What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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Farerb
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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I'm currently on my third re-read of A Dance with Dragons, but I haven't picked up the book for a while. I'm not in the mood for some time, but hopefully it will change soon.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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I finished the book yesterday for the third time, now patiently waiting for the sixth book. I might reread the Silmarillion again in the meantime, though I don't know when that'll be cause I'm kind of burned out.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

Post by blackcauldron85 »

^Is A Dance with Dragons the name of the series of books, or just one of the books?

I recently read "The Making of Walt Disney's Fun and Fancy Free" by J.B. Kaufman, which was excellent. It had really neat behind-the-scenes pictures, in addition to marketing pictures. It was a really good look into the making of that movie, but also just about making (Disney) movies during that time period. I absolutely recommend it.

More recently I read "The Art of Mulan." Another great read, more informational than most Art Of books.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

Post by Farerb »

blackcauldron85 wrote:^Is A Dance with Dragons the name of the series of books, or just one of the books?
A Dance with Dragons is the fifth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire book series. The books which Game of Thrones "adapted".
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

Post by blackcauldron85 »

^ Oh, I gotcha. Thank you! So you've re-read them all? When is he releasing the 6th book? Will that be the first book not following the storyline of the show?
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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To me the show hasn't been following the books for a long time. Major changes were made since season 2 and it increasingly became unfaithful, so yes I expect the book to be very different from the show.
No one knows when/if he's going to release it.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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Oh. After all of his work writing it for all of these years, I sure hope it gets released!!! I think there will be so much interest in this book in particular, because it'll be the final book, right? And I don't think he was happy with the ending of the series. I know I'll be curious as to how the whole story ends.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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There's going to be a seventh book after that one, so even after the sixth book, there's going to be five? ten? years until that one is released. But yeah, I really want to know how the real story is going to be.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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^ Oh, wow...so the 7th book is yeeaaarrrrsssss away...
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

Post by MerPrincessJamie »

Just finished , "I Was Anastasia" by Ariel Lowhon Very interesting take on the tale. I've always loved history and just started to get into historical fiction.


Now I'm reading Julie Andrew's memoir, "Home"
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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Currently in the middle of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I haven't read Harry Potter since High School and honestly I don't get the same feelings I used to back then, maybe because since then I read better fantasy books like The Lord of the Rings (and other Tolkien books) and A Song of Ice and Fire. It feels like there are a lot of unnecessary things happening that could easily be cut, especially in the fifth book, which was badly edited. I know the sixth and seventh are better so I might continue.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

Post by blackcauldron85 »

^ So do you prefer the HP movies, since they edited out stuff from the books?
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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I do like the films a lot but I remember that the sixth one cut a lot of important stuff from the books. The fifth film however is better than the book in my opinion. The only thing I think they should have kept in the film is the mirror Sirius gave Harry since that was important for the seventh film (the mirror is just there with no explanation).
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

Post by TheSequelOfDisney »

I finished reading Order of the Phoenix last night and just finished watching the film. OotP is my favorite novel of the series and I've never been a fan of the film. After cutting out 2/3 of the novel and then piecing together bits and bobs of storyline, I feel like we got a very rushed and disjointed film. Which terribly undermines a lot of the emotional impact the story has, not to mention just a nice fluidity to the scenes. I'd imagine we would've gotten a better and more cohesive outcome, not just for this film but for the series as a whole, if Steve Kloves had written the screenplay. Alas, he didn't.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

Post by TheSequelOfDisney »

2021:

1. The Blue Fox by Sjón (3.5/5)
2. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (3.5/5)
3. I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Ian Reid (4/5)
4. The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (3.5/5)
5. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (2.5/5)
6. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (4/5)
7. The Silence by Don DeLillo (2/5)
8. Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (4/5)
9. Passing by Nella Larsen (4/5)
10. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (4.5/5)
11. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (5/5)
12. Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark (3/5)
13. The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter (2/5)
Last edited by TheSequelOfDisney on Sat Mar 06, 2021 8:06 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

Post by Disney's Divinity »

I forgot about this thread. I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird a month or so ago. It's still an incredible book; I forgot just how funny it was. It's strange how as you get old, your memory of things becomes fuzzy. I'm trying to go through a lot of books I grew up with to refresh my memory the same way. I had considered buying that "sequel" to TKaM that was released about some years ago, but a lot of what I read about it made me talk myself out of doing that.It's sad to think Jem died...

There were several biographies out that I'd been thinking of buying if they came down to the right price: Mariah, Sara Evans, and Sunny Hostin. I don't really read many biographies. I've had Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Nellie Olsen's actress and The Facts of My Life by Charlotte Rae bookmarked to pick up for several years. I need to finally start getting around to some of these already.
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Kacey Musgraves ~ "The Architect"
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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I bought Mariah's but haven't had time to read it yet.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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I read Go Set a Watchman when it came out. I think it’s true that it reads as a first draft of TKAM, as in Watchman you see Harper Lee explore the same themes as TKAM only less successfully. I don’t think it should have been published and I choose to view it as non-canonical.

I have the historical fiction novel Courting Mr Lincoln set out. I’ve been meaning to read it for some time now.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

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Still haven’t finished Courting Mr Lincoln, but I just read Interview with a Vampire for the first time. I had trouble putting it down, it was a very engrossing read. I’m going to a used bookstore tomorrow, hopefully I can find the first sequel while I’m there.
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Re: What are you reading/have you just read? Vol. 2

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

I'm re-reading HG Wells' The Time Machine, which I haven't read in a very long time. As far as I know, it was actually the first science fiction novel (or novelette) that I ever read as a kid. And it was also the first modern work of science fiction in the genre. Older works exist, but they feels too old to be called modern.
And I'm noticing things much more clearly now than before. Most of all Wells' ideas about eugenics and degeneration of humans. It doesn't really bother me, since it was partly a product of his time, and partly a good foundation and inspiration for a concept that has been used countless times since.
His ideas about the combination of human evolution, nature versus nurture, natural selection (or the absence of it) and society, are seen in several others of his most famous works.
Wells and others had evolution partly wrong back then. They believed it was all about competing and survival, but scientists like Lynn Margulis have since shown that cooperation and symbiosis are just as important elements in the web of life.

There is one sentence I wish had been left out:
I do not remember all I did as the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was the unexpected nature of my loss that maddened me. I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind—a strange animal in an unknown world. I must have raved to and fro, screaming and crying upon God and Fate. I have a memory of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; of looking in this impossible place and that; of groping among moonlit ruins and touching strange creatures in the black shadows; at last, of lying on the ground near the sphinx and weeping with absolute wretchedness, even anger at the folly of leaving the machine having leaked away with my strength. I had nothing left but misery. Then I slept, and when I woke again it was full day, and a couple of sparrows were hopping round me on the turf within reach of my arm.
This is the only reference to birds in the story so far, and if he hadn't mentioned the two birds, that would open up for the possible scenario that a huge disaster had happened in the past that made humans perhaps the only surviving terrestrial tetrapod. Not that it would change the story much, but it would make your mind wanter, and perhaps also inspire more fanfiction.
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