Yep, I would too. Recently, I had the misfortune to watch the remake, starring The Tree, formerly known as Keanu Reeves. I'll never get that 2+ hours back. Jeez, it was appallingly bad. Any worse and I think it would have been better.
How about some more recommendations PM? I've read pretty much all that Bester, Blish, Dick, Bear, Banks and Simmons have written. Niven's Ringworld books were awesome and, in Chilco Kindle fashion, I am half way through Peter Hamilton's stuff. Where to next?
Something to keep you going for a while. I would suggest. Kim Stanley Robinson, especially the Mars trilogy, that is epic. If you like that, then maybe Alastair Reynolds, the Revelation Space series. Also, by the same author, Century Rain was good too.
They never learn do they? A list of films should be drawn up, by the guild, that can never be remade.
Oy! Ospreys are not for eating. Talking of fishy taste, I've been looking for a copy of "Good News From Fratton Park" by D Ludedfan. A historic but relatively thin volume.
Notes From the Underground, Dostoevsky. I'm hopelessly neurotic, so Russian literature it is, then. Catch-22, Heller. Just a stellar conceit, and as Godders notes, not about war at all, really. The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn. Fascinating in a "how in the **** was that possible?" sort of way. On some level, I can understand how people allowed atrocities such as the Holocaust to take place...it involves 'the other'. How 14 million people, the bulk Russian, can be moved through the gulag system during its existence without ever prompting a response the least bit threatening to the governing apparatus is mind-boggling, even in a state as disjointed as the USSR. Vimy, Pierre Burton. Incredibly-detailed account of the Canadian-led assault on Vimy Ridge during WWI. Tactically fascinating, and again because I do not understand why or how such things can happen; Vimy was a pretty small battle by the way of things in WWI, but the individual-level accounts are appalling, as is the fact that it was the culmination of a two-year-long attempt to capture a pretty minor feature of terrain that resulted in a quarter million deaths, give or take. Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman. Examination of the lead-up to and early events of the First World War. Really explains the hubris and detachment that lets things like the above happen at an executive level.
I read John Keegan's book "The First World War" and I think I now understand what it was all about. My reading on this conflict has as a result been quite substantial. I have just finished The Reader by Bernhard Schlink about a young man's relationship with an older woman and her involvement in the Nazi atrocities. An absorbing read. Dostoevsky I always struggle with and never finish. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak was the most powerful book I have read recently and one of the very few books to bring me to tears. An absolute must read for anyone with a heart.
Track down Notes From the Underground. It's typically long-winded, but it's really a short story, so it sprawls perhaps 125-150 pages, depending on the translator. Day's reading, and it's worth it. Edit: don't know the quality of the translation, but here it is in glorious html: http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/to...modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1
Just finished reading Tolstoy's War and Peace, translation by Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky. I waited til I was over 50 to read it, but I always knew I had to do it one day. Some respected literary scholars and critics have claimed that it's the best novel ever written, and I think they're right, lofty claim though that is. "If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy" - Isaac Babel
There are parts to War and Peace that are certainly among the best things ever written...the cavalry charge and aftermath chief among them. But **** could he do with an editor.
That's the thing though, Schad. I didn't think there was a single wasted word in the entire novel. I might have felt differently if i'd read it when i was younger, and it's sheer size - "it is a vast as Russia itself" - put me off trying for years, but once I started, it was never a chore. The hunting scene with the dogs was so vivid and poetic, I think it'll stay with me for life. Prince Andrei's three epiphanies are the key to the story as I read it, btw, but everyone will have their own take.
I found the relationships to be trite; the fact that two otherwise-improbable marriages (spoiler alert?) were rolled into the epilogue has always spoken to an incomplete narrative tied up imperfectly, for me. There are really two portions to it, as there should be given the title...life at the front, and life at a remove from the fighting. One is just much more compelling and far better written than the other.
For future reference, please put "spoiler alert" at the start of your text! I shall now have to wait a year to forget what you said!
I've read parts 1 thru 5. It's got better as it has moved on. The Wolves of Calla was excellent. I shall read them all in time.
Actually, Voldemort was defeated in 1998 as the beginning of the academic year in the book is always 1990 + (the book number) i.e. 1990 + 7, however he was defeated at the end of the academic year. You could but then you'd be missing out!
