Read any good books lately

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Monstro,
If you're searching stories about Proust's life (which was, as you know, a most dashing one !) you might also find them in the phenomenal Kolb editions (US). Kolb published in more than 20 volumes Proust's correspondence (his letters to his friends). I also remebered that Princess Marthe Bibesco wrote a second book about Proust « The hidden traveller » in 1949... Le voyageur voilé in French.

Now, if you want, you can visit this page:
http://search.csmonitor.com/durable/1997/08/20/feat/books.1.html

where you'll find a description of Marthe's life - which is pure glory ! - and a nicest quotation from Proust.

I stop here... it's one of my favourite writers. I mean both of them !!!!!!
 
aj2181: [quote author=Raal Lexx link=board=99;num=1062441477;start=20#34 date=09/02/03 at 23:06:35]

In the first pages, Wiesel - Nobel Prize winner for Peace in 1986 - describes the life in his native town, Sighet (Roumania), if I correctly recall ? I'm born there. The synagogue still exists, but after the 1944 deportations, there are only 9 Jews in the town.

I met several times Elie Wiesel (1994, 1999 and last year too, in July 2002, when I was at home and he came there to see his former childhood home turned into a museum). Later that day, during an official banquet (the President of Roumania, the US ambassador, etc.) we talked (chatted) about the differences between Christianism and Judaism, about Forgive and Forget in both religions, about Europe's horrendous sin called Shoah. Later, I asked him about François Mitterrand, the former French President (1981-1995) ; they used to be very good friends (I am completely fascinated by Mitterrand's personality and, well, I couldn't resist). I found out that... in the last days of Mitterrand's life (last week of December 1995, first week of January 1996), Wiesel was visiting him often in his apartment on rue Frédéric Le Play (next to the Eiffel Tower) and he was reading him fragments of his book "Night"...


[/quote]

Wow, you met Elie Wiesel! What was he like? Sometimes you hear about writers and others who are completely opposite from what you wuld expect.
 
:D, I know what you mean. Well, due to the rather official circumstances, he was very polite, open both to suggestions and questions. (Though I understand he is not that loved in France, for instance, at least by the political Right ; he is not loved in Roumania either by the same political spectrum, possibly because he has a penchant to slightly accuse & re-accuse Europe for its crime, the Holocaust. I presume German Right is also not a fan. Not because they would be anti-semite, but because enough was said about this Sin in the last 50 years... I presume.)
I like Wiesel for his obvious philosophic preferences. He has a certain exterior softness, but he's steel inside. In 1994, he was actually talking with my grandmother (I was just listening, I was 15) about the prayers in Judaism and Christianism. YHWH is full of splendour for him, he considers God a reality. It was in 1999 and 2002 that (aged 20 and respectively 23, with some more brains in my head) I picked up the thread and I asked him about the threads I mentioned : Christianism and Judaism, Forgive and Forget in both religions, what can be done to Europe's horrendous sin called Shoah, and François Mitterrand.

Twice (1994, 1999) he had the kippa on his head when I met him - it means a lot to him. But not in 2002... maybe because he was visiting just his childhood home. Well, that's all I could write down in a hurry :) (Eventually, send me an IM, I'll give you more details !).
 
SweetDiane: Wow, Raal :eek: !!! Did you meet other famous writers ?
 

:) Yes. From France - Chantal Delsol... From Italy - Umberto Eco (he said something very nice about those who love to read books)... Roumanian writers (that's unimportant... only if a name like Ana Blandiana might ring a bell, as she - a poet and a dissident - was one of the moral leaders of the 1989 Revolution)... Also from France (though Czech) Milan Kundera. And others.
 
longtimelurker: Not quite as high-brow as some of the other titles on this thread, but I do quite enjoy Michael Crichton's novels. I just had to complete 11 hours worth of train journeys to get from home to university (I could have flown 1/2way across the world in the same time it takes to go 500 miles!), so I bought a couple of books to get through. Crichton's 'Prey' was alright, although not one of his better books, but I am now about 1/5 through 'Porno' by Irvine Welsh (sequel to Trainspotting).

As a book it's good reading, and I'd like to give Trainspotting a go at some point, but the book is 70% written in Scots accent, which makes reading it quite a slow affair, as you need to read each word phonetically - sometimes I get 1/2-way down a page before I realise that I have not understood a word I've read!
 
sudas: I've read two nonfiction books that I consider epiphinal.

The first is Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World about the supernatural and how science can evaluate exta-ordinary claims.

The second is Henry George's Progress and Poverty(Abridged Edition), a work touted as "the all-time best seller on economic theory and policy." It's available to read online at http://www.henrygeorge.org. His question is, why does poverty go alongside progress? This book answers that and offers a solution which could affect many issues that plague cities, the nation and even world, today.
 
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