Hemingway hasn't been aging well for the last half a century.
What are you reading?
- Thread starter Bone2pick
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I loathe Hemingway, but I read his work at least once a year or so. I never fail to learn something about writing from the son of a bitch. The last book I read was The Old Man and the Sea. It was freaking brilliant.
Heartlet Happer
Active Member
Vinnie the Pooh. Funny that the language is a bit difficult to comprehend. Though it has its promised medicinal properties, it reduces the anxiety.
Maybe because of language drift over hundred years. Or maybe the writer was riding on some sort of unique impairment, making him a genius.
Also reading books as a text (on computer screen) is a new dopamine dietary challenge. Say, comparing to video plays or audio books.
Maybe because of language drift over hundred years. Or maybe the writer was riding on some sort of unique impairment, making him a genius.
Also reading books as a text (on computer screen) is a new dopamine dietary challenge. Say, comparing to video plays or audio books.
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Vinnie?
Heartlet Happer
Active Member
Ups. Winnie, not V.
(mumbling to myself: I met him as Vinnie in another reality. He is Vinnie for me forevers)
I just finished watching his latest video! Love that dude!
Vinnie the Pooh sounds interesting. He could be from the never-written East Side Story, where the Marsican Brown Bears share their neighbourhood with the Giant Pandas and the Irish Hares.
Vinnie the Pooh-bah, head of Honey Pot Escort Service: "It's so much more friendly with two."
Good to know he doesn't endlessly recite his lineage or take on (almost) all the jobs, unlike his predecessor.
Pooh-Bah: Certainly. In which of my capacities? As First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chamberlain, Attorney General, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Privy Purse, or Private Secretary?
(... and it gets even funnier and more ridiculous as the scene goes on ...)
Grimm's Complete Fairytales... research for the novel I'm planning out now, which is going to be in the shape of a fairy tale. I have Hans Christian Anderson on deck plus a variety of West African folklore books and other thematic shit.
I've read a few Grimm's over the years but never the whole thing. Lots of dead kids. Lots of creatures getting lost in the woods. Lots of creatures falling down wells. Lots of Kings with daughters that need wedding. Lots of happily ever after or definitively fucked. Not sure if I'd rather die by being sewn up in a sack and drowned or stuffed into a barrel full of nails and rolled down a mountain.
I've read a few Grimm's over the years but never the whole thing. Lots of dead kids. Lots of creatures getting lost in the woods. Lots of creatures falling down wells. Lots of Kings with daughters that need wedding. Lots of happily ever after or definitively fucked. Not sure if I'd rather die by being sewn up in a sack and drowned or stuffed into a barrel full of nails and rolled down a mountain.
My all-time favorite adaptation of a Grimm story (The Robber Bridegroom) was written by Margaret Atwood and called The Robber Bride. Maybe I'll go unearth it from the shelves downstairs and reread it.
I think I have that one somewhere, too. She's hit or miss for me.
ETA: nope, Blind Assassin
ETA: nope, Blind Assassin
Me, too. I wasn't all that crazy about The Handmaids Tale, but I very much liked its sequel, The Testaments.
Speaking of the Grimm fairy tales, I was never crazy about Cinderella and the glass slipper (though, of course, they didn't come up with that). Wouldn't that hurt like hell? :-\
Earlier versions have the slipper made of gold (which would also hurt, obviously) or silk (which sounds much better). Starting with Honore de Balzac, there have been discussions whether there was a mistranslation from the French, and the slipper was made of vair (fur) instead of verre (glass). But modern analysis confirms that it was supposed to be glass, which sounds sadistic.
Earlier versions have the slipper made of gold (which would also hurt, obviously) or silk (which sounds much better). Starting with Honore de Balzac, there have been discussions whether there was a mistranslation from the French, and the slipper was made of vair (fur) instead of verre (glass). But modern analysis confirms that it was supposed to be glass, which sounds sadistic.
The version I'm reading has it as gold, but considering one of the step-sisters cut her toe off to wear it, I don't think it matters much. I've seen women do some stupid things to land a rich guy, but that takes the cake.
Yeah, the Grimm version is brutal. (Those step-sisters losing a toe is the least violent thing that happens to them). Ugh.
Once upon a time, I went for a walk with a new acquaintance. She walked very slowly and at least a couple of times in each block, she'd stop, take a foot out of a shoe, stand a moment, and slip the shoe back on. Repeat with the opposite foot. I finally suggested she might be more comfortable walking in tennies than dress flats. She explained that all her shoes were too tight. She wanted her feet to look dainty and feminine, so she squeezed them into the smallest size shoe possible. I was so stunned, I couldn't respond. She was a career waitress, and I've always wondered if her work shoes were also too small.
I had no idea what "tennies" and "dress flats" are (I googled, so that's OK), but that sounds horrendous. Cramming your foot into a shoe that's smaller than your foot, much less into the smallest size possible, is a really good way to injure yourself permanently, or maybe even get some horrible foot deformity like bunions, hammertoes, ingrown toenails, or worse. 
I hope your made your acquaintance see reason, Catriona.
I hope your made your acquaintance see reason, Catriona.
I didn't even try. They were her feet and if she was vain enough to undergo the western version of footbinding, she was not likely to listen to reason from a woman who wears a size ten.