What are you currently reading?

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

^

Absolutely fascinating. The conditions during that event are hard to comprehend
from our relatively comfortable existence.

The intense cold, lack of basic supplies and the limited daylight hours were a true living nightmare.
On my own reading stack at the moment are two books.

'Times to Remember" a memoir by Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (Doubleday)

and

'Personal History' by Katherine Graham (Random House)

Kate Graham assumed the helm of the Washington Post after a very stormy marriage

and succeeded in a very challenging learning curve.

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Interesting old book popped up at goodwill called

'The Sign and the Seal' by Graham Hancock.

"The fate of the lost Ark of the Covenant is one of the great historical mysteries.

The mention of the Ark disappears in the Old Testament quite suddenly'.

Where did it go?

[Kaonohi]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Interesting old book popped up at goodwill called

'The Sign and the Seal' by Graham Hancock.

"The fate of the lost Ark of the Covenant is one of the great historical mysteries.

The mention of the Ark disappears in the Old Testament quite suddenly'.

Where did it go?

Where in the OT is it last mentioned?
There was a time when the Temple was destroyed; it might have been plundered at that time.

Sounds interesting!

(History is written by the victors. - Winston Churchill)

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

1 Chronicles 28:2 is a good starting point.
The evidence suggests that is was already long gone when the armies of
Nebuchadnezzar burned Jerusalem in 587 bc.

It was not in the second temple which was built over the remains of the
first after the return from exile in 538 bc.

A close reading of the old testament reveals more than two hundred seperate
references to the Ark of the Covenant
up until the time of Solomon (970-931 bc)

After the reign of that king it is never mentioned again.

[Honoruru]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. This is a re-read for me, to refresh myself for the movie, which opens on October 26. I have it circled on my calendar.

As for the novel itself, this is easily one of the best novels I’ve read in quite a while. I might even go so far as to say this is probably one of the best novels of the early 21st century. When I first read it, I had a difficult time getting into it, probably because the first story was my least favorite. But when I got to the other stories and realized what the author was trying to doing, the narrative picked up and I had a hard time putting it down. This is a novel that definitely challenges you. The sixth story, the Hawai‘i section, is the apex of the novel, but is the most difficult to get through because of the language. Mitchell imagines how language evolves after centuries, perhaps millenniums, have gone by. The language is reminiscent of Russell Hoban’s classic Riddley Walker, which Mitchell acknowledges as being influential in his writing (particularly this section of Cloud Atlas). One of the elements thrown into this invented language mix is Hawaiian pidgin.

This is not a novel you simply breeze through. But if you like a novel that challenges you, I would highly recommend it.

[Leo Lakio]

Re: What are you currently reading?

"Changeling," the autobiography of musician Mike Oldfield.

[Kaonohi]

Re: What are you currently reading?

1 Chronicles 28:2 is a good starting point.
The evidence suggests that is was already long gone when the armies of
Nebuchadnezzar burned Jerusalem in 587 bc.

It was not in the second temple which was built over the remains of the
first after the return from exile in 538 bc.

A close reading of the old testament reveals more than two hundred separate
references to the Ark of the Covenant
up until the time of Solomon (970-931 bc)

After the reign of that king it is never mentioned again.

Wow. Too bad. The Nebbieas probably melted down the gold, made chairs from the wood (good stuff, acacia!), and used the rocks (tablets) for wall-building. Or as your text suggests, it was already long gone.
LONG gone....

I love the descriptions that suggest it was a powerful capacitor! Communication with aliens????

Who knows? Let those who care, seek.

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

It should be noted that the Pandanus trees are producers of Dimethyltryptamine.

What this means for the long term , will be left to the cultural historians.

Trees root where they can.

[scrivener]

Re: What are you currently reading?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999)

“Do you always think this much, Charlie?” asks Charlie’s English teacher. Charlie wants to know if this is bad, and his teacher says, “Not necessarily. It’s just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.”

It’s not so much an accusation as advice, and Charlie is much more a watcher than participant, at high-school dances, at family gatherings, at football games, at parties, and even on dates. Some of his peers think he’s a weirdo, while others think he’s brilliant, while still others think he’s just a great listener. His parents and siblings, who know Charlie best, seem to handle him with kid gloves, looking out for warning signs that he is withdrawing completely into thought and out of participation.

Charlie chronicles his frosh year of high school as a series of letters to an unnamed “friend” who may not know him. In kind of a raw, super-sincere, confessional voice, Charlie tells this friend about his new friendships with Sam and her step-brother Patrick, both seniors, and the awkwardness and joy they add to his school year. Sex, drugs, drinking, school work, music, movies, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show all provide Charlie with inspiration as he tries to make connections between himself and everything around him, hoping for some kind of attachment when forces seemingly beyond his control but completely within him push him only toward increased detachment.

I had a real problem with the writing style in the first half, since the novel is written in Charlie’s ninth-grade voice. While I totally get the purpose of writing this way, I’ve seen the device fail too many times ever to want to experience it again. Accurately capturing the voice of a ninth-grader is no great feat and from a reader’s perspective, that voice can be maddening. The fact that Charlie is supposedly gifted, in his English teacher’s words, begs the writer to push a little more toward elegant writing.

About halfway through the book, I found myself used to this voice, mostly won over by the narrator’s utter sincerity. When a likable character opens himself so fully and shares his confusion, happiness, anguish, and love, it’s just about impossible to keep focusing on his lousy English. Of course, if everything is going to hinge on the likability of the character, it becomes necessary to keep him likable, something that can be hard to do if he’s going to be so honest about everything. And the author really does pull it off. While Charlie does things I wouldn’t do, never once do I think, “What an idiot,” or “What a jerk.”

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is often referred to as a modern Catcher in the Rye, and it’s an apt comparison, mostly because the novel works best when the reader is either a young adult or can put him- or herself in that ninth-grade emotional space. Truly great young-adult fiction doesn’t require this kind of reliving of youth and is capable of affecting readers outside its target audience. This novel doesn’t quite achieve that, but if the reader can strip away a few years’ worth of grown-upness, there is a surprisingly touching story here, one that broke my heart in ways I didn’t think it had the onions to attempt.

An excellent book for mature tweens and almost any high-schooler.

[Honoruru]

Re: What are you currently reading?

I’m just into Life of Pi by Yan Martel, winner of the 2002 Booker Prize. There is a movie version coming up, directed by Ang Lee. It opens November 23.

Note:
I bought the Kindle version of the book and, by default (at least on my Kindle), it always opens at the first chapter (bypassing the front matter: cover, title page, table of contents, etc.). For this novel, I simple dug in and began reading. Three chapters in, I decided to go back and look at the table of contents, where I discovered there was an Author’s Note prior to the first chapter, so I began reading it. What a surprise! I thought the Author’s Note, which is fairly lengthy, was more interesting and intriguing than the first three chapters of the actual narrative. It revealed that this improbable story of a man shipwrecked on a lifeboat with a tiger was based on a true story. Or so it seems. So, if you’re going to read the novel, don’t pass up the Author’s Note. I wished I had read that first, because doing it the way I did confused me a bit when I eventually resumed the narrative at Chapter 4.

As for the novel itself, so far I’m finding it a mixed bag. But it’s very early on.

[Kaonohi]

Re: What are you currently reading?

It should be noted that the Pandanus trees are producers of Dimethyltryptamine.

What this means for the long term , will be left to the cultural historians.

Trees root where they can.

Oh? And how do we extract it?

[scrivener]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Honoruru, I'm right behind you in Life of Pi. So far so good.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)

I’ve heard people talking about this David Mitchell novel for years, one or two people here, and then another one or two there, and each time it sounded like something I’d want to look at someday, but despite its apparently universal praise among people whose opinions I appreciate, I never thought I’d pick it up and actually read it. Then there were murmurs about the Wachowskis turning it into a movie, and that the very concept of filming an adaptation of this novel was mind-blowing. That intrigued me a bit. Still not enough to read the book.

Then I saw the beautiful, intriguing movie trailer. And I had to get the book, because a film this ambitious begs one to compare it to its source. I can’t stand the thought of a movie ruining a good book before I get a chance to read it.

It’s a very difficult novel to write about without spoiling it, but what’s going to give anyone a handhold on it if I don’t write something about it? I knew more about it before I read it than some might prefer and I don’t think my enjoyment or surprise were lessened one bit, so that will be my very abbreviated approach, to walk that line without going over it.

It’s a novel written as a few different stories linked by a few themes, mostly themes of how connected we all are through space and time. There’s a sense throughout its five hundred pages of characters being naggingly familiar with things they have no reason to be familiar with. The characters never figure out where that familiarity comes from, but we the readers are given some very cool insight to explain it. This multi-style, multi-voice, multi-genre attempt to sketch what one of his characters longs for, “a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable,” doesn’t come up with anything much like a revelation, but holy moly: the very exploration as it is executed is a heck of an interesting ride.

Not exactly a frame tale, it’s got a structure somewhat reminiscent of One Thousand and One Nights and The Canterbury Tales, but any comparison to those works ends pretty much at just the suggestion of similar structure. Cloud Atlas is really unlike anything I’ve ever seen. A friend described it as “meta,” but by the time I was midway through it, I declared it “meta on top of meta, wrapped in more meta.”

It’s not all enjoyable to read, but I forced my way through parts I didn’t enjoy because I could feel something neat happening. Since a few of my friends who’ve read it have said they put it down without finishing it, I’ll encourage anyone finding the going kind of tough (“slogging” is the term I used when getting through one chapter) to stick it out. One characters says, “A half-read book is a half-finished love affair,” and while I wouldn’t go that far, not finishing this one would be sort of like making all those folds in a piece of origami paper and never opening it up in its last step to reveal the crane. It is overall a rewarding and pleasing experience, and a pretty darned good book.

[Honoruru]

Re: What are you currently reading?

I completely agree with you about Cloud Atlas. It’s a novel that stays with you for a long time.

As for Life of Pi, I just finished it. It’s an astonishing novel. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but the ending turns everything upside down and forces you to look back at what you’ve read up to that point. So pay attention to details. Now, I’m even more interested in the movie. I really admire Ang Lee and I’m curious as to how he’s going to handle many of the novel’s elements.

As for what I’m reading now, I’m about to begin Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt. Mo Yan just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. His name kept popping up as someone I should read, so here I am.

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Howdy!

Scriv it is always with anticipation that I read what you write

The end result is always thought provoking. You have engaged the reader!

Now on to business.

I am currently reading a tome called "Goddess" by Anthony Summers.

hardback, Macmillan.

From what I surmise ,his research in this area , lead Tony to research other
areas upstream and very difficult to research.

Sometimes some topics are like a third rail.

[LikaNui]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Currently reading "Life", the autobiography of Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. (And yes, Stones is plural. )
It covers everything from his childhood (briefly) to current times. I'm very pleasantly shocked at how intelligent he is and how well this book was written.

http://www.keithrichards.com/life/