Quotations and Literature Forum

I've read a few Pratchett books, and while I like his style of writing, I don't really like his stories very much. I feel he has a rather escapist attitude of dealing with his plots. I mean, he creates a problem, builds the tension, and then suddenly solves everything magically without really explaining much to the reader.

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`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
-from Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll

I'm reading Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, a collection of short stories compiled (but not authored) by David Sedaris.
Some are funny, some sad, some touching...
They are actually quite enjoyable.

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In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Nietzsche

I'm reading A Million Little Pieces
I dnt knw it's kind of weird but it pulls u into it..


Rana

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'One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.'
~Sophocles

So far the journey might be worth a letdown. Agatha Christie pulls rabbits out of hats sometimes and doesn't give you all the important cards. Is it that kind of magically solved? She's still mesmerizing and clever in her endings. Or does he just let you down? It won't stop me. I'll just be braced and maybe pleasantly surprised.

For that matter, I hated 'And then there were none' by Agatha Christie. I mean, it felt like such a letdown in the end; I feel the best thing a thriller/mystery does is give you a chance to be the super-sleuth and solve, or at least, try to solve it.
Throughout the book, I speculated, and wondered and marvelled. And bam! The end made sure I'd never guess it. Was pissed off.

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To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

The most recent one I have finished is "The Contortionists Handbook" by Craig Clevenger. It was a very good read. Good entertainment. It's the type of book that would make a good movie or television series. There is one other thing, though. I have this problem where I compulsively purchase books but never get around to reading them. I have so many on my shelf that I've got started on but loose interest around fifty pages in. I have this obsession with 9/11 and have been trying to read books concerning aspects surrounding the event, but once I get into them I'm just overwhelmed by all the information that it doesn't stick. It may be easy for the authors, take for example, Michael C. Ruppert, to make sense of the information because they get it first hand, but I find to be very difficult for any casual reader, like myself, to be able to link so many scattered facts into some kind of historical context.

I have to agree and I love Christie. This is a very popular one but not for me anymore. Maybe as I have read more of her works, it's less of a surprise and thrill.

last book i read was I'll Be Watching You
next is going to be SweetBlood again... for the 12th time

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Circle of thorns surround the most precious flower of blood and regret.

I'm currently reading "Pablo Neruda a passion for life by Adam Feinstein, and "Neon Vernacular" by Yusef Komunyakaa. Im not sure where I'll go from there!

I am currently reading Countdown by Iris Johnson and Stairs Up the Chimney. I plan on reading On the Run by the the same author soon, but I'm in no hurry to get there.

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A stupid man's retelling of a clever man's words can never be accurate, for the stupid man unconciously translates the clever man's words so that he may understand them.

I've started "By the Pricking of My Thumbs" and though it isn't a Marple Agatha Christie novel, I wanted to finish it by the time part two of the Marple TV version comes out here.

Many Christie fans don't like the new versions but they're fine with me.

Now reading Mortal Faults by Michael Prescott. It starts
with a private investigator hired by a Congressman to stop
this woman from stalking him. But there is more to it than
meets the eye. A good read, so far.

Finishing a collection of Maupassant's short stories (some of the best I've ever read next to Chekov) after having been rather delighted by Bel-Ami and next moving on to Stendhal's The Red and the Black: part of my summer french romanticist phase.

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"The proper study of mankind is man."
Alexander Pope

Ashes To Ashes, by Tami
Hoag. It's better than I
thought it would be.

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There is no god higher than Truth.

Mahatma Ghandi