What are you currently reading? (part 2)

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johntm
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby johntm » 2014-07-27, 17:04

vijayjohn wrote:Not entirely sure what I'll read next right now. I was thinking of reading Babel No More (which johntm's also reading)

It was pretty good, I think on goodreads I gave it 4 stars. So I'd recommend it.
Anyway, can't remember what I posted last time and can't be fucked to look but now I'm working through Robert Greene's Mastery and Live and Let Die, the second James Bond novel. If it's like the first, it'll probably be the last James Bond book I read. It wasn't bad but it wasn't good, and this is coming from someone who really likes the movies. Other than that I have pdfs on my phone of Built to Serve, which is a kind of bullshitty business/management book that I'm mainly reading 1) because I have it and 2) because it's short. And Fuera de Serie, the translation of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers (which I've read in English) into Spanish, which I'm having a surprisingly easy time understanding. I read the English version maybe two or three years ago, so I remember the big things (e.g. the hockey part in the beginning) but not well enough to really help me make sense of the Spanish words, but I'm doing fine as it is. I'm not reading too much, maybe a few pages at a time of it, but it's really on the backburner anyway.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Lada » 2014-07-28, 16:28

lazyaficionado wrote:
Lada wrote:I haven't read this book and never heard that Leskov was a humourist writer

He was a satirist. And to be fair, his Story of The Two Mouzhiks and The General is far more well known as it is a part of the school literature course.

It seems to me that schools had different literature courses when I was studying. We didn't read this, only Lady Macbeth and Enchanted Wanderer.

linguoboy wrote:Of the three, I'd only ever heard of Bulgakov before. I tried reading his «Мастер и Маргарита» but I couldn't get into it.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like Veller's been translated into English at all.

Master and Margarita was difficult to read but only during several chapters at the beginning, then it was quite an amusement even for a teenager. I think other Bulgakov books are more accesible. British TV made series based on his stories. http://en.ria.ru/world/20130722/182367715/Bulgakov-TV-Series-to-Make-US-Debut.html

Ludwig Whitby wrote:Castaneda. It's interesting, even though his style of writing is dull. I really like the philosophy behind it, the way Don Juan understands the world and acts. I'm not sure how ''Indian'' his philosophy actually is, because it is very modern and Western in some sense, with the addition of drugs-induced spiritual mysticism. I like the fact that it is essentially a self-help book that teaches you how to live in an absurd, meaningless, ever-changing world.
.
I haven't read Castaneda but started to read some spiritual mysticism too, a book named Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. According to the author, the God came to him and gave interview. So far the God reveals the ideas close to what Osho sais...

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Yasna » 2014-07-29, 1:34

I'm reading Lord of the Flies by William Golding. It's one of the many books I partially read/skimmed in school. What can I say.. my interest in literature came late.
Ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. - Kafka

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-07-29, 17:44

OK, so, ahem, what I'm currently reading. :lol: I just started reading a novella in the 2012 annual special issue of the Malayala Manorama magazine. It's called "Kudiyettam" (കുടിയേറ്റം [kuɖiˈjeːttə̃m]), which means 'The Crossing'. It just so happens that the author, Sethu, also used to be the chairman of the South Indian Bank. It promises to be an interesting read for me (and already was for my dad, apparently), because it's about Malayalee Jews migrating to Israel. (Kerala once had a huge Jewish population, and it's even been suggested that the first Christians in Kerala were in fact local Jews converted by the Apostle Thomas. One of my uncles told me once that there were 112 Jewish families in Kochi at some point (maybe in the 70s? I forget), but "now, there are seven." And yet neither my dad nor I has seen Jewish people covered in Malayalam literature, although Sethu's latest novel, Aaliya, is also about members of a Malayalee Jewish community :)).

Oh, and...I'll get around to Babel No More eventually, I hope. I just don't really feel like reading about people who have waaaay too much in common with me right now. :P

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby linguoboy » 2014-07-29, 18:06

The Wikipedia article on Sethu says that "many of his novels and short stories have been translated into English", but I can only find translations of നിയോഗം (as The wind and the rain), പാണ്ഡവപുരം (as Pandavapuram), and a single collection of short stories. And, of course, my library doesn't have any of these.
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Re: What are you currently reading?

Postby MillMaths » 2014-07-30, 16:47

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck.

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Hoogstwaarschijnlijk » 2014-07-30, 17:39

I'm reading Het verloren symbool van Dan Brown because sometimes I want to read something that's not very literary. Luckily it's not from the library because I had it in my bag with the horrible rain last Monday so now it's all wavy...
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Corrections appreciated.

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby linguoboy » 2014-07-30, 17:44

Hoogstwaarschijnlijk wrote:I'm reading Het verloren symbool van Dan Brown because sometimes I want to read something that's not very literary. Luckily it's not from the library because I had it in my bag with the horrible rain last Monday so now it's all wavy...

In case some of the pages are stuck together, or you just want to save yourself some time: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/22/the-lost-symbol-dan-brown.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-07-30, 18:20

Anyway, I'm still reading Kudiyettam, but I also signed up for this Malayalam forum yesterday and found out there are some stories that people have written in Malayalam there. I just read one in Romanized Malayalam. This is the first time I've ever read an entire story in Malayalam in Latin script before. :lol: But aww, it was so cute! It was about a Facebook romance. :)

EDIT: Actually, that was even the title of that short story - "oru facebook pranayam." :P

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Johanna » 2014-07-30, 20:26

admin

The discussion about what books you had or didn't have to read in school and how it affected you can now be found here: http://www.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43499 :)
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Re: What are you currently reading?

Postby IpseDixit » 2014-07-30, 20:27

Nehushtan wrote:Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck.


The end almost made me cry :whistle:

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Prowler » 2014-07-31, 21:49

Read The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka last night. Didn't like it much. Found it boring midway through it. Good thing it was short.

This makes two Kafka books I've read so far, the other one being The Trial. Wasn't very keen on both. Guess I won't bother reading anything else by Kafka in the near future.

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Halfdan » 2014-07-31, 23:36

Prowler wrote:Read The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka last night. Didn't like it much. Found it boring midway through it. Good thing it was short.

This makes two Kafka books I've read so far, the other one being The Trial. Wasn't very keen on both. Guess I won't bother reading anything else by Kafka in the near future.


You should give "A Hunger Artist" a go. Short and sweet. :)

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Yasna » 2014-07-31, 23:45

Halfdan wrote:
Prowler wrote:Read The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka last night. Didn't like it much. Found it boring midway through it. Good thing it was short.

This makes two Kafka books I've read so far, the other one being The Trial. Wasn't very keen on both. Guess I won't bother reading anything else by Kafka in the near future.


You should give "A Hunger Artist" a go. Short and sweet. :)

Also, In der Strafkolonie.
Ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. - Kafka

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-08-01, 20:19

Just finished reading Kudiyettam this morning. I guess I'll start reading Babel No More...soon. :P Aaaaand...what else should I read? :| In Malayalam, I mean. I guess I've been procrastinating on Pithaamahan; maybe I should just go ahead and start reading it! But I'm also wondering about reading some stuff in the literary magazine Mathrubhumi...maybe I'll read articles/stories there while I'm eating or something. :P

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Halfdan » 2014-08-02, 15:24

A few plays by Aeschylus:
The Persians
Seven Against Thebes
The Suppliants
Prometheus Bound

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-08-04, 6:21

Lately, for some reason, a lot of the books people here are reading seem to be books I had to read in school. :lol:

Nothing really to report here, though. Started reading Babel No More. Got through the introduction and first chapter in a hurry because I'd already read the introduction and started the first chapter before and wanted to make sure I got beyond that point.

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby loqu » 2014-08-06, 20:11

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones. I've read like 60% in two days and it's astonishing. It's crushing my soul. I never thought the social situation in the United Kingdom could be that horrifying, that society was so classist.
Нека људи уживају у стварима.
Let people enjoy things.

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Yasna » 2014-08-06, 21:13

I'm reading メニー・メニー・シープ, the first book in Issui Ogawa's series 天冥の標. It's well-written SF with a medical bend. The main character is a skilled doctor who lives in a deep space colony that has lost contact with Earth and all other humans.
Ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. - Kafka

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby mōdgethanc » 2014-08-07, 5:08

loqu wrote:Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones. I've read like 60% in two days and it's astonishing. It's crushing my soul. I never thought the social situation in the United Kingdom could be that horrifying, that society was so classist.
Classism is deeply ingrained in British culture and you see that reflected in their media in everything from Downton Abbey to Harry Potter. There's a quote that's something to the effect of: race is at the center of the American experience; language at the center of the Canadian; and class at the center of the British.
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