Dear Lilliana

Currently I am  very busy again and I have barely time for fictional literature. Too bad, but I still feel good, because I have enough rest room for me.

My favorites are Erich Maria Remarque: German: "In the West 

Nothing New"; English: "All Quiet on the Western Front" and all books on Nelson Mandela, an impressive, humanistic personality. A model for the rest of the New World

All the best

Michael Lersow

Dear Lilliana,

You changed your question! Did you read the same book twice, and if not, why not?

Dear Lilliana

Currently I am  very busy again and I have barely time for fictional literature. Too bad, but I still feel good, because I have enough rest room for me.

My favorites are Erich Maria Remarque: German: "In the West 

Nothing New"; English: "All Quiet on the Western Front" and all books on Nelson Mandela, an impressive, humanistic personality. A model for the rest of the New World

All the best

Michael Lersow

I read at all times. I once named some titles in a similar thread, but actually there is not one which should be set aside. I read lots of technical books though.

I read all times. Anything i.e. research papers, novels, socila book,..

I have love reading. I like to read books that give an insight into a leadership, culture, politics, autobiographies and so on....

A book is a best friend. I can read books at any place at any time but I like to read a book with a cup of coffee and in my favourite corner of the house.

Regards

Vibha

Of course I enjoy reading, but fiction, why? I really do not know, perhaps it is because imagination flies free in any case and it is not subjected to what a film director and/or theater try to tell me. I love Ray Bradbury´s, Philip K. Dick, Miguel Angel Asturias, Carlos Fuentes, among others. Sometimes I hate textbooks.

Yes, but most in paper, in real books. My favorite book is the Bible.

Dear Lilliana,

I taught myself to read/comprehend my first written words from perusal of the Bible before entering public grammar school at the age of six. I apparently had a knack for it, and the public instruction greatly and rapidly accelerated the expansion of my vocabulary. By the age of nine, I had become a voracious reader, rarely seen without a book-in-hand. Our community was very fortunate in having a fantastically endowed public library (built by a beloved local oil millionaire, Harry Meredith, who all the town's children knew and loved as kindly old "Uncle Harry" and which he endowed perpetually from his estate ... so more than a half-century afterward, his legacy is helping other poor children from my hometown start life off with the advantage of being good readers), where ANY book (or magazine) one desired, no matter how expensive, if not already on the shelves, would be acquired for any patron upon request. So, I had access to everything. Not only did the library subscribe to Scientific American (on my request ... that of a poor, dirty, raggedy, ten-year-old-boy from the "wrong-side-of-the-[railroad]-tracks"), but after seeing how devoted to it I had become, the librarian (on her own initiative, and without my having to make a request) ordered a microfilm edition of all the historical issues of Scientific American, all-the-way-back to the beginning, the first issue of 1842. I began a systematic/chronological reading of these, and by the age of 13 had caught-up to the present. This provided me with a fantastic overview (and love) of American history, particularly during the florescence of technology and science ... for example, seeing, through the presentation of new-found discoveries, week-by-week and month-by-month, how old myths and superstitions about medicine were slowly disproved and displaced. Scientific and historical (and history-of-science) works were my "serious" or intellectual favorites ... but I also greatly enjoyed a wide variety of "recreational" reading material ... e.g., the Tarzan series by Burroughs [which led me to seek-out and read everything Burroughs had ever written ... and to a life-long dedication to science-fiction ... of course the best from Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, etc., but even the "sappy-pulpy" science-fiction, like the Perry Rhodan series, of which I read, serially, 134 numbers in my 11th summer], the Nancy Drew juvenile-detective series, and several others of similar ilk (Hardy Boys), which tend to hone the analytical mind, and inculcate a love for solving puzzles.

Becoming a professional archaeologist was likely simply a natural progression of my love for solving puzzles and problems ... of discerning how-and-why society and technology changed (and how technology changes societies) derived from the detailed overview I had gained from reading the whole Scientific American from beginning-to-end (as well as the National Geographic). Archaeologists dig in the trash of past civilizations to learn things about them that never found their way into the history books ... archaeology, for me, became a way of reading-and-learning more than the sparse (or non-existent)  facts about obscure and extinct cultures that could be read in books (and I must not fail to mention how very much I loved and was influenced by National Geographic, which I started reading assiduously, starting at the age of nine). However, my conception of archaeology is that I am "reading the dirt" or "reading the trash" or that each single artifact or feature I excavate is like a fragment of a unique un-published history book that has been torn-into-shreds and scattered here-and-yon ... most of the fragments being lost or destroyed (and almost-all buried-out-of-sight-and-memory) through the vagaries of time and preservation ... but a few preserved and recoverable ... just enough (like having just enough pieces ... the significant/strategic few pieces of a complex jigsaw picture-puzzle that when-assembled, will allow you to "see the whole picture") allowing a "reading" of the lifeways of the culture that produced the artifacts. So, I have not only continued my life-long dedication to reading, but extended it beyond a fascination with books, into other media (the earth, and the vast new digital media opened-up by the expansion of the Internet ... among which the greatest advance I perceive being the Google Books project, which makes all the historical books, the best-of-the-classics, as well as the ordinary tripe, of all ages / cultures / countries, all instantaneously accessible and FREE to anyone who can "get online" ... it's the greatest thing  for readers [and scientists, especially the social scientists] since the ancient Library of Alexandria).

Nowadays (with a progressive neurological disease and advancing age) I find it difficult to concentrate and maintain my attention on any particular topic for very long (my attention-span is steadily decreasing) ... but I still read ... mostly brief articles ... and vapid stuff ... like many comments here on RG, especially my own ... ha h ha ah ah aha ha ha haha ha ah ah ahha aha haha!

Best regards,

Bob

Herewith some interesting references to me:

1) Patricia Darré. Les lumières de l'invisible. Michel Lafon, 2013

2) Michèle Decker. La vie de l'autre côté. Presses du Châtelet. 2004

3) Patricia Darré. Un souffle vers l'éternité. Michel Lafon, 2012

4) Sa Sainteté le Dalaï-Lama. Voyage aux confins de l'esprit. NiL Editions, Paris 1998

5) Pedro G. Ferreira. DE Volmaakte Theorie. Athnaeum - Polak & Van Gennep, 2014

6) Jacques Montangero. 40 questions et réponses sur les rêves. Odile Jacob, 2013

7) Rudolf Steiner, La science de l'occulte. Editions Anthroposophiques Romandes, 2004

8) T. Lobsang Rampa. Le troisième œil. Albin Michel, 1957

9) Michio Kaku. De toekomst van het brein. Nieuw Amsterdam Uitgevers, 2014

10) Jim Baggott. Higgs. De ontdekking van het godsdeeltje. Lannoo, Veen media, 2012

11) Frederick Delaere. Ufo's in België en Nederland. De waarheid achter de waarneming. Lannoo, 2014

.....

Dear Lilliana

Currently I do not have time I'd like to read what I'd like, but every night trying I book a few minutes of reading. Now it's up to The Witch of Portobello, P. Coelho. Very good and recommended.

Thank you for your question.

Best regards.

yes ,I am enjoying reading.it is my passion and profession.Women identity related books also read.Nasira Sharma, Maitreyi Pushpa,Simon,Chitra Mudgal, Tasleema Nasreen's novels specially read.

Dear Lilliana,

I like reading books so much. My  favorite books are academic books, monographs..., not fiction or manga or literary ones.

I want to get more and more knowledge from research books, especially books on the field of oriental cultural studies, korean studies, cultural anthropology.

I read academic books to improve my research skills.

My favorite one is:

American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture 3rd Edition

Review

Praise for the first edition:

'Something of a godsend ... As a teaching resource this book is second to none ... Achieves levels of multiplicity rarely, if ever, reached by others.' – Borderlines: Studies in American Culture

About the Author:

Neil Campbell is Professor in American Studies at the University of Derby, UK. His recent publications include The Rhizomatic West: Representing the American West in a Transnational, Global, Media Age (2008), The Cultures of the American New West (2000) and The Radiant Hour: Versions of Youth in American Culture (2000).

Alasdair Kean is a lecturer in American Studies at the University of Derby, UK.

Paperback: 368 pages

Publisher: Routledge; 3 edition (December 17, 2011)

Language: English

Dear Marcel and dear all!

The first draft of my question was deleted by the system. I had to reformulate it. I believe you were the only one to read the original post! So, here's my personal list of favorite books. :-)

1. Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu. An extraordinary novel about the basis and the process of human memory

2. Leonardo da Vinci, Trattato della Pittura. Leonardo literally taught me to see

3. Lucretius, De rerum natura, a poetic science and a poiesis of science

4. Italo Calvino, Le città invisibili, The best theoretical book on the meaning of architecture and urbanism ever

5. Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, the making of genius during his travels especially on Chile

6. Octavio Paz, La llama doble, the best book on the theories and workings of love

7. Wislawa Szymborska, Complete Poems, a poet devoted to the harrowing everyday with wisdom beyond fact and word

8. Virginia Woolf, The Waves, a novel about the poetic language of life

9. Marguerite Yourcenar, Carceri d'invenzione : les prisons imaginaires de Gian-Battista Piranesi, a brilliant book about the most splendid creation of Piranesi

Of course, this list changes every 6 months... :-)

Warm regards to all, Lilliana

I do enjoy reading very much. Now, I do read a book Tesla's parcel by Vanja Bulic! My favourite book of all the time is "The Bridge on the Drina" by Ivo Andric, the Nobel Laureate!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_on_the_Drina

Wow, Bob, we have many authors and books in common! Yeah!

:-)

Lilliana

There is similar thread dear @Lilliana, posted by my dear friend @Jesus.

What is your favourite book of all time?

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_favourite_book_of_all_time2

Dear Lilliana and Ljubomir Jacić,

I think there is no problem for the same thread.

Every one has different purposes on their questions.

But, the thread you recommend is helpful for Lillian, I think so.

What is your favourite book of all time?

https://www.researchgate.net/post/W...is_your_favourite_book_of_all_time2

What is your favourite book of all time?You can find so many lists of the greatest books ever... Now I would like to know what book is your favourite one. I suppose some of you will say Don Quixote (Cervantes), or 100 years of solitude...

Do you enjoy reading? Why? What are you reading now? What have been your favorite books ever? - ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_you_enjoy_reading_Why_What_are_you_reading_now_What_have_been_your_favorite_books_ever#view=56cdf3f95f7f71723e8b4574 [accessed Feb 25, 2016].

Mainz, Germany

Dear Ramos-Collado,

I read so much for research that I tend toward cinema for relaxation. I believe it is the great art form of our times. Still, I have favorite books that I go back to repeatedly, and I have very memorial books that made a great impression on me. I find that whatever I read, it stimulates thought, sometimes on a related topic and sometimes on a topic I happen to be working on at a given time.

In fiction, I often favor books that have also been made into movies. One that comes to mind is The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the novel by Milan Kundera. After reading that, I also read almost everything the man wrote. With books not related to my research, I tend to go in long bouts of this sort. Another author I read through is V.S. Naipaul, starting with A House for Mr. Biswas and right along for all the rest. Naipaul seems always to be both insider and outsider at once and always has fascinating perspectives. 

I often go back to Emerson, who I find enchanting--his books are great American classics, though I have favored his later writings over his more popular early writings. He becomes more realistic as he goes along. He has been an inspiration to generations.

I read science fiction, now and again, and I have read science fiction ever since I was quite young. One book that greatly impressed me in recent years is Stanislaw Lem, Solaris. This was a fascinating book and movie, and the author a deep thinker. I loved the Dune novels, by Frank Herbert, and have watched the films many times. Herbert was another deep thinker. I tend to like things that I have to puzzle out, that are complex and which are not clear at first. Minority Report, based on the story by Philip K. Dick is simply a great work of art, and Spielberg did a wonderful job with the movie. I think it a near perfect explanation of human freedom --if you think through it. It is an indictment of suspicion and "crime prevention" by reference to demographics, I believe. Blade Runner was another very impressive film based on a story by Phillip K. Dick--and in some ways much to the same point.

More to come, if you are interested. Are any of these works familiar to you? I am likely forgetting quite a bit here.

H.G. Callaway

Dear H.G. I'm a little shocked by the coincidences! I'm a total Kundera fan, and I have taught some of his books in class, for example La vie est ailleurs, Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli, La Lenteur, and especially —when I used to teach Greek and Roman literature, of course, his L'Ignorance along with Homer's Odyssey. Lem's Solaris was my first serious incursion in science fiction, and I have his books in excellent Spanish translations. I have not read Dune, but I own the movie in DVD. Naipaul in Puerto Rico is almost a household name, especially Biswas, which I read when I was very young... I am convinced that Blade Runner marked a before-and-after threshold in sci-fi cinema. 

I confess that I make these lists once like every nine or ten years. Recently I went back for my "nth" reading of La recherche, most of Woolf, Lucretius, whom I just adore, Leonardo —that simply infinite man—, and Darwin's Voyage, which was fixated in my brain since childhood until I finally made it to Chile and traveled the country southward instead of northward during my post-doc on heritage studies. Wow, how much fun is reading and, especially, rereading!

Italo Calvino... Have you read his splendid Le città invisibili? Or his Il barone rampante? I read a note by Calvino saying that the English translations of his novels, especially Il barone, were lousy. In this novel, Cosimo, who decided to live on the trees and never touch earth again, spent most of life among birds, and the English translator, instead of looking up each bird's proper name in English, just used the word "bird" as the name of every bird... Funny and pathetic!

Do tell me more about your readings. :-)

Warm regards, Lilliana

I cannot go to sleep without first reading. It is a good way to forget the problems and what I have been working on during the day. I am currently reading several books for pleasure and research.

For pleasure:

Terry Pratchett and Stephan Baxter's Long Earth series

Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark.

For research (and pleasure):

Hamlin, L. B. 1910. Brief Accounts of Journeys in the Western Country, 1809-1812.

Rosengarten, J. G. 1907. French Colonists and Exiles in the United States.

Favorite books:

Jackson, C. T. 1914. The Fountain of Youth.

Pratchett, T. Going Postal.

Frank, Pat. 1959. Alas, Babylon.

Dick, P. K. 1968. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Balmer, Edwin. 1933. When Worlds Collide/1934. After Worlds Collide.

Dear Lilliana,

I have some more interesting books I read:

To Kill a Mockingbird - My absolute all time favourite

Nineteen Eighty Four - Floored me.

In Cold Blood -  by Capote is one of the reasons

Temple - by Matthew Reilly.

The Master and Margarita - The great Russian masterpiece.

Mainz, Germany

Dear Ramos-Collado,

Many thanks for your thoughtful reply, your suggestions and especially for replying in regards to Kundera and Lem. I think a discussion of Solaris, somewhere along the line would be a great topic. I'd have to review it, though.

One author I forgot to mention is Vaclav Havel, and much could be said, obviously, about the man and his writings. I was much impressed with his stance, during the communist regime, when he continued to hold that he was not a dissident. He insisted on his right to speak and write as a citizen of his own country. The contrast between Havel, who stayed at home and Kundera who left for Paris, is a wonderful invitation to discuss Home and Exile--recalling here Chinua Acebe's book of that title. Among the Germans during WWII, Adenauer stayed, but, say, Willy Brandt went into exile --in Sweden as I recall. Einstein left Germany very early, and who doubts that he did the right thing?

I went back, briefly to Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Following the short, very philosophical introductory chapters, where the question is whether lightness or heaviness is positive, he starts his story with the following passage:

I have been thinking about Tomas for many years. But only in the light of these reflections did I see him clearly. I saw him standing at the window of his flat and looking across the courtyard at the opposite walls, not knowing what to do.

---End quotation

This passage, as it happens, often came back to me. It changed my life very substantially. I am sure I cannot explain this exactly, but I am sure that it is true, because I once found myself standing at an apartment window, looking across the courtyard, in a foreign city, and "not knowing what to do." In a sense, I came thereby to know that being there was "too light."  

Addendum: This happened more than 25 years ago.

Sorry if this seems puzzling.

Can you say more about Lem and Solaris?

H.G. Callaway

I read Lem many years ago when the translations by Madrid's Alianza Editorial came out. I will go back to it this weekend. I think Lem deserves to be revisited. 

I know that The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a great novel, but for some reason, I can't seem to like it that much. 

Bertolt Brecht also left Germany for the US. He ended up being forced to make a statement before the Committee of Unamerican Activities. Sad thing!

Best regards, 

Mainz, Germany

Dear Ramos-Collado,

I accept that you don't like Kundera's Unbearable Lightness, of course. But it is a story of liberation from "lightness," or "lightness of being."  Try, "life without responsibility."

Your thoughts on Lem and Solaris will be much appreciated! I thought the book better than either of the movies made from it, partly because the book takes you down to the planet Solaris itself. You see there that the planet was always creating things out of itself, which sets a context for what happens on the satellite station.

Bertolt Becht is far before my time, of course. Many had problems with the Committee on Unamerican Activities in those times. (I was about 5 years old or so.) It was a sad thing. However, very few decided, like Brecht, to go and live in the DDR. Einstein, in contrast, was lionized in Princeton, NJ. Many refugees from Europe took prestigious positions in American universities in the 1930's and 1940's. Their names were not even foreign to us, as I first read their works. I only learned the histories much later.

The impetus of your discussion and replies got me started re-reading Achebe's Home and Exile. He's a marvelous writer. 

H.G. Callaway

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Ljubomir Jacic said: " My favourite book of all the time is "The Bridge on the Drina" by Ivo Andric, the Nobel Laureate!"

Dear Ljubomir,

Thank you for the pointer to this great book. After reading the wiki review you provided, I could see this was the type of work (a sharp psychological insight into social relationships between different cultures over a broad-scope-of-history) I would enjoy reading ... and I immediately purchased an online English translation (so I could begin reading it rightaway). I am already enthralled with the genius of Ivo Andric, so I went immediately online to Amazon to purchase PAPER copies of his other works (all of which have apparently been conveniently translated into English ... even a collection of his short stories entitled "The Slave Girl").

I want to thank you, again, for providing this direction to what promises to be a great bit of recreational reading ... something enjoyable to look-forward-to (PLUS helping me fill-in a great gap in my knowledge of Serbian history and how the Serbian people, and other Balkan cultures, endured and survived the heels of their Ottoman and Austrian oppressors, and the back-and-forth-tug of constant warfare, for centuries, but were never "defeated" and certainly not destroyed or subsumed by/within a conquering culture).

Thank you, my friend.

Bob

PS - it reminds me of one of my favorite-books-of-all-times (similar to Lilliana, my favorites list has changed many times and often throughout my life ... but this book has always reappeared on every list) ... "The Source" by James Michener ... who, several years ago, I had the great privilege of meeting whilst he was researching another great historical-novel of his "Texas" (he and his wife lived here locally, in Austin, in a modest cottage ... near the University of Texas, where we would often meet in the historical research collections, to which he left a legacy of many millions of dollars from his estate, in endowments). Ivo Andric's style (and genius) remind me of Michener in his grasp of both the details and broad-scope of history and how cleverly they weave the segues from one era to another in the great-tapestry-of-history.

Dear all: books are the best basis for friendship. 

Warm regards, Lilliana

Dear all: books are the best basis for friendship. 

Warm regards, Lilliana

Dear Lilliana, 

My writers are a humorous eccentrics: Roland Topor, Slawomir Mrozek and Michel Houellebecq. 

I read every day: sometimes a book, sometimes a journal, sometimes in the Internet. My favorite author is Hermann Hesse, and if I have to take just a book, it could be «Das Glasperlenspiel»; but other possibility is "Cien años de soledad", from Gabriel García Márquez.

I love and need Reading. I have a wide spectrum of books in mind but, the “Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist” by Ernst Mayr will always be among my favorite books ever. However, “Clases de literatura. Berkeley, 1980”  (compilation of Julio Cortázar’s classes) gave me the chance to reunite two of my best “obsessions”: science communication and just plain communication.

Lilliana,

I love reading. I have noticed that lately I start 10 books for every one I finish. I wonder what is happening?

Primary texts still get my attention, and there are a couple of journals that I read cover to cover when they come out.

 Carlos,

My brother-in-law recently told me that he has gotten to the point that if a book does not draw him into the story in the first 5 pages, then he discards it for another. I thought about all of the books that I have read in my life that did not interest me in the first chapter or two, but ended up being some of the best books that I have ever read. For that reason, I am loathe to discard a book until I am well into it so that I can judge it better.

James,

Many of the books I don't finish, I don't intend to stop reading, but somehow I do. If I get back to them, I often have to start over. I should learn to stick to one until I finish it. Research has given me some bad habits, partial reading.

Dear James, I confess I am very much like your brother-in-law. But my disciplinary "super-ego" forces me to hang on for a few pages more. Sometimes I go beyond those extra pages, sometimes, I don't. I know, I know... I should sit tight and become a better reader...

Best regards, Lilliana

Dear Carlos, I am exactly like you. There's nothing wrong with that. Some day you might revisit those books you passed over.  In my early thirties, I headed the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture's Publishing House. I had to hire an extra editor because if I found a book terminally boring or slow to catch my eye, I would tend to postpone passing it to the editor's desk. And I knew that would not be fair. Being aware of my editorial foibles, I surrendered (literally)  this first reading to the editors. It so happened that, usually, those books that bored me to death were the same that bored my editors to death. Reading should be a joy, Carlos, not a torture... So, hang on if it doesn't mean immediate death. Hahahahahaha! Thank you for your sincerity. You either like a book or you don't.

Best regards, Lilliana

Ah, research reading! I skim through so much material each day that when someone asks me about a particular topic/fact, I can not remember where I read it. It clutters the mind.

I will admit that sometimes I continue reading because of the investment in time and wonder why I bothered after finishing the book.

Dear Lilliana,

I believe you may be correct. I think any anxiety I may feel about leaving so many books unfinished has more to do with my reading habits from when I was younger, and the idea that this represents a change for me. It may be a change for the better, or neither better nor worse. I do have an easier time putting a bad book down now. And I still read every bit as often as before.

I am fortunate, this semester, to be teaching my favorite novel: Don Quixote. I do get to read that again. It's a great year for it too.

James,

I have developed a tactic for research with books: I read the Intro and the conclusion and if it is good I keep reading, if not, I just check out the bib.

Dear Carlos, nobody's life is complete without el ingenioso hidalgo. Have fun!

Best regards, Lilliana

Hi

It is only after reading books that sometimes one understands the situation. I remember I read Mark Tully's Grant Trunk Road from the front seat (I have read this book long time back) GT road is a historical road in India. It was only later when I started driving myself on the GT road I could really understand the depictions in the book.

Regards

Vibha 

Personal experience has more value than reading the content of a whole Library?

Dear Marcel

Definitely personal experience is more valuable. Books are also imprints of the experience of people who write.

Another good book - There are no full stops in India - by Mark Tully

Where have all the leaders gone by Lee IA Cocca

Then there are books by Roald Dahl - my son is fond of - I also like to read. 

Regards

Vibha

Dear Marcel:

Personal experience is not universal. It is necessary to seek other resources so we can learn things that are beyond our personal experience. History, for example, what happens in India if you are not there. Evidently, sticking with personal experience will not take you father than your own habitat. Books (or their subsequent metamorphoses, i.e., the internet) are a shortcut to a better knowledge of the world. If you are queasy because of the possible lack of rigor in what you read, get more than one book about the same subject so you can have another point of view. Personal experience is never exhaustive, Marcel. Never. Books neither. You need a mix of everything to really get what the wold is about, at least in a richer, more complex way.

Best regards, Lilliana

I will mention one of my favourite authors Filip David which book "House of memory and oblivion" I have read recently. Yesterday, Filip David has received this year's award for Best Book in the Network of Public Libraries of Serbia...

I was delighted with his distancing from the President of Serbia. Good story!

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics.php?yyyy=2016&mm=02&dd=26&nav_id=97187

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filip_David

One of my son's favourite books is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. He has read it / parts of it many times and says whenever he reads the part that explains the chocolate river he feel like filling a mug full of chocolate and drinking it. It seems so real to him. This is the power of the books for children and of course all.

Dear Ladies and Gentlmen,

Thank you very much for best and interesting question. For me, I like reading different books in different fields and languages. Now I'm reading : 

 فى قلبى أنثى عبرية - د.خولة حمدي

B. Regards

M. OUHSAINE MOROCCO

Dear Mustapha,

Could you translate فى قلبى أنثى عبرية - د.خولة حمدي

Or is it like indicating the title of a book without revealing its content?

Thanks! 

1) Patricia Darré. Les lumières de l'invisible. Michel Lafon, 2013

Just one sentence from this book when opened it today:

Page 112: On me dit souvent: "Je suis allé chez un médium et il m'a parlé de mon grand-père défunt."

2) Michèle Decker. La vie de l'autre côté. Presses du Châtelet. 2004

Page 137: "L'au-delà se manifeste parfois à une personne qui n'a pas le don de voir, mais possède une grande sensibilité, et assez de coeur pour se donner jour après jour à ses semblables" 

Dear Lilliana,..I may not be a fan of hardcore philosophy science or spirituality stuff  and I haven't heard of many books mentioned by dear members before me (please excuse me for that!), but i do love to read, especially while i travel (which is a lot lately), Most of my books have been competed in flights airports trains and railway stations..Right now.- I am almost through with John Grisham's  "The Confession"... May be as years pass I might get on to the more philosophical ones..

Dont have a particular favorite book or author..as most book genres are fine for me..be it Sidney Sheldon, Mario Puzo, Agatha Christie, Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Erich Segal or even history and biographies.. 

picked up the habit of reading in my early school days..( i remember reading Bram Stroker's Dracula..- and being judged by mom.. as a weird book and a weird child..)Nowadays, I gift her books and she likes the books i pick for her!! :)))

Thanks & Regards

Rathish

Dear Rathish, I like Grisham, Sheldon and Christie a lot. And I believe Dracula is an extraordinary novel, like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I strongly recommend you to read. The important thing is to read and consider reading as  part of your life, an "alone-time" which gives you space to expand your imagination, your mastery of language and your sense of openness. You will become more and more demanding in terms of book quality or pertinence. And more and more enticed by reading.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

Best regards, Lilliana

Dear Marcel M. Lambrechts,

The translation of the book which I'm reading is In my heart a Jewish girl.

Please following this link : http://bookwormdiary91.blogspot.com/2014/10/in-my-heart-jewish-girl.html?m=1

B. regards

Mustapha 

Whose religion is the right one ??

The non-ag(g)ressive one!

Cheers

Book are our companion of our life .It is  the outcome of our nature gift & subsequently it has become the way of our life.It is not necessary that only certain categories of professional personnel take interest in reading books .It has been observed that a person with science traits ,medical professional personnel ,are also in their light becoming a warriors readers.

With this i also feel that our reading should not become a part time recreation as whatever may be our activities it is a nourishment of our mind which offers us some inspiration message to our mind & then it becomes a full for thought for our lifeline .

With this ,it has given me interest in well many areas just as ASTROLOGY,PALMISTRY,LITERATURE,RELIGION,PHILOSOPHY ,AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SPIRITUAL & other talent contributory writers .

Besides my action of performance for my individual career line ,reading has inspired me to take recourse of Religion ,Meditation,Power of prayer,confidence,in our faith ,will power & such other traits need the basic end of our life so that we may draw a line of demarcation in our negative & positive action of our life.

The important lesson for our reading is the development of our intuition & inner face of our hidden potentiality for preparing the road of our life to healthy ,modest ,right path.for this reply i have merely viewed my creative thinking of my mind & as such this to be treated as my personal opinion .

Dear Marcel M. Lambrechts  ,

No one is aggressive when the respect is applied and each one have a choice to choose his religion such as there are vegans, vegetarians and carnivorous so the person is freedom for his choice.

Religion is attitude and with more reading we can choose our religion.

That's my answer as Mustapha Ouhsaine.

B. regards

Yeah. I do enjoy reading books. Because I am addicted to movies. The only thing which stay me apart from movies is books. My favorite books are "Chanakya in YOU" by Radhakrishnan Pillai, "License to live" by Priya Kumar.

Hope this will help you in your activity.

Regards,

Mandar Ganbavale

I also love books and movies, dear Mandar. And, yes, your comment will help me in my research. :-)

Best regards, Lilliana

Lilliana,

My old favorite I read many times:

The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien 

Dracula, Bram Stoker

Dune,  Frank Herbert

A Novel I want to read this year:  The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil

Dear Louis, when I was about 16 years old, my boyfriend gave me Tolkien in a little box with the three volumes of Lord of the Rings (that was in 1970). Later on he gave me the first novel: The Hobbit. Two years later, he gave me The Gormenghast Trilogy, by Mervyn Peake. Then, he gave me the Narnia novels, by C.S. Lewis, another medieval cycle. I eventually discovered that Tolkien was a well know professor of Medieval Literature at Oxford, author of many books on the subject and editor of quite a few "annotated editions" of medieval classics, and that C.S. Lewis was one of the foremost authorities in medieval literature and the medieval art of love (de arte honeste amandi), with splendid books on the subject and a well established career at Oxford. In fact, I became a medievalist after reading Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Mervyn Peake, all of whom filled their works with important scenes of the best medieval literature. What can I say? Reading Tolkien, Lewis and Peake made me a competent medievalist. I always go back to them. Probably I was a medievalist since I was born. I never married Rafael, my boyfriend back them, but I owe him my career because he, unknowingly, gave the books that I needed most. Giving books as gifts is so important! I always give my friends books for birthdays and Christmas. :-)

I don't know if you will "like" Musil, but he is certainly worth reading. Be patient with him. 

Best regards, Lilliana

Lilliana,

I read Lord of the Ring at 16 in 1974 in French and I read it later in English when I learn that language in my ealy twenties. I did not read Narnia but my four children did many times and I read with them the Harry Potter series.  My two girls have read the series at least 8 or 10 times and even went to a Harry potter convention last year.  I think that Tolkien have spoken of our modern world being destroyed by the industrialisation under the hidden power of the Lord of the RIng Sauron: money.  Powerfull fiction can imprint the collective unconscious of  powerfull ideas. Musil is a philosopher-novelist like Kierkeegard. I am gradually see the power of great litterature for penetrating the deep laywer of our modern world.

Dear Louis, I have done a lot of research about the incredible similarities between the Middle Ages and the present moment. Our crises are quite similar, believe it or not. Some years ago I teamed with a friend who is an important economist to write about these similarities for a journal in Cambridge, which accepted our abstract. Umberto Eco edited a book with several essays on these "new Middle Ages" by several authors pointing to the same issue, save that my friend and I were dealing with the topic with more emphasis on the material and financial angle. Eco's book is titled "The New Middle Ages" (I have it in Spanish) and his essay is titled "La Edad Media ha llegado ya" ("The Middle Ages are Already Here"), which is very witty and incredibly pertinent. Eco was mainly a medievalist and many of his books deal with aspects of the Middle Ages that still survive or that have returned under a new guise. That is why we are now so connected with Tolkien, Lewis and Peake: deep down we recognize ourselves in their dialogue between the present and the medieval past. :-)

Best regards, Lilliana

Lilliana,

Another great intersection with the Middle Ages. Anybody trying to teach the oral tradition to this generation of students should have an easier time of it. Our students, and indeed we ourselves, live in a time when so many oral/visual methods can substitute for print, it is easier to understand how societies worked without it. They can apprentice with a master without traveling to Salamanca. Saves on sandals too. 

Nowadays I am on to digital reading, but there's something about holding a book in your hand, smelling a new book and the intimate feel of turning each page, can't be matched with pixels on a screen.

e-books and print books could have a bright future together, because for all the great things e-books accomplish — convenience, selection, portability, multimedia — there are still some fundamental qualities they will simply never possess.

http://mashable.com/2013/01/16/e-books-vs-print/#W6ejx8PTJPqP

Lilliana,

The middle age was a feodal age where power (military, agricultural resource) were concentrated in the hands of few familites.  We live in a age where power (capital) is concentrated in the hands of few families. This is not a Marxian theory anymore it is the reality we are living in.  Jean Ziegler of  ''reféodalisation du monde" . And Thomas Piketty quantified that trend since the 18th century in his book:Capital in the Twenty-First Century.  Except for the brief period of the two WW, on average the rate of return on capital is greater than the rate of economic growth  resulting in a steady concentration of wealth.  And the concentrated wealth is gradually moving out of reach of any taxation reach of the states.  States are forced to cut on spending and to cut education, heath care and this trigger the richer to create private alternatives to all the services.  Production is more a more decentralized and move to the cheapest location and less regulations and with less taxes.  The educated middle classes of the world are more and more in competition and those with the higher wages are constantly loosing jobs.  Until very recently the young generations in the developed countries were hoping to be richer than their parents and the trend are reversed in spite of the tremendous increases in technology and efficiency.  But all the benefit of all these technologies are being concentrated into the few hand and that technology is used for accelerating globalisation and capital concentration. All the democracies are less and less democratic and more and more catering to the finantial plutocracy, the new money lords who travel accross the wold in private jets or private yatches and whose level of personal expenditure are at the level of cities.

Regards,

- Louis

Krishnan,

Totally agree. Real books can't run out of battery! However, I like the fact that scans of the old books are available from places like archive.org for free download. Now anybody can download and read the classics and other works, sometimes even in their non-English native language or the book's original published language.

JAG

Digital archives!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, what treasure-troves!!!!!!!!!!

The U.S.A. National Archives, simply awesome: https://archive.org

France's national archive: Gallica: http://gallica.bnf.fr/?lang=EN

In Spain... :-)  http://www.bne.es/es/Catalogos/BibliotecaDigitalHispanica/Inicio/index.html

Documents on Latin American Art... http://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/es-mx/portada.aspx

Archives are dizzying... Wow!

Thank you, James, I use these archives every day!

Warm regards, Lilliana

Dear Lilliana,

Let me offer an orthogonal handle on from where our "book" comes.

The very first book I encountered in my youth was one I treasure:

"East of the Sun and West of the Moon with other Norwegian Folk Tales" Retold from the original by Inger Margrete Rasmusasen c1924 Albert Whitman & Co. 

I remember reading it many many times before moving on to RL Stevensen & M Twain etc. It says in back "This book belongs to " and my father's name in a somewhat juvenile script that was obviously the precursor to his handwriting. There are marvelous stories therein: I know for sure because, as fortune would have it, it came back to my possession a couple decades ago.

Karl

PS love all the network access. particularly pictures but words too of course. I have collected a bunch from Gutenberg over the years. Amazing stuff you can find, tho its harder than a few years back. Now there are people wanting to sell you the information you seek. Oh well, answers are everywhere.

Just remember, the word other than "digital" often applied to our electronic data systems is "virtual". It is a very transient and impermanent world. It can go away, albeit with some warning, due to solar storms. We've narrowly missed being in the path of one on more than one ocaission since 2000. ...K

I enjoy reading novels. My favourites are those of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina are a couple of them.

I love reading. As a primary school teacher I read as many children's novels as I can. My current favourite being Varjak Paw and The outlaw Varjak Paw by S.F. Said. Having said that my favourite adult book is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini .

I do enjoy reading and as a scientist I need to do it on a daily basis. I think the language (other than my native), sometimes, hampers my enthusiasm about reading but my genuine love for/need of reading always wins. I jump from science books to novels and short stories, being my favorite authors are Ernst Mayr and Julio Cortázar, respectively. Lately, I tend to think that “Clases de Literatura: Berkeley,1980” (J. Cortazar) is the best one at merging both worlds. After all, it is always about “ideas” and how we, people, communicate our ideas.