PeeMarc Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 I'm probably going to sound like an old fart here. I've just moved into my new house and been unapacking boxes of books. Lots of boxes. It seems I carry my Father's 'book gene' which never lets me throw one out. Putting them on all the shelves, and lingering over a few, reminded me of so many memories; decades of reading and enjoying the simple pleasure of curling up with a good book and getting completely carried away and lost in the words and ideas. In contrast, this is the age of Google and Wiki, where just about everything we need to know is at one's finger tips. I wonder if any website could ever infuence or affect my life (or anyones) just books can do. When I was a kid of about 7, I used to love adventure books. In those days it was Enid Blyton and "The Secret Seven". As I got older, Rubyard Kipling's 'Kim' and 'The Jungle Book', 'King Solomon's Mines' and Tom Saywer and Huckleberry Fin followed by 'The Hobbit' and the 'Lord of the Rings' series as a teenager. These are just a few of so many that really influenced me growing up. Still later, came everything from 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', 'The Dice Man' to 'The Godfather' to Shakespear. Whenever I traveled I loved to read authers such as (the man of letters) Sommerset Maugham, Jack Kerouak or Tom Robins. I adored all these writers for all sorts of reasons, and I somehow consider them part of my life. I think I've read everything they wrote at least twice. I've gone through crazy times with books like 'Fountainhead', 'Atlas Shrugged', 'The Screwtapes Letters' and 'Catcher in the Rye', 'Carl Jung's works, 'Bhagavad Gita', 'The Mahabarata' and 'Future Shock'. Of course, i still continue to read and love books, but since the internet came along, sadly, not as much. What books have changed or affected your life as you were growing up? __________________________________________________________ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr_Sassy Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 The Alchemist, Freedom in Exile, He's just not that into you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
friendlyCat Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 hmmmm, and where do those birds go in the Winter when the pond freezes. Oh, yeah, Thailand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R.Win Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 jeeeesszzz, how old is you dawg? :wink: No but on the real, the passion of curling up with a book I just don't share, I like to look things up on the internet, the thing I do have that sort of passion for if not even greater is listening to music. How is your new house btw? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr_Sassy Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 Hey Marc, you dont sounds like an old fart...errr.what an old fart sounds like?? on my 16th birthday I asked my parents the original version of the Kama Sutra ( written by Vatsyayana) and when I was 23 I bought me the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.But between my 13th and 15th birthday I read all russian classics and it was really an orgams of culture!!Tourgeniev, Tolstoi, Dostojewsky, Pouskin.. WAW they dont make them like that anymore errrr and those books somehow changed / affected your life as you were growing up? LOL OMG !!! Would u care to elaborate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JakeFin Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 What books have changed or affected your life as you were growing up?__________________________________________________________ mmmm... - Michail Bulgakov : Master and Margarita - Brett Easton Ellis : American psycho - William Burroughs : Naked lunch - Dee Brown : Bury my heart at Wounded Knee - Trevor Ravenscroft : The spear of destiny ....And many, many more... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geri Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 I'm probably going to sound like an old fart here.When I was a kid of about 7, I used to love adventure books. In those days it was Enid Blyton and "The Secret Seven". :shock: My sister and I have a collection of those Secret Seven Series - I was cleaning some cabinets at home and saw it again the other week, Now it's with my 9 year old niece - a hand me down gift (with emphasis on telling her to read it and handle it with care as these are the books that her mom and I used to read when we were a lot younger).... ...I am not yet an old fart :cry: :cry: :cry: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeusbheld Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 jeeeesszzz, how old is you dawg? :wink: No but on the real, the passion of curling up with a book I just don't share, I like to look things up on the internet, the thing I do have that sort of passion for if not even greater is listening to music.How is your new house btw? i ******* LOVE to look things up on the 'net. but "old" books aren't really old at all, are they? i mean the main obstacle to wading through Homer is sifting through those in-translation 'rosy-fingered dawns' innit? human beings haven't changed, hardly at all. Homer still kicks ass because 'he' was right and true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeusbheld Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 I'm probably going to sound like an old fart here. true, dat. I've just moved into my new house and been unapacking boxes of books. Lots of boxes. It seems I carry my Father's 'book gene' which never lets me throw one out. feelin' ya. although i've sold off quite a few, i replace them at a horrible rate. moving to a bigger apartment so i can move my books in, even though i expect to not stay in bangers more than another six months. but being separated from my books... hurts. i feel like half my brain is stored elsewhere. at least i have my DVDs (that'd be the OTHer half, and arguably more relevant, given my vocation). In contrast, this is the age of Google and Wiki, where just about everything we need to know is at one's finger tips. I wonder if any website could ever infuence or affect my life (or anyones) just books can do. still have lots of books. new ones, even. i see googen and weakie as mia noy and gik, respectively. but heroin, i mean books. it's my wife and it's my life. and like any wife i rarely service the saggy ***** but damn Unamuno, Borges, they shaped my brain. i'm never free of 'em. When I was a kid of about 7, I used to love adventure books. In those days it was Enid Blyton and "The Secret Seven". As I got older, Rubyard Kipling's 'Kim' and 'The Jungle Book', 'King Solomon's Mines' and Tom Saywer and Huckleberry Fin followed by 'The Hobbit' and the 'Lord of the Rings' series as a teenager. my dad got me into mark twain, my mom into tolkien. Whenever I traveled I loved to read authers such as (the man of letters) Sommerset Maugham, Jack Kerouak or Tom Robins. I adored all these writers for all sorts of reasons, and I somehow consider them part of my life. I think I've read everything they wrote at least twice. i read "on the road" when i left engineering school for art school. it is still with me, even after all the other beats (except for burroughs) have fallen away. but really especiallly as an expat i ******* LOVE Paul Bowles. What books have changed or affected your life as you were growing up? first book that changed my life was obscure sci fi purchased in a grocery store. "voyage of the space beagle" by A E van Vogt." all about over-specialization, really. to this day i fancy myself a "nexialist." comic books were major. spider man got his ass kicked and triumphed. when i got to be a teenager and college STUDent i put away these things and fancied indie/underground ****, like "nexus" "flaming carrot" and "8 ball." also 1920s comics---"crazy kat" by G. Herriman and anything by Winsor McKay ("Little Nemo," etc) back to books Borges, Unamuno. a lot of fiction. Dawkins' "the selfish gene." all the various collections of essays on biology by Stephen Jay Gould changed my life. (yes, i love BOTH Dawkins AND Gould. it makes sense... at least to me.) in college had my raymond carver phase. i like short stories better than novels because a) i have an ADD prob, and b ) they're more like screenplays. also Andre Dubus and Tobias Wolff. occasionally, Amy Hempel. my southern-US phase consists almost entirely of Bobbie Ann Mason and Flannery O'Connor. (O'Connor being the better writer, but Mason is damn good). lately DAVE ******* EGGERS is the shizzit. mostly fiction, yet read mostly nonfiction. STRANGE innit. ****edit***** i left out an obscure but important one. "roadside picnic" by boris and arkady strugatsky. "happiness for all... free... and no one goes away unsatisified." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeeMarc Posted February 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2008 jeeeesszzz, how old is you dawg? :wink: No but on the real, the passion of curling up with a book I just don't share, I like to look things up on the internet, the thing I do have that sort of passion for if not even greater is listening to music.How is your new house btw? Hey, I could easily have started this thread on how music changed my life buddy. It's crazy, but true, that music changed my life so much that I left school and home in one night, carrying my guitar down the driveway, telling my Dad where he could "stick it" (actually, we are so similar it was killing us by the time when I was 17). It was like going to join the circus. I went traveling with my band on the road for a couple of years and eventually got into stage and sound production. But, I digress.... Looking things up on the net is fantastic. I love it too. But, there is something very different about taking the time with a great book. Here are some profound differences... When I read a book, I am presented with that authors COMPLETE idea. AND, sentence by sentence, page by page, I invest time and patience to fully get into the whole story and idea. It is a personal, one-on-one engagement, between me an the writer who is using nothing more than letters on a page to convey his mind and heart to me. The typography of books is usually fairly standard, evolved over time since Guttenberg and William Caxton (look them up on Google if you like). Each line is in about 12 point type, with line space of about 16pt. The typeface itself will usually be in serif face like Perpetua or Century so that it can be read more easily and the amount of characters per line and the line width is fairly standard too (around 60+ characters) , so that the reader can effortlessly go from the end of each line to the start of the next. Even the margines around the type on the page play a big role in presenting and 'framing' the words on the page. The use of punctuation marks, sentences, paragraphs and chapters play their role in conveying exactly what the writer intended, rather like musical notation for a musician, I must follow as it is written. If I dont, the 'music' will not sound right. For example, anyone who has really read Kerouak will know this. (Incidentally, I saw Kerouac being interviewed once and he read from 'On the Road' while the interviewer played some jazz scats and chords on piano. For the first time, I heard how Kerouac was jamming with his words and phases with the piano, like a jazz master. That completely changed how I saw this author) Pages on the internet usually do none of the above. In fact, most web designers know nothing about REAL typography. After I'd been in Malaysia about 3 years, I went back to Sydney and first stayed with one of my best buddies there. Year's before he had got me hooked on Tom Robbins ('Jitterbug Perfume', 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues' etc). We were having coffee and reading the papers one saturday morning and I noticed and small ad saying that Tom Robbins was actually at the local library, where he was presenting his new book ('Frog's Pajamas'). We rushed up the road and sat in a small room with 20 others and waited for our hero. The first thing he did, without even much of a "good morning" was to read an entire section of 'Jitterbug Perfume' (the bit about the sex-life and amazing uses of the beetroot). I was completely spell-bound and in awe as he read those SAME words I had marveled over before. But HE was reading them as HE had written them. It really gave me goose bumps and brought tears to my eyes. The net does (and will) continue to present people with new experiences and knowledge. But books are completely unique, and perhaps really shouldnt even be compared to the net at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeeMarc Posted February 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2008 [u]I'm probably going to sound like an old fart here.What books have changed or affected your life as you were growing up? __________________________________________________________ It must be ?Jonathan Livingston Seagull? in Thai translation that I read first time when I was very young. It?s recommended by my uncle who was one of those TU students during October 14, 1973. I didn?t understand much by then but I re-read many times afterward (in both English and Thai)? Sample here : http://www.crookedbush.com/cgi-bin/bookviewer.pl?bookname=jonathon_livingston_seagull p.s you are not alone. Haha... I just opened the last box today, and there inside is my copy of this little book. I think I was about 18 when I first read it and I've read it again a few time since. And yes, it is one book which influenced my youth too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeeMarc Posted February 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2008 What books have changed or affected your life as you were growing up?__________________________________________________________ mmmm... - Michail Bulgakov : Master and Margarita - Brett Easton Ellis : American psycho - William Burroughs : Naked lunch - Dee Brown : Bury my heart at Wounded Knee - Trevor Ravenscroft : The spear of destiny ....And many, many more... Oh... yeah... 'Naked Lunch'.... amazing piece of literary art.... (did you ever see the movie, with Judy Davis?) Aparantly when he wrote that, he wasn't writing a book at all. The story goes he was in Morocco completely f**ked up on heroin and hash. He was writing letters back to his publisher in New York about what he was going through. It was his publisher who convinced Burroughs to complile all his crazy, drug-f**ked letters into the book as we know it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeeMarc Posted February 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2008 Hey Marc, you dont sounds like an old fart...errr.what an old fart sounds like?? on my 16th birthday I asked my parents the original version of the Kama Sutra ( written by Vatsyayana) and when I was 23 I bought me the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.But between my 13th and 15th birthday I read all russian classics and it was really an orgams of culture!!Tourgeniev, Tolstoi, Dostojewsky, Pouskin.. WAW they dont make them like that anymore Wow Ghee... in your mid teens you were reading Kama Sutra (yeah me too...hahah) and guys Tolstoi and Dostojewsky? Those guys, and also a bit of Chekov didnt come until later for me. But I would imagine these writers would have had profound affects on you during your early years growing up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R.Win Posted February 23, 2008 Report Share Posted February 23, 2008 jeeeesszzz, how old is you dawg? :wink: No but on the real, the passion of curling up with a book I just don't share, I like to look things up on the internet, the thing I do have that sort of passion for if not even greater is listening to music.How is your new house btw? Hey, I could easily have started this thread on how music changed my life buddy. It's crazy, but true, that music changed my life so much that I left school and home in one night, carrying my guitar down the driveway, telling my Dad where he could "stick it" (actually, we are so similar it was killing us by the time when I was 17). It was like going to join the circus. I went traveling with my band on the road for a couple of years and eventually got into stage and sound production. But, I digress.... Looking things up on the net is fantastic. I love it too. But, there is something very different about taking the time with a great book. Here are some profound differences... When I read a book, I am presented with that authors COMPLETE idea. AND, sentence by sentence, page by page, I invest time and patience to fully get into the whole story and idea. It is a personal, one-on-one engagement, between me an the writer who is using nothing more than letters on a page to convey his mind and heart to me. The typography of books is usually fairly standard, evolved over time since Guttenberg and William Caxton (look them up on Google if you like). Each line is in about 12 point type, with line space of about 16pt. The typeface itself will usually be in serif face like Perpetua or Century so that it can be read more easily and the amount of characters per line and the line width is fairly standard too (around 60+ characters) , so that the reader can effortlessly go from the end of each line to the start of the next. Even the margines around the type on the page play a big role in presenting and 'framing' the words on the page. The use of punctuation marks, sentences, paragraphs and chapters play their role in conveying exactly what the writer intended, rather like musical notation for a musician, I must follow as it is written. If I dont, the 'music' will not sound right. For example, anyone who has really read Kerouak will know this. (Incidentally, I saw Kerouac being interviewed once and he read from 'On the Road' while the interviewer played some jazz scats and chords on piano. For the first time, I heard how Kerouac was jamming with his words and phases with the piano, like a jazz master. That completely changed how I saw this author) Pages on the internet usually do none of the above. In fact, most web designers know nothing about REAL typography. After I'd been in Malaysia about 3 years, I went back to Sydney and first stayed with one of my best buddies there. Year's before he had got me hooked on Tom Robbins ('Jitterbug Perfume', 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues' etc). We were having coffee and reading the papers one saturday morning and I noticed and small ad saying that Tom Robbins was actually at the local library, where he was presenting his new book ('Frog's Pajamas'). We rushed up the road and sat in a small room with 20 others and waited for our hero. The first thing he did, without even much of a "good morning" was to read an entire section of 'Jitterbug Perfume' (the bit about the sex-life and amazing uses of the beetroot). I was completely spell-bound and in awe as he read those SAME words I had marveled over before. But HE was reading them as HE had written them. It really gave me goose bumps and brought tears to my eyes. The net does (and will) continue to present people with new experiences and knowledge. But books are completely unique, and perhaps really shouldnt even be compared to the net at all. I agree, I agree. The net and books shouldn't be compared. The net is mainly for getting the info you need from anywhere or anything in the world although it is still not perfect at all and many things you might need still aren't out there somewhere (at least not in dutch or english). And typeface, let's nt even go there, browsers tend to mess that up anyway. But when it comes to getting information it beats the library anytime, even when you find a book which might offer you the info you need, you still have to read through or ask the index, on the net you type the thing you need, you then get to choose which one you want to see, when you get a book worth of text you just use the find option and the word you're looking gets marked so you might find what you look for within seconds instead of going to a library, walk around dodging guardians and hoping the book you look for isn't already in the claws of another person. It could lead to fantastic introductions to a nice girl, I remember I brutally snatched a book a needed for a school project from the hands of a girl in the library and told her that if she ever wanted to see her precious book again she'd have to meet me at the local disco. Which she did 8) . So on info, nothing beats the net, if you're able to read & understand english, spanish & mandarin the world is yours for the take. Storytelling however is much much better in books than it is from reading it from a screen, I remember a conversation between 2 of my uncles, the one claiming computers would make books dissapear and the other saying that's never going to happen because it's much more comfortable and a much more relaxing experience to read from paper than from a screen. That was about 15 years ago, the "book" uncle died 2 years ago but men was he right and he probably will be for a while, even with those new devices that started to be released last year, books are here to stay. I never had much interest in books, just newspapers and computers, it was school which forced me to read some in dutch, german, english & french which made me do just that and for a little while I liked the going on an adventure through those pages. But after The Legend of Zelda on super nintendo came out I felt like reading was wasting time compared to these kind of role playing games where you went on an adventure as well and you decide wheter you go left or right and who you talk to. Later came Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger and ofcourse the typeframe sucked and sucks ass, the music, atmosphere, storyline, graphics and action made up for everything. This was evolution in storytelling. Final Fantasy really took off around the 7th part but the last ones don't seem to interest me, it's become too sweet and romantic. I wonder if you ever took the time and pleasure of playing those kind of games with you being an old fart an' all :wink: My dad is an even older man nd he always loves to read books but playing his Ultima games on c64 and later on pc he loved just as much, but when the controlling went from keyboard to mouse and there was no accuracy in the movement and action from part 8 I recall and no storyline like before he lost interest and stopped playing them. Now he's been hooked on diablo 2 for about 4 or 5 years. But he reads much more than he spends time behind the computer EVEN after I bought him an iMac 1,5 years ago. Because he has much more holidays in spain than before and computers aren't really camping or sunny backyard material and books ofcourse are. Before I'm creating a whole chapter here... Books are fantastic, but I personally just prefer different ways to spend my time and if you do like it you can go ahead and do it WITHOUT me calling you an old fart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeeMarc Posted February 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 24, 2008 Check out Jack Kerouak himself reading from 'On the Road'. What a great natural talent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBILjdzkpzU Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeeMarc Posted February 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted February 24, 2008 The movie trailer for 'Naked Lunch' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh-Q07iVQws If you are a YouTube member, this scene from the movie is probably the most insane... Judy Davis... sex with a typewriter... http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3D4hDaSrIzxNo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJack Posted February 24, 2008 Report Share Posted February 24, 2008 russian authors: Nobokov, and I guess Tolstoy Irish: Joyce, Wilde American: Kerouac, Twain, and Updike nowadays, I read trash, newspapers, magazines, and internet. and no doubt my thought patterns, elocution, and creativity suffer as a result. anyone check out Goodreads.com? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJack Posted February 24, 2008 Report Share Posted February 24, 2008 He's just not that into you. I cant imagine why. I bet that was a very short book. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laragirl Posted February 24, 2008 Report Share Posted February 24, 2008 i grew up reading Sweet Dreams and Judith McNaught... they made me love pink girly stuff, opened my mind to a whole lot of romance even when i was still in grade school.... made me overly dramatic, sweet and lovesick. :oops: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loburt Posted February 24, 2008 Report Share Posted February 24, 2008 Perry the Imp by Nicholas The Guilty Bystander by Rod MacLeish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thitipat Posted February 24, 2008 Report Share Posted February 24, 2008 Now..I reading "The secret" http://www.thesecret.tv/ and use some trick in my life and it work !! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JakeFin Posted February 25, 2008 Report Share Posted February 25, 2008 (did you ever see the movie, with Judy Davis?) Yeah, have seen it. It's just that when you've read the book beforehand, I think the movie usually is a dissappointment, because you've already "seen" it in your mind. And of course there are things you just cannot put on silver screen.... Well, actually I 1st saw Jonathan Livingstone Seagull story, from tv and got the book afterwards, so the movie made an impression. 8) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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