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Author Topic: Rate the last book you read.  (Read 194269 times)

roujin

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #710 on: May 11, 2011, 10:58:22 PM »
When Movies Mattered Dave Kehr

I wish I could write about the formal qualities of films in the way (and with the detail) that Kehr does. He's very good at that. He's also very good at making me want to check out things I didn't know I wanted to check out (such as Blake Edwards films). A great man!

sdedalus

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #711 on: May 12, 2011, 12:43:46 AM »
Haven't gotten to the book yet, but I'm not buying Blake Edwards.  Too many bad memories of Switch.

I'm all for jumping on the Raoul Walsh train though.
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roujin

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #712 on: May 14, 2011, 02:28:32 PM »
Never seen a Blake Edwards film.

He made a compelling case for Walsh. He also made me want to reevaluate those 80's Godard films (the ones he talked about I'm not really big on).

sdedalus

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #713 on: May 14, 2011, 07:58:57 PM »
You haven't seen Breakfast at Tiffany's???

I still have almost every 80s Godard to see.
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roujin

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #714 on: May 14, 2011, 08:01:02 PM »
You haven't seen Breakfast at Tiffany's???

Never seen an Audrey Hepburn film...

sdedalus

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #715 on: May 14, 2011, 09:43:22 PM »
Wow.
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Jared

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #716 on: May 15, 2011, 02:06:59 PM »
The Art of War by Sun Tzu

I didnt get much out of this. Maybe having just read War and Peace, and watching Ken Burns docs, Ive just seen the priniciples of miltary strategy applied within a much more interesting context. Most of the stuff in this book is just kind of...."duh". A general that exploits the weaknesses of his enemy gains a great advantage. take the offensive when you have an advantage. Take the defensive when at a disadvantage. well um yeah.

Furthermore, the version I read poorly dispersed the annotations throughout the text, making it a horribly clunky read.

Verite

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #717 on: May 17, 2011, 08:53:29 PM »
You haven't seen Breakfast at Tiffany's???

Never seen an Audrey Hepburn film...

They All Laughed.  Unless you're talking about a movie in which she's the lead.
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Junior

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #718 on: May 18, 2011, 03:59:46 PM »
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

The Name of the Wind owes a lot to Harry Potter. There's the school for learning magic, the dead parents, the snooty aristocrat arch rival, the wandering Big Bad enemy, the teacher with a grudge against our hero and the teacher with loopy but seemingly knowledgeable insights, and there's the girl that is kinda strange but makes a connection with Kvothe, the hero of the tale. Yes, there's a lot of overlap there but what The Name of the Wind does with these characters and ideas (which I recognize weren't exactly invented for the Harry Potter universe but the popular girl get's all the dirty looks, I guess) makes it a great story. This, the first book in the Kingkiller Chronicle series does a lot of heavy lifting as we hear about the first 15 years of Kvothe's (pronounced like "quoth") life. The framing story is a clever conceit in this tale because the Kvothe we know in the present is quite different from the Kvothe at the beginning of his life (and he doesn't even come close to old Kvothe's melancholy by the end of this book, the first day of his recitation of his life).

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St. Martin the Bald

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #719 on: May 19, 2011, 11:44:44 AM »
The Art of War by Sun Tzu

I didnt get much out of this. Maybe having just read War and Peace, and watching Ken Burns docs, Ive just seen the priniciples of miltary strategy applied within a much more interesting context. Most of the stuff in this book is just kind of...."duh". A general that exploits the weaknesses of his enemy gains a great advantage. take the offensive when you have an advantage. Take the defensive when at a disadvantage. well um yeah.

Furthermore, the version I read poorly dispersed the annotations throughout the text, making it a horribly clunky read.

I read the Thomas Cleary translation by Shambhala Books - he is a great translator of old Chinese texts and he takes several different translations and shows how Sun Tzu can be taken according to the time period of Chinese history. I often tried to apply his teachings to interpersonal relationships and see how it would fit into my job.

You might enjoy The 48 Laws Of Power (Bob Greene) a bit more - it takes a lot of different writings and musings on power and relationships (between people, groups, countries) and distills them down to 48 laws. Very entertaining read.
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