Search results

Don't worry about Iraq - think Iran A declassified CIA document now says that the world is more dangerous since the USA started their Holy War on Terror. Iraq is a mess of a country being torn apart by civil strife and is no longer a safety valve to keep those crazy Iranians in check. Iran will...

I think we've left it pretty clear on this thread that it makes him a hypocrite :D I don't think there's really any convicing explanation. If he spent 60 years preaching to German people to face their past, then he should have admitted his SS role. Do you think it would harder for an...

Reading Frenzy Indeed Saramago, José: The Stone Raft Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver's Travels Hong Kingston, Maxine: The Woman Warrior Dostoevsky, Feodor: Devils Cortázar, Julio: Bestiary Pessoa, Fernando: Message Böll: Heinrich: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum García Marquéz, Gabriel...

You are giving people too much credit. Most people are sheep and they are content in being sheep; average people do not plan revolutions and they seldom turn against their government. How would the average illiterate 18th century Frenchman who toiled all day in subhuman conditions have the...

Seeing Thanks, Sofia. Didn't you just love the two only moments with the Dog of Tears? Seeing is a novel of ideas, far more so than Blindness. Saramago practically eschews plot and character to develop the premise in all directions. In an age when democracies seem less democratic, casting a...

I bought Identity today just to see if Milan Kundera is interesting.

Most people in hindsight say they wouldn't have joined the Nazis. But of course they weren't there, inside that society, to understand it was inescapable. It's very easy to seem morally superior now, but I doubt these people would have the courage to really die for their convictions :rolleyes...

Interesting that whenever a writer sides with the wrong politics, he's just politically naive or stupid. Writers are so clever about some things, but can't read newspapers and add two and two to make four :rolleyes: I wouldn't know about PG Wodehouse's case, but Pound's fascination with...

Thanks for the list of diminuitives, Phlebas. That certainly makes things clearer for me :)

I wonder if the sinister Unity of Jurists (just whisper it) has any power to prosecute anyone outside Turkey? Suppose some self-exiled Turkish writer living abroad in some western country wrote a book that denigrated turkishness. How could the Unity of Jurists (sure to be the secret evil society...

No, Phlebas, that was quite educational :)

Horror movies seldom scare me, perhaps because I never watch them at night or in the dark :rolleyes: but if horror movies need these conditions to scare, they're not doing their job :D The Shining scared the hell out of me during daylight, and it's still the only horror movie that disturbs...

Well, you'd better not tell me what writers you like, for I'm sure I could easily find some dirt on each one, the poor guys being humans and all :D If I thought like that I couldn't read TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, John dos Passos, Knut Hamsun, Gabriel García Márquez, and so many more. Some...

I've stopped several times, but eventually always return to them. Books on hiatus right now include Ulysses, The French Lieutenant's Wife and The Stranger.

I agree with Crimson King. One can't break up a novel. If the writer has done his job properly, then each part is inseparable from the other, each moment builds on the previous one and whets one's apetite for the next.

I prefer the 3rd person narrator. I can't stand the confessional tone of the 1st person narrative, it seems to easy. However, I do enjoy the unnamed omnipresent 1st person narrator who is acquainted with someone inside the story and slowly builds up a fractured story from rumors and a posteriori...

Russian names are terrible, aren't they? It's like each character has two or three names. Crime and Punishment confused me with Raskolnikov also being Rodion and Rodya :eek: Too many characters shouldn't pose a problem if the novel manages to juggle them evenly. For that I believe it needs...

Thank very much for that, Shade! The God Delusion is now on my to buy list.

Visited a book fair today: it had lots of great stuff at low prices; unfortunately I am short on money right now :mad: so it felt like torture to me. I only got No One Writes to the Colonel, by García Márquez, The Lost Honor of Katharine Blum, by Heinrich Böll, and a book of literary essays...

I prefer watching the plays, or the movie adapations, if they're good. I love Henry V very much because of Kenneth Brannagh's beautiful version. Kurosawa's Ran is also a good adaptation of King Lear. I'd say these two filmmakers taught me to love Shakespeare.