Saturday, September 17, 2005

Hitchhiker's Guide to buying more books

Well, I finished Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and now, as was predicted, I will have to buy the others. I really enjoyed it - I hadn't really come across sci-fi humor before. At first I wasn't sure I would like it, but then I settled into the flow of it and it worked well. Unfortunately, I'll have to wait a month or two before I can order the others. I think I can wait. Next on the nightstand is Microserfs. I really enjoyed Generation X, and I've heard good things about Microserfs, so I expect to be pleased.

My husband and I are slowly making our way through Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - I believe we are on Chapter 9 (which my husband fell asleep in the middle of reading - he is the only man who can actually fall asleep while he is reading aloud, I think). Sometimes I really regret this "reading it together the first time" thing, but I love to hear my husband read, and most of the books we like to read don't really lend themselves to being read aloud. Still, I just want to find out what happens! It is all I can do to steal the book while he is at work and read ahead. But that would ruin the fun of reading it together, wouldn't it? One thing I have noticed is that while the story is sound and exciting (of course), her writing style seems to be a bit sloppier in places. But, you know, its Harry Potter, I'm not going to complain.

I am going to have to start going back over The Iliad, The Aeneid, Antigone, The Oresteia, Beowulf, Hamlet, and the Henry trilogy so I can finish my thesis outline and get the ball rolling.

So many books, so little life to read them all.

3 comments:

melusina said...

Yea, the version of the book (Hitchhikers) that we bought had a long section about how the movie got made, ie. the process of selling it and getting it accepted and finally made into a movie. It is kinda sad that it all came to fruition after Adams died. At any rate, they had another screenwriter come in who took from the last script Adams had written and added things from other works of Adams' as well. Disney had wanted it to be able to reach a wider audience before they accepted it as a financial risk.

The SeaWitch said...

What's your thesis on Mel?

melusina said...

My thesis is on the call to action of the hero, focusing on the heroes in those works I mentioned. I'm trying to distinguish between those heroes that have moments of hesitation (Achilleus, Hamlet) and those that act automatically (Beowulf) to decipher the "hero motive".