Quote:
Originally Posted by SATCHMO
National Geographic produced a really great documentary series based on the book, just in case you're feeling lazy. I'm sorry, that might be too much temptation for you to handle.
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I'll watch the documentary regardless, help cement some of the things the book is talking about into my mind. I started watching the HBO series
Rome right around the time we were learning about the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire in my history 105 class and it's really helped cement the key characters in my mind. Because I had the history in the back of my mind, it was easy to differentiate from the historical characters from the fictional ones, drawing a nice line between history and fiction.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheBig3KilledMyRainDog
Actually, the bus book is a little more difficult to read since Shelly's writing in older modern English. I'm dodging the "What a wicked douche" look by bringing a large hardcover book on the bus. Though I'm sure I'll regret Frankenstein as I did Moby **** for trying to read it on the bus.
I own G,G,&S and haven't even started it. A buddy of mine who's used to reading things of a laborious nature (Gladwell and the link) and said he hasn't finished it after a few attempts.
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Hah! I never thought of reading a hardcover book on the bus as a douchey prerequisite, in fact when I was living in Vancouver and working in the lumberyard I use to love the juxtaposition I created while reading a non-fiction science book while dressed in my dirty work clothes. I will say that there are some books I think people read in public more for attention then anything else, like the Anarchist Cookbook or Mein Kampf, or maybe I'm just a judgmental as
shole.
As far as
Guns, Germs & Steel is concerned the author's diction and syntax is quite friendly and easy to read, but I usually get about 200 - 300 pages in before something else catches my eye. I have a shelf full of half finished books that I play on finishing some day, a lot of them I read in between finishing one book and starting another. A perfect example is
The Godfather, I started that in the summer of 2003 and read a good portion of it over the summer but put it down for something else, I think it was
The Talisman, but after that was finished I picked up
The Godfather again by Christmas 2003 and had it finished some time by the spring of '04. Sometimes I can just plow though a book and sometimes I need to take a break.