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 Whats in Your Library? 
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Chibi-Czar
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Oh gawd, you people can't be serious!

Hamlet? Hamlet?!

Hamlet, the whole play, is the Jerry Springer of Shakespeare's plays. It's like the retarded cousin of his plays that the other plays pretend don't exist. It's the crowd pleasing summer slasher flick ta keep the common folk happy, by showing them that the royals were more fucked up then they are.

Only reason he wrote it was 'cause, well, he had to pay the bills somehow.

I mean, seriously, poison in his ear? That's a lack of basic research, fer goshshakes!

Killing everyone off just ensured he would't be forced/able to make a sequal to such an embarassment.

*shudder*

Flameon!

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Thu Mar 25, 2004 10:02 pm
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Cherub
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Mista_B wrote:
Oh gawd, you people can't be serious!

Hamlet? Hamlet?!

Hamlet, the whole play, is the Jerry Springer of Shakespeare's plays. It's like the retarded cousin of his plays that the other plays pretend don't exist. It's the crowd pleasing summer slasher flick ta keep the common folk happy, by showing them that the royals were more fucked up then they are.


Admittedly, one can look at it as a Jerry Springer-esque piece. However, some of the most immortal lines/phrases in history come from this play. And if any of Shakespeare's plays were the "Summer slasher flick" it would be Titus Andronicus. Have you read that? It's like he went through a Quentin Tarantino phase...or he took a look into Fiss' head. And of course, even the Czar invokes Hamlet's immortal words:

"...this majestical roof
fretted with golden fire,
why, it appears no other thing to me
than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.
What a piece of work is man!
How noble in reason,
how infinite in faculty
In form and moving,
how express and admirable!
In action, how like an angel,
in aprehension, how like a god
The beauty of the world,
the paragon of animals,
and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"
-Used in "The Glass Menagerie"

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Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:01 pm
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Mista_B wrote:
I mean, seriously, poison in his ear? That's a lack of basic research, fer goshshakes!


Actually, it was commonly, though incorrectly, thought that poison could be introduced into a human body through the ear. I thought the same thing when I read it, so I did some research and found this out. I can't remember what the reasoning was. I read the refference about 8 years ago, after all and don't really care enough to try find one.


Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:04 pm
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Chibi-Czar
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Is Briteny Spears ear poison?

I would have to say gauardgmpasdmph...

*thud*

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Fri Mar 26, 2004 12:44 am
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Cherub
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I would definitely qualify Britney Spears as Ear Poison, and an incredibly painful one at that.

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Fri Mar 26, 2004 1:03 am
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Chibi-Czar
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Compared to you guys, my library sounds positively barren. :(

Most of my shelf-space is taken up by nature books, some dinosaur stuff, books of mythology (mostly Greek) and astronomy. There are various resources for classical drawing, manga techniques, 3D animation programs, and behind the scenes of television and cinema. There's also assorted collections of Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Garfield (the old stuff, before Jim Davis sold out).

Fiction-wise, I've got some David Eddings, Piers Anthony's Xanth, Harry Potter (of course), the complete Animorphs series, The Myth Adventures of Skeeve and Aahz by Robert Asprin, the obligatory Tolkien works, and some old D&D Choose Your Own Adventures.

And I have one biography: I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action. :)

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Fri Mar 26, 2004 11:31 am
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My bookshelf (my one bookshelf, in my room, next to the closet, full of books, candles, and insence burners) contains the basic classics (Shakespeare, Dickens...) and a lot of poetry (Browning, Dickenson, and collections). Then, there's Steven King books and the like... some books on dreams, some on palmistry, some on herbs and Wiccan beliefs.. a LOT of notebooks (I write a lot), yearbooks, and yardsale/thrift store books, on calculus and Latin, how to fix anything, and recipes for random stuff (like lipstick).
Last thing I read was a book called True Notebooks. I liked it, though it is probably cheesy by any other standards. About kids in juvenile hall that get life in prison, and what goes through their heads. It's things they wrote during a creative writing class, and how the teacher felt through the whole thing. Hmm. The cheese is easier to see now....
Before that I read The Gods Will Have Blood by Anatole France. I hated it, read it for class, but there were some extremely interesting parts. A good chunk of it was about the French Revolution and who killed whom and suchnot but then there was the love affair and the athiest who was more moral than the monk and.. *rambles* oh, and lots of people died. BLOOD!!!


Sat Mar 27, 2004 9:02 pm
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Chibi-Czar
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And people say the world's such a dangrous place these day's.

*rolls eyes*

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Sun Mar 28, 2004 10:17 pm
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Chibi-Czar
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Had to look again and mull it over. Leaving aside the textbooks and references (even after I dropped out of college, I couldn't bring myself to part with some of the damn things), the items that stand out are

Robert Heinlein - I've got most of his work, and to Hotwire's recommendations I'd add Expanded Universe - his essay (read as, "splendiferous rant"), "The Happy Days Ahead" alone is worth the price of admission.

Spider Robinson - if you have not read the Callahan's stories, do so - and move on into his other stuff as soon as you've finished them.

David Drake - He may be best known for his Hammer's Slammers stories, and Redliners says more about what war does to people than anything in SF today, but I'll stack the Isles series against all its contemporaries in fantasy.

Marion Zimmer Bradley - what can I say that hasn't already been said? She had a positive talent for drawing you in to her characters.

William Gibson - don't be afraid to look, the darkness out there is not going to get any nicer if you try to pretend it isn't there, and you just might see one or two people in the masses who really can make things a little better, in our little corner, for a little while.

Rudyard Kipling - Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. BTW, bit of trivia, he wrote, "The White Man's Burden" as a warning, not an exhortation - see most of his adult shorts (e.g., "Lispeth," "Without Benefit of Clergy," et c.) .

Suggestion: get two or three different translations of Sun Tzu and Musashi, as well as what history you can find to put them into context, and compare and contrast the spin different interpreters put on the texts. You'll find it rather eye-opening, and you'll come a little closer to understanding the original. I've just barely scratched the surface of this technique, and it's astonishing what it did for my understanding.

In fact, I find myself gravitating more and more towards history, biography, and political and military treatises as time goes by. It's humbling, because it rubs my nose in the fact that I really should've been paying closer attention to the History, Geography, and Poli-Sci and Soc classes I was gundecking.

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Mon Mar 29, 2004 4:50 pm
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It's a shame that so many children never realize the wealth of information they're being taught until much later in life. I personally would LOVE to flip through my old Social Studies textbooks now...I'd probably enjoy them a lot more and find them a lot more interesting/useful. It's too bad we learned the "Japan" section before I really got into anime. ^_^ I love when we would learn about subjects I was passionate about. Top marks and I never minded coming to class. I'm really bad that way...I usually only like learning when I'm interested in the subject or I need to learn part of it. It shows in my book collection: Small, but I love every one of the books making it up.

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Mon Mar 29, 2004 5:11 pm
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Chibi-Czar
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Christopher Fiss wrote:
It's a shame that so many children never realize the wealth of information they're being taught until much later in life. I personally would LOVE to flip through my old Social Studies textbooks now...I'd probably enjoy them a lot more and find them a lot more interesting/useful.


That's exactly what I was hinting at... The trick is selling it to them. Here we have this most wonderfully healthy addiction - knowledge - and we almost deliberately make it as dull and distasteful as ditchwater. Makes me want to throttle the next pair of clowns I spot arguing pounding in the three R's vs. nurturing a child's self-esteem, while snarling, 'It's not one or the other, you di-"

But maybe I'll save that for a rant. Give me a chance to get my brain defragged...

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"Charlie was a policeman, Nick-san. If you steal, you disgrace him. And me. And yourself..."

"Tough times don't last. Tough people do."

"You have the rest of your life to solve your problems. How long you live depends on how well you do it."

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Mon Mar 29, 2004 8:45 pm
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Chibi-Czar
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Umm... a lot..

I have a fairly big collection of erotica...

I have a lot of history stuff, pagan books, Anne Rice novels...Umm.. I cant remember... theres over 200 books there... gunna suck when I move...

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Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:07 pm
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Every AD&D book out there..

All of the Terry Brooks books,

and

Binders and Binders or Fanfics.. i think i cut a tree for them.. but

its SO worth it.

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Thu Apr 08, 2004 3:28 pm
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Ok HOTWIRE...first, er at least one of the first(Just came in from a night of drinking with friends..so i don't have enough counciousness(spelling?) left to read the rest of the posts;) but...

Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers (the movie can fuck itself with a proboscis) STARSHIP TROOOPERS...one of my alltime favorite movies...not sure why, maybe because it combines a hell of a store with the ..b-movie genre?...or maybe it's denise richards, either way a hell of a movie....ALL the vampire chronicles by Ann Rice...keep in mind I haven't read the latest one where they/she comines the mayflower witches wth the VP chronicles....only because I haven't read any of the mayflower withces book......uhm, stephen king is pretty good....some books slower than others. And if you saw the latest thread I .....tried...to startup, The Da
Vinci code, you know what other types of things I read.


Fri Apr 09, 2004 11:05 pm
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whoa,
Just stopped in to check somethings while I stumble around the house still sleepy at....yeesh, 7:17 am, for some water. I have now learned not to post after getting back from the bar lol.

I'm pretty sure the first line was a quote, Most likely from hotwires first post to this thread. oh well, I'll edit later lol


Must....drink....water


Sat Apr 10, 2004 5:19 am
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Cherub
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Sheesh, if you think that Hamlet lacks complexity and depth, I think that you haven't looked at the play too closely. Hamlet would almost be better off without its preponderance of famous lines.

Some picks for right now:

John Kennedy O'Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces: Brilliant and hilarious; Martha Steward's lawyers even used the phrase "confederacy of dunces" in her defense!

Beowulf - A fascinating piece of early English mythology.

John Gardner - Grendel - Very interesting book; tells the tale of the monster of Beowulf.

Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels - Working through it now; entertaining.

That's just some stuff that I have read recently that I've liked.

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Sat Apr 10, 2004 10:55 pm
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Chibi

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Salman Rushdie - Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Damn.
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game (and series), The Homecoming series
Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time
Terry Goodking - The Sword of Truth
Stephen King - Eveything, but especially The Stand, and It
James Clawell - Shogun
H.P. Lovecraft - Cthulu!!!
PHILOSOPHY! - Sartre, especially, but anything else as well.
Clive Staples Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia. My first fantasy series... *sniff*
Brian Jaques - The Redwall Series. Anthro, baby.
Al Franken - Politicalness!
George Carlin - Anything by this man
Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion. My second fantasy series, I read it at the age of eight.
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, Deeper Meaning of Liff
Pat O'Shea - The Hounds of the Morrigan. This is an out-of-print book I had to special order from a vintage book store in DUBLIN. If you can get your hands on a copy, do so: It's a great read, if you like Gaelic mythology.
Star Wars - Used to read these, but stopped after a while. I consider myself lucky - some people never can quit their addiction...

wolf wrote:
John Kennedy O'Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces: Brilliant and hilarious; Martha Steward's lawyers even used the phrase "confederacy of dunces" in her defense!


"A Confederacy of Dunces" is just one of those great books - it's definitive, to put it simply. A must read.

[b]Fan Fiction
- Not much more to say, except to break it down some more:

Ah! Megami-Sama - "Trial by Tenderness" by Cevn McGuire. The only AMG fic I consider to be worthy.

Sailor Moon - Actually, the only SM fics I've truly ever liked were those by Fiss-sama...Nice job, by the way.

Evangelion - Higher Learnings. Yo. Holding Hands. Yo. Shinji the Casanova. Yo. I sense a running theme here... hm....

Ranma - Er...there's a lot of it. Skysaber. WFROSE. Metroanime. Callum Wallace. And one of the most perverted - but talented storytellers - of Ranma fiction....Jim Bader. His stuff is borderline illegal, in some cases, but it's the little details that make his workds so very...um... *scratches head* I'm sure there's a term for it besides 'perverted'...I just have to think of it.

Some of my fave Ranma works include: Misteltoe, parts 1&2 (part twooooo....), Girl Days, Comes the Cold Dragon, Nabiki 1/2, A Tale of Two Wallets, Biker 1/2, Mirrors Multiplied, The Bet Series, and the best, in my opinion...

Waters Under Earth, by Alan Harnum. If you haven't read this, do so, now.

Christopher Fiss wrote:
It's a shame that so many children never realize the wealth of information they're being taught until much later in life. I personally would LOVE to flip through my old Social Studies textbooks now...I'd probably enjoy them a lot more and find them a lot more interesting/useful.


I agree. In fact, I reread my Dual-Enrollment American History book to brush up on some facts, as well as info concerning other cultures throughout history. Most people just ignore the fact that all of this stuff is out there, because they had teachers cramming it down their throats in school... It's a pity, you know...


Thu Apr 15, 2004 9:28 pm
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Chibi
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I really enjoyed Anne MCAffery's view on time travel. SInce it makes a damning kind of sense; it has ruined most time travel in stories for me because of it's believability.

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Sun Apr 25, 2004 10:13 pm
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to answer the above post, my problem with the Starship Trooper movie started when they abandoned all the parts of the novel that I fell in love with. the power armor, the politics of the military in the story( admitadly they did a hell of a job with the boot camp segment- and thats the only part of the movie I really enjoyed) and the general feel of the story were all ditched in favor of a gore fest. I Love a good gore fest, mind you, but thats not what the story was about.

my key problem with the movie, however, is as follows. when James Camron made Aliens, he deliberatly borrowed tremendously from Hienlien's stories for that film. hell, even the terms 'bug hunt' and 'artificial person' were refrences to Sarship Troopers and Friday. if you look closer, you can find more. now here's the issue I have. the movie Starship Troopers ripped off the movie Aliens on over a dozen levels. To summerise: they ripped off the movie, which was based on the book they were making a movie off of. my bottom line is: Read the book, save the movie for a drunken afternoon of MST3K.


Sat May 15, 2004 12:34 am
Chibi-Czar

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that was me, Hotwire, above, btw. I'm having a little trouble with the Log in system. probably because I've been up for 32 hours ^_^

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Sat May 15, 2004 12:37 am
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Marion Zimmer Bradley
Anne McCaffery
J.D. Robb
David E. Weber
Margret Weis
Laurell K. Hamilton
David Eddings
Mercedes Lackey
Tamora Peirce
Terry Brooks
Terry Pratchet
Shakespere
Dante
and The Illiad and The Oddessy and not the fucking movie Troy! They KILLED the Illiad

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Sat May 22, 2004 7:32 am
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Chibi-Czar
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<= added two Halo books to his library

I just started "The Flood" and I can already tell it's not written as well as "The Fall of Reach." Eric Nylund, why have you forsaken me?! :cry:

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Sat May 22, 2004 1:49 pm
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Chibi
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My library's not really impressive, but...

Recently (Re)read: Please Kill Me (Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain), Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country, Communist Manifesto, High Fidelity (Nick Hornby), Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix (since I translate the videogames, I get to read all the books again every year), Man's Worldly Goods (Leo Huberman).

Reading: The Culture of Fear (Barry Glassner), The Art of War (Sun Tzu - I don't remember how English-speakers spell it).

To Read Again: An Actor Prepares (Stanislavsky), Laughter (Henri Bergson), Civil Disobedience (Thoreau), Poetics (Aristotles)

To Read: Six Ibsen dramas (I don't know exactly the English titles... Enemy of the People is one of them), Shakespeare's historical dramas (King Jonh, Richard II, Henry IV and so forth), Ten Days That Shook The World (John Reed), Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber - again, not sure about the English title), Politics (Aristotles), The Suffering of Young Werther (Goethe), Utopia (Thomas More), Les Fleus du Mal (Baudelaire), Une Saison en Enfer / Po?sies / Lettre du Voyant (A Stay at Hell / Poesies / Clarivoyant's Letter - Arthur Rimbaud. Does anyone has the correct titles?)


Mon May 24, 2004 12:45 pm
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Cherub
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I own a beejuzuz load of books, so here's some i have read recently/enjoyed a lot.
Lovecraft - Absolutely anything by this guy.
Clive Barker - One fucked up man, but quality none the less
R.A. Salvatore - At last count, I have read more than twenty of his books. Not exactly classics, but good fun.
Stephen King- Specifically the Dark Tower series. Much goodness.
Catch-22 - My fifth read. It gets better every time
The Odyssey - Absolutely one of the best pieces of fiction ever written
Dracula - God, this book is good. Bram Stoker has an incredible ability to write suspense/horror.
Red Storm Rising - Yes, its Clancy, but its good none the less

And I am fucking addicted to the Blade Of The Immortal mangas

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Wed Jun 02, 2004 9:47 pm
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Quote:
And I am fucking addicted to the Blade Of The Immortal mangas



Manji is the man. ^_^

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Thu Jun 03, 2004 1:59 am
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