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what is your favorite book and are you do you a lot

I love books and literature so it is really impossible to name a favorite book or author. I have loved and read several times Doris Lessing's five book series CHILDREN OF VIOLENCE. She is one of my favorite authors, also particularly like, of hers, THE DIARIES OF JANE SOMERS and THE DIARY OF A GOOD NEIGHBOUR.

Heart of darkness....Joseph Conrad
Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
Everything by Dale Carnegie
The Road Less Travelled - M. Scott Peck

It's all a bit dated but I hardly read anything more than the Herald Tribune these days....

I love HEART OF DARKNESS...

"The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth."

"He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision — he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath — "The horror! The horror!"....

..and to think that "heart of darkness" was written by someone who's mother-tongue was not english....

Oh, I forgot my other favourite....

"Wuthering Heights"- Emily Bronté

Thank you Wiki:

"T. S. Eliot's use of a quotation from The Heart of Darkness--"Mistah Kurtz, he dead"-- as an epigraph to the original manuscript of his poem, The Hollow Men, contrasted its dark horror with the presumed "light of civilization," and suggested the ambiguity of both the dark motives of civilization and the freedom of barbarism, as well as the "spiritual darkness" of several characters in Heart of Darkness. This sense of darkness also lends itself to a related theme of obscurity — again, in various senses, reflecting the ambiguities in the work. Moral issues are not clear-cut; that which ought to be (in various senses) on the side of "light" is in fact mired in darkness, and vice versa..."

Heart of Darkness seemed to be compulsory reading for lots of people I knew as a mature student at Uni............ you recommend I read the book?

I understand it's about the Congo - I lived there for three years and found it a very disturbing country for a young, sensitive adolescent to be growing up in -

I loved Uganda as a kid, I then found India very sad with all the poverty.........

but the Congo still gives me the shivers - there was an endemic sense of evil that pervaded everywhere......... and, like I just wrote, I was a sensitive teenager and it upset me greatly.

From my youth, like Lagoona, I have my favourite books:

Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'

Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Aubervilles'

Voltaire's 'Candide'

Yikes!!! You n' me need to form a book club

"I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees — my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath — a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff — he's always, always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being — so, don't talk of our separation again — it is impracticable."

I recommend you read HOD, however it is a very dense book, a virtual tapestry of sybolism and imagery......so not a light read, but absolutely magnificent...The Congo is simply used as a metaphor....but, yes, it takes place in the Congo, during the era of European Imperialism....

I love Tess of the D'Aubervilles, actually I love all of Hardy's work...he is another favorite. Brave New World is interesting.

the moons a balloon and bring on the clowns david niven jfk war and peace mind u that is heavy churchllls life stoy for light reading any book by dick francis

Oh, I love mysteries too....Dick Francis is cool

'The Moon's a Balloon' was a very funny; I actually met David Niven once on an aeroplane - and he was EXACTLY the same as the type of character he portrayed in so many of his films.

My mum and dad were travelling first class, and my brother and I were consigned to travelling second class or economy class - whatever it was called in those dim and distant days!

My dad came 'back' to where my brother and I were sat and we were allowed to take turns going ' up front' to meet and speak to David Niven for five minutes.

I know I should have been an actor; pretending to be somebody I'm not comes as naturally as farting or burping for me; it requires some effort but I just know how to do it.

I'd have liked to have been an actor in his genre; the now almost non-existent English gentleman - debonair; with an impish glint in my eyes, and a wonderful flirt with the ladies -

but also a loyal and good husband to one special woman in my life.

William Powell in THE THIN MAN; Cary Grant in everything....

So many great books


One hundred years of solitude & Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez (all time favourites)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Pride and prejudice - Jane Austin
Memoirs of a Geisha - Aurthur Golden
Paulo Coelho - everything - Alchemist currently reading ' the witch of Portobello'
James Thurber - Walter Mitty
Frank O'Connor - The Oedipus complex - The first confession
Brendan Behan - The Confirmation suit
James Joyce - Finnigans Wake
Doris Lessing - To room 19 - The Golden Note book
The Hours - Michael Cunningham
1984 - George Orwell




Plays
Anything by Tennessee Williams - Cat on a hot tin Roof one of my favs
12 Angry Men - Reginald Rose
The Field - John B Kane
Hamlet - william shakespeare


Poets -
Collected works of Spike Milligan
The road less travelled - Robert Frost



The Four Agreements - Don Jose Luis Ruiz
No Logo - Naomi Klein
Alice Walker - In search of our mothers gardens
Postcards from the edge - Carrie Fisher

Wow, this is a biggy,I,ve got hundreds of books. Love HOD, re-reading Tess. Also adore The Rape of the Lock (Pope)Paradise Lost (Milton) King Lear(Shakey) Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)....so many great books. Last book I read was by Zafon, In the shadow of the wind,bloody good read.

Hod is essential reading,the journey down the congo is really about a journey into self. Also love Laurie Lee,s Spanish adventures, beautifully written. Also read Driving Over Lemons, written by ex Genesis drummer cum Spanish farmer. Great book.

I studied Spanish literature at uni and have a list of fav Spanish books longer than my arm.

My all time fav book is the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea by Juan Ruiz. A magical book that brings back the feeling of reading I had as a child when I spent hours reading by torchlight under the blankets so as not to wake my four brothers.

Other Spanish authors on my fav list include Unamuno - whose novel 'Niebla' was the theme of my thesis. The protagonist questions the author about his life in that book.- Cervantes, of course. - Rojas, Libro de Calisto y Melibea y de la puta vieja Celestina - Camilo Jose Cela, family of Pascual Duarte, any many others....

And can someone please tell me the name of the book that takes place near Salamanca and has a blind man and a young servant who tries to trick him?

I also love Latin American Literature and the constant search for self and place usually contained within. Los Rios Profundos by Arguedos is a good example, there is a wall with three layers. Each layer belongs to a different time in history - pre- colonial, colonial, and post-colonial, and there is also the question 'where are we?' I kind of share that question in my life, which might be why I like the book so much. there are many wonderful books like that one. El tunel by sabato is another favorite, in which the character feels like he's spending his life trapped in a tunnel and unable to relate to other people on any meaningful level.

Literature brings a whole world of another place that makes some sort of sense to me and is a sense which is sadly lacking in this 'real world'.

Anything in English I find at the village "dump". At the moment reading "A practical guide to Self-Hypnosis" - to enable me to continue posting on CS.