Mythos by Stephen Fry
Well, right at hand I have Rescue of the Bounty, The Novels of Dashiell Hammett, Krauthammer's Things That Matter, and Nigel Calder's Shakedown Cruise. The last is written about sailing a 38' ketch named Nada on her first cruise. Nada lives here on Long Island now. My friend owns her, and I've sailed and cruised aboard. The book feels a bit like a family story.
For some reason my wife thinks I have too many books. I told her there is no such thing.
Sailing disaster?
Brings back many memories of when my father was lost at sea 41 years ago. Been wanting to write a book about it myself but have never done it.
May there be fair winds and calm seas.
My greatest fear, though I used to compete open ocean swims. I'm really sorry your father had to endure that, terrible disaster. I'll only gently say, I hope he came back to you. A story that needs to be told.
It’s all good.
I will have to check out some of those books.
Sailing: I think either I, or someone else mentioned them so sorry if so, but I enjoyed To the Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy, by William Golding. Also Pincher Martin, same author. British sailor stranded on a literal rock in the middle of the North Atlantic, ship was torpedoed, WWII. Think Robinson Crusoe, with Crusoe's living in an island paradise comparatively speaking. Along with the Sea novels and The Inheritors (neanderthal meets homo-sapien), loved Pincher.
I could not finish Pincher Martin. Promising, with incredible detail by a gifted writer. Such incredible, incredible detail. But my god, how can one write an entire chapter on a wet rock that Pincher was clinging to. I found myself skipping pages of this incredible detail, and ultimately gave up when I realized the author had no intention of moving the plot along. I suppose I would have finished it when I was younger, but these days I have low tolerance/patience for things that don't appeal to me.
Hahahaha, yeah, I get that. When I first went through it I was on a mad tear through English writers - I've read, several times, every word the late John Fowles wrote, to include his personal diaries (going all the way back to teen years), musings on writing, studies on islands and trees, novels. I was nuts for him. And it was in this period that I read all the Goldings, incl. Pincher Martin. It would be interesting to read it again now. You've said it really well, eloquently, as a critique and I respect that. Did you ever come to the finish?
No, did not finish. I presume from the pace of the thing that Pincher is still clinging to that wet rock
I suppose I would have finished it when I was younger, but these days I have low tolerance/patience for things that don't appeal to me.
That was me with War and Peace. I finished it, but then again I was younger at the time and decided I would slog through even though I hated it just to say I'd finished it.
I believe War and Peace is a sadistic joke inflicted on the public by literature professors that hate us and think we're rubes. So they foist a book that has no redeeming value outside of being an excellent [AND HEAVY!] doorstop and wait to see who will be stubborn enough to trudge through 1000+ pages of that tedious, meaningless, tome.
Hahahaha, oh, come on, fellers. Yes, some of it painful - but the battle sequences are some of the finest threads of writing I've ever experienced. As an orthodox nationalist, he almost made me a believer; along with Anna Karenina - scenes there after day's harvest done, peasants drinking rye-beer and eating their dark rye bread. I don't know, I find Tolstoy beautiful. Each to their own! Maybe it helps to play in Chekhov plays. You get used to a bunch of Russian aristos milling about, lol.
As a counterpoint, you've got something like Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. She's a terrible writer. Wooden two-dimensional characters that are typically either wholly heroic or wholly villains. Stilted interactions. Spending 30 or so pages on a monologue.
But I actually found myself eager to turn the page and find out what happens next. For as terrible as her writing is, at least the plot was engaging.
I really hate to quit reading a book, but since I read so many, (around 50/year) I have started allowing myself to quit reading one or two per year, instead of slugging through it and being miserable. I think you mentioned Children of Time in this thread? I actually gave up on it 1/3rd through. Last year I gave up on a fantasy book, that I completely have forgotten the name of. I think the solution is to be more picky about the books I start. I now download a sample ALWAYS and screen it first.
Hmm... I actually really enjoyed Children of Time. Just not your genre?
No excuse really, I love Sci-Fi, and especially anything to do with time travel. I think the thing with the spiders was what annoyed me the most.
No excuse really, I love Sci-Fi, and especially anything to do with time travel. I think the thing with the spiders was what annoyed me the most.
No excuse really, I love Sci-Fi, and especially anything to do with time travel. I think the thing with the spiders was what annoyed me the most.
Or better, Dark Matter? Oh yea, that is a time travel that will bend yer mind. Haha, loved this one.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0180T0IUY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
I was skeptical. I just finished the tenth book and I've really enjoyed them so far. The biggest issue is that by the seventh book or so there are so many different threads going on that you end up going through an entire book without a whole lot happening in any of them - a crisis that would normally be introduced and resolved in a single book may take three or four volumes to finally resolve. Jordan's really good at getting the reader back up to speed whenever he switches to another thread, but it can be a bit frustrating to get invested in one of the threads only for it to go back into hibernation a couple chapters later without making much progress and not return for another 250 pages.I have been thinking more seriously about starting The Wheel of Time this year, it's been on my bucket list forever. I've seen a lot of people mention it in this thread.
Lately I've read:
Great Expectations
As a counterpoint, you've got something like Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. She's a terrible writer. Wooden two-dimensional characters that are typically either wholly heroic or wholly villains. Stilted interactions. Spending 30 or so pages on a monologue.
But I actually found myself eager to turn the page and find out what happens next. For as terrible as her writing is, at least the plot was engaging.
I read Great Expectations in 1981. Checked it out from the Los Angeles Public Library. It's sitting on the shelf next to me right now I've given all of my books away, or in garbage / garage sale, but a few remain, including this one, for reason of guilt. One day I'll return it, I swear. It was a great book with the unexpected ending of course. Pip and Tom and Mrs Haversham. I read most everything Dickens wrote. Tale of Two Cities was his masterpiece for sure.
Nope, you're right, and these are good points. Most immediately for me is that it's the same when I watch an actor - because I was one, for a long time; Shakespearean, classically trained, Chicago theater, Los Angeles stuff you'd never seen me in (lol). And so I cannot help it - when I watch a performance, I'm not only taken by the performance, by the character, but also by the work of it, the choices I can see, the truth of what the actor is doing, etc. And to some extent it's the same for me when it comes to writing.
I have been thinking more seriously about starting The Wheel of Time this year, it's been on my bucket list forever. I've seen a lot of people mention it in this thread.
I read Great Expectations in 1981. Checked it out from the Los Angeles Public Library. It's sitting on the shelf next to me right now I've given all of my books away, or in garbage / garage sale, but a few remain, including this one, for reason of guilt. One day I'll return it, I swear. It was a great book with the unexpected ending of course. Pip and Tom and Mrs Haversham. I read most everything Dickens wrote. Tale of Two Cities was his masterpiece for sure.
I was always amazed at how much Jordan could say with so few words. I loved the way he would have so many threads going, and weave them together. Often there were characters in one thread having a profound affect on characters in another, without either group knowing that the other was involved.
I'm glad someone picked up the torch to finish the story, but Sanderson's writing style is very different. What Jordan had planned for 1 book took Sanderson 2 massive tomes to tell. I got about halfway through the final book before I put it down and walked away for over a year. 500 pages on a single battle was just too much.
Am in the middle of Matthew Hockenos Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemoller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis. It's an interesting book about a German man who was an officer on a U-Boat in WWI, became a pastor, and seemed ok with the rise of Hitler in Hitler's early days before he realized what Nazism was going to do to the country and the church. He was eventually arrested for speaking against the Nazis from the pulpit and after being sentenced to time served he was thrown in a camp until the end of WWII.
Certainly not a blameless man, but a good case can be made that he would become a repentant man. I think there are lessons that can be learned from his life.
I'd recommend it.
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