What are you currently reading?

[Míchéal]

apt pupil... there's something wrongi cant quite place...its not holding my attention...

[IWasSentWest]

reading (in class) MYTHOLOGY by EDITH HAMILTON

fun, yes i know

it'd be fun for me, i love religious studies texts. it was my major and makes up a lot of my non-fiction bookcase

o dont get me wrong...i love mythology, thats why i took the mythology class. its just the book doesnt really elaborate on too much. just repeats what most educated ppl know

[John Blaze]

reading (in class) MYTHOLOGY by EDITH HAMILTON

fun, yes i know

It is FUN!

I happen to own that book, and a couple of other mythology books. Of course, you can find another book on Greek Mythology which would elaborate a hell of a lot more, and it'd be a bit more enjoyable to read. The reason I like Hamilton though, some of the original form stories are a bit hard to read, and her breakdown is simple.

I am currently rereading my Jack London books. I love his books, but I have a question. Either he was a bit white supremacist, or there was no such thing as PC back then....

[Jean]

both

neither prevented him from being a great writer, though

[OchrisO]

reading (in class) MYTHOLOGY by EDITH HAMILTON

fun, yes i know

It is FUN!

I happen to own that book, and a couple of other mythology books. Of course, you can find another book on Greek Mythology which would elaborate a hell of a lot more, and it'd be a bit more enjoyable to read. The reason I like Hamilton though, some of the original form stories are a bit hard to read, and her breakdown is simple.

I am currently rereading my Jack London books. I love his books, but I have a question. Either he was a bit white supremacist, or there was no such thing as PC back then....

He was quite racist, from what I have read(see some quotes below). A lot of authors back then were, though. H.P. Lovecraft was a eugenicist. Maybe that doesn't make he a bad writer, as Jean has said, but he was also accused of plagiarism on a number of ocassions, with chapter 7 of The Iron Heel being almost identical to an essay by Frank Harris that was published 7 years prior to London's book. That's only one of the most clear cut accusations of plagiarism, he was accused of it on a number of ocassions. I think that makes his writing pretty questionable myself.

London shared common Californian concerns about Asian immigration and "the yellow peril" (which he used as the title of an essay he wrote in 1904). [3] However, many of Jack London's short stories are notable for their empathetic portrayal of Mexicans (The Mexican), Asian (The Chinago,) and Hawaiian (Koolau the Leper) characters. London's war correspondence from the Russo-Japanese War, as well as his unfinished novel "Cherry," show he greatly admired much about Japanese customs and capabilities.

In London's 1902 novel, Daughter of the Snows the character Frona Welse states the following lines (scholar Andrew Furer, in a long essay exploring the complexity of London's views, says there is no doubt that Frona Welse is here acting as a mouthpiece for London):

We are a race of doers and fighters, of globe-encirclers and zone-conquerors …. While we are persistent and resistant, we are made so that we fit ourselves to the most diverse conditions. Will the Indian, the Negro, or the Mongol ever conquer the Teuton? Surely not! The Indian has persistence without variability; if he does not modify he dies, if he does try to modify he dies anyway. The Negro has adaptability, but he is servile and must be led. As for the Chinese, they are permanent. All that the other races are not, the Anglo-Saxon, or Teuton if you please, is. All that the other races have not, the Teuton has.

In Jack London's 1904 essay, The Yellow Peril, he writes: "The Korean is the perfect type of inefficiency — of utter worthlessness. The Chinese is the perfect type of industry"; "The Chinese is no coward"; "[The Japanese] would not of himself constitute a Brown Peril …. The menace to the Western world lies, not in the little brown man; but in the four hundred millions of yellow men should the little brown man undertake their management." He insists:

Back of our own great race adventure, back of our robberies by sea and land, our lusts and violences and all the evil things we have done, there is a certain integrity, a sternness of conscience, a melancholy responsibility of life, a sympathy and comradeship and warm human feel, which is ours, indubitably ours …

Yet even within this essay Jack London's inconsistency on the issue makes itself clear. After insisting "our own great race adventure" has an ethical dimension, he closes by saying

it must be taken into consideration that the above postulate is itself a product of Western race-egotism, urged by our belief in our own righteousness and fostered by a faith in ourselves which may be as erroneous as are most fond race fancies.

In "Koolau the Leper," London has one of his characters remark:

Because we are sick [the whites] take away our liberty. We have obeyed the law. We have done no wrong. And yet they would put us in prison. Molokai is a prison. . . . It is the will of the white men who rule the land. . . . They came like lambs, speaking softly. . . . To-day all the islands are theirs.
London describes Koolau, who is a Hawaiian leper—and thus a very different sort of "superman" than Martin Eden—and who fights off an entire cavalry troop to elude capture, as "indomitable spiritually—a . . . magnificent rebel".

An amateur boxer and avid boxing fan, London was a sort of celebrity reporter on the 1910 Johnson-Jeffries fight, in which the black boxer Jack Johnson vanquished Jim Jeffries, the "Great White Hope". Earlier, he had written:

[Former white champion] Jim Jeffries must now emerge from his Alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson's face … Jeff, it's up to you. The White Man must be rescued.

Earlier in his boxing journalism, however, in 1908, according to Furer, London praised Johnson highly, contrasting the black boxer's coolness and intellectual style, with the apelike appearance and fighting style of his white opponent, Tommy Burns: "what . . . [won] on Saturday was bigness, coolness, quickness, cleverness, and vast physical superiority... Because a white man wishes a white man to win, this should not prevent him from giving absolute credit to the best man, even when that best man was black. All hail to Johnson." Johnson was "superb. He was impregnable . . . as inaccessible as Mont Blanc."

A passage from Jerry of the Islands depicts a dog as perceiving white man's superiority:

He was that inferior man-creature, a nigger, and Jerry had been thoroughly trained all his brief days to the law that the white men were the superior two-legged gods. (pg 98).
Michael, Brother of Jerry features a comic Jewish character who is avaricious, stingy, and has a "greasy-seaming grossness of flesh".

[Wuducynn]

Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Howard Phillips Lovecraft were all racists but I still love their work.

[jayson]

lets not forget Roald Dahl. the man was a rabid anti-semite yet his books are awesome.

[Daghain]

Just finished Blaze and am now starting a reread of Cujo.

[Bev Vincent]

I started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Swedish author Stieg Larsson last night.

[Matt]

That sounds interesting...I'm fully involved in Duma Key.

[Wuducynn]

I'm fully involved in Duma Key.

Thumbs up, way up, way way up..your anus..

or down, way down, way way down so far, or you are still making up your mind on it?

[NeedfulKings]

Just finished Funland by Richard Laymon.

I'm starting 1984 by Orwell (my first time reading it)

[Erin]

You're in for a treat, Needful Kings! 1984 is an excellent book.

[NeedfulKings]

You're in for a treat, Needful Kings! 1984 is an excellent book.

Thanks! I'll be sure to give you a full report.

[Wuducynn]

I think Matt totally missed my post above. Still looking for an answer.

[John Blaze]

both

neither prevented him from being a great writer, though

Yes, I read his wiki article after my post. It's funny that Chris here posted it right after the fact.

C.S. Lewis, ey? a rascist? Never woulda thunk it.

[John Blaze]

Reading Jurassic Park, The Partner, and From a Buick 8 right now, and this time I'm going to finish it.

[Jean]

You're in for a treat, Needful Kings! 1984 is an excellent book.

::stays with his own private opinion::

[jayson]

Just finished Funland by Richard Laymon.

I'm starting 1984 by Orwell (my first time reading it)

It may seem familiar to you from what has been going on in the world the past 8 years or so. One of my fav books ever.

[Wuducynn]

C.S. Lewis, ey? a rascist? Never woulda thunk it.

It comes out particularly strong in The Last Battle.

[Erin]

You're in for a treat, Needful Kings! 1984 is an excellent book.

::stays with his own private opinion::

Yea you'd better keep that opinion to yourself


I just finished The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman. I do believe it's Duma Key time for me now .

Also tonight at the bookstore I bought Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife by Linda Berdoll. I noticed there is a lot of spin-off novels and "continued stories" regarding Pride and Prejudice out there in book-land. Has anyone read any of these? Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife sounded interesting and I can't get enough of Elizabeth Bennett, so I thought I'd give it a try.

[John Blaze]

C.S. Lewis, ey? a rascist? Never woulda thunk it.

It comes out particularly strong in The Last Battle.

Really? I have the collection, and recently re-read it. I didn't think I'd read anything particularly rascist. Do you mean anti-arab? Because although the Calormenes are the villains of the piece, the young Calormene is told by Aslan that he has served him even though he thought he was serving Tash.

[jhanic]

I finished my reread of Duma Key and have started rereading The Dark Tower series. I'm about halfway through Drawing of the Three. I'd forgotten just how these books hold your attention and "draw" you in!

John

[ManOfWesternesse]

Just started on Duma Key.

[Matt]

I'm fully involved in Duma Key.

Thumbs up, way up, way way up..your anus..

or down, way down, way way down so far, or you are still making up your mind on it?

I'm in the way up category right now

At first, I was a little weary because it seemed like it might be very similar to a few other of his works. Now it has gone in a direction I did not expect.

Not only that, but it is amazing how King can write characters in a way that they become really real, I mean really real. I'm loving it