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bigperm posted:I have to do an oral presentation in my English class. Basically it's reading a sonnet or 14 lines of another work by Shakespeare. I feel everyone in the class is going to just read the first 14 lines of 'To be or not to be'. I am totally unfamiliar with Shakespeare was was looking to solicit some suggestions. Oh, there's always Sonnet 20. Freak out your teacher by convincing the class Shakespeare was gay! For bonus points, point out that many of the love sonnets, including Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a Summer's Day") were addressed to a man! Alternatively, this might be a good site: http://www.shakespeare-monologues.org/
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Apr 30, 2012 04:05
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Trip report - I did sonnet 29 as Idonie suggested to a grand audience of one other student and the professor. It was well received and my last English class of the semester lasted about 5 minutes.
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May 2, 2012 18:15
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I've also got a presentation next Thursday. I'm to apply Victor Shklovsky's Art as Technique to Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. Now, Shklovsky's main point was this: quote:The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important. Benny the Snake fucked around with this message at 23:02 on May 2, 2012 |
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May 2, 2012 22:58
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Benny the Snake posted:I've also got a presentation next Thursday. I'm to apply Victor Shklovsky's Art as Technique to Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. Now, Shklovsky's main point was this: bearic fucked around with this message at 23:38 on May 2, 2012 |
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May 2, 2012 23:18
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To go along with what vegaji said, are there any particular passages in Waugh that you had to re-read a time or two to understand the content? If so, try to account for that effect: is she using odd metaphors, irregular syntax, fresh ironies, an unusual p.o.v., or what? Shklovskii and the Russian formalists are all about discrete devices. This can be a little problematic because the Russian formalist technique is very much historical. The theory is that new techniques will arise (or old techniques re-purposed) once the current constellation of defamiliarizing devices has been used so much that they don't work anymore; and in turn new devices will wear out and be replaced and so on. So what was totally baffling and unfamiliar to a reader in, say, 1934 may be old hat by now and harder to spot.
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May 2, 2012 23:36
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vegaji posted:I've never read Waugh before, but I've read a lot of stuff on Shklovskii (though admittedly, most of it was related to Tolstoi). The changing from paragraph to paragraph thing could be promising if you think that it was done with the intention of disorientating the reader, thus giving him/her a new/fresh perspective on something. What do you think the author's intention was in using such a narrative technique? Does she try to get that same impression by using any other devices/techniques? TFNC posted:This can be a little problematic because the Russian formalist technique is very much historical. The theory is that new techniques will arise (or old techniques re-purposed) once the current constellation of defamiliarizing devices has been used so much that they don't work anymore; and in turn new devices will wear out and be replaced and so on. So what was totally baffling and unfamiliar to a reader in, say, 1934 may be old hat by now and harder to spot. Benny the Snake fucked around with this message at 23:54 on May 2, 2012 |
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May 2, 2012 23:50
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Does anyone use Audible.com? I'm thinking about getting a membership, but I'm reluctant because I don't understand why I would need to pay a monthly membership fee just to have the opportunity to spend more money. Is it worth it? You get free Wall Street Journal and New York Times access. And a free book each month. (I have some vision problems, and suffer headaches and dizziness when I read small type in books, so the audiobook is a legitimate physiological preference.)
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May 3, 2012 21:11
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TFNC posted:To go along with what vegaji said, are there any particular passages in Waugh that you had to re-read a time or two to understand the content? If so, try to account for that effect: is she using odd metaphors, irregular syntax, fresh ironies, an unusual p.o.v., or what?  Evelyn Waugh had a penis!And was married to a women named Evelyn; their friends called her Shevelyn.
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May 3, 2012 22:06
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escape artist posted:Does anyone use Audible.com? That's really the only benefit, plus if you find one of the many offers for an extra free book for signing up. So basically it's like promising to buy a $15 book every month and if you do, you get discounts on their other products. Much like Time-Life or those old "free CDs after promising to buy 4" plans.
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May 3, 2012 23:38
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escape artist posted:Does anyone use Audible.com?
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May 4, 2012 01:33
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escape artist posted:Does anyone use Audible.com? Have you checked out Itunes? It runs a little more per book - $24 for Calico Joe there, $7.50 with an audible membership - but there's no membership fees, so you might end up ahead if you only buy a few audiobooks a year.
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May 4, 2012 02:55
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Random question but... Does anyone have a hardcopy of DeLillo's Cosmopolis? I got the Kindle version and it seems like there are two copies of the chapter "The Confessions of Benno Levin" in a row. I'm assuming this is just a screwup with the e-book version but I can't find anything online about people posting the same problem, so I thought I'd ask here on the off chance that it's actually supposed to be like this and maybe they are different somehow in a way I can't immediately figure out since flipping back and forth between them on a Kindle is difficult.
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May 4, 2012 04:35
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z0331 posted:Random question but... Definitely a mistake. There should be two Confessions chapters, one that starts "Night" and one that starts "Morning" about 50 or so pages apart.
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May 4, 2012 05:45
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ShutteredIn posted:Definitely a mistake. There should be two Confessions chapters, one that starts "Night" and one that starts "Morning" about 50 or so pages apart. Ok thanks. Emailed Amazon. It's not that big a deal but it'd be nice to get it fixed. I'm actually a little annoyed at how this book's has been done on the Kindle. I get that he doesn't use traditional chapter divisions, but Underworld still had a linked table of contents, why can't this one?
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May 4, 2012 14:27
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House Louse posted:
Derp, thanks. drat my heteronormative assumptions! Benny, Snake posted:Well the Arthurian theme does serve to disorient the reader in how Last Mansion has rooms named after the Knights of the Round Table yet the characters are some of the most un-chivalrous people you'll ever see. And Arthur as a theme is practically timeless. This is a nice reading, but I don't think it lends itself well to the Russian formalist method. I think it can work, but I think the reading would work just as well - probably better - without the RF schema. When I first got into high theory I was like super eager to apply some of it in every paper I wrote, but I would use the text to support my interpretation of the theory rather than vice-versa. Your presentation seems like the same thing, which is OK because it's still a useful exercise and I think Russian formalism is a rich field to draw on even if you have to kinda shoehorn it onto a text. So, if we want to put your reading into Shklovskii's defamiliarization schema first we need to figure out what object the reader is looking at: the Arthurian myth in this case. The reader's perception of this object isn't direct but is mediated by some device or another. I'd say the dominant device is allusion, both to components of the myth itself (the names of the rooms) and to other texts that draw on the myth (the title is taken from The Waste Land, which is loaded with Arthurian/Fisher King imagery). One can imagine that the Arthurian theme, which like you say is timeless, is old hat in 1934. A reader in the Anglo-Saxon tradition might come across some Arthurian allusion and think more or less automatically, "Arthur, great, chivalry and quests and all that, whatever," and move on. It's become so familiar that it no longer has the power to draw out perception and make the reader think about what it means. So, along with allusion as a device Waugh also deploys irony as a device which inverts the reader's perception of the myth and the character's relationship to it, so they have to struggle a little to reconcile the two things. Bam, they see the myth in a whole new light. (It's worth mentioning that the popularity irony as a device started growing around 1934, became totally dominant by, say, the 1960s, and is by now totally outworn and needs replacing. That's the historical/diachronic aspect of Russian formalism.) I haven't read the novel, so I'm just going off the snippets you mentioned. If I were going formalist on those snippets, though, this is how I'd do it. If you could find some other texts from the period leading up to A Handful of Dust that allude to the Arthurian myth that would be useful to establish the weariness of that device.
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May 4, 2012 19:45
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Thanks for the feedback, TFNC. I'm actually dropping the Arthurn theme for something else. I talked to my professor about approaching Dust in the context of aesthetics. Shklovsky speaks on length in Art as Technique on the importance of aesthetics, and in Dust, Heton Manor, a broken-down mansion, is protagonist Tony's obsession. The house is what comes between him and his wife and those issues are what drive the story. I'll write on the white board in huge letters AESTHETICS ARE A MORAL IMPERATIVE. I'm such a nerd.
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May 4, 2012 20:10
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Is there a good website that will tell you simple information, such as is there a sequel, about the book without spoiling anything? I tried to use Amazon when looking up the second book in a series, misclicked the third book, and found out a decent bit of what happens in the second book by accident. Hoping not to repeat this again.
huhu fucked around with this message at 05:59 on May 5, 2012 |
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May 5, 2012 05:51
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How do I clean used books, both hardback and paperback? My great-uncle, bless his heart, sent me twenty pounds of books he bought at yard sales for my son. A fair amount are going straight to Goodwill, but some of them are pretty cool ('70s Sesame Street).
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May 5, 2012 06:05
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huhu posted:Is there a good website that will tell you simple information, such as is there a sequel, about the book without spoiling anything? I tried to use Amazon when looking up the second book in a series, misclicked the third book, and found out a decent bit of what happens in the second book by accident. Hoping not to repeat this again. isfdb.org if you're after genre fiction. It's a great resource because it lists editions of books, book series, collections, omnibuses, and is also good for finding out where a particular short story has been published.
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May 5, 2012 07:23
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huhu posted:Is there a good website that will tell you simple information, such as is there a sequel, about the book without spoiling anything? I tried to use Amazon when looking up the second book in a series, misclicked the third book, and found out a decent bit of what happens in the second book by accident. Hoping not to repeat this again. I use Fantatic Fiction a lot, especially for science fiction/fantasy books--just the list and often the cover of the book.
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May 6, 2012 23:55
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I've got damage on my hardbound books. Towards the bottom of the spine, the paper is ripped and the cardboard is exposed. I used scotch tape, but it's a temporary fix. What's a better fix? Should I reinforce the bottom of the spine with a better tape?
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May 7, 2012 00:25
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Is anyone else sick of Dan Simmons? I adored Hyperion and his early horror like Summer of Night, but most of his other work is increasingly self-indulgent and juvenile. It's like reading Heinlen's later work: Endymion is Hyperion but wordier and self-interested, like the Star Wars EU garbage with symbolic child sex (my favorite chapter was definitely the 30 page--and I counted this, so it's not exaggerated--climb from one point of a mountain to another that Simmons describes in exact technical detail); Illium interested me but Olympos turned out to be a slapped together mess that reveals all 1,000 pages as an excuse to raise Shakespeare to the status of messiah; the Dickens book was the same, but self-indulgent about Dickens trivia and Dickens fanboyisms so that the book doesn't even begin to move with proper pacing until page 300+. The Terror worked pretty well for the first half, as there was a real sense of desperation and slowly running out hope there. I was going to hail it as a return to form for Simmons, but then he kept repeating the same polar beer attacks as his scares and ended with a non-climax that he couldn't afford--oh, and the only female character gets reduced to big tit jokes. Great. Now he's apparently written an Orson Scott Card-like sci-fi novel called Flashback, about a future where everyone is addicted to a drug that makes them remember old times vividly (sounds good so far) and America is in ruins (ok) because Obama destroyed it with his universal healthcare and pacifism (what?). So, can someone assure me this copy of Black Hills I picked up for $2 is actually worth my time? timeandtide fucked around with this message at 11:20 on May 11, 2012 |
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May 11, 2012 11:14
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A Confederacy of Dunces just ruined Batman for me:Ignatius Reilly posted:"I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he's found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman" 
Benny the Snake fucked around with this message at 22:25 on May 11, 2012 |
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May 11, 2012 22:19
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timeandtide posted:Dan Simmons I haven't read Black Hills so you're up the creek there, but I just wanna say I very much agree with your take on the bizarre turn in Simmons's career. Summer of Night is still one of my favorite horror novels. I remember a few years back when he posted some trollish blog entry about meeting his time-traveling grandson who was fighting against sharia law and the new global caliphate (what), which caused a poo poo-storm in its own right. Since then his more recent works have been rife with a sort of reactionary reification of the Great White Writers, as if he feels these folks are in serious danger of being underappreciated. (And for the record, my grad work focuses on Shakespeare, so it means something that even I was angered by Olympos.) There's a certain puerile satisfaction in the way Simmons works his intertexts -- a sense that behind the novel Simmons is saying to the reader, "Well you probably haven't read Henry James, but I certainly have!" But I have, Dan, I have! And even if I didn't like him all that much, at least he didn't constantly name-drop himself in order to feel important.
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May 12, 2012 03:55
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timeandtide posted:Is anyone else sick of Dan Simmons? I adored Hyperion and his early horror like Summer of Night, but most of his other work is increasingly self-indulgent and juvenile. It's like reading Heinlen's later work: Endymion is Hyperion but wordier and self-interested, like the Star Wars EU garbage with symbolic child sex (my favorite chapter was definitely the 30 page--and I counted this, so it's not exaggerated--climb from one point of a mountain to another that Simmons describes in exact technical detail); Illium interested me but Olympos turned out to be a slapped together mess that reveals all 1,000 pages as an excuse to raise Shakespeare to the status of messiah; the Dickens book was the same, but self-indulgent about Dickens trivia and Dickens fanboyisms so that the book doesn't even begin to move with proper pacing until page 300+. Have you read Song of Kali? Just curious to get your take on it, it's the only Simmons I've ever read and I quite enjoyed it. If you haven't, well, I don't know about Black Hills, but if you like Simmons and want to read a not-lovely book by him again, Kali might be a good choice.
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May 12, 2012 05:54
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I really need to read Simmons, don't I? I love old school style horror with a literary twist. The only thing I've read of Simmons was the first 1/4th of The Terror (and then someone spoiled the ending so I stopped) and his Dying Earth novella in the GRRM anthology. Isn't Kali considered one of the finest works of modern horror?
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May 12, 2012 20:20
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bengraven posted:Isn't Kali considered one of the finest works of modern horror? People say this but I'm not quite sure where it comes from, other than the book won a World Fantasy Award. I actually found Kali to be predictable and underwhelming, and rather poorly written. The narrator is very hammy and the whole novel is racist in a Heart of Darkness kind of way. I still think Simmons's strongest horror work is Summer of Night, though others may disagree. He has some good short stories, too -- "This Year's Class Picture" is a very interesting zombie apocalypse tale, for instance.
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May 12, 2012 20:39
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H.P. Shivcraft posted:People say this but I'm not quite sure where it comes from, other than the book won a World Fantasy Award. I actually found Kali to be predictable and underwhelming, and rather poorly written. The narrator is very hammy and the whole novel is racist in a Heart of Darkness kind of way. I've heard his old stuff is very classic. Kali and Summer of Night, like you said, have come up quite a bit. Carrion Comfort. Obviously the Hyperion books. Someone was reading A Winter Haunting and heavily recommended it, but since it takes place after Summer of Night, I suppose I should read that first.
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May 12, 2012 22:05
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I've read three of Dan Simmons' books and enjoyed them all quite a bit. The first one I read was The Terror, and I thought it was really good. I enjoyed the book, the whole way through. I've been meaning to read this again, and hope I can get around to it soon. I then read Song of Kali which had some really, creepy moments. And Carrion Comfort is awesome. The book revolves beings that are almost like vampires, but instead of sucking your blood, they rape your mind. Absolutely terrifying. I'd love to see this made into a movie, but it would be tough. This all reminds me that I haven't read any horror in awhile. Need to find something good. edit- added a word that I left out Juanito fucked around with this message at 22:09 on May 13, 2012 |
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May 13, 2012 06:11
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I thought Song of Kali was boring and predictable in addition to being crazy horrible racist.
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May 13, 2012 21:13
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This is going to be a slightly niche request, but can anybody with experience in game design recommend any books on the subject? I'm looking more for a theoretical approach, not a programming handbook. As an example, Mark Rosewater (head designer of the card game Magic: The Gathering) wrote a nice short column about what he views as essentials of game design. I found the column interesting and it gave me a few different angles to view game design from, but I'd like to find a more in-depth study of game design and I'm unsure where to begin in terms of books. Felt I ought try here and then if nothing comes up maybe over in the Cavern of COBOL.
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May 14, 2012 22:37
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Mo_Steel posted:This is going to be a slightly niche request, but can anybody with experience in game design recommend any books on the subject? I'm looking more for a theoretical approach, not a programming handbook. As an example, Mark Rosewater (head designer of the card game Magic: The Gathering) wrote a nice short column about what he views as essentials of game design. I found the column interesting and it gave me a few different angles to view game design from, but I'd like to find a more in-depth study of game design and I'm unsure where to begin in terms of books. Felt I ought try here and then if nothing comes up maybe over in the Cavern of COBOL. I don't program games myself, but I imagine the Game Dev thread over in the Cavern of COBOL might give you better results.
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May 15, 2012 02:34
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timeandtide posted:Is anyone else sick of Dan Simmons? I adored Hyperion and his early horror like Summer of Night, but most of his other work is increasingly self-indulgent and juvenile. It's like reading Heinlen's later work: Endymion is Hyperion but wordier and self-interested, like the Star Wars EU garbage with symbolic child sex (my favorite chapter was definitely the 30 page--and I counted this, so it's not exaggerated--climb from one point of a mountain to another that Simmons describes in exact technical detail); Illium interested me but Olympos turned out to be a slapped together mess that reveals all 1,000 pages as an excuse to raise Shakespeare to the status of messiah; the Dickens book was the same, but self-indulgent about Dickens trivia and Dickens fanboyisms so that the book doesn't even begin to move with proper pacing until page 300+. Yeah, I've noticed that tendency in him as well. While parts of Endymion were pretty  (latter-day Heinlein is a pretty apt comparison), I still liked it; and Hyperion was great. I picked up a lot of his earlier stuff really cheap afterwards and never got around to read it (it's boxed up in storage back in the US now), but I'm still interested in it. I'd scoop up The Terror at a yard sale if I saw it, but I guess that's about where my interest ends.Mo_Steel posted:This is going to be a slightly niche request, but can anybody with experience in game design recommend any books on the subject? I'm looking more for a theoretical approach, not a programming handbook. As an example, Mark Rosewater (head designer of the card game Magic: The Gathering) wrote a nice short column about what he views as essentials of game design. I found the column interesting and it gave me a few different angles to view game design from, but I'd like to find a more in-depth study of game design and I'm unsure where to begin in terms of books. Felt I ought try here and then if nothing comes up maybe over in the Cavern of COBOL. I have no experience in game design, but the dude who made Cow Clicker has written about game design and it's something he seems to care passionately about. You can also try poking around on Amazon and reading reviews. Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 08:47 on May 16, 2012 |
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May 16, 2012 08:44
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Cow Clicker Hahaha I had never heard of that before, it's incredible.
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May 16, 2012 13:15
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timeandtide posted:Is anyone else sick of Dan Simmons? I tend to like the first book or two of each of Dan Simmon's series, where he sets up intricate and original worlds, interesting narrative concepts, intriguing characters, and enthralling puzzles. I always hate the last book or two, where it always turns out the answer to those enthralling puzzles is Space Jesus.
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May 16, 2012 14:34
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A while back someone recommended The Alchemaster's Apprentice, and I just realized it's actually the 4th book in his Zamonia series. Should I start on the first one, or are they independent stories a la Discworld?
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May 16, 2012 18:00
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Edmond Dantes posted:A while back someone recommended The Alchemaster's Apprentice, and I just realized it's actually the 4th book in his Zamonia series. Should I start on the first one, or are they independent stories a la Discworld? They're independent, so you can read them in any order. I think Rumo is supposed to be the best one in the series.
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May 16, 2012 23:45
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I just saw that House of Leaves is coming out on Kindle in October, I am curious to as how that is going to work with all the back and forth, footnotes, and just plain old curiosities. Its being released on the same day as his new book.
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May 23, 2012 01:36
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Benny the Snake posted:A Confederacy of Dunces just ruined Batman for me: Ignatius J Reilly is not a sympathetic character.
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May 28, 2012 17:41
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I realize that this is a longshot, but I'm not sure where to ask. Years ago I read a short story about Armageddon happening in the midst of World War 1 trench battles, with neither side noticing because it was already hell. Things like the rain of fire just seeming like yet another artillery barrage, the trumpets being drowned out by the explosions, and the four horsemen getting pinned down in No Man's Land by machine guns. Looking around on the internet, the only thing I managed to find was someone else looking for the exact same thing, so I'm confident that I didn't imagine it. If anyone has any idea where I might find the story, I'd appreciate it. It's been bugging me for a while and I wanted to show it to a friend.
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May 31, 2012 20:16
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