Recent Reading?

[Gadlor]

Just curious - what have you chumalums been reading? I'm always trying to find new stuff to read, whether it be silly power-metal-esque fantasy or actual serious literature.

Plus I am intrigued - do people who listen to the same music necessarily read the same sort of thing? I know Gums has musical tastes that are pretty close to mine - not exact, but pretty close - and we read some of the same silly fantasy stuff.

Recently I've plowed through:

Cyrano de Bergerac (by Edmond Rostand) - a French play modeled after a real-life swordsman, poet, and scientist doomed to never love because of his gigantor nose. Seriously. Actually pretty amazing.

The Game (by Laurie R. King) - Sherlock Holmes goes to India! Laurie R. King has all these books about Holmes after Doyle ends the series, and Holmes goes off and gets married, which does nothing but makes the whole shindig better.

Some book by Michael Moore. He's a little too wackjob for me with some of his conspiracy theories, and I'm about as liberal as they come without living in a commune.

And I have a copy of the Kalevala that I've been slogging through on occasion. It's weird - you can spot the passages that Amorphis lifted lyrics from. If you're into mythology, it's pretty nifty.

Also I've been reading on and off Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and a translation of some Rainer Marie Rilke poems. Anyone else into this poetry shindig?

And for the members of Skyfire...are there any corresponding Swedish works like the Kalevala? Big epic Swede mythology?

 

[trapper_87]

Cyrano de Bergerac (by Edmond Rostand) - a French play modeled after a real-life swordsman, poet, and scientist doomed to never love because of his gigantor nose. Seriously. Actually pretty amazing.

Ok, are you reading that in french? What kind of language is it? I read it in its orriginal state and did not ejoy it at all, the story was OK but I didnt like the writing.

 

[neal]

i think that book is actually based on this beast:

 

[opacity]

to my knowledge the entire Scandinavian mythology is comprised in the Edda (older and younger Edda).

finland has its own national epos because they are simply not scandinavian. so they needed an own one (very different view on the foundation of the world though the "scandinavian" one is killer too, literally =))
finns have their own pantheon too, which is similar to the scandinavian one, but not the same at all.




i've been reading mainly german books lately.
my fave fiction book seems to be by Hans Bemmann: "Stein und Flöte" (stone and flute). you can say it's a fantasy road movie but with a philosophical background, so it's entertaining and serious at the same time.

hm, and a trilogy by Jean-Louis Fetjaine - also in german since i don't understand french. it's one more interpretation of the pendragon/king arthur/merlin legend. it's fantasy but the warfare parts are historically authentic (tactics, strategy of army, howto's, daily life in the MA, etc.) which i found very interesting.

another one i quite liked was by N.M. Browne, "Hunted"
it's more young adult literature, but hey i liked it after all, a fox is playing a main role - i had to read it
fine piece of worlds crossing over, with an old celtic myth being the core of the story.

other than that I've been reading about NLP, various psychological models of "soft" therapy and such stuff (don't know the english terms for these).

 

[AlphaTemplar]

Tom Robbins - Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
Frank McCourt - 'Tis
Joseph Heller - Catch-22
Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel

Metal has a bit of an attachment to fantasy/sci-fi. I love both, but I haven't seen anything that looked really inspired and original in a while. I need to get the new Orson Scott Card though, and I've heard Otherland is pretty good.

 

[froosch]

I need to get the new Orson Scott Card though, and I've heard Otherland is pretty good.

I went to the library a while ago because I wanted to check out The Seventh Son... Well, they've got like three books in the series, but not the first one. Why the hell would they have books in a series, but not the first one? Who's gonna read the rest?

Same thing with Dune. They have like 80 Dune books, but no just Dune.

 

[neal]

Dune is awesome.

 

[Gadlor]

Anyone here ever read any Robert Heinlein? He's a little bit Dune-ish. Some of his best books are "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress," and he's definitely up there as one of my favorite authors.

 

[AlphaTemplar]

"Stranger in a Strange Land"

That where the Maiden song comes from?

 

[Gadlor]

Yeah.

Also, to the guy who asked: No, I didn't read Cyrano in French. The language is still probably a bit flowery, but it's not rhyming in English.