Books discussion

[turin]

Just finished the biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and started:

Grendel, by JohN Gardner. A retelling of the Beowulf story from the POV of Grendel. Judging from the first chapter, there's an emphasis on the character of Grendel and how he is a monster and a person at the same time.

[Velensk]

Grendel, by JohN Gardner. A retelling of the Beowulf story from the POV of Grendel. Judging from the first chapter, there's an emphasis on the character of Grendel and how he is a monster and a person at the same time.

I don't know how they could retell Beowulf from the point of view of Grendel, in the story it served as about a single episode of the tale, and Grendel does little besides be of very evil origions, terrorise a land for 14 years (IIRC), and get it's arm torn off by Beowulf and bleed to death while trying to escape. You could hardly retell Beowulf from that perspective, you'd have to tell a diffrent story with the same characters.

I realy don't see why anyone would want to write that, unless for some reason they disliked the way Grendel was used in the origional story. Admittedly I don't really see why anyone would want to read a story from the point of view of Grendel especialy if they want to make him more of a person, so I'm probably missing the point entirely.

[turin]

Well, yeah, "reimagining" more than "retelling". It doesn't change the facts of the story, but presents Grendel in a completely different light. Kind of like those versions of fairy tales where the villain is the hero (e.g. "the good wolf and the three evil pigs" - I have read a children's story with this premise).

[Girgistian]

I think the idea would be very interesting. Hell, I'd try it myself if it hadn't already been written.

[Sgt. Groovy]

Someday I'm going to write a new version of LotR, told from the Sauron's POV.

[Girgistian]

Someday I'm going to write a new version of LotR, told from the Sauron's POV.

that'd be fun too you know

[Turuk]

that'd be fun too you know

True, but that would be rather difficult to pull off in making the reader sympathize with pure evil...

[TheMasterOfBattle]

hehe, then you might like to read these

http://saurongorthaur.blogspot.com/ (has posts 1-20)
http://kunochan.com/sauron/ (has posts 12-41)

It is Sauron blogging! it starts from the Silmarillion and hasn't really gotten to the time of LoTr yet. XD

It has some offensive language in it just to forwarn you. But I guess that can be expected from the Dark Lord. XD

[bert1]

I've recently finished reading:

The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov. It's a good one of his, I think. Four novellas each with an interesting premise. All of them are told in dialogue, which is quite unnatural, but easy to read and works well IMO.

1984 by George Orwell. Great classic. I actually like best the excerpt from Goldstein's book on political philosophy. It has a good bit about the need for maintaining a perpetual war to use up/destroy the surplus production and to keep Party cohesion. For a while afterward I kept noticing examples of doublethink, especially in supermarkets. ASDA's "Spend and Save" being the best one, and, of course, the ubiquitous "Buy one get one free". I'll just have the free one please!

Contributions From a Potential Corpse by Eugene Halliday, my favourite philosopher. In this one is his definition of love as the 'will to work for the development of the potentialities of all beings'. He gives an account of consciousness as a continuous spatially extended field of sentience. The first half of the book is philosophy of mind, and later it becomes a collection of notes. He annoyingly suggests that atheistic materialist accounts of consciousness are doomed to fail but stops short, as far as I can tell, of saying exactly why. There's a nice definition of 'good': "To see the Absolute as the Good is to see it as the object or aim of the highest will. For Good is simply that which is willed. The Good is the object of appetite, the "universal wolf which at last eats up itself"."

[Thanatos]

So, I just finished the collection of Death myths by Schopf yesterday.
Now I can't decide which to read first:

Camus, "Der glückliche Tod" (The happy Death)
or
another collection of philosophical texts and poems called "Über den Tod" (About Death).

This decision is quiet difficult.

[Blarumyrran]

"Der glückliche Tod"
"Über den Tod"
"Death myths by Schopf"

[Eleazar]

1984 by George Orwell. Great classic.

Yep. It is still as relevant as it ever was.

[cobra]

War and Peace

[Thanatos]

"Der glückliche Tod"
"Über den Tod"
"Death myths by Schopf"

Something to say?

[LemonTea]

Something to say?

Yeah, in that post, your text, signature, name, and avatar referenced death 9 times.