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Thread: The Book Discussion Thread

  1. #276

  2. #277
    Quote Quoting Kurosawa Fan (view post)
    Lolita.
    We have a winner. Thanks.

  3. #278
    dissolved into molecules lovejuice's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Horbgorbler (view post)
    The Sea, The Sea is exceptional so far.
    eagerly awaiting for your thought.

    among my favorite books, this one is least read. in fact murdoch is criminally under-rated. and that mediocre movie doesn't help either.

  4. #279
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    :cry:

    All three of those emotions are coursing through me right now. That's disgusting, and wrong on just about every level.

  5. #280
    I am going to read every book they publish (that I haven't read yet) in all its original glory just to spite their snip-happy asses.

  6. #281
    Crying Enthusiast Sven's Avatar
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    But people have been selling abridged versions of books for years...

  7. #282
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting iosos (view post)
    But people have been selling abridged versions of books for years...
    "People" were wrong then, and they're wrong now. Abridged versions of anything should be against the law.

  8. #283
    dissolved into molecules lovejuice's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Kurosawa Fan (view post)
    "People" were wrong then, and they're wrong now. Abridged versions of anything should be against the law.
    for the sake of argument, how are you going to introduce classics to school kids? especially if the kids live in a non-english-speaking country. i remember having to read abridged hunchback of notredam back then. am not sure did it do me more good or bad.

    the idea behind that link -- abriged version for common people and grown-up -- is just plain retard though.

  9. #284
    The sin here really is in the marketing. The idea that what they're doing is scrapping the superfluous fluff so you can get to the real essence of the story, that that qualifies as the book is obscene.

    When I read the abridged version of David Copperfield in high school, I knew damn well that I was not getting the full experience. I regret it, too, as I was only reading so I could pass comprehension exams, and these days, I underand just how much Dickens rocks.

  10. #285
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting lovejuice (view post)
    for the sake of argument, how are you going to introduce classics to school kids? especially if the kids live in a non-english-speaking country. i remember having to read abridged hunchback of notredam back then. am not sure did it do me more good or bad.
    Have them read classics at their own level (there are plenty) and save the good stuff for when they're ready, not only to read it but to understand and relate to the themes within the work.

  11. #286
    dissolved into molecules lovejuice's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Kurosawa Fan (view post)
    Have them read classics at their own level (there are plenty) and save the good stuff for when they're ready, not only to read it but to understand and relate to the themes within the work.
    but the level of language skill, in a foreign country, will never match kids' maturity. for example i will be surprise if any 12th grader in thailand can read...tom sawyer?...no, harry potter. my friend who had not a chance to study abroad cannot read the first book even when she was a college sophomore.

    the situation, however, is slightly better now. thank to the potter series, more kids try to develope their language skills in order to not having to wait for the translation.

    come to think of it, if any book deserves abridgement, it's potter series! :twisted:

  12. #287
    Crying Enthusiast Sven's Avatar
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    I don't know... while I'm definitely all for full and pure quality and wouldn't ever pick up a cut-up novel, I don't think I can rightfully say that abridgements are all that useless. Seems like it's one of those necessary evils. You know... lame people thinking to themselves "I wanna read that, but there're so many pages" kind of thing.

  13. #288
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting lovejuice (view post)
    but the level of language skill, in a foreign country, will never match kids' maturity. for example i will be surprise if any 12th grader in thailand can read...tom sawyer?...no, harry potter. my friend who had not a chance to study abroad cannot read the first book even when she was a college sophomore.

    the situation, however, is slightly better now. thank to the potter series, more kids try to develope their language skills in order to not having to wait for the translation.

    come to think of it, if any book deserves abridgement, it's potter series! :twisted:
    I was speaking about abridged versions for kids, not for foreign countries. I don't know much about that, so I can't offer an opinion. Still, if you create dumbed-down, easy-reading versions of classics for foreign countries, they aren't really reading the novel, are they? They're reading cliff notes. It's not the same. Perhaps they should either polish their language skills or read classics in their own language. Why can't the full novels be translated? I find that what makes my favorite novels so special isn't just the story, but the way they're written. You lose that by abridging.

  14. #289
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting iosos (view post)
    I don't know... while I'm definitely all for full and pure quality and wouldn't ever pick up a cut-up novel, I don't think I can rightfully say that abridgements are all that useless. Seems like it's one of those necessary evils. You know... lame people thinking to themselves "I wanna read that, but there're so many pages" kind of thing.
    Then don't read it. I get tired of people being made to feel inferior because they don't read. Who cares? There are millions of things to do every day of your life. If you don't read classic novels, so be it. But reading some slimmed-down version of a classic isn't reading the novel. It doesn't count. You're reading the story. Anyone can tell a story. That's not what makes these books special. The way they're written is what makes them special, and that can't come through when you're cutting out 30-40% of the novel and changing sentences to read easier. It just can't.

  15. #290
    Crying Enthusiast Sven's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Kurosawa Fan (view post)
    Then don't read it. I get tired of people being made to feel inferior because they don't read. Who cares? There are millions of things to do every day of your life. If you don't read classic novels, so be it. But reading some slimmed-down version of a classic isn't reading the novel. It doesn't count. You're reading the story. Anyone can tell a story. That's not what makes these books special. The way they're written is what makes them special, and that can't come through when you're cutting out 30-40% of the novel and changing sentences to read easier. It just can't.
    Here we get into the pesky issue of translating foreign works and how one can justify reading anything but the original text in the original language (because different translators, no doubt, end up telling the story differently, so you're not quite getting the same thing).

    Hey, I think it's stupid too. But if there're a few bucks to be made off people's laziness, I don't see how it's such a detriment. In fact, if you think about it, this is ONLY going to be helpful. Who's it gonna hurt?

  16. #291
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Kurosawa Fan (view post)
    Then don't read it. I get tired of people being made to feel inferior because they don't read. Who cares? There are millions of things to do every day of your life. If you don't read classic novels, so be it. But reading some slimmed-down version of a classic isn't reading the novel. It doesn't count. You're reading the story. Anyone can tell a story. That's not what makes these books special. The way they're written is what makes them special, and that can't come through when you're cutting out 30-40% of the novel and changing sentences to read easier. It just can't.

    Yes, literary snobs...they are on my "worstest things ever" list.

    There used to be one or two of them on the old board...I haven't seen them around the new one yet. I wonder what happened to them.
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  17. #292
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting iosos (view post)
    Here we get into the pesky issue of translating foreign works and how one can justify reading anything but the original text in the original language (because different translators, no doubt, end up telling the story differently, so you're not quite getting the same thing).

    Hey, I think it's stupid too. But if there're a few bucks to be made off people's laziness, I don't see how it's such a detriment. In fact, if you think about it, this is ONLY going to be helpful. Who's it gonna hurt?
    Not really. Translating is just that. It's doing your best to preserve the author's style and tone while converting to a different language. Abridging is removing text and therefore changing the style and tone of a novel for no good reason other than to "make it shorter" for the increasing number of impatient, I-want-it-now people in our society. Like I said, if you don't feel you have the time to sit down with a 600 page novel, then read something else. The logic that "reading two 300 page novels" is somehow better than reading a 600 page novel is absurd, and isn't logical at all. If a novel is good, why would you want it to end sooner?

    And this does hurt someone. It hurts the idiots. They don't need to be making any more idiotic choices than necessary. This gives them another opportunity. Seriously though, it hurts the original artistic vision these writers had, and it's a bad trend to start.

  18. #293
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Beyond the work of Stephen King, I tend to gravitate towards shorter books. Most of my favorite books are right around 200 pages. This seemed to be the magic number for a great deal of profoundly awesome science fiction novels. It is weird though, if you go through the winners of the Hugo award for best sci-fi novel, the books tend to get longer and longer as the years go on. I think that most genre books are far too long now days. Even most of King's books are far too long for the story being told. I prefer short, hard hitting, concise novels with concrete language. There seems to be a misconception that a book's merit is directly related to its length, and we all know that this just ain't true.

  19. #294
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    I don't care how long a book is as long as its length suits the story.

    "Crime and Punishment" is super long, but I was never bored - it all flowed nicely, there was always something interesting going on, and I didn't come across any portions of the book where I felt "geez, this all feels like filler".

    Similarly, "I Am Legend" is a mere 170 pages give-or-take, and I thought it was the perfect length...it never wore out its welcome, and I also felt that I got everything out if it that I wanted to.
    "All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"

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  20. #295
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    I tend to get more out of short novels. Or, in other words, the novels I've gotten the most out of have been short.

  21. #296
    Not a praying man Melville's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    I don't care how long a book is as long as its length suits the story.
    Yeah, I don't see how any particular length would be generally preferable to any other.

    I also have no problem with abridged versions of books; they're basically just reworkings of the material by new "authors". I read abridged versions of Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Count of Monte Cristo when I was a kid, when the full versions would have been just too damn long (especially in the case of Les Miserables), and I loved all three. They helped develop my love of literature, and I still think of them fondly, even though I'm aware that I didn't read the novels that the authors intended. More recently I've read severely abridged versions of The Mahabarata and The Ramayana, which gave me some knowledge of Hindu mythology that I never would have gained otherwise. However, all of these versions attempted to maintain the original writing style; books rewritten in more "modern" prose tend to be just plain bad.
    I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?

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  22. #297
    Crying Enthusiast Sven's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Melville (view post)
    I also have no problem with abridged versions of books; they're basically just reworkings of the material by new "authors". I read abridged versions of Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Count of Monte Cristo when I was a kid, when the full versions would have been just too damn long (especially in the case of Les Miserables), and I loved all three. They helped develop my love of literature, and I still think of them fondly, even though I'm aware that I didn't read the novels that the authors intended. More recently I've read severely abridged versions of The Mahabarata and The Ramayana, which gave me some knowledge of Hindu mythology that I never would have gained otherwise. However, all of these versions attempted to maintain the original writing style; books rewritten in more "modern" prose tend to be just plain bad.
    I think this is well put. One of my favorite books ever is the 600 some odd abridgement of Les Miserables. I've tried picking up the full text at least three times and can't get passed page 100 every time. One of these days I'll do it, I promise. But still, the 600 page abridged version was close to a profound experience for me, literature-wise. Maybe that's why I can see the benefit.

    KF, you make good points that I agree with (although I don't think I'd use the word "idiots" to describe those that are too lazy to read all 600 pages of Don Quixote, great book by the way). But this wouldn't be starting a "new trend". Abridged versions have been around since books were written, I'm sure. Or, at least, since public education has been around.

  23. #298
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Any Christopher Moore fans on here?

    What would you say his best work is?
    "All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"

    "Rick...it's a flamethrower."

  24. #299
    Not a praying man Melville's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting iosos (view post)
    all 600 pages of Don Quixote
    Hm.. my copy is almost 900 pages. Are you opting for all abridged books, or just editions with really tiny font?
    I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?

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  25. #300
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    Any Christopher Moore fans on here?

    What would you say his best work is?
    My wife has been reading his stuff. She really liked You Suck, and I really want to read Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.

    On another note...

    I got a mega-haul of science fiction today:

    A Case of Conscience (reading next)
    The Seedling Stars - James Blish
    Starshine
    The Ultimate Egoist - Theodore Sturgeon
    The Gods Themselves - Isaac Asmiov
    The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
    The Stars My Destination (a new trade edition) - Alfred Bester
    Tower of Glass - Robert Silverberg
    Hyperion Cantos - Dan Simmons
    Dangerous Visions (nice hardback edition) - ed. Harlen Ellison
    Cosmicomics - Italo Calvino

    While eating some sushi for dinner tonight, I read through the three introductions, written by Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Gene Wolf, to Theodore Sturgeon's The Ultimate Egoist, the first of ten volumes of collected short stories. I love what each of these authors had to say about Sturgeon:

    Bradbury:

    The worst thing you can say about an author's style is that it bored you; the most complimentary thing I can think of to say of Sturgeon is that I hated his damned, efficient, witty guts. And yet because he had the thing for which I was looking, originality (always rare in the pulps), I was forced, in an agony of jealousy, to return again and again to his stories, to dissect, to pull apart, to re-examine the bones.

    Clarke:

    Ted's stories have an emotional impact umatched by almost any other writer.

    Wolf:

    [Talking about a book of short stories his mother gave him...] The first story I read was "Microcosmic God" by Theodore Sturgeon. It has sometimes occurred to me that it has all been downhill from there.


    As I finished More Than Human this morning, I must concur with these masters' praise of Sturgeon. He is an author of unprecedented depth, character, and emotion. I didn't so much read the book, as I experienced its world, its characters, and its incredible humanity.

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