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

I studied Of Mice and Men in 11th grade (age 17, so A-level age), and I loved it. And that was with a teacher I couldn't stand.

Just finished 'A Farwell to Arms' by Ernest Hemingway. The last chapter, the birth scene, is Hemingway off the top shelf!

Steinbeck at least had the decency to find writing a slog. He wasn't one of these ones who bums on about novels and characters taking on lives of their own and writing themselves.

OMAM and TKAM are definitely easy choices for O Levels/ GCSEs. My sister did Chaucer. Possibly her school was less sussed about what's needed to bump up the exam results. She was at a newly-established comp, I was a scolarship boy at an independent school. (and *don't* get me started on the class war aspects of that!)

If it's any consolation - we had to do that dreadful arse Betjeman too. Again, very easy - but then there's so little in it.

Now that's interesting about Steinbeck. I shall have to think about that in the context of 'Cannery Row' and 'Sweet Thursday', with their asterisk system for marking especially fine passages and their shifts in style ('hopdoodles' and all that).

I did To Kill A Mocking Bird for O-level, too. (OK, hands up all those who took their English Lit O-level in 1979.<raisedhandsmiley&gt At the time, I saw reading as something I did for pleasure. I did *not* enjoy the process of picking a book apart(not to mention a play and some poems), just so we could come up with the 'right' answers at exam time. Since that time I've deliberately avoided the book. I won't even watch the film. Maybe I should give the book another chance. (I got an 'A' for English Lit., BTW. My revision was learning one poem by heart. Other than that, I worked from what I could remember. Guess it was a combination of brains, good memory and blind luck.)

Other than that, I've just finished The Fourth Protocol and have started The Medici by Paul Strathern.

Ed,
I've seen your Truman Capote film links: With 7.8/10 and 7.3/10 scores they're both worth seeing by the look of it.

I never had to read a book for school, seems to me they should reinstate that over here (Flanders). A lot of people that I know hasn't read a book trough high school.
The only thing that you had to do was keep a record off all the books you have read in the year (min of 10) but nobody ever asked any questions about any of the books you have read....

now i am reading "the adventures of huckelberry finn", in the original version.
But I have a lott of trouble with the dialects (English being my second/third language) never used a dictionary as much as now (and sometimes happy i have a copy in Dutch also)
But it is a good read

Isn't that the fundamental flaw at the heart of set theory?

I know someone who reads very little, but who loved that book when he studied it in school for his Junior Cert. I loved it too.

TRiG.

And, if you can't be bothered/don't know how to check the posting to which mine was a reply, "that book" was To Kill a Mockingbird. Brilliant; simply brilliant.

TRiG.

I'm now reading To Kill a Mockingbird having read many of your recommendations. Thank you all. Emile Zola is having a rest!

I must get around to reading what I always think of (after reading Mad Magazine) as Tequila Mockingbird...

I have just finished a Fred Saberhagen Berserker book, and am now reading another book by the genius David Gemmell. So, it's not literature (but I avoid anything with that label!) but as David Gemmell died in 2006, it is my mission to find *everything* I have missed so far. That he is a genius is beyond doubt!

Vicky

I suppose that Trig's 'Fundamental flaw at the hearty of set theory' comment refers to my one about lists of lists. Bertrand Russell. A set of teaspoon's is not itself a teaspoon, and all that. He was a fine one for the tea-related metaphors was Bertrand.

I don't understand Kiwisap's comment about 'There are some people who haven't read a book...' Like, I understand every word in that sentence, but they don't seem right in that particular combination and order. Surely such people can't really exist? (cf Queen Victoria and lesbians).

Next on my reading list...
'Bash The Rich: True Life Confessions Of An Anarchist'. Probably. Either that of the next Patrick O'Brian.

I'm about halfway through that wonderfully weighty volume, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. I've just finished reading 'An Ideal Husband'. 'The Importance of Being Earnest' gets all the praise, but 'An Ideal Husband' is definitely my favourite of his plays.

Ah! St. Oscar! There's a popular misconception that his artistic career was ruined by his imprisonment and public shaming. Nonsense! Nearer the end you'll get to 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' and (especially) 'De Profundis'.

I found the Picture of Dorian Gray a bit longwinded and padded out and sadly I fell by the wayside. It's now languishing in my church bazaar box.

An Ideal Husband or Lady Windemere's Fan, for me. The Duchess of Padua is a bit strange and Salomé is just too weird. The Importance of Being Earnest is very witty, but I can see very little depth in it. A Woman of No Importance is also better than Earnest, in my books.

(I've heard a BBC radio production of Lady Windemere and of A Woman of No Importance, and I've seen a three-actor production of Earnest. I've also read the lot of them, though I skipped chunks of Salomé.)

TRiG.