Off Topic Art & Literature

Anyone read a book called The book thief....by Markus Zusak apparently a number one international best seller.?

 

Yes, a great film too.

 

When did that come out......? Certainly didn’t know that ....thanks chilcs

 

It's a brilliant book Beddy. It centres round a young girl (Liesel Meminger) in Germany during WWII who liberates books because she loves reading so much. It's a brilliantly constructed walk through Germany and what happened during the war, and although it is a novel it's got a very realistic feel to it.

It's a truly brilliant book and one I have read several times. Never seen the film but if Chilco recommends it I will track it down and watch it.

Go for it Beddy. You will love it.

 

On the Southampton Heritage sight apparently there was a picture taken outside Archers road of a queue of patrons waiting to enter the ground sometime in the 30’s I think. If I knew how to copy and paste it onto the site I would have done. Sorry........

 

Found this one ....don’t know if it’s the one your after .

 

Thanks Richie that’s the one........

 

“Never judge a book by its cover” must be the least heeded bit of advice taken by those who are looking for a new book. I’ve dismissed many books over the years on this basis and later regretted having not read them sooner. This has just happened to me again in a very big way. I read a book called Appleseed by John Clute. I loved it and wiki’d him only to discover that he is primarily a book reviewer and a very highly regarded one at that. I dug out some reviews and saw a piece where he declared a certain series of books {that I had dismissed because of their covers) to be the most important in their genre of the last century. They were The Book Of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe and oh my word, they are a quite astounding literary feat. I’ve not read anything quite like it and hope that the rest of his bibliography is just as epic.

 

Which one are you @Beddytare ?

 

Ha......thanks a bunch........that’s what my wife said too!..........wasn’t even bloody borne then!!

 

It's possibly in the art category. Made me laugh anyway.

 

Ok been persuaded to try the book thief......... starting tomorrow!

 

You mean to say that the instructions I wrote on how to do things like copy/paste pictures to the forum went unread by you????
I suggest you click on your own Basic Editor link. Pretty sure you'll find the answer there.

 

Sorry.......forgot.........mum.....he told me off!

 

If anyone was wondering where @fatletiss had got to...

 

Listened to Kieth Richards choice on desert island disc revisited this morning. His book choice was James Norman Hall's Doctor Dogbody "who is best known as the co-author of the classic Bounty trilogy. In his later years, his favorite work was writing the tales spun by Dr. Dogbody, a peg-legged old salt who never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. Doctor Dogbody's tales vividly recreate the Napoleonic Wars, and delight with broad comedy, rollicking naval adventure, and characters that will live on in the reader's memory". Review from goodread, I'll get it on order.
Edit
Amazon UK
Hardback 3 Used from £61.60
Paperback £49.99 4 Used from £49.99 5 New from £94.53
The search continues.

 

About 10 years ago or so I was looking around for some swashbucking stuff. So I started to read the first Hornblower novel, The Happy Return [1937], by C.S. Forester. I got about 10 pages in when I suddenly realised that this couldn't be the first book in chronological order. Cue for me to buy the first one in the right order of fictional time, which was Mr. Midshipman Hornblower [1950].
9 books later, and Lord Hornblower [1946], the 9th novel of 11, was enough for me. I'd had enough of C.S. Forester. I thought I'd had enough of fictional seafaring novels altogether. But Patrick O'Brian's first Aubrey & Maturin adventure, Master & Commander, had been dramatised on BBC Radio 4 in 1996, and I'd recorded it back then but never got around to listening to it [the movie is adventures from several books in the series]. So I did listen, and it was bloody fantastic. I mean really, really good. So good I didn't want it to finish, good. So about 7-8 years ago I bought the first 4 novels in a deal off ebay and devoured them. Subsequently, I've read another 3. So along with M&C, we now have Post Captain, HMS Surprise, The Mauritius Command, Desolation Island, The Surgeon's Mate, and The Fortune of War. Fortunately, every time I've wanted to read another in the series, BBC Radio 4 have announced that they are about to broadcast a dramatisation or a reading [The Surgeon's Mate was read by Benedict Cumberbatch - not brilliantly IMO, but good enough] When they dramatised the Fortune of War they included The Surgeon's Mate in the first part. So I get to put voices to characters as I read - a nice bonus. That's 7 books of 21 in the series. I have a second batch of 6 books just waiting for their moments. This could be the time to start Part 2, so to speak.

So what can I suggest from this? The Hornblower novels are well worth reading. For me, the first 5, 6, maybe 7 are absolute page-turners. The old 1950's film adventure starring Gregory Peck is buried in this first half dozen odd somewhere, IIRC. I tended to find the books getting a little bit stodgy near the end, especially Lord Hornblower, which I barely finished. Maybe I had had enough, as mentioned earlier.
Patrick O'Brian books might have a narrower appeal, to the slightly more nerdy type. So far, to me they are absolute gold. Really intelligently written, with real historical references [Hornblower did so too at times], and I love the technical speak of the era [Hornblower does this far less], which really puts you in the moment. I highly recommend you read either set in order, as if you assume you will carry on to the next book. The next in the series is made all the easier to follow, having read preceding novels. All this reference to the series is making me think about picking up the next book - The Ionian Mission.

https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/c-s-forester/
https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/patrick-obrian/

 

If it hasn’t already been referenced; anyone read Dean Kootz - The Eye of Darkness? Uncanny resemblance to now apparently.

 

This is the book Dustin Hoffman's medical disaster film Outbreak was based on..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone