Off Topic What Is Your Favourite Book And Who Is Your Favourite Author?

Toni Morrison!

Read Beloved a long time ago, it's astonishing.

Thank you for the reminder, I'll be reading it again very soon!

 

Have you ever tried to read Finnegans Wake ?

 

Alexander Kent. The Bolitho stories.

Clancy.

Ludlum.

Anyone saying they still read Shakespeare, Keats, Yates or Neitsche after they've left school is a pretentious spunkbucket!

 

Yeah, they've both been on my "to read" list for a very long time.

That list has about 400 books on it, by the way.

 

No. To be honest with you, I had a go at reading Ulysses, but gave up fairly early on. I'm not keen on Joyce's style.

 

Also like Robert Harris as I'm interested in history.

Fatherland is arguably his best novel.

 

Tend to read mostly fictional stuff nowadays.

Grisham is one of the top modern storytellers, for me.

 

Had to study Paradise Lost in my first year. That's some painful ****.

One day Paradise Lost, the next day On The Road. What a course!

 

Really ? What didn't you like about Joyce's style in Ulysses ?

Finnegans Wake is a whole other thing altogether, I read about 50 pages and then threw the ****ing thing out of the window, but Ulysses is a masterpiece.

 

On the Road is one of my favourite books ever !

 

Had to read ALL of Shakespeare's comedies in my third year. Didn't laugh once. Not even a chuckle.

 

Nonsense!

Fantastic works! Especially Shakespeare. I cannot tell you how many times I have read the likes of Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear, or seen movies and plays. I love his poetry, too. It is truly a work of genius, and no one gets close to him.

I've read some Yeats, but can't call myself an advocate.

Never been keen on Keats. I saw him and Shelley as over-blown narcissistic clowns.

Of all the classic poets, apart from Shakespeare, I love Tennyson the most because of his classical and Romantic imagery. I can still quote huge passages of his stuff verbatim.

 

I'd need to revisit it in order to properly answer that, as it was a very long time ago! I remember being bored to tears.

 

Really ? But you find Macbeth 'fascinating' ?

Horses for courses I suppose

 

Always hated that stuff.

Poetry in general wasn't for me, I disliked the American stuff like Walt Whitman as much as Shakespeare and Byron, but I did get quite into more ****ed up stuff like TS Eliot.

 

I can relate to that.

As I've gotten older I can't be doing with books that don't grab me in the first couple of chapters. I just think '**** this', and down the charity shop it goes.

 

The only Poetry that I really enjoyed was William Blake. Partly because he was a raging socialist too.

 

Used to get free tickets to the RSC at the Barbican years ago early doors in the NHS Hiag.

Loved it! Can't beat live Shakespeare. It's powerful.

But no one reads that stuff anymore mate.

Not when they don't have to.

We're all mostly scarred by school!

Now it's way past bed time!

G'night!

 

Finnegans Wake is not like other books, you would have to have a go at reading it to understand why I mean.

I'll try and post up a few passages to give you an idea.

 

Chaucer. That's also good stuff. That guy was definitely stoned when he wrote TCT.