01-23-2007, 06:03 AM | #31 |
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Some stunning descriptions of nature from Moby Dick:
From Chapter 51-- It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day. And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But when, after spending his uniform interval there for several successive nights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. "There she blows!" Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering. From Chapter 132-- It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's chest in his sleep. Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea. But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them. Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion- most seen here at the Equator- denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster |
01-23-2007, 06:03 AM | #32 |
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I fear too much B of M reading has wrecked many here's taste in literature.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster |
01-23-2007, 07:23 AM | #33 |
Board Pinhead
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Hey! We can and do agree about something. Jane Austen is bad. The Bronte chicks are worse.
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01-23-2007, 08:08 AM | #34 |
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I agree I cannot take any list that does not include Catch-22 seriously.
In fact screw their list, I am doing my own. 1. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller 2. Breakfast of Champions - Vonnegut 3. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison 4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain 5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess 7. Native Son - Richard Wright (although the last third of the book is damn near intolerable) 8. The Stranger - Albert Camus 9. Slaughterhouse 5 - Vonnegut 10. Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game - Michael Lewis (damnit I refuse to have a list and leave off the best baseball book of all time) |
01-23-2007, 01:34 PM | #35 | |
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Quote:
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01-23-2007, 01:42 PM | #36 | |
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Quote:
I really liked John Irving's A Word According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison The Cairo Trilogy and especially Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz My Name is Asher Lev and its sequel the Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok East of Eden by John Steinbeck (ooh, that needs to go on the classic movies thread too) The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck Last edited by marsupial; 01-23-2007 at 01:44 PM. Reason: Forgot one |
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01-23-2007, 01:45 PM | #37 |
Demiurge
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Moby Dick should be renamed "How to Hunt Whales in 450 boring steps."
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01-23-2007, 01:46 PM | #38 | |
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Quote:
It really is amazing- even your favorite passage has the uncanny ability to make me want to go to the dentist for a root canal. |
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01-23-2007, 01:47 PM | #39 |
Charon
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Ouch.
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"... the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice." Martin Luther King, Jr. |
01-23-2007, 01:48 PM | #40 |
Demiurge
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Best book:
Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs The first novel I ever read, when I was six. |
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