The Book Thread

[Paco the Great]

Discuss your favourite books here!

[iliander]

Paco, you're currently making an awful lot of topics here, and each of them becomes worse.... You're losing your imagination! Create a poll, it's much more fun!

About books: I don't read much books, tbh.

[Pepp]

I keep my knowledge for myself, and share it to them who are appropriate for it.

And I think, you're not the person I mean.

Thanks.

[Paco the Great]

What?

[iliander]

I also haven't understood that...

[Paco the Great]

I liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel, an extremely long sort of alternate history/fantasy book set in Georgian England.


The Hounds of the Morrigan is also great, and out of mystery stories, I like G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown books the best, because he is the most likeable detective. Sherlock Holmes is a drug-addicted, arrogant, unemotional scientist, whereas Brown is the very opposite, a humble, friendly, and forgiving Catholic priest from Essex.

[Synecdoche]

Well, I rather like this thread's purpose, so I'm going to give it the Lazarus treatment.

I'm pretty embroiled in the midst of exams back here for the past few weeks, but on a plane ride I picked up a small John Steinbeck work that's rapidly rising up the ranks of my favorite works of literature. It's a little chronicle that Steinbeck wrote called "Travels with Charley; In Search of America" in the last decade of his life during a gypsy-wagon trip he took across the USA to rediscover his country and get back in touch with his place in it. Steinbeck is, of course, a Nobel Laureate, and it shows. The book's by turns terse, humorous, and insightful, but above all else is vehemently and steadfastly honest. That's something that's rare in modern literature, I find. There's celebration, but not glorification, of what it means to be a man in modern times, and it illuminates golden anecdotes and advice in a humble, reflective way. In addition, it reminds me of how easily camaraderie and goodwill can be established between outsiders with simple generosity and warmth, and maybe a touch of alcohol, in a time when suspicion and tensions ran even higher in the world than they do today, which is supremely heartening.

Just thought I should share my little review, because the book's an absolute gem, accessible to people with English as a second or third language because of the clean simplicity of Steinbeck's prose, and it's short! Less than 200 pages, so you could easily read it in a weekend and even a day if you find some free time. It is, however, set firmly against the very real backdrop of the US, as Steinbeck's work tends to be, but I'm pretty sure that won't do anything but add to your enjoyment, since he offers criticisms and admiration in at least equal measure.

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