay for 'man'").
"In the book and movie, it connoted a person who has no free will, a person who could only be good or bad, but nothing in between--and human beings, if they have free will--must be a combination of good and evil."
"It is a philosophical, dystopian novel. It raises the moral question: Is it better to be destructive by your own will, or to be benign by being forced into a certain set of behaviors?"
"The deepest meaning of A Clockwork Orange, both the film and the novel, is that Anthony Burgess’ house was broken into one night and his wife was raped, only to die shortly thereafter.
The entire story is his attempt to cope with that trauma, and to get into the mind of a person capable of doing such a thing, even making them sympathetic to some extent. It’s his therapy, essentially."
NOTE: See further clarification about Burgess's wife's death in a post below.
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There is so much meaning hidden in the title.
Very hidden! :)
At least it made me curious.:)
Joy, thanks for sharing that research with us; that was genuinely illuminating, as well as fascinating! (You should cross-post that on the thread that deals with the origin of unusual titles --this one is a textbook example.)
Werner, thank you for your appreciative comments and also for your suggestion. I'll try to follow up.After doing the research above about the meaning of the title, "A Clockwork Orange", I can now appreciate the Goodreads description which says:
"A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom."
I have always found the issue of "free will" to be very interesting. Since so many of our choices are based on what has happened to us in our past lives, the issue is even more complicated than we can ever know.
PS-NOTE: The statement above about Anthony Burgess's wife came from a discussion at:http://mubi.com/topics/1559
The discussion went like this:
===================================================
Brandon Bedaw said: "The deepest meaning of A Clockwork Orange, both the film and the novel, is that Anthony Burgess’ house was broken into one night and his wife was raped, only to die shortly thereafter. The entire story is his attempt to cope with that trauma, ..."
sacredchao replied: "I’ve never heard that before. Are you sure? Do you have a source? I just read through his biography and his first wife died of cirrhosis of the liver and his second died in 07, fourteen years after he did."
Brandon Bedaw explained: "Burgess has talked about it a few times. He goes into it during an interview on the recent blu-ray release of the film.
I shouldn’t have written “shortly thereafter”, though. She was raped during WWII, resulting in a miscarriage and her alcoholism, which is eventually what killed her."
====================================================
Hope that clarifies things.
Interesting. Thanks, Joy. You can also find more on both him & his works on Wikipedia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_...
His first wife died in 1948. He married his second the same year, a much younger woman - 15 years younger.
Werner, thanks for the Wiki link about Anthony Burgess.It says that _Clockwork Orange_ "was inspired initially by an incident during World War II in which his wife Lynne was robbed and assaulted in London by deserters from the U.S. Army during the blackout. The event may have contributed to a miscarriage."
Werner wrote: "Joy, thanks for sharing that research with us; that was genuinely illuminating, as well as fascinating! (You should cross-post that on the thread that deals with the origin of unusual titles..."Werner, I've followed up on your suggestion. Good idea!
I've posted the info in Message #10 at:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/3...
"Title Origins and/or Meanings"
Sounds good, Joy, thanks! And, uh, (re message #840), you're welcome, but that link (message #839) was actually supplied by Jim. :-)
Werner: Oh, yes, I see. Sorry Jim! Thanks!
That's OK, Joy. You're a mother. I understand. Names are interchangeable. At least you're not confusing us with the dogs & horses like mine (both wife & mother, actually) does.;-)
My mother occasionally called me by our oldest cat's name, Tom. (At least she didn't confuse me with any of the females.... :-))
I'm sure Tom didn't mind. :)
Speaking of movies; We saw at good one night before last, "Meet the Morgans," staring Hugh Grant. I happen to like him, but if you don't you might not like this movie. It was at times funny and good character acting. Then, last night a disappointment in serveral ways. First, was the character that Judi Dench played. She was crude; not a bit funny. Bad language. Why would she accept such a role, puzzles me. My opinion of her went south. The movie was titled, "The Blonde Bombshells." MY husband's remark after the movie, "It was crummy." nina
Thanks, Nina. The links are below."Did You Hear About the Morgans?"(2009)
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Did-You-...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1314228/
"In New York City, an estranged couple who witness a murder are relocated to small-town Wyoming as part of a witness-protection program."
"This movie is: Feel-good, Romantic" (Comedy)
Oh, boy! This one is streamable from Netflix.
"The Last of the Blonde Bombshells" (2000) (TV)
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/The-Last...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220608/
"A woman (Judy Dench) tries to reunite the swing band she played with during WWII."
"This movie is: Feel-good, Sentimental"
I watched this one on a Netflix DVD. I gave it 4 stars out of 5.
Judi Dench was OK, IMO.
Finished Scarlet earlier. I just couldn't put it down. Any free moment I had, I ran to the book. The series gets better with every page. I'm excited to continue the trilogy with Tuck. In the meantime, I chose Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt for no other reason than liking the author's other books.
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