What are you reading right now?

rubber soul · 11-18-2021, 08:46 AM

At my old forum, we used to call them gremlins. I suspect a lot of forum have that problem with pages.

TheBig3 · 11-18-2021, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lisnaholic

Currently reading Voodoo Histories, about conspiracy theories, I now realize that it is a glitch caused by the CIA/Mossad monitoring of MB.

That poor intern.

The Batlord · 11-18-2021, 07:53 PM

No wonder Merit got banned.

jadis · 11-26-2021, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marie Monday

I got a copy of a play by Racine with a translation next to the original French and I was happily surprised that I could read it with the translation's help (also is French grammar just richer than English grammar? It seems like English needs a lot of dead weight to say things for which there is a more elegant grammatical construction in French). So now I want to try reading some French, if jadis or anyone else has recommendations for easy books that'd be cool

What the French call l'Âge classique (from late 16th to early 18th centuries) does have the advantage of "linguistic purity": the vocabulary is "soutenu" and restricted (Roland Barthes called Racine "l’homme aux deux mille mots") so knowing the few thousand Latinate words that are used in the literary registers of English gets you a long way. On the flip side, it's highly stylized and many of the words are used in ways that are subtly different from contemporary French, so I wouldn't focus on that era unless you want to be a scholar of French classicism or something.

I would avoid the 19th century: everyone thinks they're going to enjoy Madame Bovary or the Three Musketeers but it's full of lengthy descriptions of stuff like taverns and horses and chapels where you'll have to look up 5 words in every sentence. Impractical.

Many of the people I know who made the biggest progress in French started by reading plenty of nonfiction: it's just simpler than literary fiction and you can get it from wherever. From news agencies on Twitter to biographies of celebrities you like. Someone I know took herself to a new level by reading on her phone a French translation of an English-language Cure biography she found as an ebook (on Google's book app, whatever it's called) cause she was a Cure fan and knew a lot about them already, so she could figure out a lot from context as opposed to looking up every single word she didn't know.

rostasi · 11-26-2021, 09:42 PM

Can't seem to get to page 746. Making a post to see if it's me or the internet.

Trollheart · 11-26-2021, 09:59 PM

Hilarious.

**Scarlett O'Hara** · 11-27-2021, 04:27 PM

This is what I am reading right now. It's very interesting. I am not really afraid of death. If I died today I would have no regrets. But love the life that I have.

rostasi · 11-27-2021, 04:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Celladorina

This is what I am reading right now. It's very interesting.
I am not really afraid of death. If I died today I would have no regrets.
But love the life that I have.

.

**Frownland** · 12-09-2021, 07:09 AM

V. by Thomas Pynchon

*passes out in exhaustion*

V/5, this **** is intense.

**Frownland** · 12-10-2021, 10:00 PM

Siddhartha - Damn I wish I read this when I was like, 14. Still really rad though. Excellent, simplistic prose filled with neat philosophical meanderings and beautiful descriptive passages about rebirth n ****. Bit of orientalizing going on but whatcha gonna do, it was the 20s and all. 4/5

11-26-2021, 09:59 PM	#7396 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,994	Hilarious. __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

12-09-2021, 07:09 AM	#7399 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,541	V. by Thomas Pynchon passes out in exhaustion V/5, this **** is intense. __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x

12-10-2021, 10:00 PM	#7400 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,541	Siddhartha - Damn I wish I read this when I was like, 14. Still really rad though. Excellent, simplistic prose filled with neat philosophical meanderings and beautiful descriptive passages about rebirth n ***. Bit of orientalizing going on but whatcha gonna do, it was the 20s and all. 4/5 __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.* d e a f b o x

11-26-2021, 09:42 PM	#7395 (permalink)
rostasi . Join Date: Aug 2012 Posts: 4,007	Can't seem to get to page 746. Making a post to see if it's me or the internet.

11-27-2021, 04:27 PM	#7397 (permalink)
Scarlett O'Hara Make it so Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 6,181	This is what I am reading right now. It's very interesting. I am not really afraid of death. If I died today I would have no regrets. But love the life that I have.