What are you reading tonight?

[Jugs]

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.

I'm gonna take heed of your advice and read The Trial next.

[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.

I'm gonna take heed of your advice and read The Trial next.

I think that is a wise choice. The Trial is a classic for a reason, it is powerful. It can, however, be diminished by a premature reading of the Castle. 'Happy' reading!

[boltonboris]

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.

So the original one that I corrected, doesn't actually exist. And the closest one to it, is the one I corrected?

That the long and short of it?

[TANGODANCER]

Just finished The Brother of Fire by Christian Jacq. Part of a trilogy on Mozart, his Masonic connections and their part in his music. I'll look out for the other two in the series.

[Harry Genshaw]

Just finished The Brother of Fire by Christian Jacq. Part of a trilogy on Mozart, his Masonic connections and their part in his music. I'll look out for the other two in the series.

Is this the book that presumes cos folk are from Bolton we can't speak Latin?

Ego rectum est offendise I can tell you

[TANGODANCER]

Just finished The Brother of Fire by Christian Jacq. Part of a trilogy on Mozart, his Masonic connections and their part in his music. I'll look out for the other two in the series.

Is this the book that presumes cos folk are from Bolton we can't speak Latin?Ego rectum est offendise I can tell you

No, HG, that's from a lightweight novel, The Janus Stone, by Elly Griffiths. Mozart not guilty.

[TANGODANCER]

Just finished The Armageddon Trade by Clem Chambers. An inside-track novel based around the stock exchange, computerisation and terrorism. Interesting.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Just read the Wave (a memoir of life after the tsunami). Seriously awsome downer. More misery per inch than anything else I've ever read. Strangely joyous misery.

[Bijou Bob]

After a delay of several years, I've finally got round to reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Robert M Persig and by which I am apparently supposed to be overwhelmed by the brilliance of his existential arguements and profound understanding of life. Instead, I find his central character a colourless buffoon with weak arguments and a singular lack of emotional intelligence.

Is it just me

[bobo the clown]

After a delay of several years, I've finally got round to reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Robert M Persig and by which I am apparently supposed to be overwhelmed by the brilliance of his existential arguements and profound understanding of life. Instead, I find his central character a colourless buffoon with weak arguments and a singular lack of emotional intelligence.

Is it just me

No. .... now, had you read it years ago I suspect you'd have been equally unimpressed, but more concerned about admitting it. Seriously uncool to say you didn't 'get it' and it hadn't 'changed your life'.

Emperor's new clothes etc., etc.

[Il Pirate]

Is it just me


No. You can count me in as a member of the 'is that it?' club as well. Thought it were sh*te

[William the White]

After a delay of several years, I've finally got round to reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Robert M Persig and by which I am apparently supposed to be overwhelmed by the brilliance of his existential arguements and profound understanding of life. Instead, I find his central character a colourless buffoon with weak arguments and a singular lack of emotional intelligence.

Is it just me

No. .... now, had you read it years ago I suspect you'd have been equally unimpressed, but more concerned about admitting it. Seriously uncool to say you didn't 'get it' and it hadn't 'changed your life'.

Emperor's new clothes etc., etc.

I got it... Then... Read it avidly... Was taken by a lot of things about it... the journey itself, the relationship between father and adolescent son (wasn't far from adolescence myself when i read it, and my father was my only parent left and we were estranged), but mostly by the philosophical enquiry into, if i remember correctly, what is 'Quality'... Have I got it right, BB that this is started by a passing question from a cleaner at the university?

It didn't change my life in any significant way, but it made me feel and made me think, and i still value books that do that... And books that experiment and push the boundaries defining fiction are necessary if the artform isn't to ossify... This was, it turned out, a failed literary experiment, but it's stupid to deny its ambition and originality...

I started reading it again about ten years ago - was out of patience with it almost immediately, and gave it up early... It was a book for those times and the person I was then... Doesn't do it for me any more...

Nothing to do with Emperor's New Clothes (one of bobo's favourite phrases). If ever there was an old and worn out saying, creaking and unoiled... like bobo's knees, perhaps... but certainly his spirit... S'what happens when you go to uni in yorkshire...

[bobo the clown]

It's a favorite saying because it's true. Some things are required to be believed, followed, worn ... often where they don't stand up to scrutiny.

That book ws a pile of old shite then, as it remains. Just was very fashionable.

We'll be swooning over Jonathon Livingstone Seagull next !

Sheesh.

You're obviously just a slow learner Bill. It'll all come along eventually.

[William the White]

It's a favorite saying because it's true. Some things are required to be believed, followed, worn ... often where they don't stand up to scrutiny.

That book ws a pile of old shite then, as it remains. Just was very fashionable.

We'll be swooning over Jonathon Livingstone Seagull next !

Sheesh.

You're obviously just a slow learner Bill. It'll all come along eventually.

The clown's old clothes... Faded, tattered, smelling terribly stale... But cherished by their wearer... Who will cling onto them lovingly... And think they're very pretty... Shiny... Sparkling...

[bobo the clown]

So hurtful Bill.



You WILL vote Tory soon enough. You are, as I say, just a bit slow on the uptake.

[Beefheart]

It's a favorite saying because it's true. Some things are required to be believed, followed, worn ... often where they don't stand up to scrutiny.

That book ws a pile of old shite then, as it remains. Just was very fashionable.

We'll be swooning over Jonathon Livingstone Seagull next !

Sheesh.

You're obviously just a slow learner Bill. It'll all come along eventually.

Someone bought me Seagull as a present. I read the blurb, laughed, haven't touched it since.

[mrkint]

It's a favorite saying because it's true. Some things are required to be believed, followed, worn ... often where they don't stand up to scrutiny.

That book ws a pile of old shite then, as it remains. Just was very fashionable.

We'll be swooning over Jonathon Livingstone Seagull next !

Sheesh.

You're obviously just a slow learner Bill. It'll all come along eventually.

The clown's old clothes... Faded, tattered, smelling terribly stale... But cherished by their wearer... Who will cling onto them lovingly... And think they're very pretty... Shiny... Sparkling...

This is going slightly off topic but every time you post with those ellipses in i just get a picture of a man in a duffel coat in some far corner of siberia with a beard, while it is snowing heavily and blowing a gale, and he's looking at the icy waste and shedding a solitary tear.

[William the White]

So hurtful Bill.



You WILL vote Tory soon enough. You are, as I say, just a bit slow on the uptake.

I will... When the Atacama Desert turns to swamp... When Everest is a valley... And when Tories feel better than shit under the fingernails...

Of these three options, the third is the least likely...

[William the White]

This is going slightly off topic but every time you post with those ellipses in i just get a picture of a man in a duffel coat in some far corner of siberia with a beard, while it is snowing heavily and blowing a gale, and he's looking at the icy waste and shedding a solitary tear.

Vorkuta on the horizon... The ice creeps through the beard... The tear freezes... Its long trickle scabs the cheek...

Time for crumpets...

[Worthy4England]

After a delay of several years, I've finally got round to reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Robert M Persig and by which I am apparently supposed to be overwhelmed by the brilliance of his existential arguements and profound understanding of life. Instead, I find his central character a colourless buffoon with weak arguments and a singular lack of emotional intelligence.

Is it just me

No. .... now, had you read it years ago I suspect you'd have been equally unimpressed, but more concerned about admitting it. Seriously uncool to say you didn't 'get it' and it hadn't 'changed your life'.

Emperor's new clothes etc., etc.

I'll just move my unread copy back into the garage.