Currently reading the DaVinci Code...I hope it's as good as everyone says.

I'm a proud, grown up Harry Potter fan, and will be counting the days until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince comes out (July 2005)!

Rhondab said:

I've read her autobiography twice...I LOVE ANGELA DAVIS!!! That, and the autobiography of Malcom X (which I've read three times) as told by Alex Hailey are the two books that mess with me each time. I finish them and just start balling...

I'm currently halfway through Volume II of In Search of Lost Time: Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust. Istensek gave me the idea to finish the entire series...I plan to finish all six books before my birthday in mid May.

The following quote is from Within A Budding Grove:

"No doubt very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon that we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, distinct from the person whom the world knows by the same name, a person whose constituent elements are derived from ourselves."


It made an impression on me because I've found myself defending this "supplementary person" to so many of my friends, who demand, it seems, that I do what THEY say. You see, I was always the proverbial third wheel in a world full of couples. Now, that I find myself with someone, my friends are not too happy about it.

DexMSR said:

It's the "prequal" to the DaVinci Code

jonylawson said:

My roommate read davinci code (he never reads) and it took him almost a year. When he finally finished he insisted that I have a crack at it. I leafed through about two or three pages and I couldn't do it. I kept looking over my shoulder thinking someone I know might find me reading it...

I'm also a book snob...and the finally straw for me is when they make lame movie versions...

I'm still living in fear of the movie version of one my favorire books; THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt...it's been in development hell for over 10 years...so hopefully that will never happen.

I just finished reading The Kite Runner. It was heartbreaking, but beautifully written and a very interesting story line.

Cloudbuster said:

Wow CB, I didn't know you were a King fan? I love SK. I've read every damn thing he's ever written. Have you read The Stand or It? Both are great. The Dark Tower series are pretty good too.

kisscamille said:

Aye! I started with The Shining last summer and slowly started my way through his work. The only one's I haven't been too keen on are The Tommyknockers and Needful Things. The rest were excellent. I love the two you mentioned and Pet Sematary is a fave, also. I haven't started The Dark Tower series yet, I'm gonna save them until the end.

Cloudbuster said:

Some of his books are a little cheesy (like Tommyknockers) but most are quite good if you like that kind of stuff. When you start the Dark Tower, don't be put off my the first book. It's ok, but it's not nearly as fun and interesting as the next 6. It was a great series. Pet Cemetary was good. Did you see the movie

"the Last Herald Mage" trilogy by Mercedes Lackey for the third time, one of my all time favorites.

kisscamille said:

Thanks for warning me about the Dark Tower set.

No, I haven't seen the film version of PS. That bad, eh?

cborgman said:

No-one cares about what you're reading.

Is shakespeare dead by Mark Twain

SO FAR AS ANY ONE KNOWS, HE RECEIVED ONLY ONE LETTER DURING HIS LIFE.

So far as any one KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote only one poem during his life. This one is authentic. He did write that one--a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides to this day. This is it:

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.

In the list as above set down will be found EVERY POSITIVELY KNOWN fact of Shakespeare's life, lean and meager as the invoice is. Beyond these details we know NOT A THING about him. All the rest of his vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures--an Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts.
When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed to him as author had been before the London world and in high favor for twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event. It made no stir, it attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries did not realize that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst. Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not regard him as the author of his Works. "We are justified in assuming" this.

His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. Does this mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of ANY kind?

"We are privileged to assume"--no, we are indeed OBLIGED to assume--that such was the case. He had spent the first twenty- two or twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was known by everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and the cats and the horses. He had spent the last five or six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a CELEBRITY? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the same unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with that period of his life they didn't tell about it. Would they if they had been asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It is pretty apparent that they were not. Why weren't they? It is a very plausible guess that nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know.

For seven years after Shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson awoke out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the front of the book. Then silence fell AGAIN.

For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare's Stratford life began to be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known Shakespeare or had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had seen people who had known or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? No. Apparently the inquires were only made of Stratfordians who were not Stratfordians of Shakespeare's day, but later comers; and what they had learned had come to them from persons who had not seen Shakespeare; and what they had learned was not claimed as FACT, but only as legend-- dim and fading and indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth remembering either as history or fiction.
[Edited 3/2/05 10:52am]

am i the only one

Cloudbuster said:

as opposed to the masses of people who care about you reading "green eggs and ham"?

ehuffnsd said:

What is this book about? I've heard about it many times, but I'm not sure if I would like it. Obviously it's about the Wicked Witch, but do we really want to know about her. Is it interesting?

kisscamille said:

it's very interesting.

it makes Oz to be a very different place. Oz was ruled by a royal line and was over thrown by the Wizard who turned into a dictator. imposed harsh rules over the freedoms of talking animals kept the poor very poor. The witch was born into to a overly religous zealot of a father and turns into an activist for the talking animals. she goes to college with her sister and the Glinda the good witch. they were all friends... blah blah blah thats about as far as i've gotten it's fairly good read. it's tale about the roots of evil and sometimes evil is just in the eyes of the beholder.

ehuffnsd said:

This is also a musical on Broadway, correct?

ehuffnsd said:

Sounds quite good. Thanks a lot.

MIGUELGOMEZ said:

yes, but it strays far, far, far from the book

cborgman said:

Yeah. They sing songs. That must suck big time.

Last book in The Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

ehuffnsd said:

i read this book a long time ago and really enjoyed it. his other books are great, too.

Anxiety said:

thanks i'm thinking of picking them up

HamsterHuey said:

they also changed a lot of the story and characters became completely different, and the ending is completely out of left field. i hated it.

cborgman said:

HATER!

everyone i know who has seen it loves it... but they haven't read the book either

Anxiety said:

want a sip of my hateraide?

ehuffnsd said:

i might have liked it if i had not read the book. however, having read the book, it made me cringe repeatedly. kristin chenowith and idina menzel were awesome though in the 2 leading roles