What are you reading tonight?

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William the White
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by William the White » Tue Nov 10, 2015 6:15 pm

thebish wrote:aye - everyone in 1606 said that the olden days of 1599 were much better!
They might have been right n all. Shakespeare's writing might well have been partly enabled by the 6 months enforced closure of the theatres because of a major outbreak of plague!

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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by Harry Genshaw » Sat Nov 14, 2015 10:33 pm

Just finished 'Oblivion' a rather disturbing book on Richard Colvin Cox a military cadet who went missing from West point in 1950. Definitely worth a look
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by KeyserSoze » Wed Nov 18, 2015 3:07 pm

Currently working my way through Steven King's On Writing. Part autobiography, part writing lecture, and very interesting.
Nero fiddles while Gordon Burns.

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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by Prufrock » Wed Nov 18, 2015 3:10 pm

KeyserSoze wrote:Currently working my way through Steven King's On Writing. Part autobiography, part writing lecture, and very interesting.

You can't have got far ^ :D!
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by KeyserSoze » Wed Nov 18, 2015 3:59 pm

Prufrock wrote:
KeyserSoze wrote:Currently working my way through Steven King's On Writing. Part autobiography, part writing lecture, and very interesting.

You can't have got far ^ :D!
I take it SK has a thing against the v word :D
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by Prufrock » Wed Nov 18, 2015 4:07 pm

He had a thing about unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, and particularly "very" which is almost always unnecessary. IIRC. It's a while since I read it. Lots stuck with though.
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by thebish » Wed Nov 18, 2015 4:16 pm

Prufrock wrote:He had a thing about unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, and particularly "very" which is almost always unnecessary. IIRC. It's a while since I read it. Lots stuck with though.
You quibble over the use of the word "very" and then you go all WtW-esque and write "lots stuck with though"???? Give your head a shake!! :D

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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by Prufrock » Wed Nov 18, 2015 4:30 pm

:D but how should I shake my head? I need an adverb.

And I like the word very. Although I prefer to shorten it to a simple "v". Makes me feel cool and modern. I was just pointing out than Stephen King really, really, really hates, loathes and detests it very, very muchly indeed.
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by thebish » Wed Nov 18, 2015 4:56 pm

Much of your post will stay with. ta very much! :-)

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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by LeverEnd » Sun Nov 22, 2015 6:15 pm

I'm tempted to oredr Morrissey's debut novel List of The Lost to see if it's really as awful as the reviewers and this sex scene suggests...

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...

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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by Dr Hotdog » Mon Nov 23, 2015 2:22 pm

LeverEnd wrote:I'm tempted to oredr Morrissey's debut novel List of The Lost to see if it's really as awful as the reviewers and this sex scene suggests...

Image
Hecky thump. Regardless of content, if every sentence is that long I doubt I'd get further than a couple of pages.

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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by KeyserSoze » Mon Nov 23, 2015 2:58 pm

Wasn't the first paragraph of his autobiography four pages long?
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by bobo the clown » Mon Nov 23, 2015 3:14 pm

KeyserSoze wrote:Wasn't the first paragraph of his autobiography four pages long?
.... a 'Penguin Classic' I'll have you know.

Talentless, vapid fop.
Not advocating mass-murder as an entirely positive experience, of course, but it had its moments.
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by Prufrock » Mon Nov 23, 2015 5:01 pm

He's an arsehole, no doubt, but Morrissey talentless?! Away with you, man!
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by bobo the clown » Mon Nov 23, 2015 6:41 pm

Talentless.
Not advocating mass-murder as an entirely positive experience, of course, but it had its moments.
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by LeverEnd » Tue Nov 24, 2015 1:10 am

Great songwriter, superb performer, complete bellend.
...

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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by Prufrock » Tue Nov 24, 2015 7:03 pm

:lol:

Oooh, I don't remember writing the bit in blue which seems to be a link to somewhere. I wonder what happens if I click on it...
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by William the White » Fri Nov 27, 2015 12:13 am

Today I finished Michael Frayn’s novel Headlong.

This is a novel about an aspiring Art historian who thinks he has discovered a missing masterpiece from Pieter Bruegel’s series The Seasons that has been looted by a British officer after the second world war and whose family has possession of it, and other paintings, without any real sense of their worth, or any real interest in them as art.

Can he find a way of cheating them out of it – he wants the money and also the fame of the man who discovers the long lost and much-rumoured Bruegel. Can he get both? Can he get either? What price will he pay to do it, financially, emotionally, morally?

This is like a novel written exclusively for me! I’ve just concluded two courses (I loved them) on Art in the Northern Renaissance, finishing with a final essay on Bruegel (and Matthias Grunewald). The novel has lengthy diversions about Netherlandish Art 1440-1580, and the profession of art history. All the paintings he discusses I knew. I knew at least a little about all the artists he considers, and the disputes within Art history he engages with. Over the last 8 months I’d read a number of the historians he talks about. So I galloped through the book with a grin and real eagerness.

But, you know… If you had no interest in art history or the Northern Renaissance I don’t know what you’d make of this book. I think very few would stay with it. I may be wrong. I’d like to think I was. Because this is an intelligent novel with a gripping central story.

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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by TANGODANCER » Fri Nov 27, 2015 12:41 am

^ Not read the book, but have you seen Helen Mirren's Woman in Gold Will? Based on a true story of Gustav Klimt's iconic painting of her ( character's) aunt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which was stolen from her relatives by the Nazis in Vienna just prior to World War II. It's an interesting tale.
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Re: What are you reading tonight?

Post by thebish » Fri Nov 27, 2015 8:15 am

William the White wrote:Today I finished Michael Frayn’s novel Headlong.

This is a novel about an aspiring Art historian who thinks he has discovered a missing masterpiece from Pieter Bruegel’s series The Seasons that has been looted by a British officer after the second world war and whose family has possession of it, and other paintings, without any real sense of their worth, or any real interest in them as art.

Can he find a way of cheating them out of it – he wants the money and also the fame of the man who discovers the long lost and much-rumoured Bruegel. Can he get both? Can he get either? What price will he pay to do it, financially, emotionally, morally?

This is like a novel written exclusively for me! I’ve just concluded two courses (I loved them) on Art in the Northern Renaissance, finishing with a final essay on Bruegel (and Matthias Grunewald). The novel has lengthy diversions about Netherlandish Art 1440-1580, and the profession of art history. All the paintings he discusses I knew. I knew at least a little about all the artists he considers, and the disputes within Art history he engages with. Over the last 8 months I’d read a number of the historians he talks about. So I galloped through the book with a grin and real eagerness.

But, you know… If you had no interest in art history or the Northern Renaissance I don’t know what you’d make of this book. I think very few would stay with it. I may be wrong. I’d like to think I was. Because this is an intelligent novel with a gripping central story.
or maybe it's like when my missus likes to watch summat on telly because it it filmed in a place close to where she went to uni and she can spend the whole time saying - ooo look, that's such-and-such a place, I've been there!

you're reminding me of her because the focus of your review is the fact that you were knowledgeable enough to recognise all the paintings and the artists he talked about - and maybe that makes you feel like you belong to some kind of exclusive club of clever people who know this stuff - hence the idea that the book is somehow written for YOU... and the rest of us - probably most people, would have been lost after page seven as they haven't got the capacity, knowledge or experience to enjoy it... so the book makes you feel good about yourself? maybe?? (that's how your review comes across, anyway!) :wink:

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