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comment by ecib
ecib  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are you reading? Is it any good?

    I am also planning on reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,

Are you opposed to kindle? I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg a few years ago:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680

I started Frankenstein last Fall after reading https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345.

If you want non-fiction, Gulag Archipelago will blow your mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago. Google Books has the first chapter if you want to see what you think: https://books.google.com/books?id=OW0poTnuCiIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=gulag+archipelago&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gFw2VbTyM9PfoATO2IHYCg&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=gulag%20archipelago&f=false





_refugee_  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·  

WHO WANTS TO HEAR ALL ABOUT HOW THERE'S A BIG SECRET (AKA NO ONE ELSE CARES) LITERATURE CONTROVERSY AS TO WHO REALLY WROTE FRANKENSTEIN?

Seriously, one of my favorite undergraduate professors literally wrote the books about Frankenstein - he's convinced she really wrote it, and of course, as his student (he also taught my mother in undergrad) I agree, but there's this dillweed out there named John Lauritsen who's convinced that M. Shelly didn't write the book essentially because "a woman couldn't write it." If you're into literature, it's pretty fascinating. Lauritsen blows up the romantics list-serv about once a year clamoring on about how "clearly Percy Shelly wrote Frankenstein for his wife" and so on.

galen  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Meh, that sounds like those arguments about whether Shakespeare was really Shakespeare. You know, "a poorish person couldn't be the greatest playwright of all time, clearly it was secretly a member of the nobility."

user-inactivated  ·  3568 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There's a tad more to the argument than that, but don't let that get in the way of your bitter anti-classicism.

In all seriousness, Bryson wrote a damn fine book about Shakespeare that talks about the controversy. The conclusion is basically, we'll never know for sure: almost certainly the Bard wrote >90% of his plays, but it is equally almost 100% likely that a couple of the lesser-known ones aren't really his. The shaky attribution thing was common at the time for various industry reasons.

The nuts who say it was Bacon or whatever are just nuts.

galen  ·  3568 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    bitter anti-classicism.

Whoa whoa whoa, I am a staunch pro-classicist. Shakespeare, Milton, Dante-- you name it.

Classism, on the other hand... :P

user-inactivated  ·  3568 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oops.

user-inactivated  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I recently bought a copy of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and was warned that to read it without also reading the Archipelago is to commit a sin against history. The used book store around the corner has a sort of militant owner/proprietor.

ecib  ·  3573 days ago  ·  link  ·  

History will forgive you. It's used to being ignored.

_refugee_  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I've committed a sin against history, but that's a great book. I think that's the only book I wrote a paper on that got a 100% my junior year. I'm sure I still have that paper.

mk  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, I gave up on the Kindle.

I'll check out Gulag Archipelago after I finish Cryptonomicon. Thanks.

b_b  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Fukkit. I'm going to join you. I feel like GA is a book I should be familiar with.

user-inactivated  ·  3568 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hey, I hope you didn't buy this yet -- I'd like to pick it up and send it to you as a much-belated, yet topical thanks for Master&Margarita.

Lemme know. I might still have your address if it hasn't changed, but maybe send me that too.

b_b  ·  3568 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Haven't picked it up yet. Thanks for the offer!

user-inactivated  ·  3568 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sure thing. I'll try to get it to you Friday.

ecib  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I keep forgetting whether you totally gave up on it or just have animosity towards it. I may be able to dig out my hard copy of GA.

mk  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Both, I suppose. An open source e-reader that had all my books in a dropbox-like account would be great.

user-inactivated  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·  
ecib  ·  3574 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That would be nice. That's one of the cool things about Gutenberg is that you can download right to your dropbox. I do that with the ePub version and just open in iBooks. Completely open source would be best though.