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Grammath

Grammath

New Member
H'm this looks like my sort of thing.

This poster is a corporate drone for a vast UK supermarket (where every little helps and we are coming to take over your town :eek: ) who is on Book Forum 'cos its better than working for a living.

My flat is crammed with books. I mostly read fiction from Wodehouse to Kafka to King i.e. I like stuff that does not suck, as the great philosopher Beavis was wont to say. I also read a lot of politics and travel. My bias is towards American literature, though - my degree is in American Studies and I lived in Pennsylvania for a year.
 
Grammath, I don't often answer intro posts (don't know why) but I like yours. Have spent many a dazed hour in Tesco while visiting my mother in law in the bleak fenlands of Lincolnshire.

What American literature do you like? I like English books--y'all sure know how to string them words together. Thinking of getting Julian Fellowes new book Snobs, which is supposed to have a sharp turn of phrase.
 
Hi Grammath! Welcome to the Forum, I'm fairly new myself. Having been a supermarket drone myself, you have my sympathies, although I was behind a register back in my summer holidays of university.

Maybe you can shed some light on what 'American Studies' actually entail, sometime. We were talking about 'Womens Studies' a week or so ago in the General Chat section, and I then started wondering what American Studies meant. Is it simply literature, or does it look at history, politics and that sort of thing as well?
 
novella said:
Grammath, I don't often answer intro posts (don't know why) but I like yours. Have spent many a dazed hour in Tesco while visiting my mother in law in the bleak fenlands of Lincolnshire.

What American literature do you like? I like English books--y'all sure know how to string them words together. Thinking of getting Julian Fellowes new book Snobs, which is supposed to have a sharp turn of phrase.
Click to expand...


I have it! I'm going to read it next!! :)
 
Grammath said:
H'm this looks like my sort of thing.

This poster is a corporate drone for a vast UK supermarket (where every little helps and we are coming to take over your town :eek: ) who is on Book Forum 'cos its better than working for a living.

My flat is crammed with books. I mostly read fiction from Wodehouse to Kafka to King i.e. I like stuff that does not suck, as the great philosopher Beavis was wont to say. I also read a lot of politics and travel. My bias is towards American literature, though - my degree is in American Studies and I lived in Pennsylvania for a year.
Click to expand...


What did you do in Pennsylvania?

Welcome to the forum! :)
 
Kookamoor said:
Hi Grammath! Welcome to the Forum, I'm fairly new myself. Having been a supermarket drone myself, you have my sympathies, although I was behind a register back in my summer holidays of university.

Maybe you can shed some light on what 'American Studies' actually entail, sometime. We were talking about 'Womens Studies' a week or so ago in the General Chat section, and I then started wondering what American Studies meant. Is it simply literature, or does it look at history, politics and that sort of thing as well?
Click to expand...

Thank you all for your welcomes. I'm particularly looking forward to having less ironing to do :p .

I've been a supermarket drone for longer than I'd care to admit :( , although I got out of store a while back and have been in head office for the past few years.

American Studies, when I took my BA in the late '80s/early '90s, had 3 branches - literature, politics and history. On the literary side of things (which I guess will be of most interest to BF'ers ;) ), books were studied as much on the basis of the context of when they were written and what they were saying about American society at the time than their literary merit. As much emphasis was placed on reading non-fiction as fiction.

The uni I went to has merged the American Studies department with its English department since my time, so the emphasis may have changed.

My degree was exclusively about the US, but other institutions include Latin America and have an element of Spanish teaching too.

The degree was 4 years, rather than the customary 3 for a UK undergraduate degree, with the 3rd year spent at a US university taking mainly junior and senior year classes in the liberal arts field. I went to Penn State.

I remember the prof who taught one of the English classes I took commenting that he felt the British students he taught had been taught how to express themselves on paper much better than the natives - this might explain why we Brits are so good at stringing words together, novella.

As for my taste in US literature, I couldn't get on with most 19th century writers at all, the only exceptions really being Twain and Poe. I mainly read modern books and think there is an exciting new wave of authors coming out of the US at the moment - Michael Chabon, Chuck Palahniuk, Jonathan Lethem and Rick Moody to name but four.

I'm fond of crime novels and I guess I like the element of danger and paranoia in most US crime writing - you're all armed, which makes a big difference :D . I rate James Ellroy, Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard highly, plus their forefathers Chandler and Hammett. And Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books make me laugh like a drain.

Other favourites include John Irving, TC Boyle, Paul Auster, Hemingway and Tom Wolfe, Philip K Dick, Neal Stephenson and, as you spotted, Stephen King. I guess about 50% of what I read is American.

Finally, Libra6Poe, I'm going to reserve judgement on "The Dark Tower" until I've finished it - I'm trying to read all 7 books consecutively so I'll be back on BF some time to let you know how I got on.
 
Thanks Grammath! Really interesting stuff.

I read a lot of American literature as well - and I just love John Irving. But so many of his books are starting to blend together for me now into one 'living in Venice, young boy with only a mother, living in a boarding school' sort of thing. I can't wait for 'The Door in the Floor' to come out as a movie. I am very intrigued!

I think this is a topic for another section, though. Maybe I'll put a thread up in the next few days.
 
Grammath said:
Thank you all for your welcomes. I'm particularly looking forward to having less ironing to do :p .

I've been a supermarket drone for longer than I'd care to admit :( , although I got out of store a while back and have been in head office for the past few years.

American Studies, when I took my BA in the late '80s/early '90s, had 3 branches - literature, politics and history. On the literary side of things (which I guess will be of most interest to BF'ers ;) ), books were studied as much on the basis of the context of when they were written and what they were saying about American society at the time than their literary merit. As much emphasis was placed on reading non-fiction as fiction.

The uni I went to has merged the American Studies department with its English department since my time, so the emphasis may have changed.

My degree was exclusively about the US, but other institutions include Latin America and have an element of Spanish teaching too.

The degree was 4 years, rather than the customary 3 for a UK undergraduate degree, with the 3rd year spent at a US university taking mainly junior and senior year classes in the liberal arts field. I went to Penn State.

I remember the prof who taught one of the English classes I took commenting that he felt the British students he taught had been taught how to express themselves on paper much better than the natives - this might explain why we Brits are so good at stringing words together, novella.

As for my taste in US literature, I couldn't get on with most 19th century writers at all, the only exceptions really being Twain and Poe. I mainly read modern books and think there is an exciting new wave of authors coming out of the US at the moment - Michael Chabon, Chuck Palahniuk, Jonathan Lethem and Rick Moody to name but four.

I'm fond of crime novels and I guess I like the element of danger and paranoia in most US crime writing - you're all armed, which makes a big difference :D . I rate James Ellroy, Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard highly, plus their forefathers Chandler and Hammett. And Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books make me laugh like a drain.

Other favourites include John Irving, TC Boyle, Paul Auster, Hemingway and Tom Wolfe, Philip K Dick, Neal Stephenson and, as you spotted, Stephen King. I guess about 50% of what I read is American.

Finally, Libra6Poe, I'm going to reserve judgement on "The Dark Tower" until I've finished it - I'm trying to read all 7 books consecutively so I'll be back on BF some time to let you know how I got on.
Click to expand...
Grief! That was a book. Confess; you're a writer.
 
Eugen said:
Grief! That was a book. Confess; you're a writer.
Click to expand...

Looks like I'm in need of a good editor then :D .

I just have too much time on my hands, really.

The idea of writing appeals but I've yet to think of a plot that inspired me to put pen to paper and start collecting publishers' rejection letters.
 
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