Amph What book are you reading right now?

How many pages in is that? My friend was trying to read the whole book before the movie came out. In five or six months, she only got halfway. Said it was VERY detailed.

 

Almost 1200 pages, plus 2 index type things. Ridiculously in-depth detailed. Gives us details about stuff we don't care about and mentions things related to the story but aren't described that much. 70 pages to get to Jean Valjean for the first time. Before that, all about the Bishop that Valjean ended up with before he turned over a new leaf. More than 100 pages in before we get to Fantine who is the Part 1 character title.

 

An orphan named Pin joins a group of Italian men fighting the Germans. The title refers to a hiding place that only Pin knows about.

Calvino is good at that. I recommend starting with If On A Winter's Night A Traveler.



Complete Stories And Poems of Edgar Allen Poe

I've read the first two stories in the collection. There are many more to go.


Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

I've barely begun this Discworld novel that is praised as one of the best.

 

The Roman Triumph, by Mary Beard. With any luck it might help me narrow down my capstone topic.

 

Are you concentrating in Roman history?

Force Smuggler wow! This might be one I skip

 

Make the effort! It's really good but extremely wordy.

 

I've read a few things since Christmas:

Falling to Earth, the autobiography of Apollo 15 Command Module Pilot Al Worden. Not a long book by any means, but interesting nonetheless, particularly as there seems to no love for Chris Kraft, George Lowe and Dave Scott.

Star Trek: Titan: Fallen Gods, a really well written Star Trek novel. It was a fun read.

Seer of Egypt. Very, very, very excellent follow-up to the masterfully written Twice Born. If you like Colleen McCollough's Master of Rome, you need to check out Pauline Gedge, particularly the Lord of the Two Lands and The King's Man Trilogy. Truly superb historical fiction.

Currently reading Into the Silence which is about World War I, Mount Everest and the death of George Mallory. I'm only about 120 pages in, but its shaping up to be a ripping good adventure and a great read.

 

Technically I'm simply a history major, as unfortunately WVU's history program is not expansive enough to allow concentrated majors, but yeah, I'm doing my utmost to specialize in Roman History. So, for WVU, that entails taking as many ancient history courses as possible, and (re)taking Latin as my foreign language (also took it in high school).

 

Nice! What books are you looking at when considering your capstone? Any particular era of Roman history?

Chancellor_Ewok tell us more about this Pauline Gedge.

 

Right now I'm looking at Carthage Must Be Destroyed, The Roman Triumph, Ancient Rome: A New History, and Conquest: The Roman Invasion of Britain. Nailing down an era is a bit of an issue, at the moment. If I choose to focus on the Roman conquest and integration of Italy, it would definitely be early to mid-Republican era. If I go with the Gauls, it would be very late Republic/early Principate. Britain and Greece are also possibilities.

I'll probably concentrate on pre-Crisis of the Third Century Rome, as that's what I've had the most exposure to. A vast library of work has already been done on the Late Republic/Early Principate, so I would like to eventually find a less-explored niche and make it my own, but for now, I'm merely a student.

 

Reading Les Miserables again.

 

Again? You've read it once and you're doing it again? Wow. I'm 400 some odd pages in and when I'm done I won't be reading it for a very long time.

 

RC-1991 - not sure if you're into fiction about Rome, but if so have you read Simon Scarrow's Roman series (the Cato/Macro novels)? They're very good.

 

Wow! Very cool Thinking about grad school?

I think Rogue1-and-a-half has read Les Mis several times.

 

Unfortunately there's not a lot to tell. She's not as well known as she should be IMHO, but here is the wiki page about her, as well as her website.

I have six of her books.

House of Illusions

The Lord of the Two Lands
Volume 1: The Hippopotamus Marsh
Volume 2: The Oasis
Volume 3: The Horus Road

The King's Man Trilogy
The Twice Born
Seer of Egypt

 

NYCitygurl - Yeah, grad school is pretty much the only viable option for me- I'm looking to be a professor at some point.

LAJ_FETT - I've never read Simon Scarrow, but I have read Robert Harris's Cicero novels, which are entertaining and make good use of his speeches.

 

I've read the Cicero novels as well - they were pretty good. However the Scarrow novels are more action-oriented but they do have a dose of politics as well, especially in later novels.

 

I'm currently reading it for my sixth time. I just think it's the most gorgeous novel ever written. I rank it behind only the Bible for sheer literary quality. I love all the character details. And even some of the derails, like the lengthy section on the convent and the bit in book four (I think) about argot and the purpose of literature, are really fascinating to me. God, I love it. I could do without the Waterloo section. That's probably about all I'd cut. But you could start with an abridged version; of course, even the abridged version is like 800 pages.

 

Interesting. Well, I'll add her to my list!

 

Wait till you make it to the cloisters. It will make or break it for you.

 

Well I am finally on Section 3 Marius. When is the cloisters section? I look forward to it.

 

I have to salute you for that. One time is more than enough for me for right now.

 

If you're in book three, you've made it past the cloisters! Oh, wait . . . I bet it's been pulled out and put in an appendix! It's a lengthy section about the history of the convent where Valjean takes refuge and then a lengthy discussion of whether cloisters are a good idea or not. It, along with the Waterloo section, have been placed in appendices in a couple of versions of the book.

 

The Waterloo section was at the start of Book 2 in my version. The Convent section was also in it. That whole section probably went way over my head about the cloisters I got the Penguin Books version with the movie cover. The appendixes in my book have a section on the Convent as an Abstract Idea and something on Argot

 

Oh, okay, so they left the history of the actual convent in, but pulled out the more philosophical discussion for the appendix. That makes sense.

I wonder which translation that is. There's like four, but I'm only really familiar with one of them. After I finish this one, which is the Modern Library translation, the oldest English translation, and the one that is most used since it's out of copyright, I'd like to move on to one of the modern translations. Well, Amazon says yours is probably the Norman Denny translation, which is from the seventies and apparently has some "minor abridgements" according to wikipedia. The only one I've read is the Charles Wilbour one, which was published the same year that the original French novel was published, 1862. I'm sure it's more readable in a more modern translation. I want to try the Julie Rose version that was done in 2007 sometime.

It'll be a while though. I couldn't like read it back to back or anything.