More 5 Things Meme
Sep. 3rd, 2006 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lesbiassparrowFor ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
squishysquidgy
5 song or singers I cannot stand to listen to
1. Garrison Keillor. Not really a singer, but if I even hear seconds of him speaking I begin to writhe. The singing at the start of the show also sends me into conniptions.
2. Molly Malone. Er, years of hearing it sung by drunken tourists in Dublin will do that to you
3. Build that Wall, Aimee Mann. Actually I like Aimee Mann, but for some reason when I am not careful with my ipod and end up at ‘play all’ this was the song that always came on, so I am pretty sick of it.
4. Daniel O’Donnell. Count yourself lucky if you do not know who I am talking about.
5. My Heart will go on’ by Celene Dion. I loathe all things Titanic related.
Forelspethsheir
5 ways to end a Thomas Hardy novel differently
1. Jude the Obscure: Jude starts his own building company, makes billions. Through a complicated sequence of events manages to gain control over Christminster and turns it into a university for the working classes. Many dons and old boys die from the shock.
2. Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Tess ‘Angel, I am not pure! For I have had a child out of wedlock.’
Angel: ‘What a relief! I’ve been wondering if you would accept the three bastards of my own I’ve been hiding in the cupboard every time you’ve come over.’
3. Return of the Native. ‘Eustacia, I’ve got the tickets for Paris here. Want to come?’
4. Mayor of Casterbridge. ‘Sell my wife? Are you insane?’
5. All the Hardy novels: everyone moves to the city, stops obsessing, and marries up.
For Forsunshine95
Top 5 books (many of these might not be the ‘best’ but they are either books that I read again and again or ones that completely bowled me over the first time I read them)
1. Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison
A deceptively simply story that begins like a fairy tale, with a baby princess being thrown out by her evil stepmother and rescued by her nurse, but ends by being a reflection on what happens to myths and folk tale figures when they no longer have a place and how you need to let go of everything. The last line is just perfect.
2. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
A perfect mystery, with a gothic setting which has never been rivalled. Holmes at his best – and also at his most manipulative – facing off against a giant hound. Great lines ‘they were the footprints of a gigantic hound,’ great characters, and skulduggery on the moors. The ending is also strangely untriumphant – and I think the note that Doyle ends on is far more influential than people admit.
3. The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendal
Incest, passion, court politics, and Napoleon. And one of my favourite characters ever: Gina, the Duchess of Sanseverina, who is deeply in love with her nephew and who refuses ever to be cowed. She owns the novel and is brilliantly and deeply flawed – but principled in her own way, and will do anything for those she loves. The ostensible hero of the novel (Fabrice) pales beside her.
4. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of Tomorrow, Haruki Murakami
Two stories: one a fantastic detective story and another straight out that reads like a fairy tale gone awry, with the main character trapped in a town populated by people who have lost their shadows; I loved the fairy tale so much that I used to get tired of the other story and wonder how on earth Murakami would ever get them to connect. How he does so is beyond brilliant and the story ends with a wonderful sacrifice for a love that may not even exist.
5. The Iliad, Homer
The greatest poem ever written. Beginning with the destructive wrath of Achilles, it’s a poem that manages not just to celebrate heroism and glory but also be one of the deepest reflections on the destructiveness of heroic values and the ruin of war. Plus the scene between Hector and Andromache in book 6, where you know both of them know Hector is going to die soon, but they slide around the topic and Hector hopes that his son will make Andromache proud if he dies just rips my heart apart. And then the comment that when Hector goes to kiss the baby it cries because his helmet scares it, is just so heartbreakingly prescient.
squishysquidgy 5 song or singers I cannot stand to listen to
1. Garrison Keillor. Not really a singer, but if I even hear seconds of him speaking I begin to writhe. The singing at the start of the show also sends me into conniptions.
2. Molly Malone. Er, years of hearing it sung by drunken tourists in Dublin will do that to you
3. Build that Wall, Aimee Mann. Actually I like Aimee Mann, but for some reason when I am not careful with my ipod and end up at ‘play all’ this was the song that always came on, so I am pretty sick of it.
4. Daniel O’Donnell. Count yourself lucky if you do not know who I am talking about.
5. My Heart will go on’ by Celene Dion. I loathe all things Titanic related.
For
elspethsheir 5 ways to end a Thomas Hardy novel differently
1. Jude the Obscure: Jude starts his own building company, makes billions. Through a complicated sequence of events manages to gain control over Christminster and turns it into a university for the working classes. Many dons and old boys die from the shock.
2. Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Tess ‘Angel, I am not pure! For I have had a child out of wedlock.’
Angel: ‘What a relief! I’ve been wondering if you would accept the three bastards of my own I’ve been hiding in the cupboard every time you’ve come over.’
3. Return of the Native. ‘Eustacia, I’ve got the tickets for Paris here. Want to come?’
4. Mayor of Casterbridge. ‘Sell my wife? Are you insane?’
5. All the Hardy novels: everyone moves to the city, stops obsessing, and marries up.
For For
sunshine95 Top 5 books (many of these might not be the ‘best’ but they are either books that I read again and again or ones that completely bowled me over the first time I read them)
1. Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison
A deceptively simply story that begins like a fairy tale, with a baby princess being thrown out by her evil stepmother and rescued by her nurse, but ends by being a reflection on what happens to myths and folk tale figures when they no longer have a place and how you need to let go of everything. The last line is just perfect.
2. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
A perfect mystery, with a gothic setting which has never been rivalled. Holmes at his best – and also at his most manipulative – facing off against a giant hound. Great lines ‘they were the footprints of a gigantic hound,’ great characters, and skulduggery on the moors. The ending is also strangely untriumphant – and I think the note that Doyle ends on is far more influential than people admit.
3. The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendal
Incest, passion, court politics, and Napoleon. And one of my favourite characters ever: Gina, the Duchess of Sanseverina, who is deeply in love with her nephew and who refuses ever to be cowed. She owns the novel and is brilliantly and deeply flawed – but principled in her own way, and will do anything for those she loves. The ostensible hero of the novel (Fabrice) pales beside her.
4. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of Tomorrow, Haruki Murakami
Two stories: one a fantastic detective story and another straight out that reads like a fairy tale gone awry, with the main character trapped in a town populated by people who have lost their shadows; I loved the fairy tale so much that I used to get tired of the other story and wonder how on earth Murakami would ever get them to connect. How he does so is beyond brilliant and the story ends with a wonderful sacrifice for a love that may not even exist.
5. The Iliad, Homer
The greatest poem ever written. Beginning with the destructive wrath of Achilles, it’s a poem that manages not just to celebrate heroism and glory but also be one of the deepest reflections on the destructiveness of heroic values and the ruin of war. Plus the scene between Hector and Andromache in book 6, where you know both of them know Hector is going to die soon, but they slide around the topic and Hector hopes that his son will make Andromache proud if he dies just rips my heart apart. And then the comment that when Hector goes to kiss the baby it cries because his helmet scares it, is just so heartbreakingly prescient.
