CP LITERATURE DRAFT - (Rapid Fire Free For All Round)

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Someone needs to tell rogermexico that it's bad form to be AKd on your very first pick of a draft....

[Frequitude]

Nice work Trout. This is the first of these threads that I'm going to follow. Would love to have been a part of it, but just know I can't be relied upon.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Someone needs to tell rogermexico that it's bad form to be AKd on your very first pick of a draft....

He still has over 5 hours . . .

[troutman]

One hour roger . . .

[troutman]

habby is up.

[habernac]

I got these books Easter Sunday, April 19, 1981. They changed my view on what good books could be. Most of you have seen the movies. Go read the books that inspired them. My first choice in the literary draft is JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring, the Two Towers and the Return of the King.




from Wiki:

The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by the English philologist J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit (1937), but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in stages between 1937 and 1949, much of it during World War II.[1] Although intended as a single-volume work, it was originally published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955, due to post-war paper shortages, and it is in this three-volume form that it is popularly known. It has since been reprinted numerous times and translated into many different languages,[2] becoming one of the most popular and influential works in 20th-century literature.
The title of the book refers to the story's main antagonist, the Dark Lord Sauron, who had in an earlier age created the One Ring that rules the other Rings of Power, as the ultimate weapon in his campaign to conquer and rule all of Middle-earth. From quiet beginnings in the Shire, a hobbit land not unlike the English countryside, the story ranges across Middle-earth following the course of the War of the Ring through the eyes of its characters, most notably the hobbits, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee (Sam), Meriadoc Brandybuck (Merry) and Peregrin Took (Pippin). The lands of Middle-earth are populated by Men (humans) and other humanoid races (Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs), as well as many other creatures, both real and fantastic (Ents, Wargs, Balrogs, Trolls, etc.).
Along with Tolkien's other works, The Lord of the Rings has been subjected to extensive analysis of its themes and origins. Although a major work in itself, the story was only the last movement of a larger work Tolkien had worked on since 1917, that he described as a mythopoeia.[3] Influences on this earlier work, and on the story of The Lord of the Rings, include philology, mythology, religion and the author's distaste for the effects of industrialization, as well as earlier fantasy works and Tolkien's experiences in World War I.[4] The Lord of the Rings in its turn is considered to have had a great effect on modern fantasy; the impact of Tolkien's works is such that the use of the words "Tolkienian" and "Tolkienesque" has been recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary.[5]
The enduring popularity of The Lord of the Rings has led to numerous references in popular culture, the founding of many societies by fans of Tolkien's works,[6] and the publication of many books about Tolkien and his works. The Lord of the Rings has inspired, and continues to inspire, artwork, music, films and television, video games, and subsequent literature. Adaptations of The Lord of the Rings have been made for radio, theatre, and film.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings

[RougeUnderoos]

Is that in the fantasy category or European Lit?

I've never read these books but apparently I should, considering I have been given (or inherited) two copies of the trilogy and a guide called "The Tolkien Reader".

There seems to be a love/meh relationship with these books. It's either "best books ever" or "I haven't read them". You never hear anyone say "I read them all, and they were alright".

[Displaced Flames fan]

I read them all, and they were alright.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

I have kind of a busy day ahead--I'll try to get my pick up in the early afternoon here.

[habernac]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

Is that in the fantasy category or European Lit?

I've never read these books but apparently I should, considering I have been given (or inherited) two copies of the trilogy and a guide called "The Tolkien Reader".

There seems to be a love/meh relationship with these books. It's either "best books ever" or "I haven't read them". You never hear anyone say "I read them all, and they were alright".

European Lit for now

[rogermexico]

Sorry guys, I was out of town for the weekend.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by rogermexico

Sorry guys, I was out of town for the weekend.

No problem - pick away . . .

[troutman]

Originally Posted by habernac

I got these books Easter Sunday, April 19, 1981. They changed my view on what good books could be. Most of you have seen the movies. Go read the books that inspired them. My first choice in the literary draft is JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring, the Two Towers and the Return of the King.

I love these books - perhaps the only books I have re-read multiple times (though I skip over the songs and poems).

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

With the 10th overall pick in the draft, Team Bartleby and the Scriveners is pleased to select Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' groundbreaking graphic novel Watchmen.

This may seem like an off-the-board pick--but I have two slots in this category to fill, and not all that many choices. My other picks will, I'm reasonably confident, be available in later rounds.



Watchmen, originally published in serialized form in the mid-1980s, did for the Superhero genre what Marcel Duchamp did for public installation art. The novel asks this basic question, one that seemed particularly urgent at the close of the American Century, along with the waning years of Reaganomics and the Cold War: what if Superheros were real? What if caped crusaders had arrogated to themselves the status of social engineers, attempting to bring about the potent and wonderful Utopia so often hinted at but never realized in the Superman universe?

The answer is not encouraging. The cast of heroes here is a motley group of neo-Nazis, misogynists and narcissists, whose self-love and arrogance blinds them to their own most pernicious effects on society. Effectively, the vigilante has one ironic social effect--to reinscribe fully the power of the state itself to enact its will upon a populace that now must fear two massively powerful, completely unaccountable groups. The characters try their best to make moral choices in this universe, but are doomed to failure, because their very first choice--to take upon themselves the defense of the statist ideals of the American Century--has already corrupted them. Not to spoil the ending--but this corruption reaches its final, apocalyptic form at the end of the book, when the "heroes," completely indoctrinated by their own ideology of "standing up for what is right" without ever interrogating exactly what that is, make the most ghoulish, awful moral choice imaginable, destroying forever the dream of Utopia that brought about the age of Superheroes in the first place.

[Ronald Pagan]

Good pick. Excellent graphic novel.

[octothorp]

Excellent pick with both LoTR and Watchmen. Both are genre-defining works, and while Watchmen is still not really well known in the mainstream, it will be soon with the movie release (here's hoping that the movie manages in some small way to live up to the original). I was a huge fan of LoTR growing up, and Fellowship of the Rings is the only book that was able to give me nightmares.

[rogermexico]

With my (late) first pick, in the American Lit category, I pick Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.



The people who run The Modern Word, a website about 20th century fiction put it this way: Considered by most to be Pynchon's greatest work, Gravity's Rainbow is one of the most celebrated -- and notorious -- novels of the twentieth century. Crammed with countless allusions that range from rocket physics to pop culture, organized along a structure that satirizes the liturgical calendar while paradoxically drawing power from its symbolism, and stubbornly resisting any definite interpretation, Gravity's Rainbow has achieved the status of a postmodern masterpiece, if not a modern Moby Dick or Ulysses.

Gravity's Rainbow takes over your life, makes you crazy, has you seeing Them and Their Plots everywhere you look. It's a manual for the proper paranoid responses to a world which is sexually in love with death. It's also a musical comedy. The 1974 Pulitzer committee called it "unreadable, turgid, overwritten, and obscene". It made an illustrator named Zak Smith crazy enough to illustrate every page. And it gave me a name to use as an internet handle. I love this book.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Nice pick. My favourite "Gravity's Rainbow" reference is from the Simpsons episode where Lisa pretends to be going to college:

Lisa: (awestruck) "You're reading Gravity's Rainbow?"
College Student: (sounding world-weary) "RE-reading."

[Circa89]

Thanks Senior Mexico. I believe this is the idea behind this thread, to introduce others to amazing works that they have not yet read. I will have to pick this up this week as it seems like a must read.

[liamenator]

Not a lot of time for a write-up right now, but in the spirit of keeping things moving, absolutely ecstatic to have still available, to be placed in the category of European lit (or World lit, depending on how we're defining Russia).. Dostoyevski's epic, sprawling, philosophic, amazing, mind-altering opus... Crime and Punishment

Quite simply my favorite book of all time. I can't imagine any other book ever being able to usurp it. No novel has ever proved to be as engrossing or as affecting.