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#105438 06/12/03 01:05 PM
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My next-town-over neighbor and former co-worker -- Brendan DuBois, has a new novel out! "Betrayed."
A starred review from Publisher's Weekly said, "DuBois... sets up another frighteningly plausible scenario in his latest and heartbreaking thriller."
I just got my copy and will be devouring it on the first rainy weekend - which is forecast to be the upcoming one!
Anyone else found any "ripping reads" for the summer?



#105439 06/12/03 01:16 PM
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"Tess of the D'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy. one of the most disturbing books I've read. there is no romance suggested by the name and I don't like author's attitude toward women. he says that a man in a field is a person and a woman is so close to nature she is part of the field.


#105440 06/12/03 01:34 PM
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"Tess of the D'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy. one of the most disturbing books I've read.

Now, now... calm down. You have to remember the time period that this book was written. Women were seen as less than men or as belonging to them. A woman was a man's chattel, as were his horse, his home, his fields, etc...
So pop a vicadin and be the mellow...


#105441 06/12/03 03:02 PM
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Vika i'm with you.. i hated Tess, and don't much like anything by Hardy (on the other hand, my daughter loves the book, and everything she has read by Hardy!)

i thought the book depressing. since fiction, like life becomes more interesting when we see change.. growth, in some way, in the characters.. and i didn't see any in Tess. things happen to her, she is not in control of any part of her life.. except her thoughts, and here she thinks thing happen i can't control them.. oh well.

i am a generally happy person. i have had adversity in my life.. I haven't been blessed with endles bounty (physical, or emotional or any other way) its not been perfect, hererofore, but my feeling about things are idependant almost of reality...

sure i had a rotton childhood.. but every year it becomes less signicant in my emotional life (it still shows up in somethings,) but my past (and even my current circumstances!) don't keep me from being happy!

I think i am young, and act young, and people respond to me, as if i where younger than i am... the reality about my actual age doesn't interfer with my feelings!
Tess is the oposite! all of hardy's femine character are the same, there is not one i would want as friend!

Yeah, he wrote of a specific time.. but even in that time others were writing about a different reality!


#105442 06/12/03 03:30 PM
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even in that time others were writing about a different reality

I could never manage to read 'Tess'. The emotions are too strong for me to wish to cope with and I agree that Hardy is nearly always depressing; I guess he was a man with a mission and he aimed to change attitudes rather than celebrate what was already changing.


#105443 06/12/03 03:58 PM
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In reply to:

i thought the book depressing


.

i agree strongly. it is so disappointing when TH says "if this would have happened then they've lived happily ever after...but it didn't...". i mean we all miss some opportunities but not all the time. nobody is doomed
i think I'll try to read something else by Hardy and compare. his analysis of the process of peasants turning agricultural workers is quite striking but...but...but


#105444 06/12/03 04:14 PM
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I've started All The King's Men, which reads like poetry. The language is rhythmic and richly evocative. He reminds me a lot of another KY author, Jesse Stuart. I was reading ATKM in a coffee shop with my kids the other day and I read something in it - I forget what it was exactly - that caused me to laugh uncontrollably for several minutes. I had tears in my eyes and was coughing. My kids were giving me evil stares, though, and when we left asserted they were never going ANYWHERE with me again, as they were embarrassed to admit even my acquaintance, let alone my kinship with them.

I also started The Emperor's Codes, which is an account of WWII codebreaking.
Interesting detail: I'd always thought the Brits broke the German codes and the Americans broke the Japanese codes. Turns out the Americans broke a few of the Japanese codes, BUT most were also broke by the Brits.

Also, I retreived my copy of volume I of Feyman's Lectures on Physics and plan to spend a fair chunk of the summer on it.

k



#105445 06/12/03 04:53 PM
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think I'll try to read something else by Hardy and compare. his analysis of the
process of peasants turning agricultural workers is quite striking but...but...but


Try The Mayor of Casterbridge. The mayor in question is a prizewinning jackass and the female characters pretty well take charge. It's the only thing I've read by him, but from what people in this forum have had to say, I may leave well enough alone.

And I figured out how to write in blue.


#105446 06/12/03 08:31 PM
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"I retreived my copy of volume I of Feyman's Lectures on Physics..."

Feynman also wrote (at least) two books for the layperson: 'Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character' and 'What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character.' They tickle and enlighten... and I'd be grateful if anyone can suggest more works by the same author intended for a similar audience...


#105447 06/12/03 10:59 PM
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I read the first of the two books which Feynman wrote "for the layperson" and found him to be among the most egotistical, self-obsessed, self-promoting, self-congratulatory writers I have ever read. Needless to say, I did not / will not read the second.



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