What Are You Reading? (3 Viewers)

[Gregor Samsa]

Maurice Keen-The Penguin History of Medieval Europe.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Geoffrey Chaucer-The Canterbury Tales.

 

[miss_salty]

Just finished reading The Trial - Kafka
Starting Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov

Gregor Samsa, I envy you. How do you have so much time to read so many books?!

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Originally posted by miss_salty
Just finished reading The Trial - Kafka
Starting Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov

Gregor Samsa, I envy you. How do you have so much time to read so many books?!

The combination of having a passion for literature and not having a job.

What did you think of The Trial? I love its surrealism, and how the text seems to anticipate totalitarianism in its depiction of nightmarish bureaucracy. This door was only ever made for you. I am now going to close it.

Kafka also had a great talent for the opening sentence.. Josef.K was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong. [Paraphrasing. I read it eighteen months ago, and don't own a copy to quote.]

If you haven't already read them, I highly recommend reading some of Kafka's short stories, including 'The Metamorphosis', 'In The Penal Colony', 'The Great Wall Of China', 'A Hunger Artist', 'The Burrow', 'The Cares Of A Family Man' (This is merely a fragment, but there is much contained within it.) etc:. Most of these can be found in a good anthology. [Or 'Complete Short Stories'. ]In my opinion, these are even better than his novels.

 

[miss_salty]

Originally posted by Gregor Samsa
The combination of having a passion for literature and not having a job.

What did you think of The Trial? I love its surrealism, and how the text seems to anticipate totalitarianism in its depiction of nightmarish bureaucracy. This door was only ever made for you. I am now going to close it.

Kafka also had a great talent for the opening sentence.. Josef.K was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong. [Paraphrasing. I read it eighteen months ago, and don't own a copy to quote.]

If you haven't already read them, I highly recommend reading some of Kafka's short stories, including 'The Metamorphosis', 'In The Penal Colony', 'The Great Wall Of China', 'A Hunger Artist', 'The Burrow', 'The Cares Of A Family Man' (This is merely a fragment, but there is much contained within it.) etc:. Most of these can be found in a good anthology. [Or 'Complete Short Stories'. ]In my opinion, these are even better than his novels.

Kafka gives me this weird, almost suffocating feeling. But yeah I rather enjoyed The Trial and that analogy by the priest. I've read a couple of his short stories (I like In the Penal Colony) and they have quite an alienating effect - but they're so fascinating. I think it's a shame that Kafka died and most of his texts are incomplete.
They've published a book on the scraps of work Kafka has done. He wrote quite a few axioms and most of it is pretty hard to understand. But yeah his writing is really esoteric.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Originally posted by miss_salty
Kafka gives me this weird, almost suffocating feeling. But yeah I rather enjoyed The Trial and that analogy by the priest. I've read a couple of his short stories (I like In the Penal Colony) and they have quite an alienating effect - but they're so fascinating. I think it's a shame that Kafka died and most of his texts are incomplete.
They've published a book on the scraps of work Kafka has done. He wrote quite a few axioms and most of it is pretty hard to understand. But yeah his writing is really esoteric.

It is a shame that Kafka died at a young age, but he was a tortured soul in some ways.. Such as his relationship with his father (Reflected in 'The Judgement', 'The Metamorphosis' and 'Letter To His Father', among others..) 'The Castle' is probably the most famous example of his unfinished texts.. It ends in the middle of a sentence. (How post-modern.)

Some of his axioms are fairly simple, and very nice..Such as the one quoted in my signature.

Youth is the ability to see beauty. Those who continue to see beauty will never grow old.

I believe that many of the 'scraps' have been published as fragments, and these have their own creepy effect..Like The Cares Of A Family Man, or The Vulture for instance.. I'd like to read that volume of his Diaries too..

 

[Gregor Samsa]

For the reading pleasure (I hope) of all;

Franz Kafka-The Cares Of A Family Man.
Some say the word Odradek is of Slavonic origin, and try to account for it
on that basis. Others again believe it to be of German origin, only
influenced by Slavonic. The uncertainty of both interpretations allows one
to assume with justice that neither is accurate, especially as neither of
them provides an intelligent meaning of the word.

No one, of course, would occupy himself with such studies if there were not
a creature called Odradek. At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped
spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to
be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled
together, of the most varied sorts and colors. But it is not only a spool,
for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and
another small rod is joined to that at a right angle. By means of this
latter rod on one side and one of the points of the star on the other, the
whole thing can stand upright as if on two legs.

One is tempted to believe that the creature once had some sort of
intelligible shape and is now only a broken-down remnant. Yet this does not
seem to be the case; at least there is no sign of it; nowhere is there an
unfinished or unbroken surface to suggest anything of the kind; the whole
thing looks senseless enough, but in its own way perfectly finished. In any
case, closer scrutiny is impossible, since Odradek is extraordinarily
nimble and can never be laid hold of.

He lurks by turns in the garret, the stairway, the lobbies, the entrance
hall. Often for months on end he is not to be seen; then he has presumably
moved into other houses; but he always comes faithfully back to our house
again. Many a time when you go out of the door and he happens just to be
leaning directly beneath you against the banisters you feel inclined to
speak to him. Of course, you put no difficult questions to him, you treat
him--he is so diminutive that you cannot help it--rather like a child.
"Well, what's your name?" you ask him. "Odradek," he says. "And where do
you live?" "No fixed abode," he says and laughs; but it is only the kind of
laughter that has no lungs behind it. It sounds rather like the rustling of
fallen leaves. And that is usually the end of the conversation. Even these
anwers are not always forthcoming; often he stays mute for a long time, as
wooden as his appearance.

I ask myself, to no purpose, what is likely to happen to him? Can he
possibly die? Anything that dies has had some kind of aim in life, some
kind of activity, which has worn out; but that does not apply to Odradek.
Am I to suppose, then, that he will always be rolling down the stairs, with
ends of thread trailing after him, right before the feet of my children,
and my children's children? He does no harm to anyone that one can see; but
the idea that he is likely to survive me I find almost painful.

 

[truly-in-bliss]

Originally posted by Gregor Samsa
For the reading pleasure (I hope) of all;

Franz Kafka-The Cares Of A Family Man.
Some say the word Odradek is of Slavonic origin, and try to account for it
on that basis. Others again believe it to be of German origin, only
influenced by Slavonic. The uncertainty of both interpretations allows one
to assume with justice that neither is accurate, especially as neither of
them provides an intelligent meaning of the word.

No one, of course, would occupy himself with such studies if there were not
a creature called Odradek. At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped
spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to
be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled
together, of the most varied sorts and colors. But it is not only a spool,
for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and
another small rod is joined to that at a right angle. By means of this
latter rod on one side and one of the points of the star on the other, the
whole thing can stand upright as if on two legs.

One is tempted to believe that the creature once had some sort of
intelligible shape and is now only a broken-down remnant. Yet this does not
seem to be the case; at least there is no sign of it; nowhere is there an
unfinished or unbroken surface to suggest anything of the kind; the whole
thing looks senseless enough, but in its own way perfectly finished. In any
case, closer scrutiny is impossible, since Odradek is extraordinarily
nimble and can never be laid hold of.

He lurks by turns in the garret, the stairway, the lobbies, the entrance
hall. Often for months on end he is not to be seen; then he has presumably
moved into other houses; but he always comes faithfully back to our house
again. Many a time when you go out of the door and he happens just to be
leaning directly beneath you against the banisters you feel inclined to
speak to him. Of course, you put no difficult questions to him, you treat
him--he is so diminutive that you cannot help it--rather like a child.
"Well, what's your name?" you ask him. "Odradek," he says. "And where do
you live?" "No fixed abode," he says and laughs; but it is only the kind of
laughter that has no lungs behind it. It sounds rather like the rustling of
fallen leaves. And that is usually the end of the conversation. Even these
anwers are not always forthcoming; often he stays mute for a long time, as
wooden as his appearance.

I ask myself, to no purpose, what is likely to happen to him? Can he
possibly die? Anything that dies has had some kind of aim in life, some
kind of activity, which has worn out; but that does not apply to Odradek.
Am I to suppose, then, that he will always be rolling down the stairs, with
ends of thread trailing after him, right before the feet of my children,
and my children's children? He does no harm to anyone that one can see; but
the idea that he is likely to survive me I find almost painful.

i luv everythig by kafka... he is just one of a kind..

 

[ameh]

scarlet letter and ulysses

 

[blam_babe]

Molvania coz my brain needs to sleep and get away from school once in a while.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Originally posted by amoz_lilo
ulysses

Fantastic. What do you think of it? I positively revelled in it myself.

Whilst reading The Canterbury Tales;

Jaromir Malek-In The Shadow Of The Pyramids.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Read earlier today;
Richard Hodges & David Whitehouse-Mohammed, Charlemagne & The Origins of Europe.

Now reading;
Gabriel Garcia Marquez-One Hundred Years Of Solitude.

Funnily enough, I started reading this on a fairly crowded train returning from uni tonight.. Utterly absorbed, I only looked up again when I was almost back at Campbelltown Station, to find myself the only person in the carriage... Interesting.

 

[naturalCo.]

The Journals Of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962

 

[Sarah168]

browning poetry for ee1

man, this guy was abit psycho in the head but i like his stuff

 

[ica]

the newspaper

 

[Sarah168]

ur av is blinding me ica!! didnt virgin sexy have an av like that awhile ago?

 

[Fire_Hydra]

Originally posted by naturalCo.
The Journals Of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962

same...

Plath = pure genius

and re-reading - Girl, interuppted - susanna Kaysen....

i read the book and then saw the movie - movie does the book no justice......

 

[Ziff]

'The History Wars' by Stuart McIntyre

 

[Malazn Pleasure]

Management Accounting - Hanson & Mowen

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Miriam Dixon-The Real Matilda: Woman and Identity in Australia 1788 To The Present.