|
Post by JoeP on Sept 1, 2013 11:26:47 GMT
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
... and I've just got to the line "Never try to out-drink a Swede. Unless you're a Finn, or at least a Russian."
|
|
|
Post by raspberrybullets on Sept 1, 2013 11:47:49 GMT
Oh cool, let's have a drinking contest on the 21st!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 1, 2013 11:59:08 GMT
I think Frank and I would have to say no to that. We both don't drink alcohol and could certainly not outdrink Scandinavians. Once there was a group of Finnish heavy-metal-fans in the bar and they drank a lot, I mean really loads. And the scary thing was they didn't seem to get drunk.
|
|
|
Post by JoeP on Sept 1, 2013 13:38:01 GMT
Do we have any Scandinavians in the mooting? Finns aren't Scandinavians and we only have one of them and she doesn't drink that much.
|
|
|
Post by Miisa on Sept 1, 2013 15:15:48 GMT
Yeah, I am so bad at drinking. A cheap date.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 1, 2013 15:33:43 GMT
Oh, sorry, I got that wrong. I've been told Russians are best at drinking.
|
|
|
Post by JoeP on Sept 1, 2013 19:46:25 GMT
Yeah, I am so bad at drinking. A cheap date. Especially as it was your alcohol we were drinking!
|
|
|
Post by Alvamiga on Sept 10, 2013 8:12:50 GMT
I don't know if this counts as me reading something, but Benedict Cumberbatch has read Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka to me. A most unusual story, and one of those that I can't imagine being turned into anything but a book due to the descriptions of thought and emotion throughout.
|
|
|
Post by charliebrown on Sept 24, 2013 18:20:28 GMT
I am reading a biography of Schubert. Most fascinating to read about how accomplished he was in music when he was at his 20s. I like his music very very much.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2013 19:19:21 GMT
I just finished reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time, about Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt and the American home front in WW2. Just started John Thavis' The Vatican Diaries.
|
|
|
Post by Moose on Sept 25, 2013 17:10:26 GMT
I am on rereads atm. Just finished Jane Austen's Persuasion and was disappointed by it .. it struck me that it really is the weakest of all her books. Am also rereading The Far Pavilions.
|
|
|
Post by charliebrown on Oct 8, 2013 10:17:06 GMT
I am reading Oscar Wilde's "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime".
|
|
|
Post by ProdigalAlan on Oct 8, 2013 20:50:33 GMT
I don't know if this counts as me reading something, but Benedict Cumberbatch has read Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka to me. A most unusual story, and one of those that I can't imagine being turned into anything but a book due to the descriptions of thought and emotion throughout. It was turned into a play staring Tim Roth and Steven Berkhof. Produced and directed by Berkhof. It was stunning, there just are not enough superlatives. It's one of my favourite novels ( I'm a huge Kafka fan - I love the theatre of the absurd )
|
|
|
Post by Alvamiga on Oct 9, 2013 4:07:16 GMT
I was most interested by the way no attempt was made to explain how or why any of it happened, before or after the event. It simply starts,'As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.'
|
|
|
Post by charliebrown on Oct 18, 2013 9:14:51 GMT
I am reading Orthodoxy by Chesterton and Chekhov's play "On the High Road".
|
|
Yuki
Senior members
Posts: 632
|
Post by Yuki on Oct 22, 2013 21:05:07 GMT
I read 30 pages or so from a French translation of Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History", then I decided to drop it temporarily and started Sagan's "Broca's Brain, Reflections on the Romance of Science"
|
|
|
Post by charliebrown on Nov 5, 2013 9:08:50 GMT
I am re-reading Forster's Howard's End. I like Forster's writing a lot.
|
|
|
Post by whollygoats on Nov 25, 2013 5:12:34 GMT
I've been reading my way through Carl Hiaasen's dystopic humor adventures. I just finished Lucky You, which was an absolute scream...a tale of the multiple winners of a state Lotto, backwater Florida, peculiar people (these, in particular, with religious peculiarities). I also finished off one of his 'young reader' stories, Hoot. Now, I'm in the midst of a collection of his columns, Paradise Screwed, written for the Miami Herald.
|
|
Yuki
Senior members
Posts: 632
|
Post by Yuki on Nov 25, 2013 6:16:03 GMT
|
|
DGoeij
Very Regular
Pan Narrans
Poehee
Posts: 601
|
Post by DGoeij on Nov 27, 2013 8:34:16 GMT
I remember that series as pretty nice actually. Mildly cliché at some points perhaps, but maybe because it's getting on in years.
I finished a re-reading of the Hunger Games (all three) and now back to finishing LOTR with Return of the King, which I had to wait on Lady RB for.
|
|
Yuki
Senior members
Posts: 632
|
Post by Yuki on Nov 27, 2013 17:53:37 GMT
You mean the Robot series? I'm having issues with some details in the story (umm, 3000 years or so in the future and no brain-machine interfaces, which we've already started to develop?)..
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2013 20:50:35 GMT
It was written in the early 1950s...
|
|
Yuki
Senior members
Posts: 632
|
Post by Yuki on Nov 28, 2013 6:26:24 GMT
I know Sven, but a guy like Asimov, with a PhD in biochemistry should have had at least the glimpse of an idea that by the time we create AI, we'd probably have figured out a way to connect machines to our brains, and the implications of that on all levels.. and 3000 years or so is a very long period when it comes to technology.. even if a catastrophe destroyed our civilization, we'd probably be back to our current level in less than a few hundred years, I think.. I'll definitely finish this novel and read more by Asimov and others, but ever since I read about the Singularity, and realized that it's virtually inevitable (unless we destroy ourselves before it happens), I've been having a hard time not to look critically at every detail in every science fiction work I read or watch, and I always find loopholes that are difficult to plug.. This piece however was one of the best attempts to depict the future of humanity that I've read this year: blog.khanneasuntzu.com/?p=4977
|
|
|
Post by Mari on Dec 1, 2013 11:48:51 GMT
I'm rereading the Ranger's Apprentice series because number 12 just came out, so I'm rereading the whole series before reading book 12. I'm very excited to see what it will be about. Apparently there's going to be a bit of a time jump and it will be the final book in this series.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2014 8:19:06 GMT
I'm reading "The Republic" by Plato and "Lords and Ladies" by Terry Pratchett at the moment.
|
|