The Cambridge Chat Thread

That verges on being proactive about dissertation research, though. I'm staunchly against that, me.

Ah, the kerflop effect. Very deadly. If it makes you feel any better, I'm going to be reading Astrix comics in the UL for a week or two, being entirely irrelevant and, therefore, unlikely to damage the equilibrium of what I've written so far.

where did you see them? I need to get me a harness soon (aka when i'm back in cam so the porters can take delivery for me )

Trashy Fantasy is certainly a good idea. I've been re-reading Pratchett books all summer, while abandoning Les Miserables with a withering and definitive review to my flatmate ('it's ******* awful'). I've also found a French website that has an amazingly well done interactive map of Ankh-Morpork and the Disc .

Did you say, "unless it's clear that I really, really need it"?

Bloody auto-correct. Well, the UL because the comics belong to them. This way I cut down on the amount of cash I spend in Borders.

In my college library I get pissed at people talking and, generally, being there

...so it's best to allow my natural state (quasi-malice) to be distributed among more people in a larger area.

And I'm rereading catch-22 at the moment after an interval of about 4 years...I'd forgotten how entertaining it is

Trashy Fantasy is certainly a good idea. I've been re-reading Pratchett books all summer, while abandoning Les Miserables with a withering and definitive review to my flatmate ('it's ******* awful'). I've also found a French website that has an amazingly well done interactive map of Ankh-Morpork and the Disc .

And I'm rereading catch-22 at the moment after an interval of about 4 years...I'd forgotten how entertaining it is

I'm in a similar situation, although I'm 400 pages into Les Miserables, so I don't want to give up now. It has good bits, but it's just so slow, especially with all the tangents. I think I'll take a break for a while and read something enjoyable, if less worthy.

Are you a Pynchon fan? If not, go for it. He's like a more obscene, sexually frustrated and drug riddled modification of Heller.

Never heard of him. *amazons*

And yeah, Anthea Bell and Dereck Hockridge seem to have done an amazing job of making Asterix work so well in english. I've wondered just how much they've had to change from the way the original text went to make the word plays and puns work so well in this language though.

I've inherited a whole stack of hardback Asterixes from the 70s. They're great

...?



edit: don'tyoudaremergemyposts, power-hungry-girl

My impressions are a bit garbled, and a little obscene, but generally I couldn't understand why Hugo believed that to start a 'great' novel you have to explore, in tedious, genuinely awful terms, the life of a dull little tit of a priest, for eighty pages. When Valjean stole from him I was largely satisfied, and gave up on the rest of the book. I'd go for Zola any day.

What!? I don't have mod powers in here

Maskerade I've only read once. I don't know a great deal about opera (wait, nothing), as such I may have missed a few good jokes.

Anyway, I was absorbed by Equal Rights; in many regards I think it's his best written work, though I'm a fan of the earlier novels anyway ... more raw magic and darkness

If you read the comics in any other language, all of the linguistic jokes and puns are still there ... just modified to suit that particular language. The translations are amazing pieces of writing in themselves. How "Vitalstatistix" is still amusing in any other language I have no idea.