What are you reading tonight?

[Annoyed Grunt]

read Animal Farm again last night - in one sitting - cos I heard a snippet on t'radio and I realised I'd actually forgotten what happened!!

Just watch the video

[HMX]

Ordered myself 2 Bill Bryson books with a gift card from Christmas. Notes from a Small Island and the Lost Continent.

Looking forward to reading them!

[Bruce Rioja]

Ordered myself 2 Bill Bryson books with a gift card from Christmas. Notes from a Small Island and the Lost Continent.

Looking forward to reading them!

Both brilliant, Fella. Enjoy.

[William the White]

read Animal Farm again last night - in one sitting - cos I heard a snippet on t'radio and I realised I'd actually forgotten what happened!!

Four legs good, two legs bad!

How could you forget? and poor old Boxer too! Feckin pigs.

I think I had somehow persuaded myself that it had some kind of a happier ending!!! it was many many years ago that I read it...

'tis a fairly depressing view of human nature...

but a very true one.

Human nature isn't any one thing. Humans are capable of acts of tyranny and generosity. Everything can be won or lost. That is our saving grace. We contend.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

read Animal Farm again last night - in one sitting - cos I heard a snippet on t'radio and I realised I'd actually forgotten what happened!!

Four legs good, two legs bad!

How could you forget? and poor old Boxer too! Feckin pigs.

I think I had somehow persuaded myself that it had some kind of a happier ending!!! it was many many years ago that I read it...

'tis a fairly depressing view of human nature...

but a very true one.

Human nature isn't any one thing. Humans are capable of acts of tyranny and generosity. Everything can be won or lost. That is our saving grace. We contend.

To be honest, I don't think Animal Farm is about human nature as such, it's about how political systems corrupt, it's about how good intentions become swamped by minorities that assume power. It's about group nature rather than individual nature, politics rather than ethics.

[thebish]

To be honest, I don't think Animal Farm is about human nature as such, it's about how political systems corrupt, it's about how good intentions become swamped by minorities that assume power. It's about group nature rather than individual nature, politics rather than ethics.

yes - I think you're right...

[William the White]

To be honest, I don't think Animal Farm is about human nature as such, it's about how political systems corrupt, it's about how good intentions become swamped by minorities that assume power. It's about group nature rather than individual nature, politics rather than ethics.

yes - I think you're right...

Yep...

[Gary the Enfield]

Indeed.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Or summat.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Indeed.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Or summat.

Four legs good! Two legs bad!

[boltonboris]

Often misquoted.. For pedantic purposes, the full quote is: ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

[mrkint]

Indeed.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Or summat.

Four legs good! Two legs bad!

And judging by today's news no legs is absolutely dreadful.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Indeed.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Or summat.

Four legs good! Two legs bad!

And judging by today's news no legs is absolutely dreadful.

Two legs good, two blades better!

[Gary the Enfield]

Often misquoted.. For pedantic purposes, the full quote is: ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Which is why you won't find any quotation marks in my post.

[Jugs]

Bought Kafka's Metamorphosis this week so I'll go home and read that tonight. Its the Dover Thrift edition so has come with its own selection of other short stories which will hopefully be enjoyable.

I must say that Hunger by Knut Hamsun was a truly devastating read. Following, as it does, the turmoils of a starving writer, it taps into the readers' own personal anxieties and fears. Beautifully written but not one to read if you're not feeling well, either mentally or physically.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Bought Kafka's Metamorphosis this week so I'll go home and read that tonight. Its the Dover Thrift edition so has come with its own selection of other short stories which will hopefully be enjoyable.

I must say that Hunger by Knut Hamsun was a truly devastating read. Following, as it does, the turmoils of a starving writer, it taps into the readers' own personal anxieties and fears. Beautifully written but not one to read if you're not feeling well, either mentally or physically.

It's a while since I read it, but I didn't think Metamorphosis was a novel, I thought it was a short story... though my memory is deteriorating badly.

Gregor awoke and found himself to be an insect... it's that one yeh?

[Jugs]

Yes, thats the one. It's a short story, though a bit of an extended one, and apparently his 'most perfect.' I want to check out more of Kafka's work.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Yes, thats the one. It's a short story, though a bit of an extended one, and apparently his 'most perfect.' I want to check out more of Kafka's work.

Leave The Castle till last. By then you'll know whether you want to attempt to try it knowing it's not finished, or will have decided on the basis of the others (mostly especially The Trial) not to bother. I, by the way, was in the first group, but by the time I'd finished it had wished to be in the latter.

[Jugs]

I was actually gonna read it first Yeah, it is a bit of a shame that it isn't finished.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

I was actually gonna read it first Yeah, it is a bit of a shame that it isn't finished.

Fair enough. Just don't let it spoil the Trial.

[Montreal Wanderer]

Often misquoted.. For pedantic purposes, the full quote is: ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Well, if we are going to be pedants, Boris, you are using Lord Acton's version. However, Acton may not have been that original. Pitt the Younger and Shelley have claims, and others.

See below:

Absolute power corrupts absolutely" arose as part of a quotation by the expansively named and impressively hirsute John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902). The historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

The text is a favourite of collectors of quotations and is always included in anthologies. If you are looking for the exact "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" wording, then Acton is your man. He didn't invent the idea though; quotations very like it had been uttered by several authors well before 1887. Primary amongst them was another English politician with no shortage of names - William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham and British Prime Minister from 1766 to 1778, who said something similar in a speech to the UK House of Lords in 1770:

"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it"

Acton is likely to have taken his lead from the writings of the French republican poet and politician, again a generously titled individual - Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine. An English translation of Lamartine's essay France and England: a Vision of the Future was published in London in 1848 and included this text:

It is not only the slave or serf who is ameliorated in becoming free... the master himself did not gain less in every point of view,... for absolute power corrupts the best natures.

Whether it is Lamartine or his anonymous English translator that can claim to have coined 'absolute power corrupts' we can't be sure, but we can be sure that it wasn't Lord Acton.