Reading “A tale of two cities” by Charles Dickens. I am not too far into it, but so far it’s been really enjoyable! The English accents are really hard to follow for someone whose native language isn’t English, but I’m getting used to it.
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwells memoir about the Spanish civil war. I never read memoirs or autobiographies, but I am very glad I have read this one. It gives a good insight into various aspects of the civil war, as well as Orwells personal views (and his sigarette addiction). On top of that, it is at times hilarious. And it is almost unbelievable how many things happened in just 6 months.
Highly recommend it if you’re into history or politics or love Orwells other works.
If you have objectively proven that atheists are wrong, that means that you must have proven that God exists right? I do not think that is possible without God showing himself, and not just to you, but to others too. If these atheists have not seen God, you have in fact, not proven that they are objectively wrong.
Also, there are many arguments that atheists use. For example, some atheists believe that the Bible can not be right because parts of it were written long after the events that they describe (for example gospels written maybe 50 years after Jesus’ death, meaning most if not all eyewitnesses have died).
As a Christian myself, I do not believe you can objectively disprove atheism. And to claim not liking God is the only reason for their beliefs is ignorant, if not worse.
Did some re-reading of Anna Karenina and Pride and Prejudice. Now reading George Orwells “Homage to Catalonia”, his memoir of his time as a volunteer against the fascists in the Spanish civil war. I’m about a third of the way in and so far it has been quite enjoyable, but I am hoping for some more politics later on; right now it is mostly about the situation on the front.
I am a big fan of Leo Tolstoy. His biggest works are War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but those are both quite large, so if you want to know a bit about his style i would suggest some of his shorter works. Of the shorter works I have read I really loved “The Death Of Ivan Ilyich”, “Hadji Murad” and “Master And Man”.
I also really like Jane Austen, you can’t really go wrong with her. Her novels aren’t that difficult either; they were the first novels in English (my second language) that I really enjoyed reading and they significantly improved my English.
I am reading a bit too much different things at once right now, so this is a fairly long comment:
I’ve been reading “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway for a while, and I have read 5/6 now. It’s about partisans in the Spanish civil war. I am enjoying Hemingway’s prose and the story, but I think I will wait a bit after this before reading any of his other works.
I’ve been meaning to read the great Chinese classic novels for a while, but I never got to it. Last week, after seeing someone on here was reading it, I decided to start reading “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”. The story (about the fall of the Han dynasty and the war of, you guessed it, three kingdoms) is very fun so far, but there are like 50 names in the first 50 pages, so I have trouble remembering who is who. I’m hoping for a bit more dialogue too.
I’m also halfway through the “Aeneid”, the great Latin epic by Virgil. It’s a decent story, but I should have gone for a modern translation instead of the old one I have now. I think I’m going to stop with this one for a while, as this is the perfect point to stop.
Lastly, I’m reading Leo Tolstoy’s “The Kingdom of God Is Within You”, his most well-known non-fiction work. I am a massive Tolstoy fan (War and Peace is my all time favourite novel), so I wanted to know more about his philosophy. It is very interesting so far, with how he makes arguments for non-violence, as well as his arguments against the principle of the Church. I don’t always fully agree, but it is a very thought-provoking book.
Last week I also read Tolstoy’s short story “Master and Man”. I think it may be the best work to read as an introduction to Tolstoy. The setting is perfect for this time of the year, the prose is amazing as always, the psychological depth is unbelievable for so short a novel, and the moral part is typical for his later works, but not too prominent that it bothered me in any way. So if you’re interested in reading some Tolstoy, you should definitely read this one!
Top left? I believe that’s Billy Joel, but I may be mistaken
Cormac Mccarthy enters the chat
I forgot to mention it, but I have ADD too, so that is definitely a big contributing factor!
Many people do, myself included. I myself am just not capable of reading fast for some reason, but other people may just want to take more time to analyse prose or certain aspects of the story. For older books you may want to do some research about society in the time that it was written, for a book like Crime and Punishment you may want to think about the symbolism.
In short, there are many reasons to read slow, so many people do it.
I read mostly English because English books are easier to get online (I mostly read classics from Gutenberg). It really helped me improve my English. If you want to get better in your native language, then it may be a good idea to read more in that language, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it if I were you.
No, Picasso, pronounced Pizza-so.
I should really start listening to audiobooks more often. I just looked and the book is freely available on Librivox, so I may switch back and forth between reading and listening from now on. Thanks for the tip!