elliott57 is not currently reading any books.
I’m 30 years old, male, from France. I’ve been a DailyLit member since February 23, 2008. My reading interests include Fiction, and drama - READ "HUNTING UNICORNS" - BELLA POLLEN!.
Books
Posts
Ideas - Autobiography, Memoirs,Diaries and Journals
...whatever it is you're smoking, you've found you're Xanadu! i think it would take great gull maximus to publish the secret diary of a loved one after their passing, it should be burned , not read, our eyes have no invitation into the journey composed on those pages. I will say you have a clever knack for the obvious, indeed that which is secret and has been told is no longer secret anymore ... alas and alack I wonder if that idea is what puts the flame under those Hollywood and London tabloids, not to mention the obnoxious paparazzi.
Ideas - Autobiography, Memoirs,Diaries and Journals
I beg to differ, but autobiographies and biographies and journals date back to ancient Roman and Greek periods - most of what is know about both civilizations are from diaries and journals, fragments and graffiti; the same could be said of the might Egyptian empire and what writing we have left in ancient Sanskrit are journals, biographies and diaries. And why should they "come to occupy a solid place in the scheme of topic" here in the next few years when they already hold such a position in general literature? Your bombastic rhetoric boils down after the Bourbon has been ignited and burned off to nothing more than your simple desire, I presume, that more "autobiography[sic], memoirs, diaries and journals" be add to the reading list of Daily Lit. Has anyone ever discussed syntax with you as it applies to a simple sentence?
Book Requests - The Catcher In The Rye
You can pick up a copy of Salinger's book at any used book store for less than a buck!!! Seems like a lot of effort to put The Catcher in the Rye on the site for something that at the end of school year Freshman trash - go trash picking at your high school - you'll find a trove of good stuff - when I was at Yale I got boxes and crates all ready as seniors moved out and couldn't store stuff any longer at their residential colleges - I must have added at least 500 books to my collection each year! I must have 20 copies of the book, which I'd gladly give to anyone who wanted a copy, but that gets all icky with exchanging addresses - so try a used book store or a good will store - 25 cents there ;)
Charles Dickens - Which is the best?
I'd have to say "A Tale of Two Cities" & "Nicholas Nickleby" (although I read in Form I in Paris - your equivalent of 9th grade - "Great Expectation" and it turned me into an Anglophile almost immediately, so deep down I have a special place for Pip, Estella and dear Miss Havisham).
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Did you know Dickens' publisher made him write two endings for Great expectations - one where Pip & Estella reunite and marry and life happily ever after - Thanks be to God Dickens prevailed!!! I first read GE in 9th grade at my boarding school in Paris and it turned me into an Anglophile immediately. To this day I can remember the openning lines from A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way... My Tutor had us always memorize the fist paragraph of every book we read. I liked Tale better than GE, be interested in what you think mon ami?
Etc. - MISSPELLING OF AUTHORS' NAMES/BOOK TITLES
MAYBE IT'S JUST MY BEING FRENCH or it's my pet peeve but the misspelling of authors' names and titles of works in here is maddening - if we care anything about literature, then we should respect the spelling of authors' names and the titles of their carefully chosen work! Maybe I'm an uptight French ass but that was how I was taught. If you add the Google tool bar you get 4 pop-downs - first being a spell checker that works on all forms, like here. It would have caught the person who spelled Prufrock "Prufock." I know were all here for fun and reading, but I think there is room for both, I really do. I know I mix up my syntax in sentences all the time - lack of proofing, but I see that differently from getting the authors name spelled wrong or part of the book title. I said my peace and I'm sure you'll tell me yours.
Reader Challenges - Book Sequel Challenge
J Alfred Prufrock .... first it was a POEM (NOT A BOOK as the challenge asked) and second Prufrock has an "r" in it ... MAYBE IT'S JUST MY BEING FRENCH but the misspelling of authors' names and titles of works in here is maddening - if we care anything about literature, then we should respect the spelling of the authors' names and especially the titles of their carefully chosen work! Maybe I'm an uptight French ass but that was how I was taught - if I turned in a paper with such a misspelling I'd get an automatic F no matter how good my paper was.
Question of the Week - Question of the Week #14: Books You Hate
IF I EVER SET EYES ON MIDDLE MARCH AGAIN BY GEORGE ELIOT - I'LL GO BALISTIC - you know how man freakin' pages it has of tiresome Elizabethan English - and the number of characters to keep track of - and of course it would pop up in a senior English class at Yale when I'm cruisin to med school ...and like the book is really written by a woman and the romantic twists and turns make any reality show look stupid (they're stupid to begin with, come on you American woman???) ... but I shudder just seeing a copy of the two-set volume - it sends me into anaphylactic shock so help me god!
Question of the Week - Question of the Week #31: American Writers
Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1876)
Booker T. Washington: Up from Slavery (1901)
W.E.B. Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
D.H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers (1913)
W. Somerset Maugham: Of Human Bondage (1915)
James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence (1920)
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (1925)
Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises (1926)
Ayn Rand: Anthem (1938)
John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
Eleanor Roosevelt: On the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Speeches (1948, Paris)
J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita (1955)
Jack Kerouac: On the Road (1957)
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
John Updike: Run Rabbit (1960)
John Irving: The World According to Garp (1978)
Bella Pollen: Hunting Unicorns (2004)^^^
^^^ A prediction on my part that she will become an author of note in the coming decades.
Question of the Week - Question of the Week #31: American Writers
I've started with a southern storyteller known as the "Father of the American Novel." Then history brought me to the most influential and highly educated African-Americans of the beginning of the 20th century who were beginning change. And from there I continued with writers who I believe helped change the political, racial and misogynistic attitudes prevailing in here these United States. Each brought their part in reshaping the American landscape (some good, some maybe not so good), Yet it resonated in the heart and minds of folks across this diverse country a sense of personal freedom and the right to say what we believe. Writers gained new found respect as the troubadours of free press and speech and got doors opened that had been long shut to ordinary folks for centuries.
Let me know what you think of my choices, please - I love feedback!!! MY PICKS ARE BELOW /
Etc. - Title = a person's name.
And a special recognition must go out to the huge series of novels in the Jeeves series:
"Carry on, Jeeves," "The Inimitable Jeeves, "And Thank you Jeeves, among many delightful others, by P.G. Wodehouse.
And the Jeeves & Wooster series of novels by P.G. Wodehouse:
Thank You, Jeeves
Right Ho, Jeeves
The Code of the Woosters
Jeeves in the Morning
The Mating Season
The Return of Jeeves
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit
How Right You Are, Jeeves
Jeeves and the Tie That Binds
The Cat-nappers
And a special honor is due Agatha Christie who has ever so enriched my life with two remarkable characters that I have come to love and adore, the first, Miss Jane Marple and the second, Monsieur Hercule Poirot - and too many of her titles fit this category to list!.
Etc. - Title = a person's name.
The World According to Garp by John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Meaney
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Demian by Hermann Hesse
Gertrude by Hermann Hesse
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
Peter Camenzind: A Novel by Hermann Hesse
Knulp: Three Tales from the Life of Knulp by Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse
Tales of Adam by Daniel Quinn
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind & Spirit by Daniel Quinn
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut ??
Father, We Thank You by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Collective Nown for all fathers/or Father as in God)
Question of the Week - Question of the Week #39: Paper vs. Pixels
I read the books by Daily Lit on the Metro on my way into Paris on Mondays from our family's old county estate and again on Fridays returning back. I enjoy a 2 hour European-style lunch so often I make a basket of bread, cheese, wine, fruit and my laptop and spread a blanket and read and eat for a good hour and nap for the other half - being a Barrister I don't have to worry about my hair getting all muddled as we wear wigs in court! I also shouldn't admit to reading it in Court but so much of the time a lot of bothersome nonsense is going on that doesn't involve me. And if I’m really into what the book then I'll read some before dinner – we smart cocktails at 7 pm and dine at 8 pm sharp with our children - and because of it I'm usually a poor conversationalist during dinner as my thoughts are in the book - thank god our children are 9, 11, 13 & 15 - they squawk almost as loudly as the House of Commons on every conceivable subject - how my patient wife puts up with me!
Ideas - Gay Novels vs Novels with Gay Characters
What's more authentic literature? Gay Novels or Novels with Gay Characters? Are they both legitimate genres and why or why not? Do you have a favorite "coming out" book? Or a romantic lesbian novel? How about a favorite book with a major gay characters in it? Does the character being gay add something to the story a straight character couldn't? It's almost impossible to read current fiction without there being a gay or lesbian character, and perhaps even an affair with someone gay or lesbian. Is there a new sub-culture forming across America that's very metro-sexual? What's your take on this?
[The word "Gay" here is only meant to mean gay men or lesbians.]
Question of the Week - Question of the Week #30: Books Go To Camp
Have to be CS Lewis "Chronicles of Narnia" and some saucy paperback I stole from from uncle's garage so I could read the sex scenes after light's out with a flash light while all the guy farted and made crude eschatological jokes!!!
Question of the Week - Question of the Week #38: Books on Repeat
On the light side I read Gerald Durrall's "My Family and Other Animals." It is soaked in the sunshine of Corfu, where Gerald Durrell lived as a boy with his family, this book evocatively chronicles his five-year sojourn on the Greek island. With hilarious yet endearing portraits of his eccentric family and their many unusual hangers-on. This is an entertaining and enduring memoir, of which he wrote two more: "Birds, Beasts and Relatives" and "A Zoo in My Luggage." Gerald's elder brother was more known for his literary acclaim, British author Lawrence Durrell most noted for "The Alexandria Quartet."
On the heavier side, I return to the existentialists of my early teens and each summer read by Hermann Hesse: "Demian," "Narcissus and Goldmund" & " Steppenwolf."
Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant - I was uncertain that this would live up to all the praise.
Dreamdust I am equally surprised to learn this and I have studied Civil War history and little know facts a great deal as I am a direct descendant of Robert E. Lee on my fraternal grandmother's side, and carry the Lee name as my middle name as every male has for many generations. (I hate to hit on grammar but this is a literary club but " ... it should be "his 13-year-old son..."
Question of the Week - Question of the Week #33: Go International
A close call between Elie Wiesel, another survivor of both Auschwitz and Buchenwald who won the Nobel Prize in 1986 for his unforgettable work, Night, or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Один день Ивана Денисовича Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha ...but in the end I'd have to pick Elie Wiesel.
Question of the Week - Question of the Week #32: Guilty Pleasures
PG Wodehouse "Jeeses" series
Question of the Week - Question of the Week #37: Where to?
Pre-war Edwardian England, as long I belonged to the aristocracy, with a large London Brownstone and huge country 'House" like in 'Brideshead Revisited, with summers at our Tuscany Villa.
Question of the Week - Question of the Week #35: Literary Friends
HANDS DOWN - JEEVES WOULD BE MY FIRST CHOICE FOR BEST FRIEND!!! ;) ... along with Holden Caufield and unnamed narrator of "Hunting Unicorns," which if you haven't read, you're missing out on one of the most devine novels ever written! King Lear for obvious reasons (and I'd have to argree with Booknerd825 about Lord Voldemort - and that wasn't lame - it was damn creative!!! ;););) ) and Charles Ryder from "Brideshead Revised."
Masters of Verse - Master of Verse: More of A Primer for High School Juniors
I looked over the list of poems included and found then on the "light" side for a college textbook. If you took AP English or English for college bound students, you should have read at least 90% of them by the end of your Junior year. Many are used or referenced on SAT questions (I don't know about ACTs?). I was also surprised that one of the most influential poets from the Romantic period, William Blake, was entirely left off the list.. There are much better books on introduction to verse/poetry that will include Greek and Roman verse, which are so important to our Judeo-Christian history of Western literature.
Masters of Verse - Must read!
A Divine Image
William Blake
Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And secrecy the human dress.
The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace seal'd,
The human heart its hungry gorge.
Masters of Verse - Must read!
I looked over the list of poems included and found then on the "light" side for a college textbook. If you took AP English or English for college bound students, you should have read at least 90% of them by the end of your Junior year. Many are used or referenced on SAT questions (I don't know about ACTs?). I was also surprised that one of the most influential poets from the Romantic period, William Blake, was entirely left off the list. And if this was a class for British Literature, there were a good many poets included who definitely were not British! God Save the Queen! Unless you are taking this course in high school, then the book has value, otherwise it's a complete waste of money and there are much better books on introduction to verse/poetry that will include Greek and Roman verse, which are so important to our Judeo-Christian history of Western literature (especially if studying British Literature).
The Iliad - What's the deal with the Roman names?
Well you won't have to I report with the name of my cocker spaniel ;) named Phidias! My last cocker had a Greek name Pliny the Younger, so I thought a Hellenist name would be appropriate!
Reader Challenges - 6 Word Autobiography
intuitive, sarcastic, curious, lovable, bisexual, surgeon
Reader Challenges - Summer Vacation in Six Words
blistering sun, sandy sand, foamy waves