h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't do very well with extremely long classics when I borrow copies from the local library. I tend to read ten pages in each of 8 to 10 books each day. At ten pages [maximum] a day, it will take 130 days to finish "War and peace," way beyond the 21-day borrowing period at my library. Even allowing for renewals, I would need five or six, a bother, since I would need to bring the book into the library each time [no online renewals after the first one]. So spending 20 bucks on my own copy saves me some hassle.

The average novel tends to run around 300 pages, a length that I can read in two borrowing periods, so I will still borrow average-length novels.

I got a paperback of W&P for EUR 4.95 recently. New.

It will be interesting to hear what you think of it. It's a while since I read it and I'm with Woody Allen on this one: it's about some Russians

Ronald Reagan: - If you can't explain it to me on a single A4 sheet, it is of no interest



PS: Have you read James Joyce's "Ulysses", paulh? Friend of mine thinks you haven't read it until you have read it at least ten times - which makes it more everesty than "War And Peace", yes?

...wa'll, 0.0...n... ....

I heard about a guy who read "War and peace" 12 times, seeing new things in it each time. But if I try to read both "War and peace" and "Ulysses," and also keep up with everyone else's favorite books, I doubt that I'll be able to read *anything* more than once, if that. In the last 15 months I've made a good dent in many of the must-read classics -- Hemingway, Faulkner, Roth, some Dickens, some Bellow, some Dos Passos, some Durrell, etc. I will soon tackle the first of Asimov's "Foundation" books. There are numerous classic crime novels that I've missed. Now that "Name of the Rose" is out of the way, I can try "Godfather" and some Agatha Christie.

Meanwhile, with every passing year there are thirty or forty more books that get heralded as must-reads.

Some of the classics that I have recently read did not impress me. I found "Madame Bovary" and "Frankenstein" boring, for example.

I recently ended "The Massive Book Cull of 2014": I had started reading cirka 20 different books over these last few years and they sort of loaded on my conscience. So now all but one remains on my bedside table, the rest have been moved back to their respective shelves, where they will have to await their time

And then yesterday I was given a brand new book, so it seems like my problems are starting all over again

(Thing is the Danish minister of culture gave away 100,000 books for free on "The Day of the Book" - and I was one of those lucky 100,000 Yay™)

Except for extremely long books like "War and peace" and "The Goldfinch," I borrow books form the library. When I finish them, they go back tot he library. The guilt of owing fines on overdue books is part of my incentive for plugging away at them .

Good luck Paul with reading War and Peace. I go phases when I ever read a lot or read very little. I use reading to help me relax when I am on the as an aid to stop me having panic attacks.

I very much doubt if Ronald Reagan said "A4 paper". Don't they have different sizes in America? (Something like the ones I learnt on - foolscap, quarto, letter etc.)

We used to have what we called "American A4" in the office - slightly shorter and fatter than the UK equivalent.

Just goes to show how out of date I am.

"I very much doubt if Ronald Reagan said 'A4 paper'" [TC]

We have letter size [8 and 1/2 inches by 11 inches] or legal size [8 and 1/2 inches by 14 inches]. Those are the two main sizes.

Thanks Paul - I had noticed those on the settings of most printers, which is why I thought they were still in use.

Actually Ronald Reagan made this the paper size for U.S. federal forms in the early 1980s, so I too believe you are right, TC